by Heidi Swain
‘You can come back down,’ she said as the creaking floorboards gave me away. ‘You can come back now, Hattie dear.’
I slowly descended, resting my hand on Beamish’s slumped shoulder as I brushed by to reach my chair. He placed his much bigger one over mine and sniffed before sitting upright. His eyes were damp and there was a definite trembling around his bottom lip and in that moment, I wanted nothing more than to kiss his hurt away.
‘I can’t believe it,’ he said huskily as I picked up my tea again and drained the contents which were now lukewarm. ‘Why now?’
‘Why at all?’ I said, sounding bitter on Dolly’s behalf.
Beamish nodded in agreement, while Dolly looked entirely at ease.
‘I’ve been through all of that,’ she said, sounding resigned, ‘in my own time and in my own way and nothing came of it. There was no sudden moment of enlightenment, it was just a waste of time. Precious time,’ she reiterated. ‘I suggest we all stop worrying about the whys and wherefores and focus on the here and now.’
Beamish sat up straighter and I returned my cup to its saucer. She was right of course and if that was what she wanted, then that’s what I would do. In front of her at least; my private time would most likely be nowhere near as composed.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘as you know, I’m not going anywhere for a while, Dolly. I’m going to stay in Wynbridge for as long as you need me.’
I couldn’t bear to say until she was gone. I couldn’t allow myself to think that far ahead, let alone, beyond that.
‘And I’m only just a phone call and a short drive away,’ said Beamish, backing up my good intentions. ‘I can be at your beck and call twenty-four seven, Dolly. You needn’t worry about that.’
‘We’re both here to do whatever it is you need,’ I nodded vehemently, ‘whenever you need it.’
Dolly nodded and I hoped our words were of some comfort to her. Whatever happened next, she was not going to be facing it on her own. Whether she had weeks or months, between us, Beamish and I would make sure they were as comfortable and as filled with as much wish fulfilment as Dolly could manage.
‘Thank you,’ she said, ‘thank you both. That means so much to me and to be honest, I expected nothing less from either of you. I’m a very lucky woman.’
Beamish and I exchanged a look which spoke volumes.
‘However,’ Dolly continued, a frown forming, ‘there is something else. Just one more thing.’
‘Name it,’ said Beamish and I nodded in agreement.
I would do anything to free Dolly of that frown and clearly, Beamish felt exactly the same way. Whatever Dolly wanted, if it was in our power to give it, then we would.
‘It involves just you two actually,’ she said, reaching for her phone again.
Beamish and I exchanged another quick look.
‘Oh?’ I swallowed.
‘Yes,’ she said, scrolling through her messages, ‘this message you sent me Hattie, about finding Beamish and sorting everything out and reforming your friendship.’
‘What about it?’ I asked, feeling confused.
I had genuinely thought she would have been feeling as pleased about the situation as we were. It was a huge relief knowing that I wasn’t going to have to edge my way around the cottage every time Beamish called in and I was certain that we were going to need each other to lean on as the coming days stretched into weeks and Dolly’s illness became more obvious and difficult to deal with.
‘Well,’ she said, looking from one of us to the other, ‘it’s all well and good, but it’s not enough, is it?’
‘Isn’t it?’ asked Beamish, scratching his head.
‘No,’ she said firmly, ‘it isn’t.’
‘In what way?’ I said, ‘I thought you wanted us to make amends.’
Dolly tutted. Clearly, we were missing the point.
‘I think you’d better spell it out, Dolly,’ said Beamish.
‘All right,’ she said, raising her chin. ‘If you two really are as dense as I think you are, then I will.’
I held my breath.
‘It’s obvious to me,’ she launched, ‘more than obvious in fact, that the pair of you are going to get together, are meant to be together, as a couple I mean. As partners as well as friends. There’s more than the spark of friendship between you and even though I might have been a little slow to realise it, I can see now that you had fallen headlong for Hattie, Beamish, the second you laid eyes on her.’
‘Oh,’ he blustered, ‘well, I . . .’
