Bees can vote. When a new nest site is found, scout bees use the waggle dance to inform the other bees of the location, and when enough bees have checked it out and agreed, they do a dance of approval until a majority is reached.
The second day is pretty much the same. The only thing that’s changed is that Carey’s wearing a different, but no less impressive, T-shirt.
‘Bagpuss today.’ I point at his chest when he meets me on the roof the next morning with two cups of coffee. ‘You have excellent taste.’
‘Thank you, Queen Bee.’ He does a mock bow and hands me one of the mugs. ‘And good morning.’
I mumble a good morning as I sit down on the bench next to him. It’s earlier today. One of the Nectar Inspectors will be here at five o’clock this afternoon to pick up the crates of honey and deliver them to Gracie’s shop in time for tomorrow’s rush, and I thought I’d better get a timely start. ‘I didn’t expect you to be here so early.’
‘Why? You weren’t waiting for the opportunity to jab me awake by ramming a fire poker into my kidney, were you?’
I reach over and smack at his leg.
He grins. ‘I love mornings.’
‘You weird, weird person.’
It makes him laugh out loud. ‘Bee never too busy for a morning coffee. And it’s different here. Peaceful and quiet. I feel like the only person on the planet when I’m here. Early mornings, you can watch the bunnies bouncing around and the birds coming over to the feeders for their breakfast. I feel like an intruder in the daytime, but in those post-dawn early morning hours, I can sit unseen and watch the grounds coming to life around me, and I feel like Elderflower Grove doesn’t mind me being here.’
‘You’re really into nature and wildlife and stuff then?’
‘I’m a gardener – of course I am. You must be too with the bees and all.’
‘Oh yeah, totally. Yay nature.’ I wave an imaginary pompom. I can’t say I’m into nature either way – only enough to know that a place like this should stay as natural and wildlife-friendly as it is now, and not be replaced by a theme park.
I open the Honey House and pull my bee suit on while Carey’s still outside and not watching every time I stumble over because a leg is stuck in an arm hole. Babies wear romper suits because they have a parent to dress them – no one ever mentions how complicated it is getting into one as an adult.
We quickly fall back into the routine of yesterday, and the day passes in a blur of honey and companionable silence. Before I know it, there’s the honk of a horn and a pick-up truck pulls up outside the gate.
‘It can’t be five already!’ I look at Carey in horror. ‘We’re not done!’
‘We’re close enough.’ He pushes himself onto tiptoes and peers through the window. ‘You go and stall him, I’ll do a final count.’
I race down the steps from the roof and forge my way through the trampled brambles and weeds that are getting more trodden down every day.
‘Hello!’ The man who climbs out of the pick-up greets me. ‘You must be Kayleigh. I’m Wilbur, second-in-command of the Nectar Inspectors. Come to pick up Gracie’s honey order.’
He’s a tall guy, probably in his sixties, with arms like tree trunks and salt-and-pepper short hair. He’s also wearing a pair of bee deely boppers on his head, and a black vest top with a tiny bee embroidered on the chest pocket.
‘Did you get all the jars done? It must’ve made for a busy week!’
‘Ah, I wasn’t alone. I had—’ I remember I’m not supposed to mention Carey and amend quickly. ‘Help from the bees! You could say the bees did a vast majority of the work!’
I laugh much louder than anything is actually funny, until he starts looking at me like I’ve not got all my cornflakes in one box, and I tell him I’ll start bringing the honey down.
When I get back to the rooftop, Carey’s hefting the second crate outside the Honey House door.
I pick it up, surprised at the weight of twenty jars, especially because he’s moving them with no trouble. I use a knee to push it up into my arms properly and stumble backwards under the weight.
‘I’d help but I can’t be seen.’ He sighs and takes pity on me. ‘I’ll bring them to the bottom of the steps, the wall is high enough to hide behind. You’ll have to take them from there. Just don’t let him come in.’
Letting him come in isn’t a problem. Sweat is beading on my forehead by the time I get back to the gate where Wilbur is waiting, but like Gracie, he stays outside and peers in worriedly, looking like he’s expecting a ghost to jump out at any moment or a wheelie bin to roll past of its own accord.
