The Lost Guide to Life and Love Read Online Free PDF Page A

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 longsilence 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 intothe 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