Page 75 of The Price of Love
‘Of course, there’s a downside.’ Cal shook his shirt out and began putting it back on. ‘There’s the fact that you’ll be stuck with me, dragging myself around the place like a sexually obsessed Quasimodo.’
‘Quasimodowassex obsessed.’
‘Was he? I thought he was just misunderstood and lonely.’
‘Yes, well, I used to think that about you.’
‘Ha. Fine, all right, dragging myself aroundexactly likeQuasimodo.’
‘Except for the hump.’
‘Willow, will you please shut up? Thank you. Right, okay, so there’s me, and then there’s the winters up here.’
I gave a little shiver. ‘Mmm. Snowed in with nothing but a bottle of whisky, and staying in bed until the snowplough gets through, wasn’t it?’
‘Disadvantages rapidly turning into an upside, and there’s the goat.’
‘Just needs a firm hand.’
Cal groaned. ‘Oh, stop. But you know what I’m saying? It’ll be tough. And there may be winters so bad that you lose all the herbs.’
‘I’ll make things with them. Candles, soap, that sort of thing. When the herbs themselves are out of season. That way there’ll be back up.’
Cal looked impressed at my forward planning. He would have been even more impressed if he’d seen the pile of magazines in my room. Shut up, not the bridal ones. I suspect he would have made rude remarks about grown women dressed as toilet-roll covers if he’d seen those. I mean the rural-small-business ones, the start-your-own-smallholding ones, the North York Moors’ publications of rules, regulations and grants for new businesses within the National Park. Ever since the thought of buying this place had crossed my mind, I’d been researching.
I’m not stupid, you know.
Except, possibly, about violet-eyed, tight-trousered science graduates. Which really wasn’t my fault. Besides which, I wasn’t alone in that particular stupidity. Which reminded me.
‘How’s the planning going for next weekend?’
‘Mmm? Oh, not bad. Ratboy’s had a few bites. We’re taking it from there. You found a hotel yet?’
‘I’ve booked the honeymoon suite at the Bismarck in York. It’s absolutely fabulous. Katie came to look at it with me. There’s a whirlpool bath in the middle of the floor and this huge four-poster all done up in silver gilt. It looks like the Beckhams’ spare room.’
‘I find a perverted pleasure in hearing about the scene of your seduction of another man.’
‘You find a perverted pleasure in everything.’
‘True.’
‘Cal, look, I’ve still got around twenty grand left in the bank. We could make a start on getting this place fit to live in before the winter, couldn’t we?’
He gave a peculiar chuckling laugh. ‘Um. Willow. Have you been listening to me? I head up the best-selling anti-hack business in the world. Me and the boys, we save companies billions of dollars, not to say the world from nuclear meltdown and Doctor Who from the Daleks.’
‘So?’
‘Do you have any idea how much they pay me? On average? I know things that could bring whole continents to their knees, ways to bring down the yen, the pound, how to transfer the funds of multimillion corporations into a Swiss bank account with my number on it. Believe me, they pay to keep me sweet.’
‘But . . .’ I looked around me at the crumbling plaster and the spongy beams. ‘Why do you live in a flat in York instead of some gorgeous mansion? And drive such a horrible car? And surelyyou could afford someone to come and help keep this place up, someone you don’t mind knowing about what you do?’
Cal looked into my face, hooked my hair behind my ears. ‘Because, Willow,I don’t care. Didn’t care. When Hannah left me all the pleasure in it wentfooof. The money was coming in and what could I do with it? I bought a flat with fewer stairs, but what’s the point of a mansion? Just more space to rattle round in. Ilikebeing in York. Love the place. And same with my car, you think this one is horrible, you should have seen the one I hadbefore. After that, what was there to spend it on? And if I’d found someone on the strength of how much I earned, what kind of relationship would that be? Money is not important, Will. I’ve grown up without . . . well, you can see what I grew up with, can’t you? And Mary wouldn’t take any. I paid to re-fence the field down by the river, but she’d had her stroke by then and she couldn’t complain fast enough to stop me, so.’
‘So it never was about the money. Selling this place to me.’
‘No! I’d have given it to you, if I thought you’d take it. But if I had, how would you have run it, mmm? You would have had to carry on working at the paper for at least a couple of seasons just to fund your startup, and you’d probably have come to resent it, having to travel out here to dig and plant and stuff and then spend all week working to spend your weekends doing the same again, no. If you’d taken this place on your own, you would have come to hate it. But together . . .’
‘Big finish music, maestro.’
