A Summer to Remember (32 page)
Olivia sighed. ‘I know you wouldn’t, Nina,’ she said.
‘But, if you think ill of me, I’ll perfectly understand if you want to find a replacement secretary for Dudley,’ Nina said, blinking back tears that were threatening to spill at the thought of leaving The Old Mill House even earlier than anticipated.
‘Leave? Are you
mad
? I don’t want you to leave!’ she cried, much to Nina’s relief. ‘We all
adore
having you at the mill. It’s just that I’ve been trying to find out what on earth’s been going on. Nobody tells me anything – not when it comes to matters of the heart, anyway, and I do like to be kept informed about these sorts of things.’
Nina gave a little smile. ‘Then we’re friends?’
‘Of
course
we’re friends. The very best of friends, in fact. Anyone who can handle my Dudley is right up there in my books, and anyone who can handle Ziggy deserves a medal. Anyway, you can’t possibly think of leaving just yet – because I want to see you in that gorgeous party dress!’
Nina laughed in relief. She was staying. For the time being at least.
It was a week after her trip to London with Olivia and, after a morning of typing up Dudley’s notes for a rather convoluted in-depth plot synopsis for his novel, Nina’s eyes felt sore. She needed a break and the best place for that was the garden.
As she opened the back door and stepped out into the sunshine, she realised that she was fast becoming dependent on being able to do this – to work quietly in a beautiful Georgian house with a boss who pretty much let her get on with things, and being able to wander freely around the gardens when she wanted. Gardens that she had now fallen in love with. There was the warm wooden bench with the flaking blue paint that she liked to sit on mid-morning when it received the full glory of the sunshine, and there was the ornate white metal bench under the beech tree, which was lovely in the afternoon when it provided a dappled shade to cool sun-warmed limbs.
The Old Mill House was going to be a very hard place to leave, Nina realised. It was the thought that was occupying more and more of her mind as summer rolled on towards the day when she would no longer be needed there. August had seemed an age away when Nina had arrived at the mill but, now that the party was just a few days away and Dudley’s novel was drawing to a close, where would that leave her? Back at the recruitment agency? Back at Mr Briggs’ flat? Back to being on her own again?
She’d got used to being a part of the mad, chaotic world of the mill. What would she do without Olivia and Ziggy? How would she survive without Dudley’s daily dictation of romance?
She felt she’d really grown since she’d left the wicked clutches of Hilary Jackson. Janey had been right. There’d been more to Nina than taking orders from a bad-tempered battleaxe whose idea of being a good boss was letting her employees go home only half an hour late. Her post at the mill might only have been short-term, but it had let her redefine herself. It had shown Nina that she could be paid for a job and be appreciated at the same time, and she would miss that if she left.
Walking across the velvet-soft grass, she pulled out her mobile from the pocket of her jeans, but there was only a message from Janey.
Any news, stranger? x
Nope! x
Nina texted back. And it was true. She hadn’t heard from Justin for three days now. They had been sending each other the usual little texts about day-to-day life and Nina had been keeping him up to date with Ziggy’s antics and the progress of Dudley’s novel. But she couldn’t help feeling disappointed that she hadn’t actually seen him recently.
Everything’s up in the air at work
he’d told her.
I can’t get back to Norfolk. Miss you. x
Nina didn’t know what to think and, the longer she went without seeing him, the more she felt sure that nothing was going to happen between them – a thought that made her sad.
She looked down at her phone now and the last message she’d received from him.
Miss you. x
She’d texted him back.
Miss you, too
and her finger had hovered over the ‘x’ for a good long time before she sent the message without it.
It was just as she was putting her phone away that she spied Faye bent double over a clump of some kind of flower Nina couldn’t ever hope of recognising. It felt like an age since she’d last had a good chat with her, and Nina was desperate to find out what had been happening with her and Dominic.
‘They’re all falling over,’ Faye said as she saw Nina approach. ‘I’ll have to stake them.’
‘They’re lovely,’ Nina said, admiring the enormous scarlet blooms.
‘High maintenance, though,’ Faye said.
