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The independent, hard-to-get, self-respecting woman inside me shakes her head in despair at this pathetic strategy to impress Hal.
“You look nice,” Pierre says as soon as she arrives.
“I woke up late,” I answer, hoping not to blush.
“This is Liam.” She introduces a slim brown-haired man. “He’ll stay with Hedge.”
“Thank you.” I want to say I’m sorry about him losing the house he wanted next door, but something about him, a self-contained quiet, stops me. Besides, I don’t really know him enough to get into personal matters “We won’t be long.” Is all I say.
“Take as long as you need. I’m here all day,” he says pleasantly then hands Gabriel a satchel with shoulder straps.
Gabriel has another just like it already on his back, so I offer to take it.
“Don’t worry, I’ll give it to Hal to carry. It’s a picnic that Cook put together.” And he slings it over one shoulder and sets off towards Low Catch.
“Is Hal definitely coming?” The words are out before I can stop them.
“Of course.” Pierre is surprised at my question. “This is as much about saving his property as it is about yours.”
My heart leaps with nervous anticipation. And more than a little joy.
Hearts are very stupid.
We say goodbye to Grandad and Liam and go out through the kitchen door into the back garden.
Gabriel and Hal are waiting for us at the start of the wooden steps.
My eyes go to him immediately.
It’s incredible how, in an instant you can see so much. The short-sleeved T-shirt, the cargo shorts, the bare calves, and canvas shoes. The satchel with the picnic foods already on his back, its leather straps looped over his shoulders and under his arms making his T-shirt stretch across his chest. A chest that I know so well, I can trace his pecs from here.
Yet, it’s none of those things that make my heart turn over. It’s his expression. The one I’ve seen before, from the beginning when he used to be my hostile neighbour. The way he nods towards us without quite looking at me.
I drop down on one knee and pretend to retie my trainers so Pierre has to go ahead. The proud, independent, self-respecting part of me, which had been pushed to the back when I was getting dressed, now comes forward and takes charge. If only for a few minutes, long enough for me to hold my head high and keep my eyes away from him.
Instead, I observe the path around me. The wooden steps are new, installed since we last went that way. Reclaimed wood which looks old. The steep hillside has been terraced into a series of flat gardens edged with rocks or irregular tree-logs that look as if they’d just fallen from the trees. Hal and his landscaping team have planted purple, white, and yellow flowering climbers and blue grasses between the round boulders, so each terrace looks like a hanging rock-garden, as if it just grew like that and wasn’t in fact constructed artificially.
He always talks about himself as not creative, not artistic. I want to run past Pierre and Gabriel to take his hand and tell him he’s wrong. That it takes so much vision to make water trickle down limestone rocks into a small pool surrounded with greenery.
“Oh my!” Pierre stops to point at the first of the glamping pods. The one with the old-fashioned water-well beside it.
“That looks like it has been here for decades, even knowing you only put it up a month ago, it really blends in.”
Hal nods but doesn’t stop.
Pierre, however, keeps stopping to look at things. She hasn’t been here since it was all a jumble of earth and thorns. Everything fascinates her and she wants to take pictures with her phone even when Gabriel tells her that he already has proper photos of everything. I think Gabriel must sense, like I do, that Hal doesn’t really want to linger over his creation which might be taken from him in a few days.
“How did you make the tree grow out of this cottage?” She stops again at the rounded plateau with the larger pod that looks like a woodsman’s cabin.
“I didn’t,” Hal says shortly. “We built it around the tree.”
“It’s gorgeous. I want to come and stay here, it’s like a fantasy.” Then she turns to glance at Hal, her eyes swimming with tears. “My God this place is extraordinary. We can’t let Morris and Sweeny take it.”
In her enthusiasm she’s dislodged the stones surrounding a small pool, and something little and green falls into the water. Hal stoops to fish it out, shakes it then pushes it deep between the stones.
“What is it?” Pierre asks.
“Garden light,” he says. “There are lots of them around the steps and the water, but they only come on at night.”
