Is She Really Going Out with Him?

Chapter 22

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“Why can’t we drive again?” Will asks as we wait on a remote country road for our connecting bus.

“Because it’s an eco-retreat, they encourage people not to bring their cars,” I explain for the third time.

“?‘Encourage’ isn’t an outright ban, though, is it?” Will says, stretching out his hamstrings. He really is incredibly tall. I can’t imagine what it must be like to take up so much space.

“We’ve been invited to write about the place, we need to embrace the retreat’s ethos.” I don’t know how I’ve found myself the champion of this plan. A one-hour journey is taking us two and a half.

“I have better things I could be doing with my time,” Will says, checking his watch again.

“And I don’t?” I shoot back tetchily. I’m already indebted to Dan for switching another weekend with the kids, and given the confusing vibe between Will and me, I could do without having to spend a whole weekend alone with him, especially on a romantic getaway. My life already feels like one long fake date.

“If only you were wearing that delightful costume from last weekend. I’m sure a horse-drawn carriage would have rescued us by now.”

“Ha ha,” I say, ignoring him and turning back to my phone.

“How are you going to cope without your phone for forty-eight hours?” Will asks, watching me tapping away. He walks up beside me and looks over my shoulder. “Why are you on a dating site? Isn’t that against the rules?”

“It’s for someone else, I’m playing matchmaker,” I tell him.

Will’s eyes grow playful. “I’ll bet you don’t last the full forty-eight hours.”

“You want to bet? What are you, twelve?”

“Because twelve-year-olds are such notorious gamblers,” Will says, raising his eyes to the sky. “First to fold has to…” He pauses.

“Has to what?” I ask, keen to see what ridiculous suggestion he’s going to come up with.

“Has to cede the chair once and for all.” He holds my gaze and I can’t help smiling now. He reaches out a hand to shake mine, but I swipe it away, not in the mood for his childish games.

“I like that chair,” I say.

“It’s my chair.”

“Technically it’s Bath Living ’s chair,” I tell him, then shake my head. “Fine. Whoever checks their phone first relinquishes the good chair.”

Will starts doing a ridiculous victory dance just as the bus arrives. On the bus, I go back to creating Michael’s dating profile, and Will gives me a knowing look.

“It doesn’t start until we get there,” I clarify.

When we finally reach the retreat, the sun is low in the sky, and the gravel track leading off the main road is bathed in beautiful orange sunlight. The location is as stunning as the website promised. Rolling green hills striped with hedgerows, and no sound except the distant hum of the road and chirping of birdlife.

Will is walking in an odd way, hopping around the track. I look down and see he’s wearing smart leather shoes and is trying to avoid the mud.

“Ah, poor little town mouse didn’t bring his wellies?” I say, feeling smug about my own scruffy pair of trainers, but as I say it, I trip and land my foot right in a deep patch of mud. It splatters all the way up my leg, and I let out an involuntary groan.

“Oh no, did you get muddy, country mouse?” Will says, leaping over a patch of mud to get past me.

We reach a gate and a sign that says “Reconnect Retreats. Off-grid since 2024.” On the other side of the gate, a Land Rover is parked in the mud, and when she sees us, a woman jumps out. She’s perky and young, with wild brown curls beneath a tweed flat cap. She is Outdoors Barbie in Hunter wellies and a faded Barbour jacket, ready to don a plastic shotgun and shoot some plastic grouse.

“You must be Anna and Will, from the Times ,” she says, and I can’t help relishing how good that sounds. “You managed the bus, then?”

“Just about,” I say, reaching out to shake her perfectly manicured hand.

“I’m Verity, Reconnect PR,” she says, her voice high and light like a tinkling fairy’s.

“Great to meet you, Verity,” says Will, giving her his most dazzling smile as he leans in to shake her hand. Her eyes widen in delight as she takes Will in. Yes, yes, he’s hot, we all see it.

As Verity guides us through the woods, she explains a little about the retreat’s founding principles. Her jeans are so tight and her bum so perky in them, I’m finding it hard to look at anything else as she walks ahead of us. Did I ever have a bum like that?

