Trish took the tray into the lounge and, much to her mortification, Dominic followed her outside.
She felt flustered, complicit in something that was nothing, and at the same time cloaked in guilt at no more than letting a man,thisman, into her husband’s place of refuge and where she still liked to picture him. A sacred space.
‘Gosh, it’s beautifully organised.’ Dominic admired the neat shelves that were stacked with clearly labelled boxes and tins, running his hand over the jars hanging beneath the shelves, whose lids had been screwed into the wood. ‘You can tell a lot about a man by the state of his shed.’ He smiled at her. ‘You must miss him.’
‘Why didn’t you say,Oh it’s you, Car Park Woman, when you arrived, why didn’t you mention it?’ She ignored his question, far from comfortable discussing Jonathan while standing in his shed.
‘I don’t know, CP. Why didn’t you?’ he countered.
Because I have felt flustered when I’ve thought about you, imagining you, wondering where you live, conjuring you in the early hours and this is not like me, not like me at all! You are a married man, and it goes against all I stand for! I’m struggling with how my son has hurt Holly, how can I have any legitimate stance on that if I do the same?
‘Not sure. I didn’t want to spoil the moment, I guess, everyone wrapped up with the kids’ engagement.’
‘Yes, that was it, same for me.’ He smiled, as if he hadn’t bought a word of it. ‘Amazing to think that on that day, just three weeks ago, in a heartbeat that neither could have envisaged, two people were going to meet, and it was going to change their whole lives in ways they could not have begun to imagine. Their plans disrupted, their thoughts hijacked, their routine disturbed, their needs altered, their focus shifted, and it started with no more than a glance, a brief exchange, a shared understanding that all the planets were aligned and the universe was sending them this incredible gift.’
‘How was it going to change their whole lives?’ she whispered, hardly daring to ask, feeling an unwelcome and uninvited tremble to her limbs at no more than the proximity of him.
‘Because they’re getting married!’ He smiled.
‘Oh yes, of course!’ She gave a small nod, understanding that he was talking about Iris and Aiden. This was what he did, wove a spell with his words, his manner. The skill was in not falling for it, keeping a level head.
‘Think about it, one minute they were trying to find their seats on a plane, the next they’re sharing an armrest and by the time they had landed in Rome, according to Iris, she knew. Just like that!’ Heclicked his fingers and she jumped. ‘Do you think it’s possible, to meet someone and fall, fall so hard that it leaves you with a kind of madness, with obsessive thoughts that take the rational you and leave you feeling hollowed out, exposed, vulnerable, but excited too, happy at the prospect of all that might lie ahead?’ He stared right at her.
‘I think . . .’
Enya wasn’t sure if he was toying with her. Whatdidshe think? That if he had been single and free she would have given in to the madness the very day she met him? If, when she’d asked, he had replied,No, no I’m not married, she would have fallen so hard there would be no recovering from it? Possibly. But it was, she knew, no more than physical attraction, an infatuation, much as she’d described to Aiden.
She opened a little drawer on Jonathan’s granny’s old bureau, which was splattered with paint. Each colour told a story of a chapter in their life: the red of Aiden’s ride-on fire engine that now languished in the loft. Pale blue that had been the colour of choice for their bathroom in the eighties, and droplets of the French grey that was actually closer to green with which her husband had painted the hall, stairs and landing when first diagnosed.
‘That should do you for a few years, one less thing for you to think about...’he had stated, admitting to her, and possibly to himself, that all talk of recovery and plans for one more trip somewhere were lies.
She carefully removed the tube of glue and handed it to this man, a stranger who had certainly hijacked her thoughts and routine.
‘Yes.’ She held his gaze. ‘I do miss him. I miss him very much.’
Chapter Fourteen
It had been two days since Enya had sat through the excruciating afternoon with the Sutherlands. She was exhausted, had barely slept trying to figure out the complex puzzle of it all, awash with shame that she was mixed up in the situation at all. To think her main concern had been Aiden and Holly. How she longed to talk to Jenny, to see Jenny, knowing that her friend offered the very best advice. With the whole experience bottled up inside her, their lack of contact made everything feel harder. She felt loneliness ripple through her veins and had barely ventured out, reluctant to leave the house for fear of bumping into Phil. It was a crazy state of affairs.
At least Angela was home, a sounding board and a friend, and she was in need of both.
Her sister sat at the kitchen table and slurped her cup of tea. ‘There is nothing like a good cup of tea at home. The tea abroad is never the same, is it?’
‘I guess not.’ Enya fought to remember, another reminder of what she had lost when she had become a widow, those lovely experiences, mint tea in Marrakech, sardines in Lisbon.
‘Even if you take proper teabags, I think it’s something to do with the water.’
‘Possibly.’ Enya nodded.
Her sister’s tan was deep, her hair sun-kissed, and she carried the languid air of one who was not yet revved up for life back in the real world.
‘Mum looked old, I thought.’
‘Ill or just old?’
Enya hated not seeing her parents frequently, but Jonathan had always reminded her that it was their choice to go sit in the sun and sip her inheritance through a cocktail straw on a nightly jaunt to the town square. Not that he begrudged them and neither did she. It beat popping on an extra jersey and dodging the rain in Keynsham while they watched daytime TV and went to bed earlier and earlier in the winter months. She shook away the thought that this was what her life had become.
‘Tired maybe, and old, I don’t think all that sun is good for her skin.’
