Memories II

|13| • The Pretty Little Angel •

It took me a while to really calm down after that encounter with my parents, if I was honest, but with Brian there to help me, listening to me, somehow I managed. I would hate for my parents to have ruined yet another thing in my life, the last cosy evening with Brian in a while. And while they were still there somewhere in the back of my mind, I managed to ignore that pretty well. The following morning, we tried to prolong the inevitable as much as possible, but Brian had to leave and I had to go to work. We had agreed to keep the goodbye short because no one enjoyed lengthy goodbyes and after all we would still be seeing each other again soon.

The time until the weekend passed quickly, and I ended up going to the recording studio where Brian showed me what they did during recording times. It wasn't as bad as I had feared, so that was good. However, when Brian was busy in the studio, he really was busy, so most of the time I visited him was spent alone, with the people who ran the recording studio, or out in the surrounding area. That was why I had decided to keep the visits to a minimum, surprisingly. I was getting frustrated with sitting around, doing nothing, and I wanted to avoid taking out my slowly growing frustration on him. Instead, I stayed in London, where I could be productive.

The day before Brian was supposed to come home from Oxford, I went to his house in Surrey again, to water the plants like I had been doing up to now because the weather was still surprisingly dry and I didn't want his plants to die. Before we got together he'd have his mum do it, but I called Ruth and told her that I'd be driving out there occasionally anyway so unless she wanted to spend some time in nature she didn't have to go through the trouble. So far I hadn't met her there, so I was expecting to be on my own there today as well. I was actually planning to spend the night because it was a Friday night and I had Saturday and Sunday off and a little retreat in Brian's countryside house was always a nice way to end the week.

With my little backpack full of necessities and some food, I made my way inside. Once everything that needed to be put away was put away, I did my routinely check around the house to make sure everything was alright before I watered the plants inside his house. I'd been working the early shifts that week, so the sun still hadn't set yet. I still had to water the plants in his garden, but I decided to get myself a cup of tea and some of the biscuits I had brought before I got on with that. I felt like I deserved that after the week, it had been busy. I hadn't taken the past weekend off because Brian had admitted he most likely wouldn't have time for me if I visited him because they were recording as much as they could since it was going well. So instead of wasting my time driving up there and then being bored out of my mind I decided to work a little bit extra so my boss would happily give me some time off if I asked for it.

The point was, this was the first time in quite a bit that I could actually relax, so I took it, enjoying the remaining rays of sunlight which felt quite wonderful after many days stuck inside the pharmacy dealing with all sorts of people. I carried one of his comfortable garden lounge chairs out onto the grass to a spot where the sun was still shining before I sat down with my tea and biscuits and simply did nothing. I just enjoyed the relative silence, and the sounds of nature. I was really starting to love this house, it was such a nice change from being in the city all the time.

I hadn't really paid attention to how much time had passed, but when the setting sun had moved from where I was sitting, I put the lounge chair back and got to work on taking care of his garden plants. I watered them and checked most beds for any weeds which I got rid of. Brian was a bit weird about that, he had some areas where he actually grew vegetables, so those were the areas where I was allowed to get rid of weeds, but in most beds around his garden I wasn't allowed to pull anything out because according to Brian it wasn't right that we made the distinction between weeds and plants we wanted because in the end they were all plants. I just went with it because it was very much like him, it was adorable, and in the end it saved me the work from having to weed his entire garden.