by Jessica Hart
When not providing Simon with a free cabaret—which he hadn’t appreciated at all—Clara had spent the journey curled up in her seat, half-turned towards him, and they had talked and argued their way all the way up the motorway.
Simon was one of those drivers who hated breaking the momentum of their journey and, in spite of constant lobbying for a proper meal, Clara had barely been allowed the occasional brief loo stop. She had a sandwich and a packet of crisps that earned her a ticking off for dropping crumbs all over his car, but now they were there and she was starving.
‘Well, let’s see what it’s like inside,’ she said, digging in her bag for the key they had picked up a lifetime earlier. ‘I’m sure it’ll be fine once we’ve got the kettle on and a fire going.’
She had to push hard to open the car door. The wind snatched at her hair and spat snow into her eyes as soon as she got out, and she made a bolt for the cottage. She was shivering so much she couldn’t get the key in the lock.
‘What are you doing?’ Simon had to raise his voice above the howling wind and, even fumbling around in the dark with the snow swirling around them, she was acutely aware of his body behind her.
‘My hands are cold,’ she yelled back.
‘Let me do it.’ His fingers were warm and sure as he reached out and took the key from her, and for an instant Clara was transported back to Paradise Island and his hand on her thigh, on the back of her knee.
The rush of heat warmed her as Simon opened the door without any difficulty and groped around for a light switch.
‘Ah,’ he said as he encountered one and clicked it on.
Nothing.
He switched it off and then on again. Still nothing.
‘What’s the matter?’ said Clara, who was shivering again after that brief, welcome spurt of warmth.
‘No power.’
‘Ohmigod…’ Clara’s dream of a cosy cottage was rapidly fading.
‘Perhaps it’s just the bulb.’
But when Simon located another switch, that didn’t work either.
‘Now what?’ Clara said as he cursed.
‘See if you can find the fuse box.’
Muttering under his breath, Simon fought his way back through the wind and snow to the car and stomped back with a torch.
Clara was very glad of his competence. She certainly wouldn’t have known what to do. Tasked with holding the torch, she huddled behind him, pulling her sleeves down over her hands, while he examined the fuse box.
‘I can’t see if you wave the torch around like that,’ Simon said irritably.
‘It’s cold,’ she grumbled, but she eased her fingers out of her jumper to hold the torch steadier.
Simon straightened, and they were suddenly standing very close. Clara took an instinctive step back, which seemed a better idea than throwing herself at his chest, which was what she really wanted to do.
‘The fuses are OK,’ he said, taking the torch from her briskly and playing it around the room. ‘That means the power is out further down the line. There’s nothing we can do about that.’
Clara hugged her arms together in dismay. ‘What are we going to do? This is a nightmare.’
‘You were the one who thought an isolated cottage would be romantic,’ he reminded her.
True, she had.
‘It’ll be cosy, you said,’ Simon added maliciously. ‘It’ll be wonderful, you said. It’ll be elemental.’
‘We’ll make it cosy,’ said Clara, pulling herself together. ‘There must be a fire. Let’s have that torch. Look, there,’ she said in relief, spotting a mantelpiece.
‘That’s something,’ grunted Simon. ‘You get it going and I’ll bring our stuff in from the car.’
Fortunately the fire had been laid, and Clara found some matches. They were the first tenants of the year, the agent had told them, and the matches were rather damp, but she eventually managed to get one to light. She was shivering so hard by then that the match nearly went out as she held it to the paper with a shaking hand, but at last a tiny flame caught the edge of the paper.
Clara watched it anxiously as it wavered, then steadied. Puffing out a sigh of relief, she sat back on her heels, holding out her hands to the fire as it crackled into life. Now she knew how cavemen must have felt. There was something infinitely comforting about the leaping flames in the darkness.
Simon pushed the door shut with his foot and dumped their things by the door while he brushed the snow from his jacket. They didn’t have much with them. It had seemed silly to load up the car when the van could bring everything more easily.
Which might have been a mistake.
‘I’m starving,’ said Clara, switching off the torch to save the battery. ‘I hope Ted and the others arrive soon. They’ve got all the food.’
‘We won’t be able to cook it,’ Simon pointed out as he dropped wearily into a chair on one side of the fire and stretched out his legs to the flames. ‘The oven’s electric.’
Clara’s shoulders slumped. She had been fantasising about the piece of lamb she’d bought to roast.
‘There’s bread and cheese.’ She perked up a little as she remembered what else they could eat. ‘Crisps, olives…oh, and wine, of course.’
She sighed. ‘I must stop thinking about it. I’m drooling! I can’t even find out how far away they are.’ Just in case a signal had miraculously winkled its way through the mountains, she dug her phone out of her bag. It was still blank, but she did find the end of a packet of mints that she had forgotten was there.
