The Little Cottage in the Country

Anna went to correct his grammar but, aware of Horatio standing feet from them, fumbling around at the back of the room, she told Freddie he should view it as an adventure, and he jumped up, ninja-like, on cue. Seconds later, the front room was flooded with light.

‘There you are,’ Horatio said, standing from a kneeling position by the cupboard. ‘Electricity was off.’

‘Oh.’ Anna avoided his eye. ‘Thanks.’

He smiled. ‘Have you got plates? If not, Mary put some plastic picnic plates and so on in there.’

‘Thank you,’ she said again, imagining Mary’s perfectly manicured hands daintily holding a glass of sherry as she asked him to pop round to ‘the poor’ with yesterday’s leftovers.

‘You serve up and I’ll get the car out.’ He nodded, breaking the awkward tension that had descended on the room.

She knew she should say more but she was tired and…

And… Antonia had just head-butted her brother for apparently no reason at all.

‘OK, you two, stop. I know you’re exhausted. Come and sit in the other room. I’ll get the heating on.’ She had spotted the boiler earlier and offered a silent prayer to the Plumbing Gods that it was working. The children followed her through to the kitchen and she pressed the ON button. The boiler clinked and clanked loudly and Freddie laughed happily.

‘Farty-farty noise,’ he said, and Antonia, forgetting the latest battle, started giggling.

The old pipes creaked into action and Anna sighed with relief. She set the children up at the dusty farmhouse table and opened Horatio’s offering. Three Tupperware containers held a delicious-smelling beef stew and smooth potato mash, and there was a Nigella-Lawson-Standard (a place Anna hoped to occupy one day) apple crumble for afters. She beamed when she saw the bottle of wine.

Anna retrieved the plastic plates and spooned the food out. Freddie’s cheeks glowed pink as he ate and Antonia smacked her lips with delight. The kitchen had started to warm and she thought they might survive the night after all. They had bedding in the car and she would set the twins up on Aunt Flo’s old bed. She took out the bottle of Merlot and twisted the cap off, pouring generously into a plastic wine glass. She noticed that there were, in fact, two wine glasses. She couldn’t imagine why Horatio’s wife would encourage him to take a strange woman wine and then help her drink it. Then again, anyone who owned a horse called Taittinger and was married to someone as supercilious as Horatio must have had some sort of crisis.

Anna knew she was being unfair, but she was tired, cold and fed up. She hated looking desperate, even though she hadn’t felt this out of her depth in a long time.

‘OK?’ she asked the twins.

They nodded, mouths full of food. Anna turned at the sound of Horatio clearing his throat.

‘Car’s out. Left-hand side has taken a bit of a beating but otherwise it’s in good working order.’

‘It can join the other dents,’ she said and, another glug of wine later, smiled. It wasn’t his fault he spoke the way he did or that she had made the huge mistake of even coming to the countryside. ‘Thank you and please thank your wife for the food. It’s the happiest I’ve seen them all day.’ She nodded towards the children.

‘My pleasure but…’

‘Mummy, Freddie ate my food.’

Anna turned her attention to her son. ‘Don’t eat your sister’s food.’

‘I’ll leave you to it. I don’t want to get in the way,’ Horatio said, moving towards the door. ‘Let me know if you need anything, like I said before.’

‘Thanks, but we won’t be staying.’ She followed him to the front door, carrying her glass and the bottle. ‘It was silly of me to think we could make a go of this. I blindly brought my two young children to the middle of nowhere.’ She frowned. ‘I may not be a perfect mother but it doesn’t seem fair on them.’

Horatio nodded. ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’ He looked at her in earnest. He paused briefly and said, ‘I thought a lot of your aunt.’ He looked regretful. ‘But maybe you’re right, maybe it’s for the best.’

Anna ignored his last comment. ‘You knew her?’ She supposed he would have, but she hadn’t really thought about it.

‘Very well.’ He smiled. ‘She would often come up to the house.’ He gave a small shake of his head. ‘My parents’ house,’ he corrected himself. ‘And she would chat with me. She talked of you often.’

