“No,” I reply miserably. “You’re not wrong. Ididwant nothing more to do with him. But then…”
“You saw him again, and it was like no time had passed?”says Lorraine, who’s a self-confessed Vivienne Faulkner fan, and is going tolovemy new book for her, seriously. “Your eyes met, and you realized you still loved each other?”
“No, of course not,” I reply, before she can get too carried away. “Anything there was between Elliot and I ended years ago, when he left the way he did. It just … well, it just feels like there’s unfinished business between us, that’s all.”
Likewhyhe left the way he did, for instance. That’s the main thing I want to know, but have been too afraid to ask.
But all of that’s in the past; and, of course, you can’t rewrite the past, no matter how much you might want to; or be secretly attempting to, via your latest ghostwriting project.
I sigh, and turn back to Lorraine.
“I don’t know why I said I’d go with him,” I tell her honestly. “It was a moment of madness, I guess.”
It was the snow, starting up right at that minute. It was the way it sent me back in time, and made me remember how it felt when I met him. It was the way he looked at me and laughed at the snowflakes falling on us, and the way it all felt exactly like the first time.
So, actually, I guess I do know why I agreed to go with him after all.
I’m just not willing to admit it.
“Speaking of madness,” says my aunt. “Have you seen Martin lately? He keeps ‘popping in’ to ask me how you are.”
“I haven’t seen him,” I reply, not wanting to admit that I’ve hidden in the office — and, on one occasion, under the counter in the Coffee Corner — every time Martin’s ‘popped in’ to the bookstore for the same reason. “But he’s texted me a few times. I wish he wouldn’t. I hate having to keep telling him we’re not getting back together. It’s like kicking a kitten.”
“Keep kicking, though,” says Lorraine firmly, making me smear the lipstick I’m attempting to apply onto my cheek in shock. She’s normally such an animal lover. “Not literally,” she adds hastily. “But seriously, Holly, don’t go back to Martin. He’s not the one for you.”
“I wasn’t planning to,” I reply, surprised by the intensity in her voice. “Why are you so against the idea, though? I thought you liked Martin?”
“I do like Martin,” she insists. “He’s … nice. I just think you can do better than justnice, that’s all.”
And there’s that word again. ‘Nice’ is the word everyone uses to describe Martin. Well, everyone except Levi, who once described him as “completely delulu, and not in a good way”. ‘Nice’ might translate to ‘boring’ in Martin’s case, though, but that’s the reason we got together after Elliot left. Because ‘nice’ might mean ‘boring’, but ‘boring’ means ‘safe’. And sometimes safety feels like the best option.
“I’m not getting back together with Martin,” I reassure Lorraine, who finally leaves, taking the first few pages of my Vivienne Faulkner book with her, promising to read them and let me know what she thinks. Once she’s gone, I pace anxiously up and down the kitchen floor, watching the snow continue to float lazily down outside the window until a sleek black car pulls up outside, and Elliot climbs out, looking around with interest at the little street perched on top of the hill.
“Nice place,” he says, as I open the door to meet him, quickly stepping through it so he doesn’t expect me to ask him inside. “I’m sure I recognize these houses. Isn’t this the hill we used to…?”
“That’s not why I bought the house,” I cut in quickly, closing the door behind me. “I just like the view, that’s all.”
“It’s a great view,” Elliot agrees, pretending not to notice how defensive I sound.
I cringe inwardly at myself. It’s not like he was accusing me of buying a house near the bench we used to sit on just for old time’s sake, was it? But now I’ve made it sound like Ididdo that, which means our trip together is off to a predictably awkward start. Not that there’s any way us taking a trip together could be anything other than awkward, I suppose.
Remind me why I agreed to this, again?
“Where are you staying, by the way?” I ask once we’re safely cocooned inside Elliot’s hire car and driving away from the hill and its memories. “I keep meaning to ask. I’m guessing it’s not The Rose this time?”
“The Globe, you mean?” he says, with a chuckle which suggests he’s much more comfortable with references to his book than I am. “No, I decided to give it a miss this time. I’m staying in an Airbnb just outside town. My assistant found it for me. It’s pretty nice, actually. You’d like it.”
There it is again; that casual assumption that he still knows me. It’s both infuriating and confusing, because it makes it hard for me to pretend we’re just two random strangers who happen to be taking a car ride together; which would be my preference for this situation.
But Elliot continues talking as if we’re a couple of old friends who haven’t seen each other in a while, and he does it all the way to the house the auction is taking place in; which is, as he said, on a country estate around 10 miles from Bramblebury. By thetime we pull into a parking space in front of the old Georgian manor which sits at its center, I know he’s living in Sarasota now, in a house near the beach, and that he has three nephews and a niece, all of whom he dotes on. I know he made enough fromThe Snow Globeto not have to join the family law firm after all, and I know his parents discovered they were actually pretty okay with that turn of events after all — presumably once the royalties started rolling in.
“So, what do you actuallydo, though?” I ask, as we get out of the car and crunch our way across the vast, circular driveway towards the house, which looks straight out of a Regency romance. “If you’re not writing, I mean? What do you do with your time?”
“Oh, I still write,” Elliot replies vaguely. “Just … nothing likeThe Snow Globe.”
His answer only gives me even more questions, but before I have time to ask any of them, we’re walking up the steps to the polished front door, where a well-dressed woman greets us and hands us a glossy brochure each, before directing us to the ‘great hall’ as she calls it, where the auction will be being held.
“Isn’t this place amazing?” says Elliot as we make our way down a long hallway lined with oil paintings, our feet sounding unnaturally loud against the tiled floor. “It has a maze in the grounds, apparently. And it looks like it’s haunted. Don’t you think?”
