“So did I,” she whispered.
“But the truth is I don’t know where this is going. Where anything between us can go. You’re leaving in a couple of months and I don’t even know if I’m ready for a relationship. Or if my daughters are ready for one. And that’s without even asking you what you want. I know you recently broke up with a bloke who was saddled with kids, and I can’t imagine your wanting to jump into that scenario all over again.”
He waited, and Lucy wondered what he wanted to hear. That she did? Or was he hoping she’d give him the easy out?
“I don’t know,” she said slowly. “All of this is unexpected.”
“Yes, definitely,” Alex agreed. “I wasn’t looking for . . . well, anything. Frankly at this point my life is more about survival mode.”
“Right.” So this was the letting-her-down talk, and the trouble was he did it so nicely. She felt sorry for him, but it still hurt that he wasn’t sweeping her into his arms and kissing her senseless as he apologized for ignoring her for the last three days. Poor Lucy, ever the optimist.
“So . . .” Alex raked a hand through his hair, shrugging up at her, and Lucy decided to help him out. Help herself out, and end this misery.
“So maybe we should just leave it?” she finished with as practical a tone as she could muster. “It was fun, but . . . ?”
Now it was his turn to finish. And for a second she thought she saw disappointment flicker in his eyes. No, that was probably more of her deluded optimism.
“Fun, but,” he repeated after a moment. “Yes, I suppose that sums it up.”
Nodding slowly, the heart that had free-fallen like a penny now heavy as a stone, Lucy turned and walked back to reception.
A week dragged by, an awful week where Lucy exchanged cordial hellos with Alex and not much more. Once he’d come into the office and attempted some chitchat, but it had been so painfully awkward for both of them that they’d left it.
Lucy told herself she didn’t mind, insisted she had enough going on in her life to be happy about. And shedid. She was teaching art to the Year Fives as well as the Year Sixes now, and she, Rachel, and Juliet had started a new team for the pub quiz with Abby, the granddaughter of Mary Buxton from the beach café and a single mum to a three-year-old boy.
Abby had been living in Newcastle but was staying in Hartley-by-the-Sea for a little while. “Until Mary gets on her feet,” she’d said, although Juliet had told Lucy privately that Mary wasn’t likely to do that anytime soon.
“So what do you think Abby will do?” Lucy had asked.
“Stay, I suppose. Mary’s the only family’s she got, as far as I know. Abby grew up here, but she left as soon as she’d finished school.”
“Do you think she’s glad to be back?” Although they’d done a pub quiz together, she hadn’t gotten to know Abby very well. She hadn’t spoken except to offer a few tentative answers, and she hadn’t even stayed to hear the results, needing to get back to Noah.
“I don’t know,” Juliet answered slowly. “I never got the sense she hated it here, but more that she wanted to see the world. She’s only twenty-four now.”
Lucy and Juliet had taken to spending their evenings together, chatting over dinner and sometimes watching brainless TV shows. Lucy was trying to convince Juliet the merits of reality TV, and so far she thought she’d had some success.
“It’s such rubbish,” Juliet would exclaim as contestants dumped buckets of mud over each other’s heads on one particularly inane program, but she was smiling.
“You just love to criticize,” Lucy answered, and threw a pillow at her.
Some evenings they spent chatting with whatever guests were staying: retired couples or gap year kids or the occasional bus tour of pensioners or pupils. Lucy liked hearing all their different stories and accents, learning a little bit about their lives before they moved on. Juliet, she thought, seemed to like it too, although she never said as much.
So really, Lucy told herself as she swept mascara onto her lashes in preparation for another day at Hartley Primary, she had nothing to complain about. So she wasn’t going to dive headfirst into a relationship. With her history, it was better this way. Really.
It was the last day before half term, the weeklong break at the end of October, and Lucy had nothing planned for theholiday week except helping Juliet out with the steady stream of guests booked into Tarn House. Poppy had already told her, confidingly, that Alex was taking her and Bella to see his in-laws down in London, so Lucy wouldn’t even have the paltry hope of accidentally on purpose bumping into him on the beach when he walked Charlie.
It was just as well, Lucy decided as she started packing up that afternoon. The children had left at half past one, shouting and running down the hill, delighted to be off school for an entire week. And maybe some time away from Hartley Primary would help to get Alex out of her system. She’d certainly be busy enough helping Juliet.
“So what’s going on with you and our head teacher?”
“What?” Lucy looked up to see Diana standing in the doorway, eyebrows raised expectantly. “Nothing’s going on. Why do you even ask?”
Diana glanced furtively at Alex’s closed door; he was working, right up to the last minute. “Because I have it on good authority that you’ve been to his house twice. Late at night.”
“This is your bridge-playing neighbor.”
“That’s the one.”
