Читать книгу The Little Clock House on the Green - Eve Devon - Страница 8

In the cramped window seat of the plane, Kate was oblivious to the fact that if she looked out of the window, past the thin layer of cloud, she’d be able to make out the Atlantic Ocean below. Instead, she was completely focused on her laptop screen. Using the tracker-pad, she dropped the image of the little friendly looking bee over the letter ‘e’ in the word ‘Beauty’.

Hmmm.

It didn’t look quite right.

Maybe she should change the word ‘at’ for the ‘at’ sign?

Making the change, she tipped her head to the side and re-read: Beauty @ The Clock House.

That looked much better. Simple and contemporary. Although… maybe she should work on a tagline to explain the bees?

‘Clever,’ declared the passenger in the seat beside her. ‘Do you design logos for a living, then?’

Dragged from her state of intense concentration, Kate turned towards the woman sitting next to her. ‘I’m sorry?’

The woman nodded her head towards Kate’s laptop screen and turning a little red, said, ‘It’s me who should be sorry. I shouldn’t have been looking.’

Kate swung her gaze back to her laptop screen.

Caught red-handed.

Darn it!

She was supposed to be working. On coming up with the last three points of her ‘Travel Hacks’ article for The World’s Your Oyster travel blog. She certainly wasn’t supposed to be designing logos for a pipe dream she’d thought she’d successfully buried four years before.

It was all Juliet’s fault.

Six weeks after receiving the first postcard, she’d received another.

Two postcards in and Kate had an inkling these things were going to find her wherever she was. Honest to goodness, it was like being on the Dursley end of receiving owl post.

After the first one, she’d emailed Juliet and explained she wasn’t interested in hearing about the clock house, but clearly her words had been lost in translation. Admittedly they’d been shoved into the middle paragraphs about how beautiful Tobago was and all about the stunning humming-birds and the tranquillity of the rainforest areas and this gorgeous callaloo soup she’d tried because obviously she didn’t want to appear too weirded-out about The Clock House being up for sale.

But maybe she was going to have to stop sending Juliet postcards, e-cards or any other kind of card that kept her in touch with where she was and how she was, if this was the sort of payback she was going to receive.

Her cousin was the only person from Whispers Wood who Kate kept in loose contact with and the thought of not checking in with her every now and then… the thought of severing that connection with the place she used to call home, made that stupid pang that had been hitting her at the oddest of times of late, press into her breastbone again.

‘I could claim to be politely interested,’ Kate’s new travel companion stated, ‘instead of appearing downright nosy, but to be perfectly honest with you, I fall very comfortably into the nosy camp. Plus, I hate flying and I thought this book,’ she held up her paperback for Kate’s attention, ‘would hold my interest, but alas… not.’

Kate stared at the front cover of the proffered paperback. It depicted a woman in sky-scraper heels holding a whip and standing over a man lying on a bed. Kate grinned. Who didn’t love gawping at what other people were reading? ‘Too much whipping action?’ she sympathised.

‘Not enough,’ the woman said, making Kate’s smile grow wider. ‘So much for the “What to read after 50 Shades” list, but don’t mind me. If you’re not in the mood to talk… or if what you’re working on is confidential…’

‘No, it’s all right,’ Kate reassured, glad of the interruption, because what if, after she’d finished designing logos for a business she didn’t have, in premises she has absolutely no intention of owning, she’d actually moved on to designing the packaging too? ‘What you saw,’ she gently closed her laptop, ‘well, that wasn’t work. I was just–’ Getting carried away? Testing myself? ‘Doodling,’ she finished lamely.

‘I see,’ said the woman, with a look that clearly said she didn’t and as Kate hardly understood it either, she couldn’t really blame her.

For the thousandth time Kate told herself that just because Old Man Isaac was finally selling The Clock House, didn’t mean she should be the one to buy it…

Yes, she might, technically, have the funds sitting in a bank, largely untouched for four years, and, yes, she might have the idea.

But, and as buts go, this one was a doozy… the person she was supposed to implement the idea with, wasn’t here any more.

Her hand moved unconsciously to rub at her sternum and encountered the filigree-silver locket watch she never took off.

There were some wounds that time couldn’t heal, so to be even contemplating going home to Whispers Wood and buying The Clock House was madness.

Determined to shake off the melancholy, Kate turned more fully to her new-found friend and asked, ‘Have you been to La Rochelle, before, then?’

Her companion shook her head. ‘My son-in-law is French, and he and my daughter moved back two years ago now. We Skype and all that business, but I haven’t been to see them because I hate flying so much. But–’ The woman pulled out her phone. ‘I decided the arrival of one’s first granddaughter merits a change in attitude and so here I am. Prepare yourself, this is where I now bore you with photos.’

