“Absolutely not.” Stuart gets to his feet. “There are some pyjamas you can borrow upstairs.” He shoots Lila a pitying look. “All of you. Come on, Rowan. You can help me carry.”
“Er, okay.” I follow him out of the room, and upstairs, where he turns right instead of left, which is the way to the room I’m staying in, and takes us up another set of stairs into a wood-panelled loft conversion. There are two doors, and Stuart leads us through the right, into a small but beautifully formed room, with sloping ceilings, polished wooden floors and a rustic iron-framed bed, covered in layers of woollen blankets. It’s tidy, but lived-in: a rack of neatly hung clothes against one wall, a tangled pile of rope and wood tucked into a basket next to it. It smells like Angus, and I pause on the threshold.
“Is this where the interrogation begins?” I ask.
“Angus is my best friend.”
“I take that as a yes.”
“I have nothing against you personally, Rowan. You seem nice enough.”
Stuart opens a cupboard, revealing carefully stacked piles of clothes. I can make out an entire shelf of plaid shirts, andanother of grey trousers. There’s no doubt. This is Angus’ room. I want to explore, to touch everything, but I restrain myself under Stuart’s scrutiny.
“But?”
He throws me a pair of dark-blue jogging bottoms, and an over-sized grey T-shirt, fraying at the hem. “Look, I’m sure Angus hasn’t told you about it, but he’s been through a lot these last years. I don’t want to see him hurt again.”
“And you think I might hurt him?”
“I think that from the outside, you don’t seem like you’re in a place to offer him an equal partnership. Angus needs stability. Everything is changing for him, everything he’s ever known – he can’t be spending his time traipsing up and down the country, chasing after a woman using him as a rebound. He’s not going to leave the farm. Not right now. Maybe not ever.”
“I—”
“He’d kill me if he knew I was saying any of this, but, for his sake, let this stay as what it is: a one-night stand. He’s too stubborn and too honourable for his own damn good, so unless you can commit to him, and I mean really be there for him, don’t lead him on, okay?”
“Look, I get it. You care about him – I’d do the same for my best friend.”
I drunkenly had a similar conversation with Brian when I first met him. Thankfully, Marnie wasn’t too annoyed: she mostly thought it was funny that I decided to have a go at him at 2am outside McDonalds, waving a packet of chicken nuggets to emphasise my point. Somehow, I don’t think Angus would feel the same.
“And with what happened with his mum, and his dad… You’re right. He’s been through a lot. But, at the end of the day, anything between Angus and I is between us. Not you. Also, nooffence, but we’ve slept together once. That’s it! I think it’s a little too early for this kind of talk, don’t you?”
Stuart’s hands still on the pile of clothes he’s picked out of the cupboard. “He told you about his dad?”
“Um… yes?”
“Huh.”
“What?”
“Nothing. I— Look, I stand by what I said. Don’t hurt him. Don’t lead him on – not unless this is really what you want. Not unless you can be there for him, thick and thin.” He looks me up and down. “All set?”
I nod. I don’t know what else to say: it feels like everything is suddenly going at one-hundred miles an hour, when we’ve barely touched the gas.
“Do you mind if I get changed here?”
Stuart smiles, the friendliness back in his eyes, as if he hasn’t warned me off. “Go ahead. I’ll see you downstairs?”
“Sure.”
Chapter Thirty
Angus
“Fucking hell. Another one?”
Milly looks up from the counter she’s wiping as I slam into the kitchen, glad to be away from the raucous group outside. They’re beyond drunk; somewhere between dessert and cheese, the tenor of the dinner has changed, from civilised conversation among the twinkling fairy lights to one of the groom’s friends trying to convince the other to do a handstand on the table while he chugs a bottle of wine.
Thank fuck they didn’t manage it. The handstander made it as far as bending over before vertigo overtook him. Now he’s lying somewhere on the lawn, singing lullabies at the stars.
