Remember Me at Willoughby Close (Return to Willoughby Close Book 4)

by Kate Hewitt

  “Just my old insecurities rearing up yet again,” James replied with a shrug. “Issues around my dad, and feeling less—well, valued, I suppose, than my brother.” He gave her an unhappy grimace of apology. “This makes me sound rather pathetic, I realise, at my age.”

  “No more pathetic than anyone else,” Laura returned. “It’s just hard to imagine. You seem so confident to me. As well as insanely gorgeous.” That coaxed a small smile, at least, although it didn’t reach his eyes. With a pang Laura wondered whether this weekend would really make or break them. Whichever it was, she had a feeling it would change things, and she didn’t think she was ready for that.

  *

  James was starting to seriously regret inviting Laura on this weekend. What had seemed so lovely when he’d asked—the prospect of having her company, of showing her off—now just felt like a minefield of dangers. Why not just invite her to view all his insecurities, all his weaknesses, everything about himself that he didn’t like? Why not make a list? This is what you signed up for, except they’d only been dating a week and going home to meet the parents was, like he’d said, more like six-month territory.

  He had a very bad feeling about this. Laura had seemed panicked since they’d got in the car, and frankly he couldn’t blame her. He hadn’t exactly talked his family up, had he? And he couldn’t keep his mood from taking its usual nosedive when he headed home. He enjoyed seeing his sisters, and yes, even his brother, and his mum would fuss over him in a way that was both irritating and flattering, but what about his dad?

  David Hill was a salt of the earth type who won people’s respect if not their hearts. Generous, gruff, unyielding and hardworking. And he and James had never seemed to be able to agree about anything.

  Get over it already, James told himself, as he had a thousand times before. Easier said than done, it seemed, judging by the way he was feeling now. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. There was the farm ahead of them—rolling fields dotted with cows and sheep, the corrugated iron of the barn roof glinting in the sunlight, the square, stolid farmhouse of dark grey pebbledash standing like a sentinel on the top of the hill.

  “Here we are,” James said as cheerfully as he could. Laura reached over and placed her hand over his on the gearstick. She gave him a smile that was part sympathy, part encouragement, and James didn’t know whether it made him feel better or worse.

  Dogs erupted from the house as he pulled up alongside his father’s ancient, mud-splattered Land Rover, and his sister’s smarter estate, squaring his shoulders as he stepped out of the car.

  “James!” His mother came forward, wreathed in smiles, her arms outstretched. James hugged her briefly before she pulled away to look with eager expectation at Laura, who was shyly emerging from the passenger seat of his car.

  “And you must be Laura.”

  James didn’t miss the slightly knitted brow that accompanied this statement, and he knew Laura, didn’t either. Perhaps he should have warned his mother that Laura was older than him, but really, what did it matter? It was the last thing on his mind right now.

  “So lovely to meet you, Mrs Hill,” Laura said, and shook hands.

  “Oh, call me Janet, please,” his mum insisted. “And yes, a pleasure.” She’d recovered from her surprise, although James could tell she was still a bit taken aback. “I hope you don’t mind dogs,” she added, for one of the springer spaniels was circling around Laura and sniffing with intent.

  “No, not at all. We have a golden retriever at home. He’s being watched by a friend for the weekend.”

  “Come inside, come inside,” Janet urged. “The kettle’s boiled.”

  James placed one hand on Laura’s lower back, anchoring himself to her, and her to him, as they headed into the farmhouse, which sometimes felt like falling back in time. His mother’s decorating taste was decidedly twenty years out of date, with so many antiques that it might as well be fifty or even one hundred. Not that he minded; there was something comforting about the dark, heavy furniture that had never once been shifted, the black-and-white photographs of his unsmiling grandparents and great-aunts and uncles on the walls. Comforting, but also stifling.

  The kitchen had always been the heart of the house—a big, square room with an ancient and temperamental Rayburn taking up most of one wall, a large, rectangular table of scarred oak in the centre, and a jumble of Welly boots and plus-fours cluttering the corners.

