Look at your canvas the way you should be looking at people, at the world. From different angles. Examine it from far away and squint your eyes. Then, come up close and see how the textures change—the light, shadow, depth. It’s the same painting, but it changes depending on where you’re standing.
Why does English rain seem so different from California rain? Noelle pondered the question as she stepped over puddles on her way down the hill. It didn’t look or sound any different, didn’t create special pitter-patter sounds hitting her umbrella or fall with a particular kind of slant unique to England. She might have to be content never knowing why.
Aunt Joy owned a plethora of umbrellas in almost every color. Noelle appreciated this particular eccentricity when she’d grabbed a blue one and headed to the gallery.
Mac had arrived at the cottage early in the morning, working on the outside of the cottage and garden before Noelle even awoke. Seeing the top of his silver head through the kitchen window had startled her as she reached for the kettle, groggy and yawning. She’d offered Mac some tea, and they sat for a few minutes, listing minor repairs to make over the next few days. Other than some nods and grunts, he simply listened, drank his tea, and stepped back outside to continue his work. A man of few words.
Frank O’Neill, on the other hand? A man of too many words. The moment Noelle had closed her blue umbrella and opened the door, itching to step inside the gallery for the first time since her arrival, he approached her, hands poised and ready for conversation. He threw out a barrage of questions about the meeting with Mr. Lester, the duration of her stay in Chilton Crosse, what her decision about the gallery would be.
She wouldn’t be able to browse the gallery in peace until she answered his questions, so she tried to tackle them all at once. “I meant to call you last night, but there was so much to do. No news on the gallery. I’m still mulling over all the possibilities, with Mr. Lester’s help. I’ll be leaving Sunday night because of the work still to do, getting the cottage in order.”
“I fully understand.” He raised his hands suddenly. “Oh! Have you met Mac MacDonald yet? He can be a great help to you.”
“Yes! In fact, he’s at the cottage right now with a long list of things.”
A muffled chime floated into the gallery. She tilted her head, hearing another, and another, trying to figure out their source. The back wall?
Frank explained, “That’s the clock shop. Next door.” He rolled his eyes. “Dozens of them, lining the walls. Enormous antique grandfather clocks. Old Mr. Rothschild insists on having them chime simultaneously.”
“Every hour?” Ten o’clock. Still four to go.
“On the hour,” Frank said with another eye roll and lowered his voice. “I once tried to approach the village council with a complaint, hoping to get a petition going to stop the noise. But apparently, since only the two shops on either side can hear the chimes, we were outnumbered. Mr. Rothschild was within his rights to set the clocks however he pleased.” Frank shrugged. “Truthfully, I barely hear them anymore. And some people have actually called them charming.”
“Probably the ones who aren’t on either side of the shop.”
“Precisely.”
“Frank?” a female voice called from a back room.
“That’s Holly, my assistant. Let me see what she needs, and I’ll return in a bit.”
Noelle had waited for this moment since she’d first peered inside the dark windows two nights ago. Waited to walk the long gallery hall, smell the pungent “gallery” smells of paint and turpentine, view the larger space in the back where Aunt Joy used to perch her easel. Funny, though, how time changed the details of memory. She recalled the walls of the hall being a paler shade of blue, not this current dark navy color. Perhaps Frank had painted them. Or perhaps her memory had played tricks on her. She also didn’t remember the two benches in the middle of the room being quite that small.
As she walked toward the paintings, about ten lining each side of the rectangular room, one made her pause. She peered down at the corner signature, “NC.” Her own painting, completed at seventeen, during her last summer in England. She never knew what happened to it.
She remembered that day well, trudging up the hill of her grandmother’s estate with her easel and paint box, finding a stunning patch of countryside as her inspiration. She’d spent hours trying to capture on canvas the sunbeams filtering shadows through the tree branches. A card, “For Display Only,” rested on the painting’s nameplate. She loved the idea that her aunt had been proud enough to display her work but sentimental enough not to sell it.
