We could’ve been anywhere in the world and I’d have known the woman who came dashing over as we disembarked was Matty’s grandma—same big blue eyes, white-blonde hair, slender dancer’s physique, mannerisms…
“Good evening! How was your journey? Not too arduous, I hope?”
…but different accents. Hers was pure, rolling West Country, and that really shouldn’t have surprised me, considering where we were. However, Matty was from Norwich, which was about as far east in England as you could get.
“Hey, Nan.” he said. “It was good, cheers. How are you?”
“All the better for seeing your face.” The hug they shared was openly emotional, with whispers of ‘I missed you’ and ‘I’m so happy to see you’. They hadn’t seen each other since Matty’s mum died, which was their first time since Matty’s parents cut contact when he was little. It was making me tearful just thinking about it, and I averted my eyes to the ground, chancing a peek in Leigh’s direction when their finger brushed the back of my hand.
When Matty and his nan finally released each other, she moved on to Noah. “It’s lovely to see you again.”
“You, too, Nan.”
She didn’t linger so long with Noah, and he seemed strangely disappointed.
“Now, who’ve we got here, then? Jesse?” she asked Leigh, who grinned and shook their head. “Leigh?” They got in one nod of their head before they were wrapped in another big hug. “I do like your hair!”
“Thanks!” Leigh beamed. They hadn’t got around to the rainbow colours, I didn’t think. It looked a bit blue to me, so I guessed it might still be purple.
“That must mean you’re Jesse,” Matty’s nan said to me.
“I am,” I confirmed and soon thereafter discovered why my three companions were all doe-eyed. It was like being wrapped in a warm, fluffy blanket of love.
“We’ll get our bags, Nan,” Matty said.
“All right, me ’ansum.” She released me, and I sagged. I loved hugs. “Do you need a hand with anything?”
“We should be OK, thanks.”
“I’ll go and open up the car.” As she moved off, she pointed at an old VW Beetle. Noah and I looked at it, and then each other.
“Is it walkable? Do you know?” I asked.
“No idea.”
There was no way enough space for the four of us and our luggage.
Leigh appeared in front of me and held out my bag. I took it from them. “What’s up?” they asked.
“How are we all going to fit in that little car?”
“Snugly?”
“And our bags?”
“Trailer.”
Trailer?
“Come on.” Leigh grabbed my hand—I noticed Matty had done the same with Noah—and we walked/were towed to Matty’s nan’s car.
“Load ’em in, folks. Now, it’ll be a bit of a squeeze, but we’ve not so far to go.” She waited until our bags were in the trailer and pulled the cover over, securing it with bungee cords. “Right, my lover,” she addressed Noah, “front seat for you. Jesse, sit behind me. There’ll be plenty of room for these littluns alongside.” She winked at Leigh and Matty.
We took her word for it and pieced ourselves into the car as instructed. It was bigger than it appeared from the outside. Once we were underway, Leigh asked the question that was also in my mind to ask.
“What do we call you?”
Matty’s nan peered in the rear-view mirror. “Nan, if you like. Or Hazel. And Matty’s grandad is Stuart.”
We left the streetlights behind and headed along a dark and winding country lane, round to the left, and right, and up, and down. The little old car chugged as Hazel pulled it out of steep dips. Contrary to what people claimed, Norfolk wasn’t flat, but this was like driving through the Himalayas in the dead of night, and Hazel’s ‘beach is down there’ and ‘pub’s just behind those trees’ was something we’d have to trust her on until we could explore in daylight.
Soon after, she said, “Here we are,” and turned sharp right onto a farm track with a well-lit house up ahead.
“Were they sheep?” Matty asked. Both he and Leigh were gazing past me out the right side window.
“Dozen sheep in there,” Hazel confirmed. “A couple of goats out back, and the hens, of course.”
“Aw, never mind, Noo,” Matty said, then explained, “He was looking forward to a week without Dandy waking us up at stupid o’clock.”
