29
Ryan strummed on his guitar,playing the melody he’d composed forLost And Found. The notes had sounded full of promise when he’d first written them. Now, they were filled with melancholy.
“Why are you mooching around with that look on your face?”
Ryan glanced up and saw his grandmother standing in the doorway to the kitchen-dining area, her keen eye watching him from across the room. He set the guitar down against the coffee table and got to his feet.
“I thought you were still on the phone with your friend,” he said. “Shall I put the kettle on? You must be overdue some Earl Grey.”
“Never mind that,” Miriam said, and her refusal of the tea he’d offered made Ryan turn in surprise. His grandmother never refused tea.
“Why are you looking so gloomy?” she asked with a frown.
“I didn’t realise I was.”
“Don’t play dumb with me, my boy. I know you better than you know yourself. Ever since Grace left after we enjoyed our coffee and pastries this morning, you’ve been huffing around and looking miserable.”
“No, I haven’t,” Ryan said, annoyed to discover he’d failed to hide his mood from his wily grandmother. He was determined not to dwell on this any longer. “Anyway, if you’re finished with the phone calls you’ve been making for the last half an hour, do you want to go out somewhere together?”
“No, I don’t, at least not right now anyway,” Miriam said, her tone becoming more brisk by the second. “If you aren’t going to be honest and tell me what’s the matter, then perhaps I’d better just say it for you.”
Ryan braced himself, part of him wishing his grandmother would leave the topic alone, another part of him curious about what she might actually come out with.
“You’re upset because Grace might end up leaving for this big job opportunity in York, and, as you’ve only been seeing each other for a few days, you don’t feel it’s right to tell her how you really feel about her and that you don’t want her to go, in case it sways her decision about applying for the job, which you don’t think would be fair.”
Ryan blinked and stared at his grandmother for a long moment. “How on earth do you know about Grace’s job opportunity?”
“This morning I was about to come into the kitchen to find out why our coffee was taking so long when I heard the two of you talking. I wasn’t eavesdropping. I’m not so coarse. But when I heard Grace mention a job that had come up in York, and then I heard your response, I didn’t want to just barge in while you were both in the middle of what sounded like an increasingly uncomfortable conversation. I waited until there was a lull, which was right after you encouraged Grace to apply for the job, a comment which I think rather left the girl speechless.”
Once more, Ryan absorbed this flood of information and insight from his grandmother. She was more up to speed on all of this than he was.
“Why would me encouraging Grace to apply for that job leave her speechless?” Ryan scowled. “It might be the perfect job for her. She was sad and disappointed that she wasn’t being promoted where she’s currently working, so it makes sense for her to think about whether she ought to go somewhere else.”
Miriam’s sharp expression softened into a smile. “Oh, Ryan. You must know that you two are already very much falling in love with one another. But when you casually told Grace to jump into that job opportunity with both feet, despite the fact it might take her hundreds of miles away from you, she must inevitably have wondered if you felt the same way about her as she does about you.”
“I’d never get in the way of her career by making grand declarations that could discourage her from doing something that’s important to her.”
Ryan thought of what Grace had told him about the reasons why it was so important to her to make her job and her career as secure as possible. He understood those reasons. She’d endured instability and financial upheaval when she was growing up, and now she wanted to do everything in her power to make sure she was on solid ground in her career in the future.
If that meant leaving her current job, where her promotion prospects had ground to a halt through no fault of her own, and taking another job elsewhere that would propel her in the direction she wanted to go, then that’s what she should do.
“And anyway,” Ryan continued, determined to defend himself. “There’s no guarantee she’ll get the job. But she certainly won’t get it if she doesn’t apply for it. That’s all I was saying. I was just encouraging her to take the leap.”
“Quite,” his grandmother said, and gave him a gentle smile. “You are a good boy, Ryan, and you are a man of integrity. And I don’t doubt for one minute what you’re saying. However, I stand by my belief that, when it comes to matters of the heart, youcan’t help waiting for the bubble to burst, just as it did all those years ago on that stupid music competition programme. When the bubble burst on that occasion, you were terribly humiliated, having just bared your soul publicly to the young woman with whom you’d become involved.”
“Thanks for the reminder.”
“But,” Miriam continued, cutting him off, “you cannot continue to distance yourself from the chance for love just because you fear things going wrong again.”
“That’s not what I’m doing.”
“In a roundabout sort of way, it isexactlywhat you’re doing. If there’s even the slightest chance of Grace departing for a job elsewhere, you’d rather distance yourself from your feelings for her now, rather than have those feelings deepen further and for the pain to be all the worse should a time come when you must part.”
“All I was doing was encouraging her to do what’s best for her, Grandma!” Ryan insisted.
“And that’s why you are a man of integrity, just as I said a moment ago. But while you were encouraging Grace to apply for that job in York, you should also have told her that you’d miss her if she left because you feel very strongly about her.”
“It’s far too early to say anything like that. We’ve only known each other for a week.”
