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‘Pippa, put my case in my room. It’s over there behind the kitchen. I checked on the floor plan. And then put my phone on charge. It might be useless but … well.’
He limped after Pippa as she rolled the case across the flagstone floor and into the downstairs bedroom, which already had ‘Elaine’ printed on a picture from Swallows and Amazons that Helena had taped to the door.
‘Um, sorry this isn’t your room,’ I said, scurrying after him.
He pulled Elaine’s name card off the door, looked at it, and then handed it to me.
‘It is now,’ he said and went in, closing the door behind him.
Helena and I stared at each other, gobsmacked.
‘What!’
‘He can’t do that!’ Helena said. ‘It’s Elaine’s room. She asked specially.’
‘Well, I know!’
We went up to the door and listened. We could hear Mr Charm rattling off instructions to Pippa, telling her where to put things. After a moment’s hesitation, I knocked and opened the door. Mr Charm turned to look at me.
‘Er, do you mind?’ he said.
I hesitated; he was a lot bigger than me.
‘This is Elaine’s room,’ I said bravely, ‘not yours. You’re Oliver Forest aren’t you? You’re in the upstairs front room. I told you so in the email.’
Pippa drew in an appalled breath at my insolence. I swallowed hard and waited for the full force of his bad temper to fall on me.
He sighed and pointed to his leg. ‘And how am I to get up the stairs?’ he said.
‘I’m sure you could manage,’ I said. ‘If there was a winning lottery ticket up there on the landing you’d get to it wouldn’t you?’
‘Is there?’
‘Well no, but I was just making a point. If there was …’
‘You’re expecting me to get up and down the stairs with my leg in a boot? Really?’ He fixed me with a hard stare.
It was only the utter unfairness of his attitude that kept me from running off. ‘Well, Elaine has arthritis.’
‘Who is Elaine?’
‘The person who had …’
He waved an impatient hand at me. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. I haven’t got time for this. Now would you excuse me? And by the way, I don’t want these.’
He limped across the room, put the dish with the bedside chocolates into my palm, and closed the door in my face.
I turned to look at Helena.
‘Bloody hell, what a rude sod!’ I hissed, unwrapping a Belgian truffle and handing the other to Helena.
‘Sssh! He might hear you.’ Helena is always more concerned about other people’s opinions than I am and she pulled me away. ‘What shall we do?’
We stood and thought about it for a moment.
‘I’ve no idea. He’s bigger than us,’ I said. ‘We could wait until he comes out and then move all his stuff?’
‘We can’t do that!’
We looked at the closed door for a few minutes until we realized there was nothing we could do. Not without a couple of beefy companions and a cattle prod.
Suddenly the oven timer beeped and I dashed across the kitchen to rescue the second lot of cookies.
‘What can we do?’ I said, darting a fierce look at the closed door and trying to get the cookies off the baking tray without burning myself again.
‘We must keep cool and think,’ Helena said, stretching her hands out in a calm-down sort of gesture. ‘He’s a paying customer after all. He did pay didn’t he?’
‘Yes he did,’ I muttered and made a different sort of gesture. ‘Unbelievable. I can see this week’s going to be a barrel of laughs. Didn’t you say he was allergic to shellfish? Well let’s hope I don’t accidentally buy a lobster.’
Chapter Two (#u0992f64c-37f9-5965-a3ed-c9dc883f8f50)
I once made the mistake of telling my boyfriend how hard it was to write a book and get it published, and Matt sneered and said writing was just drinking coffee and making stuff up. Why would that be difficult? He then added some pithy comments about how many Mint Clubs I had been getting through recently under the guise of plotting. In my defence they were on a BOGOF offer, and of course once they’re in the cupboard …
We broke up soon after that – I put up with a lot from him in our two years together but even I have my limits – still, I think he was partly right. I like Mint Clubs. I’m not ashamed to admit it. OK, I like most things that mix chocolate and biscuits, if I’m honest. Perhaps that’s why my figure is always slightly out of control.
It wasn’t a very merry Christmas last year. We had been about to go to New York as he had finally persuaded me there were holidays to be had outside Europe. I was fizzing with excitement. These sorts of trips were few and far between but Nan had left me a small inheritance that I’d been hanging on to and I’d just been paid for some private pre-Christmas catering, so for once I had some savings.