“Our founder, Malin, met her partner, Brad, when they both bought tickets to a scam festival that didn’t exist,” Verity tells us. “They found themselves on a remote Caribbean island, left to fend for themselves with no phone-charging facilities and hardly any resources. Maybe it was destiny, but Malin swears that it was not having their phones that caused love to blossom. They were totally present. The principle of Reconnect Retreats is to give couples the space to put the focus back on each other. Whether it’s a first date or a relationship check-in, two days here will feel like a month out in the real world.”

“How could you scientifically test that?” I ask. “Is that a peer-reviewed statistic? What if you find yourself on a bad date? Isn’t that torture, being stuck on a monthlong bad date?”

“Anna is a skeptic,” Will explains. “She’s also allergic to the outdoors.”

“I’m not allergic to the outdoors, I just enjoy the indoors,” I clarify.

Verity carries on chatting to Will and ignores my questions about scientific data.

After a fifteen-minute walk through the woods, we come to a wooden shepherd’s hut on cast-iron wheels. It’s a modern, sleek design, with a large window looking out over the valley beyond. Verity opens the door and shows us both inside. It’s stylish and well-appointed, with a double bed, a small desk, and an oil burner, then a separate room with a shower and compost toilet. It’s all tastefully decorated with pale wooden beams, pale burgundy bed linens, and elegant throw cushions. But just as I’m warming up to the idea of this “camping without camping” experience, I have a concerning thought.

“There is another cabin, right? You’re not expecting us to share this one?” I ask.

“I told them we’d only need one, pookums,” Will says. “Was that not right?”

My stomach drops and my throat constricts. He has to be joking. I know we’re supposed to be writing about this as though it’s a date, but having to share a bed would be beyond the call of journalistic duty. Verity lets out a burst of laughter, like a pretty little machine gun.

“Don’t worry, there’s another cabin just beyond those trees,” she says. “This is our ‘separate but together’ glade, perfect for a first date. We have many combinations.”

“I’m offended by how panicked you just looked,” says Will, tilting his head to one side.

“You’re not together, then?” Verity asks, her eyes flashing back and forth between us.

“First date,” says Will, in that voice he uses when he’s trying to wind me up. “But there’s a lot of unresolved sexual tension.”

Verity laughs, as though he’s made the most hilarious joke, and I feel my cheeks heat. Is he flirting with her, or me, or both of us? Why am I so bad at reading this stuff?

Outside the cabin, Verity shows us the firepit, which has a large wooden lockbox beside it. “All your food for the weekend is provided, and there’s a stocked cool box in each of the cabins. You’ll need to cook and heat water on the fire here. Wood, kindling, fire lighters all in the wood store, drinking water from this casket.” She taps a large plastic water butt. “You have separate living spaces, but you come together for meals.” Verity gives me an expectant look. “We ask that you replenish whatever wood you use from the store; logs to split are over there. And that you leave nothing in the woods but footprints. Finally, phones. There’s limited reception in this valley, no Wi-Fi, so it’s easy not to cheat. But we provide lockboxes to put your phones in, as it can be hard to break the habit of reaching for them. Did you give family members our emergency landline number?” We both nod, and I feel the first tug of alarm at being completely cut off for two whole days. “If anyone needs to get in touch with you, I’ll drive down from the office and let you know. Rarely happens, but it puts people’s minds at rest, especially if you have children.” Verity smiles at me. Did I tell her I have kids, or do I just look so tired she assumes I must?

“This all looks wonderful, thank you, Verity. I feel more relaxed already,” says Will, the teacher’s pet.

“Each door locks with a code, all the information you need is in this pack.” She hands us each a booklet full of “commonly asked questions.”

“Your code is written here, five seven zero four,” she tells me, pointing to the front page. “It won’t lock unless you click the latch like this, so just leave it open until you’ve remembered the code, or until you’re inside at night.” Taking in the calm quiet of the woods, I feel my shoulders start to relax. The cabin is gorgeous and the view of the valley beyond the trees idyllic. There are certainly worse places you could be forced to spend a weekend. I’ve brought Pride and Prejudice with me, and without my phone or my laptop to distract me, I’m hoping to get plenty of reading done.

