The Love Square

by Laura Jane Williams

  Inside the pub, Francesco watched all of this unfold. He watched Penny standing in the rain and the wind with Thomas, and Priyesh pull up, and the way Penny was gesticulating to the outhouses. He could see that the tiles seemed unsteady, and it didn’t take much to figure out that she was out there trying to secure them before the storm threatened to blow everything away. He grabbed his raincoat and slipped through the bar and into the kitchen, to take the back way out.

  ‘Need a hand?’ he yelled, as Thomas and Priyesh were manhandling a huge sheet of tarpaulin against the wind.

  ‘Yes!’ said Thomas. ‘Take this!’

  Francesco used his arm to help manoeuvre the middle part of the sheet, and Penny said, ‘Here!’ and passed him some bricks from the pile by the skip. They worked quickly and in harmony, securing the tiles as best they could. The rain came almost sideways, and Penny had to keep her face turned at an angle because the force it hit her with was almost painful. It was hard to see, but the men worked quickly and as a team, limiting any potential damage.

  ‘I think that’s enough!’ she shouted into the elements. ‘We did it!’

  As they ran back to the pub the villagers crowded under the outdoor heaters cheered.

  Inside the porch, the four of them – Penny, Francesco, Priyesh and Thomas – stood dripping in varying states of being soaked.

  ‘Jesus,’ said Priyesh, shaking his hands of water and peeling off his Barbour jacket.

  ‘That was crazy!’ said Francesco, his t-shirt stuck to him where his coat had flown open. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever known a storm like it!’

  ‘Sorry-not-sorry lads, but—’ Thomas said, taking off his sodden t-shirt. ‘I’m wet through. Have you got a towel, Pen?’ he asked, and Penny replied, without her eye wavering to his naked torso, that yes, she did. Thomas stood half naked and smiling, totally unabashed. It was typical Thomas.

  Penny went out of the bottom of the kitchen into the restaurant part of the pub, to where they kept the laundry. She pulled out three towels and a handful of linen napkins, rushing back through to the kitchen to see, from one end to the other, the three men glistening and panting, adrenaline pumping through everyone’s veins.

  Priyesh didn’t, technically, know about Thomas. Francesco knew about Thomas and Priyesh, in theory, but not since their kiss. Thomas knew better than to ask about Francesco or Priyesh, but could just about establish that situation if he used his imagination. Penny looked at the three men and knew the truth about her relationship to them all.

  Not that it could last.

  She was ready to make her choice.

  As the four of them gathered themselves, drying off, there was a sudden moment of awkwardness. The three men didn’t know each other well at all, and now that the adrenaline was winding down it was odd, really, to be semi-nude with a bunch of strange blokes. In the awkwardness, Francesco reached out to the back of Penny’s neck – his port in the social storm. It was proprietorial, but he needed it as comfort. Penny looked up at him and he grinned at her, and she didn’t know how to tell him now wasn’t the time to lay claim to her. He could do that later, once they’d talked. She hadn’t even told Priyesh or Thomas what she wanted, yet.

  Priyesh clocked Francesco’s hand on Penny, and didn’t like it.

  ‘Darling,’ he said, taking her hand. ‘Let’s get some dry clothes from upstairs.’

  Francesco looked at Priyesh in surprise. He didn’t like that he was talking to Penny – his Penny – in such a familiar tone. And why was he holding her hand? He lightly tugged at her neck, pulling her towards him.

  Priyesh pulled her towards him.

  Francesco pulled again.

  Penny deftly retrieved her arm from Priyesh’s grip and bent down to take off her sodden trainers, releasing Francesco’s hand from her. Thomas shook his head of blonde curls, combing his hair out of his face with his hands. As he did it he caught sight of Penny, hair in loose damp waves around her face and rain caught in her eyelashes and exclaimed, ‘Pen, you look well fit right now.’

  Priyesh looked mildly confused at that, but Francesco understood what he’d said loud and clear and immediately sent him daggers.

  ‘Oh,’ continued Thomas, clocking both men’s reactions. ‘It seems I’m not the only one who’s thinking it …’

  Priyesh frowned. ‘Penny?’ he said, and the way he said it made Francesco understand he felt they were somehow still involved.

