Page 109 of A Recipe for Love
‘No need to.’ Not that it was true anyway. Bella’s nan kept her own schedule. She had ever since Bella had been old enough to pack up and bring along. She’d never let niceties like school term dates or paid jobs hold her back. She definitely wouldn’t have rushed back on Bella’s account.
‘So is this mystery man with you?’
Bella stopped. She hadn’t told her nan about Adam. ‘What man?’ she asked.
‘Well you scurried your way back over here from Spain without a hint you were planning it, so I assumed there was a man. Or a woman?’ she asked.
Bella couldn’t lie to her nan. She always saw through it. It was her superpower. ‘It didn’t work out.’
Her grandma nodded. ‘So that’s why you’re back here.’
Bella tried to smile. ‘Just until the next thing pops up.’
‘All right then. Any idea what the next thing might be?’
Bella shrugged. She’d run from Lowbridge. What came next was… was what?
Her grandma was still looking at her. Bella knew that look. She braced herself for what was coming next. Even though she hadn’t lied, she also hadn’t entirely told the truth. Eventually her grandmother nodded, and stepped back. ‘Well I’m going to go and have a bath. Been on the road all day.’
‘You got new wheels?’
She shook her head. ‘Nah. Got a lift with a Cornish escapologist heading up to Edinburgh. Nice lad.’ She grinned. ‘Bendy.’
‘I do not want to know how you know that.’
‘I had him stretched out right across that back seat.’
‘Nan!’
Her grandma laughed. ‘I dropped my glasses under the passenger seat. He bent round to get them for me.’ She sighed. ‘Not that I’d have said no to a bit of the other, but he said that having sex drained his focus for getting out of handcuffs before he drowns so what can you do?’ She rubbed her eyes. She looked tired.
‘Are you OK?’
‘I’m fine.’ Her nan looked Bella up and down. ‘Can we say the same for you though?’
Chapter Nineteen
The knock on the bedroom door would have woken Adam up, if he’d actually managed to sleep at all in the last seventy-two hours. Mostly he’d pretended to sleep and when he’d reached the point where it seemed as though he couldn’t get away with that any longer, he’d slipped out of the coach house – where he was resolutely staying – and walked as far as he could away from Lowbridge, away from the village, away from the family, hoping that if he walked and walked he would tire his body enough that he would have no option but to fall asleep. Perhaps he even hoped that if he walked far enough he would walk right back to her.
Flinty pushed the bedroom door open and wrinkled her nose. ‘Oh. When did you last open a window in here?’
Adam had no idea, and an overwhelming desire to tell her to go away, but he knew better than that. He had a strong suspicion that Flinty didn’t consider him too old or too grand to be put on the naughty step if he talked back to her. She put the tray she was carrying on the dressing table. ‘I brought you some tea. I was going to bring you breakfast, but then I thought if I did that you’d have even more excuse to hide in here.’
‘I’m not—’
Flinty’s look silenced him, because he was hiding. Of course he was. ‘You need to talk to them.’
‘To who?’
‘Your grandmother. And Darcy. You walked in, announced that you were selling the estate, had a shouting match with your lassie and you haven’t spoken to anybody since. Have you spoken to her?’
‘Bella?’ Adam shook his head. He wanted to, like he’d wanted to run after his mum and tell her not to go all those years before. But, just like that time, he was terrified that nothing he could say would be enough. And this time, it was all his fault.
Flinty shrugged. ‘Well you can’t avoid everybody. Your mother hasn’t been back in touch?’
Adam wasn’t sure whether that was a statement or a question, but he shook his head. ‘She said she was going back to Lerwick.’
‘Typical.’
