‘It’s okay,’ he assured her. He hadn’t really minded. It was only Alex’s chiding which had upset him. He didn’t blame Nina. In fact, he’d rather liked being the focus of her attention. He’d been special enough to warrant a nickname, and that had made him smile. And, of course, it was also one up on Alex.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’ve interrupted you. What were you going to say?’
They walked across the lawn towards a long beech hedge in which was set a wooden gate that had been painted a brilliant turquoise decades ago and was happily flaking into old age. Nina opened it and they walked through into a small walled garden.
‘I love it here,’ she said. ‘It’s so peaceful.’
‘It’s so messy,’ Dominic said. ‘Mum keeps bugging Dad to do something with it.’
‘Perhaps Faye will come up with something wonderful. She’s full of good ideas.’
Dominic didn’t say anything.
‘Dommie – what did happen with Faye?’
He merely shook his head. ‘We drifted apart. That was all.’
Nina frowned. ‘Did you two—’
‘Do you mind if we don’t talk about it?’ Dominic said. ‘It’s bad enough that Mum keeps pushing her under my nose.’
‘Okay,’ Nina said, ‘of course.’ But Dominic could see that her eyes were full of curiosity and her mind was full of questions.
‘I don’t want to talk about Faye. I want to talk about you.’
‘Oh,’ Nina said in surprise.
‘I wanted to make sure you’re still okay for dinner tomorrow night.’
‘Oh, yes, I am. Thank you, Dommie.’
He winced inwardly at her use of the name Dommie. He wished she’d call him by his full name now. After all, he wasn’t a little boy in pyjamas any more.
‘Great!’ he said.
‘You Miltons certainly know how to keep a girl well fed,’ she said, grinning up at him.
‘Oh, well, we can do it another time if you prefer,’ he said, feeling himself blush.
‘No, no!’ she said quickly. ‘I was only teasing. Tomorrow would be fine,’ she said, and they watched in amusement as Ziggy leapt over a scraggy box hedge and lifted his leg up against an old scarecrow.
Now, after a day of preparing canvases for his upcoming show, Dominic had a whole evening of Nina’s company to look forward to. Alone. No interruptions and no Alex. But, first of all, he had to clear away some of his work. It was okay to have standing room only when he was on his own, but Nina might not appreciate having to squeeze between rows of paintings and having near-misses with easels and dirty jam jars.
He started to move his canvases until they all leant up against the same wall like some trendy art shop, and gathered up the brushes that were scattered across the floor like kindling. That was when he found them. The Faye canvases. He’d meant to get rid of them, but he just hadn’t had the heart. They’d been painted at sixth form during their last few months together and the naivety of the portraits struck him now. The artist in him was desperate to be rid of them. He should paint over them with something more professional, he told himself, but the young man instinctively knew that that would be wrong.
Dominic gazed at the gentle face looking right out of the canvas at him as if she was in the room with him there and then. Those enormous eyes of hers were so expressive, he thought. And there was that glimmer of a smile playing around her lips, perhaps at a long-forgotten shared joke.
He shook his head. He didn’t have time for this. He placed them behind the small sofa and got back to work, whipping a duster over his chairs, carefully checking for signs of paint. There’d be nothing worse than if Nina sat down and got up with a burnt sienna bottom.
Finally, he stood in the middle of the room to survey the scene. The converted folly might not have been everyone’s idea of the perfect property – for a start, it was about three times as tall as it was wide – but to Dominic, it was perfect. He loved the long, slender windows that allowed the extraordinary East Anglian light to illuminate his work. He adored the bare floorboards that echoed under his shoes and he loved the warmth of the red brick; soft to the eye, but wonderfully gritty to the touch.
He loved the unusual and the quirky, and he sincerely hoped that Nina would love it too.
