by Heidi Swain
‘Okay,’ I called after him, ‘just don’t make a big deal out of this, Jacob. It doesn’t have to mean anything, okay? Jacob?’
He didn’t look back and I watched him walk away before letting myself into the house, wondering how such a wonderful and well-planned day could have such an unexpected and spontaneous end.
Chapter 21
When Jacob and I had left Colin’s after-hours launch party I had been determined that I wouldn’t go to bed and fall asleep until Ryan was safely home, checked for wear and tear and subtly, but thoroughly, quizzed about what he’d been doing.
Had I known that I was about to be kissed and consequently stirred in a way that I had never been before, I wouldn’t have felt quite so preoccupied about the possibility of nodding off, because after my all-too-brief encounter with Jacob’s loving lips there was absolutely no way I was going to be able to sleep.
I had no way of knowing if Jacob felt the same way as I did but those thirty or so shared seconds had completely knocked my socks off. I did however know that he had referred once again to The Spark and that if his sack full of damaged relationship baggage was added to it, we could well end up with a lost friendship and awkward neighbourly relations. Neither of us wanted that. This little flame had to be properly snuffed out. We were friends, firm friends, now and we both needed and had welcomed that platonic, uncomplicated togetherness into our lives – but that kiss, though . . .
I was just beginning to think that it was going to be impossible to stop playing it over in my head (and embellishing for good measure) when the sound of Ryan’s key rattled in the front door lock and I was thankfully distracted.
I lay quiet and still, hardly daring to breathe as I strained to listen. How he handled taking off his trainers and scaling the staircase would give me some clue as to the state he was in. I waited, fully expecting to hear him trip, giggle, hurl or possibly all three, but from what I could make out he was stone-cold sober and in complete control of his fine motor skills. It was such a relief to hear him moving quietly and competently about that I began to wonder if I really wanted to get into a conversation, that could well descend into a row, at ten minutes to midnight. Perhaps it would be best to wait until the morning and have The Talk over tea and toast in the back garden.
I slipped back under the duvet and tried to get comfortable. I would deal with Ryan, and my feelings for Jacob, tomorrow.
*
‘Morning, sis, good night was it?’
‘What?’
‘Colin’s party! How long did it go on for?’
‘No idea,’ I muttered, floating up from the depths of sleep and shielding my eyes from the sudden burst of sunlight that filled the room as Ryan flung open the curtains. ‘I was actually home before you were.’
All of the events of the evening before came flooding back in an overwhelming rush. Ryan had gone off with some random boy and Jacob had rocked my world and aroused my slumbering libido and I was supposed to be up, dressed and dealing with it all like a responsible adult.
‘You’re not hung over then?’ Ryan grinned as he placed a mug of tea on the nightstand and plonked himself down heavily on the bed next to me.
‘No,’ I snapped, feeling nettled that he had the upper hand. ‘Are you?’
‘Hardly,’ he said and laughed, making my head pound. ‘I’ve learned my lesson as far as alcohol is concerned, but to be honest I expected to find you feeling the worse for wear.’
‘Why?’
‘Because you never sleep in,’ he said, leaning forward and tapping the top of my alarm clock, ‘not even on a Sunday.’
I didn’t explain that I didn’t usually sleep in because as a rule I wouldn’t be lying awake half the night worrying that I wasn’t doing a good enough job of taking care of him, before moving on to mulling over how I thought my nearest neighbour’s soft full lips would feel caressing other parts of my anatomy. Not that I was supposed to be thinking about that, of course, but during the longest watches of the night the brain was prone to wander off along all kinds of forbidden paths . . .
‘It’s almost nine,’ Ryan nudged, pulling me back to the present and reminding me that I had failed to get up and play the role of concerned sister, with its potential to end in a shouty showdown.
‘I know,’ I said, sitting up and pushing my hair away from my face. ‘I can see that, but I didn’t get off to sleep until after four.’
I was annoyed that I felt compelled to justify my slatternly Sunday lie-in.
