Both women laughed and wiped their tears.
“I’ll think about it. But only if you tell me why you are so sad.”
“If you stay here, I’ll tell you.”
What was it about this place that made people negotiate so much? She herself had fallen into the habit of extracting conditions. Also, Millie wouldn’t get married unless the dress wasn’t white; Joanie had sent her here to do a job on the condition of living without a car; and of course Adam. Adam and his conditions.
If I stay here, will you stay with me and give us a try?
If you tell me why you cut your hair.
He’d agreed to tell her a carefully-tailored account of his life, cutting out anything about his marriage.
As long as you understand I’m not a commitment kind of man.
While all the time he’d made a commitment to someone else.
Laura nodded to Pierre. She could have a conversation with Adam as long as she didn’t have to forgive him.
And that…
Thatwas non-negotiable.
Chapter Forty
Adam wokeup to the sound of music. Someone had connected their playlist to the main house speaker system.
Whose bloody playlist was this? It must have been recorded when God was a little boy.
“And so I go to fight the savage foe.”An archaic tenor sang his heart out.“Although I’m sometimes missed by the girls I’ve kissed.”
Adam hauled his torso upright and peered at his watch. 5:15am.WTF?
He was on the same floor as the family, so they too were being subjected to the golden oldie song collection. Maybe that was why they seemed to have abandoned their beds. Many footsteps went up and down the corridor outside his door.
The tenor had come to the end of his song.“Goodbye, goodbye, I bid you all a last goodbye.”
Thank God. He flopped back on the pillow, an arm over his eyes. He had tossed and turned half the night unable to fall asleep. A couple more hours this morning would have been nice.
Ella Fitzgerald came on with a jazzy number.“I see your face in every flower.”
Adam sighed, and pushed the covers away. Sleep was not going to be possible.
He’d gone to bed naked so he just padded to the ensuite bathroom and stepped under the powerful hot shower. He really ought to enjoy the luxury. Soon he would be moving into his new cottage. ‘New’ was of course relative. It would be new to him, but it had been built probably around the time Ella Fitzgerald recorded her songs. The pretty house with a small garden had caught his attention ages ago because it sat on top of a cliff with nothing around it but wild grass and a steep, rocky path down to the sea. When George had shown him the site of the new clinic, Adam had pointed to the cliff fifteen minutes’ walk away and asked if he could rent the house.
“Don’t be daft.” George had laughed. “The place’s stood empty for years. It needs a lot of repair.”
Adam had assured him he was more than happy to deal with all of that. And so, the cottage was now his.
Before it could become habitable, it needed new plumbing and wiring, a kitchen, a bathroom; the roof leaked and the front door was broken. Thanks to his ex-father-in-law, Adam now had no money to pay for any repairs. A hot shower and dry, fluffy towels would soon be a thing of the past.
Just like his relationship, apparently.
If it could be called that.
He’d gone from hoping to make Laura his girlfriend to the break-up without actually landing on ‘relationship’ – so much for Rudyard Kipling’s talk of starting again.
She’d been invisible all day yesterday. At the Casemate, according to Pierre, repairing the wedding dress. How she was doing that, God only knew because from what he had seen, the gown was far past any repairing. Laura, though, never gave up. Lord M had been right all those weeks ago: she was a wild flame that never went out.
