by Anna Jacobs
The other driver who had been caught up in the accident had survived with less damage to his body, but Russ was lucky to have survived at all. He knew that. But he didn’t feel lucky when he found himself facing months of rehab, in order to be able to do everyday things that had been so easy before.
Oh, stop dwelling on that and look to the future, you moron, he told himself and pressed the lift button to go down again. It worked smoothly with very little noise. When he joined Molly again downstairs, he said, ‘It’s fine. Where do I sign?’
She gave him one of her lovely, understanding smiles. ‘Eager to move in?’
‘Very eager.’
‘Here you are.’
She held out the clipboard and he signed on the dotted line at the bottom with a flourish. He wasn’t worried about the two minor defects not being remedied because he reckoned she was as honest as she’d seemed. That was one of the reasons he’d contracted her and her husband to build him a house here in the leisure village they’d created from previously bare meadows. That and the smiling, friendly faces of the other residents.
He didn’t watch her walk back to the sales office. As soon as she’d left he rang the removal company he’d booked provisionally and his day immediately went another step brighter. Yes, they’d be happy to move his small collection of furniture the very next day, as long as they could turn up at eight o’clock to load it.
He was so eager to move something in today, he drove the hour back to his grotty rented flat in Swindon and collected together a load of oddments of various sizes and shapes, like his great-grandmother’s old copper kettle, his wok, a few ornaments he treasured, wrapped in bubble plastic, and some boxes of books and CDs.
After grabbing a quick lunch, he drove them across from his flat to the new house. Smiling ruefully, he admitted to himself that the removal men could easily have brought these as well as the other stuff and this was mainly an excuse to wander round his new home again and gloat at its spaciousness.
By the time he’d transferred everything from his car into the house, his shoulder and knee were aching. With a growl of annoyance, he dumped things in the appropriate rooms and rode the lift back down to what Molly called the kitchen–family area.
Only he didn’t have a family, did he, just fond memories of the wife who’d died.
That had been years ago now, but though he’d met some very pleasant women since, he’d never been tempted to go as far as marriage again. So he would be living here on his own and that was fine. He was used to it, was looking forward to resuming his busy working life.
He sneezed suddenly and became aware that the whole house smelled of some sickly air freshener that was making his nose tickle and his eyes water. He found a couple of gadgets spraying the stuff automatically every now and then, and turned them off with a grimace, putting them outside the back door. Pity it wouldn’t be safe to leave the windows and doors open overnight. It’d be the first thing he did tomorrow, open up every window he could so that the house could be filled with clean, fresh air.
Back at the flat he made tea – cheese on toast followed by an elderly piece of fruit cake from the nearly empty freezer – then he finished the last bit of packing.
Not that he had a lot to pack. He hadn’t taken out of storage more than the absolute minimum needed when he moved here, knowing it would only be for a few months. He’d rented this place because he’d needed somewhere to live that was away from his aunt’s well-meaning fussing. Vera had been wonderful to him, but she did talk a lot and he’d never been fond of chatting for the sake of it. In his professional career as a nature photographer he’d relished silence except for the sounds of life outdoors.
Anyway, she lived in a flat near the centre in Leicester. Not a convenient place for him, either for work or his new home.
As for his half-sister, he hadn’t heard from her for ages. The last time he heard Justine had been living in Strasbourg with some rich French guy. But she’d rarely bothered to keep in touch, so who knew where she was now?
Well, he hadn’t been brilliant at communicating with her, either. She was twenty years younger than him and he’d already left home when she was born, so he had never really got to know her properly.
Justine called herself an artist, but she was into modern, incomprehensible stuff that looked like a child’s crayon drawing to him. No wonder she found it difficult to make a living. She’d made up for that with a series of wealthy men.
He left the clothes he would need for the morning on a bedside chair and stuffed his dirty clothes in the linen basket. He’d put the sheets in with them in the morning.
My last night in this cupboard of a bedroom, he thought happily as he lay down. He’d be so glad to close the door of this cramped little flat behind him for a final time.
In the morning Russ was awake by five and then had to fill the time until the removal people came by fiddling around online. Once they arrived, he kept an eye on them but it was soon obvious that he was doing more harm than good by trying to help, so he left them to it and sat on a hard chair in one corner of the bedroom. He pretended to look out of the window, but actually he was simply existing, longing to leave.
When the men had cleared the place out, they told him they’d be having a half-hour coffee break before taking his things to his new house, because they’d already spent time loading stuff from their warehouse. Good. This gave him time for a quick check that everything had gone and the flat was clean before he left.
As he drove past the leisure-village hotel and across to his new home he caught a glimpse of Penny Lake sparkling in the morning sunshine. How nice it would be to live within walking distance of a body of water. He should get some good photos from that. Most people wouldn’t know half the species that lived there.
If he’d been the singing type he’d have burst into song as he opened his front door, but that might have scared the neighbours. He grinned. He definitely wasn’t famous for his musical ability!
It felt wonderful to stroll inside, absolutely wonderful, even without any furniture there to make it look like a home. He had left the new electric kettle standing ready in the kitchen for a ceremonial first brew and while he waited for it to boil, he walked round the ground floor opening the windows. Once he’d made himself a pot of tea, he raised his mug in a silent toast to his new home.
