A Summer to Remember (8 page)

‘Difficult?’ Nina said. ‘I’ve done difficult before – believe me.’

‘But I’m sure you’d be able to cope with Dudley’s little ways. It’s just part of the creative temperament, you see, and we’d all be
so
grateful. We’ve always felt so comfy with you, Nina,’ Olivia said warmly. ‘It would be lovely to have you here again.’

Nina smiled. She wasn’t used to such flattery. It would be hard work, but not impossible, and surely Dudley couldn’t possibly be worse to work with than Hilary Jackson. She remembered him from the days when she used to babysit. Sure, he had a bit of a temper, but she didn’t think it was anything she couldn’t handle and besides, she needed to be occupied at the moment; she needed to find an escape. After being with the wrong man and the wrong boss for an inexcusable length of time, she needed a change, and it looked as if she just might have found it.

‘I’d be happy to help in any way I can,’ Nina said. She held out her hand and Olivia beamed, taking it in hers and shaking it vigorously.

‘Oh, Nina! That is wonderful.
Really
wonderful!’ Olivia enthused.

‘I just have one question,’ Nina said.

‘Yes?’ Olivia sounded a little nervous.

‘When do I start?’

Dominic scratched his head as he looked down at Nina’s teacup. If the blue and white china hadn’t been sporting a smudge of pink lipstick, he might well have believed that he’d just invented an entire scene in which his mother had asked Nina to stay at the mill. But there it was. Pink lipstick; as bright as the Norfolk Broads’ daylight.

Dominic smiled as he remembered the tickle of her hair as she’d bent over him to help him with his homework that time. He’d been eleven years old and she’d spent twenty minutes reading through a comprehension and helping him to answer the questions, but he hadn’t heard a single word. Well, he’d heard her; the soft lilt in her voice, the way it rose so beautifully in the middle of a question and the melancholy tenderness with which she read the story; he just hadn’t heard any of the answers.

His teacher had given him two out of ten.

But, as with most childhood crushes, she’d been placed, very firmly, in the back of his mind as he’d grown up – the image of her fading over time, along with those intense boyhood feelings he’d had for her.

So why then did he now feel as if he’d swallowed a snake? His insides were wriggling about in a most disconcerting way. Ten long years separated him from those feelings – yet he could still recall them, and that made him uncomfortable. He couldn’t still harbour feelings for her, could he? He didn’t even know Nina. He had
never
really known her. But that, in its own way, had been part of her appeal. She’d always been rather elusive; like a movie star whom you can dream about, but whom you’ll never meet. It would be completely irrational to think he was in love with her. It would be utterly insane to suggest that the old feelings could just bob back up to the surface in the space of a smile and a hello.

Wouldn’t it?

He took a glance in the mirror and his eyes widened with horror. He’d suspected he might look like an extra from a low-budget horror film, but it didn’t prepare him for the reality. No wonder Nina had been smiling at him so much. He looked hilarious. Like Groucho Marx after an electric shock.

He shook his head in despair and left the mill before Nina could clap eyes on him again.

When Nina finally got home, she looked around her flat and smiled at the peeling wallpaper with the damp patch in the shape of Italy. She’d wasted many fruitless hours trying to cover it up with a succession of posters and cheap prints in frames, but the thing had merely spread to enormous proportions.

She smiled down at the ancient carpet that was so hard underfoot that you could grate cheese on it. She smiled as she heard her neighbour revving up the motorbike he’d been fixing in his kitchen for the last four months, and she grinned widely as she smelt the familiar waft of curry, courtesy of her other neighbours, through the air vent in the open-plan kitchen. This had been her home for the last two years, and she was smiling because she was leaving it forever.

She knew it would be reckless to give up her little place, but she meant to continue as she’d started – if she really wanted to get her life back on track she was going to throw caution to the wind and leave it for good anyway. Determination fuelled her, and a sudden sense of calm and purpose filled her. She was getting good at leaving things recently. This could very well be the new Nina, the new direction, the new way forward that she’d been looking for, she thought.

The flat had come fully furnished, so Nina only had a few personal belongings to pack up and, if at the end of the summer she couldn’t find a new place to rent, she could always make do with Janey’s futon until she got on her feet again.