  James’s older sister Mhairi was sitting at the table holding baby Hannah, with her two older ones pounding Play-Doh at the other end. James introduced them all, and to her credit Mhairi didn’t bat an eyelash at seeing Laura for the first time, or when Laura greeted his two little nephews, and made a point of mentioning her own children.

  “It’s been a while since mine have played with Play-Doh,” she said quite deliberately, James thought, and his mum paused in pouring the tea.

  “You have children?” Her tone was an attempt at being neutral, with more than a whiff of scandalised.

  Laura’s smile was bright and determined, if a little brittle. “Yes, Maggie is fourteen, Sam eleven. James is Sam’s teacher, actually. That’s how we met.”

  “Oh, I see.”

  An awkward silence ensued before James did his valiant best to bridge it. “Where are Dad and Jack?”

  “They’re out in the shed,” his mum answered. “Lambing season, you know.” This for Laura’s benefit, James supposed, since he certainly knew when lambing season was. “Jane’s at work—that’s Jack’s wife.” Again for Laura’s benefit. “Elin is arriving later today, and Bella is out with friends but she promised to be home for dinner. Gwen is on her way home from uni. Her train gets into Shrewsbury at six.”

  Janet started handing cups of tea around. “So, Laura,” she said brightly. “Tell us about yourself.”

  “I’m not sure how much there is to say,” Laura answered with an uncertain laugh. She glanced at James and then continued a little stiltedly, “I used to be a history teacher, but I stopped when my children were little.” She paused, giving James another uncertain glance before continuing, “I only moved to Wychwood-on-Lea in January. Before that I lived in Suffolk… My husband died in a car accident just over a year ago.” This last was said in a rush, and his mum blinked in surprise.

  “Oh, my dear, I’m so sorry,” she said, and James detected a thawing in her voice and manner. No doubt she’d assumed Laura was divorced, a black mark in her book. He sighed inwardly, and Mhairi, no doubt wanting to deflect attention from Laura, held Hannah out to him.

  “How about a cuddle from Uncle James?”

  “All right.” He scooped the baby up in one arm, an old hand now that he had five nieces and nephews. He loved babies, something that made him feel as if he were a bit soppy, but he didn’t care. He brought Hannah up to his chest and pressed his lips against her downy head, breathing in that lovely milky baby smell that seemed to him a comforting mixture of laundry detergent and toast.

  Mhairi eyed him affectionately. “You really are a natural.”

  “It’s easy when you don’t have them twenty-four seven.”

  “Yes, remind me when you were offering to babysit for a weekend?” Mhairi half-joked. “So Rob and I can get away?”

  “A whole weekend?” James feigned alarm, but actually he wouldn’t mind. “My house is a construction site at the moment, as Laura can attest to, but when it’s ready to receive very small visitors, I’ll be more than happy to have them.” He rocked Hannah gently. “You know that, Mhairi, right?”

  His older sister eyed him with her distinctive brand of tolerant affection. “Yes, I do.”

  James rocked Hannah a bit more as she started to grizzle, and eventually, reluctantly, he handed her back to his sister before turning to his nephews who looked as if they were trying to kill the Play-Doh rather than mould it, although Tommy, the younger one, was also trying to eat it.

  “Easy there, kiddo,” James said as he rescued a disgustingly squidgy piece
of damp Play-Doh from his nephew’s chubby fingers. “It’s for playing with, yeah?”

  He glanced up at Laura, meaning to share the humorous moment as well as to check how she was coping with all this mayhem, but to his surprise, for a second, she looked utterly stricken.

  James felt as if his heart were leaping into his throat at the look on her face—what on earth could be so wrong? But then it cleared, and she smiled at him and said lightly, “Why is it that children find Play-Doh so delicious?”

  The conversation moved on easily enough, but James was left with the lingering and uneasy sense that this weekend was about to send him and Laura right off the rails.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The night air smelled of coal smoke and cow as Laura tramped through a dark, muddy field with James at her side. With the farmhouse full to the rafters—she was sharing a bedroom with teenaged Bella—a walk in the dark was their only chance for any privacy.

