Page 73 of The Price of Love
As I crossed down over the field, I could see that the door to the barn was open a touch. Nothing visible inside, of course, he was too careful for that. All the machines were tucked away in the far, dark corner, ticking and flickering and purring to themselves out of sight of any casual passers-by.
‘Hello?’ Forgetting exactly who I was dealing with, I tugged at the slightly open door. The resulting noise drove me to my knees, both hands clamped over my ears. The noise was so big it had character.
‘Er, sorry, Will.’ Gradually I became aware that the sound had stopped and opened my eyes, to stare into the knees of Cal. ‘Wasn’t expecting anyone, so the alarms were enabled.’ He helped me to my feet. ‘I should know better, really. Last time I was working with the doors open, the bloody goat got loose. I’m in the middle of a really tricky piece of analysis and suddenly it sounds like a buffalo mating with an elephant seal. I go outside to shoo her off, forgetting I’ve got my headset on and all the team can hear me shouting “fuck off and leave me alone you evil bitch” with the full-scale racket going on in the background.’
‘Sounds nasty.’
‘It was. They thought I’d been raided. All shut their systems down, all off-line, couldn’t reach anyone for a week.’ I was upright but he hadn’t let go of my hand. ‘So. You came back.’
‘No. I’m a hologram.’
‘Won’t bother offering you a drink then. Don’t tell me, you’re deeply in love with my goat and you’ve come to ask for her hoof in marriage?’
‘I wouldn’t take that thing’s hoof in anything less than a curry.’ He was smiling down at me in a way that made me itch inside. ‘Cal, I think someone’s calling you.’
‘What? Oh, yeah, right.’ He flipped the headset back up from around his neck, but even his voice was smiling as he spoke into it, ‘Yo, Zak! What’s the news? What? Yes, Willow’s here, how could you . . . oh, did I? Shit. Hey, down boy, that’s for me to know and you to forever speculate on. Now . . .’ Turning away from me he walked back into the barn but I didn’t follow. I wanted five minutes.
I walked behind the barn and leaned on the paddock gate looking up the hill towards the moor. Winnie stopped scratching her bum on one of the fence posts and eyeballed me balefully. ‘I’ll even miss you, you evil-smelling lawn mower,’ I whispered. As philosophical as I’d been about the lack of council funding coming my way, the thing I was really regretting was the loss of this place. Ever since the notion of buying it had come to me, the farm had felt like home. The smells, the dust, the dry rot and peeling paintwork, all had got under my skin and had become part of me, as much as I felt I had become part of them. And now, although Luke’s treachery had allowed the desire for score settling to fill me, the inability to buy the farm made me far sadder. ‘I wonder if that makes me really deep or incredibly shallow?’ I closed my eyes and let my chin rest on the gate, thesmell of pine resin trickled up my nose and made me think of forests and clean toilets.
‘Penny for them.’
I jumped.
‘Sorry. You looked completely lost there. Making plans for turning all this into an herb nursery? Or just herself into goat-burgers and a bedside rug?’
I looked up at him, leaning beside me companionably. Those eyes were like a total eclipse. ‘I can’t buy the farm.’
His shoulders tensed, drew away from me. ‘Oh. Right.’ Our thighs had been touching, now there was a handspan between them. ‘Okay. Thanks for letting me know.’ And then he was turning, turning away from me and setting himself to limp back towards the barn. He looked beaten, defeated.
‘I would if I could,’ I half-called after him.
A shrug. ‘Doesn’t matter. Don’t worry about it.’
‘Cal.’ I caught him up in the middle of the yard. ‘Look, I really am sorry.’
A beat. Then he grabbed me by the shoulders, pushing me back against the wall of the barn, leaning his full weight into me, catching my hair in his hands and using it to tip my head back and up. I had time for a tiny whimper before his mouth came down hard on mine, kisses like bruises, tongue teasing, reckless, shuddering,wild.
‘What the hell wasthat?’ I asked, when he let me go, my face flaming flamingo-pink and my mouth doubling in size with the ferocity of the kiss.
‘That, Willow’ — Cal moved back lazily — ‘was clearly “goodbye”.’
‘Goodbye?’ Confusion was streaming from every pore. ‘Why? What have I done?’
‘I could live with you fooling with Luke, setting him up, maybe even one quick last fuck to keep him onside until thedenouement, but I can’t live with you deciding to write it all off. Or, rather, I’m going to have to, aren’t I, but . . . well. Goodbye, Willow.’
‘But I haven’t.’
His eyes flared. ‘So, you’ve decided off your own bat that you don’t want the place? Oh, come on. Give me some credit. I’ve seen the way you’ve been around here — you love it. You kind ofbelonghere, somehow. I mean, even that fuckinggoatbehaves for you. And now, suddenly, you don’t want it? Yeah, right, there’s a man behind a decision like that, and I can only think of one who’d let you pass up on your own happiness for the sake of his.’
‘Listen, you arrogant, sexist shit, not every decision I make revolves around men. You’re so self-obsessed, what, you think I’ve got a brain that doesn’t work unless some guy’s swinging his dick at me?’
On adrenaline-fired legs, I wobbled off across the yard, attaining a decent march by the time I reached the paddock. Winnie gave me an ‘oh God, it’s you again’ stare and clambered into the far corner, from where she watched me turn up the lane and head towards the hill with my fists clenched and my jaw rigid. Howdarehe? Was that what he really thought of me, that I was so gullible and trusting that I’d get back with Luke, after everything he’d done? I power-walked up the track, not acknowledging the nettle stings peppering the backs of my legs, or the tiny flag-wavings of butterflies celebrating the thistle flowers.Bastard. Did he see me as some weak-willed, pathetic little woman, having to have a big, strong man at her side in order to feel vindicated? Even if that big, strong man was a double-dealing fraud? That evenLukewas better than nothing?
Halfway up the hill my anger and I ran out of steam and I sat down on the sandy bank overlooking the farm. I couldn’t see Cal, no movement apart from the goat shuffling aroundher drinking trough and some bumblebees lazily torpedoing the gorse blossoms. Maybe he’d gone inside the barn and plugged himself in to his machines, called up the team and told them to stop their work on my behalf. Not needed any more. With that scared, tortured look back on his face, the look he’d lost come to think of it, since I’d told him I loved him.
And then, with the perfect clarity of hindsight and the additional focus of the microscope of guilt, I realised.
This wasn’t about me. It was about him.