‘Want a mint?’ she offered Simon.
‘Why not save them until we’re desperate?’
‘I’m desperate now!’ But she put the mints back, and got to her feet and picked up the torch.
‘I’m going to see if there’s anything in the kitchen.’
‘Don’t waste the battery,’ Simon warned.
‘I’ll be quick.’
It was too cold to be away from the fire for too long anyway. Clara hunted through the kitchen cupboards but could only find some old instant coffee and two cans of kidney beans.
‘No can opener either,’ she reported glumly when she was huddled back in front of the fire. ‘We’d better eke out those mints or we’ll be reduced to gnawing our own limbs.’
Simon added a log to the fire and poked it into place. ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘A quick step from a twinge of hunger to cannibalism. Why am I even surprised?’ He threw himself back into the chair. ‘Do you ever react moderately to anything?’
‘I don’t need to be moderate when you’re sitting there being moderate enough for ten of us!’ said Clara pettishly.
‘There’s no point in me doing drama when you’re sitting there being dramatic enough for twenty!’
There was an unpleasant silence, and then Clara sighed. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m just cross because this is turning into a nightmare.’
Dispirited, she looked around the cottage. It was difficult to make out much in the firelight, but she didn’t hold out much hope of the charming, cosy décor she had imagined. There were some bulky pieces of furniture, most of it dating from the Seventies to judge by the knobbly material on the three-piece suite in front of the fir
eplace, and a musty smell pervaded everything.
‘You’re right,’ she told Simon miserably. ‘It’s not romantic at all. It’s awful. Maybe I’ve got it all wrong.’
Simon sat up in mock alarm. ‘That’s not like you! Isn’t there some song you can sing to make you feel better?’
‘I don’t feel like singing,’ said Clara, settling herself with her back against the sofa.
‘Now you’ve really got me worried,’ he said, only half-joking.
She tucked her hair behind her ears and forced herself to face up to the truth.
‘All these romantic situations have turned out to be disasters,’ she said in a hollow voice. ‘Pouring in Paris, food poisoning on Paradise Island, and now freezing and starving in the middle of nowhere! Of course it’s not romantic. What am I going to say tomorrow when we’re filming? I’ll have to admit that I’ve changed my mind and that I don’t believe in romance any more.’
Simon looked at her in concern. He ought to have been pleased that she had seen sense and come round to his way of thinking, but it felt all wrong. Clara’s shining belief in romance was part of her. He didn’t like it when she was sensible and rational.
‘You’re just tired and hungry,’ he said. ‘You’ll feel better when Ted gets here and you’ve had something to eat.’
But three hours crawled by and there was still no sign of the van. Clara gnawed the inside of her cheek. ‘Do you think they’ve been in some terrible accident?’
‘No,’ said Simon. ‘I think they’re sensibly holed up in a comfortable hotel somewhere rather than drive through the snow in the dark.’
‘I wish we knew what had happened to them!’
‘They’ll be here in the morning. In the meantime, there’s nothing we can do about it except resign ourselves to no supper.’
The torch beam was already weak, but he used it to explore upstairs, where he found ample bedding, which was something, and then he went around the living room opening and closing cupboard doors.
‘What are you looking for?’ asked Clara, following his progress.
‘Survival rations…ah!’ Simon came back to the fire with a bottle of whisky and two glasses. ‘I thought a Scottish cottage had to have an emergency supply somewhere.’ He held up the bottle and inspected it in the firelight. ‘Half empty—I suppose you’d say half full—but it’ll keep us going.’
He sloshed whisky into the glasses, and handed one to Clara. ‘This will cheer you up.’
They both sat on the floor, backs against the sofa, not quite touching. Their legs were stretched out towards the fire, and the flames sent flickering shadows leaping over their faces.
Clara wasn’t used to drinking whisky, she told him. She choked and spluttered at first, but she soon got the hang of it, and they drank in companionable silence for a while, their hands brushing occasionally when they set their glass on the floor between them.
Simon looked down into his glass contemplatively. He had driven for twelve hours that day and he was very hungry. Astrid would never have got him into a situation like this. On the few occasions they’d been away together, Astrid would book them into five-star hotels, and always made sure that she got a good deal by booking in advance. Simon couldn’t imagine her here.
But he was oddly comfortable sitting in front of the fire in this musty old cottage. Outside, the wind worried at the windows, and the rest of the rooms were dank and bitterly cold, but within the circle of firelight it was quite cosy. They had long ago finished the mints, but the whisky was warm in his stomach and Clara was beside him, long legs sprawled in front of her, humming as she watched the fire, one of those wretched show tunes he was going to have running round his head for the rest of the week.
