Authors: Katie Fforde
When Sian opened the door to Gus the next day her first feeling was relief that Rory wasn’t there.
Then she noticed he was wearing shorts, old trainers and a T-shirt. He’d obviously been jogging and her body responded to the energy he exuded.
‘Oh, hello,’ she said as casually as possible. ‘Couldn’t you make it all the way home? Needed a rest?’
He smiled. ‘No, but I saw your car, thought it must mean you were in and so called on the off chance.’ He grinned. ‘Just to be neighbourly, you know.’
Pleased and anxious at the same time, Sian opened the door and let him in. The smell of fresh sweat and aftershave caught her nostrils as he passed and she was sent dizzyingly back to their first meeting and what happened afterwards. Smell really was the sense that brought memories flooding to the front of one’s brain, she realised, wishing he wasn’t so loyal to Geo. F. Trumper West Indian Limes Cologne. She knew what it was because she remembered seeing it in his bathroom; he’d told her that he used it because it reminded him of his father. Afterwards, before she’d been sensible and worked on forgetting him, she’d sniff it in department stores, and remember.
She cleared her throat and led him through to the narrow kitchen. ‘Would you like coffee? Or water? Or something?’
He threw himself down on to one of the two chairs drawn up to the tiny table. ‘Water, then tea, if that’s OK.’
Sian gave him his water and then clicked the switch on the kettle, wishing she could think of something to say. There were some of Rory’s trains on the table and she gathered them up.
‘So your kid likes playing with trains? We’ve got some up at the house.’
‘We know about them. Rory plays with them often. I hope you don’t mind.’ She poured boiling water into mugs.
Gus laughed. ‘What sort of a man would I be who minded if someone played with my toy trains?’
Sian laughed too, relaxing a little as she reached into the fridge for the milk. She could do this. They could have a perfectly easy conversation without it throwing her into a panic. ‘Well, you know, some men are very possessive about their toys.’
‘I’m possessive about some things, but not about playthings I discarded years ago.’ He became serious suddenly. ‘I do hope you don’t think I discarded you. I never would have done that.’
‘No. Oh no, I knew you were going away. I always knew the score. Listen, would you mind if we went through to the dining room? The kitchen is not the best bit about this cottage. The dining room is lovely and sunny.’
‘It needs knocking through, really,’ said Gus, following her.
‘I know, but it’s not my house. Sit there.’ She pointed to the big armchair and put his tea on the table beside it. She didn’t want to find herself sitting next to him. He was far too large and unsettling. She seated herself on the sofa opposite, pulling her skirt over her knees in an unconscious gesture of self-defence. Somehow she knew Gus wouldn’t give up. He obviously wanted to talk about that night. She’d have to be grown-up about it and let him know that the past was the past. She’d moved on. He couldn’t expect her to behave as if nearly six years in between their first meeting and now hadn’t happened.
‘So, Sian, I’m longing to know, what have you been up to since I went away? It’s been a long time.’
‘It has, hasn’t it? Well, let’s think.’ It all seemed a long time ago. ‘Was I working in a bar? While I was looking for something actually connected with my degree?’
He nodded. ‘That’s right. I remember you telling me about the man who always came and stood by you and it was only afterwards you realised he fancied you.’
‘I’d completely forgotten about that.’
‘I’ve got a good memory.’ His look told her exactly what he was recalling; it made him smile.
‘Of course, I’ve had a child since then,’ she said, placing a hand on her stomach in remembrance.
‘Oh yes.’ His look altered slightly but the smile remained.
‘Yes, that did take up quite a lot of the time,’ she said briskly and then smiled, to indicate she was happy with the situation.
‘But you didn’t get married?’ He frowned slightly, as if he’d assumed she would have.
‘Oh no. It was quite a short relationship.’
‘I’m sorry.’ He leant forward as if to take her hand as a gesture of sympathy, but she sat back in her seat, avoiding his hand. He smiled. ‘Do I gather you weren’t left heartbroken?’
‘Oh no,’ she lied, smiling again. ‘Nothing like that. I was very surprised to discover I was pregnant, but once I’d got over the shock, I was delighted.’
‘I thought of you, you know. A lot. As I was walking across the frozen waste on snow shoes.’
‘Did you? How strange. I can’t quite imagine myself being thought of in such a wild terrain.’