  ‘Ah,’ Francesco said. ‘I’m sorry, mate. Hasn’t she told you?’

  ‘Told me what?’

  ‘That we’re … well. Not “back” together, but … you know … together.’

  ‘What?’ said Penny. ‘We’re not back together.’

  ‘Right,’ said Francesco. ‘Except. Well. These past few days. Not to mention everything before that.’

  ‘Francesco, let’s not do this now?’

  Thomas piped up, ‘This is why I don’t put any rules on you, babe,’ he said.

  ‘Babe?!’ said Priyesh and Francesco in unison.

  Francesco narrowed his eyes. ‘Penny – are you still seeing … all three of us?’

  Penny looked from Francesco, with his earnestness and kind eyes, to Priyesh, with his chin held high, self-confident and certain, to Thomas, with his youthful charisma.

  ‘No,’ she began. ‘I mean. Not on purpose. I don’t know how this happened … you make it sound like I did something wrong, but …’

  ‘Wrong?’ said Priyesh. ‘I thought we were falling in love?’

  ‘In love?’ countered Penny, genuinely perplexed. They had hardly sat and had long, deep, meaningful chats over hours and hours. They’d been sleeping together with a little light pillow talk every now and again. Did Priyesh think it was more than that? Her stomach lurched at the thought of having accidentally led him on.

  Thomas patted Priyesh’s back. ‘You make love sound finite, mate. She can love more than one person.’

  ‘Oh, do me a favour,’ said Priyesh. ‘That’s just something little boys say so they can sleep around.’

  Thomas held up his hands in surrender. ‘Bit harsh,’ he said.

  Francesco stepped forward. ‘Pen, come on. Us. Our history, and the kiss … the pasta … Don’t you want that?’

  Penny looked at him, water settled in droplets on his thick hair, big brown eyes searching hers for reassurance and confirmation. She did want those things. Two minutes ago she was certain of it. Her and Francesco. But now, with him asking her to say it, it was a lot.

  Penny didn’t know anything. She’d have to be so certain to make a choice, and before this moment she thought she had been, but now, confronted with a ticking clock and six eyes boring into her for her answer, she didn’t want to decide anything. She didn’t have it in her.

  ‘I don’t know what to say,’ she stated, simply. ‘Maybe I shouldn’t be with any of you. I don’t know. I’m scared.’

  ‘This is bullshit!’ cried Francesco. ‘I do not accept what you are saying. Don’t be so afraid, Penny. I just can’t get my head around this. It’s you and me. There isn’t anything else.’

  The presumptuousness of him enraged her, flipping a switch in her brain that told her not to be pushed around.

  ‘You can’t tell me what I feel,’ she said. ‘You don’t understand. You think you do, but you don’t. And that’s just it, isn’t it? As long as you think you know what’s best for me, you will never be what’s best for me! Get your head around that!’

  ‘Listen,’ said Thomas. ‘I don’t want to get in the middle of anything here, okay? Penny, you’re a babe, I enjoy knowing you, you know how I feel …’ he trailed off. Penny appreciated that he knew when to back away.

  ‘I’ll call you,’ she said. ‘To explain.’ She was pleased he knew how to take the temperature of a situation.

  ‘Do that,’ Thomas replied. ‘I’m just going to have a nip of brandy to warm up, and then I’ll be gone. Maggie from the fishmongers has been flirting with me anyway.’ He picked up his things and h
eaded, topless, into the throng of customers.

  Priyesh stepped towards her. ‘Penny, what is this? We’ve been having such a beautiful time together. If you’re afraid, that’s okay. I’m afraid too. If you need space, just say the word. But you and me … you can’t deny it is special.’

  Penny was shocked. She nodded, thankful to him for his kindness, but she hadn’t realized he’d felt so deeply about her.

  ‘I have so much respect for you …’

  Priyesh smiled at her. ‘I like you a lot,’ he said. ‘I know there’s the age difference but I think you like me too.’

  ‘Priyesh,’ Penny said. ‘It’s just physical though, isn’t it …?’

  ‘Ah, sod this!’ Francesco said, loud enough that people in the closest vicinity to them turned to look, and enough did so that the people behind them, too, turned to look as well.

