‘My advice to you is—’ her father began, loftily.
‘Picture the audience naked?’ Alice tried, wishing he’d stop. Cranmer Hargreave had been a member of his medical school’s amdram group and loved nothing better than the feeling of all eyes upon him and the sound of applause.
‘My advice is stand still, legs apart, arms by your sides, go off book, so no reading from the page, and project your voice, really yodel it out to the very back row.’
‘Got it, thanks.’
‘And pace yourself, don’t forget to breathe, or you’ll find yourself gulping like a goldfish and fluffing your lines.’
‘I’m sure she’ll be fine, Cranmer,’ her mum said in the background over the sound of the kettle boiling. ‘Ask her if she’s sleeping any better.’
Always the same question, something her mother had agonised about ever since Alice was tiny and, unlike her sporty, food-shovelling, academic brothers, had proven to be a fitful sleeper. At seven, her mother had shown little Alice a medical textbook that said children her age needed eight to ten hours’ sleep every night, and at that point Alice was averaging six. Her mum had kept a chart to prove it.
When Alice had tried to adhere to her new ‘sleep hygiene’ schedule, this had fallen to five hours a night, and the whole thing ended in a tearful, exhausted Alice begging her mother to drop it and let her close the door to her bedroom in peace, without anyone watching her and worrying. Her mother, realising her mistake, had tried to comfort her, telling her that simply lying in bed resting her body was just as good as being actually asleep, and for all of ten seconds little Alice’s heart had lifted. Lying in bed thinking?Thatshe could do. She was brilliant at it, in fact, but her dad had overheard and stormed in with his expertise, saying that was “patently untrue”, and that his wife knew as well as he that “only full cycles of deep REM sleep contribute to optimal cognitive function and cellular repair. Kindly don’t fill the child’s head with unscientific bunkum”.
‘Your mother asks, are you sleeping?’ her father parroted down the line.
Ugh! Why hadn’t she just sent them a few jolly Highland postcards to keep them at arm’s length and stop them feeling the need to ring? She shouldn’t have picked up the call, anyway, not when she was supposed to be working.
Just then, Cary’s face appeared around the back of the shed, searching her out.
‘Ah, duty calls,’ she said with a flood of relief. ‘Better go. Love you,’ and she’d hung up before Cary reached her, but the damage had already been done.
Her head was reeling with their words of warning about the risk to her professional standing if anything should go wrong on her watch with this garden project, or about her chances of fluffing the Burns supper address under the gaze of the locals and the scary Carenza McDowell when she was supposed to be making her very first public appearance as the (temporary) new town doctor, which called for gravitas and dignity, and then there’d been the bombshell about Bastian still hanging around like they hadn’t in fact split up weeks ago.
‘Oh dear,’ she couldn’t help saying.
‘Hey, hello!’ Cary greeted her. ‘You OK?’
‘Absolutely.’ She tried to steady her breathing. She’d promised herself Cary wouldn’t see her getting in a state ever again. ‘Is it time to plant the wildflowers round the trees, then?’
‘It is,’ he said. ‘But before we do, I wanted to give you something.’
‘No more presents, please, Cary, you’ve already been too kind and… Oh!’
It was just a leaflet.
‘I thought this might come in handy,’ he said, a little apologetically.
She read the front cover. ‘Bonnie Blair, MA, Counsellor, specialist short-term intervention and talking therapies. COSCA accredited.’
‘She’s setting up an office on the high street. I thought you’d want to know…’
It clicked into place what he was saying. He’d anticipated her very problem, the same one her parents had identified. ‘You’re right! Wedoneed someone like this on board! Thank you! Have you already approached her?’
‘Eh?’ Cary didn’t seem to be keeping up.
‘To help with the garden project? I also figured we need a trained counsellor on the team.’ He didn’t need to know it was her parents’ misgivings that had alerted her to this fact. ‘What a coincidence.’
‘Oh, right.’ He had taken a step back, raising a hand to the back of his neck.
Alice turned the leaflet over, reading aloud. ‘Deciding to seek counselling after going it alone may feel daunting. I offer a non-judgemental, trusting space where you can share your fears and experiences in order to achieve acceptance, resolution and better peace of mind.’
Cary was looking at her like he was afraid.
A bleak feeling came over her. ‘What is this?’
‘The other day at the repair shop?’ he began.