The smell of the so-called air fresheners was still lingering and he sneezed twice, so took the lift up to open all the bedroom windows as well. He didn’t intend to use the lift all the time but the physio said he should take it easy at first when he moved back into a two-storey house, and he would. Well, he would try to rein back his eagerness to sort everything out.
As he stood sipping the last of the tea, a small florist’s van drew up outside and a young fellow came towards his house carrying a bouquet. Must have got the wrong number. He opened the door.
‘Mr Carden?’
‘Yes.’
‘Compliments of Molly and Euan Santiago.’ He held out the bouquet.
Russ was so surprised it took him a minute to accept the bouquet, then he stood watching the van drive away amazed by this gesture. He couldn’t remember anyone ever buying him flowers, though he’d bought them for other people at various times, usually for women.
He looked down at them and murmured, ‘Beautiful!’, loving their delicate perfume. Unlike harsh, artificial scents, these didn’t make him sneeze and they gladdened the eye with their delicate colours.
He walked back into the kitchen, cradling them carefully in his arms. Did he even have a suitable vase? He wasn’t sure, but the flowers would stay alive just as well in a bucket till his furniture arrived.
The bouquet made him feel truly welcome. Special. At home. All the things he hadn’t felt for a good long while.
Molly’s kind gesture also brought some of those stupid, weak tears to his eyes. Oh, hell! Since the accident his emotions had been rather fragile. But he hadn’t had a home of his own for over a year, what wi
th his time in rehab and then staying with his aunt. And he’d never owned a house himself, only half of a huge mortgage when he was married. He’d been careful with his money since then and owned this house outright.
Vera had been wonderful to him after he came out of hospital. He’d needed help in the early days of his convalescence with the many small tasks of daily life, like shopping, cooking or merely carrying a mug of tea across the room without slopping it on the floor. It had been embarrassing to be helped by an almost eighty-year-old.
Still, that was typical of his aunt. She was in excellent health for her age and had helped a lot of people over the years. She admitted she tired more easily these days than she had in her energetic middle years, which probably meant she was now behaving like a fifty-year-old. He smiled at the thought of her. And of his brother.
He just wished they would stop matchmaking, though. Once he started getting better, Vera had kept introducing him to women of his own age and she’d egged his brother on to do it too. Steve hadn’t been hard to persuade. Just because he’d been happily married for years, he thought everyone else ought to be as well. Well, he’d fallen lucky. There weren’t many people as delightful as his sister-in-law, Katie, and even their kids had grown into nice young adults.
However, Russ did not want to get married again. One ride on that wonky roundabout had been more than enough for him, thank you very much. His career had been taking off before the accident because he’d sold a television series of nature programmes about the almost invisible world around humans’ dwellings. He was hoping to pick up on that again and Sally, his agent, was behind him one hundred per cent.
By eight o’clock that evening he had sorted out his furniture, his clothes and other smaller possessions, and he was utterly exhausted. He locked up and went to bed at nine o’clock, hoping not to be woken by nightmares, not only of the car crash but of the roaring noise the flames had made when rushing towards the small town where he’d been staying.
He hadn’t realised bushfires could be so loud or travel so quickly. If he hadn’t been driving, he could have got some fantastic photos.
To his amazement, Russ slept right through the night. Now there was a good omen. He got up smiling, eager to start his first full day here, grimacing when he used the lift because he was a bit stiff and had found some more bits and pieces to carry downstairs. He’d forgotten how many boxes he’d put in storage and had mixed upstairs and downstairs items in his hurry.
Soon after breakfast there was a knock on the door and he opened it to find the neighbours, whom he’d seen and waved to a couple of times, standing there holding out a small flowering plant.
‘We’re the Dittons from next door, Bob and Linda. This is to welcome you.’
‘How kind. Pleased to meet you. I’m Russ Carden. Do come in and have a cuppa.’
‘No, we won’t at the moment. We know what it’s like when you’ve just moved into a house. There’s so much to do.’
‘Well, you must come round for a drink sometime then.’
‘That’ll be great one day but probably not until later in the year, thanks,’ Bob said. ‘This is hail and farewell, I’m afraid. We’re swapping houses and cars with an Aussie woman who lives near Perth so that we can be there for the birth of our daughter’s first child. We’re picking our swappee up at the airport this evening.’
His wife smiled at Russ. ‘We wanted to ask you to keep an eye on Simone at first. She hasn’t been to England since she was six, so she might not know how to do some of the everyday things.’
‘Oh. Well, I’ll do my best, but I don’t know this area very well, myself. I’ve been living in Leicester and Swindon and before that I was overseas.’
Bob chuckled. ‘We’re not expecting you to babysit her – she’s in her fifties after all – just to be aware of her situation and lend a hand if necessary. We’ve asked our other neighbours to do the same. Most of them are very friendly, you’ll find, but not over-friendly, thank goodness.’
‘Yes. Right. I’ll, um, keep my eyes open and do my best to help if needed. Thanks again for this.’ He nodded towards the little plant.