‘And you, Hattie,’ she charged on, ‘you also developed feelings for Beamish pretty smartish, didn’t you? Even though you knew they were wrong and tried to pretend they didn’t exist because you were tied to that ratbag, Jonathan.’
I couldn’t help a laugh escaping my lips when I heard him described so unfavourably.
‘She did go to kiss me first,’ said Beamish with a grin.
That wiped the smile back off my face.
‘I did not,’ I protested.
Dolly looked at me and raised her eyebrows and I felt heat flood my cheeks.
‘Exactly,’ she said briskly. ‘Just as I thought. So, there we have it. A mutual attraction which is going to ultimately, at some point, result in more than friendship.’
Beamish and I stayed quiet, not sure if we were supposed to confirm, deny or respond to what she was suggesting. I wasn’t sure what his heart was doing, but the thought of having more than friendship with the man sitting next to me had got mine skittering along at a right old pace.
‘However,’ Dolly went on, ‘what you both have to keep in mind, is that I haven’t got a lot of time and I certainly haven’t got a stretch left for pussyfooting about. By the time the pair of you have gone through the usual back and forth, the expected ups and downs and had the final will they, won’t they Richard Curtis moment, I could be six foot under.’
‘Dolly!’ Beamish and I chorused.
‘Well I could,’ she said, laughing at our shocked expressions, ‘couldn’t I?’
‘I suppose that is a possibility,’ Beamish conceded.
I tutted but I knew there was some truth in what she was saying. Unfortunately.
‘More than a possibility,’ she said, shooting straight from the hip. ‘So,’ she continued, sounding a little breathless, ‘I need the two of you to get on with it! I want the pair of you to be together, from this very moment. In fact,’ she added, nodding to the Christmas Wish List which was in its usual spot next to the fireplace, ‘if you look at the final page, you’ll see it’s my very last wish.’
I jumped up and reached for the list and sure enough, there it was, added in her familiar but now slightly shaky copperplate handwriting. I handed the note to Beamish but he didn’t look at it. He threw it down on the table, jumped up, pulled me into his arms and kissed me passionately on the lips.
‘There now,’ I heard Dolly say, sounding suitably satisfied, ‘we can tick that straight off!’
Chapter 28
Once Beamish had let me up for air and I had, laughing, grabbed him and kissed him back, Dolly was content that her work was done and announced that she was taking herself off for a bath and a very early night.
‘There’s only so much excitement I can handle,’ she said, smiling, ‘and I’m sure you two lovebirds would like a moment to gather your thoughts and catch your breath.’
I ran back up the stairs to draw Dolly’s bath, adding the lavender salts she loved so much while Beamish made a light snack which she could eat in bed.
As soon as she was settled, we sat together on the sofa, Beamish tucked into the corner and me tucked into him with my feet curled under me. Our fingers were entwined as we watched the flames leaping up the chimney and the snow softly falling through the window in the garden. All was calm, all was quiet.
I twisted round to kiss him again, taking my time on this occasion to enjoy the full-bodied tingling the pressure of his soft lips pressed against mine provoked. There were butterflies in my stomach an
d tongues of desire licking through my veins as his lips gently parted to deepen our kiss and my heart began to beat even faster. It was a heady concoction of feelings and nothing like I had experienced when kissing Jonathan, not even during the first flushes of our relationship.
‘You OK?’ Beamish asked, when we finally drew apart and I snuggled back down again.
‘Oh yes,’ I sighed, looking up at him. ‘I’m very OK.’
He kissed the top of my head.
‘Are you?’
‘Oh yes,’ he echoed the words back to me, smiling as he squeezed my fingers. ‘I’m very OK, too.’
‘Dolly was right, wasn’t she?’ I whispered, even though I knew she wouldn’t be able to hear me. ‘We would have ended up together, wouldn’t we? We aren’t just going along with this to make her happy?’
Beamish frowned.
‘I mean,’ I went on, ‘it was just a few hours ago that we had decided to start our friendship over, and now here we are—’
‘Hattie,’ he cut in. ‘Stop.’