  ‘I’m not competing for your affections,’ he said, his voice rising. ‘This isn’t the Penny Olympics. You’re not a prize. I don’t want to be the last man standing.’

  Penny’s jaw went slack at his outburst. Almost the whole pub had ceased talking amongst themselves in order to crane their necks to see what was happening.

  ‘I am so angry at you,’ he carried on. ‘So, so angry. And I’m hurt. I am hurt, and I am angry, and it’s not fair that you’re shirking responsibility for that, like you don’t know how it happened. You know how it happened!’

  Penny was shaking her head, a mix of pleading with Francesco to stop and a way to disagree with what he was saying. She hadn’t meant to upset him, or cause a scene. All she’d wanted was more time. A minute to think. This was all unravelling too fast. She looked to Priyesh apologetically, but he stood with his head bowed, lowering his eyes as if politely averting his gaze from Francesco’s frenzy. She hadn’t expected that from him. It was as if he was embarrassed to be near the whole thing.

  ‘I have loved you since the very first day I met you,’ Francesco continued. ‘I don’t understand why you think you aren’t worthy of that love. It’s here. I’m holding it right here in my hands for you, desperate to give it to you, and not because I’m selfish and want to claim you or own you. I want to give this love to you to free up my goddamn hands, so I can hold all the love you give me. Because you do. You love me. It couldn’t be like this between us if you didn’t. You. Love. Me. And I love you!’

  A man stood near the bar put his pint down to clap, slowly at first – clap, clap, clap – and then the woman beside him joined in, and then somebody else, until the whole pub was whooping and cheering and somebody shouted, ‘Kiss him, Pen!’ and Penny turned and looked at all these well-wishers, and she froze. She couldn’t say anything, couldn’t do anything. Every sad thought about herself came flooding back – men leave, nobody sticks around. Nobody sticks around for her, anyway. She looked at Francesco – he deserved a woman who could give him his own kids, a woman who wasn’t broken or lost, a woman who could trust him. It was all too much. She was better on her own. No matter how close she’d come to letting herself love him she couldn’t take that one last step. She knew how to be on her own. She didn’t know how to give in to this feeling with Francesco.

  She looked back around, thinking of Priyesh, feeling self-conscious at what he’d just heard, but he was gone. Instead there was only Francesco and, in that moment, even seeing him was too much for her.

  ‘I can’t do this,’ she said, panicked. ‘I’m sorry.’

  Penny pushed through the throng of people to the stairs that would lead her to her flat. She took them two at a time and locked the door behind her. After five minutes of hyperventilating, desperately trying to get herself to calm down, she could hear the noise in the bar get louder and she knew she had to go downstairs to help. They’d be totally overwhelmed without her. She pulled herself together, engaging the ‘I am the boss’ muscle it would take to head back downstairs. She splashed her face with cold water, found some dry shoes, and joined Charlie behind the bar.

  ‘You okay?’ they said, clocking her ashen face and fake smile.

  ‘Nope,’ said Penny, teeth clenched. ‘Not one bit.’

  She let herself assess who was still in the pub, but there was no sight of Francesco, or of Priyesh. She just caught the back of Thomas’s head before he ducked around a corner with Maggie from the fishmongers. She didn’t care.

  20

  The cemetery was quiet. Penny didn’t even see the groundsman, but she didn’t know how unusual that was because she hardly ever actually came to the physical grave of her mother. Before she’d died, when she’d known that it was terminal, Hermione Bridge had pulled her daughters Penny and Clementine close to her in bed, one of them either side, and whispered, ‘You can talk to me whenever you like, even when I’m not there. Anything you say I will hear.’

  Penny wondered if that’s why she spent so much time recording voice notes. Sometimes they were for the recipient, but some of them were really just prayers for mum. What must it be like to live around the corner from your mother, or pick up the phone to hear her voice whenever you wanted? Penny wondered. What a luxury, she thought. What a privilege.

  ‘Hi mum,’ Penny said, as she took off her scarf and used it to kneel at the side of the grave. It had a white granite headstone, engraved with the fact she’d left two beautiful daughters behind, and Penny reached out to stroke it, as if by doing so she’d wake up the spirit of her mother, who might then respond.