“That your cockerel, is it?” Hazel asked.
“Yep. I named him,” Matty said proudly.
“It’s a marvellous name.” Hazel stopped the car in front of the house and turned off the engine. “Well, Noah, you’ll be pleased to hear we don’t have a cockerel, so you might just get to have a lie-in while you’re here. I left Stu setting up your beds and whatnot. Let’s go look, see how he’s getting on.”
We unpacked ourselves from the car but left our bags for the time being and followed Hazel through a gate at the side of the house.
“Make sure that’s closed, please, Jesse. Don’t want the dogs escaping.”
I shut the gate behind me, giving it a tug to be sure, turned, and literally stopped in my tracks—lucky I was taking up the rear. “Wow!”
I had to admit, with the ancient VW and the farm animals, I’d expected a bit of a field with a hippie camper van. I couldn’t have been more wrong. For one thing, the camper van was a massive mobile home; for another, the garden was like…well, the kind of garden I dreamed of having one day. Pools of water overflowed into one another, down to a large pond with koi; there were plants everywhere, in pots and growing in the ground, pebbled footpaths and stone ornaments—toadstools with pixies atop, posed in thought or sleeping or dancing, or sheltering beneath—all of it delicately illuminated. It was bewitching.
“Jesse? Are you OK?” Leigh asked.
“Yeah. I…” I was speechless.
“Didn’t you know Jesse’s an avid gardener?” Noah asked.
“I had no idea.”
“Not avid,” I protested pointlessly.
Hazel emerged from the camper van with whom I assumed was Matty’s grandad. The fact I hadn’t noticed her enter the camper van to start with wasn’t something I’d be sharing.
“Alright?” Matty’s grandad called on his way over. We responded variously with waves and hellos. “The beds are made and I’ve put the heater on. It’s a bit nippy at night now. Why don’t you get yourselves sorted, get your stuff in? I’ll get some drinks on the go. Dinner should be ready soon, I’d think?”
“Whenever you are,” Hazel confirmed. “I made pasties.”
“Cornish pasties?” Matty asked.
“You’re in Cornwall, me ’ansum. Don’t get more Cornish than that. Right, you go on now, and when you’re ready, just come in through that door, there—” Hazel indicated the door in question “—and ignore the dogs. They’re fond of their own voices, but they don’t bite. See you dreckly.”
And off she went, followed by her husband.
“Dreckly?” Leigh and I repeated at the same time.
Noah shrugged. Matty was on it already—his phone, that is. He scrolled, clicked, scrolled, read, and nodded.
“Whenever we’re ready,” he said.
***
The camper van was oldish but clean, and cleverly designed. It was a six berth, with two single beds and two doubles, a kitchen, bathroom and living room with the seats currently converted to form one of the beds; the other was above the cab. There was a brief, awkward moment when the four of us simultaneously realised Stuart had made up the two double beds, but then Leigh and I shrugged and got over it. So we were sharing a bed? It could mean as much or as little as we wanted it to, although I was excited about the prospect of cuddling up together, waking up next to Leigh. It was all so perfect, I almost wanted to pinch myself to see if it was real—did that even work?—or if I was still asleep on the coach.
Now to decide who was taking which bed. The one over the cab… Just the thought of sleeping up there made me queasy. I wasn’t scared of heights or anything, but that fear I had of the bath crashing through the floor? The same applied here. I watched Matty scoot up the ladder, followed by Leigh. They both sat up there, grinning down at me.
“You want that one, mate?” Noah asked, gesturing to the other bed.
“If that’s OK with you,” I said. The conversation was a façade. He’d sussed me already.
“No worries.”
Leigh scooted back down the ladder and went straight over to the other bed. It filled one end of the van and was partly obscured by the bathroom, which meant crawling over it in order to get into it. Leigh did exactly that and sat, cross-legged, in the middle.
