In fact, checking out the chickens was the joint highlight of his day, along with getting a Wi-Fi engineer to agree to come out by the end of next week.Nextweek, and James wasn’t even tempted to tear a strip off him, he was so grateful. Turned out telecoms engineers had an aversion to doing jobs on islands.
The low point was being bored enough to open an email from his father. He nearly didn’t open it. He should stick to his resolve not to engage. Although when you were on the other side of the world, on a fairly remote island, with a new phone number that you’d only given to people you liked, it felt somewhat as though you were protected. If he read it, his father would never know. So he opened it.
It was the first time the man had been in touch since the death of James’s mother nine months ago and he hadn’t referred to her at all. He wanted to borrow some money from James because he was raising capital for an investment in an organic vineyard in the Greater Manchester area. James wasn’t an expert in viticulture but he was pretty sure that all the signs were that this wasn’t a great business opportunity. Also, over his dead body would he go into business with his father. He pressed Delete.
Bad idea even to read the email. He shouldn’t have given his new email address to his father. The email had made him think about his mother, and that had made him think about Ella and Leonie.
He sent Ella a guilt message telling her about the island and the alpacas and chickens, for his nieces’ benefit. She was up late and sent an immediate – very chatty – reply, with a couple of references to Leonie, which James couldn’t deal with. He’d get back to her in a week or two, when enough time had elapsed for him not to need to refer back to what she’d written.
Not a great evening.
* * *
When Dina went past in the morning on her way to feed the animals, he was almost tempted to join her.
He flicked through the animal part of Cassie’s notes while he was eating his breakfast. Extraordinary. The top part was actually an animal master list. There were sub lists. Feed. Exercise. Vet numbers. Egg collection instructions. Egg distribution suggestions. And so on. The three alpacas and the eleven chickens had names. Of course they did. He was guessing that none of the chickens would be ending up as a roast dinner.
Maybe he should start helping Dina with the animals.
Yeah, maybe not.
The solitude was definitely getting to him. Good job he’d be going down to Boston and New York for the occasional night on business.
Early afternoon, after several hours of back-to-back Zoom meetings moving an uncomfortable (brightly coloured) metal chair around the garden the whole time to get out of the sun’s glare, he took a kayak out.
This was the first time the sea had been calm enough for him to go far. Twenty minutes’ hard paddling took him round the headland and into a bay with a shallow beach bordered by shrubs and woodland.
James paddled himself over to the beach and got out.
Wow. This was like a little piece of paradise. It was completely secluded. All he could see was the ocean in front of him and vegetation behind and to either side. This must be a wildlife haven. Tourists would love it.
Whoever owned the land and beach had to be sitting on a goldmine.Or, whoever found the owner and bought the land would be sitting on a goldmine. James needed to do some research. You could build an eco-hotel here and charge rich people a fortune to fly from the far corners of the world to take a green holiday. You could include a charge for offsetting on their behalf the carbon footprint for the flights they’d take. You could have them fish for their own supper and cook it themselves and thank you for it. In fact, you could charge rich people to come andbuildthe hotel for you as an experience-vacation. This was the perfect project. Total serendipity that there looked to be an amazing business opportunity right under his nose.
It took several hours of digging to find the owner of the plot. C. Adair. Cassie, or a relative. Had to be; it was too much of a coincidence otherwise. If it was Cassie herself, she must be quite wealthy. Inheritance? Or whatever job it was she did? She’d really covered her tracks, like she really hadn’t wanted anyone to know that she was the owner, which was slightly odd.
So far, he’d found her pretty annoying, and in an ideal world, he’d minimise conversations with her until they ended the swap, and then not speak again. But he knew he’d regret it if he didn’t at least try to buy or lease the land from her. Unfortunately, they weren’t ongreatterms, post the Wi-Fi argument. He was going to have to swallow his pride and improve relations between them.
The woman herself gave him the ideal opportunity the next day.
Hi James,
I hope you’re settling in. Hope it hasn’t been too rainy for you – it isn’t normally that wet on the island, especially as we head into the summer, honest (!!).
I’m writing because there’s a little favour that I’d like to ask that I didn’t really want to put in the notes I left for you; and it’s too long for a text…
Laura (next-door neighbour; you met her, she took your parcels in – yes the island grapevine does stretch across the Atlantic and yes the island grapevine does stretch to discussing exciting matters such as parcel taking on behalf of neighbours) is elderly and, while in excellent health, notquiteas sprightly as she once was.
Basically (and of course please do feel free to say no), I wondered if you would be able to check on her from time to time. Dina’s around but sometimes very busy with work.
Thank you! (But please do ignore if you don’t have the time.)
Best,
Cassie
Well, this was perfect. Cassie was apparently going to ignore their argument, clearly because she wanted him to do her a favour. And he was going to reply politely today, visit Laura tomorrow, and then call Cassie with a friendly, chatty update. And when they’d had a few conversations and established good relations, he’d call her again to broach the land purchase.
Ten
