‘I love this town,’ he said, pulling his jacket from the back seat and indicating for her to do the same. ‘It feels free. Even the air is different here somehow.’ His eyes glistened when he looked at her. ‘Let’s walk.’
‘You’re crazy,’ she giggled. ‘It’s so cold!’
With the time close on eleven at night, the temperature had dropped. The pavements twinkled with a frost that ran all the way along to the opposite end of the street, up the side of the clock tower. Evie pulled on her gloves and scarf and they walked along, past a bakery that come morning would most likely have pastries galore, loaves of bread shaped different ways, cut or ready to be sliced however you chose. A liquor store had closed for the night, a flower shop had ruby-red poinsettias in the window along with a Santa on a sleigh pulled by reindeer and filled with more flowers, gorgeous ice pink roses. An archway led to a circular set of wooden benches and they passed beneath it. It too was lit up with lights that had been wound around its entire shape.
Evie sat on a bench and jumped up again.
‘Cold?’ Jack asked.
‘Just a bit. My butt will turn to an ice block if I sit there.’
Jack sat down himself as Evie looked around them, and then he moved along the bench a little and nodded to the space where he’d been. ‘I warmed it for you.’
‘With your ass?’
His laughter echoed across the empty street. ‘Now that you put it like that …’
Evie smiled and sat down anyway. ‘Thank you.’ She wondered what Lizzy would say if she could see her now. Presumably she’d go on about Jack, how gorgeous he was, how he always came to her rescue. The thought warmed her right through rather than making her want to run for the hills, which was definitely a first.
Jack nodded up towards the moon, tonight a crescent shape, clear-cut and surrounded by a cluster of stars. ‘There’s something magical about looking at it, don’t you think?’
‘There is.’ Her words sounded small against the night air, the weirdness of the situation.
‘When I was a kid it was a real family thing to do, to go out and look at the moon. All four of us would gaze at it for ages, not caring if it was getting cold, or still too warm from a summer’s day. We were always there. It was as though by looking at it everything in the world just settled around us, we knew where we were, who we were.’
‘And you don’t now?’
He looked down at his hands encased in woollen gloves. ‘Sometimes I wonder if things could be different.’
‘You mean if you left the city behind?’
He turned and looked at her. ‘You’re very perceptive.’
She looked from him, to the moon, to the stars. ‘You’re a completely different person out here.’
He let her comment settle before he said, ‘My mother had a real passion for astrology, you know.’ His breath met the cold air. ‘She believed that even when our lives were chaotic, or didn’t make any sense, the universe and the stars would see to it that everything worked out in the end.’
‘And you don’t believe that?’
He shrugged. ‘I wish she was right. I wish I had that much faith in the world.’
‘I think your mother’s way of thinking about the world is nice, but I’m not sure I agree.’ Was she speaking out of turn? ‘I believe part of the universe and the stars is in us already and so the best person to take charge of your life is you.’ She may as well keep going now. ‘Only you have the power to change your life, Jack. You need to let go of whatever is preventing you from making changes and instead of trusting in the stars, learn to trust yourself.’
Jack took a deep breath of the winter air. ‘You’re lucky, you know.’
‘Oh, I know. I’m lucky Nicole found me when she did.’
‘Is she very angry with me and my father?’
‘About The Diamond Touch being after the shelter premises you mean?’
He winced at the clarification.
‘You know Nicole,’ said Evie. ‘She’s taking it personally.’
‘I’m sure she is.’ He hesitated. ‘But I didn’t mean you were lucky to have found Nicole.’
‘Then what did you mean?’
