Anyway, that sappy girl wasn’t really her, and nor had it ever been. Those avid, breathless weeks when she’d been borderline obsessed with Sam were a blip on her otherwise sane and sober record– never repeated and never revisited.
‘Sam and I never really got on,’ Amy told Kit. This was the truth, if not the whole truth. Sam’s quiet coldness in the wake of Hari’s death had stamped out any feelings she’d had for him, except dislike. He’d been awkward, aloof and stiff-upper-lipped in the aftermath of their mutual loss, seeming to enforce a careful distance from Amy– almost as if he feared her anguish might contaminate him. She’d felt like she lost them both that summer, and it had devastated her. When Sam jetted off to spend a year travelling with some old family friend, she didn’t even say goodbye.
‘We had classes together, during which we mostly disagreed about poetry, plays and novels,’ Amy said. ‘Sometimes we ended up hanging out because he was friends with Hari and so was I. Hari was, like, the glue that stuck us together … Or the neutral zone between two warring factions.’
‘But you never liked him?’ Kit asked, his narrowed eyes doubting and playful.
‘No,’ Amy said, emphatically– relieved that Sam and Jed had sloped off in the direction of the pub kitchen and she no longer risked being overheard. ‘He was always so smug. So arch. Soannoying. He pretty much got himself kicked out of some private school that cost thirty grand a year so he could come to the state sixth form in Stratford … Talk about pissing all over your privilege.’
‘Politically dubious, perhaps, but I do love a rebel,’ said Kit, shivering theatrically.
‘During our first year he got a job here collecting glasses.Collecting glassesfor minimum wage, for fuck’s sake– the boy who was, whois, going to end up owning the pub.’
‘Well, it’s unorthodox,’ Kit said reasonably, ‘but it’s not like he was out there whoring and pillaging the local peasants, is it? What’s your issue, Ames– poshos coming over here, taking our jobs? Did he get in the way ofyourglass-collecting ambitions?’
‘Of course not,’ Amy snickered. ‘I just always hated the “man of the people” shtick. He might as well be from another planet, so why not justownthat? Live in his separate sphere and just … lord it over everyone like he was born to, the way his family trained him?’
‘He could lord it over me anytime,’ Kit said, winking.
Amy shook her head in disgust.
‘Anyway. Now you know,’ she said, sipping the last of her wine and putting her glass back down on the table. ‘He was never mentioned because he isn’t important.’
‘Did you really not know he was living in the village?’ Kit asked. ‘This is a small place. Seems weird that you never ran into him when you came back to visit your gran.’
Amy shot him a dark look, not least because she felt quite guilty enough about how infrequently she’d visited Grace over the past year or two. ‘No idea at all,’ she said.
In honesty, she felt grateful to the universe for never having thrown Sam in her way before– though she’d hardly given it many opportunities. She’d generally restricted time spent back in Rowton to hours rather than days, and she’d certainly never asked Gran or Barbara about what Sam was doing with himself. Perhaps aware there was something sensitive they didn’t know, neither of them had mentioned his name to Amy in years; the last solid intel she’d had from Barbara was that he was based in New York and working for some big corporate firm from a corner office. At the time, she’d sniffed indifferently at this– but later, when her online snooping suggested he’d moved back to the UK, she hadn’t been able to help wondering why.
‘I’m sure our paths will barely cross while I’m here,’ Amy told Kit now. ‘Even if he is living at “the old house” … Which, in case you missed it, is what he calls that stately pile we drove past on the way here.’
‘Pity,’ Kit said, pushing his chair back to confirm it was time to go. ‘A few heated exchanges with His Lordship-to-be might have provided some entertainment, at least. Sounds like you’ll have to start making cakes if you don’t want to die of boredom over the next few months.’
‘I think I’ve hadmorethan enough excitement recently,’ Amy commented as she led the way out of a side door of the Old Oak, avoiding Jed and Sam.‘I’m here to work and spend time with my gran, not resurrect old squabbles or start training forBake Off,’ she decreed. ‘This next little while is going to be a quiet, calm time for me– and that’s exactly what I need.’
Chapter 8
Despite Carolyn’s suggestion that she begin her new role without pausing for breath, Amy decided to take a few days of leave after returning to Rowton. She wanted time to get her stuff unpacked and settle in, especially now she was planning on being at the cottage for the foreseeable future, rather than just while she was flat-hunting. It felt surreal, but not unpleasant, to hang up her clothes in her old wardrobe and arrange her vast collection of skincare and makeup products in baskets on the dressing table– though the processhadmade her wonder whether she was equipped for country living. Her array of strappy sandals and spendy flats seemed unlikely to get much airtime in the village, and she sensed several ‘sensible shoe’ purchases hovering on the horizon.
It wasn’t until Thursday morning that her workday alarm went off at seven o’clock– later than it would have done in London, as for the time being she’d only need to commute as far as Gran’s kitchen table. Her stomach cramped painfully as her mobile phone trilled, and after tapping the ‘stop’ button Amy got up to grab a box of tampons and a packet of paracetamol from a nearby drawer.Of coursethe universe would see fit to send her her period today, when she needed to wade through hundreds of emails and start getting her head around her new responsibilities.
She made her way to the downstairs bathroom and chugged the tablets with a tumbler of cold water, then washed and dressed at a snail’s pace while she waited for the painkillers to kick in. The sensation in her lower belly was gnawing and urgent– as if someone was trying to dig through layers of skin and muscle with a spoon. It was at moments like these that Amy wondered how on earth women coped with childbirth.
When she stepped from the bathroom back into the kitchen she found Gran already there, preparing Bertie’s breakfast and making two cups of tea.
‘Oh love, you look poorly,’ she said to Amy. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘I’m OK,’ Amy said, sitting down. ‘Honest. It’s just …women’s troubles, you know?’
‘Ah,’ Grace nodded sagely. ‘I remember how badly you used to suffer. I’ll do you a hot-water bottle.’
Amy opened her mouth to protest, then closed it again as a fresh wave of pain squeezed savagely at her insides. She felt her eyes start to shimmer with unshed tears– the combination of discomfort and surrendering to her grandmother’s care threatening to overwhelm her. It had been a long time since anyone had looked after her when she felt ill.
Grace opened a cupboard and pulled a scrappy-looking thing down from its lowest shelf. With a start, Amy recognised it as the furry, sad-faced, sloth-shaped hot-water bottle she’d used pretty much every month during her teenage years.
She felt strangely emotional at being confronted with this worse-for-wear, bad-taste relic from her past– this ugly thing that Gran had kept, presumably for no reason other than that it had been Amy’s. When Grace handed the filled hot-water bottle over, Amy gratefully hugged it to her stomach.
‘Thanks,’ she said.
