It didn’t work. And it wasn’t just her hands shaking; it was her shoulders, her whole body, as the sobs she’d managed to keep inside for so long came hurtling out, overwhelming her. She bowed her head, her hair falling in front of her face, her whole being racked with a pain that felt too intense to endure for more than a moment. Surely this couldn’t go on. Surely she couldn’t feel this much and still live. And yet she could; she wrapped her arms around her middle as the tears poured down her face and she cried for her wrecked friendship with Peter, and for all the relationships she’d never dared to have. For the lonely little girl she’d been, longing for her mother to love her, and for the fact that at thirty-seven she still felt like that lonely little girl.
When the sobs finally stopped, she felt both exhausted and empty. She pulled back the duvet and crawled underneath thecovers, shivering as if she had a fever. Eventually her body relaxed a bit, even if the ache in her heart didn’t ease. She felt leaden and heavy now, and the thought of getting up from bed ever seemed like an impossible task. She closed her eyes, and eventually she slept.
Chapter twenty-one
Lucy
The rest of the Crab Fair had passed by in a blur of happiness.
After the greasy-pole competition Alex had washed up a bit in the public bathrooms in the center of the square, and fifteen minutes later he was a bit cleaner if still grease-stained, and they’d gone in search of lunch. The sun was still miraculously shining as they ate sausages and chips on a park bench with the antics of the fair all around them. Bella had relaxed a little, and was even smiling, if still studiously ignoring Lucy. She tried not to mind, but the girl’s rejection of her rubbed her raw in places that had barely healed over.
“Thank you,” Alex said quietly, leaning closer to her on the bench so the girls couldn’t hear.
“What are you thanking me for, exactly?” Lucy asked lightly, but Alex’s gaze was serious.
“For realizing that climbing that blasted pole was something I needed to do. For them.” He nodded towards his daughters, who were immersed in the sights of the fair. “For Bella, especially.”
“Your clothes won’t thank me,” Lucy teased, because she wasn’t sure how to handle Alex’s sudden, sincere intensity.
Alex glanced down at his grease-spattered jeans. “No, probably not. But I’d sacrifice my entire wardrobe, such as it is, to reach Bella. I don’t know where I went wrong, but I know it happened a while ago.”
“Before your wife died?” Lucy asked, and Alex considered the question.
“Unfortunately, yes. I’ve been a workaholic my entire adult life. It only got worse when we moved here.”
“Even though you were looking for the community life,” Lucy stated, and Alex gave a nod.
“Ironic, I suppose, but the closer I get to something, the farther away it feels.”
“Or maybe it just doesn’t feel the way you thought it would.”
“That too, I suppose.”
“You must get the summers off, though,” Lucy said. “Most people don’t get that kind of holiday.”
“Head teachers don’t, either. I have to work for at least half of it. And if I’m honest . . .” He stopped, his unfocused gaze resting on Bella and Poppy. “It’s not just a work issue.”
“What is it, then?” Lucy asked. She leaned forward and Alex smiled bleakly.
“It’s ameissue.”
She wanted to ask what he meant, but she didn’t get the chance, because Poppy had finished her sausage, spilling ketchup all over herself, and after the necessary cleanup they headed over to the children’s races.
Bella warmed up enough to stagger through a three-legged race with Poppy as Alex and Lucy cheered them on. They watched some of the gurning competition, with various people pulling all sorts of funny and grotesque faces, and listened to some live music in the town hall until Lucy saw that Poppy was flagging and they decided to wrap things up.
A bucket of popcorn and far too much candy floss later, they headed back towards the car. Lucy had wondered how the day would end, if she should just ask Alex to drop her off at Tarn House, and she was still dithering about whether to say something when he turned to her and said, “Why don’t you stay for tea?”
“Are we having the lamb?” she teased, and he smiled.
“I’m afraid not. It needs to roast for about six hours, I imagine. But how does pasta and tinned sauce sound?”
“Delicious.”
Bella, thankfully, didn’t make a fuss about Lucy staying, and Poppy was delighted. When they got back to the house, Alex disappeared upstairs for a shower—despite his ablutions in the public bathrooms, he was still pretty greasy—and Lucy put on a pan of water for the pasta, got out the tinned sauce, and added some chopped onion and pepper to it to make it a little tastier.
It felt so cozy, so wonderfully normal, to be pottering around in Alex’s kitchen, chatting absently to Poppy as she searched for forks and knives and tidied up some of the breakfast things that had been left out.
She felt far more at ease, more at home, here than she ever had in Thomas’s sleek penthouse apartment. Yet she still had no idea what could happen between her and Alex, or what he—or even she—wanted to happen.
