‘And do you have something for the diabetic coma I’ll be slipping into afterwards?’I’d smiled at my own joke, and the way it broke out a reluctant glimmer of a smile on his face. It was good to know that the old cut and thrust of our humour wasn’t entirely lost.
As I drained my mug I wondered if it was too soon to ask him again why Adam had sent me to see him, but my plan was derailed as Josh got to his feet and reached for his jacket.
‘Are we going back out again?’ I asked. The storm had lost none of its strength; if anything it was battering the cabin even more ferociously than before.
‘You’renot.Iam,’ Josh replied, yanking up his zipper with a decisive tug.
‘Why? Where are you going?’
‘To see if I can drag your car out of that ditch before it gets totally buried beneath a snowdrift.’
‘Then I’ll come with you,’ I said, starting to get to my feet. His hand felt firm when it came down on my shoulder and prevented me from rising. ‘No. It’s better if you stay here. That way I only have one of us to worry about.’
Panic flooded through me, and I didn’t know if it was born from fear of being left alone, or fear of him going out into the storm. Probably a bit of both.
‘Hey, I’ve an idea. Why don’t webothstay here, and then you don’t have to worry about either of us.’
Josh shook his head, and there was a look that novelists like to call ‘steely determination’ on his face, but in real life it’s better known as sheer stubbornness.
‘If we don’t get your car out of that ditch today, I’m not sure I’ll be able to haul it out with the Land Rover, which means you’re likely to be stuck here for even longer. And I’m pretty sure neither of us wants that to happen.’
A knot twisted in my stomach. Did Josh really want me gone so badly he was willing to risk his own safety to ensure I wouldn’t be here for a single moment longer than I had to be?
‘Even if youdomanage to drag it out, you can’t drive two cars back here,’ I reasoned. ‘Surely it makes sense for me to come too?’
‘No disrespect, but I’ve just seen your icy weather driving skills. I think both you and your car are safer if we wait until the storm dies down before bringing it back here.’
I hated that he had so many ready – and unfortunately reasonable – arguments to back up his plan. Even more, I hated the danger he was putting himself in. I’d seen that huge oak come crashing down out of nowhere. No one, however much they resembled a TV survivalist, would be able to get out of the path of something like that.
Josh was pulling a woollen beanie from his pocket, obviously believing he’d convinced me to drop my protests. But I couldn’t.
‘What happens if you don’t come back?’
A frown crossed his features. ‘Stay here until your mobile service is reconnected and then call for help. You’ll be perfectly safe here at the cabin if I’m ... delayed.’
His eyes met mine. I think we both knew ‘delayed’ wasn’t what I was worrying about.
Josh headed towards the hallway, looking genuinely surprised to find me still at his heels. Through a window beside the front door, we both surveyed the storm. The snow was now so thick on the ground I wondered if his car would even be able to make it out of the clearing.
With one hand on the latch, he turned to me. ‘Just stay inside the cabin. It’s built far enough away from the surrounding trees to be perfectly safe if any of them should come down.’
I shook my head, knowing the same couldn’t be said for the place where my car had been abandoned.
‘I’ll be back in about an hour. If you get bored you could check out the larder for something we could heat up on the wood burner for dinner.’
I bristled at the cliché of being the little woman staying out of danger, preparing a meal, while the ‘hero’ went out to do battle – albeit only with the elements. But in truth, what did I know about hauling a car out of a ditch? Absolutely nothing.
‘Can you please try not to end up dead?’ I said, which had sounded a little less concerned in my head than it did when it came out of my mouth.
‘I’ll see what I can do,’ Josh said, and then without another word he opened the door, letting in a flurry of snow, and slipped out into the storm.
Josh’s larder reminded me of ones I’d seen in films, where a crazy survivalist reveals they’re ready for the end of the world. Josh didn’t have quite enough canned goods to see him through Armageddon, but he could easily ride out a pandemic or two. I was bemused by an entire shelf of tinned tomatoes, but the one beneath it – filled with cans of creamed rice – made far more sense. As a teenager it had been his favourite dessert, and it was oddly comforting to know that while Josh had changed in a thousand different ways, his taste in puddings had remained the same.
Despite the distraction of the storm, an old memory I really didn’t want to revisit elbowed its way into my thoughts.
It was the hottest day of the year, in the middle of the school holidays, and Josh and I had climbed the sycamore to escape the heat in its leafy boughs. We were eating ice creams he’d filched from Janette’s freezer, which were melting faster than we could demolish them. ‘You’re dribbling,’ Josh said, polishing off the last bite of his cone. He leant closer, and with his finger scooped up a line of escaping ice cream from my chin. And suddenly the air froze on that impossibly hot day. I wasn’t able to breathe, and my heart was pounding so loudly I could no longer hear the buzz of bees or the sound of birds. All I could see, feel or hear was Josh, as he remained inches from my face, his gaze focused on my lips. Then, from what felt like another planet, we heard someone come into the garden and the spell fractured and then broke when he took his sticky finger and smeared the spilt ice cream all over my nose. But even as we laughed and I tried to retaliate, there was still a shadow of something lingering in his eyes that I’d never seen before.
Chapter Eleven