‘Well, I’ll leave you to it.’ Ryan smiled, handing me the tea he had gone to the effort of getting up to make. ‘I’ll be back later.’
‘No, hang on,’ I said, no doubt sounding snappier than I should, but I was none too impressed that he was heading off out again. ‘You promised Graham that you’d help in the garden today. You can’t go shirking your responsibilities just because you’ve found something more exciting to go and do, you know.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘You still haven’t told me what you got up to last night.’
‘Jeez, I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist starting on about that,’ he bit back.
‘So, where did you go,’ I blurted out, ‘and who is this Joe who has suddenly appeared on the scene?’
I had a horrible feeling that I was beginning to sound like a nagging parent. A big sister was supposed to be more of an ally than an inquisitor, wasn’t she?
‘He hasn’t just appeared,’ Ryan said, mimicking my tone. ‘He’s a regular at the youth centre and we’ve been hanging out together whenever I’ve been down there. Last night was the first time we’d met up outside the club and we just mooched about a bit. He introduced me to a couple of other lads he knows and we wandered down to Chapelfield Gardens and messed about on their skateboards.’
‘Right,’ I said. ‘I see.’
‘To be honest, I thought you would have been pleased that I’ve found a mate my own age. I can’t spend my entire time here hanging around with you and your friends, you know.’
I didn’t say so, but I wished he could. That way I could have wrapped him up in cotton wool and kept him safe – not that he was really likely to come to any harm, but now I was responsible for him it was my intention to keep him on the straight and narrow.
‘Well, I would have appreciated it if you could have let me know yourself,’ I told him.
It was a bit much to find something else to moan about given the fact that he’d offered a perfectly satisfactory response to my questioning, but I couldn’t seem to help myself.
‘I was going to send you a text, but you were at the radio station. I thought you’d be pissed off if your phone started going off in the middle of the interview.’
He was right. I would have been annoyed, especially as I hadn’t thought to turn it to silent.
‘So, I asked Colin to let you know. I left a message with him and asked him to tell you as soon as you got back.’
‘He did tell me,’ I admitted.
‘So, why the fuss?’ Ryan demanded, stomping over to the door. ‘You still don’t trust me, do you?’
‘Look—’
‘No. I’ve got to go.’
‘You can’t just go,’ I shouted after him. ‘There are things you promised to do today, Ryan!’
I couldn’t believe that he was going to let Graham down. I knew he was annoyed with me, but that was no reason to let everyone else down.
‘I’m well aware of that,’ he said, with anger flashing in his eyes. ‘But first I promised I would go and collect Gus, which is where I’m heading now, and then, if it’s all right with you, I’m going to the garden. If you’d waited to hear me out, you’d know I’d never arranged to do anything different.’
‘Oh . . .’
‘I can’t believe you thought I was going to bail,’ he said sadly, which made me feel even worse. ‘Do you really think I’m still that selfish?’
Not surprisingly, he didn’t hang around to hear me apologise
but stormed out, slamming the front door behind him and making the windows rattle in their frames. I drained my tea, slumped back down in the bed and pulled the duvet over my head. Given the mess I’d just made of things with my brother, I thought it was probably best if I didn’t try to talk to Jacob, not today anyway.
*
The following week kept me so busy that there was no opportunity to worry about my kiss with Jacob or properly make amends with Ryan. Work was so manic, I barely had time to draw breath, let alone keep tabs on my brother.
‘Have you got any of those chuck-it-all-in chutney cards left that you were talking about on the radio?’ asked a young woman with a small baby in a pram. ‘It sounds like just the thing for our end-of-summer allotment party.’
‘This is the last one,’ I told her, handing it over, ‘and there’s a piccalilli one as well if you’re interested.’
She took both and I began to think that given the number of customers who had started to take the cards, there wouldn’t be any point in producing the recipe books because I’d given so many ideas away for free.
‘You were right about this being the way forward,’ Harry puffed as he rushed by, ‘but I had no idea it would make us this busy.’
‘Me neither,’ I laughed.
