Page 75 of Fundamentals in Flirting

“Here, let me help you with that,” I offered, and she gratefully handed the watering can to me. “Oh, by the way, Deidre had twins last night.”

“She did? Oh, that’s a bit earlier than I’d thought. Everything ok?”

“Yes, she did great. You have a beautiful new nanny and a strong billy. I was just going to do a little check on them. Do you want to come along?”

Agnes nodded, then said wistfully, “The magic of new life still surprises me every time. Did you and Teddy see it happen?”

My heart lurched at his name, but I smiled and led her back through the hole in the hedge and towards the shippen.

“Yes. Teddy was very worried about her. I think he might have a few new grey hairs from the experience!”

She laughed. “He’s a sensitive soul, isn’t he?”

I nodded, not really trusting myself to speak.

Inside the shippen, Deidre was busily eating hay, while the two kids were up and nursing. When Agnes called her, shaking a bucket with pellets, she bleated excitedly and trotted towards us.

“She looks good and both babies seem fine,” she said, softly stroking Deidre while I examined the trio, happy to see nothing out of the ordinary.

“Yes, I think she’s passed the afterbirth cleanly, and these two seem good and strong,” I replied, adding some more straw to the area and topping up the water and hay in her pen.

“Thank you for caring about them, Hannah.”

The kind, gentle tone of her voice had tears pricking behind my eyes, and I turned away from her to sniff discreetly. This was so unlike me – I never cried, not even after everything with Jonathan; not even following the personal and professional devastation of leaving my research position behind. In all the putrid vileness of the last few months, not a single tear had escaped my eyes. No, I prided myself on being the mistress of the frosty veneer, ensuring I was protected by a thick covering of ice so no one could peek inside and catch even a hint of the vulnerability hidden deep down. Yet recently, this all seemed to be changing.

My voice was surprisingly gruff when I finally spoke. “You’re welcome.”

“I saw Teddy leaving very early this morning. Is everything ok?”

“Yes, fine.” Tight-lipped, I climbed over the gate to get out of the pen. “I should get going, unless you need anything else?”

“No, I think they should stay here for a few more days before I put them out in the paddock. Do you think that will be ok?”

“Good idea.”

We left Deidre eating peacefully, the two kids sleeping quietly in the fresh straw, and closed the shed door behind us.

“I’m glad they’ve come along now. Actually, Giles asked if I might bring some goats to the country fayre on Saturday. The little ones should be ok to do that, don’t you think? Deidre goes every year – she loves the attention from all the children.”

“I’m sure that will be fine.”

“Will I see you there?”

“Um, sure,” I said.

Parting ways in the garden, Agnes gave me a cheery wave and disappeared back through the hedge, while I headed to the surgery car park. A new worry weighed on my shoulders: the Chipping-on-the-Water Country Fayre and Scarecrow Festival. Yes, indeed, a bizarre local tradition that I’d attended as a child – one which I’d blanked out of my mind for many years and which I had totally forgotten that I’d agreed to attend. Actually,agreedwasn’t quite accurate; Giles had strong-armed me into judging one of the classes in the dog show. Which, quite frankly, sounded like a very special kind of torture reserved for a disciple of Satan himself.Excellent.

ChapterTwenty-Three

Saturday came around rather more quickly than I would have liked. Our small town was awash with bunting and stalls and the large green in the town centre was set up with marquees and white-roped rings for various show classes and displays. The shopkeepers had dressed up in bright colours and ridiculous hats, and absurd and increasingly elaborate scarecrows graced every garden. The excitement of the annual country fayre turned the locals into nutcases. Clearly.

Teddy had sporadically texted me in the last few days, just brief “How are you?” messages, which, at first, I had responded to politely and concisely, but his own answers had been sketchy, inconsistent, and definitely not keen, so I gradually stopped replying. Repairing my bruised ego was easier without his physical presence nearby, so I was grateful that he seemed to have disappeared. It left me to try my hardest to get back to normal, almost able to squash the uncomfortable feelings, to swallow them away, pretend they’d never messed me up at all – and that I’d not acted like an uncontrollable dog in heat in his presence. Because, frankly it was absolutely mortifying.

Turning thoughts away from Teddy, my social anxiety spiked as I accompanied Giles to the fayre committee tent, where a lot of tweed-clad local bigwigs were busy peopling and organising, loudly and importantly. Palms clammy and my feet suddenly leaden, I began to slow down, dropping back from Giles’s side. He turned to me with a puzzled expression.

Then I heard it: the unmistakeable laugh, the false and overtly brash sound that was indelibly etched on my mind, the sort of laugh reserved for those he secretly despised but whom he was intent on smarming up to.

“Are you ok?” Giles asked, twisting his whole body to face me.

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