She moved to the next one. Clearly a Joy painting, a rich sunset with stunning colors over a rolling Cotswold hillside. Joy had even created a subtle pink reflection on the tree trunks below. Noelle recalled the sensation of being drawn to a painting so vividly that her senses were almost tricked into believing it was real. Is this why Joy painted, why she loved it so much? It allowed her to be somewhere else, of her own creation, for a sliver of time.
How heartbreaking it must’ve been for her aunt to stop painting. To deprive herself of the escape that art provided, especially during a time when she needed that escape the most.
A pair of giggles behind Noelle broke her focus. Two little girls, about eleven years old, had come in with their mothers. One of the girls sprinted toward Noelle to escape the other one. “I’m sorry!” she whispered, nearly bumping into Noelle.
“It’s all right. Do you like the paintings?”
“They’re lovely,” the little girl said in her posh British accent then went straight back to giggling and skipping around the gallery with her friend.
Noelle envied them. She remembered how easy things seemed at that age. The world felt warmer, safer—her parents still married, her father still a strong-ish figure in her life. And as the little girls settled into a corner together, playing a clap-rhyming game, Noelle realized she’d been around their age when she met Jillian at Windermere one summer.
Gram had called her downstairs and introduced her to the family who had recently moved in to the neighboring estate, Willowbrook. A skinny girl with sparkling eyes and strawberry ringlets had stood before her. “Meet Jillian Bartleby. She’s going to keep you company this summer,” Gram had said. Generally shy about meeting new friends, Noelle had taken a step backward, but Gram had gently nudged her forward again, whispering, “Say hello. She’s our guest.”
By that afternoon, the two little girls had become easy friends, playing hide-and-seek in the garden’s maze, pushing each other back-and-forth across the length of the library on the tall, wheeled ladder, and sitting cross-legged under the dining table, talking about the “ick factor” of boys. Both the girls were hungry for playmates—Noelle because her shyness often kept her from making friends at school, and Jillian because she had already been to three different boarding schools in the last five years. Summer became her only true stability, the only time she lived with her parents in a real home.
Jillian told Noelle the most amazing tales about boarding school—ghosts in the halls of the living quarters and stern teachers with permanent scowls who threatened lashings for misbehavior. She always laced the stories with extravagant details, greatly embellished, no doubt, and Noelle would listen, holding her breath until the end.
Jillian was everything Noelle would never be. Tall and wispy, utterly comfortable in her own skin, full of life, confident she was good enough and worthy enough to match wits with absolutely anyone. Noelle wished sometimes she could switch places with Jillian and see what it felt like to be that unafraid.
As the little girls grew tired of their clapping game and wandered away to find something else for amusement, Noelle wondered how long it would take before they lost touch, as she and Jillian eventually did. And what hollow excuses they might offer themselves for allowing it to happen.
After leaving the gallery to run a few necessary errands then working to clear out another section of the cottage, Noelle realized she’d missed teatime. Only a couple of days in England, and already teatime at precisely four o’clock had become a tradition. Probably because of all those summers of strict ritual. Gram had insisted the entire household come to a halt when the four o’clock chimes rang deeply from the hall clock. No matter if Noelle had been in the middle of a swim or on the last page of a novel, she would be summoned to the Great Hall to sit with Gram and Aunt Joy for strong Yorkshire tea, shortbread biscuits, almond tea cakes, and an assortment of scones and jams.
Secretly, Noelle always looked forward to that particular hour of the day. She became a grown-up, all proper and sophisticated. Though Gram didn’t require her to wear formal clothing, Noelle was required to display her best manners. No crumbs dropping onto the floor, no jam on her face after a bite of a scone, no slouching and talking about “frivolous” subjects. At least once a week, Gram invited company over during that time, a neighborhood friend or one of her bridge club ladies, which gave Noelle even more incentive to be proper.
As she drank her tea in Joy’s cottage, she broke the drop-everything rule to go on an online mission. Something had nagged at her since the gallery. Those girls playing together had reminded her, once again, of her youth. She had lost those years in between her teens and adulthood too fast, in a blink.
It only took a few fast clicks to find Jill again. Her modeling career had been brief, but she’d developed quite an online footprint. Noelle sifted through biographies and forums to find a site with an actual phone number. Probably the wrong one, but it wouldn’t hurt to try. She took a final sip of tea and dialed.