I let him take the crate out of my hands and load it into the back of the truck, and when I get back to the house, Carey’s standing on the bottom step, waiting to hand the next crate over to me. He’s hidden by the tall wall the steps are built into and holding the crate against one hip like it weighs nothing.
‘Thank you,’ I mouth at him, my arms nearly being pulled from their sockets as I almost drop the thing.
After I’ve brought a few more crates down to the gate and stacked them on the pavement for Wilbur to load in, I take a breather. ‘Will Gracie really sell all this?’
‘Probably by Monday.’
‘What?’ He’s winding me up. There aren’t five hundred people in Little Kettling, and surely not all of them want jars of honey.
‘She’ll ration a few crates over the next couple of months, until the big harvest at the end of the season, but the locals are getting desperate. They were allowed only a maximum of two jars each last autumn, so they’ve had to eke it out. It’s the cure for everything, you know? Coughs and colds, digestive issues, ulcers, cuts and burns. It’s anti-ageing. It’s a moisturiser or an antiseptic. My wife’s paranoid about her wrinkles, she ran out in January and the mass-produced supermarket stuff is no match for genuine Elderflower Grove honey. My mother-in-law even put it on a bunion once and she swears it disappeared.’
‘That sounds … uncomfortably sticky.’ The mental image of honey on feet is not a good one.
‘They’re such special bees from this special place. Raw honey straight from the hives – nature’s cure for everything, nothing more powerful than that.’
Hanging from the mirror in Wilbur’s truck is a crocheted bee with a ‘bee kind’ flag, and a honey jar charm. People really love these bees.
‘Elderflower Grove honey has got a cult following online,’ he says when he sees me looking. ‘When the big harvest arrives in the autumn, Gracie starts shipping internationally. She’s got hundreds of pre-orders already.’
Big harvest? Was five hundred jars not the big harvest?
He points to the poster of the local councillor that’s still on the gate where Gracie put it. ‘He was at it again last night. The grass verges and central islands on the nearby motorway. The flowers had just started to open, and now they’re all gone again. Last week he filled in the pond in the local park. A hazard, so he said. A haven for wildlife, more like. Thank god for people like us trying to help. At least the Elderflower Grove bees will never be short of pollen, eh?’ He nods towards the elderflower trees.
It makes that little thread of dismay feel like it’s being yanked through me. No one has any idea about Elderflower Grove being repossessed.
By the time I get back, Carey’s stacked crate after crate at the bottom of the steps, and I collect them one by one, feeling ridiculously grateful. I don’t know how unlikely it is to stumble across someone living in an abandoned manor house, but it’s definitely unlikely that the person also turns out to be so kind and willing to help.
When Wilbur has finished loading the crates into the back of his truck, he beckons me over, still unwilling to take even a step inside the gate.
He fishes something from his pocket and holds his hand out, and when I open my palm, another smooth stone is dropped into it, this one with a painted bee and the words ‘bee-lieve in magic’ and some sprigs of elderflower blossom.
‘Thank you on behalf of the Nectar Inspectors,’ Wilbur says. ‘We know it was a tall order on short notice.’
I’m inexplicably welling up. ‘Oh, it’s fine, no problem at all,’ I stutter, feeling guilty for taking the credit when Carey’s done half the work. I stroke my fingers over the smooth stone. ‘Thank you.’
‘My granddaughter painted it especially for you. She thinks you’re some kind of superhero.’
‘Superheroes have more attractive outfits than this.’ I shake one of the sleeves of the bee suit, the hood hanging down over my back.
‘Well, we all think you’re very brave to face the ghosts. No sightings yet?’
‘None at all.’
‘Poor Josie.’ He shakes his head, looking up at the house. ‘Breaks my heart to imagine what she must’ve gone through.’
‘Did you know her well?’
‘Used to, when we were younger, but not in the later years. She was always such a big part of village life, and then she stopped. Pulled away. Wouldn’t let anyone in or speak to any of us. No one had seen her for ages before she died.’
He doesn’t mention there being any question over her death.