  ‘Sorry I haven’t been in a while. I guess I feel like I don’t have to come here to tell you I’m thinking of you. I think of you all the time. I really do.’ She took a breath. She hadn’t come here to keep crying. She’d come here so she’d stop.

  ‘I feel in a bit of a mess actually, mum. I thought you’d know what to do. There was a man, and I made it too complicated, I think, and now he’s mad at me. So, so mad.

  ‘There’s another man who I think could love me, but am I settling? He’s too old for me, at the very least. How do I know if it’s settling, or if it’s right? And I don’t want you to think you left behind a slutty daughter or anything, but there’s also been this other guy, too, but … well, did they have non-monogamy in your day, mum? I mean, it was the seventies, of course they did. Did you ever do that? Because this man, Thomas, he’s shown me this whole area, all things I didn’t know or hadn’t seen or had forgotten, and he makes me laugh, and he’s exciting, but he travels so much and is hardly here and when he is sometimes he doesn’t really show up. I don’t think I want to be in an open relationship. I mean – I know I don’t. I want one person, one love, one main partner who I choose and who chooses me and together we are against the world.

  ‘I want somebody who puts me first and thinks of me and looks after me and I want to have one person, above all else, who I do that for too.

  ‘That’s what I want. I do.’

  Penny stopped talking as she watched a woman with two small children walk through the graveyard, silently weeping but still smiling. She was carrying flowers, and the children looked solemn and serious, like they understood now wasn’t the time to run or play or act up.

  ‘I love you mum. I’m just trying to make you proud, you know? But it feels hard, lately. I feel like I’ve strayed from my path or something, and that makes me sad. I think because I know it would make you sad, if you knew.’

  Penny started to cry again now.

  ‘I wish I didn’t feel like this,’ she said. ‘I wish you could tell me what to do.’

  She stayed by the grave for forty-five minutes, waiting for a sign. It didn’t come. Penny understood she had to figure it out for herself.

  Over the next few days, the tension at The Red Panda was such that it interfered with Penny’s leadership. Lunches were made and evening shifts came and went but she was distracted and made mistakes. Francesco’s cold shoulder was so extreme that Penny didn’t dare suggest a bowl of pasta. Francesco didn’t really say much at all, until one day he did.

  ‘We need to talk.’

&nbs
p; He’d appeared at the bar where Penny was stood talking to Charlie about the benefits of the Kiehl’s Turmeric and Cranberry scrub versus the Elemis superfood glow mask.

  ‘I just can’t afford to stain yet another towel yellow,’ Charlie was saying, when Francesco interrupted. He looked wan and pale, and like he hadn’t slept.

  ‘Morning, bitch,’ Charlie said to him, but all he replied with was, ‘Hey.’ Charlie looked taken aback, and quickly understood he was finally going to have it out with Penny.

  ‘Shall we go outside?’ Penny asked Francesco, understanding the same thing.

  ‘I think that would be wise,’ he replied, and Charlie and Penny exchanged a loaded look as he led the way.

  The pair walked through the pub to the back decking, and Penny studied Francesco’s face. It was the first time she’d seen more than a side profile of him in days. She pulled out a chair that was damp from earlier rain and sat, hoping he’d pull out the other one, but he remained standing.

  ‘I’m leaving,’ he said, simply. ‘I can’t stay.’

  Penny nodded. She’d wondered if he might decide that. He’d made no attempts to make things right between them, or to even open up the space for Penny to try. He was furious, and did his job each shift and then left wordlessly. Every time Penny tried to make even light chit-chat, he’d shut her down. It made trying to move forward really hard, being met with an emotional brick wall that way.

  ‘I’m not happy about leaving,’ he said. ‘But I don’t know what else to do.’

  ‘Where will you go?’ Penny asked, after a beat. He wouldn’t look at her. He was looking at his shoes. Penny wanted to fix it, she wanted to take away his pain. But she knew she couldn’t. She’d messed this up, and her punishment was the look on Francesco’s face.

  I can’t say that I love you, Penny thought. I just can’t.

  ‘My grandmother,’ he said. ‘She has a Pasticceria in Bologna. I’ll stay with her. Learn some new recipes. Decide what’s next …’

  Penny felt sick at the thought of him leaving Havingley, let alone to another country.