‘A lot of beautiful things are,’ Nina said.
Faye laughed. ‘Like one of my old school friends that I met up with last night. She couldn’t stop looking at my grubby fingernails,’ Faye said. ‘Look!’ She held out her small hands for Nina to examine. The nails were short and neatly rounded, but there was a fair amount of dirt underneath them. ‘This is just from this morning. I did clean them last night but Sara wouldn’t believe me. She kept showing me hers, which she’d just had done, and insisted that I went along to see her girl. “She’s an absolute wonder!” she kept saying, but Sara’s nails look like some kind of medieval torture that you’d threaten traitors with at the Tower of London.’
Nina laughed, surreptitiously looking down at her own short but neat nails. They were practical rather than pretty, serving her well for her hours at the keyboard.
She watched as Faye crouched down to remove some weeds.
‘How’s the portrait-sitting going?’ Nina asked, desperate to know what had been going on since she’d set up the rendezvous between the ex-lovebirds.
‘Oh, that’s all over,’ Faye said and there was a hint of disappointment in her voice.
‘All over?’ Nina said, feeling her friend’s disappointment and unable to disguise her own, too.
Faye nodded and wiped her dusty hands down the front of her trousers. ‘It all happened so quickly. It was only three sessions and I had to fit it around Dominic’s Country Circle portraits and his preparations for his show in Norwich.’
‘So—’ Nina paused. What was she going to say? ‘You’re not seeing him again?’
The two women exchanged looks.
‘He didn’t say anything,’ Faye said. ‘I kept thinking he was on the verge of saying something, you know?’
Nina nodded.
‘If only we’d had more time. If only—’ Faye stopped.
‘What?’
She shook her head. ‘It’s useless,’ she said. ‘There’s never going to be a Dominic and me. I think our relationship is doomed.’
‘Don’t say that!’ Nina said.
‘But it is. I never really believed we’d get back together – didn’t even think I wanted to – but, when I was with him at The Folly, I couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like. I mean, I know Olivia’s always trying to push us back together, but I don’t want to push him, too. That’s probably how I lost him in the first place. I was always on at him to email me, text me, phone me.’
‘But that’s only natural when you care about someone,’ Nina said.
‘But I think I pushed him away,’ Faye said, shaking her head, ‘and I’m never going to make that mistake again.’ She picked up the large silver garden fork that had been standing up in the flower bed beside her and thrust it into the dry soil. ‘I’m being philosophical about this,’ she continued. ‘I’m going to leave things alone. If they’re meant to be, then it’ll happen – but I’m not pushing. I’m not going to try and force things.’
Nina watched in awe as she stabbed the earth repeatedly with the fork and, as much as she couldn’t help wanting to meddle and to – well – push, she decided that she couldn’t really argue with a girl who had such command over her garden tools.
‘It’s these last few chapters. I can’t seem to get them right.’ Dudley stopped pacing the length of the study and banged his empty pipe on his desk. ‘I’ve got to make them more exciting.’ He cleared his throat. ‘At the moment, they’re about as gripping as a dead hand.’
Nina looked up from her computer, but her eyes were so blurry that she couldn’t quite focus on him. It was the end of the day and they’d been working so hard that she felt sure she could no longer type straight.
‘This whole thing is ridiculous. Who am I trying to fool? It’s all a waste of time,’ Dudley said in the sort of way that begged for somebody to contradict him. But Nina didn’t even hear him. ‘Nina?’ He looked across at her. ‘Are you all right?’
‘I’m fine,’ she said, managing a weak smile for a second, but Dudley wasn’t taken in by it. He pinched his great white moustache and stood up, after having only just sat down.
‘Tell you what,’ he said, clearing his throat, ‘it’s gone five o’clock. Why don’t we break for today and come back fresh to it first thing tomorrow? I have to go into town anyway.’ He got up and left the room without further explanation. Nina remained seated, staring at her computer screen, blinking every now and then and wincing at the tightness of her eyelids.
