The Last Train Home

Chapter Forty-Four

Even though I had been reluctant to join in with the whole thing, the jigsaw puzzle ended up being a lot of fun and became a rather enjoyable pastime for the week I had away from the treehouse.

Although I would have preferred to have been working on the treehouse, especially since we only had the Summer months to complete it and July was approaching faster than I thought it would, it ended up being fun. Jonathan was invested entirely in completing it and would try to complete his work on the farm as fast as he possibly could in order to spend as much time working on the jigsaw as possible. Barbara tried to hide her enjoyment, but even she spent more time working on it than she did on the housework.

By the time the week was up, we had almost completed the puzzle. Not wanting to abandon the project, Jonathan woke up early to finish his chores on the farm before returning to the house. I had already started work on the last few sections of the puzzle when he returned, kicking his boots off at the door and not caring for the mess he created. He approached me at a slight jog and settled onto the floor beside me.

"Last day before you can be released back into the wild. Do you think we can finish this in time?" he asked.

I shrugged. "No idea."

"You continue there, I'll start at the other side and we'll hopefully meet in the middle."

"Hopefully being the important word."

Jonathan smiled. "As always. Come on, let's try and get this done before lunch."

We still had a little while to go before we would be finished, but the deadline of lunch - despite being almost impossible - did help me to work that little bit faster. The two of us sat on opposite ends of the floor fighting over the pieces scattered around us. Even though we were supposed to be doing the work together, Jonathan had still managed to turn it into a competition and would hide the pieces I needed under his leg so I couldn't find them. I started to do the same thing to him once I realised what he had been up to. Within about two hours, we were both hoarding puzzle pieces from one another and making the entire task that much harder to complete.

Just as I thought, we ended up not finishing it by lunchtime because we had both gathered a large number of pieces from one another. Barbara thought that we were just being childish about it all, but Jonathan and I just laughed as we tucked into the sandwiches laid out for us at lunchtime. We knew we would have to stop hiding pieces from each other if we were to finish the puzzle by the time the day was finished, but we had fun hiding the pieces and that was all that mattered.

Our lunch break didn't last too long since we wanted to finish the puzzle on time so we ended up finishing the sandwiches on the floor. With a week's worth of laundry having piled up, Barbara wouldn't be able to join us for at least another hour so Jonathan and I continued on with our plan from before, minus hiding pieces from each other. By not hiding the pieces we did manage to make significantly more progress. We were both so absorbed in what we were doing that we didn't even hear someone knocking at the door.

"I'll get it then, shall I?" Barbara said, coming in through the backdoor after handing the laundry out.

"Oops, I guess we were too focused," Jonathan said.

"First time for everything."

I glanced at Jonathan who appeared to be holding back a slight laugh before turning my attention back to the wooden pieces scattered around in front of me. Goose lay beside me, nudging the pieces with her nose and occasionally going to pick one up before either of us noticed. She once made it all the way upstairs before any of us realised she had taken a small piece with her.

"Sybil, you have a visitor," Barbara said.

I turned to see Alec lingering by the front door. "What are you doing here?"