My voice wavers as I realize how emotionally attached I feel. I frown, looking to the ground.
‘It’s less than a month until the Wine Society event. If we can hang on until then, there is a chance we can turn it around.’
I nod, feeling a weary pressure, as I remember all the preparation I need to make for that event. And then I feel my phone vibrating in my pocket. I pull it out clumsily, and it falls to the ground and lands with a thud, face up. I rush to collect it from the floor. It’s Heather.
‘I have to take this,’ I say.
‘Go, go,’ Irene nods.
I try to ignore the knot that is tightening in my stomach, and answer my phone.
‘Hi.’
‘Birdy, can you talk?’
‘Of course,’ I say. My search for James will have to wait. I head out of the chaos of the restaurant towards the cottage.
‘I think I’ve made a huge mistake, Birdy,’ Heather says.
‘Oh no. Tell me,’ I reply. The sun bursts out from behind a cloud, and the afternoon is suddenly bathed in light. I want to go down to the loch and regroup in the peace of that view. ‘What’s going on?’
‘There’s so much going on.’
I sigh. I’m going to have to extract it from Heather slowly.
‘Right, give me two secs, I need to change my shoes.’
‘Okay,’ she says meekly. ‘Where are you?’
‘Just got home.’
I push open the door and race up the stairs to James’s bedroom, where the door is wide open. His whites are dumped on the bed, not in the staffroom where they should be. He left in a hurry. I rush back downstairs, grab my sneakers and slip off my stupid work heels, then head down past the kitchen garden to the loch path.
‘All right, shoot,’ I say, once I’m clear of the cottages.
‘Well. God, I don’t know where to start.’
‘Are you okay?’
‘Not really.’
‘How are … things with Cristian?’
‘Well. To be truthful, we’ve started bickering a lot.’
‘It must be stressful, if he’s still sneaking around with you and hasn’t told his girlfriend. Still.’
Birdy, stay calm.
‘Yes,’ she jumps in. ‘That’s exactly it. He’s not left her, and it’s been, what? Over two months now. Nearly three.’
Shit! She’s really angry.
‘Do you think he will?’
‘Who knows?’ she says, like she’s had this conversation a hundred times in her own head. ‘And, honestly, I don’t want him to. I want to come home.’
There it is.
