‘It’s gorgeous, isn’t it?’
He nods and smiles. ‘I, um, couldn’t help overhearing Shelley on the phone earlier,’ he adds.
‘Oh, really?’ Her heart quickens.
‘Yeah, talking to Michael, I assume. The owner? Something about there being another freezer in the woodshed?’
‘Ah, right. Yes.’ Pearl senses blood rushing to her cheeks and then catches his eye, relieved to see that he’s amused by their deceit. The ‘temperamental’ Aga. The hurriedly changed dinner plan. ‘You must think we’re a bunch of incompetents,’ she adds. ‘And you’re writing about all this, aren’t you?’
‘Yeah, and very positively too.’ He picks up a smooth pebble from the shoreline and sends it skimming over the water. ‘They’re easily the best fish and chips I’ve ever had,’ he adds.
Pearl’s shoulders relax. ‘Glad you enjoyed them. But you’ll be pleased to know that tonight, everyone will be having what they ordered. There won’t be any surprises.’
‘Oh, I was kinda looking forward to seeing what might happen.’ Niall grins, and Pearl registers the intensity of his blue eyes behind the glasses.
‘Sorry to disappoint you.’ She smiles.
Niall picks up another pebble and skims it, then sits on the rock beside hers. ‘I also owe you a bit of an apology.’
‘Really? What for?’
‘For being such a grump yesterday, when you were asking me about Christmas…’
‘It was none of my business,’ she says quickly. ‘And you saved the day with those towels, you know. That was some arrival, wasn’t it?’
He chuckles. ‘Yeah. Poor kid. I was just glad I still had them. I’d been meaning to get rid of them.’ A small pause. ‘I had the world’s most carsick dog,’ he adds.
Pearl frowns in sympathy. ‘But you don’t any more?’
‘Oh no, he’s still very much going, is Barney. No, my ex has him now.’ Another pause, and the pebble is skimmed. ‘Bit of a custody battle,’ he explains with a dry laugh.
‘That must’ve been difficult,’ Pearl offers, but he shrugs off her sympathy.
‘People go through far worse things. It’s all fine now.’
Pearl takes this in, figuring that it isn’t all fine, and also that this might explain why Christmas was a sensitive issue. Damn Christmas! She’d looked forward to it so much, all those years when it was the three of them: Pearl and Dean and Brandon. And possibly even more so when it was just her and Brandon, her little mate – because it gave them something to plan for and focus on.We can’t feel all jaded and sad because Christmas is coming!
‘The thing is,’ he continues, ‘I s’pose one of my main motivations for arranging this trip, and persuading my editor to go for it, is because…’ He breaks off, as if figuring out how best to explain it.
‘Well, it’s work, isn’t it?’ Pearl suggests. ‘It’s your livelihood?—’
‘Yeah, there is that.’ He looks out over the water. It’s as still as glass until a bird swoops down, skimming its surface. ‘But there’s another reason too.’
Pearl glances at him, waiting for him to offer more. When he doesn’t, she lets the silence settle and looks along the shoreline. She notices a small wooden jetty and a little rowing boat lying on the rough grass above the pebbled shore. There are oars too, jutting out of it. She’s glad now that Niall stopped to talk, after the awkwardness of yesterday. Her curiosity is piqued and she senses that he might actually want to open up to her.
‘Look,’ she says, getting up from the rock. ‘That must be Michael’s boat. You don’t fancy a row on the loch, do you?’
Niall seems to hesitate. ‘I’m actually not the best at rowing. Bit embarrassing. I realise it’s one of those things men are instinctively supposed to know how to do?—’
‘No, I can row,’ Pearl tells him, ‘believe it or not.’
Niall looks quizzical. ‘Why the “believe it or not”?’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ she says quickly. ‘Maybe I don’t look like the type?—’
‘I don’t really judge people like that,’ he says lightly, and briefly, their eyes meet.
‘Right.’ Pearl smiles. The morning is so still and quiet, the blue sky streaked with wispy clouds. When she’d told Elias about the rowing – what a big part of her childhood it had been – he was amazed. ‘What, a dainty little thing like you?’ Feeling patronised, she’d quickly changed the subject. ‘My dad had a boat on the river Weaver, close to where we lived,’ she explains now. ‘He taught me to row and it became the thing we did together, Dad and me. I was mad about water, being on the river…’
