by Heidi Swain
‘Lou!’ Colin called after her, standing up.
‘I have to go!’ she called back. ‘I’ve got a date.’
Colin flopped back down in his seat and looked from me to Jacob and back again.
‘What the hell was that about?’ he asked. ‘What did I say?’
‘Work it out for yourself, mate,’ said Jacob, gathering glasses, ‘I’m not going to spell it out for you. Another?’
‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘just a half though, thanks.’
‘Not for me,’ said Colin. ‘Has she really got a date?’ he asked me.
‘No idea,’ I said as my phone began to bleat. ‘She didn’t say anything earlier.’
The text message lighting up my screen was from Lou and I read it out of Colin’s view. No, she didn’t have a date. She was going home for a bubble bath and a good cry and no, I wasn’t to let on to Colin.
‘I think I’ll head home,’ said Colin sadly. ‘This evening hasn’t quite turned out how I thought it would.’
‘And why do you think that is?’
‘Beats me,’ he said. ‘I was on cloud nine when I arrived. Are you still happy for Gus to go home with you?’
‘Of course,’ I told him, ‘I don’t think you’d be the best company for him really, Colin, do you?’
It appalled me to think that he was every bit as dense about recognising that Lou had fallen for him as she had been for so long about picking up on how he felt about her. If they didn’t get their acts together soon I was going to have to bang their heads together. That is, assuming Natalie didn’t rush in to tend to Colin’s bump and kiss him better.
‘I take it Colin’s gone home then?’ asked Jacob when he came back with our drinks.
‘Yes,’ I answered, ‘and Lou hasn’t got a date—’
‘I didn’t think she had.’
‘. . . she’s gone home for a good cry.’
‘Jeez,’ he muttered before taking a pull at his pint. ‘This just goes to prove everything we said, doesn’t it?’
‘About what?’
‘Relationships between friends being a bad idea.’
‘Yeah,’ I glumly agreed, ‘I suppose it does.’
‘Because when they go belly-up,’ he carried on, ‘which they inevitably will, you end up losing a friend as well as a lover.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Not that relationships between adults who weren’t friends first necessarily turn out any better, of course.’
I didn’t say anything.
‘And I’ll tell you something else,’ he said, turning to look me in the eye, ‘you won’t ever catch me jumping into another relationship, short-term or otherwise.’
‘Given everything you’ve been through,’ I said gently, ‘I’m not at all surprised that you feel that way.’
I yearned to suggest that he might feel differently in a few months’ time. After all, if I was in the midst of, dare I say it, falling in love, then perhaps one day he might find himself there too?
‘You don’t know the half of it,’ he said, draining his glass. ‘Same again?’
I’d barely started mine.
‘No,’ I said, ‘I’m still on this one, thanks.’
I guessed that Lou had been right; the phone call had been bad news.
‘I’ll be back in a sec.’
‘Jacob,’ I said, laying my hand on his arm as he stood up again, ‘I think I’m going to go home. It’s been a long week and I could do with an early night and a chilled day tomorrow before I’m back to work on Monday.’
‘Oh, right.’
‘And I daresay you’ve got loads to do for school, haven’t you?’
‘Yeah,’ he said, running his free hand through his hair and making it stand up in all directions. ‘Yeah, I have got quite a bit to do.’
‘Why don’t you come with me?’
‘To your place?’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘come on. Let’s go back to mine and if you want to, you can tell me the half that I don’t know.’
*
We walked slowly back to the square with Gus padding quietly alongside. The evening was still early and it was light and warm, with just the faintest breeze rustling the leaves of the trees on the green.
‘Thanks for stopping me,’ said Jacob, as he breathed in a lungful of fresh air.
‘From doing what?’
‘Making a fool of myself in the pub.’
‘You didn’t make a fool of yourself,’ I said.
‘But I would have,’ he replied huskily, ‘had you not been there, and how would that have looked? A local teacher drinking himself senseless on a Saturday night because his ex still has the ability to tear his heart in two.’