I thank him again for the stone, still blushing at the idea of being a superhero in a beekeeping suit. Best not start wearing my knickers on the outside though.
He says goodbye and gets into his truck, and I wait until he pulls away and then lock the gate and plod back up the stone steps to the rooftop.
Carey’s leaning in one of the notches of the battlement roof. ‘We did it!’
He holds his hand out to give me a high five. I slap my hand against his and his fingers close around mine and tug our joined hands downwards before letting go. ‘That was fun.’
‘That was amazing. I didn’t think we could do it.’ I couldn’t get the smile off my face if I wanted to. I was so daunted when I got here on Tuesday, and to have actually managed to extract and jar that much honey is unreal, and I still think this might be some kind of dream.
‘Thank you, bees, you amazing little creatures!’ I call to the hives on the opposite end of the roof. ‘You little stars! I’m sorry for every time I’ve batted you away when you wanted to share a picnic with me!’
Carey laughs. ‘How can you be so surprised? You must have done this hundreds of times.’
I gulp, and not just because my mouth is still dry from lack of oxygen. ‘Well, yeah, but … not here. Not on this scale. Not with a two-day deadline. Not with hives I don’t know and an extractor I’ve never used before. And, more importantly, not with your help.’
‘Probably more of a hindrance than a help with the fear of bees.’
‘Not at all, you were invaluable.’ I really am embarrassingly out of breath, and he hasn’t even broken a sweat.
Carey reaches across the wall and picks up a glass of water that he’s put ready for me and hands it over.
‘Thanks.’ I slurp it gratefully.
‘You’re going to ache in places you didn’t know you had. C’mere.’ Before I realise what he’s doing, he’s stepped nearer and turned me around. His hands are on my shoulders, massaging gently through the thick material of the bee suit. ‘I’m sorry about having to hide. You know what the gossip will be like if anyone finds out I’m here.’
It’s the closest I’ve got to him so far. I can feel his height behind me, the strength of his gorgeous hands pressing into my shoulders, rubbing gently. They are going to ache tomorrow, I can tell that much, but with Carey’s hands on them and his apple-like aftershave so close, it doesn’t matter.
I enjoy the massage for a few moments before he jumps backwards like he’s been burnt. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to do that. I’ve been on my own for so long that I’ve forgotten how to act around other people. I’m forgetting I don’t know you well enough to touch you without permission yet.’ He shakes his head at himself. ‘No wonder you wanted that fire poker nearby.’
‘Care, it’s fine.’ In my head, I cling onto the ‘yet’ part of that sentence. I’d like to say something fun and flirty, like ‘carry on if you want to’, but he looks embarrassed and the moment is gone.
It wasn’t an intimate touch, but the atmosphere between us is awkward and odd, and I’m absolutely sure he’s not going to expand on exactly how long he’s been alone, which is what I really want to know, especially after the comments about past relationships yesterday.
‘Thanks for noticing my level of unfitness,’ I say to break the tension, glad when it works because he laughs and goes back to looking out across the grounds.
I walk around him and lean on the wall in the next notch along, and reach out and touch the back of my fingers against his bare forearm. ‘Thank you.’ I pull my hand away quickly. ‘Couldn’t have done it without you. Literally could not have done it without you, Carey.’
He glances at me and smiles. ‘How was that for a baptism of fire?’
‘Why does everyone keep saying that? That’s what the interviewing bee said too.’ I try to groan, but I’m still so buoyant that I can’t stop smiling. ‘It was fun, actually. Did we make the quota? If not, I’ll have to take however many we were short on over to Gracie in the morning.’
‘Five hundred and seven jars to be exact.’
I let out a whoop and he smiles again, those dimples at the corners of his lips making me feel more fluttery than the thought of actually succeeding in a job I didn’t think I could do. ‘That’s brilliant. Bee-rilliant, even. Getting things right hasn’t been my strong point lately.’
‘Mine neither.’ His wide smile turns into a small, lopsided smile with only one dimple – an expression of solidarity. It intrigues me. While I believe he could be Josie Garringham’s grandson and that it’s easier to stay here while he looks for evidence, it also seems odd to lock yourself away in a crumbling old manor with only a few ghosts for company, and I get the feeling he’s holding back.
