I was backing away, Tilly enveloped in my coat, and a peculiar feeling as though my vision were greying out at the edges beginning to settle over me. ‘It might not be!’ My voice was shrill.
Ross glanced over at the direction the sound had come from, then at my face. ‘Let’s go over here,’ he said, tugging at my sleeve so I had to follow him, back along the mossy path and out towards the road. ‘Now, what’s up, Libby?’
The shock had made me weak. I broke and blurted out everything, about thinking I saw David before the text message had arrived, the way that the dreadful feelings of being followed, being scrutinised had all come flooding back. My very real fear that he might have found me and be lying in wait to try to snatch his daughter. My hold on Tilly tightened until she squeaked.
‘You think he might have followed you here?’ Ross was biting the side of a nail again. ‘Why, though? Why not wait until you got to the hostel and confront you there?’
‘I don’t know!’ I almost shouted the words, which increased the cacophony from overhead as the birds seemed annoyed by my tone of voice. ‘I don’t know,’ I repeated. ‘We’re not dealing with someone who thinks the way you and I do, Ross. David is sick. He’s got some paranoid delusions or something, thoughts that make him convinced that I’m a danger to Tilly or that I’m up to something – I don’t know. I can’t even guess at his thought processes.’
‘Do you need to move out?’ The nail got a sturdy scrutinisation. ‘Are you safe at the hostel?’
I sighed and rearranged Tilly onto my other hip. ‘I don’t know. Yes, I think so. We’ve got code-locked doors and nobody will let a random man in. They’ve all got their reasons for being there and none of them are good, so… yes. I think we’re safe.’
‘Safe,’ echoed Tilly, putting her head down on my neck. It reminded me why I was here, why I was doing any of this. To keep her safe. Above the trees the birds whirled like solid smoke, their sour cries echoing down to us like the sounds of linen tearing. I closed my eyes.
‘Okay, just, you know. If you feel threatened or anything, you can come and hide out at my place.’ Ross spoke very quickly. ‘And I’m not saying that because I want to save you or anything, it’s just that… I really like you, Libby, and I don’t think you should be frightened.’
I opened my eyes, and he was looking at me. It was an earnest look, almost beseeching, and I felt that tightening in my stomach again. I really did fancy Ross Ventriss – oh dear Lord. And now he was trying to be kind to me? To cover my confusion I juggled Tilly again, causing her thumb to pop out of her mouth with a dribble of saliva on my collar.
‘That’s very… I mean, you’re being very sweet… I just don’t know if I…’ I stammered, using my daughter as a sort of shield to prevent him from seeing how red my face was getting.
Ross flicked his head sideways. ‘The offer’s there,’ he said. ‘If you need it. If you choose to use it. And this isn’t me riding to the rescue or wanting something from you in return. I’m keeping well out of whatever happened between you and your ex, mostly because I’m really tired of being decked by irate men when I’m only trying to help.’ Then he added more forlornly, ‘I’m rereading all my therapy notes just to make sure.’
‘Oh, Ross,’ I said, the words sliding out without my meaning them to, and also sounding a little more exasperated than I meant them to.
‘I know, I know.’ He’d got his hands over his face again and Tilly was watching attentively. ‘Believe me, none of this was on my agenda either. I need to get vacant possession, get the work started on the new house, try to look like a competent and competition-winning architect in charge of my own destiny. Instead I’m finding myself falling for a complicated mother with a tiny child and a possible stalker.’ His voice came muffled through his fingers. ‘I have no idea how I manage to make such a fu—muck up of life. I was a perfectly normal teenager! Well, no, I wasn’t, because of my mum, I was always worried about what I’d come home to and whether there was any food in or any money for the bills, but apart from that…’
‘Ross.’ I had to circle so that I wasn’t talking into the back of Tilly’s coat, which meant that she was craning over my shoulder to watch him. ‘You are a really lovely man.’
The heat which had detonated again inside me and this time wasn’t embarrassment, told me that I felt the same. A curious, tentative liking right now, one that reached deep inside me and told me that I found him attractive, something that could be more. But I’d been here before, hadn’t I? David had been attractive, a ‘lovely man’ at first. Now, here I was, hiding out in obscure places and still…stillseeing him over my shoulder every time I turned around.
Ross sighed. ‘Yes, I know. And I know that tone, I’ve been friend-zoned so many times that I’ve practically got my own parking space. Trust me, Libby, it’s not news to me.’
‘No!’ I alarmed myself with my raised voice, and there was a momentary hush in the routine cawing overhead, as though even the birds were listening in. ‘No, I didn’t mean that. I think…’ I had a momentary flash of what it might be like to sleep with Ross: whispers in the dark and slippery heat. I pushed it away. ‘I’d like to think that you and I might be…’ I couldn’t think of how to describe any relationship which had the heavy weight of a toddler laid across the middle of it, with all the restrictions and impossibilities that implied. ‘But it’s difficult. And I don’t know how I go about trusting a man again, after the way David changed.’
Ross sighed hugely. ‘I know. I know. Plus there’s, well, Tilly. Your opportunities for being wined and dined are limited and besides I’ve sunk all my wining and dining money into the building of the house which I can’t build because there’s someone living in the old one.’
‘Tilly has nursery twice a week,’ I said, sounding almost hopeful.
‘But I’m spending all available daytime hours trying to sort out the shit show that the cottage rebuild is rapidly becoming.’
‘Oh.’
We stood at the side of the road for a while longer, while the restless chilly breeze tugged at us and the birds slowly sank back onto branches and twigs again, like ashes subsiding after a fire.
‘But you’re not saying an unequivocal “no”?’ Ross startled me by speaking. I’d been straining my eyes to see into the deep dark between the trees, still not certain that we weren’t being watched.
‘To what?’ I asked. Tilly had put her head on my shoulder and looked as though she was drifting off to sleep.
‘To us – you and me. Possibly surrendering to the potentiality of perhaps going for a drink sometime? Or a coffee? Or just jointly screaming into the void?’ He gave me a small smile. ‘I’m actually not bad company when I’m not worrying about cashflow or film crews which, now I come to think of it, is pretty much all of the time at the moment, so forget I spoke.’
Cautious because of so many factors that I couldn’t even list them, I reached out and touched his sleeve. ‘I’ll think about it, all right?’
‘More than I dared hope for.’
Now I smiled back. ‘But for now I ought to get Tilly home. We might even stop for an ice cream on the way back,’ I added, because this curious almost-confession made me feel light-hearted and wanting to celebrate somehow.
The sleepy head raised, animated now. ‘Ice cream?’
