It Started With A Tweet(68)

‘Oi,’ I say poking him in the arm. ‘I think I’m doing just fine, thank you. Look, I’m all kitted out. What more do I need?’

‘If I’m being honest, a shower .?.?. I’m guessing that you haven’t been for that skinny dip yet.’

My jaw falls open and my eyes go wild. I’m about to give him a right thumping, but he’s already jumped up and is walking backwards towards the path we walked up.

‘Only kidding,’ he says.

I stick my nose under my fleece and wonder if he’s got a point, but Rosie promised that the bathroom would be in operation, in some fashion, this evening.

I get up and join him, keeping my distance just in case he does get a whiff of me.

‘Thanks for asking me to come on this walk,’ I say as we head back into the woods.

‘Thanks for coming. I usually like a good walk by myself, but every so often it is nice to have a bit of company.’

‘Have you found it easy to make friends since you moved here?’

I can’t imagine starting from scratch like that. I took the easy option after university, following Erica, Tess and Amelie when they got jobs in London. I couldn’t imagine living somewhere without my ready-made friendship group.

‘I’ve made a few. Of course there’s Rodney, but I climb a lot with a couple of guys who live in the next village and I go running sometimes with Trish.’

‘Trish the yoga instructor,’ I say, hoping it wasn’t the super-fit, super-pretty one that I met in the village. I look at my nails to pretend that I’m not interested in what he’s saying, cross at myself that I’ve got prickles of jealousy.

‘Yeah, that’s the one. She does try and get me to do her yoga class, but it’s not quite my scene. I imagine I’d be the person who toppled everyone over like dominoes.’

I smile as I try to picture him attempting to be dainty in a ballerina pose.

‘And you’re also friends with Jenny the hairdresser, right?’

‘Jenny, um, oh yeah, I know Jenny.’

I detect him going a little pink round the cheeks and I start to feel a bit foolish. A part of me had enjoyed feeling special, having Jack’s attention, but I think back to what Liz said and it makes me feel as if I’m one of many.

‘I also go to the pub once or twice a week. Have you been there yet?’ asks Jack.

‘Only for lunch yesterday. Rosie doesn’t let me out at night,’ I say making it sound as if she’s my jailor.

‘OK .?.?. well, it’s worth a visit as most people are pretty friendly, once they know that you’re not tourists. Liz and Gerry are often there with their husbands so I’m sure they’d show you off and introduce you to everyone. That is, if you get let out at night.’

He’s smirking at me and I feel the need to explain myself.

‘Rosie and I are on a digital detox, remember, which is why she thinks we should stay away from the pub. She has this ridiculous idea that I’ll steal someone’s phone and hide in the loos using WiFi all night.’

‘I wonder why she’d think that. I mean, it’s not as if you’d go out of your way to get the Internet, doing something strange, like, I don’t know, hiking up a hill in flimsy summer shoes after stealing your housemate’s phone.’

‘I didn’t steal it, I borrowed it,’ I say. ‘There’s a big difference.’

‘Oh right, I stand corrected,’ he says, holding his hands up, the smirk still planted on his face. I think I preferred him when he scowled all the time. ‘I take it the detox isn’t going very well, as every time I seem to find you, you’re trying to get the Internet.’

‘It’s going well in the sense that I’ve stopped twitching and reaching for my phone, so that’s progress, right? The problem is I’m worried about getting a job. I felt like I needed a break from the outside world when I agreed to the detox, but that was over a week ago and now I want to get on with my life. Only, Rosie brought me up here and roped me in to the renovation, and I’m now going to be up here for a few more weeks. I’m worried that I’ll be out of work too long and that panics me.’ I can’t face telling Jack about the reason for my sacking. ‘I just want to put some feelers out to see if I can get another job.’

‘That sounds fair enough. Surely Rosie would understand that if you explained it to her?’

‘She doesn’t get it. She got made redundant last year and has spent her time renovating and selling houses, so she thinks there’s nothing wrong with me having time out before I find something else.’

‘Do you think she could be right? Do you have to get a job straight away? Have you got a mortgage or debts?’

I shake my head. ‘No, I haven’t, but I don’t want to eat into my savings too much as I’ve been saving up for a flat deposit for years.’

We find ourselves out of the wood and in the fields again. Buster runs over to us excitedly before bounding after a rabbit.

‘Listen, I know that I don’t really know you, so I can’t really have an opinion, but from the little I do know it sounds as if you were really stressed out with your job and your lifestyle. I think your sister is probably right that you do need to take some time. You might have some biological clock ticking and you might be worried about CV gaps, but it’s not as if you’re lying on some beach drinking cocktails. You’re project managing a house renovation, surely you can talk about that in an interview and put it on your CV. Didn’t you say Rosie was turning it into holiday lets? With the right wording, you could spin it so that people didn’t just think you were painting your bathroom.’