I unlocked the front door, buying myself a few seconds as I bent to unclip Gus’s lead and let him go in ahead of us. If Jacob’s ex of what must be getting on for ten months now could still do that to him, did that mean he was still in love with her? If he was, even after all this time apart, then it was probably a good thing that I’d kept my thoughts to myself back in the pub.
‘Come on,’ I said, ‘let’s have a coffee.’
Jacob didn’t want to sit outside, so we made ourselves comfortable in the little sitting room at the front of the house. I closed the curtains, just in case any of the neighbours happened to be taking an evening stroll. We each had enough going on in our lives without having to contend with adding speculation about the parameters of our relationship to the list. A rumour about that would, I knew, spread itself like bindweed through everyone’s conversations.
I handed Jacob his mug and sat on the armchair next to the fireplace, curling my bare feet beneath me as was my usual habit. Jacob stretched out on the sofa, then sat forward again. He put his mug back on the coffee table and rested his elbows on his knees, looking down at the carpet.
‘She’s pregnant,’ he blurted out. ‘She’s fucking pregnant.’
I stared at the top of his head, not knowing what I could possibly say. No wonder he was feeling so bad. Out of all the things he could have told me had happened this was perhaps the most unexpected. He’d painted Rebecca as a high-flying career-driven character, just like his twin brother Daniel, so it was a complete surprise to hear that she was planning to put her professional advancement on hold for parenthood.
‘Oh Jacob.’
I wondered if it was Rebecca herself who had called to tell him, or his brother or perhaps one of his parents. Would it have been any more bearable to hear it from one rather than the other?
‘It was Dad who phoned,’ he said, looking briefly up at me.
I could see his eyes were filled with tears and rushed to kneel next to him, dumping my mug next to his on the table. It was hardly any wonder he had seemed a bit off when he came back from taking the call. He hadn’t even had time to properly take it in yet.
‘I’m so sorry.’
He sniffed and nodded and took a deep, shuddering breath. My heart was thrumming in my chest as I moved to lay a hand on his leg. He grabbed it before it came to rest and pulled me up on to the sofa next to him.
‘Apparently they’re telling everyone now because she’s just reached three months. It wasn’t planned or anything.’
Given Rebecca’s career ambitions, that I could believe.
‘Dad didn’t want me to hear about it from anyone else.’
‘That was kind of him.’
I wasn’t sure if that was the right thing to say.
‘Yeah well,’ Jacob said. ‘Dad is kind. Him and Mum are still reeling from everything that’s happened almost as much as I am.’
I shook my head. There really were no words.
‘And do you know what the worst of it is?’ Jacob asked, looking right at me, the anguish in his eyes unbearable.
I shook my head.
‘She’s carrying twins.’
‘Oh God.’
‘Yep, she’s just had the scan to confirm it. No idea of the sex yet, but God help the little mites if they’re boys. I wouldn’t wish
a twin brother on anyone.’
I squeezed his hand tighter.
‘But things might be different for them,’ I suggested, ‘Daniel might—’
Jacob shook his head and I stopped.
‘Sorry.’
‘It’s all right,’ he said, lifting my hand and pressing his lips against the back of it. ‘In your position I wouldn’t know what to say either.’
I certainly didn’t know what to say now as his firm lips skimmed my hand. I repeated the ‘I’m his friend’ mantra over in my head a few dozen times, just to remind myself that this evening needed to be about making Jacob feel better, not looking forward to going to bed so I could lie staring at the ceiling, thinking about where his lips had lingered.
‘Here,’ I said, leaning forward and reaching for his mug so he had to let me go, ‘drink this. I daresay you could do with the caffeine.’
‘Thanks,’ he said, taking it from me and sitting back again. ‘I could do with something.’
I stayed next to him on the sofa.
