‘Your granny?’
‘Sí, sí. You speakespañol, ah Rita.’
Rita laughed. ‘Hardly. GCSE was my limit.’
‘You are not just the pretty name or the pretty face.’ Teo grinned.
Rita felt herself blushing, again! What was happening to her today? He’d already insinuated he was gay and was a similar age to her son, and she was acting like Camilla.
‘Could you teach yoga or Pilates do you think?’
Teo cocked his head. ‘Why you ask?’
‘I’ve got a retreat opening soon. Meditation, yoga, all that healthy stuff. Here at the farm. Could be right up your street.’
His molten brown eyes lit up. ‘This is… how you say, fate?’ He brought his hands together in a prayer pose and added with a grin, ‘I teach yoga. Vinyasa and Hatha.’
Rita, having no clue what either style involved, nonetheless grinned broadly. ‘Amazing!’ she replied, with the kind of enthusiasm normally reserved for fireworks or winning raffle tickets. Just then, Hilda, dressed in black from head to toe, arrived, her sharp eyes giving Teo the complete once-over. Rita cringed at what might come out of her mother-in-law’s mouth. ‘Morning, Hilda. This is Teo Serrano, hopefully soon to be our new yoga instructor.’
Hilda, a shade under five foot, peered up at him with mischievous eyes. ‘Serrano, eh? Tasty, just like the ham.’
Rita looked horrified. Teo laughed. ‘Gracias, señora.’
Hilda’s face remained straight. ‘Don’tseñorame; I’m off to a funeral, not a flamenco class.’
It was Teo’s turn to look horrified.
Rita was curt. ‘Another one?’
‘Yes. George Lewis. Lovely man. Lived in the last house on Cliff Street. The bus is about to go down to the bay, so I’d better toddle off.’
Rita shook her head. ‘She’s got more front than half the seagulls in this town, that one.’
Teo waved his hands in the air. ‘No comprendo, peroI like her. She speak the truth and the truth is…’ He hesitated. ‘The truth is what connects us, whatever the language.’
‘I think you’re going to fit in here, just fine.’ Rita smiled, handing him a newly printed retreat flyer. ‘Now why don’t you get your fish and chips. If you run, you will catch the same bus as Hilda and how about you come back here for dinner, and we can discuss everything. Say seven p.m.?’
‘Do you do B&B here, too, Señora Jory?’ Teo tilted his head cheekily.
Rita gave a wry smile. ‘Not officially. But if you don’t mind creased sheets and a snoring labrador, I might be able to rustle something up.’
Teo held out his hand. ‘Perfecto, I see you later. Now give me some more of those flyers, for surely we must sell, sell, sell?’
SEVENTEEN
Exceedingly early the next morning, up at High Meadow, the sky blushed with the first streaks of dawn. A light mist still clung to the lower fields, and the dew on the grass soaked through Rita’s trainers as she twisted her hair into a knot and secured it with an old elastic band she’d found in her jeans pocket. She really must get to the hairdresser’s but there was just too much to do at the moment and despite Hilda’s ‘danger money’, she still classed having her hair done as a luxury item.
Birdsong drifted lazily from the Singing Tree, and somewhere in the distance, a horse whinnied. The girls and the chickens had been delighted at their early feed. After a quick walk, Henry had gone back to his bed in front of the Aga, where Rita had left him snoring.
Stan ambled into view, a roll of guy ropes slung over one shoulder like a reluctant Scout leader. His face was already pink from the short walk from his Land Rover.
‘Jago can’t make it today,’ he puffed.
Rita stifled a yawn and tried not to let the disappointment show, but it landed anyway. ‘Oh,’ she muttered, keeping her eyes on the mallet she’d just picked up. ‘Well, we’ll just have to manage, the pair of us, Stan, won’t we?’
She looked ahead to the work they had achieved the day before, willing herself to focus. She had always hated the manual side of the farm work, in fact, rarely did it. But the resort was her baby, and she wanted it to succeed, not just for financial purposes but for own sense of purpose too.
Just then, the thud of footsteps on damp earth caught her ear, and she glanced up to see Teo jogging over the crest of the hill, grinning, a half-eaten banana in one hand. He wore a sleeveless T-shirt and his well-fitted European shorts again. His tanned skin glistened with the fresh sheen of effort.