‘You feel I should only think about you when I’m somewhere safe in England?’
‘Yes, that sort of thing. Maybe while you’re drinking tea, or something homely like that.’
He laughed. ‘I’d never thought of people having special places to be thought about, unless you mean graves, or where ashes are scattered. But to tell the truth, I found it hard not to think about you.’
Aware she was blushing, Sian fiddled with her mug and then got up. It was getting awkward. She wasn’t ready for this conversation, and might not be, ever. ‘More tea?’
‘No, I’m fine. Sian, please sit down, I want to talk to you.’
‘Well, you are talking to me.’ She knew she was blushing again and hoped he’d just think she was hot. Come to think of it, she was hot. She got up and opened a window.
‘So, tell me, what brought the city girl you were to a little backwater like this?’
‘I don’t think of myself as a city girl. Not now, anyway. I’ve started growing my own vegetables and everything.’
‘But why here? I know it’s a lovely village but it’s a bit of a coincidence, you moving practically next door to my childhood home.’
She was indignant. ‘You’re not accusing me of stalking you, are you? I didn’t have any idea you were Fiona’s son before you walked into the dinner party.’
‘So if you’re not stalking me, which is a bit of a shame, why are you here?’
Sian gave herself a couple of moments to answer. ‘It was because of Richard really.’
‘Oh, Richard.’ He seemed to condemn Richard as being nice but not much more just by saying his name. ‘You were rather evasive yesterday. Come on, tell me now, are you and he – you know – together?’
She should say yes immediately, without hesitation. After all, she and Richard might be together, one day. But she did hesitate and then found she couldn’t lie.
‘Well, not really. I mean, sort of. He’s an old friend, of course, and he’s been brilliant, but it was partly because his sister – who Rory knows well – was setting up a playgroup, which meant if we moved here, he could be looked after somewhere he was happy while I worked. And it is a nice area, with a good school, a shop, post office, not too far from London.’ She realised she’d gone on too long and had ended up sounding like an estate agent.
But Gus seemed not to notice. ‘Come to think of it, we were at Richard’s party when we met, weren’t we?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Sian, wondering how much interest in their shared past she should admit to.
‘But you must have moved on quite quickly after our – fling – if you’ve got a son who’s about to go to school.’
‘Not really. Well, maybe.’ Sian picked at some paint lodged in the edge of her nail, aware Gus must think she was a slut by now. From a starting-school point of view, Rory could be a year younger than he actually was.
‘I hope I didn’t sound judgemental. I didn’t mean to. There was no point in hanging round waiting for me, after all.’
‘No.’ Sian felt better. He didn’t think she was a slut and he was right, they’d agreed not to contact each other after that night, to not even exchange mobile numbers.
‘So how old is he? Rory, is it?’
‘Um …’ She went into a state of panic. She knew he was just being polite but she couldn’t even hint that she might have got pregnant that night. ‘I don’t know!’ she blurted and then felt a fool. ‘What I mean is …’ What she meant was, she couldn’t instantly work out how old it was safe for Rory to be.
Gus was looking a bit bewildered.
‘I’ll make some more tea.’
Sian got up, grabbed their mugs and rushed to the kitchen, frantically doing sums in her head. She was in danger of making the situation worse.
‘Hey, don’t worry, it was only a casual enquiry,’ Gus called from the dining room as Sian came back carrying two fresh mugs of tea, aware she would be horribly caught out if she lied. Rory would be having his birthday soon. Maybe she could put one less candle on his cake if Gus was likely to be around. No, she’d make it a children’s-only party.
‘So,’ she said, deciding that only a complete change of subject would get her out of this mess. ‘Shouldn’t you be writing your book?’
The crooked grin that had first attracted her across a crowded kitchen had the same effect now. ‘I’ve only just got back. I need some time off before I start work.’
‘Don’t you want to finish your book then?’
He shrugged. ‘I’ve got to earn my living somehow, but will a book do that? I’m not sure. I’m a bit nervous about it, to be honest. I have an agent who says he can sell it for me if I do it right. I do have lots and lots of photographs. Perhaps it could be a coffee-table tome.’
Sian was surprised by Gus’s uncertainty. He always seemed so assured and confident. She’d enjoyed his tales at the dinner party despite her anxiety that evening. She couldn’t help being interested. The artist in her adored photographs. ‘I’d love to see them,’ she said, before she remembered she didn’t want to have any more to do with Gus than she could help.
