AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He pushes his chair back and gets to his feet. “I believe underneath the anger, you love La Canette.”
Chapter Fourteen
Hal
Despite the cold, I go for a long walk. Out of the village everything is covered with a light frost, and everywhere the tree branches are almost white.
Du Montfort’s idea is ridiculous; I can’t stay here and do the renovations myself. For a start, it’s a huge job and would need a more experienced architect, with actual project management experience, not one like me who mostly handles paperwork.
Also, my life is in England. My family, my job – which I need to keep because it pays my bills and my own mortgage. I have a flat to go back to, and a girlfriend waiting for an answer.
Of all the complicated questions that need answering, this last is the hardest. What am I going to do about our relationship?
Lynsey is the only woman I ever considered marrying; it’s why I asked her to move in with me two years ago. Since then, she has been the perfect girlfriend in so many ways. My mum and sister love her. and she’s done her best to ‘look after me’ as they like to call it. The only arguments we ever have are about my love of walking.
“There isn’t a problem in the world that Hal cannot solve by going for a long walk.” She likes to joke at dinner parties, ha ha, everyone laughs. But in private, in bed, she isn’t laughing. “Why won’t you let me come walking with you?”
“Because a long brisk walk helps me think more clearly, and I can’t think if I’m not alone.”
“Are you seeing someone else behind my back, or are you bored with me already?” she always asks jokingly, but it’s not really a joke.
Nothing I said made sense to her. In the end, knowing an argument was waiting for me spoilt the peace I wanted in my walk.
Now, the silence is only spoilt by the sound of my boots on the ground and the snap of twigs. Even after twenty years away, this landscape is so familiar. Underneath the frost, spring is on its way. I can see it in the way the tree branches are knobbly with the promise of buds, the way birds collect small twigs of willow and hazel to build nests.
It’s not hard to understand why George doesn’t want to spoil the countryside. I don’t want to spoil it either. On the other hand, taking a couple of months off work to stay here is not really an option. Selling to Morris and Sweeny would solve so many problems.
The sun peeks in briefly from between the clouds, then hides again. It’s hard to believe how hot it’ll be in a few months, sun-drenched and bright. An idea snakes into my thoughts just like the sun peeking in from behind the clouds.
At the bottom of our garden, the slope of Catcher Hill faces south, and the sun beats down on it nine hours a day in summer. What could be more ideal for solar panels? It would be good to build something different. Not just carbon neutral, but actually positive; with grass rooves, natural insulation, and geothermal heating.
Haven’t I always wanted to build something special?
On the other hand…
My pocket vibrates. I take out my phone and check the screen. Lynsey.
“Hi?”
“Are you on your way?”
“On my way where?” Although I know what she means.
“Your mum and sister dropped by earlier, they said you were coming back today.”
My sister? I stop so suddenly, that a bird pecking on the ground nearby startles and flies away.
“Haneen?”
“Do you have any other sisters?” Lynsey laughs.
She hasn’t set foot in my flat in over a year, yet the moment I’m out of town, she comes to visit. More evidence that something is very wrong in her marriage; her husband hates me because he knows I don’t trust him. So, Haneen, my beautiful kind sister, keeps the peace by not coming to my home. I only see her when we happen to meet at Mum’s.
Haneenwas a word my mother read in a book when searching for girl names starting with H. It means Flower in Japanese. But in Hindi, Urdu, and Arabic it means nostalgia, like the longing for something you used to love, a home you lost.
“You’re out on one of your walks, aren’t you?” Lynsey drags me back from my thoughts. “You always go quiet and unresponsive when you’re walking.
“Just thinking.”
