Page 79 of The Christmas Retreat
I was certainly ready for lunch by the time we got to the cafe and met the others, but as we came out afterwards, we found the weather was starting to change. It felt even colder, and clouds of a strange leaden pinkish grey were moving in.
‘I think that looks like snow,’ said Timon. ‘Time to head for home, I think.’ However, at Cariad’s insistence he did allow us ten minutes in the zoo shop first.
Pearl and I bought hoodies and T-shirts – mine purple with sloths printed on them, and hers pink, with meercats.
I like sloths. I think it’s the way they seem to stop and think about things a lot.
Noel was persuaded by Cariad to buy her a large, cuddly orangutan, with Velcro pads on its hands, so its arms could be linked around her neck. It was nearly as big as she was and she fell asleep cuddling it as we turned out of the car park. A few fat snowflakes hit the windscreen.
‘I think I’ve had more fun since I came on the retreat than I’ve had in my entire life,’ Toby said, and Pearl and I agreed.
‘It’s been one delightful and interesting thing after another,’ I said. ‘But I must get down to some work tomorrow!’
Nerys said, with her warm smile, that she was glad we were getting the most out of our stay.
‘And storing up new experiences,’ I said. ‘You were right about the retreat filling up the creative well, because I keep having all kinds of new ideas for books.’
‘Seren Bachismy creative well,’ Rhys said. He was driving and the windscreen wipers were now slowly pushing snow off the windscreen. ‘Even when I was trying to make a living writing articles, stories and poetry in London, I had to come back here as often as I could to recharge my batteries. In the end, I realized I needed to make it my home base.’
Which was where, I thought, remembering what he had said after the Solstice ceremony, he differed with Annie, just as I had with Will …
For a moment, I felt the ghost of Annie there with us again, this time as I had last seen her, the light going out of her beautiful face, and felt for a moment as if she was trying to tell me something.
I shivered and hoped it was just my over-active imagination, and I wasn’t turning psychic!
*
The snow was falling more heavily by the time we got back, but the narrow road from St Melangell had been gritted. The day had turned dark early too, but the house was warm and welcoming.
Snookums was yapping from the kitchen, but distantly, from upstairs, came a deeper barking, like a sealion.
Nerys must have read my mind, for she said, ‘Poor Opal seems to have reached the chesty stage, doesn’t she? When they start barking like that, I never know whether to throw them a fish or pour a hot toddy.’
‘You are a wicked woman,’ Timon told her affectionately.
‘I’d better go straight up and see how she is,’ said Pearl, who appeared to be emerging from a happy daze that had enveloped her since the trip to the zoo, and Nerys went with her.
I went up to my room to jot down some ideas, change and dream a little, until Cariad, refreshed, came to drag me downstairs with her.
I’d pinned my mistletoe brooch to my cord tunic. It was my new favourite thing, like a talisman, which I wanted to wear all the time. Pearl came down in the pink hoodie and meerkat T-shirt she’d bought at the zoo, which looked strange teamed with a snot-green skirt and leggings, but gave her face a rosy glow. Or that might just have been happiness, because she and Toby kept exchanging glances, and there had been the hand holding …
I hoped if they were falling for each other, Opal didn’t get welltoosoon and put a spanner in the works.
*
We had another wonderful, celebratory dinner, with bubbly and crackers, almost the same as the previous day’s except thatthe turkey and stuffing were cold and we’d eaten up all the Christmas pudding, although not the sherry trifle.
Nerys assured us that this would positively be the last we saw of the turkey, until much later in our stay, when it might reappear in the form of curry or casserole.
Verity seemed to have even less appetite than usual and finished eating before the table was even cleared – a first. She’d been very quiet too, and her pale Madonna face looked a little flushed, so I hopedshewasn’t going down with the flu too!
Cariad was almost asleep on the table after the day out and was sent to bed immediately afterwards, while Pearl took up more soup to her sister and also, at Bronwen’s suggestion, some ice cream, which she thought might slip down easily.
‘But no fish,’ Nerys said gravely, and when we giggled, Kate and Verity looked puzzled.
Only Evie, going by her grin, got it.
In the sitting room, looking round at the now familiar faces, I thought how quickly I had come to feel at home here and used to the various foibles of the other guests.