He walks across the roof and ducks inside the Honey House before returning with a jar of honey in each hand.
‘You kept the extras,’ I say, laughing. Of course he did. ‘Seven jars! The villagers will have the police on us. At the rate the honey seems to go around here, we could sell them on eBay for £200 a pop.’
‘The worst part is, we’d probably get it too. I’ve never known a village so obsessed with honey.’ He hands me one of the jars. ‘Don’t know about you, but I’m taking one of these. Thank you, bees. Terrifying, scary bees.’
I use the jar of honey to salute towards the hives. ‘Thank you, bees. Sweet, fuzzy, environmental geniuses.’
I never eat honey. There’s always a jar in Mum’s cupboard in case anyone gets a cold, and it’s usually been there for so long that it’s set solid. Honey reminds me of being ill when I was little and drinking hot honey and lemon to soothe a sore throat.
‘I’ve got to ask an expert – what’s your favourite honey-based dish? I never buy the stuff, but now I want to make the most of this … fountain of eternal youth or whatever it is.’
The laugh distracts me from trying to think of an answer. I’m supposed to be an expert on all things honey, and the most exciting thing I can think of is a Lemsip.
‘Bagels!’ I say in a burst of inspiration so sudden that it makes him jump. I remember a friend saying she was enjoying honey on a toasted bagel for breakfast, which is just about the most inventive honey use I can think of at such short notice.
‘That sounds remarkably … simple. I was expecting the honey expert to say something you’d be charged eighty-five quid for in a posh restaurant … Just plain bagels and honey?’ He sounds confused.
And I’m really hoping my friend’s throwaway comment about her breakfast one day a few months ago is right. ‘I’ll prove it. I’ll be here in time for breakfast tomorrow morning, and I’ll bring the bagels.’
He laughs because I sound so serious that I should be in a Robert De Niro film, and then he uses the honey jar to indicate back across the roof. ‘Do you usually use the beeswax? There’s loads of it leftover.’
‘Use the beeswax?’
‘Well, people make things with it, don’t they? Didn’t you mention something about candles yesterday?’
Did I? ‘No.’ My voice is too sharp and wasn’t meant to sound that snappy. I don’t ever want to think about making candles again, but that’s not his fault. I sigh. ‘I used to. But now I don’t.’
There are a few chapters towards the end of the bee bible about beeswax, but reading them wasn’t a priority, but maybe it should be. Should bee. The pun makes me think of the stone Wilbur gave me, and I dig it out of my pocket and put it down on the wall between us.
‘Aww.’ Carey pushes his bottom lip out, and although he sounds mocking, he traces his finger across the design with a wistful look on his face. ‘That’s sweet.’
He sighs and rests his chin on his hands on the wall, sounding thoughtful and faraway as he gazes out across the grounds.
The white sprays of the elderflower trees rustle in the early evening breeze and unseen birds in nearby trees are singing their hearts out. It’s something you hear often in a leafy, quiet village like this, but I’ve never really stopped to appreciate it before, to listen to the distinct melody each bird sings.
‘I think you could here.’ His voice makes me jump from where I was lost in a reverie. ‘Believe in magic,’ he adds when I glance over at him.
He goes back to looking out, his chin leaning so heavily on his hands that he has to speak from the side of his mouth. ‘I wish I could stay here forever. It’s like a different world. Like nothing bad has ever happened here, even though something bad obviously did happen here. It’s an escape in the middle of real life. Stepping through the gate is like pressing the pause button. We all need to do that sometimes.’
Now we’ve hit the honey target, I can’t wait to go and explore the grounds. Walk by the lake to make sure Mr Darcy isn’t about to emerge from it. He’s right though. Things seem different here. Even when racing to make five hundred jars of honey, I’ve found there’s a peacefulness about Elderflower Grove, and it seems to be a part of Carey too. Not once in the past two days has he got riled or snapped or rushed.
I take a deep breath and let it out slowly, enjoying the way the air fills my lungs to an almost uncomfortable capacity.
It feels like the first time I’ve breathed in over a year.