‘But—’
‘Stop,’ he said again.
‘OK.’
‘I do understand what you’re getting at,’ he said reassuringly, ‘but no, we aren’t just going along with this to make Dolly happy and yes, we definitely would have ended up together.’
‘OK,’ I said, feeling happier again.
‘You might not realise it,’ Beamish continued, ‘but I knew the moment I set eyes on you on that windswept train platform that you were the girl for me, I just hadn’t bargained . . .’
‘On me having a belligerent boyfriend in tow.’
‘That’s one way of putting it.’
‘I am sorry I never told you,’ I said, pulling myself up a little so I could look at him properly again.
‘It doesn’t matter now,’ he said. ‘It’s all worked out OK, hasn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes, it has.’
‘And like Dolly said, our friendship would have been very different if I’d known about him. I wouldn’t have allowed myself to get so close to you and that would have meant that you weren’t able to compare you and me with you and him.’
Dolly had said that was the main reason why she had never talked about Jonathan in front of Beamish.
‘Things might have ended up very differently if she hadn’t been a little bit deceitful about it all,’ Beamish pointed out.
I wasn’t sure that if Beamish had a secret girlfriend tucked away somewhere that he hadn’t mentioned, I would have been so ready to forgive, but none the more for that, I was very grateful that he was.
‘And Dolly’s gut feeling was right about Jonathan, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘it was. She knew he was no good for me but didn’t want to risk our friendship by saying too much. She knew I was going to need her eventually and thought it best to just bide her time. I can’t believe I was so blind to it all.’
‘Well, they do say love is blind,’ Beamish pointed out.
‘It wasn’t love,’ I said, ‘I thought I was in love with him but I wasn’t. I know that now.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because,’ I said, stretching up and brushing my lips softly against his again, ‘what I feel for you is completely different.’
‘Oh really?’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘you’re the real deal, Beamish. My feelings for you run far deeper.’
‘In what way?’ he asked, kissing me back.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘for a start, I don’t care if you’ve seen me with no make-up on and still in my PJs at lunchtime. I don’t care if we bump into each other and I’ve got the wrong clothes on. With Jonathan it was all show, I was always on show. I was more of an accessory on his arm, one willing to accept his opinions rather than share and stick up for my own.’ I stopped and bit my lip.
‘It’s all right,’ said Beamish, ‘I don’t mind you talking about him.’
‘It’s not that,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘It’s embarrassing, looking back and seeing how stupid I was, how easy to manipulate. I’m not a doormat, am I?’
‘No,’ said Beamish, pulling me back into his embrace. ‘You’re not. Jonathan was the problem, not you. Men like him are so convinced that they’re the centre of the universe that they leave no room for anyone else to enter their orbit. The idiots.’
I snuggled back down, thanking my lucky stars and Dolly, of course, for bringing me to Wynbridge and introducing me to Beamish.
‘Anyway,’ he said, tickling me and making me giggle, ‘I know I said I didn’t mind you talking about him, but I’ve heard enough for one day. I want to talk about you now, Hattie.’
‘Me,’ I said, ‘what about me?’
‘Well, for a start, are you still planning to visit your parents before Christmas? There’s only a couple of days left now.’
‘I know,’ I said, ‘the time has flown by and so much has happened. I’m going to email Mum again and explain everything, including what’s going on with Dolly. I was hoping to travel up to see them but I can’t right now. I’m sure they’ll understand.’
‘I could stay here with Dolly while you’re gone,’ Beamish suggested.
‘No,’ I said, knowing I would only worry the whole time I was away. ‘It’s fine. There’s going to be plenty of time to see them now I’m not moving.’
‘Which leads me on to my next question,’ Beamish carried on, ‘what are you going to do now, Hattie? What are you going to do, after . . .?’
His words trailed off and I was happy not to finish the sentence for him.
‘I’m not sure,’ I said, ‘but for now, I just want to concentrate on giving Dolly the best ever Christmas and spending as much time with her as I can. I’ll think about my future when the times comes.’