“Hello?”
“Hi. I’m looking for Jillian Bartleby.” No, that wasn’t right. The webpage said she was married now. “Sorry.” Noelle squinted at the screen. “Holbrook. It’s Jill Holbrook.”
“That’s me.”
“Well, I’m not sure you’ll remember me. My name is Noelle Cooke. Years ago, we were friends—”
“In Bath. At Windermere. For heaven’s sake, yes. I remember you!” Jill’s shriek of excitement calmed Noelle instantly, lowered the formal wall between them. “How on earth did you find me?”
“Well, you’re a star model over here, apparently. It wasn’t too hard.”
“Over here? Are you in the UK?”
“I am. Unfortunate circumstances. Remember my Aunt Joy?”
“Famous painter? Smoky voice, serious eyes. They could stare right through you. Scared the life out of me more than once. I could never tell if she was being serious or dripping with sarcasm.”
“That’s the one. Well, she passed away a couple of weeks ago.”
“I recall reading about that. I was sorry to hear it.”
“Thank you. I inherited her cottage and the gallery, too. I flew here from California on Tuesday to sign legal papers, sort through the cottage.”
“Joy—wasn’t she your mother’s aunt? You must’ve been surprised she didn’t leave a portion to your mum.”
Noelle’s long pause probably told Jill everything. “My mother actually passed away. Ten years ago.”
“I’m so sorry. How awful. An illness?”
“A car accident.” She struggled to get back on track, sound upbeat. “So, that’s why Aunt Joy left me everything.”
“Well, I think that’s lovely. Does this mean you’re sticking around?”
“No, in fact, I leave in a couple of days. I’m putting the cottage up for sale, getting it ready. It’s quite a chore. But I wanted to look you up before I had to go back to the States.”
“I’m thrilled you did. So, how the devil are you? Spill! I want to know absolutely everything!”
Noelle told her about California, about the beach house and her strong desire to change jobs. Then her unexpected jaunt to Chilton Crosse and what a whirlwind it had all been.
“The Cotswolds. You’re a stone’s throw from us!” said Jill. “I’m in London, married to a gorgeous Welshman—a surgeon. He puts up with all of my little vices.”
Noelle suppressed a chuckle. So Jill-like.
“And how about you?” Jill asked. “Married as well?”
Always the awkward part, matching lives with someone else and seeing who came up short. “Actually, no.” Noelle rotated her empty mug, preparing all the right clichés.
But this was Jill. Not a stranger. Not someone she had to work hard to impress. In spite of the years that had turned them into sensible, respectable, socially aware adults, Noelle took a chance to turn back the clock a bit. To remember sitting on the floor under the dining room table in Gram’s estate, talking about boys or plotting ways to steal more gingerbread from under the cook’s watchful gaze.
“Okay. Here’s the truth. The only two serious relationships I’ve ever had were complete disasters. First Greg, right out of college. Older than me, professional, motivated, but distant. He lost all interest in me, and I tried everything to keep him but couldn’t. And then Steve, two years ago. Even worse. Classic bastard. He cheated on me, borrowed money from me and never gave it back, lied to me.”
“Oh, I’ve dated a Steve or two in my time. Maybe they were brothers.”
Noelle chuckled. “You know, I might just be one of those girls, destined to be alone.” She hadn’t planned to let one of her greatest insecurities tumble out so easily. “I can’t seem to get it right.”
“I highly doubt you’ll end up alone,” Jill reassured. “But even if you are, there’s nothing in the world wrong with that. I loved my single days. They were terribly empowering.”
“I do enjoy the freedom. But it sounds like you and your husband are a good fit?”
“We are. But I’ve never had to compromise so much in my life! It’s been a struggle sometimes, putting his needs before mine. I can be a selfish bitch, but he knew that when he married me.”
“Oh, Jill,” Noelle snickered. “I’ve missed us. And all those summers. Do you ever go back there sometimes, to those days?”