His eyes rested on her profile, on the tilt of her lashes, the line of her cheek, the sweet curve of her mouth, and his heart turned over. Had there really been a time when he had thought of her as ordinary? Now, every time he looked at Clara she seemed more beautiful to him. Not perfect in a cool, classic way, but with a warmth and an allure that made his senses swirl.
There was a tight feeling around his chest, and he found himself remembering what she had said in Paris. It’s about looking at the one you love and feeling your heart swelling and swelling as if it would burst.
The way his heart felt right then.
Sensing his gaze, she glanced at him and smiled.
And that was it. The world tipped and the tight band around Simon’s chest that had been keeping his emotions in check for so long snapped open, and his head reeled before the rush of feeling, as terrifying as he had feared and as exhilarating as Clara had promised.
One of these days you’ll fall in love, she had said. Then you’ll know what I mean.
Simon was glad that he was sitting down. Very carefully, he put his glass on the floor beside him. He had been afraid letting go would be like this, that the feelings would surge and slosh around out of control and that he’d be left grappling for something to hold onto. In the maelstrom, there was only one certainty.
Clara, and the fact that he loved her.
The panicky feeling subsided and the world righted itself once more, the same but with everything in a subtly different alignment. Clara was beside him and nothing else mattered. He might be tired and hungry and uncomfortable, but she was there and he was happy.
When had she become so necessary to him? Simon couldn’t take his eyes off her now. Unaware of the effect of her smile, she had turned back to watch the fire, absorbed in the wavering flames.
Why her? Why Clara, with her absurdly romantic view of life, with her chaotic outfits and her infuriating singing and her exuberance? She was completely wrong for him.
And yet completely right.
He wanted to slide his hand under her hair, to see her turn towards him, her eyes widening and that smile tugging at her mouth. He wanted to draw her close, to lay her down in the firelight and make love to her until she promised that she would never leave him.
But why would she promise that? Simon picked up his glass and took a steadying sip of whisky. He had locked away his feelings after his father’s death and turned inward. Clara was braver than that. She had been hurt too, but she had hidden it beneath a gaiety and a zest for life.
She had loved Matt so much. Simon’s jaw tightened as he faced the truth. He could never match up to the love of Clara’s life. Matt had been everything she had ever wanted. She had told him that outright. Kind, romantic, Mr Nice Guy…everything Simon wasn’t, in fact.
When you love someone, you want them to be happy. That was another thing Clara had said. She wanted a man who was passionate and funny and wildly romantic, and he could never be that, Simon knew. But now the truth was out there, slapping him with his stupidity—how could he not have known how much he loved her?—he had to find a way to tell her how he felt.
He cleared his throat. ‘Astrid wants us to try again.’
Clara broke off in mid hum and straightened to look at him. ‘Well…that’s good news,’ she said a little awkwardly before she turned back to study the flames. ‘I knew that was what she wanted really. What happened to Paolo?’
‘She said that he was too demanding, and jealous of the time she spent at work. At first she found it f
lattering, she said, but after a while she wanted someone she could talk to about work. Me, in fact.’
‘So what did you say?’ asked Clara.
‘I said no.’
‘No?’ The whisky slopped in her glass as she jerked in surprise. ‘Why? I thought Astrid was perfect for you?’
‘I thought she was too.’ Simon turned his glass between his hands, remembering the scene. ‘I can’t explain it. She was so practical about it. She seemed to take it for granted that we would just pick up from where we left off and go back to the way we were before, that we’d pretend that she had never said that she wanted passion and excitement and romance.’
He put the glass back on the floor beside him. ‘It was only then that I realised we couldn’t do that. I told her I thought we had both changed too much to pretend everything was the same.’
‘Do you think you have changed?’ Clara asked softly, and he nodded.
‘The truth is that I would never have kissed you in Paris if Astrid had been really important to me. I wouldn’t have wanted to kiss you on Paradise Island.’ His voice deepened and his eyes rested on her face. ‘I wouldn’t want to kiss you now.’
Clara’s eyes met his almost unwillingly, and the air between them thrummed with the memory of what that last kiss had been like.
‘We did say we would try a third kiss,’ she said with difficulty.
Simon’s heart was pumping as he laid his hand to her cheek, twisted a strand of her silky hair around his finger. ‘What if I want more than three kisses? What if I want to kiss you in London, say?’
Clara stilled. ‘I don’t think that would work,’ she said slowly.
‘Why not? Why does it matter where we are?’
‘Because this isn’t real,’ she said, gesturing at the fire. ‘The way Paradise Island wasn’t real, or Paris.’
‘It felt pretty real to me when I went upstairs,’ said Simon. ‘It’s freezing up there.’