‘This is the thing I’ve been dreading,’ he said after we had sat in silence for a minute or two. ‘I knew it was bound to happen at some point, but I wasn’t expecting it to be so soon.’
‘Well,’ I said, wondering if it had taken Rebecca the three months to come to terms with the idea, ‘perhaps it’s a good thing.’
‘A good thing?’
‘Yes,’ I said, turning to face him. ‘Maybe it’s no bad thing that you’re having to deal with it now. If this is the most difficult thing you could imagine happening, then surely it’s better to face it and get it all over and done with while everything else is still so raw.’
‘Maybe,’ he said, ‘but in a year or two I might have moved on. The news might have hurt me less.’
‘And it might not,’ I batted back. ‘It might have just opened up old wounds all over again. At least now you’re at rock bottom and can establish a firm foundation to build on.’
‘Thanks.’ He smiled. ‘Is that supposed to be the silver lining?’
‘Yes.’ I smiled back, pleased with his reaction. ‘That’s exactly what it is. At least now you aren’t waiting for it to happen. Right now, things are as crap as they can possibly be so the only way for you to go is up.’
‘Maybe.’ He frowned.
‘You only have to think about everything you’ve achieved since you’ve moved here to know that you can do it,’ I rushed on, encouraged that he hadn’t dismissed my take on the situation.
‘What have I achieved?’
‘Well, for a start, you have more friends here now than you can shake a stick at, you’ve settled into a job that you love, you have a lad who thinks the world of you and you’ve developed a passion for gardening—’
‘Woah.’ He laughed, holding up his hands. ‘I wouldn’t go that far.’
‘Yes, you have,’ I insisted, knowing that it was the gardening bit he was objecting to. ‘No one can tie in beans like you can, Mr Grizzle. You’ve got the most dextrous hands out of all of us.’
I felt my cheeks start to burn as I imagined those hands being put to a very different use.
‘When I first moved here,’ I carried on, ‘you told me you weren’t interested in joining in and helping out.’
‘I wasn’t.’
‘And later you said you’d never trust a living soul again.’
‘I didn’t think I would,’ he said softly.
‘Well there you are then,’ I said, slapping his leg, ‘all that just goes to prove that you can change and that you’re more than capable of dealing with this latest blow. I have every faith in you, Jacob.’
‘Bloody hell, Poppy,’ he said laughingly, ‘how do you do it?’
‘Do what?’ I smiled, stopping to take a breath.
‘You know what.’
‘No,’ I said, ‘what do you mean?’
‘How do you always manage to talk me down and make me see the best of a bloody awful situation?’
I wasn’t sure that I did always manage it, but I was pleased he was willing to acknowledge my efforts.
‘Is that what I do?’
He raised his eyebrows.
‘You had a rough time before you came here,’ I said simply, ‘and I wanted to help. I’d had a rough time myself when I first started work at Greengages and Harry helped me through it. I was able to turn my life round and become a part of this community and I always maintained that if I could do the same for someone else, then I would.’
‘So, I’m your pay-it-forward project, am I?’ Jacob grinned. ‘If you aren’t careful you’ll use up your kindness quota on me and there won’t be enough of you left to go around.’
‘Don’t be silly.’
‘I’m not.’ He laughed again. ‘I mean it.’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘living here in Nightingale Square has been a long-held dream come true for me and I just want everyone else who moves here to enjoy it as much as I do. I want to share my recipe for life far and wide.’
‘Including with your brother.’
‘Of course,’ I agreed.
‘You’re doing a great job with him, you know.’
‘It’s not all down to me though, is it?’ I reminded him. ‘You’re paying it forward now by looking out for him.’
‘He’s doing well.’ Jacob nodded. ‘He probably hasn’t told you, but he’s been seeing the counsellor at the youth centre. He says it’s helping.’
Ryan hadn’t told me that, but I didn’t mind. I was just pleased a professional ear was listening to him.