‘That’s fair enough,’ he said, reaching for my hand again, ‘and if I were you, I wouldn’t worry too much about it. I have a feeling that everything’s going to be all right.’
Once he had gone home and I had gone to bed, and in spite of his insistence that I shouldn’t, I did begin to fret. The first few blissful minutes in my lovely warm bed were filled with remembering the kisses we had shared, and thoughts of how lucky I was to have friends such as Dolly and Beamish in my life, but then the fear of losing Dolly and the uncertainty about my future came flooding back.
What was I going to do long-term? Was staying in Wynbridge really going to be an option for me when I had nowhere to live and no income? I was going to have to force myself to put it all out of my mind, because the last thing I wanted was to be worrying about all of that while I was looking after Dolly. I would just have to bide my time and see what came along. Perhaps Beamish was right, perhaps things would be all right.
*
Dolly was up before me the next morning and looking very smug when I went down to breakfast.
‘I can’t begin to tell you how happy I am for you both,’ she grinned, her cheeks positively glowing. ‘The pair of you are perfect for each other and I know I barely gave you a second to patch things up like I would under normal circumstances, but with the grim reaper circling, these aren’t normal circumstances, are they?’
I tutted and shook my head.
‘Thank goodness you agreed to come and visit,’ she carried on, bustling about in the kitchen, apparently oblivious to my reaction. ‘I can’t bear to even imagine what would have happened if you hadn’t.’
‘Me neither,’ I said, with a little shudder as I thought how hard Jonathan had tried to cajole me into not making the trip.
Looking back, I realised I was relieved to be away from him right from the moment I left the flat, even though the journey had been a shocker and he had made me feel nervous about travelling alone. There were lots of things I had stopped doing on my own. Jonathan had always maintained that it was better for us to do them together but I could see now that he was trying to make me more reliant on him. He always had to be the one in control. There would be no fear of anything like that h
appening with Beamish; he was the kindest and most generous of men and an equal partner in every sense. And he was mine. Along with the school, the local community and every pensioner within a ten-mile radius, that is.
‘So,’ said Dolly, ‘what are you plans for today?’
‘That rather depends on you, Dolly. Is there anything I can do for you?’
‘I don’t think so,’ she mused. ‘Doctor Harris is popping in at some point and I have a couple of friends coming mid-morning. It’s time I started telling everyone about my cancer so I’ve invited the two women I know who are most efficient at spreading news.’
‘Gossiping, you mean,’ I laughed, determined not to wince at her ability to casually throw the ‘C’ word into the conversation.
‘Got it in one,’ she laughed back.
‘In that case,’ I said, peering through the window to see how much snow had fallen. ‘I might wander into town. See if there are any last-minute presents to be had before I pack away the wrapping paper and ribbons.’
‘You should treat yourself to one of the iced and spiced buns in the Cherry Tree Café,’ she said with a wink. ‘And while you’re there, bring a couple home for me.’
The snow was only a light dusting, but as I was travelling on foot, I decided to wear the wellies Anna had lent me again. The idyllic icing sugar scene would soon turn to slush and the wellingtons would safeguard my jeans from any freezing splashes. Wrapped in one of Dolly’s knitted scarves and hats, I set off, smiling to myself as I thought what Jonathan’s reaction would be if he could see me going out in homemade gear. Not that his opinion could touch me anymore.
The town was busy for a Monday, but with the next day being Christmas eve that wasn’t too much of a surprise.
‘Hattie,’ beamed Jemma as I crossed the café threshold and set the bell above the door tinkling, ‘just the person. Grab a seat and I’ll be with you in a minute.’
It felt nice to receive such a warm welcome. I almost felt like one of the locals.
‘Now,’ she said, popping a brown paper bag stamped with the café logo down on to the table, ‘what can I get you?’
‘Well,’ I laughed, nodding at the bag, ‘I’m guessing Dolly phoned her iced bun order in, did she?’