In her bedroom at the mill, Nina was wishing that she could shake the word date from her mind as she got ready before Dominic arrived. It was, yet again, just a simple friendly invitation to dinner. Besides, she was quite determined not to get involved with another man. She really hadn’t thought that Dominic would mention his invitation again after the embarrassing nickname revelation of the night before. Still, she couldn’t dispel the way he’d looked at her as he’d reminded her of her promise in the walled garden; so earnest, so imploring, and she got the distinct feeling that the word date would be foremost in his mind, if not her own. But she had definitely sworn off men – that much was clear in her mind. Tonight, she was merely making amends for having been so rude to Dominic when she’d taken off to the pub with Alex, and maybe – just maybe – she’d be able to find out more about Faye. Nina had instantly warmed to Faye the moment she’d met her; she could really feel the girl’s heartache and couldn’t help wondering if it would be possible to bring about a reconciliation between her and Dominic. She just couldn’t shake the feeling that this young couple were meant to be together.
Nina sighed. She knew herself what it was like to be so hopelessly love-struck that everything else in the world seemed trivial. She remembered the first time she’d met Matt. They’d both belonged to the same gym and there’d been a Christmas party one year. She’d seen him before, of course, but she’d always been much too shy to say hello to him and he hadn’t known she’d existed before the incident with the punch. Somebody had knocked into him and he’d crashed right into her, magenta punch spilling all down the front of her dress.
It wasn’t the best of introductions, and it should have been an omen that things wouldn’t work out, but Nina had been lost from that first encounter and, even when she knew that he was no good for her, his hold over her had been unyielding.
For a moment, Nina caught her own gaze in the mirror, and a pair of sad hazel eyes stared back at her. They were eyes that said they still remembered. Eyes that hadn’t been able to close against the truth even though she’d managed to physically run away from it. Matt had tried to contact her, leaving message after message, but Nina had deleted every single one of them, not allowing herself to listen to them after the last abusive one he’d left for her.
Nina blinked hard, dispelling thoughts of past times and emotional crimes, and turned her attention to her meagre wardrobe. She didn’t have many decent dresses, but it wouldn’t be seemly to wear the same dress that she’d worn when she’d gone out with Alex. So, she pulled out a long white dress splashed with vibrant poppies.
Quickly flinging off the neat shirt and cotton trousers she’d worn for work, she hummed lightly as she smoothed the dress down over her body. It felt delicious; like a second skin, but a much cooler one. She turned to the mirror and gasped. Not only did it feel like a second skin, it looked like one, too.
‘Jeans and T-shirt!’ she whistled through clenched teeth.
‘Nina?’ Dominic’s voice called from downstairs. ‘Are you ready?’
‘Er – yes! Just a minute,’ Nina called, looking desperately at the clock and noting that it was only ten to seven. Dominic was more than a little prompt.
Anyway, it was too late to change now so she grabbed a cardigan from the bottom of her bed and hid as much of her body with it as she could.
‘I’ll be down in a moment,’ Nina shouted, flattening her hair against her head and licking her lips to remove a little of their pink gloss. She grabbed her white pumps from under the bed and flung her feet into them. That would tone the overall image down a bit, she thought.
Dominic was in the hall, standing under one of his paintings as if posing for a celebrity magazine article.
‘Hello,’ Nina said, noticing the smart navy shirt and black jeans.
‘Hello,’ he echoed, his eyes wide and full of poppies. ‘I like your dress,’ he smiled. Nina bit her lip. She really should have put her jeans on.
‘Do you?’ she asked, nervously doing up another button of her cardigan.
Dominic nodded. ‘I like your pumps, too.’
‘Oh?’ Nina said, wishing she’d put Wellies on instead.
‘Come on – let’s go,’ he said, opening the door for her like a true gentleman.
Leaving the house, they crossed the bridge and followed the footpath that ran alongside the river. It was a perfect summer’s evening. Swallows dipped and dived along the water and the air hummed with insects. It was warm enough to walk without a cardigan, but Nina thought she’d better keep it on. She wouldn’t want to give Dominic the wrong impression and, if there was a dress to give the wrong impression, then she was wearing it.
He looked nice though, she thought, as they ambled across the field, the sun low on the horizon. His eyes sparkled like dark jewels in the evening sunlight. Faye, she was quite sure, would have swooned.