“There are six other reconnectors on site,” Verity tells us. “But their cabins are half a mile away at the other side of the woods. They shouldn’t disturb you. Our forester, Malcolm, will be leading a guided flora and fauna walk tomorrow. He’ll be leaving from the gate at twelve if you want to join in, but nothing is compulsory. There’s also a river down the hill with a plunge pool that’s safe for swimming, just follow the wooden arrows. If you do go skinny dipping, just be aware that the other residents might also use the pool.”

“I’ll bear that in mind,” Will says, his voice a flirtatious growl. Verity laughs appreciatively. I suppress the urge to groan.

“You are going to have the best time,” she tells us. “Two nights here feels like an eternity, in the best way, trust me. We try to leave you to it as much as we can, but if there’s anything urgent, there’s phone reception on top of that hill and our office is only three miles down the road.” Verity points to a hill on the other side of the valley, which looks a long way away. She lingers, shifting her weight from side to side, eyes on Will. “I’ll leave you to it then, shall I?” she asks him.

“Yup, we’ve got it. Thanks, Verity,” I say.

Once she’s gone, Will says, “She was nice.”

“She was,” I agree. “Right, I’m going to unpack.”

“Don’t unpack, let’s get the fire going,” Will says, clapping his hands, then rubbing them together, his eyes dancing. “Don’t you just love camping?”

“This is so your kind of thing, isn’t it?” I say, feeling myself smile because it’s sweet how excited he is.

“It is,” he says, flashing me a grin.

“Were you okay to leave your brother this weekend?” I ask, remembering he, like me, has family commitments.

“Yes, George came down for the weekend to help Dad. Shall we go and look for this plunge pool before it gets dark?”

“I didn’t bring a swimsuit,” I say, “and before you suggest skinny dipping, it’s not happening.”

“Suit yourself,” Will says. “Shall we keep each other’s phones? Otherwise, how do I know you’re not going to sneak up that hill to check the Daily Mail in the middle of the night?”

“I’m hardly going to do that, am I?” I say, but I turn my phone off and hand it over. He does the same with his, then we head to our respective cabins to get settled.

There’s a lockbox in the wall, which I put Will’s phone into. Maybe it is better not to have mine within reach. I did secretly download two movies onto it and that’s probably not strictly in the spirit of a technology detox. I wonder if Dan will remember to call the emergency landline number if anything happens with the kids. I chastise myself for worrying. They’ll be fine. They aren’t babies anymore.

Dumping my bag and the information booklet on the cabin table, I head back outside, walking carefully down the steep cabin steps. I flinch as a gust of wind bangs the cabin door shut behind me. The sun is low in the sky, and Will has already started to build a fire. Seeing him rearrange kindling in the half-light stirs some primordial feeling within me. This must be an evolutionary trait left over from our cave woman days, to be impressed by a man making fire. It’s ridiculous because fire isn’t even hard, especially if you have fire lighters. We should be attracted to rarer skills, like the ability to reboot the Sky box without losing all your downloaded programs or being able to shave without leaving the bathroom sink covered in bristles.

Will shoots me a broad smile when he sees me coming, and I notice he’s left his glasses behind in his cabin. He’s also taken his shirt off and is now wearing a thin cotton T-shirt that clings to his biceps. There’s a streak of ash on his cheek and he looks happier than I’ve ever seen him. He’s brought two beers from his cabin cooler and hands one to me.

“Do you think you’re going to be able to endure a weekend in the woods with me then, Appleby?” We’re back to Appleby.

“I’ll try,” I say, sitting down on a log and raising my beer can toward his. His eyes gleam with playful energy. I can tell he’s in a flirty mood, and with Verity gone, there’s no one else to flirt with but me. “Stop flirting,” I say, narrowing my eyes at him.

“I’m not,” he laughs. “This is just my face. What, are you worried you’re not going to be able to resist me this time, Appleby?” he says, voice smooth as butter, but his face falls when he sees I’m not smiling. “What’s wrong?”

I cross my arms. I hadn’t planned on saying anything but now I think I’m going to have to.

“It’s all a game to you, isn’t it?” I say, taking a large swig of beer. “I don’t want to be your plaything when there’s no one else around to flirt with.”