“It’s really comfy,” they said and patted the space next to them—my cue to test it for myself. Seeing as Noah had accepted Matty’s invitation to do the same, I went over and sat on the edge of the mattress.
“Yeah, it does feel comf-eeee!” I toppled backwards and peered up at Leigh’s upside-down, mischievous smile. “Hi.”
“Hi. Did you see there’s a door?”
“Is there?” I lifted my head. “So there is.” It was only a flimsy sliding door, and it wouldn’t be much of a sound barrier, but it was quite possibly the best door that had ever existed. Now I had somewhere to dress and undress in privacy, my last remaining worry about this holiday was snuffed out in an instant.
Leigh’s fingertips pitter-pattered on my cheeks then across my lips. “We should go get our bags.”
“Yeah.” I sighed out the word and felt my shoulder muscles loosen. My right shoulder clicked; my belly got in on the act and rumbled loudly.
“Are you hungry?”
“A bit.” The last thing we’d eaten was our chicken mayo sandwiches, almost six hours ago.
“Only a bit?” Leigh asked in blatant disbelief. “I’m starving!”
Reluctantly, I dragged myself up off the bed and moved aside to give Leigh space. “We’re going for the bags,” I told Noah and Matty, both lounging on their bed. “Want us to bring yours?”
“Nah, we’re coming now,” Noah said. I waited long enough to see him and Matty start moving before I opened the door…and got ambushed.
I can’t lie. Two unknown dogs charging in my direction and barking like crazy things nearly had me crapping myself. Fear kicked in first, the memory of Hazel’s reassurance second, by which point Noah was behind me. He bodily shifted me aside and strode off along the garden path, leaving me to fend for myself. Or not really, seeing as the dogs had followed him. God, they were noisy.
At the gate, Noah commanded them to ‘stay’ and looked back at me. “You coming?”
“Um…yeah.”
“Ignore them,” he said and disappeared from view.
Ignore them. Heh. The wonders of living with a mental German shepherd. OK, these were border collies, but they could still have taken a chunk out of me if they felt like it.
Leigh and Matty bounced past me, and I quickly followed them out to the trailer, then back again with our bags, which we dumped, unpacked, in favour of dinner. The aroma wafting from the house was too delicious not to.
I reach the back door first, for no other reason than I was trying to outrun the dogs, who I was pretty sure were deliberately singling me out. “I feel a bit weird just walking in,” I said but did so nonetheless, holding the door open until everyone, human and canine, was inside.
“Through here,” Stuart called, poking his head out of a doorway along the hall and to the left. It turned out to be the dining room, which was quite small. I guessed, with only the two of them, they didn’t need anything bigger, and judging by the mismatched chairs, they rarely had visitors.
“Sit yourselves down. Do you like beer?” Stuart was already setting bottles on the table, so we said yes and thank you, even though I could see from Noah’s squinty eyes and Matty’s and Leigh’s fight against the yawns that I wasn’t alone in being absolutely exhausted. As always with travelling, the day felt like it had way too many hours.
Stuart left the room through a different door to the one we’d entered, as did one of the dogs, only to reappear on the other side of the room. They had both exits covered.
“Making sure we stay in our pen, eh?” Noah said.
The dog advanced, head low, body wiggling with the wag of its tail, and sniffed Noah’s hand. He tickled it behind the ears. The other one came over, too, eager not to miss out.
Now they’d stopped yapping and racing around, I saw how beautiful they were—long, sleek, black and white coats, feathery tails swishing low, and the way they moved was almost like dancing—but they never stopped watching and listening.
“We had a collie before Suke,” Noah said—I got the impression he was telling the dogs rather than us. “Banjo.” He must’ve sensed my raised eyebrows, because he glanced my way and added, “He was highly strung.”
“I’d never have guessed.”
Hazel arrived carrying a salad bowl and a stack of plates. “I hope they’re not pestering.” She put the bowl down and distributed the plates around the table, saying to Noah, “You can tell them to bugger off if you like.”