Nina jolted at the thought as an idea occurred to her. She was going to have to talk to Dominic about Faye.
‘I hope you like pasta,’ Dominic began casually.
‘Oh, yes,’ Nina said, wondering how she could bring the subject of Faye up. It wasn’t going to be easy, slotting the name of an ex-girlfriend into a conversation about pasta. ‘Do you cook a lot?’
‘When I have the time,’ he said.
‘Did you used to cook for Faye?’ she asked. Oh dear. That wasn’t terribly subtle, but it was the best she could do in the circumstances.
Dominic turned to look at Nina, his face clouded over with suspicion, as if he knew she had a hidden agenda. Honestly, she might as well have had her mission tattooed across her forehead, she thought.
‘I wish she’d get a gardening project somewhere else,’ Dominic said quietly. ‘Mum really shouldn’t be encouraging her to spend so much time here. It just isn’t right.’
‘But it would be a hard garden to beat. It’s a lovely place,’ Nina said.
‘You think so?’
‘Of course. Faye obviously likes it.’
Dominic frowned again. ‘I can’t understand why you’re so interested in Faye, Nina! Must we always talk about her?’
Yes, Nina thought. ‘‘Course not,’ she said with a light smile, as if she didn’t care one way or another.
‘Come on,’ he said, his stride picking up, scattering a fine cloud of insects from the tall blonde grasses at the side of the path. ‘I’m starving. And I’m banning all conversations about anyone who isn’t you.’
Had Nina thought of Dominic as a potential suitor rather than as an ex-ward, she would have been impressed by his attempts to set the scene for romance. As it was, she saw that he’d made a genuine effort to accommodate a guest in a rather sparsely furnished room.
The Folly had always been an impressive building from the outside, but Nina had never thought of it as having any potential as a home. It was amazing, she thought, how Dominic had transformed it, turning it into something worthy of a feature in a glossy magazine. She grinned at the stacks of canvases leaning precariously against the walls and the rows of bottles and heaps of half-squeezed-out tubes of paint on shelves made from salvaged timber.
A tiny table was set in the centre of the room. It was one of the few items of furniture in the place, and it looked as lost as a dinghy out at sea. Nina’s eyes scanned the room, her homemaking gene placing a comfortable sofa here and arranging a bookcase there. Tall candlestands would look just perfect and large pottery vases filled with flowers would brighten the room.
‘What do you think?’ Dominic asked, his hands dug deep into his pockets, his shoulders hunched close to his body, as if nervous of her reply.
‘It’s lovely,’ Nina said truthfully, ‘but perhaps a woman’s touch might help.’
‘Are you offering?’ His eyebrows rose suggestively and then he blushed as if he realised that that was the sort of thing Alex would say, not him.
Nina cleared her throat. ‘Well, I know this is your workspace, but it could be a little more homely,’ she said gently, trying to keep the conversation as neutral as possible by veering the talk towards curtains and cushions. ‘You know, with some fabrics here and there. Just a few touches.’
Dominic nodded, scratching his chin. ‘I’m not very good at that. Besides, after doing the place up I couldn’t afford to buy a bean, let alone a beanbag.’
Nina smiled. ‘If it’s any consolation, I don’t own one of those either. All I have is currently in my room at the mill.’
‘But you’re—’
‘Twenty-eight – I know,’ Nina said, as if she’d been found guilty of a heinous crime.
‘I wasn’t going to say that,’ Dominic assured her.
‘But you were thinking it?’ she teased.
‘No! I was going to say that you’re not some flako artist.’
‘But neither are you,’ she said with a smile.
‘Yeah – right!’
‘But you’re not!’ Nina stressed. ‘Everyone knows how difficult it is to make it, even when you’re as talented as you are. It just takes a lot of hard work and a little bit of time.’
Dominic looked at her. ‘You’re marvellous!’ he said.
Nina blushed. She really must make an effort not to be quite so nice to him all the time.
‘I can’t believe you did all these,’ she said, changing the direction of the conversation as quickly as she could by admiring a group of sketches he’d hung haphazardly on the walls. ‘And these are beautiful, too. Are they for your show?’