‘Goodbye mouldy wallpaper!’ she yelled as her neighbour revved his motorbike. ‘Good riddance crumbling windowsill!’ And, just for old times’ sake, she pressed a finger into the woodwork and the paint flaked away under her touch.

‘Farewell clanging pipes!’ she sang, deciding to put the radio on; it was one of the few things in the flat that actually belonged to her. She’d pack her things, tidy around and get out of there, taking her keys to her landlord the very next morning, and then she’d take the bus out to The Old Mill House, walking down the potholed lane to a place where she felt truly welcome.

Olivia was absolutely delighted. She was also rather anxious. It had been a great shock losing ‘Teri with an i’, and Olivia had no intention whatsoever of losing Nina – although she doubted she would, as she remembered how well Nina and her husband had got on in the past. Still, she’d have a word with Dudley about the situation and make sure he behaved himself and that he was especially nice to Nina. She knew all too well that he could be brusque once the creative mood took hold, but he had to be warned that it would be at his own peril. Poor Teri used to surface from the study positively shaking after her encounters with Dudley – her face pale and her eyes wide in terror.

‘I can take dictation, but I
won’t
take being dictated to!’ she’d once cried, before grabbing her bag and leaving. Olivia had been left to sort the mess out, appeasing Teri by telling her that the creative muse could take many a strange form and that it took a special sort of person to handle it, and that Teri was obviously one in a million. And the flattery had worked. Well, for two further weeks anyway, before the next verbal volcano had erupted. Dudley, of course, had denied all knowledge of why Teri had left, although Olivia believed that there was more to it than just her husband’s temperamental nature.

Anyway, she wasn’t going to let it happen again. She wandered back into her husband’s secret domain and trailed a finger over one of the few empty spaces on the desk before inspecting it. Just as she thought: it was as if she’d dipped it into a sack of flour. Dudley hated having anyone invade his special place, but Olivia was quite determined that she’d get Marie in with the vacuum and dusters before Nina started work the next day. Anything to help make Nina’s job easier. After all, Nina would have Dudley’s mood swings to cope with, a study that looked as if a tornado had passed through it, plus the three boys hanging around the house for most of the summer. There was no guarantee that she’d like it, let alone actually stay. But then again, miracles were known to happen.

Chapter Eight

Nina handed the keys to her flat to a bemused Mr Briggs, who said he’d have to keep her bond because she hadn’t served out her period of notice. But she didn’t care about that. She was free – free of her job and free of her flat. Free to start again. After the last few dark weeks, she felt as if she was on the edge of a great adventure and, right there and then, she made a promise to herself – to steer clear of men. The recent months with Matt had left her scarred and scared, and she felt that it would be a long time indeed before she would even want to think about entering into another relationship.

No, Nina thought, she was going to focus solely on herself for a while.

She arrived at The Old Mill House at ten o’clock the very next day, as agreed, and Olivia was ready to greet her.

‘Nina! I was so worried in case you’d changed your mind,’ she said, ushering her into the hall. ‘I’m glad you didn’t,’ she added with a smile. ‘Gracious – is that all you’ve brought with you?’ Olivia said as she saw Nina’s modest suitcase and her portable radio.

‘It’s all I need,’ Nina smiled, thinking of the humble wardrobe and miniature library of books she’d packed.

‘Oh,
do
be quiet, Ziggy!’ Olivia said, addressing her command to the closed kitchen door, which was being pounded from the other side. Then, turning to Nina, she said, ‘Do you remember where your old room is?’

‘Oh, yes.’ Nina nodded enthusiastically, looking up the stairs, dying to see the little room again.

‘Then I’ll leave you to get your things organised,’ Olivia clenched her hands together, as if not quite knowing what to do next. ‘Just give me a call when you’re ready and we’ll have a cuppa before you face the study.’ She bit her lip, then hurried down the hall.

Nina started up the two flights of stairs. She looked down at the oatmeal carpet, which was immaculate now that Olivia employed Marie to clean, but which had always been covered in domestic tumbleweed whilst the boys had been growing up and money had been tighter. Now, it appeared that every surface in the house was dusted and polished until it gleamed, and that carpets were vacuumed to cotton-wool cleanness. Apart from the study, it would seem.