“Sure, sometimes. Do you know the first memory I had when I heard your voice again? You’d think it would be sappy or sentimental, but it was completely silly. The time we went into that insanely posh jewelry store in Bath. I bet you ten pounds that you couldn’t walk up to the snotty salesman behind the counter and ask to look at three pieces of jewelry whilst using that fake cockney accent of yours. And twenty pounds if you didn’t crack a smile. You were brilliant! I had to feign allergies and hold a kerchief up to my face to keep from laughing!”
“I remember that! I pulled it off, didn’t I?”
“The most entertaining twenty pounds I ever spent.”
Noelle remembered the look on that poor salesman’s face. “Now, be honest, didn’t my accent sound too Dick-Van-Dyke-in-Mary-Poppins?”
Jillian cackled through the receiver, barely able to speak. “No, no. It was perfection. The right mixture of nasal and twang!”
“I thought he’d throw us out! Thank goodness he was a typical Brit, too polite to be brutally honest in public.”
“Lucky you. And wasn’t Adam with us, too?”
“Yep,” Noelle said, seeing his lanky frame.
“Adam Spencer. ‘Scrumptious Adam.’ I called him that during my crush phase.”
“I remember.” Noelle had been crushed herself, when she found out Jill liked Adam romantically. And relieved when it hadn’t worked out.
“I can’t believe I asked him out. We were all sorts of wrong for each other. I should’ve known. Never date a friend. Do you know I actually saw him recently?”
“You did?”
“Well,” she clarified, “if two years ago constitutes ‘recent.’ Bumped right into him in the West End. We had tea, chatted for a bit, and I haven’t seen him since.”
“He lives in London, too?”
“Well, he did then. I assume he still does. He’s an architect—quite successful, with his own firm and scads of employees.”
“Married, I assume?”
“No. Well, not at the time, at least.”
“Really? That’s odd. I thought… well, never mind.”
“Of course, a lot can happen in a few years.”
“Tell me about it.”
“We should call him.”
“Call him?” Noelle swallowed hard.
“Call him. As in pick up phone, dial digits, talk into receiver. It would be a grand reunion. Three Musketeers and all that rubbish.”
“He’s probably not even in London anymore. And I’m sure he’s too busy, anyway. Or he’s forgotten about us. Plus, I’m leaving in two days.”
“Hmm. Protesting a little too much?”
“What do you mean?” Noelle never knew if Jill realized the intensity of her feelings for Adam. But that didn’t mean Jill didn’t have her suspicions.
“I don’t mean anything if you don’t mean anything. Now, tell me. Can you squeeze in a visit to see your old friend before you leave? Say, tomorrow evening? Gareth would love to meet you. He’s a fab cook. We could have dinner here, at the house, then maybe take in a show at the West End?”
Noelle hadn’t expected this. She had no business driving all the way to London for an entire night out, with still so much work to do before boarding the plane on Sunday. But she couldn’t possibly leave England without seeing Jill. “Yes. Absolutely, I’ll come.”
“Perfection. I’m so looking forward to it. We’ll have loads of time to catch up then. I can email you with directions.”
They exchanged contact information, then Noelle heard Jillian air-kiss the phone. She added a cheery, “See you then!”
Noelle clicked off and stared at Jill’s email address. Talking to Jill had taken her back in time the way no memory could do. For a moment, Noelle was her old self again, that youthful self. And she sometimes longed for those parts lost to adulthood. She missed them achingly so, perhaps because they were irretrievable.
Returning to her laptop, Noelle couldn’t help herself. She typed in his name, plus “London,” plus “architect,” and waited for the result. And there it was—“Spencer-Murdoch Architecture.” Breathing faster, Noelle clicked on the sparse menu, hoping to see Adam’s picture, to confirm the “Spencer” was really him, but nothing came up. “Under Construction,” each page told Noelle as she clicked in vain. Another quick Internet search yielded nothing, either. The first three Adam Spencers lived in Scotland, Cornwall, and New York, none with accompanying pictures. At this rate, it would take her a week to find him. His name was much too common.
What does it matter, anyway, finding him or not finding him? She would be back in the States by Monday, back to her regularly scheduled life.