“Is that what you think? You’re not that,” he says, leaning his elbows on his knees, brow furrowed in concern. “You’re not that to me at all.”

“Not that I want anything to happen,” I say. “Hay was a mistake, I’d had too much to drink. But if you’re seeing someone, however casually, I don’t think it’s appropriate to be so flirty with every woman within a five-mile radius.”

“What are you talking about?” he asks, looking genuinely confused.

“Deedee?” I say, watching his face, and I’m gratified to see his eyes shift.

“What about her?” he asks, though his tone is less indignant now.

“I saw you sneaking off with her after Hay.” I pause, weighing up how much to say. “And having breakfast with her when you said you were at the dentist.”

Will shakes his head, and now I see he’s smiling. Is he enjoying this?

“It’s not funny! You’re a real dick, you know that?” I mutter. “I can’t believe I ever—”

“Anna Appleby, are you jealous?” he asks, biting his lip, and I feel the urge to throw my beer across the fire at him, to wipe that conceited smirk off his face.

“I am nothing of the sort,” I shoot back, standing up now, pacing with restless energy. “I don’t care who you’re sleeping with, I’d just rather you didn’t play these games with me.”

“Have you finished?” he asks, and I nod, pulling my elbows into a tight hug. “Deedee is a headhunter. She works for news outlets across Europe. She came to Hay to watch my panel, but then had to fly back to Paris the next morning. She’d put me forward for this job at an international news station, but she didn’t think my CV was going cut it against the competition. She persuaded me that I needed to get on a plane and go with her to meet the head of the station, said it might be my only chance to throw my hat in the ring.” Will pauses. “She’s not someone I’m seeing. In fact, Deedee is married to a friend of mine.”

“Oh.”

“The guy she introduced me to liked me enough to ask for a screen test. I met Deedee for breakfast the other day because she’d organized one for me in Bath. I didn’t tell you, because I don’t like telling anyone about interviews. It sucks to have people ask if you got the job when you didn’t. I haven’t told work I’m looking to leave, so I told a white lie about the dentist’s. I’d rather not be pushed out before I have somewhere to go.” Will stands up and saunters around the fire toward me.

“A presenting job, wow. That would be incredible,” I say, hugging myself even tighter as I process this new information.

“It would,” he says, standing just a foot away from me now. The smell of his cologne, his perspiration, and the campfire mingle into a heady combination that puts my senses on high alert. “Anything else you want to say?”

“Sorry,” I mumble, eyes on my feet.

“Sorry for what?” he says, his voice teasing.

“Sorry for calling you a dick,” I say with a grimace. How can I have gotten that so wrong? When I look up, I see he’s smiling.

“And for assuming that I’m having moonlit parties with anyone but you, Appleby.” His eyes hold mine, and there it is, back like a punch to the gut, the crackle of undeniable energy between us.

“Sorry about that,” I say, biting my lip.

“Thank you,” he says quietly, tilting his head and then slowly leaning in toward my neck. I can’t help inhaling the scent of him now, his skin radiating heat. “I’m sorry you thought Hay was such a mistake. I will try to keep a lid on any such behavior in the future.” He’s mocking me, but his proximity sends a prickle of anticipation down my spine, a disconcerting throb between my legs. “Now that that’s out of the way, can we relax, maybe even enjoy ourselves?” He pauses, watching my expression. “And I would appreciate it if you didn’t mention Deedee or my job hunt to anyone at work.”

“Of course not,” I say, and then move to sit down on a log beside the fire, because I’m feeling giddy. If we’re still at war, then Will won that round. Though on this occasion, I don’t mind losing, because I’m glad that he’s not seeing Deedee, that I wasn’t being made a fool of in Hay.

As the sun goes down, we set to work preparing dinner on the fire. Will pulls some baking potatoes from the food box, wraps them in foil, then places them into the firepit. I fill a pot with water and hang it on a pole, suspended across the flames. There’s a tub of freshly made soup in the cool box and steaks to fry on the griddle, a laminated menu and instruction sheet. The food smells incredible, there’s something so satisfying about cooking outdoors, and Will’s relaxed demeanor is contagious. We stick to safe topics of conversation: Jonathan’s eccentric wardrobe choices, writers we admire, and the appeal of rural living.

