The Little Cottage in the Country

‘Weren’t you just on the Downs? I remember doing the same exercise when I was at the school.’

‘Yeah, but we had no food for hours. It’s clearly illegal and some form of child abuse.’

‘How long were you out there for?’

‘Two hours,’ she had wailed, thinking she might have broken him this time. ‘Then we were allowed back for tea.’

She had been greeted by the sound of a long, dead dialling tone.

Not dissimilar to the one she was hearing now. Not dead – but no signal, to her mind, was as good as dead. ‘Bloody hell. What is the bloody point of a mobile if you can’t be bloody mobile with it?’

‘Mummy, bad word,’ Antonia said.

‘What word?’

‘Buggy.’ She meant ‘bloody’.

Anna looked back at her daughter, who always achieved an enviable look of disgust that Anna one day hoped to mimic when she was telling them off.

‘Sorry,’ Anna said, exhaling deeply. ‘Only I can’t find it.’

A tap on the window made her jump and she looked outside. That Horatio person stood holding his horse’s reins and peering in at them. She rolled the window down.

‘Hi,’ she said.

‘Are you lost?’

‘Aren’t you meant to be with the hunt?’

‘Yes, but I’m taking Taittinger home.’

‘Pardon?’ she said, trying to hide her smile.

He looked at her disbelievingly. ‘Am I speaking a foreign language?’

She inclined her head. ‘Not far off.’

‘Tatty,’ he indicated the horse, ‘needs to go home.’

‘Right.’

‘It looks like you’re lost. Maybe I can help?’

‘We’ve just moved here.’ She lifted her chin. ‘I haven’t been here in over ten years and can’t remember where the house is. I inherited it from my aunt.’

‘What’s the name of the house?’

‘Primrose Cottage.’

His look changed to what she could only read as: pity? ‘Oh.’ He tried to recover and smiled. ‘Yes, everyone’s been wondering who was moving in there.’

‘Well, where is it?’ She fought off the rising irritation at this man’s ability to make her feel so ridiculous. He seemed so supercilious considering she had only just met him; but, she knew, it was also because she hated to ask for help.

He pointed towards a narrow lane leading up towards a small cottage on the hilltop. ‘There.’

‘Brilliant, thank you.’ As she put the car in gear, he leant in.

‘Look, I wonder if we might have a chat sometime soon.’ He smiled. ‘Perhaps a coffee tomorrow? I…’ He stopped, as if grasping for words.

Was he coming on to her?

‘Yes, maybe.’ Her mind raced with excuses. ‘If I’m not planting…’ She tried desperately to think of something country-esque and settled on vegetables. After all, she knew it wouldn’t be far off the truth: how hard could it be to grow vegetables? She would be the embodiment of The Good Life. ‘Potatoes,’ she announced triumphantly.

He smiled knowingly. ‘Ah, that old chestnut, planting potatoes.’

She nodded firmly and started to move off, leaving Horatio with his horse and a strange look of amusement on his face. The lane leading to the house was steep and rough.

‘Right, let’s go and see our new home.’ She drove along the bumpy lane to the house, about a quarter of a mile from the bridge, and at the top she stopped, her heart sinking. The downstairs windows were covered in ivy and the garden entirely overgrown with weeds. She could have cried if it weren’t for the sight of Horatio and Taittinger walking up the hill in her rear-view mirror.

‘Oh, why can’t he get lost?’ Horatio’s pity must have stemmed from his knowledge that the house was in need of that man off the daytime-telly home-improvement programme. Anna vaguely remembered a female presenter prancing manically from one room of tea-slurping builders, showing their bum cleavage, to another. All before said frilly presenter, along with the poor owners, who had never actually asked for a magenta-coloured kitchen, and the builders toasted their heroism and cried at their brilliance. The owners were then forced to smile at the camera and pretend they had always wanted a hot-pink kitchen with a life-size mural of their dead hamster on the main wall.

Anna felt humiliated. Turning to Freddie and Antonia, she put on a brave face. ‘How are you guys doing?’

‘I’m hungry,’ they chimed in unison and a lump rose in her throat. What had she been thinking? At least, in London, she had been able to provide the most basic of care for them: warmth and food. Now, she searched the derelict cottage for any signs of homeliness. It was a shell.

‘Me again,’ Horatio announced, out of puff, as he and Taittinger sidled up to the car and she put the window down once more.

‘I can see that. If you’ve come to gloat, please don’t.’ Her eyes smarted.

‘I didn’t think you’d be pleased.’

She bit back her comment and leapt out of the car, indignation flaring inside her. ‘But we’ll be just fine. So, Mr Horatio Spencer-what’s-it, if you wouldn’t mind leaving me and my children alone, instead of standing their looking on like we’re some sort of entertainment, then that would be most jolly.’ Jolly? Why did she use the word ‘jolly’? Help. Horatio was already rubbing off on her.

‘Jolly,’ repeated Freddie from the back.

Horatio was staring at her intently; maybe too intently. She shifted uncomfortably under his stare.

‘Listen, about that chat…’ She stared at him incredulously as once again he floundered. Who was this man? ‘I know what it feels like to be suddenly alone.’

‘I am not suddenly alone,’ she said, defensive. ‘I’ve been alone for years.’ Then she smiled, despite herself.

He grinned.

Her heart fluttered at his incredibly sexy smile but she pushed her shoulders back, more determined than ever. She was an independent woman, she said to herself, although she wasn’t entirely convinced at this point in time.

‘Thank you, I really appreciate your help,’ she said with sincerity. She knew she shouldn’t be so stubborn. Her mother’s voice rang around her head: ‘Anna, you are a mule, girl, a mule.’

Despite this, and ignoring the gnawing maternal guilt eating away at her stomach as she glanced in the rear-view mirror at her children giggling at Freddie’s burping-on-demand, she said, ‘We’ll be just fine.’