stone barns, with high, dark doorways. It was a weird, empty landscape. What’s more, there seemed to be no road up to it. I began to wonder just what I’d booked.
‘You’ll have to back out of the yard and follow the track through the stream. Don’t try and get over the bridge. It’s built for horses and pedestrians, not cars. The key’s in the door. I’ve put the heating on and I think everything’s self-explanatory. But if not, just pop down and we’ll put you right. Anything you need, just ask. If I’m not here, I’m not far.’
I thanked her and we got back into the car and Jake manoeuvred it out and along the track.
‘A bloody ford!’ he muttered. ‘Let’s hope it doesn’t rain much more or we’ll be washed away. You couldn’t have chosen anything further away if you’d tried.’
‘But Simeon Maynard’s grouse moor is just over there,’ I waved vaguely, ‘That’s why I chose it. Only a mile or so as the crow flies.’
‘I am not a bloody crow,’ said Jake through gritted teeth as we splashed and bumped through the ford, past the narrow packhorse bridge.
The stream…the ford…the packhorse bridge…
My mother’s voice echoed in my ears. This must have been where she came with her mother, my grandmother. This must be where part of her family—my family—had come from. So I wasn’t coming somewhere new and strange. I was coming home. What a thought. My ancestors had lived and worked in this strange, empty landscape. I tried to get my head round it and felt quite ridiculously excited.
Unlike Jake. ‘This track is going to do nothing for the suspension of the car. We’ll be lucky if the exhaust doesn’t drop off before the end of the week,’ he grumbled as he pulled up alongside the cottage.
We sat in the car and stared at it. It wasn’t a pretty house. No roses round the door. No cottage garden. Grey and solid, it was a no-nonsense, take-me-as-you-find-me sort of house, looking down the hill and across the moors. The road was so steep I felt I could drop a stone down the chimney of the farmhouse far below us. We got out of the car into a gust of wind so sudden and strong I thought it would blow us away as we ran indoors, heads down and jackets flapping. I wondered where on earth we’d come to.
But inside the cottage was warm and welcoming. As well as the central heating, there was a wood-burning stove in the small living room, which was cheerful with brightly coloured curtains and rugs and a big squashy sofa. The kitchen was modern farmhouse, lots of terracotta and pine and a stunning view from the window above the sink. On the table was a tray with mugs, a teapot, a fruit cake and a wedge of cheese and a note saying there was milk and a bottle of wine in the fridge.
Relieved that there were at least some elements of civilisation in this wild and windblown place, I dumped my bag on the floor, switched on the kettle and looked at the huge folder of information.
Jake, meanwhile, was stamping round, clutching his mobile and muttering angrily.
‘No signal! No bloody signal!’
‘Try outside,’ I said, calmly, ‘it might work better there.’
But two minutes later he was back. ‘Not even one rotten bar. Absolutely nothing.’
I’d made some tea and was looking through the notes Mrs Alderson had left. ‘It says here that there’s Internet access from the pub.’
Jake looked horrified. ‘From the pub! The pub all that way across the moors? You mean we haven’t got it here?’
‘Nope,’ I said, still reading. ‘Problem with phone lines, or lack of them. Too isolated apparently.’
And that’s when Jake lost it. ‘You mean I’ve got to drive down the track and through that bloody stream to the pub every time I want to check my emails?’ he shouted. ‘That you’ve brought us to a place in the back of bloody beyond, that has no mobile phone signal, no phone and no Internet access and is halfway up a mountain in the middle of a bloody moor in the middle of nowhere? Tilly, I’m meant to be working here. This isn’t a bloody holiday! How can I work without the tools of my trade?’
‘Well, it’s not far to the pub,’ I said soothingly. ‘You can get a mobile signal there too, it says here. Come on,’ I continued, trying to coax him into a better mood. I seemed to have been doing a lot of that lately. ‘Have a cup of tea and some of this fruit cake. It’s really good.’
‘Don’t you understand?’ he yelled in a fury, ‘I can not work here. It is utterly impractical. Out of the question. We can’t stay here. End of. Put your bag back in the car. We’ll have to find somewhere else. Maybe the pub for tonight until we find something else. Come on.’ And he walked out of the warm, welcoming kitchen and back to the car.
I started to follow him and stopped. As he stood by the car waiting for me, his jacket billowing out in the wind, I thought about how tricky things had been with Jake. I thought how he seemed to have changed lately. I thought about how I seemed to spend so much of my time trying to please him, keep him happy—and failing. I thought about how we hardly spoke about his work and never ever spoke about mine. I thought about the way we just didn’t seem to fit together any more. I thought about the long silence all the way up the Great North Road. And I wondered if what we had was really worth another row, another few days of tiptoeing round him trying to keep him happy. I thought about that stream and the ford and the packhorse bridge. And without really meaning to, I made a decision.
‘I’m not coming with you,’ I said, my voice shaking only a bit.
Jake looked at me as if I were mad.
‘Come on, Tilly, don’t be stupid. It’s no time to play games. It’s been a long day. I’m tired. We need to find somewhere else to stay.’
‘I’ve got somewhere. I’m staying here,’ I said, very calmly, though I knew as I said it that it was about much more than where we stayed tonight. Or where we stayed for the next two weeks. I knew that—as far as Jake and I were concerned—after two years together, this was a point of no return.
Jake was quieter now, but impatient, exasperated. ‘Look, be realistic. I can’t stay here with no phone reception and no Internet. And you can’t stay here by yourself.’ He looked at me as though I were terminally stupid. Come to think of it, he often did that. And suddenly I’d had enough.
‘Why not?’ I thought of the little packhorse bridge and the stream. My family had lived here. It might be strange, but I had roots here. Already I could almost feel them tugging at me. I wasn’t going to turn round and go before I’d had even a day to explore.
‘Because you’d be on your own and—’
‘Maybe I want to be on my own.’
My words hung in silence. Jake stood and looked at me for a few, long seconds. I stared back. Coolly. Calmly. I hoped he couldn’t hear my heart thudding.
‘Right,’ he said, ‘I’ve got no time to play games with you. If that’s the way you want it, suit yourself.’ And he got into the car, slammed the door and drove angrily down the track.
I watched him go, watched the car twist down the hill, sploosh through the ford, past the farmhouse and the bridge, and then disappear, like a little Dinky Toy along the winding track over the moor, getting ever smaller until he was out of sight, and I was alone. In a little house on the top of a moor, miles from anywhere.
For a moment I wanted to run down the hillside after Jake, saying sorry, sorry, all a mistake. For another moment, I felt desperately sad and abandoned—even though I was the one who had done the abandoning. For yet another moment I was panicking, terrified of being alone miles from anywhere.
But then, while all that was going on, I felt the small stirrings of a strange new feeling. I was so surprised that it took me a moment to work out what it was. Then I realised. It was relief—relief at not having to put up with Jake’s increasingly sour moods, of always having to do things his way, of living with the feeling