“Nah. They’re awesome.”
“They’re not bad dogs,” Hazel agreed and left again. I half watched, in a daze, and caught the tail end of Leigh’s yawn. Now I was infected, too.
Someone’s belly rumbled, but we didn’t get as far as establishing whose; the wait was finally over, and Hazel and Stuart joined us at the table, not that we were paying any attention to them. The pyramid of pasties had stolen the show. They looked delicious and the smell…mmmm.
“Help yourselves,” Hazel invited. She didn’t have to tell us twice.
I usually avoided pastry because it was high in calories, but God, those pasties were good, and they were crammed with veggies, so healthy in a way—same with anything eaten in moderation.
However, there wasn’t much in the way of moderation happening here, and the four of us scoffed three pasties each. Three! The usual post-splurge guilt threatened an appearance, and I quickly quashed it. I’d eaten the same as everyone else—the normal people—but I bowed out on dessert: Cornish vanilla ice cream. It wasn’t that hard to resist.
“I’ve got some little cakes,” Hazel offered.
“No, thank you,” I said with what I hoped was a gracious smile. I could get my fill of joy from watching Leigh eat their ice cream, although I’d needed a pee when we were on the coach, and it was getting a bit desperate. “Could I use your bathroom, please?”
“Course you can. Just along the hall there. We’ll show you where everything is before you retire for the night. You don’t want to be using that chemical toilet when you can come in here and use a proper one.”
“OK. Thanks.” I set off in the direction Hazel had indicated and found the bathroom on the second attempt—the first being the sitting room. It had to be about the same floor area as our flat, and there was a piano in there, along with a couple of sofas and a huge TV. There was also a large print on the wall that only half-registered on my way to the bathroom, but the mental image stayed with me, and I slowed on the way back to confirm I was right: it was a portrait of baby Matty and, I assumed, his mum.
I returned to the dining room to find everyone helping clear the table. Hazel and Stuart led us through to the kitchen—also huge—and told us to help ourselves to whatever we wanted for the duration of our stay. While Leigh, Matty and Noah took turns with the bathroom, Stuart gave me the wi-fi password and then invited us to sit with them and watch TV, but we were bushed, so we said our goodnights and thanked them for the amazing food, and for having us, and plodded back across the enchanted garden to the camper van.
Noah and Matty had no shame at all. Both stripped to their boxers in plain sight while Leigh and I loitered awkwardly, waiting for them to get out of the way. It didn’t take them very long, though it felt like forever, and Leigh’s sigh, when Matty finally pulled down the shutter that concealed their bed, was easily as loud as mine.
“I’ll get changed in there,” Leigh suggested, nodding at the bathroom door.
“Is there enough space?”
“I’m only little.” They grinned and dug out their PJs and wash bag. “Be back soon.”
“OK,” I said, already frantically digging through my bag for my PJs and then almost falling flat on my face in my hurry to get them on. In the absence of a toothbrush, I swilled with mouthwash at the sink in the kitchen area and then Marine-crawled up the bed, diving under the duvet with seconds to spare.
“That was quick,” Leigh observed.
“I’m warming it up for you,” I said.
They put their wash bag away and climbed onto the bed. “Would now be a good time to tell you I have really cold feet?”
“Literally or figuratively?”
“Oh, only literally.” Leigh slid the door shut and joined me under the duvet. I squealed.
“You weren’t kidding, were you?”
“Nope.” Leigh giggled and shuffled closer. No exaggeration, it was like having blocks of ice on my shins.
“I don’t mind being your hot water bottle,” I said bravely, and I didn’t. Far from it.
After a bit of arms-under-and-over nonsense, we settled into a good sleeping position, and kissed goodnight. Slowly, gently, arousingly…but there was no urgency. The only thought in my head as I drifted off to sleep was how much I wanted this, every night, for the rest of my life.
* * * * *