Page 12 of Hope and Happiness in Bluebell Wood
I thank him, and then Merlin and I – well, mainly me, Merlin’s contribution is sniffing all the food before it goes in the fridge, the freezer and the cupboards – put our shopping away.
‘Right, what now?’ I ask him when we’re done. I look around the kitchen. When I’d done the order, inspired by all the equipment in here, I’d added some ingredients for baking, but now just the thought of it scares me.I can’t bake – who am I kidding? Maybe Evelyn has some cookery books on that huge bookshelf in the sitting room? Perhaps I can find inspiration there?
I hadn’t spent very long looking through the books yet. I’d figured reading was something I could do on a rainy day to keep myself amused. I used to read a lot – always had a book on the go – but recently I’d found it incredibly difficult to concentrate on anything for very long, so reading was something that had fallen by the wayside, like so many other things in my life.
Could now be the time to try to take it up again?I wonder.I’m already starting to get a little bored, and I’ve only been here a couple of days.
I shake my head. ‘Stop it. This was what you wanted – remember?’ I tell myself sternly, speaking the words as I glance at the mirror in the hall on my way through to the sitting room. ‘A quiet, solitary life. You longed for it before.’
The large bookshelf that runs the length and height of the sitting-room wall does, I’m pleased to find, contain quite a few cookery books. Unlike the bookshelves I’d been used to seeing in some of my friends’ swanky London flats, which contained only glossy cookery books by celebrity chefs, Evelyn has proper cookery books with battered covers and worn pages covered in splashes of past recipes she’d created. Some of the pages even have detailed notes in the margins suggesting what could be done better next time.
I flick through a few books, and make a mental note of what I might have a go at baking sometime. Then I look over some of the other shelves: as well as the cookery books, there are books on gardening, sewing, DIY and wildlife, including some bird books.
Maybe these will tell me why the birds aren’t coming to the table?I think, pulling a few aside to read later.Can’t do any harm to have a look. Oh, what’s this one?
From the shelf where the bird books end, I pull out a leatherbound notebook. I open up the front cover and find a page of handwritten notes detailing all the feathered visitors Evelyn has had to her garden: when they came, how long they stayed, and even what they ate.
‘Ah, maybe now I can discover where I’m going wrong.’
I don’t know why it was bothering me that much. After all,why did it matter if a few birds came and fed from a bird table? But I knew it was more than that. I’d been used to problemsolving in my old job; in fact, I’d thrived on it. ‘I will get you to feed on my table,’ I hear myself saying. ‘I don’t give up that easily.’
Hold on, I think, catching myself.That’s the old Ava talking. The one I’m trying to get away from.
But was it the old me I was trying to escape from by coming here? There hadn’t been anything wrong with the person I was before. It had been the situation that had changed me, not something I’d done.
‘You couldn’t control that situation, Ava,’ my therapist had told me over and over again. ‘You couldn’t control what happened that day.’
I knew she was right. But I still felt guilty. I just couldn’t help it.
And there was the problem. That day had been out of my control. I couldn’t do anything back then to change the events of that awful afternoon, but now I could control something. I could entice the birds to feed on the table again. It was clear from this notebook that Evelyn had done it. And if she could make a success of it, then so could I.
‘I might not have been able to do anything back then,’ I say purposefully, going over to the sofa and sitting down with the books. ‘But I can do something about this now.’
After I’ve been sitting reading the bird notebook for a while – making my own notes on a pad about what types of bird food I should be putting out and when – Merlin suddenly gets up from where he’s been asleep on the floor and puts his head on my knee.
‘Hello,’ I say, stroking him. ‘What’s up?’
He lifts his head and drops it on my knee again.
‘Do you want something to eat?’ I ask him.
He wags his tail.
I glance at the clock. ‘It’s not quite your dinner time yet,’ I say, standing up, ‘but let’s see what we’ve got.’
I walk through to the kitchen and look in one of the bags that Gavin had filled for me. Then I produce a couple of dog biscuits, which Merlin sits neatly for. Then he walks over to where his bowls are on the floor, and nudges his water bowl with his nose.
‘Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry, Merlin!’ I cry when I notice the bowl is dry. ‘I’ll fill it for you immediately.’
I lift his bowl, rinse it out, fill it with clean water from the tap, then I put it down again and he laps thirstily from it.
I feel awful as I watch him. I had to get used to looking after someone else again. In the past, when the children had been growing up, I’d been used to caring for others. There had been three people as well as me to look after back then, until my separation and subsequent divorce from my ex-husband. Then it had just been Hannah, Matt and me, and then when Hannah went to university Matt had become my only housemate, and then when he eventually flew the nest, it had just been me alone.
It was then I’d moved to the small apartment in central London; it was expensive but I had a good job, was working long hours and I had a busy social life; I didn’t need a home, I needed a place to stay. But afterthat daymy flat became more than just a place to lay my head at night and keep my things. It became my fortress. I barely left, and when I did, I would usually return a sweaty anxiety-ridden mess.
I look at Merlin; he has water dripping off his chin as he gazes up at me.
‘It’s not your fault you got taken on by a mess of a human, is it?’ I tell him. ‘I’m sorry; I’ll try to do better.’ I kneel down in front of him and look into his big brown eyes as he gazes up into mine. ‘I promise I’ll learn to take care of you properly, Merlin. After all, I need you just as much as you need me right now.’
