I glance around the site. There’s a couple of tents but no cars; you have to walk to get to the clearing. One of the tents has a gas stove set up on a camping table, but there’s no one around as far as I can see. ‘I wonder where we hid that grill?’ I muse, turning towards the woods now. ‘The one Mum made out of wire...’
The smile teases Fergus’s eyes. ‘Shall we look?’
‘I don’t think so.’ I laugh, filled with happiness at being here. At being here withhim. ‘It’s a needle-in-a-haystack-type thing,’ I add.
He shrugs and there’s something about his smile, as if he’s holding a secret close. ‘Let’s just see, shall we?’
I shake my head at the madness of what’s happening here. Not just his crazy suggestion to find the thing, but feeling his warm hand wrapped around mine. Sparks are shooting through me as we step into the cooler darkness of the woods.
Yet it’s not all darkness, once we’re in there. Fragments of sunlight land on the soft forest floor, shining like gems. His hand is still wrapped around mine as we find our way deeper into the forest, pushing our way through when the path becomes so narrow it’s barely there at all.
In the distance I spot the path opening out into a narrow lane where there’s a farm gate with a table outside, partially covered by a red and white checked awning.
I let go of Fergus’s hand and run towards it, glancing backwards as I go. ‘I remember this!’ Boxes of eggs and jars of home-made preserves are set out on the table, along with a wooden box with a secured lid, in which there’s a slot. An honesty box.
Suddenly, I find myself wondering how it was for Mum, being whisked away from her village just an hour’s drive north of here, when she was just a teenager. She’d been nineteen when she’d met my dad. And then suddenly she was a housewife in Glasgow and, not too long afterwards, mum to me and then George. But she’d always loved bringing us back here.
I pull out my phone and take a photo of the stall. We’d always bought supplies here for our little camp. We were fascinated by the honesty box system and couldn’t believe that no one would break it open or steal it.People are different up here,Mum said.
Then Fergus arrives at my side and my heart seems to turn over. I look at his kind, handsome face, overcome by a desire to kiss him. Apart from the chirp of birdsong there are no sounds at all.
‘I’m really glad you turned up again, Kate,’ he says. ‘It’s kind of funny, isn’t it?’
I know what he means: it’s funny how things have turned out. How the two of us have fallen into a friendship, and we’re now working together – but it’s not just that. It’s there again – that feeling between us, glimmering like the dappled sunlight on his face. A feeling that something could happen. Of course it won’t. Itcan’t.It’s been less than four months since I scrambled out of the bathroom window. So the very idea of even feelinganythingfor anyone is ridiculous and wrong. I’m still married to Vince, and we have so much to untangle and sort out. Yet somehow time has warped and distorted up here, and it feels as if I have known Fergus forever.
He squeezes my hand, then lets it drop and turns away from me.Don’t!I want to cry out.Don’t turn away. Come here.But Fergus has walked away now, and I stare at the back of him, at the broad shoulders and the expanse of his back. ‘Fergus?’ I call after him. ‘What is it?’
It’s okay,I want to tell him.I’m feeling it too.
He’s stopped again and raised a hand to the sturdy tree trunk in front of him. He steps around it, and I catch his expression, set in concentration until he seems to find what he’s looking for.
‘Kate?’ He beckons me over, grinning now. AndnowI get it. The local boy with scruffy light-brown hair who’d turned up at the campsite, wanting to hang out with us. Lured by sausages, Mum said. Just part of the local gang of kids. Years later, we’d kissed on that low stone wall. I know he remembers that part. But Fergus also remembers those times we cooked our supper on the grill, back when we were little kids. I hadn’t expected that. But it was part of his childhood too.
‘What is it?’ I ask.
‘Come here. Look at this.’ I can hardly breathe as I step towards him, twigs crunching beneath my feet. He waits until I am right there beside him to lift the thing from the hollow in the tree, all rusted with age but definitely our makeshift cooking implement.
‘That’s it.’ I look at him, feeling as if my heart could burst.
‘Yeah.’ He nods, smiling, and taking both of my hands in his. ‘I thought you’d come back the next year, but I didn’t see you again until that time, years later, at the ceilidh—’
‘I know,’ I say softly.
‘And I thought I’d come and see you here after that night. But you’d already gone,’ he adds. ‘I wondered if you’d ever come back.’
His beautiful grey-blue eyes seem to pull me in, and then I do it. I lean forward and kiss him softly on the lips.
‘Well, now I have,’ I say.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Vince
Vince has never cheated on Kate. Not once in all these years together. There’s been the odd flirtatious fan hanging around after a gig, but all comedians get those. Even gnarly-faced ones like Vince. (He doesn’t consider himself to be especially attractive; he’s always got by on his humour which is how the whole comedy thing started.)
He’s enjoyed the attention from these fans, and occasionally flirted back. But he’s never been tempted do anything – not even with Deborah, despite all those lurid fantasies. Okay, so he’s never had the opportunity – and if she’d launched herself right at him, then hemighthave reciprocated. But this isn’t Deborah! It’s Agata Kemp with the bicycle and enamel tin of tiny tools, whose husband prescribed Vince some ointment when he had a fungal toenail infection! And now he’s kissing her on his parents’ sofa, which Kate had been badgering him to get rid of. It seemed immoral to have it taken away to the dump when there was still plenty of wear left in it.
Immoral! He’s a fine one to talk about morals as somehow they’ve progressed to lying side by side on the sofa and their clothes are strewn around the living room like bunting after a carnival. They’re naked and kissing deeply and her cool, slender limbs are wrapped around him. How could this be? It feels like only minutes ago that Agata was cycling home with a bunch of tulips in her basket. Of course several hours have spun by, and they’ve sunk a good few glasses of wine in the interim. But it feels sudden and kind of shocking, as if a freak hurricane had whipped through the bungalow, taking with it their clothes plus Vince’s common sense and moral code.
