‘Oh, of course. Sorry, I didn’t mean to keep you.’ He rose too. If he’d worn a hat he suspected he’d have taken it off, or doffed it or something. He felt absurdly old-fashioned.
‘You haven’t. I mean…’
He suspected she wasn’t sure what she meant.
‘Anyway, I need to get on.’ He pointed to the laptop, its Wordle screen now safely closed. He suddenly felt a flash of panic that he wouldn’t see her again. ‘Augi!’ She twisted around to face him. And she wasn’t the only one. Nerves — not something he usually suffered from — had made his voice ring out loudly in the café. People stopped talking to look over at them.
‘Yes?’
‘I, er, wondered, if you’d like to meet for a, er, drink sometime.’
She actually frowned. It wasn’t the expression he was after. ‘Why?’ And nor was her response.
‘Because…’ He thought quickly. ‘I, er, thought it might be nice to discover if we might find we have more in common than Oliver Perry-Warnes.’ He smiled, willing her to smile back.
But the fixed polite smile didn’t widen. Her face was more guarded now than at any other time they’d been speaking.
‘I don’t think so, Daniel.’ He noted her use of his full name. ‘I’ll let Lucy know everything I find out, as will you. I can’t think of any other reason to meet up.’
And, without waiting for a response — because Dan guessed there wasn’t anything to wait for — she’d turned and walked with that dignified glide out the café. He watched her walk along the footpath, wondering when he’d last been turned down. He thought it might have been when he’d asked out a work colleague of his mother’s. He’d been fifteen. There had been a lot of laughter, none of it his.
Lucy joined him. ‘She’s something else, isn’t she?’ said Lucy.
‘Hm,’ he agreed. Trouble was he wasn’t sure what exactly that something was, nor how to charm it. The only thing he did know was she’d done something no one else had been able to do in a very long time — captured his attention and made him forget his past.
He’d have to try a bit harder, woo her more carefully and more gently, next time he saw her. Because that was the only other thing he knew.
There would be a next time.
Chapter Three
The house stood tall and gracious, with a verandah along two sides, the front door on the corner, with olive trees in terracotta pots on either side of the doorway. Augi wasn’t sure what it was that so captured her imagination about it. But from the first day she’d come to MacLeod’s Cove, it had. It stood on the hill opposite the library: one side looking out to a sea which was hidden from the library by the hill upon which the house stood, and the other side of the house, looking across to the hills behind the library.
The house had stood sentinel to her, these past ten years. Watching over her, the windows catching the winter light while the library was in shadow. And in summer the place shone with a vibrance and confidence which she envied, as if it were a person. If she’d ever allowed herself any dreams, they’d been centred on that house. It looked nothing like her past, and everything like a future she’d never have: lofty, visible to all and beautiful.
Still, she thought as she checked the clock, wasn’t that the point of dreams? Soothing visions of an unattainable life. But she was a realist, she reminded herself. And that meant living in the here and now. Where it was ten past five and she should have closed the library ten minutes earlier.
But she rarely closed on time. She loved this space. At this time in summer the sun was still high above the house opposite, and shone in through the front double doors she always hooked back so they stood open wide. There was a curious sense of quiet hanging over the place now that the last of the school children had gone home. The small library felt settled.
Which was more than could be said for her, she thought, checking her work emails one last time before closing down the laptop with a snap.
For the past few weeks, since she’d encountered Lucy’s brother Dan, she’d felt distinctly unsettled. The way he’d looked at her, as if she were something rare and breakable, had stopped her in her tracks. She remembered that look. A long time ago her husband had looked at her like that. But he was dead and she felt, absurdly, as if she were betraying his memory simply by reacting at all. As if the act of being seen again, properly seen, was a kind of infidelity.
That Dan should have actually asked her out, had shaken her to the core. Because her reaction told her that she hadn’t died inside after all. And that was the biggest shock of all.
But she refused to think about that. Instead, she rose and quickly and efficiently closed down the library, turning it back into the tennis club rooms which was its alter ego. The desk and computer were wheeled into a locked cupboard, where the photocopier and router were kept. One by one the wooden mobile units — now battered from constant use over the past sixty years — had their covers attached, were locked, and wheeled back against the wall. The larger, wall units were folded onto themselves until all that was left were the displays which she moved to the back room.
One last check that everything was turned off in the kitchen, then Augi collected her bag, glanced around, wanting the familiar sense of peace to wash over her again.
But it didn’t come. He’d done that. Dan. Daniel MacLeod. Tall, handsome, charming and at least ten years younger than she was. The man had been raised in this glorious place she now called home, among a loving family in a peaceful country. He was the polar opposite to her. She just couldn’t figure out why he didn’t realise it.
She locked the door and walked briskly down the path, closing the creaking gate — making a mental note to bring something with her to fix it next time — and walked home, only permitting herself one glance at the house on the hill opposite the library. The house to which her thoughts often strayed when the library was quiet. It represented a world she didn’t have, and would never have.
But that was fine with her.
She rarely socialised in the evening. She didn’t really need to. There were always people she knew from the library walking on the beach, or swimming. They’d all been incredibly friendly from the start, so between her day job and walking around MacLeod’s Cove, she didn’t want for company.
She also wasn’t lonely during her evenings and nights spent alone in the small railway cottage. It was one of a group at the far end of the village which were unpopular because they were built alongside the railway line, behind a high hill that cut off the afternoon light. But Augi loved her rented cottage, tucked away out of sight of the world, and had kept it minimalist in style. At first because she’d arrived in New Zealand with nothing, and afterwards because she found the discipline of having few possessions freeing and calming. These were the two things she was always after.