Harry had decided to go ahead and turn Greengages into the first completely plastic-free grocer in the city. Thanks to my research earlier in the year, the produce was now packed into paper bags, or bags the customers came in with, and nothing was unnecessarily wrapped. It hadn’t been easy finding a wholesaler who would go out of their way to deliver loose, but Harry had stuck to his principles. He said the look of the place, and the people holding open their jute bags and baskets to be filled, reminded him of his grandfather’s old shop, but I knew that what we were working on now was the future.
‘Here’s Andy,’ he said with a smile as a horn tooted outside. ‘He’s here for today’s orders.’
As well as going plastic-free, Harry was also trialling a new delivery service. The delivery charge was waived if the order was worth a certain amount or if there were enough properties in a certain proximity prepared to take delivery at the same time. It was a logistical challenge but was working well so far.
‘Hey, Poppy,’ Ryan muttered as he unexpectedly turned up just as Harry and I were getting ready to close the shop.
‘Hey,’ I said back, bending to greet Gus. ‘What’s up?’
Ryan had been every bit as busy as I had over the last few days. If he wasn’t at college or doing his bit in the garden, he was helping Colin in A Good Book, which had seen a definite upturn in trade, especially now Colin had decided to sell online as well as directly from the shop.
My clever brother had proved most useful when it came to setting up both the Grow-Well Twitter account and a website and newsletter for Colin, and I knew the book club and some author events were also in the pipeline. I wasn’t sure the cheeky tweets referring to Mark’s tasty baps and the like were entirely appropriate, but the Grow-Well followers were lapping them up.
Ryan and I hadn’t talked about his evening with Joe or the subsequent trips out and I daresay my brother was wondering, just as I was, if we were both keeping busy to avoid having to talk through anything meaningful at all.
‘I’ve had a message,’ he told me, ‘from Mum.’
‘No way,’ I gulped, standing back up. ‘I take it she’s back then?’
‘Yeah.’
‘She hasn’t said you’ve got to move back, has she?’
Ryan gave me a withering look.
‘What about college? Did she ask about that?’
‘She’s barely acknowledged the note I left about coming here,’ he huffed. ‘So, she’s hardly likely to ask about lessons, is she?’
‘Sorry,’ I apologised, ‘stupid questions. So, what did she want then?’
I had checked my own phone earlier when I was making Harry tea, so I knew she hadn’t bothered to message me.
‘To moan.’
Ryan shook his head and handed me his phone. I wrinkled my nose as I read.
‘So, she’s come back to find you gone,’ I said, ‘and the only thing she’s worried about is the state of the outside bin.’
‘Maggots though’ – Ryan gagged – ‘and flies.’
‘Even so,’ I said, handing back the phone and trying to dismiss the image of the photo she had attached from my mind. ‘You’d think that would be the last thing she’d be concerned about.’
I had secretly hoped that her coming back and finding Ryan gone would have given her a jolt. Not necessarily kick-start her maternal instincts, because I knew she didn’t have any, but perhaps prompt her to question her priorities. Clearly, I had been wrong. She hadn’t even broached the subject of him going home – but then, given how quickly I’d got used to having him around, that was a relief.
‘Don’t forget this is our mother we’re talking about,’ Ryan reminded me. ‘She’s nothing like your average everyday mum, is she? She wouldn’t be out of place on Jeremy Kyle’s couch.’
‘That’s true,’ I conceded, bowing to Ryan’s more recent experience of life with her, ‘but even so, she could be at least a little bit grateful that you were responsible enough to lock up.’
‘Do you think I’m responsible then?’ he asked, looking up from his phone screen.
‘Of course, I do,’ I said, pulling him into a sisterly hug before he’d had a chance to see it coming.
‘But after the row last Sunday . . .’
‘We’re brother and sister, Ryan,’ I said, letting him go before I reached up to ruffle his hair, which I knew he absolutely hated, ‘we’re supposed to row, remember?’
‘I guess,’ he said, knocking my hand away and smoothing his hair back down. ‘So, we’re all right then?’