‘Good. Got to get back now. Lots to do. We’re leaving in a couple of days.’
And they were gone.
Russ went back inside and dumped the plant on the side of the sink, feeling somewhat aggrieved about the reason they’d called round. He didn’t feel like keeping an eye on anyone, didn’t even want to chat to the neighbours, however nice they were. Not until he’d settled in.
All he damn well wanted was some peace and quiet to make a new home for himself and start rebuilding the career that had been interrupted by the accident.
Russ went back to unpacking and arranging his bits and pieces of furniture, using the stairs a few times, enjoying getting organised.
He did his midday exercises carefully, never missed the various activities prescribed by the physio because he was determined to finish rehabilitating his leg and arm as quickly as he could.
It all went well but he had to take a rest in the early afternoon. He wasn’t stupid enough to press on through pain. He’d probably done too much in the past couple of days.
He took things more easily for the rest of the day. There was no hurry to sort every single thing out, after all. It was a pleasure simply to be here.
Chapter Five
It was a huge relief when the pilot announced they’d be landing at London Heathrow in twenty minutes, just after five in the morning. The cabin staff began a rapid clear-up and passengers got in their way as they gathered their personal possessions together.
Simone felt nervous but told herself not to be stupid. She muttered what had rapidly become her mantra: I can do this.
After the plane had landed, the disembarkation went smoothly and as her British passport got her through customs quickly, her anxiety began to ease. Neither this passport nor its predecessors had ever been used until this trip. She’d only kept a current one at her parents’ insistence that it could be very useful to have when you were travelling outside Australia, which she might want to do one day.
She never had until now, though, still wasn’t sure she was doing the right thing.
Thank goodness someone was meeting her – and thank goodness for the large signs telling you where to go in airports.
As she walked out into the terminal pushing her luggage trolley she breathed a sigh of relief that she had got through it all smoothly and looked round for Bob and Linda Ditton. She’d seen what they looked like, easy to remember with long, curly grey hair for Linda, a bald head and spectacles for Bob.
Only they were definitely not there, either singly or as a couple.
She went past the people waiting to meet visitors and hung about nearby, watching others enjoy their reunions. She envied them. Being met by strangers wouldn’t be the same as being greeted by loved ones. Still, at least she was being met.
Only, the minutes ticked past and there was still no sign of the Dittons. She kept glancing at the clock or her watch – or trying not to when she found only two or three minutes had passed. They must have been caught up in traffic.
When more than half an hour had passed and a whole new set of people had arrived to wait for the next group of arrivals, she began to wonder if the Dittons had got the date or time wrong, or even had an accident on the way here.
Harriet had given her their mobile number, so after fiddling around for a little longer, she pulled out her phone with its new sim card – Thank you, Libby! – and dialled it.
‘Hello!’ a woman’s voice said.
‘Is that Linda?’
‘Yes.’
‘Simone here. I’m at Heathrow. Um, I was told you’d be meeting me.’
‘Oh, no! We thought it was this evening not this morning. Oh dear, I’m so sorry! Just a minute.’
Simone heard her yell for her husband then explain the situation to him.
‘Are you still there, Simone? Look, it’ll take us just under two
hours to get to Heathrow. We’ll set off straight away. I can’t apologise enough for the mix-up.’
‘No, no! Wait. I’ll catch a taxi.’ Whatever it cost, she couldn’t bear the thought of hanging around the terminal for hours longer.
‘You don’t need to do that. We’re happy to come and get you.’
‘I’d rather find a taxi. I’m not fond of airports.’ Especially after seventeen hours on a plane.
‘Neither am I. Oh dear, I feel so guilty. What a dreadful welcome for you!’
‘Look, I have your address. I’ll be there as soon as I can. I’ll go and find a taxi straight away.’
When she’d disconnected, Simone stood for a few moments coming to terms with the situation, telling herself not to panic. I can do it! I can!
She took a few deep breaths and kept repeating those words in her mind for the sheer comfort of them and gradually calmed down. Of course she could do it. Catching taxis wasn’t rocket science, even in a foreign country.
Should she have waited for the Dittons? No, she didn’t want to stay in this crowded airport for one second longer than she had to. She was desperate for fresh air and daylight, instead of hurrying people and what seemed like miles of garish artificial lighting.
As a loudspeaker made an echoing and utterly incomprehensible announcement, she looked round at the various signs informing travellers of their choices and found one saying simply ‘Taxis’ so set off with her trolley in the direction it indicated.
There. She’d found the taxi rank.
The driver of the first car in the line said he was too near the end of his shift to take her on a long trip into the country. He studied her, eyes narrowed, and added, ‘Get a fixed price for your journey, love. It’ll be cheaper.’ He even told her roughly how much she should pay.
‘Thank you. That’s very kind of you.’
‘Well, you look like a tired, lost soul to me, and surely that’s an Aussie accent?’
‘Yes, it is.’
‘I like Aussies.’
She didn’t like his description of her, though. Did she really look like a lost soul in need of pity? Squaring her shoulders, she moved to the next taxi, trying to look more confident. ‘I need to go to Wiltshire. Can you take me, and how much would it cost? I’d like a fixed price.’