  It had been a happy and chaotic afternoon and evening, with people coming and going, a dozen different conversations seeming to happen at once as Laura did her best to try to remember who everyone was—Mhairi and Rob with their three children Ben, Tommy, and Hannah; James’s brother Jack with his wife Jane and their two boys Brody and Gethin; Elin and her husband Rob, and then Gwen and Bella, plus Janet and David reigning over it all, and the three dogs whose names Laura couldn’t remember on top of everything else.

  It had all been a lovably jumbled mess, and Laura had taken to the homely warmth of the farmhouse, so many things happening at once, the deep and abiding sense that everyone loved one another, and yet there had been undercurrents.

  Laura had felt the beginnings of them with Janet’s diplomatic silences and unable-to-be-disguised surprise at the sight of an obviously older Laura; she’d felt their strength when James’s father had come into the house with his brother Jack, both tall, strapping men with cold-reddened faces and a taciturn manner. David Hill’s only greeting for his second son had been a nod and a grunt.

  The talk over the evening meal in the fusty, old-fashioned dining room had been varied, but David’s contribution had only been to address Jack about the lambing. When Elin had asked James how he was finding Wychwood Primary, David had snorted once, the sound not quite one of derision, but almost.

  Laura had learned over the course of the meal that all of the Hill children were involved in farming in some way save for James. Mhairi and Rob ran a farm shop in Cheltenham that was supplied locally, including by the Hill farm, and Elin worked for Natural England, advocating to the government on behalf of farmers. Gwen was studying land management at uni and Bella was thinking of doing the same. Jack worked the farm with his father, and he and his family lived in a house they built themselves half a mile away, on the other side of the property.

  As the meal progressed, Laura could see why James felt like an outlier, and she knew every deliberate silence on his father’s part was felt like a wound. It made her ache, and yet she couldn’t even be truly angry on James’s behalf, because it was obvious that everyone loved him, if with a sort of bemused confusion about some of his life choices, and his father was simply the man he was, no more, no less. Laura didn’t think he meant anything unkindly; it was more he couldn’t understand what made his son tick. That realisation, however, made James’s unhappiness no less.

  Although as they tramped through the fields, stumbling over the tussocks in the darkness, it wasn’t James’s family that Laura was thinking about, but rather her own. Or lack of it. The future that felt as if it just raced up to smack right into the present.

  “Was this a mistake?” James asked, his voice seeming disembodied in the darkness, after they’d been walking in silence for a good fifteen minutes.

  “I like your family,” Laura said, which was true enough.

  “But?” James turned to look at her, no more than a gleam of eyes and teeth in the starless night. “Because I have been sensing a but from you all evening.”

  “It’s a lot to take in,” Laura said slowly. She didn’t want to have this conversation, and yet it now felt inevitable.

  “What is a lot to take in? My family? Or me?”

  “You?” Laura wished she could see his expression, because his tone had sounded a bit bitter. “What do you mean by that?”

  He shrugged, his hands dug deep into the pockets of his waxed jacket. “Coming home doesn’t exactly cast me into the most flattering light. I know that.”

  “James, you told me on the way here that the issues you had with your family were more about you than them. You haven’t been cast in an unflattering light at all, trust me.” She paused, doing her best to keep her voice gentle. “I think you feel that way, but no one else does. I certainly don’t. You’re still the amazing, insanely gorgeous guy I fell for when I first met him.” She kept her tone light even though the admission made her feel so very vulnerable. “I promise.”

  He sighed, barely seeming to take in her words. “I can barely paint a wall, and my brother built his own house. It’s hard not to make the comparison.”

  “I didn’t agree to go on a date with you because I thought you could build me a house,” Laura joked, but judging by James’s lack of response it fell flat. “Why does this bug you so much?” she asked softly, and he sighed again, a sound of aggravation, as he drove one hand through his hair.

  “Honestly? I don’t know. I know I shouldn’t let it. I’m thirty-two years old, after all. I’m way past this. I should be. And mostly it doesn’t bother me. It’s just when I come home, and I feel about fifteen again, and never measuring up. It brings everything back.”

