‘You’ve gone green,’ Ross observed, still neutral. ‘Are yousureyou’re all right? She’s not going to fire them at you like rockets.’
‘I know.’ My voice sounded faint, as though I very muchdidn’tknow. ‘I just really don’t like birds. Don’t they make your flesh creep?’
‘No.’ His head went up, following the flight of some of the birds as they departed from Isobel and, looking oddly purposeful, took off into the clearing sky. ‘They’re just birds.’ Then, slightly wistfully, ‘It must be nice to fly.’
He pushed off from the car and started to walk across the verge towards the beaten path to the cottage, then stopped and looked behind him. ‘Not coming?’
‘Not until the birds have gone.’ Now it was my turn to have my hands in my pockets, knuckles aching.
‘You really don’t like them, do you?’ His head tilted.
‘Love them, this is just cosmetic distress,’ I said between clenched teeth.
‘But why? Were you taken by an eagle as a baby or something?’ Ross sounded genuinely interested. ‘What set it all off?’
‘Nothing. Just like people with a fear of spiders or wasps – I just don’t like them.’
‘Passed down from parents?’ A casual question but it seemed to have something behind it.
‘Not at all. My mum rescues stray dogs, she loves any animals. My dad hasn’t expressed much of an opinion, other than that magpies are bastards in the nesting season. My parents live in Australia,’ I said to his raised eyebrows. ‘All the wildlife seems hellbent on attack over there. Dad’s a vet. He was offered a job out there just after I left home and it was too good an opportunity to miss.’
‘That’s a long way away.’
I remembered the nights during my pregnancy, chatting to Mum on Zoom. She’d wanted to come over for the birth, she’d even booked a flight, but Tilly had come earlier than expected and then… then everything had fallen apart. The last time we’d spoken she’d sided with David, and I realised that he’d got to her too and she wasn’t the ally I wanted. She hadn’t tried to get in touch since I’d left and I didn’t dare ring her in case I gave something away about where we were and it got back to him. He’d always found it easy to manipulate people and my mother had clearly been no exception.
Tilly and I were better off alone.
‘It’s fine.’ I assumed a smile that even my face didn’t feel. ‘Now it looks as though they’re all off, shall we go?’ I overtook him and started to lead the way. To be honest, even if a few of those black horrors had still been perched on the doorstep I would have gone to the cottage, anything to stop Ross asking difficult questions. Or any questions at all, really.
‘You can talk to me, you know.’ His voice was quiet but I heard it, from somewhere behind my left shoulder. ‘If you need to.’
I stopped so suddenly that I nearly fell over, and turned, stomping around on the bitter-smelling earth. I’d been going to launch into a list of why Ididn’tneed to talk to anyone, why he was imposing and pushing and that I had boundaries and anyway it would be too weird, but the sight of him chewing away at the side of a finger, harmlessly scruffy and anxiously attractive, stopped me.
‘Thank you.’ It was because he wasn’t like David, that was what it was. There was none of the ‘so attractive you’vegotto like me’ about Ross, or the superficial bonhomie that plagued so many of the acting fraternity. He didn’t have that gloss of having been brought up with money either, that slickness that made David feel as though he were sliding through the world without catching on the sides. Ross felt genuine and I didn’t know how to deal with that. ‘But we need to deal with Isobel,’ I went on.
‘We do. I’m running out of biscuits in the shed. And the TV crew arrive next week. It’s going to be a bloody short programme if all they can film is me pacing up and down and wondering when I can get started.’
We stood and looked at one another for a few moments. His gaze was steady and level and I suddenly saw the professional man behind the rather neurotic superstructure, intelligent and proficient. Without my permission my mouth stretched into a smile and then further to a grin, and it felt good. There wasn’t generally a great deal to smile about in my life, but Ross temporarily was making it feel as though there might be. My stomach had lost the ice cube of tension I permanently carried and the chains around my heart slackened for a second.
‘Right,’ I said, and didn’t move.
Ross shook his head. ‘I amsuchan idiot,’ he said without any context. Then, ‘Come on, Isobel will be wondering what we’re doing out here.’
‘She knows I won’t go near the cottage if the birds are in there.’ We started walking again, our shoulders level this time. ‘So she probably thinks you’re trying to persuade me out from my position cowering behind an elder bush.’
‘Metaphorically speaking, she’s right,’ he replied and I looked at him sideways but he didn’t say anything else until we reached the front door, standing half-open in an inviting and yet sinister way. There was a huge crack running the entire length of the wood, as though it had slammed recently and the wood had split. ‘You go first. I don’t want to catch her doing something embarrassing.’
‘What, more embarrassing than living in a single room in a derelict house?’ I put my hand up to push the door further open and half of it moved while the other half stayed put.
‘Good point. But we can’t go in together, we’d jam in the hall.’
He was right, and I had to sidle and slither my way through the half-open door into the hallway, which was as dark as usual. I shuddered at the sight of the closed door beyond as my mind filled with feathers and cawing. Ross nudged my shoulder.
‘They’re outside. You saw them.’
‘I know. It’s just… confined spaces, and they were in there the first time I came here. It’s an experience that has sunk into my psyche and scarred me for life.’
‘Not the only one, from the sounds of it,’ Ross said breezily. ‘Go on. I’ll throw my coat over your head if the room is full of crows.’
