Maddie Please - The Summer of Second Chances - The laugh-out-loud romantic comedy

I opened the fridge door and put a few things inside. The freezer was empty apart from some novelty ice cubes. I hesitated, my head on one side trying to make out exactly what they were. When I realised they were ice boobs I shut the freezer door very quickly, I didn’t want him to see them and think they were anything to do with me.

Quick think of something else. Something dull.

Mobile phone contracts. Changing electricity suppliers. Mulching.

‘You can’t refreeze fish fingers,’ Bryn said, ‘you’ll be ill.’

I turned round. ‘I wasn’t going to.’ My tone was that of a stroppy fifteen year old.

Bryn went out and brought in a couple more boxes that he dumped under the table. From memory they were filled with casserole dishes and some Waterford crystal wine glasses. From the tinkling sound as Bryn put the box down there was now one fewer.

‘That doesn’t sound too good,’ he said, ‘sorry about that.’

He opened the top of the box and delved about for a second. Suddenly he snatched his hand out with a gasp and stood hanging on to his arm as blood seeped out between his fingers.

‘Sod it, that was a bit of a mistake,’ he yelped.

He sat down rather heavily on one of the kitchen chairs and closed his eyes. I watched fascinated as the colour drained from his face.

‘Not very good with blood,’ he said after a moment, ‘especially my own.’

I galloped up the stairs to find the first aid kit that I had, mercifully, unpacked earlier in the day and put into the bathroom cabinet.

When I got back he was bent over, head almost touching his knees, still clutching his arm and obviously feeling a bit wobbly.

‘So stupid,’ he said, ‘sorry.’

I hesitated for a moment, looking at the curls that nestled into the nape of his neck and fighting the overwhelming impulse to wind them around my fingers. To cover up my hesitation I went into brisk and efficient mode and dabbed at him with wet kitchen roll and antiseptic wipes. Once I got rid of the gore we both realised it was just a long scratch from a piece of broken glass, easily solved with a large plaster. Gradually the colour returned to his face and he gave an embarrassed grin.

‘Sorry about that. You must think I’m a right idiot.’

‘No, not at all, I’m sorry you hurt yourself. It was my fault, not packing things properly.’

He pressed the plaster down hard onto his arm and looked up at me.

‘Like I said, I’ve got some beer in the fridge next door and some cold roast beef. Do you fancy a roll?’ he said.

Why did everything seem to be laced with innuendo this morning? It was like living in a Carry On film.

‘No, thank you. Now if you are feeling better I must get on,’ I said, trying to sound brisk and busy. I found the cloth and re-wiped the draining board. Then, as he was still looking at the contents of my cupboards, I began polishing the kettle. Something I am not known for.

He must have realised that I wanted him to go.

‘Well if you change your mind, you know where I am. I’ll go this way, if that’s OK?’

Bryn went out of the kitchen door and loped across the garden in his CAT boots. I ran the cold tap and splashed some water on my face. What the hell was the matter with me? I had no business feeling like this. I was behaving like a silly teenager. Just because a man was good-looking and had muscles and an amazing smile and lived next door. Of course it meant nothing. Well it should.

Over the next few weeks I scoured Holly Cottage from top to bottom. There wasn’t an inch of grubby paintwork that I didn’t clean, not a single scuffmark that I didn’t try to remove. The bathroom in particular took several cans of elbow grease. It looked as though one of the previous tenants had enjoyed more than a few adventures with unusual hair-dye shades. Behind the roll top bath were splashes of blue, green and magenta. Impossible to remove but if I was going to redecorate I needed to make some sort of effort. And it kept me busy, that was the most important thing.

I didn’t want to think too hard or too deeply about anything. I didn’t want to compare my new home with my old one. I didn’t want to think about what I was used to and what I now had. Above all, I didn’t want to think about the future.

One morning I realised it was nearly three weeks since I had seen Bryn. I wondered where he had gone. Even when I went out into the garden and made a half-hearted attempt at cutting the grass he didn’t appear. The mower I found in the shed wasn’t up to the task any more than I was. I found that very disappointing, as our gardener had been a wizened old man who produced sleek lines in the turf with apparently no effort at all. I’m no expert in these matters but I think the blades on the mower were bent or something. Perhaps it was the wrong sort of grass? At its best the machine spat clumps of moss over my feet and occasionally lumps of earth. I found an old strimmer in the garage and fiddled about with it, trying to untangle the ‘tangle-free’ line feed. It wasn’t much use at strimming but it was great for flicking gravel painfully against my ankles, so I gave up. Looking at my progress I could safely assume the ground staff at Wimbledon weren’t going to come calling any time soon. But somehow the beauty of the countryside was getting a hold on me. I had been feeling I was never going to get myself back on an even keel but the garden kept sending out buds and shoots of greenery like a powdering of hope over the bare branches.

I was used to designing the inside of a house. I had made colours and fabrics work even when Ian had pulled that face and voiced his doubts. Now I began to wonder if gardens could work the same way. Perhaps if that hedge was removed, if those trees were cut back?

Crocuses were beginning to sparkle in the grass at the end of the garden; white and golden yellow and purple – heralds of a new spring that only a few weeks ago I didn’t think I had the courage to bear.

I kept darting looks at Ivy Cottage, half hoping Bryn would come out, see how incompetent I was and take over, but the kitchen curtains remained shut; the top half of the stable door closed. Perhaps he was away? Maybe he was ill?

I carried on messing about at the end of the garden for the rest of the afternoon. There was a fair amount of debris to remove from the neglected borders. Apart from the bath there was a collection of foil takeaway trays, a rusted child’s bike, the remains of several very large nylon dog bones (that explained the damp dog smell) and a broken basketball hoop buried in the nettles at the end of the patch. There was also a rotting wooden construction, not so much a compost bin as an additional rubbish dump. I toiled away for a couple of days while the weather was good, and then realised I had only succeeded in moving the debris from the garden where it had been well hidden, to my driveway where it wasn’t. Perhaps I needed a skip? I couldn’t afford a skip.

I didn’t know what to do with all the stuff I had accumulated. Should I put it into the car and take it somewhere? If so, when and where? Bryn would know. And with all those muscles and also the use of his useful pickup truck, he would make short work of it. Perhaps I could take him up on that offer of a beer too. I hadn’t really spoken to anyone for nearly a week, apart from the boy in the mobile phone shop who had sorted out a new contract for me, and a friendly cashier called Maureen in Superfine who always seemed to be there in the afternoons. I’d tried going to the village shop in a sort of ingratiating desire to support local industry but they seemed to open and close when they felt like it.

I decided to give up for the day; I needed bread as I seemed to be living on sandwiches and my endless tea and coffee consumption meant I was always in danger of running out of milk.