When she was confident her fire wouldn’t go out, Helena flopped back on to the sofa and picked up her wine glass. ‘So,’ she said, ‘what was the best thing you saw today?’
‘I’ll tell you what the worst thing was – that blanket that looked if it was literally made out of what was picked up from the cow-shed floor,’ said Amy. ‘But I did love that alpaca stuff. Such fine wool. I must get hold of some and give it a go. And did you see Elaine? Isn’t she looking great these days? She’s definitely better fatter.’
They chatted on about the various people and projects they had seen, what was new and what was boringly the same.
‘I must say I was relieved that my wall hangings went down so well,’ said Helena, having stirred the beef and dumplings and put it on for a few more minutes. ‘I was quite nervous about them, I must say. My work is usually far more ordered than that.’
‘They worked very well artistically, and I loved the great chunky bits of fleece in them.’ Amy frowned. ‘Where did you get the idea from?’
‘Can’t I ever have invented anything? Do I always have to have got the idea from somewhere else?’
‘I’m sure your brain is a simmering mass of inspiration but I’m sure you said something about cake that I didn’t understand.’
Amy got up to find bowls into which she put the stew. She carved two huge slices from a loaf they’d bought at the show and put thick slabs of Welsh butter on them. She brought it all over and set it down on the coffee table. Helena opened another bottle of wine. It was going to be that sort of night.
‘Yes, it was a cake my mother made for her boyfriend. I admit it.’
‘What? Gilly’s got a boyfriend! Oh – the silver fox my mum saw her with at the opera? That’s great!’
‘No, not him! He wasn’t such a great catch, it turned out.’ Helena went on to explain what was wrong with him until Amy was convinced.
‘So, tell me about this other boyfriend?’
‘Well, he’s her accountant so they’ve known each other for years but have only got to know each other properly just recently. The cake was for a surprise party his aunt gave him. It was a bird’s-eye view of what you see when gliding, apparently. Mum suspended a glider over it. I saw the pictures as well as the cake. And then I got the idea of doing a cross section of the earth.’
‘Well, they looked amazing. And you produced quite a lot of other work considering you’d cleaned yourself out for Springtime.’
‘That was because Jago was so amazing at looking after me so all I had to do was work.’ She paused. ‘I couldn’t have managed without him.’
‘I know you’ve been pretending you’re a couple – don’t think you can pull the wool over my eyes – excuse the pun – but are you really a couple now?’ Amy sounded wistful.
‘Yes.’
Amy nodded slowly. ‘And you’re sure about this? Obviously you’ve had boyfriends but you always said they were just a bit of fun, and it was only very recently you said you didn’t have time for men.’
‘It’s amazing what you find time for when you fall in love.’
There was a long silence. ‘So Jago is the real deal? The one, etc., etc.?’
‘Yup.’ To lighten the mood a little she added, ‘And in case, like Mum, you were wondering, he is definitely not gay.’
‘Gilly thought he was gay? Oh, that’s adorable! Why?’
‘Because he borrowed a hot-water bottle for me. She told me she thought hot-water bottles were camp.’
‘That’s so sweet! And so like Gilly.’
‘I know.’ They sat in silence for a little while, sipping their wine. ‘So, Ames, how was your holiday?’
Amy had been on a yoga retreat, her unspoken agenda to find a man with a perfect and very supple body. ‘Lovely, inspiring, a real break but man-wise a total failure. There was this lovely guy on the course but there were more lovely women and he picked one of them.’
‘Oh, Amy, I am sorry.’
‘So, your perfect, hot-water-bottle borrowing hot-sex machine—’
‘I never said that!’
‘—hasn’t got a non-gay best friend, has he?’
Helena laughed, relieved to hear her friend wasn’t too cast down by her failure to snag a yoga expert.
‘Well, now you come to mention it, his best mate from forever, who I still haven’t met, is newly single. You might be just the person to make him happy again.’
‘I might be! Now tell me all about him.’
Helena realised she’d made an error. She knew very little about James apart from his name and that he and Jago went way back. She also knew he liked football and lager, neither of which was going to make him sound attractive to Amy.
‘To be honest, I don’t know anything – hardly anything – except he’s a mate of Jago’s.’
‘Men do sometimes have very peculiar friends and if they’re not peculiar they can be quite ugly.’
‘They can.’
‘So we look him up on Facebook,’ said Amy. ‘Where’s my laptop?’
There were an awful lot of people with the same name as Jago’s friend so Amy suggested they looked up Jago – in fact she had done it almost before Helena had realised her intention.
Helena wasn’t really happy with what Amy was doing – it felt like prying. She and Jago had no secrets between them and somehow looking him up on Facebook without asking felt wrong. But she knew an open objection, or a protest that she didn’t want to, would just encourage Amy in her investigations so she yawned instead.
‘I don’t know about you, Amy, but I’m done in. Can we do all this detective work tomorrow? Or maybe when we’re back home? We’ve got another very long day tomorrow and then we have to drive home.’
‘Oh,’ said Amy, looking disappointed. ‘I expect you’re right.’
‘And tomorrow is another day – you might meet the man of your dreams IRL – In Real Life,’ Helena added with emphasis, just in case Amy was too tired to understand the initials.
‘Yeah, right. I could meet a sheep farmer who knits his own hot-water-bottle covers out of old birds’ nests – how sexy is that?’
‘I think that could be perfectly sexy. But right now I need a shower and bed.’
She also wanted time alone so she could think about Jago uninterrupted.
The following day was similar to the first. There was lots of meeting up with old friends as well as new people coming along, asking tentative questions. Amy and Helena decided to arrange a few more workshops as so many people seemed keen to learn from them. They also wanted to know how to create the wall hangings Helena had made principally because they were relatively quick to make compared to the gossamer-fine silk scarves she had produced for Springtime, which looked so beautiful and took so long.
As they’d sold everything except the wall hangings that had attracted so much attention, they decided to pack up early. Helena was longing to get back to Jago although she didn’t confess this to Amy. It didn’t seem fair when Amy had no one.
Helena had always felt perfectly contented without a man in her life. She hadn’t felt incomplete, or in need of validation, or lonely, but now she had found love (she’d stopped pretending it was anything other than love) she felt this incredible happiness. And while she appeared to be the same, a normal, hardworking woman, in her head she thought of nothing but Jago. She hadn’t believed such love was possible – at least for her.