Evie’s Choice. Terri Nixon

mind my family,’ I said, ‘it’s not them you’re marrying.’

      ‘What sort of an answer is that?’

      ‘It’s a resounding, thunderous yes!’ I stood up again and cupped my hands to my mouth, bellowing down the valley in a most unladylike manner, ‘Mother, can you hear this? I’m going to marry the butcher’s boy!’

      I turned back, still laughing, but Will had stood too, and was looking at me oddly. He folded his arms across his chest, tucking his hands into his armpits, but it seemed less as a way of keeping warm than of keeping his distance.

      My own laughter died. ‘What is it?’

      ‘Why did you say “yes”, Evie?’ he asked quietly, his words almost whipped away in the summer wind.

      ‘What do you mean? I said it because I want to marry you!’

      He blew out a breath and looked down at his feet, and I could see he was struggling with something he didn’t want to say aloud, but felt he must. Eventually he looked back at me, and there was a confused kind of hope in his expression.

      ‘Are you sure you’re not saying it just to upset the apple cart, and you’ll change your mind later?’

      ‘No! Why ever would you ask such a thing?’

      ‘In the market, when I gave you the rose, I thought it was sweet and funny that you put it in your hat-band and said it would annoy your mother. I told myself it was because you were, I don’t know…’ he shrugged, embarrassed, ‘a little bit moved, maybe, and couldn’t think of anything else to say.’

      ‘I was! That was exactly it. Will, don’t –’

      ‘No, listen. Just now, when you agreed to marry me, shouldn’t your first reaction have been to come to me? To kiss me? But no, you stood up and, well yes, gloated that you were going to marry the butcher’s boy. Not me, not Will Davies. The “butcher’s boy”.’

      Remorse struck me as I stared at him, at his usually open, cheerful face, now tight-jawed and frowning. I couldn’t blame him for his anger. I wanted to go to him, as I should have done before but it would just look false now – it was far too late. I simply didn’t know what to do.

      I looked at him helplessly, hoping my regret would show through my wordless inability to move. He looked back, his face pale, his own silence begging me to contradict what he’d said, but I couldn’t find anything big enough, and significant enough, to say. The feelings were swelling inside me, but they couldn’t find a way to be expressed. Eventually I found a tiny voice and managed, ‘Do you still want to marry me?’

      He let his arms drop, but he didn’t hold them out to invite me closer. ‘Of course I do,’ he said, gently enough, then went on in a firmer voice, ‘but I won’t be your toy, a means of annoyance to your mother.’ He shook his head, his expression touched with exasperation now. ‘I don’t understand you sometimes. You clearly love her, but you have this need to push her to the limit of her endurance. I can’t just be another weapon in your armoury.’

      That stung. ‘This is about you and me, Will, no one else.’

      ‘And what of your mother?’

      ‘Well, of course I love her, even though she’s sometimes hard to love.’ I saw a way to convince him then, and hurried on: ‘And yet I’m prepared to risk hurting her to be with you. Doesn’t that tell you all you need to know?’

      ‘You torment her at every chance,’ he pointed out, but he had softened his stance and now took a hesitant step closer. ‘Look, I know you’ve always been a bit of a tearaway, but you’re growing up fast, and Lady Creswell needs to get to know the young lady you’ve become. She’ll never like me, I understand that, but when she sees you’re serious she might give us her blessing.’

      I shook my head. ‘She won’t. And it’s not because of who you are, because if she knew you she would love you as much as I do. It’s because of who you’re not.’

      He slumped a little then, but my words seemed to reach him and he accepted my tentative embrace. We stood for a while, on top of the rock, while our first ever moments of discord gradually slipped away into the breeze, and began to appreciate, once more, this precious time alone together.

      I ran a finger over the back of one of his hands, noting the slender strength of his fingers and remembering their dexterity with the paper sculptures. ‘You never did tell me: how did you end up working for Mr Markham? And what do you want to do, really?’

      ‘I suppose if you’re going to marry me you ought to know something about me,’ he conceded. ‘I have no deep, dark secrets, but you’re right, butchery was never my first choice.’ He jumped off the rock and turned to me, hands outstretched to help, but I’d been jumping off this rock for years and, with a withering look at him, I managed it quite well again today without his help. He grinned and took my hand, tucking it around his arm as we walked up towards the big quarry pit that lay over the hill.

      ‘Dad wanted me to take over the business. He worked seven days a week, but that wasn’t why I left, I’ve never been afraid of a full working life. I just felt as if I had no time to do what I loved most: sculpting wood.’

      I should have expected this; his eye for crafting beautiful things was clearly echoed in the skill of his hands. ‘I had a friend,’ he went on. ‘Nathan. He lived in Blackpool too, but he had family in Breckenhall. Quite well off, I think. We both shared this…’ he looked down at his free hand and flexed the fingers reflectively, ‘this need to create, I suppose.’ He glanced down at me, a little embarrassed, a little defiant.

      ‘Go on,’ I said, delighted to be learning about him at last. ‘Where is Nathan now? Oh, and what was the family business you couldn’t wait to get away from?’

      Will stopped and withdrew his arm from mine to shove his hands in his pockets. ‘You’ll laugh.’

      ‘I won’t, I promise.’

      ‘Cross your heart?’

      ‘Absolutely. I will not laugh.’

      His eyes narrowed in warning, then he shrugged. ‘All right. It was a butcher’s shop.’

      I bit my lip, but it was no good, and although I didn’t laugh outright I did feel a wide smile on my face that made him roll his eyes, pull my hat down over my ears and stalk off. I chased him, letting the giggles out at last, and caught his hand. ‘Wait! I want to hear the rest!’

      ‘I’ll tell you the rest if you promise not to say the word “butcher” to me once more today.’

      ‘I promise,’ I said again, with the proper solemnity, and he sighed.

      ‘Might as well get the grass to promise not to grow,’ he grumbled. ‘Anyway, Nathan was – is – an artist. A proper artist, not like me; I just like to make things, but he’s a painter.’

      ‘I don’t see why that makes you less than a “proper” artist,’ I protested.

      Will shook his head. ‘He had real talent, everyone said so. He was offered a studio here in Breckenhall, one of his family left it to him. So he asked me if I wanted to leave Blackpool, come here and set up with him in business. He would take commissions, I would work on my carvings and sculptures, and we would sell them at the market.’ He shrugged again. ‘It all sounded wonderful. I was just in the way at home, anyway.’

      ‘In the way? How could you be?’

      ‘I’m the youngest of five. There were plenty of others to take my place beside Dad.’

      I tried to imagine how anyone could make him feel anything less than special, but I couldn’t begin to. ‘So the two of you came to Breckenhall, set up your studio, and what happened then?’

      ‘Nathan’s dream carried us for a while. I sold a few pieces and we set ourselves up using our savings. But we’d not thought it through really; frames,