‘No. The ones over there are going to the show.’
Nina looked across the room at the stack of paintings. ‘Wow, you’ve been working so hard, Dommie.’ She then took a step closer to inspect the trio of pencil sketches that had captivated her. Three women; two in profile and one gazing straight at the artist. Nina wondered who they were. They certainly weren’t Faye.
‘Who are they?’ she asked.
Dominic joined her by his pictures. ‘I cheated with those. They’re not of anybody real. They’re inspired by the Pre-Raphaelites.’
‘They’re so lovely – so serene.’ Nina stared at them, their soft beauty quite captivating. From the corner of her eye, she could see Dominic staring at her.
‘What is it?’ she turned to look at him.
‘Your mouth. I’d never noticed before, but it’s just like a Rossetti.’
‘Rossetti? What’s that? A kind of pasta?’ she said with a tiny smile.
Dominic smiled. ‘No! He was a painter – from this period,’ he motioned to his sketches. ‘He painted beautiful women. And your mouth is just like one of his sitters.’
‘Is it?’ Nina’s fingers flew up to touch her lips. She cleared her throat. ‘Let’s eat, shall we?’
Nina couldn’t help noticing how different Dominic was from Alex. For a start, he didn’t get up and come round to the other side of the table to tickle her. But it was more than that. He was fundamentally different. Where Alex had sped Nina along the Norfolk lanes in an Alfa Romeo Spider to a pub meal, Dominic had walked her by the riverside to a home-cooked dinner. Where Alex had teased, joked and made a thorough nuisance of himself, Dominic was quiet, calm and thoughtful.
There were several moments throughout the meal when Nina felt sure that Dominic was going to interrupt Handel’s Water Music to say something significant, but each time he stopped himself short. His expressions had certainly seemed to indicate that there were unspoken words tumbling around in his head but, whenever she’d thought he was about to speak, he’d merely placed another fork-load of food into his mouth.
By the end of the meal, Nina was beginning to get frustrated. Had he something to say? Perhaps he really wanted to talk about Faye. After he’d silenced her by the river, Nina hadn’t dar
ed to mention her name again. But, even though she desperately wanted to help bring the two of them back together again, she wasn’t one to mince words either. If he had something to say then she wanted to hear it.
‘Dominic? Is there something you want to ask me?’ she said, taking a sip of the wine he’d poured for her.
Dominic looked up, startled. ‘What?’
‘You look as if you’ve been trying to say something for the last half hour, and you’ll end up with indigestion if you don’t say it soon.’
His eyes widened at her openness. ‘What makes you think I’ve something to say?’
‘Because I know you. Well, I used to know you,’ Nina corrected. ‘And I know when you’re on the verge of saying something. Like the time when you’d dropped Alex’s toothbrush in the toilet and were hovering around on the landing waiting for somebody to help you, but not actually telling them what the problem was. Remember?’
‘I remember,’ he said with a reluctant nod.
‘Well, you’ve got that same expression on your face now. Am I right?’
He half-smiled. ‘Yes,’ he said.
‘And remember the time you sneaked down the stairs at half-past ten at night pretending you couldn’t sleep? And really it was because you were bursting to tell me what you’d made your mum for Christmas? A tissue-box covered in celebrities cut out of old—’
‘Hello! magazines!’ Dominic finished. ‘Yes. I know.’
‘You scared me half to death when I saw you standing behind me in your pyjamas! And I still don’t know how Roman Holiday ends.’
‘Sorry!’ he smiled, looking self-conscious at the fact that he had once been a little boy who had worn Thomas the Tank Engine pyjamas. ‘Blimey Nina, I do wish you didn’t remember all that babysitting stuff quite so clearly.’
‘Sorry,’ she said.
‘It’s as though you’re trying to stop me from saying what I want to say.’
‘So there is something you want to say?’ Nina said. Dominic looked at her and Nina felt herself straightening in anticipation. ‘What is it?’
A Summer to Remember Page 13
