Page 30 of The Beekeeper's Cottage
‘I can’t thank you enough,’ replied Grace. ‘Just the fact that you did it makes me feel less helpless, like I have some control over what’s happening. That’s not a feeling I’m all that familiar with, at least not where my husband is concerned anyway.’
She was about to continue but then closed her mouth again. Amos didn’t need to hear any more.
‘And I also need to thank for you all of this,’ she added, indicating the pile of chocolate bars on the table, one of which had already been eaten. ‘It was such a lovely thought.’
‘I have a terribly sweet tooth, I’m afraid,’ admitted Amos. ‘Delivering these here without having eaten any first showed considerable restraint on my part…’ He picked up another bar. ‘Fruit and Nut, or Galaxy?’ he asked.
Grace pursed her lips. ‘Oh, Galaxy please…’
Since lunchtime when Amos had first put forward his suggestion of showing around the estate agent, Grace had spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about this man. It had seemed a perfectly sensible suggestion to start with and yet the moment she had watched him leave to go back to the house without her she had begun to question herself. So much so that, by the time they had arranged to meet up afterwards for a ‘debrief’ as Amos put it, she had convinced herself that she needed to politely withdraw from his offer of help. And then he had appeared, arms loaded with half a dozen different chocolate bars, laughing that, while it was not quite her body weight, it was the best he could come up with at short notice. It was such a thoughtful gesture that she hadn’t been able to say a word. Since then, they had shared a simple meal, a coffee and made a pretty good start on the chocolate. Sitting, laughing in the sun, had been the perfect end to the day. It had been effortless, in fact, and now Grace was beginning to wonder why that was.
She turned to look at Amos, his dark curls glinting in the golden light, his eyes closed with pleasure as he allowed a chunk of chocolate to dissolve in his mouth, exactly the same way she always did, and she smiled at his obvious enjoyment. Tomorrow she would have to start thinking seriously about what she was going to do, but, for tonight at least, she was happy to just let things drift.
‘Would you really do that for me?’ she asked after a moment.
‘Do what?’ Amos’s voice was thick with chocolate.
‘Do the viewings on this place?’
‘I would, if you wanted me to. You’d be surprised how little it takes to put someone off something. Most people are entirely suggestible, once you’ve worked out what their susceptibility is. Play up to that and it’s not that difficult at all.’
Grace tipped her head to one side. ‘That sounds like you might be speaking from past experience?’
‘Well, I hope it won’t be necessary,’ he replied. ‘The house isn’t on the market yet, Grace. There’s still time for a halt to be put on proceedings.’
‘And you didn’t answer my question,’ she said, teasing him gently. ‘You don’t give much away, do you?’
Amos gave a small smile. ‘I meet a lot of people,’ he said. ‘And mostly what I’ve learnt is that folks like to talk. But, more than that, they like it when someone listens. If you do that, you’d be surprised at the things people will tell you.’
Grace smiled and popped another piece of chocolate in her mouth. Hadn’t she done just that herself? ‘And who listens to you, Amos?’ she asked.
He grinned at her. ‘Would you be fishing for information now, Missus Maynard?’ he asked, adopting his country-bumpkin voice from earlier. ‘Because I’m just a simple gardener, don’t reckon there’s anything much to tell, truth be told.’
‘I don’t believe that for a minute,’ Grace volleyed back gently. Then she sighed. ‘So, what do I do, Amos?’ she asked, changing the subject. She would leave Amos to his secrets, for now anyway. ‘I guess it will be a few days before the details on the house are ready, but do I wait and see what happens, or do I press ahead with things? I haven’t heard a thing from Paul yet.’
‘You forge ahead,’ said Amos, without even a flicker of hesitation. ‘You’ve made the hardest decision, Grace, and now that you have, believe that you’re going to be able to keep the house and act accordingly. The only reason to delay in carving out the future you want is if there’s any doubt in your mind about what you want to do.’ He looked over at her.
‘No,’ she said, quickly. ‘There’s no doubt.’
‘Then there’s no point in waiting. I can look at the house with you tomorrow if you like, through your eyes this time, and decide what things need to be done to turn you into a guest house extraordinaire.’ He broke off and grinned at her. ‘And my minimum payment for doing so is one beekeeping lesson.’
She gave him a wry smile. ‘You have a deal,’ she said, and then grew more serious. ‘And I need to phone my solicitor too,’ she added.
‘Yes,’ said Amos gently. ‘You do.’
The exchange signalled the end of their conversation, but it was well over half an hour before either of them stirred.
Despite the relaxed few hours she had spent in Amos’s company, Grace’s head filled with anxiety the moment she laid her head on the pillow. It was one thing to talk about what she was going to do, but another entirely to make it happen. Even if everything turned out exactly the way she planned, there would be massive change accompanied by huge emotional turmoil; she would be foolish to think otherwise. And that was if things went well, there were any number of points along the way where it all could go wrong…
Given the nature of her thoughts it was no surprise that by two in the morning, Grace was once again wide awake. She had fallen asleep relatively quickly, the tiredness and stress of the day catching up with her, but even if she was not consciously thinking about her problems, her unconscious was doing a marvellous job all by itself. She threw back the covers, feeling stifled by the warmth of the bedroom, and turned over her pillow seeking to find a cool spot.
Another hour of tossing and turning had Grace heading for the kitchen to get a glass of water. She wasn’t especially prone to insomnia, but there had been times in her life before when it had plagued her for nights on end. She had always found that writing down her worries helped to take the weight of anxiety from her head enough to allow her to sleep again. She collected a notepad and pencil from a drawer in the kitchen and took them to the table with her drink.
With the moon approaching fullness, she found she could still see well enough to write without turning on any lights, and, angling the paper towards the glow from the moon, she allowed the pencil to trace line after line of silvery thoughts.
After a while she realised that her attention was drifting from the paper to trace the outline of the pots of daisies that stood outside on the patio. She got up and slid open one of the glass doors, feeling the silky coolness of the night air rush in. It enticed her outside in a moment.
Grace was never scared being alone at night. Paul’s work often meant that he was away from home, even when she had considered their marriage happy. Nowadays of course he was more likely to be away due to an illicit liaison rather than any work commitment but, despite the size of the house and its grounds, Grace had never felt uncomfortable. She wandered out past the seating area and onto the lawn, feeling the softness of the grass beneath her feet. Far in the distance an owl hooted, answered seconds later by another, while closer to home the air rustled with tiny creatures scurrying through the undergrowth. Grace walked on, picking her way down the path that led through the apple trees and out onto the rougher grass. She had no real thought as to where she was headed, until she arrived at the top of the slope where the beehives lay. She smiled at the thought of Amos’s antics that afternoon, picturing the scene being played out as Amos had described it. She doubted that Amos’s intervention would have had any real effect on the agent, but even if it meant that the house details were not quite up to their usual standard, that at least was something. She might not have much choice in the house going on the market in the first place, but she didn’t have to let Paul have everything his own way.