By the time we’ve eaten, we’re both so sated, we lay out rugs either side of the fire so we can stretch out. Lying down, he is all I can see beyond the flames, the trees now hidden by darkness. The firelight turns his skin a warm orange, his eyes flickering with a reflected gold flame. I reach for my phone to take a photo, then remember I don’t have it and will have to commit this scene to memory.

“You love all this camping stuff then,” I say, watching Will gaze at the fire. “Did you go camping as a child?”

“Yes. Dad hated it, but Mum would take the four of us down to Exmoor every summer when we were kids.”

“That must have been hard work for her. I’ve never taken my kids camping. I’ve always thought there’s so much packing and unpacking involved.”

“I’m sure it was hard,” he says. “Simon was scared of the dark and the rest of us were not nice brothers. George invented this tale about the Beast of Exmoor, the size of a panther, who dragged boys out of their tent at night. He had us all terrified. Simon ended up having to sleep in the day because he was so frightened of the night. Mum was not happy with us.”

“You’re making me glad I didn’t have brothers,” I say, leaning over to pass him another cold beer from the cooler.

“You and your sister didn’t wind each other up like that?” he asks.

“Oh, we did, but it was more subtle. I was the mean older sister. Sometimes I used to pretend she didn’t exist. She tried doing it back to me, but she’d last ten minutes, then get bored and want me to play with her.” I take a sip of my beer, and when I look back across the fire, I catch Will watching me and avert my gaze, suddenly self-conscious.

“She looks up to you?” Will asks.

“I guess so. She’s four years younger, so I did everything first. She thought I was the authority on everything.”

“You weren’t?” he asks, and I shake my head. “I read this article about how your birth order shapes your family experience,” he tells me. “How the oldest bears the weight of parental expectation, while the youngest is allowed to be a free spirit. Do you ever think you would have been a different person if you’d been born second?”

“Good question. I don’t know.” I pause, contemplating for a moment. “Maybe I’d be less afraid of failure. It’s a lot of pressure having a little sister who thinks you can do no wrong. How about you?”

“I’m your classic middle child—the diplomat, forever trying to keep everyone happy. Maybe I would have been more ambitious if I’d been the oldest.”

“You’re ambitious,” I tell him, surprised he doesn’t see himself that way.

Will blows air through his lips. “I’m hardly running the country or setting up my own hedge fund.”

“That’s not what ambition is. It’s having a clear vision of what you want to achieve and being determined to make it happen. Trust me, Will, you have it in spades.”

I shift my gaze back to him now; he smiles and shifts his weight, leaning his head on his hand. “Was that a compliment, Appleby?”

“Ambition isn’t always a good thing. Didn’t you see The Wolf of Wall Street ?” I say, and he lets out a deep laugh that resonates around the quiet wood. “Sounds like your mum was ambitious, taking four boys camping solo,” I say, keen to hear more about his family.

“She was, she was brave too.” He says it so sincerely, my heart aches for the little boy he was when he lost her. “I’ll definitely take my own kids camping. I think it’s character building.” He lies back to look up at the sky.

“You want kids?” I ask, trying to sound casual, but my nose prickles and I feel my chest tighten as I wait for him to reply.

“Sure. Not any time soon, but I’ve got a lot of good dad jokes I wouldn’t want to waste. I love kids.” He turns to look at me and now it’s my turn to shift onto my back to avoid the intensity of all this eye contact. “Tell me about your parents. Are you close?” he asks.

“Not especially. They live in this old thatched cottage in Frome. When they retired, they worked out they could Airbnb their house and use the money to go on cruises. They’ve been cruising constantly for years now. I think my mum prefers my dad when there are other people around.” I shake my head, imagining my parents and their love of a ship buffet. “When things were at their worst with Dan, Lottie must have called them, told them I needed them to come home. They cut their Caribbean cruise short, and Mum moved in with me for a few weeks. Dan had just left, I wasn’t in a great place.” I pause. In a quiet wood with no distractions to hide behind, there is nothing to do but talk, and the veil of night is making me honest. “Mum lasted a week. She said it was ‘all too depressing’ and that she never knew what to do when we were upset, even when we were children. She offered to take the kids on a cruise, to ‘get them out of my hair.’?”

