Page 46 of Wild About You

‘No, I don’t!’ I said indignantly.

‘Come off it,’ she said. ‘Sean was always blowing hot and cold on you at the beginning.’

I opened my mouth to say that he wasn’t, but then closed it again. ‘We can’t all meet the love of our lives at eighteen,’ I said huffily. ‘Sometimes you have to compromise.’

‘Exactly,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Shall we raise a glass to swiping right?’

After Fi had gone, I went and got my self-help books, my coloured pens and my journal. Feeling a bit like a teenager, I sat cross-legged in my pyjamas, opened the front page, and looked at the cheerfully decorated word: No.

I flicked through the pages, looking at the word maps where I’d tried to examine my feelings, to chip away at thegrief about losing Sean and my dream of having a family with him.

Then I turned to a blank page, and wrote in gold:

Self-Sabotage.

It was time, again, to start digging around in my mind. To work out the many ways in which I’d tripped myself up. Starting, perhaps, with Callum. But as I jotted down thoughts, I couldn’t think of my crush on him as a hindrance. He was calm, he was kind, and I wanted someone like him in my life. And it was strange that I always fancied him most when he wasn’t there. I thought of him squinting against the sunlight as we looked at the woods together, and that slow easy smile beneath the thatch of unkempt hair.

And of Jamie, staring into my eyes in the orangery.

Second goal of the week, I noted.Stop thinking about Jamie inthatway.

Maybe Fi was right. Even that weird moment I’d had with Jamie might just be me, attracting inappropriate men like a magnet attracting iron filings.

Gerald the mouse raced past, and I threw a book at him, half-heartedly.

CHAPTER 14

Jamie’s absence stretched from a couple of days, to a week, to two, whilst Stonemore basked in summer. White clouds like torn cotton wool drifted across vivid blue skies, and the chill breezes combined with fierce sunlight. The beaver family had been carefully introduced to the Claybeck stream, and enthusiastically began their work on the surrounding trees.

It was a bright morning in the staff office, several weeks later, when Hugo gave a sharp little bark of a type I hadn’t heard before.

‘Shut up!’ Tally squeaked, when there was the sound of feet on gravel, and the office door swung open.

It was Jamie.

Clean-shaven, looking almost metropolitan in jeans and a linen shirt beneath a grey jacket – not waxed this time. We glanced at each other, and I was immediately on edge.

‘Hugo knew you’d arrived,’ I said, my eyes fixed on mycomputer screen as Hugo danced around his master’s legs, barking hysterically, his tail wagging so hard he should, by the laws of physics, have taken off.

‘He must have heard the car.’ Fi was on her feet. ‘Hello, hello!’

‘Hi everyone.’ When I glanced back at him, I saw he had the beginning of a smile on his face as he looked at Fi. ‘Thanks for holding the fort.’

‘No problem/no worries/it’s a pleasure,’ we all chorused. I kept my face neutral, until I felt a wet nose nudging at my ankle. Hugo. Whilst Jamie had been away, he’d spent at least an hour a day asleep in my lap as I typed over his head. Now, having greeted Jamie, he was looking at me in a questioning how-about-a-cuddle way.

‘Hey you,’ I said softly to him, stroking his ears. ‘Not now. Your dad’s back.’

‘She’s going to have to disappoint you, Hugo.’ Without looking at me, Jamie scooped the small hound into his arms and carried him away, holding him close.

Life stayed calm. I deepened my experience of the estate from close observation of every copse and hillside, drawing on Callum’s encyclopaedic knowledge of the landscape and his memory of every snowfall and flood. I even spent a day in the formal garden doing a beetle count, and was delighted to find a black and orange sexton beetle, although Tally didn’t appreciate being shown a picture of it on my phone.

One afternoon I arrived back in the office after a morningstriding over Stonemore’s acres with Callum, feeling unusually peaceful. I found Fi packing up to go and Tally’s desk empty apart from its usual piles of catalogues and magazines.

‘Where’s Tally?’ I said.

‘She’s doing a presentation,’ said Fi, sweeping her notebook and pens into her desk drawer with an air of finality. ‘They’re considering a re-hang of the paintings. Tally has done a presentation on her thoughts and Jamie is going to provide tea and scones. They should almost be done, actually.’

‘Employee of the month,’ I said. Apparently it was only me who he couldn’t stand to be around. I sat down and clicked Forestcam on.

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