‘Stop it, you two worrywarts,’ I shout from inside the building. ‘I’ll be back before you can count to sixty.’ I tug at the metal that I want, stashed behind some tumble-down rocks. Ivy has grown across and is proving a forceful deterrent. I haven’t been here since last winter; I should have realised that it might not be as simple as I had hoped.
‘Make that one hundred and twenty.’ I grapple with the ivy and hear movement from the car. No one knows my hiding place, and although it isn’t as if treasure is here or there’s any great secret, it is another bit of me that only I know about. I had brought Luisa here years ago but she was made to wait in the car, and Marsha last year for the first time, but she was smaller and napping whilst I fetched what is currently hidden under greenery.
‘Get back in the car,’ I say as I tug even more. Honestly, this stuff! The irony that I will be using ivy next week – actually that’s a point, I could put all this in the car for tomorrow – is not lost on me. Tomorrow it can be my friend, right now it’s a pain in the arse.
I almost have them. One more tug! I can do this. I’m like an athlete, I place one foot back, the other foot slightly forward, both firm on the ground. I brace myself, deep breath in. One, two and pull. I pull with all my might, the ivy comes haring off way easier than my earlier attempts indicated and I shoot back, off my feet and across the hut, hearing the intake of breath as I do so from two audience members.
I look up from where I sit, my fall luckily cushioned by the soft snow, as Rory reaches out a hand and pulls me up.
‘Are you okay?’
‘Yep, all good.’ I brush myself down as Rory and Marsha lend a hand. I bat them off. Marsha is walloping my arse harder than necessary and they feel like a little family of gorillas. They’ll be picking bugs off me next and eating them.
‘What were you doing?’ Marsha asks, her little face scrunched up.
‘Yeah, what’s worth bodily injury? Surely not ivy?’ Rory adds.
‘Oh, no, the ivy is the added advantage. Here…’ Triumphantly, I walk over to the uncovered pile of rocks. ‘Here, look. We are going to have the best day.’ Proudly I hold aloft the treasure I’d been searching for.
‘Oh, I know what we’re doing! I know what we’re doing. Look, Rory, they’ve got our names on!’ Marsha dances on the spot excitedly. Rory looks at us as if we were both bonkers as our treasure is revealed to be two slightly dented, tarnished but very well-loved tin trays.
‘When you rang this morning and said in your princess fairy voice – you know, the one that sounds like you have cured all the world’s ills and are about to sing me a lullaby…’
‘I didn’t realise I had that sort of voice.’
‘Normally you don’t, which is why this morning I was surprised to hear this gentle lilt tinkling in my ears. When that siren-like soothing voice whispered in my ear that it had the best day planned…’ Rory says as he grips the sides of his tin tray, glaring at me. ‘I didn’t realise you meant risking life and limb. Ishouldhave realised you meant risking life and limb, of course I should. Yesterday was just part of this plan, part of the plan to make me think Belle is all grown up now, likes to flit around stately homes, doesn’t engage with hare-brained schemes full of danger…’
‘This isn’t dangerous, Belle isn’t dangerous, she’s fun,’ Marsha objects. I tighten my grip around her waist and she in turn tightens her grip upon my arms.
‘She’s right.’ I nod knowingly.
‘There’s a tree bang in the middle of this field.’
‘Yes, and unless you’ve been lobotomised in the night there is no way you’re going to hit it from this angle.’
‘So you say.’
‘So I know. This will be fun. Look ahead, look how tempting that is.’ From our position at the top of the hill I wave my arms over the rolling fields below, the snow soft, undisturbed. Snow is dotted across the rural landscape, the spiny trees wearing little snow caps on each branch, a snow-covered farmhouse with smoke curling from the chimney.
He looks forward, looking ahead at the beauty of the scene before him, nods slowly as a smile I haven’t seen before plays at the corner of his mouth.
‘Race you!’
And he is gone.
We must have climbed this hill ten times, with Rory carrying Marsha up all ways – a fireman’s lift, Marsha slung under his arm as if she is a roll of carpet, a piggy back – all of which cause her to shriek with joy and declare this is the best day in the history of forever. I huff my way up the hill alongside them, tin trays in my hands and a breathlessness brought about by laughing so much in the cold air. We’ve made tracks through the snow, each of us taking turns to guess what the other person is meant to be: dog, snake, badger, horse.
Gradually other people start to appear on the brow of the hill, and crying with laughter and chilled to the bone, we head back to the car. I drop Rory back at his and he invites me over to spend the evening once I’ve dropped Marsha home. I want to say yes. Instead I find myself shaking my head as I say no, my fear of getting too infatuated stopping me from having the perfect end to a perfect day.
Thou sodden-witted lord! Thou hast in thy skull no more brain than I have in mine elbows.
December Fourteenth.
Rory.
‘It is absolutely ridiculous that a fully-grown intelligent man…’ Hmm, his words not mine. ‘…can’t live his life as he pleases. And these ridiculous dictates of yours, I have no words. How am I supposed to repair my reputation by saying I’m an alcoholic? I’m beginning to doubt you have any clue about reputation management. My fans, of which there are many and most of them women, let me tell you, want to see me hav—’ Nick Wilde continues to screech down the phone at me.
I have spent the whole day troubleshooting. People say never work with children or animals but honestly, they have it easy. That was life beforeLove Islandwas invented.