Kate stared dutifully down at the slide show on the woman’s phone, right into the eyes of a cherubic newborn swaddled in baby-pink waffle-textured blanket. ‘She’s so sweet. And tiny! Looks as if Granny’s in for a lovely visit.’

‘Doesn’t it? When my daughter first told me they were moving I was determined to be happy for them. It was a bit of a shock. We’d only lost my husband two years before.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.’ Kate watched the grief flash in the woman’s eyes before acceptance remembered to make its appearance and, without even thinking about it, Kate reached out to squeeze her hand.

The woman stared into Kate’s eyes and after a moment squeezed back and heaved in a breath. ‘Anyway, it was hard, but I had work and my friends and I knew I’d be okay. And then, oh, I don’t know, you go about your daily routine, being okay and you think that okay is fine. Okay is good. And then, out of the blue, you get some news and suddenly you’re realising things can be better than okay. And such joy floods in,’ the woman shot Kate a look. ‘Do you know what I mean?’

‘Oh, completely,’ replied Kate, lying through her teeth, because compared with before, her life being ‘okay’ was already more. Except… maybe when she’d received that first postcard from Juliet… Mixed in with that gravity-shifting experience – before she’d tamped it down so forcefully – had been a feeling of joy. Joy at the possibility of a second chance. Joy at the possibility of more.

‘So what about you?’ the woman asked, stroking a finger over the photo on the screen before sliding the phone back into her bag. ‘Meeting someone the other end?’ The woman glanced down at her book and grinned. ‘Ooh, tell me you’re jetting over oceans to meet your lover?’

Kate grinned back. ‘Where I will naturally whip him into shape?’

‘Naturally,’ the woman laughed.

‘Sadly,’ Kate answered, ‘I’m just going to be working.’

She wasn’t sure why she’d accepted the job, really. Possibly to prove something to herself? She would really rather not have realised that every flight she took of late seemed to bring her closer to England. And this was the first trip back to La Rochelle where she wouldn’t grab a taxi and whiz through the port’s busy harbour streets to meet Marco. There would be no falling into bed with him. No late-night stroll down the Rue Saint Pierre afterwards, holding hands and chatting about their latest work assignments before stopping in at his favourite bar and, after a drink or four, going back to his tiny apartment to fall back into bed again.

She tested a breath and found that it wasn’t lodged too deeply in her throat after all. The last few months had eased the ego-crushing aftershock of her last visit, when Marco had sat her down and gently told her that he’d met someone. Someone who wanted to be with him. Wanted to live with him.

Wanted to commit to him.

She’d been stunned. He’d never once intimated he’d wanted more and hot on the heels of the shock had been an automatic need to tell him she was sure she could commit to him too – especially now that she knew that was what he was looking for.

Big mistake.

Huge.

The realisation that the gravel-laced reverence in his voice when he talked about Clara was definitely not, and indeed, had never been, present in his voice when he’d talked to her, coupled with the excruciatingly gentle manner he’d used to explain why it was never going to be her, had had her salvaging her pride and high-tailing it out of there.

She’d gone down the tried-and-tested route when she’d left on that jet plane, completely certain she wouldn’t be back again. Throwing herself into work she’d crossed so many time zones she hadn’t even bothered unpacking. Not that she usually unpacked. That was her ultimate life-hack, but Kate knew that didn’t look great, so she kept it to herself.

‘Work?’ said the woman disappointedly. ‘So the doodling…?’

‘Was for someone else.’ Another her. A different her. A lifetime ago. ‘My job involves travelling and reviewing for airlines, tourist boards, resort owners, etc. It’s a tough job…’

‘But somebody has to do it,’ her new friend replied, with a generous smile. ‘You get to travel. Experience new things. Share them with others. I like it.’

‘Exactly.’

‘You’re probably too young to settle down anyway.’

Exactly.

‘So where is home for you?’ the woman asked.

Kate’s heart missed a beat. ‘Oh, you won’t have heard of it. It’s a small village in West Sussex.’ Determinedly she reached out in front of her, opened up her laptop and, with only a moment’s hesitation, hit the delete key on the logos she’d been tinkering with.

Home was where the other her had lived. The different her. A lifetime ago.

Opening up the blog article, she took a deep breath and glad to have this lovely person sitting next to her, a person more than capable of distracting her from pipedreams, Kate put her fingers on the keyboard and asked, ‘Hey, what’s your top tip for travelling?’