Unfortunately, I gave the money for my part of the holiday to Matt and I still haven’t got it back. Swine. We had been living together in the tumbledown Cotswold stone cottage my grandmother had been in the middle of renovating when she died. When we split up he left with my holiday to New York, most of my DVDs and all the decent towels.
New Year’s resolution: never do anything spontaneous.
My sister inherited the picture-perfect holiday house in Cornwall. Typical. In her will Nan said Josie ‘needed’ it more than I did. I guess that’s because Josie and Mark have two boys and their school has longer holidays than some members of the British aristocracy, while I had no kids and no prospect of any.
*
I started trying to write when I was doing English A level, and had just read Forever Amber. I quite fancied being a writer of historical fiction. After all, it didn’t need specialist equipment, formal training, or a particular level of physical fitness; the only thing it did require was aptitude.
Unfortunately, I was rubbish at it but for some reason I just couldn’t give up. I’ve been trying for eleven years. An eleven-year apprenticeship for God’s sake! I could have got a PhD. I could have learned how to rewire a house or renovate a canal boat in the same amount of time. Or at least had something to show for it other than a dead laptop and an unhealthy interest in stationery shops. I was always looking for that magic notebook that would make all the difference.
So, there I was at twenty-nine, living in the front bit of Windrush Cottage, Lower Bidford, while I waited for a miracle that would allow me to afford the renovations of the back part. The only increase in my net wealth was locked up in the value of the cottage. I still hadn’t got a proper career path mapped out. I was working part time in my uncle’s bookshop, and doing some occasional catering and cake decorating.
I suppose I still assumed I would one day magically produce a saleable book to make my fortune. Meanwhile, I had joined forces with my genuinely talented best friend Helena to run occasional writing retreats. And that’s what I was trying to do when Oliver Forest turned up at the last minute with his seafood allergy, his aversion to perfectly good chocolates, and his dark blue eyes, hell-bent on wrecking everything.
OK, the dark blue eyes bit shouldn’t matter; I don’t know why I mentioned them.
*
After he had rudely slammed the door in my face, Oliver Forest and Pippa stayed closeted in his bedroom for the next half-hour.
‘Perhaps they’re having sex?’ Helena whispered at one point, when it had all gone a bit quiet and we couldn’t hear him barking out instructions to the poor woman.
She edged closer to his door, crouched down, and angled her ear towards the keyhole. ‘Perhaps they’re doing it really quietly.’
‘I doubt it!’ I said. ‘I don’t think people like him do anything quietly.’
At that moment Pippa opened the door and stuck her head out. She looked down at Helena and seemed rather startled for a moment.
‘Could we have coffee?’ she said. ‘And I’d love one of those cookies.’
‘Of course,’ Helena said sweetly, pretending she had been about to re-tie her shoelaces, which was the wrong thing to do as she had slippers on. She recovered quickly by picking up a bit of fluff on the floor. I saw her checking to see if Pippa was in any way dishevelled. ‘Just come out when you’re ready.’
‘We’ll have it in here,’ Oliver said loudly.
Pippa gave a weak smile. ‘I’ll pop out in a minute for a tray shall I?’
‘Yes, yes of course,’ Helena said.
The door closed and we exchanged a look.
‘This is going to be a very long week,’ I said.
Helena, as is her way, tried to make the best of the situation. ‘Well let’s try and make sure he has nothing to complain about.’
She went and found a tray and wiped it over before she put out two matching mugs, a sugar bowl, a milk jug, and two polished teaspoons. Then we scrabbled around looking for the cafetière and some real coffee. I selected a pretty plate and put out some cookies before Helena found a nice little wicker basket and tipped them into that instead. Then, we took them all out again and this time lined the basket with a paper napkin. At last, after a bit of artful arranging – because there is only so much one can do with six choc-chip cookies – we took the tray up to the closed door and I knocked.
Pippa came to open it and took the tray from Helena. We both peered round her, trying to see what was going on.
‘Everything OK?’ I said cheerily, craning a little.
I could see Oliver Forest sitting in the armchair next to the window with a large notebook on his knee. He was writing, his dark hair tousled as he ran one hand through it. Almost as though he could feel my gaze on him, he looked up. His eyes really were beautiful, and he stared at me for a moment in that funny way writers do when they are deep in a plot and they aren’t actually seeing you.
