One
Llangynidr Castle, Pembrokeshire, Three Years Ago
It was said, you could have a fabulous job, a fabulous place to live or a fabulous relationship – but not all three.
Pierre didn’t have a fabulous job.
Or a fabulous place to live. Hers was a small flat above the cheap hairdresser which stayed stubbornly dreary despite her efforts to brighten it up with an old pair of Wellington boots which she had painted turquoise and filled with soil and a leafy spider plant.
As for the relationship…
“If you look out of the window,” the tour guide said loudly enough for the group scattered around the upper floor to hear, “you’ll see that the old tower you’re standing in now appears to hang over the water. Llangynidr Castle was built right on the edge so at high tide the sea comes all the way up the wall.”
People jostled forward to peer at the wave-battered base of the tower. Pierre stood back and let them go first. They didn’t stay long; clearly the view from the ancient window didn’t impress them. They were more interested in trekking along the Welsh coastline and birdwatching.
Once they stepped away from the window, Pierre went to look. She loved history and this crumbling medieval fort was fascinating.
The guide waved her arm at the stones below, some of which were covered in algae. “As you can see, much of the original structure has fallen into the sea.”
Pierre would have loved a job as a tour guide; she could have told stories about who had built this fort and how they lived and died. Unfortunately, she was just here for a weekend break. Tomorrow evening, it would be back to her dismal flat and even more dismal job. And Martin.
Martin, the manager of an online greeting cards company, part-time employer of Pierre and stringer-along of her heart for almost two years.
Doubts about their relationship had started on New Year’s Eve when, after the countdown to midnight and the singing of Auld Lang Syne, she’d thrown her arms around him, looked up into his eyes and said, “I love you.”
He had kissed her then, a long, long kiss. A great kiss. It started a small niggle at the back of her mind. Had he kissed her like that to avoid saying it back?
She wasn’t stupid, just because she fell in love with him quickly, didn’t mean he had to move at the same speed. She could wait.
Her birthday followed New Years, still no declaration. On Valentine’s Day, she’d spent two hours cutting red paper into hearts which she hung from ribbons all over his sitting room. On each heart she had written one thing she loved about him.
I love the way your hair looks messy in the morning.
I love the coffee you make me when I stay over.
I love it when you hold my hand.
“If you follow me,” the tour guide called to the group, pulling Pierre back from her recollection. “We will now leave the castle and head inland to the bird sanctuary where you will see several rare subspecies of osprey and both yellow beak and black beak puffins.”
Everyone hurried out, looking relieved to be done with the boring history part of the tour. On impulse, Pierre decided not to follow. The only thing she needed to know about birds was that they had wings and sometimes they flew. Anything else bored her into rigor mortis.
She had joined the tour in her own car, so she wasn’t dependent on them for transport. She could stay here as long as she liked and gaze out the window at the ruins of a once great Welsh kingdom.
And decide what to do about Martin.
This bank holiday weekend should give her distance and time to think. That was why her phone stayed in her handbag. On silent. The last thing she needed was to spend three days waiting for his call, wondering if her absence made his heart grow fonder. If, at last, he would see the light.
When all her Valentine hearts had been one-sided, it had hurt enough to make her finally read the book her friends had given her. A book that made her drive to Wales for this long weekend. She hadn’t even told him she was going. Because on every page of that book was the advice she’d been too afraid to hear.If he doesn’t say that he loves you then he’s not that into you. If he doesn’t live with you then he’s not that into you. If he doesn’t ask you to marry him then he’s not that into you.
Pierre was just twenty-three; she didn’t expect a proposal, but they’d been together for just under two years, a serious relationship by any measure. True, men weren’t as sentimental as women, but Martin was thirty-five, surely he knew his own mind by now. If even on the festival of love he couldn’t bring himself to say he loved her, then what was she doing? Why was she still with him?
“Don’t move!” A man’s voice startled Pierre out of her contemplation of the sea below.
“Stay just as you are,” the voice said.
A minute later, a young man approached from behind her and climbed awkwardly over the window’s edge.
Awkward because he was holding the rail one-handed, his other hand full of a large camera. He dropped over the side onto a stone lip that stuck out of the old wall. Clearly, he was trying to get down to sea level, a good twenty-foot drop. When he couldn’t find any stairs, he simply sat on the edge and dropped all the way down. His ankle boots landed softly on a rock but he almost fell and windmilled his arms sideways to regain his balance.