‘Really? I’ll bring my laptop over sometime and show you. Or you could come up to the house. Mum’s trying to make more space in the barn. She told me she’s promised it to you to paint furniture in. I’ve got a whole load of gear coming that needs to go somewhere. I’ve wondered about the attic.’ He paused. ‘My mother seems to have got rather a lot of clutter.’
‘I got the impression it’s because people keep thinking they can store things in her house, because she has lots of room.’
‘You don’t mean you think I’m doing that too? Hey! Give me a break. She’s my mum. It’s my home. Where am I supposed to keep my stuff?’
Sian chuckled. ‘At home, of course, but she might need – does need – help sorting things out. We’ve made a start on the barn, but I bet the attic and all the spare rooms upstairs are full too.’
‘You’re a good friend to my mum, aren’t you? She told me.’
‘Well, I am very fond of her and she’s been wonderful to us.’
‘Without her even knowing that we knew each other.’ Gus looked across at Sian with an expression she couldn’t read. ‘Although we didn’t know each other very long, did we?’
‘No.’
‘But quite well.’
Sian blushed fiercely again. It was wrong of him to refer to their time together, most of which they’d spent in bed. But he seemed to be determined to bring it up, again and again.
‘Well, it was very intense,’ she said firmly, as if trying to dispatch it to the past and imply there had been no leakage to the present. He mustn’t know she had gone on reliving those hours for a long, long time, despite her head telling her not to.
‘I thought of you continuously,’ he said. ‘I really wished we hadn’t been so grown up about it; that we hadn’t decided not to exchange contact details because we knew I was going away.’
‘It seemed right at the time.’
‘I know, but later, it seemed so wrong.’
Sian didn’t know what to say. Not having contact details had made things easier for her in some ways; she couldn’t tell him about Rory, or at least, not easily. At the time her mother had said this was an excuse: she knew his name, she could get in touch with him somehow. What was the internet for? Sian had replied it was for shopping, and eventually her mother had accepted that Sian did not want to track down the father of her baby and let the matter rest. She hadn’t yet told her mother about Gus reappearing in her life. At least, she’d told her that Fiona’s son had appeared at the dinner party, but not who he was. Of all the villages, why had she moved into his? And why had he come home?
She shrugged. ‘Hindsight and all that.’
‘Did you think about me, ever?’
Never had Sian been so grateful for a knock on the door. She ran to it, aware she was behaving completely erratically.
‘Oh, Melissa! Now nice!’ she said, inordinately pleased to see someone she didn’t like very much. ‘Do come in.’
Melissa was looking adorable in a flatteringly low-cut floral dress that would definitely qualify as a ‘frock’. Sian, in her work clothes, was slightly less pleased to see her now.
‘I hope I’m not disturbing you.’
‘Oh, it’s all right, I’m disturbed already. Gus is here.’
‘You mean Angus? I always knew him as Angus. But how nice.’
The two women went through the kitchen into the dining room. Gus got to his feet. ‘Hi, Lissa. Good to see you.’
‘I went round to your house to thank your mother for a lovely dinner party,’ Melissa said. ‘I thought you were jogging? Your mother told me you were.’
‘I was jogging. I called in on Sian for a drink.’
Melissa frowned slightly.
‘So, would you like a cup of tea or something?’ said Sian.
‘Oh, yes please,’ said Melissa with unseemly haste. It was obvious she intended to stay. ‘Have you got green tea? I’m cutting down on caffeine.’
‘I might have,’ said Sian, going into the kitchen to look.
‘I just love this little house!’ she overheard Melissa saying to Gus. ‘I want to buy it. Sian’s only renting.’ There was a giggle. ‘It would be fun to live next door to each other, don’t you think?’
‘I’m sure it would be,’ Gus agreed. ‘But Sian and Rory live here.’
‘But only renting,’ said Melissa.
From the kitchen Sian couldn’t quite tell how enthusiastic his response was. There was an unnerving silence from the dining room now. Were they locked in a passionate embrace? Or was Melissa measuring up for curtains? She made the tea as quickly as possible.
As she brought it through, adding some biscuits to the tray that she’d forgotten about earlier, she decided the guilty couple weren’t exactly springing apart but they seemed easy in each other’s company.