Page 110 of A Recipe for Love
‘What?’
‘Well barrelling in, causing all sorts of trouble and then buggering off again.’
‘That’s not fair.’
Flinty raised an eyebrow.
‘She didn’t make me decide to sell.’
‘No, but I’m sure she didn’t discourage it.’
Adam had never fallen out with Flinty in his life. He’d had typical teenage rows with his dad, his grandmother could be impossible to please, and Darcy’s exuberance had clashed with Adam’s adolescent moods more than once, but Flinty had been constant. Always there willing to patch up scraped knees without too many questions asked. ‘It was my decision,’ he insisted.
‘All the more reason you need to be over there explaining and working out what happens next then.’
‘I will.’ He watched Flinty automatically start tidying the space around her, folding his clothes into a neat pile on the chair. ‘Are you cross with me too?’
‘Not my place to be cross with anyone.’
‘But you think I’m doing the wrong thing?’
She smoothed his jeans onto the pile. ‘About selling? I have no idea. But lying about here in bed with your family over there not knowing whether they’re coming or going and…’ She hesitated. ‘Well yes, I think you’re messing things up a bit now.’
That hadn’t been what she’d started to say. ‘What else?’
She shook her head.
‘Say it.’
‘Well, and with your lassie goodness knows where.’
‘She decided to leave.’
‘Oh fiddle-faddle. She did this. I didn’t do that. It’s all nonsense. If you love somebody you find a way to be near them. Life’s too long to live it any other way.’
Adam didn’t reply, which he imagined Flinty would interpret as agreement.
‘Oh by the way, I’m going to take your car out to go to the village. It’s ever so comfortable to drive.’
‘I know.’
‘And all the doors work,’ she added. Flinty passed him the mug of tea. ‘Now get up, get dressed and bloody well start getting on with things.’
Adam hadn’t done what he was told, at least not straight away. In fact for the next few hours he’d done the exact opposite, not out of stubbornness, not even out of a pretence that Flinty was wrong, but out of pure paralysing fear. He’d failed spectacularly at being the laird and he’d failed at being Bella’s partner. He’d promised her a life he couldn’t deliver.
Having made the decision to sell up and walk away, he’d been able to tell himself that things would get easier. He’d been able to tell himself that the decision was an end point.
But of course it wasn’t. It was a beginning of something else for everybody and he was still responsible for working out what that should be.
And now he was responsible for all of that alone.
His phone rang on the side table. He pounced on it, desperate to see Bel’s name on the screen. He swiped to answer anyway. ‘Ravi?’
‘Hi. You OK?’
‘Oh you know.’
‘I just wanted to say I was sorry.’