‘See,’ I said, as if that proved Jacob’s influence. ‘You’ve done that.’
‘It’s teamwork,’ he said, ‘we’re a great team, Poppy.’
‘A formidable team,’ I agreed, thinking of everything Ryan had achieved since he had moved to Norwich. He was another one whose kindness was creating ripples throughout the square.
‘It’s a shame we can’t be more than teammates,’ Jacob added.
I couldn’t believe he’d said that.
‘Yes, well,’ I reminded him, ‘we’ve already discussed, on more than one occasion, that it would be foolish to risk ruining what is already a very beautiful friendship, and now you have this most recent family development to contend with on top of everything else—’
‘But that kiss, though,’ he interrupted, his voice husky and seductive.
‘What about it?’
‘Don’t tell me you haven’t thought about it?’
I’d thought of little else but I wasn’t about to admit that, was I?
‘I thought we’d agreed that we were going to forget all about it.’
‘We did.’
‘So why are you bringing it up now?’
‘Because I can’t get it out of my head!’ he burst out, jumping up and striding over to the door. ‘I don’t want to keep thinking about it but I can’t stop myself. It just won’t leave me alone.’
This was a thrilling development – and a complete disaster.
‘So, what are we going to do about it then?’
‘I’ll show you what we’re going to do,’ he said, rushing back and pulling me to my feet. ‘We’re going to play fast and loose with our precious friendship and see where it takes us.’
He pulled me close, his mouth finding mine, his arms pinning me down as we fell back on to the sofa.
‘This isn’t a good idea,’ I gasped, my hands and lips moving in such a way that left him in no doubt that I didn’t really want him to stop.
‘It’s a terrible idea,’ he groaned as I wrapped my legs round him, pulling him down harder.
‘No good will come of it,’ I gasped again as he ran his hands under my T-shirt, his fingers finding my breasts.
We both froze as the front door slammed shut and Gus skittered along the hall.
‘Hey, Gus,’ Ryan said, laughing, ‘let me get my shoes off, mate.’
Jacob and I scrambled to sit up, smoothing our hair and rearranging the cushions as we tried to calm our b
reathing.
‘Ryan,’ I said, picking up the mugs, as his head appeared round the door. ‘I was just making us another coffee; would you like one?’
‘No thanks.’ He scowled, looking from me to my dishevelled guest. ‘I think I’ll go straight up.’
‘Night then,’ I called after him.
He didn’t answer.
‘Oh God,’ I mouthed to Jacob once Ryan had gone.
‘I know,’ he puffed as my brother slammed his bedroom door.
Chapter 24
Given the looks Ryan was shooting me across the garden the next day, I knew he wasn’t happy about what he had come home to last night.
I tried not to let his death stare get to me. After all, I hadn’t done anything wrong; that said, his disapproval was palpable and hard to ignore. It was a relief when Jacob showed up and took some of the heat off me.
‘What’s with Ryan?’ he surreptitiously asked, having also been on the receiving end of my brother’s glare as he made everyone a drink in the bothy.
I was staying well out of the way, working right at the other end of the garden, tidying and weeding the cut flower bed.
‘He hasn’t said anything,’ I confided, ducking down behind the patch of cornflowers, ‘but I think he’s still cross about last night. He was hardly thrilled to find us together, was he?’
‘Thank God he came back when he did. Can you imagine if he’d been a minute or two—’
‘Don’t,’ I interrupted, ‘don’t even go there.’
Jacob looked at me and smiled.
‘I can’t decide’ – he sighed heavily – ‘if it was divine intervention or just supremely unfortunate timing.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘What I mean is, given what I’d just discovered about Daniel and Rebecca, I can’t be sure if the way I behaved was a result of Dad telling me their news.’
‘Oh,’ I said, ‘right.’
He hadn’t found me irresistible then. Shock, rather than lust and longing, had been his motivation for risking our friendship – but he had said our kiss had been quite something.