Dudley must have given himself the deadline of the anniversary party by which to finish his novel, because Nina spent the next two days typing solidly. The pace of his story had picked up considerably as the end came into sight and Nina found the task enjoyable, if a little exhausting on the eyes, wrists and shoulders. It was a wonder her fingers didn’t bleed from the speed at which they ran over the keyboard, particularly when Dudley stood over her, dictating great chunks of dialogue that moved faster than a Quentin Tarantino movie – only a little less violent. This
was
a romance he was writing, after all.
But at last, Nina got to type the two words she’d never had the pleasure of typing before: The End. An immense satisfaction filled her as she stretched her arms high above her head and blinked several times to clear the fog that had developed over her eyes from looking at the white screen for so long.
Dudley crashed down into his chair at the other side of the study and lit his pipe. Nina had got accustomed to the scent. He tried not to smoke too much when he was in the room, and would often stride around the garden when he needed a puff, his smoke drifting hazily to mingle with the honeysuckle, but he looked as if a walk in the garden might just finish him off after the day’s exertion.
‘Will it do?’ Dudley asked, in an uncharacteristically anxious voice.
‘Yes,’ Nina said, nodding. ‘It’s wonderful. Congratulations.’ She smiled, a feeling of intense pride filling her at having been part of such an exciting journey. ‘It’s a really wonderful story and I’m sure you’re going to get it published and make thousands of readers very happy.’
Dudley shook his head in astonishment. ‘Readers!’ he said. ‘I can’t ever imagine that my little book will ever be read by anyone who isn’t in this very room!’
Nina smiled as he shook his head in bewilderment. ‘I know we’ve not heard back from anyone we’ve sent your opening chapters to yet, but I truly think it’s only a matter of time before somebody snaps it up.’
‘Do you?’ Dudley looked genuinely surprised by this declaration.
Nina nodded. ‘They’d be mad not to.’
She spent the rest of the day tidying around. There were odd bits of paperwork lying about that had been overlooked in Dudley’s haste to finish his novel. Nina remembered with affection the first time she’d seen the study. Now, there wasn’t an untidy work surface in sight. Everything had a home. It was just a pity, Nina thought, that it wasn’t to be hers for much longer.
That evening, the air was cool but felt delicious after the unrelenting heat of the day, and Nina felt invigorated by it as she walked along the riverbank with Ziggy by her side. She walked like she’d never walked before; sucking in great lungfuls of air; swinging her arms as if she were on an army march, her legs slicing through the grass. She listened to the wind playing its strange melody through the trees, and watched the swallows dancing in the dusk.
She turned back to look at the house. It looked picture-perfect from across the river. Everything about it suggested peace – and yet her brief time there had been anything but peaceful. She’d managed to upset Dominic by not returning his affections, she’d failed in bringing him and Faye back together again, she’d annoyed Alex and unwittingly sent him packing and she’d made Olivia suspicious of her motives, causing the awfully embarrassing scene between them on the way back from London.
Perhaps it would be better if she just left, Nina thought, closing her eyes on the scene before her. It would be best to go before the party too. Then the Miltons could all get back to their lives without Nina’s own special brand of chaos ruining everything.
‘At least I didn’t upset you, Ziggy!’ she said, bending down to stroke his curly-haired head, her heart aching at the thought of having to leave her furry ward behind, too. What would she do without her daily dog walks? She smiled as she remembered her horror at the thought of being in charge of the mad Labradoodle, but how quickly she had bonded with him. They were true friends and the thought of not seeing him again was more than she could bear.
Blinking the tears from her eyes, Nina walked back to the house, letting Ziggy off his lead when he was in the hallway and inhaling the familiar scent of the house that she’d got so used to over the last three months. A wonderful mix of old wood, furniture polish, Olivia’s flowers picked fresh from the garden and the scent of her ever-present perfume, as well as Dudley’s earthy tobacco.
‘Is that you, Nina?’ Olivia called from the living room. ‘Come and have a drink. We have Pimms!’
Nina smiled. For tonight, at least, she was still very much a part of the family.
Simon Hudson was taking a look at the paintings Dominic had delivered to the gallery they were hiring together in Tombland for their group exhibition at the end of the month.