Page 26 of All Wrapped Up
‘And I’ve yet to see him leave the pub without either you or Uncle Jim chasing him out,’ said Jeanie, with a smile, but I couldn’t see the funny side.
‘Next time, I’m barring him on sight,’ Evelyn declared, as everyone began to drift away or talk among themselves.
‘You’re not bothered by him, are you?’ Jemma asked me as the meeting staggered to an unsatisfactory close without anyone announcing it was over.
‘You’ve not really taken any notice?’ Lizzie chipped in straight after.
‘Of course, I’m bothered,’ I told them both. ‘And I have taken notice, because he’s right, isn’t he? Hardly anyone turned out tonight and it will be impossible to get the festival successfully off the ground with such little interest.’
‘You’re not giving up, Clemmie?’ Lizzie asked, looking stricken.
‘With a turnout like this,’ I said, looking around, ‘I can’t see as I have any choice. I hate to say it, but you overestimated enthusiasm for this idea, Lizzie. I think you mistook your eagerness to bring Moses’s idea to life for everyone else’s.’
She, Jemma, Bella and her friend Holly, tried to convince me otherwise, but I wouldn’t be swayed. Too few people wanted the festival to go ahead and a blow-in being in charge and attempting to turn it into something it hadn’t started out as was most likely the reason no one had turned out to support it. I was better off keeping my head down, my own counsel and right out of town.
Chapter 7
With my first attempt to immerse myself in community life ending in such a disaster, my mood took a nosedive and I shrugged off Lizzie’s promise to get to the bottom of the disastrous meeting, closed the cottage curtains and ignored both the knock on the front door that came the next day and the multiple messages stacking up on my phone.
The only person I had contact with, and that was via a WhatsApp message rather than a call, was Mum. I told her the meeting had gone ahead, there was loads to do as a result and I was saving the details until I could send her something official, like a poster advertising what was happening. I knew I was setting myself up for a further fall, but my current mood didn’t offer up the right frame of mind in which to make a genuine explanation about what had embarrassingly occurred.
For two days, I lay low as the rain hammered down and the wind rattled the garden gate and made a determined effort to blow the end of summer out and the beginning of autumn in. Ordinarily, I would have been rejoicing about that, but not this time around. This year, I couldn’t muster the enthusiasm to embrace the change or the energy to look again for hope andsolace in Callum’s encouraging and inspiring notes. I left the special treasure box I kept them in undisturbed on the wardrobe shelf in my bedroom.
‘Clem! I know you’re in there!’
It was Ash’s voice that roused me from my Saturday lie-in with a magazine and pot of tea, but I still didn’t feel inclined to respond to my new friend.
‘I need your help! Please open the door.’
I didn’t budge.
‘I wouldn’t ask you,’ he continued to shout, ‘if I wasn’t desperate.’
With a long sigh, I carefully pushed back the duvet, to avoid upsetting the tray and peeped around the curtains. I couldn’t see Ash because he was likely sheltering from the rain in the porch, but I did hear an indignant woof and felt annoyed that he had subjected Pixie, as well as himself, to a soaking.
I assumed his appeal for help was a ruse to get me to open the door, but with the pair of them in attendance, I supposed it was as good a time as any to explain what I had decided.
‘Just a sec!’ I shouted through the window that I opened only far enough for my voice to reach him. ‘Hang on!’
I pulled on my cotton dressing gown and padded down the stairs, hoping that Pixie was going to forgive me for turning her away and that Ash wouldn’t try to convince me that I would have more than enough time to look after her now the festival wasn’t going ahead.
The failed meeting had plunged me into an emotional maelstrom and I had even found myself wavering about my former conviction to never sell Rowan Cottage during the long watches of the night. I hoped with the whole of my heartthat the current upset would pass – my slow walk along life’s path, with grief as my companion, had given me reason to believe that it would – but it didn’t currently put me in prime position for being in the best headspace to take on and nurture a depressed pooch.
‘At last!’ Ash muttered, stepping straight in when I opened the door. ‘I was beginning to think you’d left the county.’
‘If this is about the festival or Pixie, or both,’ I immediately began to say as I pulled back my shoulders and put on my bravest face, ‘then please, just let me say—’
‘It is about Pixie,’ Ash interrupted, producing her like a magician with a rabbit in a hat, from the depths of the huge waxed coat he was wearing and thrusting her into my arms, ‘and it would be about the festival too, given what Lizzie has told me about the meeting after I couldn’t get you to answer your phone, but I haven’t got time to get into it right now.’
Pixie started to wriggle and, not having the best hold on her, I put her down. She made a beeline for my armchair and jumped straight on to it, then looked at me with her head cutely cocked and her ears pricked.
‘I know it’s an imposition,’ Ash carried on, ‘but can you take her?’
‘No,’ I said, feeling cross. ‘Ash, I can’t. I’d already decided—’
‘Not forever,’ he cut in quickly. ‘Just for the weekend.’
I looked from Pixie back to him and realised he didn’t look like his usual sunny self and I got the impression that wasn’t only because of what Lizzie must have told him about the meeting.
