We perched on a low stone wall and looked up at them. And then it happened. His lips on mine, just briefly. Then we kissed again, for longer this time. Long enough for my head to fill with shooting stars.
My first kiss was with this handsome, gentle boy. All those comments about George, when we were younger – that he had the face of angel while I’d ‘grow into’ my looks. I’d never felt pretty. I knew I wasn’t. But that night I felt like a beautiful girl and I wanted the kiss to go on and on forever. Then my name was yelled, horribly close to my ear: ‘Kate! Kate! I’ll tell Mum!’ And I sprang away from the boy, mortified, and hurried back into the hall after my maddening little brother.
And that had been that. Perhaps the boy had gone home after that, because I never saw him again.
‘It was you, wasn’t it?’ I say now. ‘All those years ago?’
Fergus nods. ‘Yes, it was me.’
I look at him and laugh and shake my head, hardly able to believe it. ‘When did you realise?’
‘I’m not sure. The first time you came into the shop, I knew there was something about you. Something familiar about your face, your voice – everything. And then you talked about your holidays here and I kept thinking, “Is Kate that girl from all those years ago?” But I didn’t want to say anything,’ he adds. ‘I didn’t know how to, without it sounding weird. So I kept it to myself.’
‘It wouldn’t have sounded weird.’ I beam at him, my heart brimming with happiness now.
‘No, I realise that now.’
I take his hands in mine and smile and say, ‘But now we know for sure. And, you know, I’ve never forgotten that night...’
We start walking then, following the leaf-strewn track deeper into the woods. ‘Neither have I,’ he says.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Vince
By the time Agata knocks politely at the front door, Vince has just about stopped cringing over his sexist faux pas. Of course, by now he should know that women are far better at this kind of stuff than he is. However, Kate tended to involve him. (‘Can you come and hold this, Vince? If you’re notcrazilybusy right now?’) In contrast Agata approaches the task with calm, quiet precision, as if she were making those pastel-hued confections in her kitchen.
She’d come back with a tiny enamel box embellished with bluebells. A manicure set, he’d wondered? Then he’d caught himself. Kate’s been gone for less than four months and he’s turning into a neanderthal oaf. Is this what a lack of female company does to him?
Of course, there were dainty little tools in the tin. ‘My flatpack kit,’ Agata explained, smoothing back her choppy fair hair.
‘Nifty,’ he said, genuinely impressed. ‘So, what can I do?’
She grinned at him. He detected a glimmer of playful humour in her hazel eyes that he’d never noticed before. ‘Put the kettle on, love?’ she said in a mockney accent. So off he trotted to make tea and arrange some sugary biscuits in a fan shape on a plate.
Twenty minutes in and she’s expertly fitting sections together, not a bead of perspiration on her face. It’s a mystery to Vince why it feels fine for Agata to build him a shelf unit, yet when Colin had muscled in with the bathroom door removal, he’d wanted to cosh him with the standard lamp. The difference is, she doesn’t make him feel like an idiot for not doing the job himself. So he hangs about while she builds the thing –without instructions.He imagines she doesn’t need a recipe for those macarons either. She just knows, instinctively, what to do.
‘You really are very good at this,’ he marvels.
‘I’m just one of those weirdos who finds it satisfying,’ Agata says, happily winding a little metal thing round to tighten something up.
‘I wish I did,’ Vince remarks.
‘Well, you’re good at lots of other things, aren’t you?’ She gets up from the floor, and together they lift the unit into position against his study wall and stand back and admire it.
‘Looks great!’ Vince announces. ‘I really appreciate that, Agata. Thank you.’
‘No problem. Can I help you organise it? Get your stuff out of those ratty old cardboard boxes?’
Vince hesitates, because he realises now that Agata is an extremelyprecisekind of person. He can’t imagine she’ll be impressed by the colossal muddle of his papers, jotters and books. ‘I should probably go through it all myself,’ he says with a trace of reluctance – because now he realises he’d like Agata to hang out here for a while.
Vince has felt horribly lonely, these past few months, biffing around his eerily silent house with only Jarvis for company, apart from visits from Gail next door. (Since the planning committee dinner Deborah has definitely been giving him a wide berth.) Sure, Kate went out to work – she had her hotel shifts – so he was alone then. But before he knew it she’d be home again, cooking and chatting and they’d settle down in the evenings to watch TV and have a glass of wine.
While Vince has always thought Agata to be perfectly pleasant, she’s usually overshadowed by Deborah, who towers over her and seems to boss her around. Before today he’d never had a proper conversation with her. Yet there’s something reassuringly calm and unflappable about her, he decides. Perhaps that comes from being married to a doctor. These days Lenny has settled into life as a small-town GP, but Vince knows he’s worked in some hectic urban hospitals in his time. Maybe Agata has learnt to be a steadying influence.
‘I’ll let you get on then,’ she says with a smile.
‘Don’t fancy another cuppa, do you?’ he asks quickly. ‘Or something stronger?’
