I walk along behind her, feeling lighter than I have in a long time. I know it won’t last, but right now, I’m simply happy to see Emilie happy. She was excited to move up here. I don’t think she fully understands that Gramps is never coming back – it still hasn’t fully sunk in for me – but her questions about him are becoming fewer and less distressing.
‘Hello, boys!’ I call to the males as we make our way past their paddock.
‘Hello, boys!’ Emilie mimics me, making me laugh.
I swing her up onto my hip and pause by the drystone wall as Heath comes over. Emilie reaches out, hoping to stroke his pure white nose. He sniffs her, then retreats.
‘How’s it going, old man?’ I ask softly.
Alpacas have a lifespan of around fifteen to twenty years, so at the ripe old age of twenty-one, Heath is on his last legs.
He was one of the first crias to be born on the farm. Hazel and Hyacinth also arrived the same month, but they passed away a couple of years ago.
It was Daisy, one of our original seven alpacas, who inspired us to name our cria after plants and flowers. She was three years old when we got her, as were Derek and David. Edna, Elizabeth, Edith and Eddie were all only two. The person my parents bought them from had allocated a letter of the alphabet to their year of birth to make it easier to remember their ages. My parents decided to continue with the tradition, forgoing F and G and beginning with H when the first crias were born that spring.
Having skipped a few letters that weren’t very inspiring, we’ve now come full circle.
I have no idea what we’ll do next year, if not plants and flowers.
That’s if we still have the herd.
For a moment, I imagine what it would feel like to stand here, staring at an empty field, and I realise it would destroy me to sell off the herd too. They’re like family.
I pinch the tip of Emilie’s nose and she giggles. ‘Let’s go set those cheeky chickens free.’
* * *
We’re standing on the sandbank in the middle of the stream when a dark-grey pickup truck rumbles slowly along the lane.
Emilie is stomping her boots at the edge of the water, creating splashes that make the recently released chickens flap and squawk with fright.
‘If you scare them too much, they might not lay any eggs for tomorrow’s breakfast.’ My mind is only partly on the warning.
I watch as George cuts the engine and climbs out of his truck.
I still can’t get over how grown up he looks, how manly… It’s such a rubbish description, but it’s apt.
Theo always seemed younger than his years. George looks like the thirty-year-old man that he is, and then some.
He holds up his hand in a casual wave and I mimic the gesture, my stomach a tangle of nerves as he comes to stand on the bridge.
‘You’ve taken a trip to Chicken Island, I see.’
‘It’s still as resplendent as ever,’ I reply, gazing up at him.
He smiles down at me, resting his forearms on the wooden railing that’s permanently slippery with mildew thanks to the shade of the evergreens growing nearby. He’s wearing a dark-blue shirt over a cream-coloured T-shirt with charcoal grey jeans and chunky black boots.
‘You look like two peas in a pod.’ He nods towards Emilie.
I glance at her, then down at myself, before laughing and shaking my head with amusement.
‘I do that sometimes, and I don’t even know I’m doing it.’
I’m wearing an almost identical outfit, although my wellies are dark green rather than sunny yellow, and my floral dress is more of a mossy grey. Instead of a jumper, I have on a rose grey cardie that Mum knitted for me years ago using Marshmallow’s fleece. It’s an old favourite: so soft and cosy and exactly what I need right now.
George is still looking at Emilie, but his expression has grown pensive. I wonder what he’s thinking.
Does every little girl remind him of Sophie?
He meets my eyes. ‘How did packing up your flat go?’
‘Fine.’
He nods at the chicken coop. ‘Have you collected the eggs?’
‘Not yet.’
‘I’ll do it.’
‘You can help us. Do you want to come and collect the eggs, Emilie?’ I ask before George can speak again.
‘Yeah!’ she yells, stomping through the water to the grassy edge and sending two more birds into a frenzy.
George jumps down from the end of the bridge to the soft earth beneath the conifers. Emilie runs after him as he makes his way towards the coop.
I follow at a slower pace, my stomach squirming. George has to duck right down to enter the pen – as do I, although to a lesser extent – but Emilie wanders straight in and picks up a pure white feather from the ground. She lifts it up to her eyes and studies it. George casts me a smile and my jitters ramp up a notch.
Emilie slips the feather into one of the pockets on her jumper and picks up another – brown this time – putting that into her pocket too.
‘What are you going to do with those?’ I ask as she reaches for a couple more.
She shrugs.
‘You could make a pillow for one of your teddies,’ I suggest.
She looks at me, her hazel eyes wide.
‘Did you know that pillows and cushions are sometimes stuffed with feathers?’ I ask. ‘You can have a look at some of Nanna’s when we get back.’
George opens up the door to the nest boxes and peers inside.
‘Oops,’ he says.
‘What’s wrong?’ I step forward to look, expecting to see cracked carnage, considering his reaction, but I’m met instead with the sight of a dozen or so glossy-white and matt-brown eggs.
‘I don’t have anything to carry them in.’
‘Oh. Me neither,’ I reply, hyper aware of his close proximity. There’s so much of him that it feels as though he’s everywhere.
‘I’ll nip up to the house.’
‘No, don’t bother, we can carry them between us. Emilie?’
She looks over at me.
‘Can you carry some eggs in your jumper?’
She nods and walks over, pulling out her jumper to create a dip in the middle. I pick up a couple of eggs and place them gently in the centre of her makeshift basket.
‘You’ve done this before,’ George says.
I smile. ‘Yep.’
‘I can carry some too.’ He pulls out his own T-shirt.
I think he’s overestimating how many eggs there are, but my thoughts are distracted by the sight of his flat stomach and the V-shaped muscle that runs diagonally from his hips towards his pelvis. I quickly avert my gaze and reach back into the nest box, fumbling for a couple more eggs and finding them surprisingly slippery all of a sudden.
I allocate another two eggs to my daughter and pick up four more. ‘You can probably carry the last few in your hands,’ I mumble, hoping George hasn’t noticed me blushing.
‘Hello!’ Mum chirps when we arrive back. ‘I’ve just put the kettle on. Will you have a brew?’ she asks as she puts our eggs into a carton, ready to take to the Cracked Teapot.
‘I should probably get on,’ George replies.
He’s been clearing the stream and cutting back the undergrowth alongside it, a job that Dad had been talking about tackling for the last two years.