The toot of a car horn and a brisk call of: ‘Ooh hoo, Mia darling!’ startled her, sending cold water sloshing onto her boots, which whilst soft and warm were not waterproof.
‘Well, shit,’ she said with feeling. Setting the bucket down, she folded her arms across her chest. She loved Madeline, she really did, but it had been a long day and Mia wasn’t in the mood for a gossip. She shrugged off the unkind thought.
Both Madeline and her kind-hearted husband, Richard, were a welcome blessing in her life. They had taken her under their wing from the moment they had called around to welcome Mia to the village and found her a sobbing mess on the front porch. In the front porch was more accurate as her foot had gone straight through the rotten wood and been stuck fast until they rescued her.
With a mixture of kindness, humour and tough love when the situation required it, the older couple were helping to turn the ramshackle house into the guest house she dreamed of. Mia turned her attention back to Madeline as her words filtered through. ‘I’ve brought you a present, darling. Your first of what I am sure will be many guests.’ Madeline disappeared back inside the car although her voice carried clearly across the cold air. ‘Out you get, Daniel, there’s a good boy. Mia will see you right.’
The passenger door swung open and Mia prayed to every god that she had ever heard of for a sinkhole to open and swallow her whole as a broad-shouldered, dark-haired, bearded man uncurled from the car, eyeing her with some trepidation.
Madeline appeared out of the driver’s side, opened the boot and wrestled out a duffel bag nearly as large as she was. She dropped the bag on the ground, swiftly closed the boot, and before Mia could utter a word, the gears of the car crunched forcing the stranger to jump clear to avoid being sideswiped as Madeline spun the car around and disappeared back up the drive with a toot and a wave.
‘Well, shit,’ Mia said again as the situation clearly warranted it, before she picked up the bucket and slopped over to the drain to empty what remained of the water.
‘Umm, Madeline said you run a B&B.’ The man’s voice rumbled pleasantly in his chest and Mia decided she needed to make the best of the situation, if she could only work out what the hell that was.
‘I am hoping to open the house to guests later this year; it’s just taking a little bit longer than I anticipated to put things straight,’ she said, with what she hoped was a confident smile as she skirted around the man. She was ripe and in dire need of a shower.
‘Daniel, is it? Would you like to come in for a cup of tea while I try and find out if somewhere else in the area is open and taking in guests?’ Mia tried to sound more confident than she felt about letting a stranger into her house. It was something she was going to have to get used to and surely Madeline wouldn’t leave her alone with a crazy man?
She continued briskly towards the kitchen door. He would follow or not but she needed to get her feet out of her wet boots before they started to rot or hypothermia set in.
Daniel watched the woman, Mia, disappear through the back door, bucket swinging in hand and a large swathe of her dressing gown dragging along the ground behind her. He supressed a shudder, wondering whether the inside of the house would be as grubby as its owner. He wandered over to fetch his duffel bag and, as he bent over, he noticed a wizened stone face peering out from the depths of the evergreen shrubbery that shielded the back of the house.
Reaching into the pocket of his jacket, he retrieved the digital camera that was always somewhere about his person and stepped closer to take a shot of the green man, for surely that was what the little statue was with its hair and beard carved to resemble ivy. The dark, almost waxy sheen of the leaves of the shrubbery framed the moss-covered stone and he knelt, heedless of the cold, damp gravel of the driveway to take a series of pictures.
The sun found a small break in the cloud and its weak but welcome warmth bathed the back of his head. A glint to the right caught his eye and he turned to study another half-hidden fancy: a bronze fairy this time, standing on tiptoe with her hands held out as though drawing down the sunlight.
Daniel scrambled closer, swearing to himself as the gravel dug into his knees through his jeans. Sitting back on his heels, he brushed a few stray stones from the two damp circles over his knees. He glanced towards the still-open door of the house, intrigued by the woman. She clearly had a sense of humour and imagination if these little secret figures were anything to go by.
He rolled his head on his shoulders then pushed up to his full height and collected his bag, slipping the camera back into his pocket. He was stiff and tired from the long train journey and he could certainly do with the cup of tea he’d been offered. He’d drunk plenty of tea from dirty mugs in his art school days after all. Trying not to look too closely at the cobweb-strewn windows and the patches of weeds poking up through the driveway, he headed for the back door.
Mia glanced over her shoulder from where she stood at the large white sink, scrubbing her hands with a brush. Catching a closer look, he realised she was a lot younger than he’d first assumed. Probably close to his own age. ‘Take your shoes off, please.’ She nodded to where her wet boots were drying on a piece of newspaper on the floor next to the radiator on the spotless stone floor. ‘And shut the door behind you. The boiler’s new but this house takes for ever to heat up.’
Daniel paused to survey the kitchen, relieved to find it immaculately clean. A wooden table dominated the centre of the large square room and a huge cooking range surrounded by granite worktops filled most of the back wall. The appliances looked modern and were a soft duck-egg blue, providing a nice contrast to the stone surfaces and wooden cupboards. He toed off his shoes and placed them carefully on the newspaper as requested.
‘Have a seat. I’ll just grab my cup from next door and get the phone book and see if we can find you somewhere with a bed.’ His reluctant hostess spoke again and Daniel moved towards the table just as she took a step forward and they nearly collided. He reached out a hand to brace her, but she shied away. Wrapping her arms around her body tightly, she took an exaggerated route around the kitchen to keep well away from him. He dropped his hand swiftly, feeling big and awkward in comparison to her delicate height.
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.’ Mia turned in the doorway and offered a weak smile at his apology before disappearing.
Heat rose on his cheeks as he sank into a chair; he was clearly not wanted here. How the hell had he got himself in such a mess? Getting away from London had seemed like such a good idea, but clearly he was not a spur-of-the-moment kind of guy. He was the man with the plan, the designated driver, always booked a table, always thought ahead.
He was not impulsive usually, but he’d woken that morning with a stinking hangover. The scent of cigarette smoke and stale perfume on the pillow next to him had turned his stomach. A wash of guilt over his bad behaviour the day before added to his misery.
His dreams of being an artist, a serious photographer, had taken him from his home to the bright lights of the capital like so many before him. London was where it all happened: where the connections were, the dealers who would frame his quirky black and white pictures and sell them to people with lots of money. His simple but arresting shots had captured attention and sooner than he could have ever dreamed of, he was flavour of the month with his pictures appearing in magazines and on the walls of the hip young things who set the trends others followed.
Before he knew it, Daniel was attending parties and premieres and his picture started appearing in the magazines in the gossip sections more often than images of his work did. Then there was Giselle. Always perfectly dressed and styled, she knew the perfect places to go and be seen with lots of other perfect people.
She was also a perfect bitch, although he hadn’t realised