Nina felt that, with each stair, she was stepping back into her own past. Reaching the top, she turned left and saw that the door of her old bedroom was open. She smiled as she saw the little cast-iron bed freshly dressed in a quilt of blue roses on a white background and, on the bedside table, a small jam jar exploded with handpicked flowers from the fields surrounding the mill.

There was a small dressing table by the window, and Nina walked over to it before looking out onto the river. She remembered falling asleep to the sound of it when she’d been lucky enough to escape her own home and stay at the mill overnight. It would lull her into the most delicious of sleeps, and then be the first thing she’d hear in the morning – well, if the boys didn’t wake her up first.

The room was just as she remembered, with the neat little hand-painted bookcase in the corner filled with rows of orange Penguin novels, their slender spines making them look like a row of literary supermodels.

The old wardrobe at the other side of the room, like an extra from a C. S. Lewis novel, seemed to smile a welcome at her, the light bouncing off the polished wood.

After her hateful flat, the room was like a five-star hotel. The snow-white carpet was soft, the furniture unbroken and the wallpaper complete, and there wasn’t a damp patch in sight.

The window had been left open and she breathed in a couple of lungfuls of fresh air before unzipping her suitcase and putting her clothes out on the bed. She’d hang them up later. Now, however, it was time to start work.

‘Oh my God!’ Nina started, as she looked up from the bed. A tall figure was standing in the doorway. ‘Dominic!’ she gasped, ‘I didn’t hear you. You gave me such a shock.’

‘Didn’t mean to,’ he said, daring to venture into the room a little. ‘I wanted to have this waiting for you – to cheer the room up a bit.’

‘Oh?’ Nina watched as he produced a small watercolour from behind his back, framed in palest gilt. ‘Oh Dominic, that’s lovely!’ She took the picture from him and looked at the sunset view over the river and across the meadows, in pale pinks and deepest blues. ‘You’re so talented. I bet you’re going to be in all the big London galleries before long.’

‘Well, I don’t know about that. I’ve got a show in Tombland at the end of August though.’

‘Really?’

Dominic nodded. ‘It’s a start,’ he said.

‘And I’m sure it’ll be a really good start, too.’ She smiled at him. Little Dommie – all grown-up and making his way in the world.

‘Anyway, I hope you like it,’ he said, nervously watching for her response.

‘I do! I
love
it. Thank you.’

‘Only the room was so bare.’

‘Not at all – with a view like this,’ Nina said, ‘and I already have half of the meadow by my bedside,’ she added, nodding to the flowers. ‘Aren’t they lovely?’

‘I’m glad you like them.’

Nina looked at Dominic. Had he picked them? She’d just assumed that Olivia had collected them for her. Suddenly, she felt embarrassed.

‘Anyway, I was just going to go downstairs and make a start on your father’s study,’ she told him, deciding it best to be businesslike.

‘Yes,’ Dominic said, his eyes straying towards the bed where Nina’s clothes were spilled out across the quilt. Nina saw where he was looking and realised that several pairs of lacy knickers and bras were on display and that Dominic had turned quite red.

‘I saw your other paintings in the hallway,’ she said quickly, trying to divert attention away from her exhibition of underwear. ‘They’re amazing. I don’t know how you do it.’

‘Well, I’m not very good at anything else,’ he said, his dark eyes flickering over her face for an instant.

‘Oh, I’m sure that’s not true. Anyway, you should be proud. I wish I was artistic.’

Dominic grinned. ‘If you can restore any kind of order to Dad’s study, then you’ll deserve the Turner Prize.’

They smiled at each other and Nina placed his painting on her bedside table next to the flowers.

‘I suppose I’d better make a start,’ she said, but noticed that Dominic’s eyes had strayed to the bed again. Nina followed the pathway of his vision and saw what it was that had caught his eye.

It was her nightie – girlie pink with spaghetti straps and covered in tiny daisies.

Olivia was still clenching her hands together and looking decidedly agitated.

‘So, I’ve been making a list of things I’d love your help with for the party arrangements, but the most important thing really is for you to help Dudley. I’m not sure what he’ll need in terms of a research assistant – I’m sure he’ll let you know – but – well – I’m not quite sure where you want to start,’ she said, her eyes wide and apologetic. ‘It’s all such an awful muddle, isn’t it?’