Come Away With Me

She moved around the cottage touching things as she always did when she first arrived. She loved her city life but as soon as she got here she felt as if she were home; as if she’d shed a skin and somehow become herself.

It was also a rare chance to concentrate on Adam. She knew he liked Peter to come, but she loved having him on his own. Of course you do. You think you are making up for all the evenings you are working, all the afternoons you are not there when he comes home from a school he hates.

She went downstairs and put all the shopping away. She stuck wine in the fridge, made a flask of tea, pulled on another sweater and went out to follow Adam down a path she had walked a million times.

Jenny and I—carrying rods home-made of bamboo and string—eating jam sandwiches and drinking Coca-Cola—bannedat home. Scary adventures round the lake that leads up to the big house watched by old herons, still as sentinels, who sit in small scrubby trees that surround the water; pretending, when the shadows come, that the wood is haunted and running hell for leather back to the lighted house and godmother Sarah, who has tea and tiny thin pancakes made on a griddle ready for us in a kitchen that is always warm. On the table there is a bright cloth and real butter and honey, and a teapot with a knitted cosy from a jumble sale. Safe…safe.

She and Jenny always made a mess and Sarah had never minded. Her fingernails were full of paint and sometimes her hair too. She was vague and eccentric, and Ruth had loved her to death.

In the dusk, if her father had not collected her, tooting his horn from the corner, never coming in or thanking her godmother for having her, Sarah would start up her old Rover and drive Ruth home.

Sometimes, if Jenny was with her, Bea or James drove up from St Ives to collect them. They always came in to see Sarah. They would sit and drink wine together while Jenny and Ruth watched the ancient television.

Sarah had a smoky laugh and long, long hair, which she piled up on her head, and sometimes it escaped and then she looked younger as if she weren’t really old at all. When she said goodbye she always held Ruth gently, but very close, as if she were infinitely precious.

Adam was sitting on a bench with his binoculars trained on the incoming tide. Ruth sat beside him.

‘Look, Mum.’ He handed her the glasses excitedly. ‘On that tree…no a bit to your right…Yes there. Have you got it?’

‘A woodpecker?’

‘A lesser spotted woodpecker. He’s quite rare. Can you hear him?’

Ruth listened to the sound of a small drill. ‘I can hear him, he’s making enough noise.’

They sat side by side drinking tea and watching the waders, and listening to the terns and curlews as the afternoon drew in and the water flowed over the mudflats in small waves. There was only the movement of water and the gentle plop of birds’ footfalls in the mud. Ruth thought of Jenny and hoped she wasn’t too lonely in their empty house.

‘What’s for supper?’ Adam asked and Ruth heard his stomach rumbling.

‘Fish and chips, or scrambled eggs and bacon.’ Adam always chose fish and chips.

‘Fish and chips!’

They walked home as the last rays of a watery sun caught the incoming tide. People would start to exercise their dogs at the end of the day and the fishermen would arrive in their waders, but for now they had the whole world to themselves.

FOURTEEN (#ulink_89ad220b-17a9-5f66-8796-942467224d3d)

On our first date Tom turns up at the house with the biggest bunch of flowers I have ever seen. It’s eight o’clock and I’m not ready. It has been the most terrible day. Our most experienced cutter has gone sick and Danielle and I are behind with our accounts, again, and we are terrified of incurring a penalty. Danielle is upstairs fighting figures while I try to finish cutting a complicated pattern.

I had it all planned for a quick getaway. My clothes are laid out on the bed and an expensive soak is waiting on the edge of my bath. I wanted to feel calm and fragrant when I saw Tom again but when I throw open the door to him I am frazzled and almost tearful.

He grins at me, buckling under the weight of foliage in his arms. ’Hi, Jenny.’

‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m late, I’m not ready. Come in.’

I am mortified. I look a complete mess.

‘It doesn’t matter. Maybe I’m early…’ He leans forward and kisses me on the cheek round his acre of garden. ‘These are for you.’ He hands me the flowers. The smell of them fills the hall, dwarfs me and hides me from his sight. I suddenly want to giggle.

‘Heavens, you disappeared.’ He takes them back, laughing, and we fill the sink. Suddenly I feel better.

‘I’m not sure if I have enough vases…’ I regale him with the saga of my awful day. I get wine out of the fridge and pour two huge glasses.

‘Sorry about your hellish day.’

He raises his drink to me and we clink glasses and I am so pleased this man is standing in my kitchen that I reach up and kiss him on the side of his mouth. ‘Thank you so much for my ginormous, wonderful bunch of flowers.’

‘I didn’t know what you like so I got a mixture of everything in the shop.’

‘So I see.’ We stare at each other, delighted. ‘Look, I’ve got to go back down to the basement to tidy up. I’ll be five minutes.’

‘May I come down and see where you work?’

He follows me down the stairs and as I tidy and lock up he mooches around in an interested fashion looking at the noticeboard and at designs pinned on plastic models, and the table where I’ve been cutting out.

‘We’re a bit cramped, as you can see. We’re going to have to look for bigger premises eventually, but it’s hard in London. We need to be fairly central for people to get to us.’

‘Fairly central means expensive.’

‘Exactly.’

‘Do you always work this late?’

I laugh. ‘This is early, Tom! Danielle and I are selfemployed.’

We go back upstairs and an exhausted-looking Danielle is in the kitchen pouring herself a glass of wine.

‘I can hear a cork go three storeys up. Hello, Tom.’ She holds up her glass to him. ‘Jenny, you are not changed. Go at once…’

‘Look,’ Tom says, turning to me. ‘You’ve both obviously had a pig of a day, why don’t I order a takeaway for three and you and I can go out for a meal tomorrow, or another night, when you aren’t exhausted?’

Relief floods through me. I have to get up early in the morning. ’Are you sure?’

‘I refuse to play strawberry,’ Danielle says primly.

Tom and I scream with laughter.

Danielle smiles. ‘What? What did I say?’

‘Gooseberry, not strawberry, Elle. Don’t be silly. Where are all our takeaway menus…?’

‘Aha. Girls after my own heart.’

We fish them out and I fly upstairs to have a quick shower. Tom and Danielle get on famously.

Tom had to do a bookkeeping course for the army and he glances over our books for us. ‘Why don’t they teach students the business side of things at art school?’

‘I think some art schools do, but not at Central St Martin’s,’ Danielle says.