‘We’re fine,’ I said, wishing I’d had the sense, in spite of how busy the week had been, to clear the air sooner. ‘We’re good.’
It was true. I did feel better now the subject had been broached. Life had got heavy going enough all of a sudden. Dragging around the additional weight of extra worries was one burden I didn’t need right now. Perhaps it was time to bite the bullet and face my neighbour after that sweet seductive kiss?
‘In that case,’ said Ryan, ‘shall we go to The Dragon together? Colin said everyone was meeting down there for dinner.’
There was no time like the present.
Chapter 22
It was still early enough in the evening for The Dragon to be relatively quiet. In fact, it was so early, Ryan and I were the first of our little crew to arrive.
‘Let’s see if there’s a table outside,’ he suggested, heading for the door next to the bar that led to the pub’s little garden. ‘It’s been so hot today but it’s supposed to be cooler this evening. If we wait for the others, we won’t stand a chance of getting anywhere to sit out there.’
He had a point. The heat, as predicted, had already begun to build and we were only one week into the month.
‘Wow,’ gasped Ryan, not long after we had picked a spot in the furthest corner, which was shaded by the overhanging branches of a silver birch tree. ‘She always looks good, but she’s scrubbed up even better tonight, hasn’t she?’
I turned to see who had drawn his attention.
‘Blimey.’ I smiled. ‘Hey, Lou. You look amazing. Have you been home to change?’
‘No,’ she said casually, carefully picking her way across the grass to join us, ‘I’ve just come straight from the shop.’
‘In that case I wish I’d called in.’ Ryan grinned.
Lou flashed him a dazzling smile and sat herself in the seat best positioned to see the pub door. I was fairly certain she didn’t usually go to work wearing heels and such a low neckline, but forbore to comment. I wasn’t all that sure about the comments Ryan had made about her appearance either. Was I going to have to broach a conversation with him about objectifying women, on top of everything else?
‘Aren’t the boys
here yet?’ Lou asked, pulling an old-fashioned gold-plated compact out of her bag and lightly powdering her nose.
‘Not yet,’ I said, looking at her sophisticated outfit and then down at my creased T-shirt-and-combats get-up.
No one could ever accuse me of getting dressed up to go to work, but then, humping sacks of spuds around really didn’t lend itself to wearing posh frocks and shoes I would no doubt break my neck in.
Ryan looked at me and smirked. I knew he was thinking exactly the same thing.
‘I’ll get some drinks in and grab some menus,’ I said, before he had a chance to comment.
‘I think I’ll have a G and T,’ said Lou as she snapped the compact shut and returned it to her bag. ‘For a change. And I don’t think I fancy anything to eat. It’s too hot. Ask for plenty of ice, won’t you?’
‘And don’t get me anything,’ Ryan said quickly, having just read something on his phone.
‘I had no intention of buying you gin,’ I told him.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I meant anything to eat or drink. I’ll have something when I get back.’
‘Back from where?’ I asked.
‘Luke’s just messaged and asked if I can go to the garden,’ he explained. ‘Will it be all right if I leave Gus here?’
‘Of course,’ said Lou, holding out her hands to take hold of the little dog.
Gus promptly wriggled himself free from her grasp and threw himself down in the shade under the table with a disgruntled huff. Clearly it was still too warm for being fussed over.
‘He’ll be fine,’ I reassured my brother as we walked back into the pub together. ‘I’ll get someone to refill the doggy water bowl and I’ll keep an eye on him, don’t worry. Do you know what Luke wants to see you about?’
‘Not a clue.’ He shrugged. ‘I’ll see you in a bit.’
Ryan headed off. I was pleased I hadn’t snapped and launched into another lecture. Perhaps I was learning something as I blundered my way along after all, I thought as I waited in the queue to order drinks and a few bags of crisps instead of asking for menus. Lou was right, it was too hot to eat. In the few minutes we had been outside the place had started to fill up and I was pleased we had managed to get seated outside.