“Wow. Did they go?” Will asks.

“No. It was term time, the last thing they wanted. ‘But the offer’s always there, darling,’?” I say, doing an impression of my mother’s clipped tone. “?‘I don’t want to witness your pain, but I will take your children on a tour of the Norwegian fjords for you.’ I don’t know why I’m telling you all this. Sorry.”

“Rule of the campfire. The fire makes you bare your soul,” Will says, reaching a hand toward the flames. “Tell me more about your sister?”

“Why do you want to know about my sister?”

“Because I like hearing you talk,” he says, and I notice how kind his eyes are, how deep and complex their color. Never quite the same green from one moment to the next.

“I am basically Elinor, and Lottie is Marianne,” I say, Austen fresh in my mind.

“ Sense and Sensibility ?” Will asks, and I nod.

“She’s always been the romantic, whimsical one. Her twenties were a succession of intense relationships with various Willoughby types, while I was sensible Elinor who married a sensible man and had a family and a mortgage before any of her friends. Lottie thought I had it all worked out; she’d always call me for advice. Now she’s happily married to her Colonel Brandon, killing it at work, about to have a baby—she doesn’t need me so much anymore. The whole dynamic between us has changed.” I pause, not having articulated any of this before; it surprises me to hear myself say it out loud. “Now she wants to fix me, and I’m not used to feeling needy rather than needed.”

“I’m sure she still needs you,” Will says. “Even if not in the way she used to. Maybe it’s not healthy to be stuck in roles you’ve outgrown.” He leans over to grab another log, and when he throws it on the fire it sparks and smokes. “I have the same. In a family you’re allocated a role; it’s hard to break out. I don’t think my older brothers will ever see me as a professional person, I’ll always be the kid who cried when the Rice Krispies stopped crackling in my bowl.”

“You didn’t!” I say, laughing.

“I was a sensitive child,” Will says with a lopsided smile, and my heart thrums at his ability to make fun of himself.

We talk late into the night, jumping from family, to books, to philosophy and travel. He tells me all the places he wants to visit, all the lives he plans to live abroad. I tell him about my travels before children and my bucket list of places still to see. Will is so easy to talk to when he drops the flirty, arrogant facade. It’s obvious why so many people are drawn to him. With friends and family I sometimes find myself playing a role, being the person I think they want me to be, a person they don’t need to worry about. With Will, I realize I can just be myself, I can be honest, because he doesn’t want or need me to be anything. Once or twice I catch him looking at me when I turn away, but it’s hard not to feel connected to someone when you’re lying beneath the stars sharing your life story. Only when I start to shiver do I realize the fire has burned down to glowing embers.

“We’d better go to bed,” Will says, “or put more logs on?”

“Bed, I think,” I say, standing up, feeling dizzy from all the smoke and beers. “You know, I haven’t missed my phone once this evening.”

“Nor have I. Must be the sparkling company.”

“Must be.” I pause. “Night then. See you in the morning.”

Will grins at me, and that look is back, the toying, teasing, flirty look. He raises one eyebrow. “Unless you come knocking on my cabin door. What happens in the woods stays in the woods.”

I laugh as I shake out the rug I was lying on. “See you in the morning, Havers.”

Will turns on his torch and heads off through the bracken toward his cabin, just visible through the shadowy trees. I turn back to mine, the embers and the moonlight just enough to light my way up the cabin steps. Pulling the door, I find it locked. Did I click the latch by mistake? No, I know I didn’t. Oh shit, what was the code? It was on the information pack, which is…sitting on the table inside. I tap in a few combinations—I know there was a five and a seven involved—but when I twist the handle, it won’t budge. I rack my brain trying to conjure the combination but it’s gone, and I rattle the handle in frustration. This is not good. If I can’t get into my cabin, where am I going to sleep? A churn of nausea whirls in my stomach as I realize what I’m going to have to do.