  “Is that how your dad made you feel? Like you weren’t enough?”

  “Not deliberately, which is almost worse. It’s like I…I baffle him.”

  “And yet you were still strong enough to make your own choices and live life on your own terms,” Laura returned. “That takes strength and confidence, James. It’s admirable.”

  “Thanks.” He let out another weary sigh before he turned to her with a smile she saw as a gleam of teeth in the darkness. “So what’s been bugging you this evening?” he asked. “Or do I want to know?”

  Laura hesitated, feeling as if she were edging towards a precipice that she felt like running away from. They’d only been dating a week. And yet seeing James cradle his niece that afternoon…it had crystallised an unwelcome knowledge inside her. If their relationship wasn’t going anywhere, it wasn’t fair to James to keep it going. Yet how could either of them make that decision now? But there wasn’t enough time to deliberate or dither. It put them in an impossible situation, and yet it was one she had to address.

  “Do you want children?” she asked abruptly. “Children of your own?”

  James was silent for a moment, no doubt absorbing the sudden shift in their conversation. “Yes,” he finally said. “Ideally. But it’s not—it wouldn’t necessarily be a deal breaker for me, Laura, if that’s…if that’s what you’re thinking about.”

  The painfully wobbly note in his voice made her fear otherwise. “It feels far too early to have this conversation,” she said after a moment. “And yet I don’t know how we can not have it, considering.”

  “Considering what?”

  “Considering I’m forty-one, James. I know you don’t like me to keep rabbiting on about the difference in our ages, but it matters, whether we want it to or not. I’m forty-two in April. If I’m going to have another baby, it would have to be soon.” She flushed, cringing inwardly at her own recklessness. To talk about having a baby together when they’d barely begun dating…! What was she thinking?

  “Do you want to have another baby?” James asked after an interminable silence. He sounded so guarded, so Laura had no idea what he thought about the concept, or this whole conversation. Everything in her was cringing with mortification. Why had she gone there, so soon? She’d been so reckless, so stupid, and yet she didn’t know how she could have kept herself from it.

  “I don’
t know. After I had Sam and Maggie, I was hoping to have another, but Tim wanted to stick to two, which seemed sensible financially. And now…well, it was absolutely off my radar for a long time. In a way, it still is. And I hate that we have to talk about this, when we’re still just getting to know one another. It feels way too soon, like I’m forcing something that might make or break us.”

  “That’s what I did this weekend though, isn’t it?” James sighed dispiritedly. “I almost wish I could put back the clock. Go back to last night when we were canoodling on the sofa and I never even mentioned coming home.”

  Laura was silent, unsure how to feel about that futile wish. “I feel like we’re both in an impossible situation,” she said miserably. “I haven’t even told Sam and Maggie about us. I have no idea how they’ll take it. And what about you? If—if things were to progress, do you want to take on the raising of two teenagers? You’d practically be their stepdad.” She closed her eyes briefly. “Please believe me when I say I know how crazy this all sounds, but it matters.”

  James reached for her hand, lacing his cold fingers through hers. “We’re both borrowing trouble, aren’t we? I’m thinking too much about the past, and you’re thinking too much about the future. Perhaps we should just enjoy the present.” He tugged on her hand and she came towards him willingly, gladly, because at least here, with his arms around her and his lips brushing hers, the world righted itself. She believed things could work out. She realised she wanted them to, desperately.

  But would that be enough? If wishes were horses, beggars would ride. It was an old-fashioned phrase her mother had used to say, and with a pang of bittersweet longing, Laura wished she had her mum around to give her advice. She’d died when Laura had been only twenty-four, pancreatic cancer, diagnosis to death in just six months.

  Laura let out a shuddery sigh as James enfolded her in a hug and she pressed her cheek against the corduroy lapel of his jacket, closing her eyes against the world and all the uncertainty she feared they both still felt. At least they were here now, together, arms around each other, lips on lips, finding each other in the darkness.