‘She did?’ Anna felt a pang of sadness.

‘Yes, she was very proud of you.’ He looked as if he wanted to say more but stopped himself. ‘I know it’s none of my business but the house is on its last legs.’ He looked around him. ‘Maybe you could rent locally instead?’

‘I can’t. It’s either this or nothing. My aunt left me this house, otherwise I’d be stuck back in London in my poky flat.’ She looked at him. ‘Do you have children?’

He nodded. ‘Yes.’

‘Well, then you’ll know how hard it can be at times, but the difference is you can talk to your wife about it. But try imagining what it would be like doing this kind of thing by yourself with no one to voice your concerns to.’

‘Like what?’ he said. ‘It looks like you’re coping just fine.’

‘Like, um…’ Her head had started to grow fuzzy with the wine and she found herself flicking through the parental-disaster book she stored at the back of her mind. ‘So, um…’ She drank deeply again. ‘Like sending your little boy to school with his lunchbox, only to get a call from his school about its contents.’

‘Contents?’

‘His teacher wanted to know why I had sent him to school with a Nicorette patch, a Weight Watchers milkshake and the last of the Christmas liqueur chocolates.’ He laughed and she pouted. ‘All of that, in a sodding Thomas the Tank Engine lunchbox. I mean, there’s probably some government health warning about mothers like me.’

‘I bet yours was nice, though.’

‘What?’

‘Your lunch.’

‘Yeah, I got the corned beef sandwich and Penguin, but that’s not the point. So you’ve got to understand, Mr Spencer…’ She had downed the remainder of the glass of wine and it was giving her that joyous feeling of confidence and control. She refilled it quickly, slurped some more and continued. ‘I think I was really selfish coming here. Maybe I didn’t really think about what I was taking them away from. I mean, we had a pretty poky flat in London but it was still home, you know? They were just about to start at a local school… but it was a crap one. That was when I knew we had to move, when the children didn’t get into their first choice and Simon, that’s my ex, started giving me a hard time and…’ Her eyes smarted with tears. ‘You see? It’s not fair. And then you – yeah, you – come along all hoity-toity on top of a horse called Taittinger. I mean, seriously? And then you stand there and laugh at my predicament.’ She drank deeply again. ‘I mean, you can’t just stand there and laugh at a woman’s predicament. Well, you can, but it’s not on.’ Oh bugger, she was bulldozing. That’s what her mother called it. In other words, she had lost the ability to stop talking.

‘Don’t be so hard on yourself,’ he said kindly, appearing to have lost his la-dee-dah extra bits like the ‘yahs’ and the ‘jolly-whatsits’. ‘And I wasn’t laughing at you. I was kind of hoping you’d start laughing too.’ When she didn’t answer, he asked gently, ‘Do you work?’

She found his kindness touching and yet she didn’t want to break down in front of a total stranger.

‘I’m a journalist.’

‘Wow.’ His eyes widened with what would appear to be genuine admiration. ‘Are you going to work for someone locally?’

‘No, I’m freelancing for The Post.’ Anna laughed. ‘A London newspaper. My boss, Barry, wants to get the lowdown on moving to the countryside.’

Horatio smiled. ‘That sounds like you might have to stick it out then, but…’ He paused. ‘Maybe not here.’

‘No,’ she shook her head. ‘No, I don’t think so. I think we should leave the village altogether. If it’s not here, I have to go. I can’t afford to rent around here.’

‘I haven’t known you for more than five minutes, but I’d quite like to get to know you, if you did stay in the area.’

‘Anyone would think you’re determined we’re not going to stay in this cottage!’

He looked embarrassed and concentrated his gaze on the floor. ‘No, it’s just that…’

She smiled. ‘Listen, you’re probably right, I should head back to London.’

She gave him a small smile and glanced up at him through a blur of tears and, fearing she might cry, looked away again. ‘Listen, thank you for today.’ She paused. ‘We’d better get an early night. Head back tomorrow. Stay with my friend.’