‘But whereishe?’ Brandon wanted to know.
The answer Pearl gave then is what she truly believed. And that’s why she tells Theo, ‘I actually believe that Brandon’s daddy is still all around us, darling. I think he’s in the stars.’
They are ready to leave now but Shelley is striding down the lane, away from Shore Cottage. She has taken herself off, not because she doesn’t love her friends. But actually, they have talked it all out, and in the aftermath of the terrible conversation with Joel this morning, Shelley needs to be alone.
There is some snow left, but it’s thawing rapidly. She stomps along, still trying to make sense of everything Joel told her. That he hates what he’s done to her and his family. That he’ll do anything to make things right.
What he didn’t do was blame her in any way. ‘This is 100 per cent down to me,’ he told her tearfully. Shelley has never known Joel to cry about anything before. ‘Please,’ he begged her. ‘Just get yourself home as soon as you can and we’ll figure this out.’
Can they do that? It might be possible, Shelley thinks, as he swears he’s told her everything. Not just about this photographer in Finsbury Park, but Martha and Fin’s house party – ‘That was my fault, not theirs, I should’veknown’ – and the broken window and stolen laptop and the fact that her grandma’s baubles were smashed. They could have some couples counselling and things might change for the better. Hasn’t she read that an affair can actually help the relationship? That it can shine a spotlight on the problems that caused it and what’s really important?
Shelley marches on, past Harry and Pam’s farm. With the snow nearly gone it seems so much closer to Shore Cottage than it had on Christmas Eve. A cool wind gusts into her face now, and her ponytail has come loose in the wind. ‘Give me a chance,’ Joel implored her, ‘for the kids as much as anything else. For ourfamily.’
Now she sees a car in the far distance, heading towards her along the winding unmade road. She keeps walking, sploshing through puddles of melting snow as it comes closer. There is barely any traffic around here. Just the occasional farm vehicle or tourists getting lost, hoping that the satnav will spring to life. But the car has nearly reached her now, and Shelley steps back onto the verge to let it pass.
It doesn’t pass her. Instead it stops, and the driver lowers his window, and despite everything, Shelley senses her heart lifting, and she smiles.
Michael is home.
40
He listens as Shelley fills him in on the events over Christmas. Practicalities come first: how Harry and Pam welcomed them all into their farmhouse on Christmas Eve, and supplied them with chickens for Christmas Day. How things all worked out in the end. ‘So it’s really gone okay?’ he suggests as he makes her a coffee in the kitchen. The sunshine is dazzling now, transforming the landscape into a glittery wonderland, and everyone else has taken themselves out for one final walk.
‘It really has,’ Shelley says. ‘At least, things have gone wellhere.At home, not so much…’ And then it all tumbles out, about Joel’s affair and how Shelley is adamant that her marriage is over. ‘It’s not just the other woman,’ she explains, surprised by how comfortable she feels, chatting over the kitchen table with this man with whom she’d barely spent any time before he rushed away to London. He really listens, she decides. And listening has never been Joel’s forte. Really,Joelis Joel’s forte, and that will never change. So they talk and talk, and a second cup of coffee is made and Shelley is grateful that it’s just the two of them for now, in the cosy warmth of Michael’s kitchen.
‘Enough about all that,’ she says abruptly, freeing her ponytail from its band. ‘What actually happened with Krissy? Or would you rather not talk about it?’
‘No, it’s fine,’ he says. ‘I’d like to actually, to make some sense of it.’ He tells Shelley then that heknew, the moment they met face to face. He explains how the hotel receptionist had called Krissy’s room, and she’d come down to where he was waiting in the bar. ‘Hi, how are you?’ There’d been a big glossy professional smile, as if he were a passenger on her flight. They’d hugged and Michael felt as if he’d staggered in from a field.
He hadn’t, of course. Although he exists in sweaters and jeans and thick insulating jackets at home, for this trip he had put on his best shirt, carefully ironed late the night before (with all those sheets, Michael has become excellent at ironing), plus smart trousers. He’d dug out shoes that were actualshoes; not boots for walking or gardening or cleaning out the hen run.
Yet he still felt utterly wrong. And he sensed Krissy – immaculate, smelling strongly of a floral perfume – pulling back and appraising him, and he knew thatsheknew too.
That the man she’d spent countless hours talking to, and FaceTiming, wasn’t how she’d imagined the real-life version. Of course hewasthe same person: a divorced forty-seven-year-old B&B owner with a dog. But he wasn’t the Michael she’d built up in her mind. ‘I think,’ he ventures, ‘that she was disappointed.’
‘No,’ Shelley exclaims, frowning. ‘How could she be?’
He smiles awkwardly. ‘With all those thousands of miles between us, I think Krissy had an idea of me, of the single man in the Highlands, in my cottage, with my dog and my hens, surrounded by lochs and mountains covered in purple heather…’ He breaks off. ‘D’you really want to hear all this?’
‘Yes,’ Shelley says truthfully. Since their chats when he was alone and somewhat lost in London, she’s started to genuinelycare for Michael. Plus, his story is distracting her from the almighty mess awaiting her back at home, at least a little.
‘I used to take Krissy out on walks,’ he explains. ‘That’s what we called it: going on a walk together. I knew the routes to take where there was a decent phone signal.’ Michael tells Shelley how he showed Krissy the waterfall streaking like silvery hair down the mountain. How he took her out onto the loch in his rowing boat and circled the thickly wooded island. He took her to villages consisting of a few huddled white cottages and an old red phone box, which she found so quaint, soamazing, and a wooden village hall and an old chapel, its roof long gone, its crumbly stone walls thickly covered in moss. He has shown her deer and feral goats and even an eagle once, soaring above. Krissy has seen Michael’s little corner of Scotland in dazzling sunshine and misty rain and a crazy sudden hailstorm. And one magical night Michael took Krissy out and sat with her on a rock at the lochside, and together they watched the Northern Lights.
‘It was about this place really,’ Michael says. ‘That’swhat Krissy loved.’
Shelley shakes her head, taking all of this in. ‘So,’ she says gently, ‘what happened then? After you’d met, I mean?’
He smiles ruefully as he describes the grim airport hotel with its artificial Christmas tree with integral lights blinking feebly in a corner. How Krissy has teased him about leaving his phone on the plane: ‘You need to get up to speed with travelling, Michael. Honestly! When’s the last time you flew anywhere?’ And how he’d been relieved when she’d suggested an early dinner in the hotel restaurant. It was clear now that there was no romantic spark, but here was something theycoulddo together. He went to fetch laminated menus from the bar, and as they made their choices he kept glancing at her nails. They were long and glossy and shaped into perfect ovals; pink with very white tips. ‘No one who stays at Shore Cottage has nails like that,’ he says with asmile. And then their food arrived and Krissy, a little altered now by a couple of wines, was short with the waiter, barking, ‘Is that it? No sides?’ And as Michael ploughed his way through a burger and greasy yellow fries, Krissy scowled down at her risotto.
‘Is that okay?’ he asked.
‘It is if you like eating wallpaper paste,’ she retorted. Michael looks at Shelley now and pushes back his wavy hair. ‘So that’s about it. She said she was jet-lagged and we decided to call it a night.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ Shelley murmurs.
‘Oh, don’t be.’ He smiles. ‘Harry and Pam had been on at me to get out there, to sign up to the dating apps and just give it a go.’ He laughs dryly. ‘They’re worried about me frittering my life away…’
‘I wouldn’t say you’re doing that,’ Shelley says firmly.
