the kitchen with a shotgun over his shoulder. “Did you survive? I was giving you another few minutes and if you didn’t return, I was going to rescue you both,” he said.
“I can tell you now, Ronan, those chickens would wrestle that from you and you’d be running home with lead in your arse,” Maggie said.
Tears rolled down my cheeks as I laughed so hard I started to cough.
Charlie arrived in the room. “Where yous off tae with that?” He nodded to the gun.
“I was going to save your wife, and mine, but they managed to survive the egg collection all by themselves,” Ronan replied.
“Och, you just need tae wring their necks,” Charlie said, shaking his head. “We could eat one while the other watches,” he added, smacking his lips and laughing at the horror on Maggie face. “I’m messing with yous, we’ll eat them both,” he finished.
Maggie slapped him across the chest with a tea towel. “We have another wedding meeting tonight,” she announced. That surprised me.
“How many meetings do we need tae go over the same thing?” Charlie asked.
“As many as it takes until the day. Now, away with you, I have things to do,” Maggie scolded. Ronan and I headed to the office, and Charlie was in charge of the students that day.
“What meeting?” Ronan asked, as he placed his arm around my shoulders.
“I have no idea. As far as I’m concerned, everything’s ready. She’s excited, let’s just go along with it,” I replied.
Later that afternoon, we showed the rescue centre representatives around the estate. Of course, they could offer us the peacocks and were thrilled they’d be back on the lawn of a house they’d been missing from for over a hundred years. In addition, they started telling us about fundraising, or lack of, and the animals they had still needing a home. I told them I’d think about ways to help but right at that point, we couldn’t house any more animals.
Ronan stared at me, open-mouthed and wide-eyed. “You bloody liar,” he whispered still smiling as we waved them goodbye.
“Seriously, we have enough at the moment. But do I need to remind you how wonderful it’s been having Colleen and Gerald?”
He walked off shaking his head.
Later that day we discovered the wrath of the Heggertys when Joe called in absolute stitches after seeing a review on our Facebook page.
“She said what?” I screeched as he read it out.
“She said you allowed perverts to run naked through the woods while also offering a camping facilities for families,” he repeated, reading the review. “Anyway, my darling, I’ve put my PR hat on and replied. My reply has more likes than their comment so far.” He seemed extremely proud of that.
It had taken me a while to find a suitable punishment for Joe after he had upset me by posting awful pictures of me on Facebook, and I was super glad I’d chosen that punishment. Joe was in charge of our social media. He had set up a wonderful page and we regularly filled it with photographs. We had some amazing reviews and then we had the one star we were laughing over.
“What did you say?” I asked.
“I explained we’ve had a naturists art group that has been part of the estate for many years. I mentioned Verity and some of her paintings that sold for tens of thousands of pounds, and I finished with the usual, no one else has ignored any of the signs or information readily given about the art group. No one has ever climbed two fences to enter the art camp and no one has then gone on to physically and verbally abuse some of the guests.”
He huffed at the end of his sentence and I could imagine he would have been waving his arm as he spoke; he often spoke with his hands, and then slammed his palm on his thigh to make his point.
“They didn’t exactly physically—”
“Yes they did! They threw mudballs. That’s abuse. Anyway, it’s her word—and when you read her post you’ll see what I mean—against mine.” I could hear the smile forming in his words and I laughed.
“Thank you. I don’t know what the consequences of this will be.”
As I’d been speaking, I’d brought Facebook up on my laptop and read Mrs. Heggarty’s comment. There was a lot of support and a lot of likes and hearts on the post. But what I was over the moon to see, however, were the comments supporting us and saying they