Bloody hell.
#Rathergorgeous.
He was beyond handsome. How had I not noticed this before? He could have been a prototype for any dark and brooding hero. His long legs, one of them in the plastic boot, were stretched out on a footstool. He looked to be in his late thirties, had a clean jawline, strong straight nose, and rather kissable mouth.
He blinked a couple of times and came back into the real world with the rest of us. ‘What now for heaven’s sake? Is there a problem?’
‘No, no, no, absolutely not,’ I said, covered in confusion.
I backed away and trod on Helena’s foot, making her yelp. She started hopping around – her knee held very high – and I hopped after her, apologizing. We must have looked a right pair of clowns.
Luckily there was a knock on the back door and we scurried off to welcome the first of our other guests.
Happily it was a couple of old friends from our first retreat: Nancy and Vivienne, both retired teachers who had travelled down together from Shropshire.
‘Well the roads were really clear,’ Vivienne said, shedding her soft silk scarf and folding it neatly into her coat pocket. ‘We made excellent time. Have we missed anything?’
‘No, you’re the first to arrive. Apart from our unexpected extra,’ Helena said. She lowered her voice to a theatrical whisper. ‘He’s in his room. His name’s Oliver Forest.’
Nancy frowned. ‘Oliver Forest – that name’s familiar. Has he been before?’
‘No, believe me you would remember him,’ I said with feeling.
‘Did we ever teach a boy called Oliver Forest?’ Vivienne asked Nancy who had spotted the coffee and was already halfway through a cookie.
‘Maybe,’ she said through a mouthful of crumbs. ‘Short boy? Ginger?’
‘No, he’s dark-haired and’– ridiculously good-looking – ‘quite tall,’ I said.
‘Nope, doesn’t ring a bell. Come on, Nancy, let’s go and get settled in. It’s always the exciting bit, finding out what our rooms are like. Are we next door to each other again?’
We took them upstairs and along the corridor that divided the house in half. The floorboards – centuries old and polished by time to a wonderful patina – were warped and uneven. The house was scented with wax polish and wood smoke and bowls of potpourri in odd little nooks. I began to calm down again. Oliver Forest was only one person. There was no reason why he should monopolize the week. It would be OK.
I trundled Vivienne’s suitcase into the front bedroom where a high four-poster bed was waiting, piled high with snowy bed linen and pillows. There was a built-in wardrobe whose doors lurched unevenly to one side, wedged shut with a scrap of cardboard, a huge tapestry armchair in one corner, and a rickety Indian carved table.
‘The bathroom is down there, between your room and Elaine’s.’
‘I thought Elaine was going to have the downstairs room,’ Nancy said. ‘I remember because it’s got an en suite, and I wanted it.’
‘She did, but Oliver Forest has a leg in a boot and he commandeered it before I could stop him. I don’t know how I’m going to tell Elaine,’ I said.
Nancy went into her room – a large single with an exceptionally ugly turquoise sink in one corner.
‘Goodness, this is a ghastly thing,’ Vivienne said, evidently pleased that she had the better room. ‘How did they get away with putting this in? I thought this house was listed?’
‘Ah but just think! This could be the very sink where Charles I brushed his teeth before the Battle of Bosworth,’ Nancy said.
Vivienne snorted. ‘Oh for heaven’s sake. So what time is lunch? One o’clock? Good, there’s time to get freshened up and have a power nap.’
Nancy went into her room and closed the door and I went downstairs to help Helena with lunch. I was going to make soup and she had arranged a fresh fruit platter. There’s no point loading people up with large meals in the middle of the day; they only go to sleep and miss out on good writing time in the afternoon.
Suddenly the door to Oliver Forest’s room opened and Pippa came out, struggling into her coat. She looked like a condemned prisoner seeing the cell door left unexpectedly open.
‘Are you off then?’ I said.
Pippa closed Oliver’s door quietly behind her and came towards me, her eyes slightly wild.
‘Yes, I’m … absolutely … I’ll avoid the traffic if I go now … Paris … I might …’
She had already missed the armhole of one sleeve three times and I went to help her.
‘Are you sure you’re OK? Would you like a drink of water or something?’
‘Yes fine. No. Really. Absolutely.’
She had an outstandingly pretty face, but it was clouded with unease. I could almost feel the stress coming off her in waves.
