Page 86 of The Christmas Retreat
‘I’m looking forward to reading it in the morning,’ she said. ‘It would be good if there was a mention of Arwen in there, but since it covers the period when Arwen was in Seren Bach it will at least give me the flavour of the artists’ colony of the time.’
‘I’d be interested to read it myself,’ Noel agreed. ‘In fact, perhaps it ought to be printed, if only for sale locally.’
Kate, through a mouthful of cheese straws, suddenly announced that she was going to visit a fellow teddy bear collector friend the following day, whom she had met on the internet and been corresponding with. She was a bit coy, but we gathered that he had written a very well-regarded book on the history of teddy bear manufacture.
‘I’ve got my edits off, so this will be a little break before I get down to my new novel in earnest,’ she said.
She seemed to have chilled a little, now her edits were finished, and was now looking forward to being able to concentrate on her new book. However abrasive her personality, I had to respect her as a professional.
‘She’s almost human when she’s talking about her little furry friends,’ Rhys whispered wickedly in my ear as he passed me a glass of advocaat.
‘Ssh! She’ll hear you,’ I warned.
‘Not over the crunching of canapés,’ he said, sitting down next to me. ‘Tudor says she has several teddy bears in her room, all shapes and sizes.’
Timon was telling Nerys how quickly Pearl was picking up the techniques of working with porcelain, when the phone in the hall rang and we heard Tudor’s voice answering it.
Then a moment later he put his head in and said that there was a call for me.
‘For me?’ I put my glass down, heart sinking. ‘It must be Will.’
‘Take it in my office on the extension, if you want to?’ suggested Nerys.
‘No, the hall will be fine,’ I said, getting up and mentally rolling up my sleeves. ‘It won’t take long to tell him to get lost.’
But there I was quite wrong, because it was several minutes later and Tudor had beaten the gong for dinner practically in my ear before I replaced the phone.
Evie looked at me critically as she came out of the sitting room with the others.
‘You don’t look like a Victorian-style depiction of love awakened, thank goodness, just a little poleaxed,’ she said. She linked her arm in mine. ‘Come along, you can tell us what he said over dinner. Everyone’s dying of curiosity, even if they’re too polite to say so.’
‘Only if Ginnywantsto tell us,’ said Nerys, firmly. ‘It’s her own private affairs, after all.’
‘Oh, I don’t mind. In fact, Ineedto talk about it,’ I said, sitting down next to Rhys and unrolling my Christmas napkin. ‘He started off by trying to persuade me to see him. He intends coming down here on Friday and wants me to meet him at the pub in St Melangell. He was under the delusion that I only had to set eyes on him and all would be forgiven.’
‘I’m sure you soon disabused him of that idea,’ Evie said crisply. ‘But he always had an eye to the main chance, so I expect that woman he left you for threw him out and he thought you’d take him back. And perhaps that computer game firm he runs with his friend isn’t doing quite so well any more, either?’ she suggested shrewdly.
‘I don’t know – or care,’ I said. ‘But when I made it plain I had no interest in ever seeing or hearing from him again and told him to stop trying to contact me he turned … rather nasty.’
‘In what way?’ Rhys asked.
‘He said I should have told him I’d sold Wisteria Cottage, because it had been our shared home, and he was entitled to ashare of the proceeds when it was sold, according to a solicitor he’d consulted.’
Kate was wrinkling her brow, pausing in the lavish buttering of a roll.
‘If itwasyour joint home and he contributed to the household expenses …’ she began.
‘The cottage was bought by Ginny with money left by my mother, long before Will crept out of the woodwork again,’ Evie told her.
‘Yes, it was always mine and he never shared it, just came for weekends – and for less and less time too,’ I said. ‘His sole contribution was to pay for a pub meal occasionally and bring wine down with him, because he wouldn’t drink my homemade wine.’
‘It sounds like it’s all pure bluff on his part, then,’ said Noel.
‘No shared bank account, nothing like that?’ asked Timon.
I shook my head. ‘So far as I know, he spent all his money on flashy cars and having a good time in London. He never even invested in a place of his own there. He used to stay in his friend’s spare room before he moved in with this other woman.’
Now the first shock of Will’s demands had worn off, I was starting to see more clearly.
