He’s straight back at me. ‘I’ll be up there first thing, or late afternoon.’ He pushes his way through the picket gate at the side of the house. ‘Do you fancy chips?’
‘Chips?’ I don’t usually repeat what people say. But I just caught sight of the contours of his throat in the moonlight as he swallowed and it blew all sensible thoughts out of my head. It takes me a nanosecond to whip myself into line again. ‘Isn’t it too late?’ It’s after midnight and we’re at the end of the world, not in the city.
‘My treat. There must be somewhere in town still open.’
‘And afternoon will be good for Walter’s.’ It’s one thing dropping my standards for a couple of hours. I’ve got a lot of catching up to do tomorrow.
His mouth is slanting in the half-light reflected off the sea. ‘We’ll make a farmer of you yet.’ He wiggles his eyebrows. ‘No need to look so horrified, I’m only joking.’
‘Yay, you made a joke! That’s two in one day!’ I’m looking at my nails. And wondering how the hell they’re going to mix with metal buckets and farm gates.
But as I stand there by the garden wall, staring out across the water, watching the cloud shadows shifting in the sky, there’s another feeling too. When I arrived here I assumed my problems were a temporary blip that would last a couple of weeks. That I’d drop out of sight, brush myself off, then pop back up and carry on exactly as I was before. Only right now I feel a very long way away from that super-confident person who arrived in St Aidan with an advance on its way and her life still on track. And saying it out loud earlier was like waking up. Six weeks on, it all feels so distant. I may only be acknowledging the separation now, but my old life has been drifting further away with every day that has passed. And it might just be so distant that I may never get it back. Which is a truly horrible thought. So I pull my mind back to something better.
‘If you’re serious about chips, I need to run upstairs for ketchup.’ It’s one of those stupid things I should have grown out of but I haven’t. Chips just aren’t worth the bother if the sauce isn’t right. ‘I only do Heinz, remember?’
I sense Ross is rolling his eyes. Either that or he’s doing an in-depth examination of the moon. ‘As if I’d ever forget that, Bertie.’
It’s a question I should never have asked. And that’s definitely the wrong answer.
22
At Snowdrop Farm, High Hopes Hill
Country living and putting it down on paper
Sunday
‘So next must be … the calves?’
We’re up at Snowdrop Farm, and Ross has already talked me through filling up the hen water, how many nuts to give the pigs, and techniques for shaking out sheep food without getting trampled – tip the bag out really fast then run like hell. By a process of elimination, there can’t be much else left.
As Ross says, while I’m here, he may as well show me around properly. What he doesn’t realise is, it’s hard to remember things when they’re so alien. As it is, the Cath Kidston Meadow Flowers notebook I brought along in case of emergency is pretty much full already. Worse still, Ross keeps spotting it.
‘You don’t have to write this bit down, Bertie, it’s four scoops of milk powder, and then fill the mixing bucket to the top with water and stir like mad with the broom handle. Then share it out between the calf buckets.’ There’s a row of slobbery noses pushing past the railings; so long as they stay on that side of the fence I’m completely able to appreciate their doe-y blue eyes, and the furry topknots on their heads.
He said the same about my book when we went to see the pigs. They turned out to be the size of small cars, and they really do snuffle round in the mud and grunt. The best news is there are only two of them. The worry is that Walter goes in for rare breeds which means it’ll be impossible to find replacements if I do happen to kill any of them. But so long as I hang on to my notebook, fingers crossed it won’t come to that.
‘Would you like to try mixing this?’ Ross works so fast he’s already got a line of smaller buckets laid out and now he’s holding out the broom handle to me. ‘You may need to put your pencil down first.’
‘Sure.’ I ram my book into my bag and tug down the hem of my flowery shorts-dress, then I grasp the stick and spin the liquid and powder round in the tub. ‘If this was home, I’d be using my electric hand blender for this.’
Ross gives a grimace. ‘Walter likes to keep things traditional. When he bought the calves in a few weeks ago he had no idea he wouldn’t be here to look after them. There are more round the back by the caravans, up towards the cider orchard.’
‘So people stay here?’ That’s the most identifiable snippet I’ve heard all afternoon.
Ross shakes his head. ‘Not any more. But it’s more a smallholding than a big farm, so back in the day the holiday trade and Walter’s home-brewed cider made up for the lack of acres.’ He sighs again. ‘The hens have mostly taken over the vans. You’ll likely find more eggs there than in the nesting boxes I showed you earlier.’
The one saving grace of all this is the extra egg supply, but it sounds like they’ll be hard-earned if I have to play hide and seek to find them.
Ross takes hold of the tub and splashes the creamy liquid into the buckets. ‘You’ll need to watch them while they drink to make sure the stronger ones don’t push the others out of the way and steal their food.’ He gives a grunt. ‘You’ll get to know which ones to look out for.’
I prop up the mixing stick and reach for my notebook before I forget it. ‘There’s a lot more to this than I thought. If I have to get in and wrestle with them it’s good I’ve got Sophie’s spare wellies.’
There’s a smile playing round Ross’s lips. ‘I won’t leave you on your own until you find your feet.’ His face cracks into something very close to a smile. ‘Bright blue boots with purple spots might just scare them into behaving themselves.’
It’s notexactlya dig, but it’s close enough to nudge me into explaining what I touched on last night. ‘There you go, you’re taking the pee again.’
He gives a shrug. ‘It’s what I do, it’s only for fun.’
