“I…It’s like sometimes…” Fred tried to find the words. “I feel like Tim took away my ability to trust my own judgment. And I hate that, I hate that I can’t make up my mind about something and not question it. I hate that I feel this need to have my choices validated just so that I know I can still make good decisions. I’m so angry about it, you know? So then when Ryan starts questioning me, I’m all flustered and I feel stupid, and I don’t know if he’s right or I’m right—and of all people, I don’t wanthimto make me feel small.”
“I wasn’t there, so I don’t know how it went down, but I do know that your feelings are completely valid.”
“Thanks, Mum.”
“That said…” Fred let out a groan, and Bella smiled as she continued. “Is there a chance that Ryan might have hit a nerve?”
“Can we change the subject?”
“Sure. Want to show me what you’ve been working on?” her mum asked.
Fred refreshed the screen. “The thing is,” she started to explain as she clicked on a document of potential social media posts to schedule, “I do like Warren but I’m just not sure about him.”
“I should think not, you’ve only just met him. You don’t need to be sure of anything yet.”
“You’re absolutely right. Why am I even worrying about this?”
Bella gasped. “Good lord, do you realize you’ve just agreed with me?”
Fred laughed. “Oh my god. I did!”
“I hope you’re not coming down with something.”
Fred tutted good-naturedly, and they were soon mind-mapping ways to bring traffic to Hallow-Hart Crackers’ woefully neglected website and socials.
What they needed was a campaign—something that would capture people’s interest. Once piqued, Fred would keep them engaged with regular content. She just needed inspiration to strike. Her ideas usually came to her when she was cleaning the bathroom or shaving her legs, doing something with her hands that allowed her mind to wander. She determined to clean the house from top to bottom tonight. With any luck, it would take her mind off her disagreement with Ryan, which was currently gnawing at her stomach and was bound to give her heartburn later.
15
Bella
Andreas kept the cozy roombehind the bar as a private area for guests who were staying at the Forest Inn. A painted sign on the old stable door readSnug, and inside was a large fireplace, with French windows looking out onto the kitchen garden, and bookshelves covering two walls. On either side of the snapping log fire were two large squishy sofas whose cushions had soaked in the scent of years of woodsmoke, and two Sherlock Holmes armchairs were placed either side of the windows.
Bella and Liam sat angled toward each other in the armchairs. There were no other guests in the snug at present but when Liam had suggested they take the sofa, she had suggested the chairs instead—she needed the distance. To be any closer to him than this was painful. They each had a small side table beside them with an Old Fashioned in a whisky tumbler. Bella sipped hers, little and often, to give her courage.
Fred had practically frog-marched her out of the house this evening, saying she needed to do a “deep focus clean” to kick-start ideas for a Hallow-Hart rebrand, which her daughter had assured her did not mean they had to change their name, only their “fuddy-duddy image.” Bella hadn’t known their image was “fuddy-duddy”—but who was she to argue with a genuine advertising professional?
She had begun her evening of banishment by calling Martha, to see if she fancied meeting her for dinner, but her bestie had told her to go to the Forest Inn and “wine and dine” Liam before somebody else did. She had done just that, and after a cozy pie and mash special for two and bottle of red in the pub restaurant, here they were.
They had talked about work, about politics, about family and Windermere and Pine Bluff, they had talked about every safe topic, and now there was only the elephant in the room left to discuss. They sat quietly. Bella’s heart thrummed in her chest.
Liam had adored Claire. They’d been happy, and Bella knew that were it not for the cancer, they would be happy still. She also knew that Claire had loved him enough to want him to be happy again; she’d told Bella herself when she’d received her final diagnosis. “I want him to love again, Bella,” she had said. “He’s too good a man, and he’s too damn young, to spend the rest of his life alone.”
But would Liam feel that getting back together with an old girlfriend was a betrayal of Claire’s memory? How would Bella even broach the subject? It had been five years, which was both a long time and no time at all. She couldn’treplace Claire, no one could. All she could offer was her own flawed self and hope that Liam was willing to take a chance on her.
“You know, I was straight with Claire when I met her,” Liam began, his voice carrying the hoarseness it always did when he talked about his late wife. “She knew about you. That I’d been hanging on and hoping.”
Bella tensed.
“She was a wise woman,” Liam went on. “She ran circles round me. She knew that what she and I had was different to what I’d had with you, and that the two loves could exist in the universe without being in competition. I loved Claire with my whole heart.”
Bella felt her own heart constrict. He was going to tell her that there was no room for her. She was thirty years too late. Of course she was. Normal people—people who weren’t her, people who weren’t damaged goods—didn’t hanker after the person they’d been in love with as a teenager and for the rest of their life. She tried to maintain a compassionate outward composure, while inside her heart crumbled like the cliffs at the bottom of her garden.
“We talked a lot before she passed,” Liam went on. “About everything. A lot of it I didn’t want to hear; not then, when all I could think about was how desperate I was not to lose her. But she wanted to say her piece while she still could, and the least I could do was listen. She said we’d had a good marriage, and that when she was gone, she didn’t want me living like a loveless hermit.” He shook his head and turned away from her to stare into the fire. “I couldn’timagine a life with anyone but her. It was like she was speaking in another language, talking about me meeting someone else when she was still here; it felt blasphemous.” His voice was rough with emotion and Bella wanted to reach out and comfort him, but she kept her hands in her lap. A tear sparkled in the amber firelight as it rolled slowly down his cheek and disappeared into his beard, and her heart ached for him.
The rest of the world had zoned out of her consciousness. The noise from the bar next door had dissolved; there was only her and Liam, and the crackle of flame on wood. She had a sense of floating above herself while all her hopes of future happiness, all the longing in her stupid heart, swirled around her in a cloud, waiting to see if there would be a safe place for them to land. She had closed the lid on a life with Liam when she was barely more than a girl, and now, as a fifty-two-year-old woman, the lock had broken and all her feelings were spilling out, and she didn’t know if she could force them back in again.
Liam took a pull on his drink and rested the tumbler back on the table, turning it slowly on its coaster, looking at the amber liquid gently coating the sides of the glass, rather than at her. “I’m damaged goods, Bells. But I—” He stopped, and she watched the war of emotions raging across his face; the furrows in his brow were deep, dark grooves. “When Claire first passed, I thought I’d die too. But I didn’t. And as the years went by, well, the grief didn’t stop but it stopped feeling so sharp. I feel like I can finally let myself hear whatshe was trying to tell me, without hating myself for it.” He took a deep breath, still not looking at her, facing the window now, watching the lanterns sway in the breeze illuminating strips of the vegetable garden beyond. “I have feelings for you, Bella. And what I’m trying to say to you,” he began slowly, “what I want to ask is, do you think that you might have feelings too? That there might be a chance for us, you and me?”
