Page 23 of A Recipe for Love
Defeated, Bella lowered herself carefully to the ground. What was she supposed to do now?
She closed her eyes and took a second to think. There was no choice but to try to head back down. She fastened the laces on her left shoe as tight as she could to give her as much support as possible in an ageing canvas sneaker. A long walk was about to become an even longer hop. As she pushed herself painfully back to her feet she saw a sheep staring at her from the grass at the edge of the road.
‘What you looking at?’
The sheep stepped closer, followed now by five of its woolly friends.
‘I really don’t need an audience.’
The sheep stared at her.
‘I’ll put you in a casserole. Don’t think I won’t.’
The sheep seemed unconcerned.
She set off back down the hill at a slow, awkward half limp, half hop. After three steps she had a sense she was being followed. After five steps she was sure. After seven she stopped and looked back. The small gaggle of sheep stopped too. ‘What are you doing?’
They didn’t answer. Obviously. They were sheep.
She continued down the hill, pausing every few steps to breathe through the pain and check on the progress of her ovine support crew. Ten minutes into the struggle down the hill she was starting to grow quite fond of them. Fifteen minutes in, the pain in her ankle overcame any distraction being followed by her own uninvited mini flock might have offered. She slumped back down to the ground. She had her phone! Why hadn’t she thought of that before? She pulled the handset from her pocket. One weak little bar of signal.
She’d tapped the phone symbol and brought up the keyboard to call Adam before it struck her. She was an engaged woman who didn’t actually have her fiancé’s phone number. There’d never really been cause to ask, and other than that, all of her contacts were in Spain, or Brazil, or Australia, or – she vaguely thought – possibly on a research station in the Antarctic.
There was always her nan. Bella had no idea where she was right now, but if Bella called she would always pick up, night or day regardless. It would take a day to explain how she’d come to be sitting at the side of a road in Scotland with a sprained ankle and a sheepish fanclub, and once she’d done that, Bella realised with a sinking feeling in her gut, she didn’t actually know where she was. Near a castle and a river somewhere in Scotland. About five hours from Edinburgh. To the west, she thought. She briefly considered an actual ambulance. She could imagine Veronica’s horror at the level of fuss that would cause, but even if she decided to call 999 she would still have the ‘not knowing quite where she was’ issue to contend with.
It seemed that the only way she was going to get off this ridiculous hillside was if she walked down herself. At least it wasn’t raining…
Bella didn’t even have time to finish the thought before the heavens opened and the light mist she’d been surrounded by turned, in an instant, into fat juicy drops of rain. That was conclusive. The actual landscape had taken against her. It had sent her pointlessly up a crazy hill, busted her ankle and now it was soaking her to her bones. Not that sitting about feeling sorry for herself would change any of that.
She pulled herself to her feet again. She needed something to lean on. She ignored the bleating behind her. She needed something that wasn’t a sheep to lean on. She scanned the ground around her. No decent sized branches. Actually barely any trees at all.
She carried on with her awkward slow hop, pausing here and there to shout for Dipper to no avail. The ground around her was soaking now as well, and the risk of tipping into another pothole, or sliding on a patch of sheep poo – she shot her companions an accusatory look to go with that thought – seemed to get greater with every ungainly step. Maybe she should give in, embrace the wet and the dirt, and shuffle down the hill on her arse. At least it would save her from the risk of falling again.
Abandoning dignity and cleanliness, and a large section of her self-respect, Bella lowered her bum to the cold wet road. This was going to ruin her jeans and her hands were going to be grazed for weeks but it saved her ankle and progress got a little quicker. She was starting to pick up pace when a noise from down the hill caught her attention. A car. She shuffled as fast as she could to the side of the road to avoid getting flattened by the vehicle.
Would they even see her? She really needed whoever it was to stop and take pity on her. She could now make out the familiar hulk of Flinty’s Land Rover coming into view. She waved her arms as violently as she could manage. ‘Flinty!’
The car pulled to a stop, but it wasn’t Flinty who jumped out. Her fiancé’s mouth dropped open. ‘What happened?’
‘Twisted my ankle at the top of the hill and then it started to rain and then…’ She gestured back towards her sheep entourage. ‘I seem to have made some friends.’
‘OK.’ He nodded. ‘Shall we get you in the car?’
‘Please.’
He took her weight as she wrapped her arms around his neck and let him lift her back to her foot, leaning, without thinking, into the warmth of his hand against her. The hop to the passenger side was much easier with someone to lean on. In that, a fiancé was more use than a sheep. As she slid her bum onto the seat she asked, ‘Where were you going?’
‘I was looking for you.’ He kissed her head as she settled into the car. ‘Flinty said you’d gone for a walk and then it started pissing down. I thought I’d try to save you from getting wet.’
‘And then you actually saved me.’ She finally found a smile. ‘My hero.’
‘We aim to please.’
‘I’m very pleased right now.’ She closed her eyes as he turned the old lump of a vehicle in the too narrow road. ‘Did Dipper come back to the castle?’
‘Yeah.’ Adam frowned. ‘Ages ago. Flinty reckoned you must have brought her back but then you never appeared so I wondered if you’d gone out again.’
Bella laughed. ‘Oh thank God. I dropped her lead when I fell and she ran off.’
