‘I couldn’t think of anything else to say,’ Will confessed. ‘Worked though. The quickest methods are often the kindest.’
‘Husband?’ Lucy questioned, wiping tears of laughter from her face. ‘I just spent the entire evening with him and …’
‘Exactly. He’s probably driving in stunned silence, wondering how on earth he missed it,’ Will suggested.
Lucy shook her head in disbelief. ‘I should say thank you.’
‘You should,’ Will said with a glint in his eye. ‘Who knows what horrors I just saved you from?’
‘I feel so bad for him,’ she said as they moved back into the sitting room. ‘He looked so confused. But he really was so incredibly dull and just wouldn’t get the hint that I wasn’t interested.’
‘In that case, I’ll try not to be offended that you chose to spend time with him rather than come out with me this afternoon,’ Will said, looking anything but serious.
‘I would much rather have been with you,’ she said, ‘but alas, I had to spend a few hours listening to property facts. Did you know that the average house price in Guernsey now is nearly £450,000?’ she asked with mock excitement.
‘I did not,’ Will said, resting his head against the settee and looking towards her. ‘That is a sexy fact. Tell me more.’
Lucy laughed, turning her body towards him while she thought. ‘Some houses in the west of the island have special granite stones sticking out for witches to sit on rather than continue to cause havoc inside the house.’
‘Really?’ He angled his head up. ‘That is actually quite interesting.’
‘Don’t you start,’ she replied.
They sat in silence looking at each other before Will smiled. ‘I should go. It’s late.’
Lucy nodded but felt as if her evening had been cut short just when it had finally picked up. ‘Thank you,’ she said as Will rose.
‘No problem. Any more bad dates, you know where I am.’
‘I’m not going on any more dates,’ Lucy was quick to point out. ‘I’m not even sure why I went on that one.’
As Will opened the front door he said, ‘Night, Lucy.’
‘Goodnight,’ she said as she watched him walk back towards his house. At the gate, he didn’t turn back to wave as she’d thought he might and disappointment filled her. Instead, he kept walking and she waited until he passed through the gate and into the lane before she closed the door. She opened the door again and looked at the gate curiously. It was hanging back in place and she smiled, thinking of Will repairing it earlier in the day and not having said. Lucy hugged herself before closing the door, locking up for the night and collapsing into bed.
Chapter 18
‘You did what?’ Clara asked the next morning when she summoned Lucy to St Peter Port for a quick catch-up over coffee. ‘You went on a date? With one of the estate agents? Really?’
Lucy groaned, waiting for the fallout. She wished she’d not shared this information now.
Clara sipped her coffee but looked disapproving. ‘Was it good?’
‘No, it was terrible,’ Lucy confessed. She wished it had been a fantastic date just so she had something positive to report.
‘I hate the idea of first dates.’ Clara shuddered. ‘If John ever dumps me, I’m finished. I don’t want to go back out there again. It’s terrifying.’
‘Yes, well. Some of us are suffering this fate so others—’ she pointed at her sister ‘—don’t have to.’
‘The sisterhood salutes you,’ Clara said as their coffee arrived.
This was nice, exactly what Lucy had been missing, although she hadn’t realised it until now. When she and Clara got on it was peaceful, joyous, exactly how she envisioned a relationship with her sister ought to be.
‘I’ve got twenty minutes then I have to get to work,’ Clara said. ‘Tell me what happened with the other estate agents … the normal ones.’
Lucy filled Clara in and watched with readiness for her reactionon finding out that boring Simon was the agent who had valued the house the highest and then the dreadful way she’d roped Will into evicting Simon from the house.
‘Oh Lucy!’ Clara put her head in her hands. ‘Why did you have to have a terrible date with the one offering the most money? I don’t want to scrap him from the list. I’ll have to instruct one of his colleagues, I guess. That’ll be an awkward conversation.’
