My Favourite Part

20: teddy & freddie

The sun rises differently here than at home. Here, the sky gathers its hues of peach and pink like it's assembling a bouquet, and the ball of sun frolics through the posy-horizon, before floating upwards like a balloon. At first, it doesn't look like it'll stop – but it does, and the rays beaming through the large window make it feel as though it's stopped right over us.

I made sure to get up and watch because Eric said it was the best thing about this place, and his room has the best view. He says he's had this room since he was a teenager, and it's never changed because he tries to only come here once a year – for his birthday. If the room at all reflects who he was then, I figure he was a very prim and proper teenager, or at the very least a very mature one.

Everything's an untouched kind of clean, and ivory-coloured or leather-clothed. Something occupies every space – a silk-dressed bedroom bench at the foot of the bed; a velvet chaise longue by the window – but still, the space feels distinctly... empty. I can imagine some strapping teenager that looks like Eric drinking champagne from the bottle and smoking cigarettes with a circle of overindulged friends, but there are no burn patches on the floor or champagne cork marks to prove it. The only sign anyone's ever lived in the room, let alone a teenage boy, is the coffee-coloured mohair teddy bear he's had on the nightstand since he was 13.

"His name is Teddy", he'd told me when he handed me the waistcoat-donning bear proudly.

"Come up with that all on your own?" I'd quipped.

As empty and ornate as it feels, light gives this room new life. When the heavy curtains are drawn and the tiebacks are fastened, the most glorious white light pours in, and makes the stately ivory a flickering, bright silver-white.

Fastening the curtains back now, with my bare feet on the silk carpeting, I sigh and breathe it all in. This must be how princesses feel.

The only thing missing is my prince. But he's left note in his place, on the right side of the bed, lodged between Teddy's paws, and I grin when I spot it, springing onto the bed.

Good morning my Evie, I hope you had a wonderful sleep. I'm more upset than you know about being unable to wake up with you, but a cousin of mine arrived this morning, and is dragging me, very unceremoniously, to an early morning polo match. I should be back by midday if you'd like to stay in for breakfast. Ana will make you anything you like.

Thursday,

Eric.

P.S. I've had some cherries picked for you since you enjoyed yesterday's so much – ask Ana to show you to them.

He'd told me this sort of thing might be more common than I expected – his being pulled away for 'quintessentially Cotswold' things.

We went out on the lake in the early evening yesterday, because he said it would likely be the only full day that we'd have to ourselves out here.

In all my eagerness to find out what going 'out on the lake' meant exactly, I didn't give much thought to what he had said or meant – not right away. Dangling our feet off of the side of the catamaran, and lying tangled together in the tentative sun, reading dreary Joyce to be ironic and intellectual for as long as we could before the air turned too crisp, the moment was faultless. It was when brisk air began to blow that I ruminated for long enough to remember what I'd wanted to say – but it's your birthday... Surely you get to choose what to do on your birthday...

He'd only stroked my cheek with his thumb, to a gentle pace that I've come to know as a sign he's overthinking. And so, I closed my eyes, content with enjoying what was left of the only full day we'd have to ourselves out here.