My Not So Perfect Life(91)

Sure enough, for an instant Alex looks like he wants to explode. But then there’s a flash of sunlight, a glimmer of a reluctant smile.

“Is this how you talk to all your B&B guests?” he says at last. “Find their sore points and skewer them?”

“I’m not sure yet,” I say with a shrug. “Like I say, you’re the first guest. How’s it working out for you?”

I’m feeling a secret exhilaration: I judged it right. Alex doesn’t say anything for a few moments, just looks at me with that tiny little smile around his lips. My hair is blowing around my face, and probably in London I would be frantically smoothing it down. But here I don’t bother.

As though he’s psychic, Alex’s gaze shifts to my hair.

“Your hair’s gone curly,” he says. “And blue. Is that a Somerset thing?”

“Oh yes,” I say. “We have our own micro fashion climate here. I’m the cover girl on Somerset Vogue, didn’t you know?”

“I’ll bet you are,” says Alex—and there’s something about his expression that makes me warm inside. We’re still bantering, right? I swallow hard, the wind still gusting my hair, my eyes fixed on his. Just for a nanosecond, I can’t think what to say.



“All right.” Alex seems to come to. “Fair enough. I’ve come all this way. I should appreciate my surroundings. So: the countryside. Fill me in.” He swivels around, taking in the panoramic view beyond all the farm buildings.

“Fill you in on ‘the countryside’?” I can’t help smiling. “What, like it’s a new client and you’re going to rebrand it?”

“Exactly. What’s it all about? There’s the greenness, obviously,” he says, as though he’s standing in front of a whiteboard at Cooper Clemmow. “The views…Turner…Hardy…I can’t stand Hardy, as it happens—” Alex stops dead as something attracts his attention. “Wait. What’s that?”

“That?” I follow his gaze, past the stables, into the backyard. “It’s the Defender.”

“It’s spectacular.” Alex is already hastening toward it and runs a hand admiringly over the old Land Rover. It’s about twenty years old, all covered in mud, with the windscreen taped up because of the cracks. “I mean, this is a proper off-roader, isn’t it?”

“Well, it’s not a Chelsea tractor.”

Now Alex’s eyes are gleaming. “I’ve never driven off-road before. Really off-road.”

“You want to drive?” I say, and hold out the keys. “Go on, city boy. Knock yourself out.”

—

Alex wends his way carefully through the yard and out through the back gate, then speeds up as we get into the fields.

“Careful,” I keep saying. “Not so fast. Don’t run over a sheep,” I add, as he drives through the six-acre field. To be fair, he keeps well to the side and goes at a reasonable speed. But the minute we close the gate behind us in the empty far meadow, Alex is like a kid at the dodgems.



The meadow is a massive, bumpy, uncultivated mess—we actually get money from some government scheme for letting it grow wild. Alex drives at speed down one side of the meadow, then reverses at speed, then wheels around like a crazy person. If it wasn’t so dry, he’d be skidding by now. He hurtles over a set of rough hillocks at such an angle that I cling on to the handle, then he heads up a steepish bank and careers off the top. He actually whoops as we fly through the air (albeit for a second or two), and I can’t help laughing, even though I bumped my shoulder as we took off.

“Bloody hell!” I say, as we crash back down. “You’re going to—”

I break off. Shit. He’s heading toward the ditch. Except he can’t see that it’s a ditch because it’s covered in long grass and reeds.

“Slow down,” I say tensely. “Slow down!”

“Slow down? Are you nuts? This is the best thing I’ve done in my l-aaaaaargh!”

The Defender lurches down, and for a terrifying moment I think we might roll. My head has crashed on the ceiling. Alex has bumped himself on the open window frame. He frantically floors it, almost willing the Defender upward out of the ditch.

“Go!” I’m screaming. “Go!”

With an almighty whirring of wheels and growling of the engine, we manage to get out of the ditch, career bumpily along for a few hundred meters, then stop. I look at Alex and gasp. There’s blood all over his face, dripping down his chin. He turns off the engine, and we stare at each other, both panting.



At last I say: “When I said, ‘Knock yourself out,’ I didn’t literally mean knock yourself out.”

Alex gives a half smile, then frowns, eyeing my face closely. “I’m fine. But are you OK? You got a real bash there. I’m sorry, I had no idea—”

“I’ll live.” I touch my forehead, which is already sprouting a bruise. “Ouch.”

“Oh God, sorry.” He looks shamefaced.

“Don’t be.” I take pity on him. “We’ve all done it. I learned to drive in this meadow. Got stuck in the ditch. Had to be pulled out with a tractor. Here.” I reach in my pocket for a tissue. “You’ve got blood everywhere.”