I'm Normally Perfect (re-upload)

Chapter Forty-Five

In the morning we set off for Tillington. I drove until the traffic became unbearable then Alex took over. I very nearly kissed Anthony on my way in calling a cheery, 'Hullo!' to him. He looked at me as though I'd just sprouted antlers.

As Alex was bringing her bags for Italy out of the boot she called up to him, 'Oh, Anthony, Catherine's not going back to America, she'll be staying with us for a month.'

He said in an unimpressed way, 'Oh, how delightful,' and watched me haul in two bags and Constance and Nathalie bringing in two more apiece. He asked dryly, 'Do you have enough luggage?'

'Oh, well, you know, Alex thought I should leave some things here, since I'll be coming with her from now on. Most of this are those things.' I smiled cheerfully and continued on to my room. I couldn't believe I'd ever found him intimidating.

Our month there Alex spent the mornings in one or the other of her studios. She was still working on the series of tarot card paintings and had begun a small statue (this one really was small), then we'd have a long walk after lunch and take our tea out in my gazebo, weather permitting. In the afternoon she'd usually play in the garden around my gazebo, she'd decided to make it into a rose garden for me and was training the roses to grow around the white beams. Anthony wasn't altogether thrilled with his sister redoing a bit of their father's garden, but she said it was only a small bit and their father would have liked it. Whilst she played in the dirt I sat in the little gazebo and wrote and watched her. She had some interesting conversations with her plants, I'll say that. When I asked if they were clever conversationalists she responded dryly,

'You've no idea.' She grinned, digging away, 'Besides, you talk to yourself when you write.'

'I do not! I'm talking to the characters. That's totally different.'

She nodded understandingly, 'Oh. Right.'

I laughed, 'It is. They don't always do what I want and then we have to have big conversations about what their problems are.'

'I see.'

Once a week or so Alex would go into the village and stop by the antique shop. I usually drove for the practice and after saying hello to Tony I'd walk around the village and stop in at Jacob's. I loved going into the village. It had great cobblestone streets and long lanes of houses connected by single walls. Pretty much like every other English village, but I recall it fondly because it was the first one I ever really saw. I'd hire a bike and ride about while Alex took care of whatever business she had at the shop and then we'd have tea in a tiny teashop with lace curtains and hand-sewn tea cosies called Bess'. If you like quaint things, that's definitely the place to go, I felt like an EF Benson character dining there.

In the evenings after dinner and Alex's obligatory game of something with her brother in the library she and I would retire to her room and read or chat and have our baths. Sometimes I slept in her room. Sometimes I slept in mine.

The second week of July I asked Violet to make a birthday cake for Alex and after dinner (at which I proposed a toast to Alex's birthday and Anthony looked genuinely surprised, I think he'd forgotten it) she and I took what was left over after the staff had slices and had a little chocolate orgy in her room. It was two layers of chocolate cake sandwiching a layer of chocolate mousse, and covered in chocolate icing. Deadly. I waited until after our baths to give Alex her gift: the obligatory hand-made card and a set of artists' supplies in a handmade wooden box. It had been wonderful being able to get exactly what I wanted for her without worrying over the price. She gaped when she unwrapped the mahogany box and began lifting out the tiers of charcoals, pencils, pens, watercolours and various instruments whose purpose I hadn't the foggiest clue about.