Page 108 of A Recipe for Love
‘Again, I didn’t say that. It just strikes me that decisions made in haste can very quickly be regretted.’
‘Try telling him that.’
‘He’s not the only one making hasty choices.’
The sound of a car closing in on them down the hill and pulling to a stop drew Bella’s attention away, and headed off the bubbling row. Jill wound her window down. ‘You’re lucky I was still in the village. What’s up pet? You sounded awful on the phone.’
Bella opened the passenger door, and turned back to Veronica. ‘I’m sorry. I hope everything goes well, you know.’
And then she jumped in. ‘Can I get a ride to Strathcarron? I need to get to the station.’
Jill frowned. ‘What’s wrong?’
Bella bit back the urge to say nothing. Everything was wrong. ‘I need to get away.’
Her new friend nodded. ‘Whatever you need.’
A quick web search during the drive over had told Bella that if she made the next train to Inverness and changed there and at Aberdeen she could be in Leeds tonight. Well, not technically tonight, technically very early tomorrow morning, but early enough that she wouldn’t have to sleep on a station platform and in thirteen hours’ time she could be getting into bed at her nan’s flat, far away from Lowbridge, and Adam, and Veronica, and all the silly ideas she’d got into her head about settling down and making a home.
Jill chattered for the most part of the journey. She relayed in far more detail the saga of old Old Man Strachan and young Old Man Strachan and the various women who the different men had loved and lost along the way. ‘Apparently there’s a young Young Man Strachan who ran off to what they keep referring to as the Big City. I think they mean Inverness.’ She shrugged. ‘Anyway he’s not really to be talked about.’
Bella stared out of the window and nodded, grateful that Jill wasn’t asking any questions about why on earth she was driving Bella to the station.
‘I have noticed that you haven’t actually told me what’s wrong.’
Damn. ‘I’m fine.’
‘No. You’re not.’
‘I will be.’ And she would. Bella always was. She wasn’t the type to wallow or grieve or let things get on top of her. There was always something else to do, somewhere else to be. The mistake she’d made with Lowbridge was forgetting that there would always be greener grass elsewhere.
She caught the train at Strathcarron at a run, with only seconds to spare to hug Jill and promise – as Bella always promised when it came time to up sticks and move on – that she would keep in touch. Once on the train she flung her bag onto the overhead rack – never travel with a bag you can’t lift overhead on your own was one of Bella’s hard and fast rules for life – and threw her body into a seat by the window.
The route closely followed the path of the road they’d taken a few weeks earlier accompanying Alexander on his final journey to the crematorium, but the two Bellas taking those journeys felt worlds apart. The first Bella had been committed to supporting Adam, but even among the grief and the pain it had still been a new adventure. She’d determined to make Lowbridge work, for him, because it was what he’d made her believe he wanted.
Bella today was a ball of rage. She’d put everything into that dream –hisdream – of a life at Lowbridge and it had turned out that Adam didn’t care at all. He was perfectly happy to throw the whole thing away in a second. All that guff about how the laird was the place and the place was part of him had been nonsense. Worse than nonsense. Lies.
By the time she changed at Inverness, the anger had hardened.
By Aberdeen it had settled into a solid certainty.
By the time she was hopping off the university night bus, having persuaded the driver that although she wasn’t a student the ethical thing to do was take pity on her, and climbing the stairs to her nan’s flat, there was no doubt at all that she’d done the right thing. Settling in Lowbridge had been a crazy idea. Crazier than the time she’d signed up to train to be a paragliding instructor in Peru. Crazier than the time she’d lost her clothes going skinny dipping in California and had to steal a lifeguard’s jacket to protect her modesty. Bella wasn’t built to settle down. Being with Adam had made her believe that she could be a person who belonged somewhere. But he’d been the anchor. With that cut away she could allow herself to drift or she could take control and make haste away. Bella had no fight left. Flight was all that was left to her.
So Bella should be happy, which made the heaviness of her limbs the next morning, and her utter terror at the thought of getting out of bed and facing the day, a little hard to explain. She’d gleaned from the quiet around her that her nan must still be away. The last time they’d messaged, her nan had been in Somerset and Bella hadn’t told her she was coming to visit. She lay back down on her pillow and closed her eyes.
The second morning Bella felt much the same. Perhaps, she decided, she was sickening for something. That would be typical, that Lowbridge had left her with a parting gift of influenza, or some strange Scottish castle virus to which wee Sassenach lassies were uniquely susceptible. She couldn’t stay in bed the whole time. She could imagine what her nan would say about that. She would say that there were adventures out there that she was missing out on, hunkering down here with her fuzzy head and tired body.
Bella forced herself up and into the shower. Being clean and fresh was bound to make her feel better. There was really nothing finer, in Bella’s view, than that first shower when you’d been hiking or wild camping and you could feel the build-up of grime on your skin. This shower was exhausting. Bella filled a water glass, collected a packet of Hobnobs and some tortilla chips from the kitchen, and crawled back into bed.
By the third morning her stomach was telling her that, whatever her brain thought about the situation, she really did have to get up and eat something more substantial, and in her current state there really was only one option. Cheese on toast. It was the simplest, but also one of the most perfect meals Bella knew. Making it was an act of self-care but also a reversion to childhood tastes and needs. She could make a fancy cheffy version with sourdough and three different cheeses and a dash of something a little bit spicy or a little bit hot to elevate the whole thing. Some of her former colleagues swore by Tabasco but for Bella’s money you couldn’t beat good old Worcestershire sauce.
That wasn’t what she was making today. Today she was putting plastic wrapped cheddar onto white sliced bread from the convenience store at the edge of her nan’s estate and she was losing the here and now for a moment in the taste of being six years old and off school with a cold, on those simple days where cheese on toast made everything seem a little bit better.
‘What are you doing here?’ Her nan’s voice carried through to the tiny kitchen from the hallway as she bustled in dropping bags and coats in her wake.
‘Aren’t I welcome?’
‘You’re always welcome. I just didn’t know you were coming. How long have you been here? I’d have come back sooner if I’d known.’
