“It was. I was clueless about what was going on with Bella, and I needed you to point it out. I’m very grateful.”
“Will you talk to her?”
“About her purchases? I don’t know. I don’t think she’d want me to.”
Lucy thought of how defensive and lonely Bella had seemed this afternoon, when they’d had hot chocolate. “She might not admit it, but I think she would.”
He grimaced. “Maybe, but I’m not much good at that kind of thing.”
“Talking?” Lucy teased, but he took her seriously.
“Pretty much. If it’s not work related, if I can’t put on my head teacher hat, I’m kind of hopeless.” He smiled, but Lucy knew he believed what he’d said.
“A head teacher hat. What does that look like? I wonder.”
“Bulletproof helmet. And invisible, of course, since head teachers are superheroes.”
“You have to be, to manage a whole school. I can barely manage the reception area.”
“You’re doing well out there.”
She arched an eyebrow. “Card stock and disconnected calls aside?”
“I never said there wasn’t room for improvement.”
“Oh!” Teasingly, thoughtlessly, Lucy punched his shoulder, and in an equally unthinking reflex Alex caught her hand.
Lucy stilled, her breath coming out in a rush as she felt his large, dry hand encase her much smaller one. This time she didn’t think she was imagining the pulse of attraction between them.
Then he let go of her hand, even pushed it back a bit as if he were returning something she’d dropped. How much of that scenario had been in her own head? Lucy gave him a weak smile and turned to go.
Outside it was growing dark, the sky a deep indigo, the village mired in night save for a few streetlights.
“Do you need a torch?” Alex asked. “You’re not in Boston anymore.”
“Am I in Oz?” Lucy teased, or tried to. She was still feeling shivery from that moment in the sitting room, and she hoped Alex couldn’t notice in the dim light of his entry hall. She fumbled for her coat, pushed her arms through the sleeves, and struggled with the zip. “I’ll be fine. Tarn House is just up there, anyway.” She pointed up the high street; she could see the train station and the pub in the distance.
“All right, then,” Alex said, and stepped back, well out of touching range, which Lucy took as a signal.
She walked down the garden path and opened the gate, which squeaked loudly in the stillness of the night; for once, there was no wind. She could feel Alex watching her, and she wondered when he would go back inside.
Chapter fifteen
Juliet
Juliet gazed at her wardrobe full of jeans and fleeces and wondered what she should wear to the pub quiz tonight. She had all of four dresses: one for weddings, one for funerals, and two for any festive occasions, one summer, one winter. None of them were appropriate for a pub quiz.
Not, Juliet acknowledged, that she even knew what you were meant to wear. Presumably Lucy would wear something arty and outrageous, and Rachel would smarten up a bit, as she liked to do of an evening. Peter, Juliet could not imagine would wear anything but his usual jeans and holey Arran jumper. And as for her?
“Oh, why bother,” she muttered crossly, and grabbed one of her many fleeces. She didn’t want to make an effort, or rather, beseento make an effort, and yet she also felt a flicker of dissatisfaction at putting on her same old clothes. Maybe this whole thing was a mistake.
“It’s just a bloody pub quiz,” she told herself as she yanked a brush through her hair. “Get over it already.”
She could hear Lucy humming in the bathroom; she’d been in a good mood ever since last night, when she’d come home quite late from the bra shopping expedition. Juliet had been up in bed, reading, when she’d heard Lucy come in, humming just as she was now, practically floating up the stairs. She hadn’t left her bedroom to ask Lucy how it had gone, and Lucy hadn’t come to talk to her, which didn’t surprise Juliet and yet still left her just a little bit disappointed.
The next morning she’d taken the plate of sausages and mash she’d left for Lucy out of the warming oven and scraped it into the bin.
Now, with one last glance at her reflection, she left her bedroom and headed downstairs to wait for Lucy. The latest set of walkers had arrived that afternoon, a retired couple who were already tucked up in bed, exhausted from their day of walking from Ennerdale. Juliet settled the dogs and tidied the already-spotless kitchen, her stomach seething with butterflies.It’s just a pub quiz,she told herself yet again, annoyed with how nervous she was. She was thirty-seven, for heaven’s sake, and she was acting as if she were thirteen.
