as Adam had done…
‘I’ve got a world of trouble without adding a baby to the mix,’ she said, not wanting to think about Adam. Then, before he could ask her what kind of trouble, ‘I thought Saffy was living in Paris. Working as a model? The last I heard from her, she was doing really well.’
‘She kept in touch with you?’ Then, before she could answer, ‘Why are you walking barefoot, May?’
She stared at him, aware that he’d said something he regretted, had deliberately changed the subject, then, as he met her gaze, challenging her to go there, she looked down at her torn tights, mud soaked skirt, dirty legs and feet.
‘My feet are muddy. I’ve already ruined my good black suit…’ the one she’d be needing for job interviews, assuming anyone was that interested in someone who hadn’t been to university, had no qualifications ‘…I’m not about to spoil a decent pair of shoes, too.’
As she stepped on a tiny stone and winced, he took her by the arm, easing her off the path and she froze.
‘The grass will be softer to walk on,’ he said, immediately releasing her, but not before a betraying shiver of gooseflesh raced through her.
Assuming that she was cold, he removed his jacket, placed it around her shoulders. It swallowed her up, wrapping her in the warmth from his body.
‘I’m covered in mud,’ she protested, using her free hand to try and shake it off. Wincing again as a pain shot through her elbow. ‘It’ll get all over the lining.’
He stopped her, easing the jacket back onto her shoulder, then holding it in place around her. ‘You’re cold,’ he said, looking down at her, ‘and I don’t think this suit will be going anywhere until it’s been cleaned, do you?’
Avoiding his eyes, she glanced down at his expensively tailored trousers, but it wasn’t the mud that made her breath catch in her throat. He’d always been tall but now the rest of him had caught up and those long legs, narrow hips were designed to make a woman swoon.
‘No!’ she said, making a move so that he was forced to turn away. ‘You’d better send me the cleaning bill.’
‘It’s your time I need, May. Your help. Not your money.’
He needed her. Words which, as a teenager, she’d lived to hear. Words that, when he shouted them for all the world to hear, had broken her heart.
‘It’s impossible right now.’
‘I heard about your grandfather,’ he said, apparently assuming it was grief that made her so disobliging.
‘Really?’ she said.
‘It said in the Post that the funeral was private.’
‘It was.’ She couldn’t have borne the great and good making a show of it. And why would Adam have come to pray over the remains of a man who’d treated him like something unpleasant he’d stepped in? ‘But there’s going to be a memorial service. He was generous with his legacies and I imagine the charities he supported are hoping that a showy civic send-off will encourage new donors to open their wallets. I’m sure you’ll get an invitation to that.’ Before he could answer, she shook her head. ‘I’m sorry. That was a horrible thing to say.’
But few had done more than pay duty visits after a massive stroke had left her grandpa partially paralysed, confused, with great holes in his memory. Not that he would have wanted them to see him that way.
‘He hated being helpless, Adam. Not being able to remember.’
‘He was a formidable man. You must miss him.’
‘I lost him a long time ago.’ Long before his memory had gone.
‘So, what happens now?’ Adam asked, after a moment of silence during which they’d both remembered the man they knew. ‘Will you sell the house? It needs work, I imagine, but the location would make it ideal for company offices.’
‘No!’ Her response was instinctive. She knew it was too close to the town, didn’t have enough land these days to attract a private buyer with that kind of money to spend, but the thought of her home being turned into some company’s fancy corporate headquarters—or, more likely, government offices—was too much to bear.
‘Maybe a hotel or a nursing home,’ he said, apparently understanding her reaction and attempting to soften the blow. ‘You’d get a good price for it.’
‘No doubt, but I won’t be selling.’
‘No? Are you booked solid into the foreseeable future with your painters, garden designers and flower arrangers?’
She glanced at him, surprised that he knew about the one-day and residential special interest courses she ran in the converted stable block.
‘Your programme flyer is on the staff notice-board at the office.’
‘Oh.’ She’d walked around the town one Sunday stuffing them through letterboxes. She’d hesitated about leaving one in his letterbox, but had decided that the likelihood of the Chairman being bothered with such ephemera was nil. ‘Thanks.’
‘Nothing to do with me,’ he said. ‘That’s the office manager’s responsibility. But one of the receptionists was raving about a garden design course she’d been on.’
‘Well, great.’ There it was, that problem with her breathing again. ‘It is very popular, although they’re all pretty solidly booked. I’ve got a full house at the moment for a two-day Christmas workshop.’
Best to put off telling Robbie the bad news until after tea, when they’d all gone home, she thought. They wouldn’t be able to talk until then, anyway.
‘You don’t sound particularly happy about that,’ Adam said. ‘Being booked solid.’
‘No.’ She shrugged. Then, aware that he was looking at her, waiting for an explanation, ‘I’m going to have to spend the entire weekend on the telephone cancelling next year’s programme.’
Letting down all those wonderful lecturers who ran the classes, many of whom had become close friends. Letting down the people who’d booked, many of them regulars who looked forward to a little break away from home in the company of like-minded people.
And then there were the standing orders for her own little ‘Coleridge House’ cottage industry. The homemade fudge and toffee. The honey.
‘Cancel the courses?’ Adam was frowning. ‘Are you saying that your grandfather didn’t leave you the house?’
The breeze was much colder coming off the lake and May really was shivering now.
‘Yes. I mean, no…He left it to me, but there are conditions involved.’
Conditions her grandfather had known about but had never thought worth mentioning before the stroke had robbed him of so much of his memory.
But why would he? There had been plenty of time back then. And he’d done a major matchmaking job with Michael Linton, a little older, steady as a rock
