Page 48 of Dear Daisy

Alex laughed. ‘B-bobso is now Bobsina.’ He bent down and looked at the host of piglets. ‘Th-they c-can run as soon as th-they’re b-born.’ The hutch was fastened up and double-checked. ‘W-wish humans c-could do th-that.’

‘I bet Scarlet is delighted. It’s like “buy one, get six free”. Still, Dan did warn you.’ Mentioning Dan’s name felt odd, as though he was some kind of spectre at the feast, lurking around in the shadows. As though his name could invoke him.

‘Y-yes. H-he did.’ Alex’s voice had a strange tone, almost as though he was also feeling Dan’s presence. Then he grasped my hand again. ‘C-come on. I d-don’t want to w-waste another d-dinner. Local w-wildlife can only t-take so m-much.’

Back in the flat, even with the lighting turned down low and the wine bottle sitting between us, I still kept expecting Scarlet to burst through the door at any moment. It made me hesitant whenever Alex and I made contact, either both reaching for the wine or fingers touching when we pulled at the garlic bread in the middle of the table. He hadn’t heated it for quite long enough and the garlic butter was still solid, but such was the mood that I didn’t want to point this out.

‘Mr M-Moore told m-me to ask y-you to g-go in next week,’ Alex said, looking down at his plate. It was apparently boeuf bourguignon, as interpreted by the local supermarket, and not bad as long as you didn’t mind shallots like eyeballs bobbing to the surface when you poked it. ‘F-Friday? To talk about wr-writing.’

‘Friday’s fine.’ I poked a suspiciously hard lump and had another mouthful of wine. It was going to my head a bit and I realised that I hadn’t eaten much all day. All week, if it came to that. In fact, when had I last eaten an actual meal? ‘And I’m sorry I was a bit rude to you yesterday, by the way. I’m just . . . Dan has a bit of history interfering in my life, like I’ve said, and when you said he’d been helping Scarlet, well . . .’ I forked some more food. ‘I could just see it happening all over again.’

‘Okay.’ Alex cleared his plate. ‘N-no talking about D-Dan. Agreed.’

So we talked about life in a small town in rural North Yorkshire, about Scarlet, about places we’d travelled to and things we’d seen. Alex had, apparently, always been a hard worker, dedicated to his stone masonry and then, on the death of his father, he’d inherited enough to buy the Old Mill and attempt to rebuild it.

‘It is beautiful.’ I raised my glass to the softly-burnished wood, glowing in the dim lighting. ‘It’s like something out of Country Living magazine.’

‘W-when I started rebuilding it I w-was engaged,’ Alex said, and I almost dropped my wineglass. Then I tried to compose my face, even though I could feel the blood flushing my cheeks. He noticed. ‘I d-didn’t always sh-shut myself away, W-Winter,’ he said, with a half-smile. ‘Used to b-be quite a p-player in the old d-days.’ He took another drink. ‘B-but shit happened and now . . .’ A shrug. ‘N-now I’m a s-surrogate dad with a st-stammer.’

‘Well, I did wonder how someone as . . . well, how you’d managed to remain single for so long.’ The wine was definitely going to my head now. ‘Who were you engaged to? Anyone local? Oh, stupid question really, there doesn’t seem to be any escape from Great Leys, unless there’s a tunnel committee I don’t know about.’

‘L-Lucy.’ Alex dropped his head. ‘I w-was engaged t-to L-Lucy. B-but I was a sh-shit to her w-when Ell d-died. C-couldn’t cope, y’see?’ And now he met my eye with a look like a challenge. ‘S-Scarl doesn’t know. P-please d-don’t tell her. Sh-she knows we d-dated, she r-remembers that b-but we never t-told her it went f-further.’

‘She said that Mr Moore didn’t like you! I did wonder.’

Alex gave a slightly shamefaced grin. ‘S-Scarl thinks she kn-knows everything. B-but f-for goodness s-sake, she’s only eight! Lucy g-got a b-bit . . . I’d d-disappointed her. Sh-she married the l-l-local “tough g-guy” and w-went off to l-live on T-Teeside b-but . . .’ A shrug. ‘Wh-when she c-couldn’t s-stand any m-more she r-ran. C-came back h-home. B-but I’d n-never w-want S-Scarl to know th-that Ell d-d—’ He stopped and obviously mentally rephrased. ‘That t-taking on Scarl put a s-stop to my life as it w-was. Sh-she doesn’t n-need that guilt, she’s g-got enough on her p-plate.’

‘But Lucy still likes you,’ I said, softly. ‘Well, she still fancies you, anyway.’

Alex grinned more widely and shrugged. ‘It’s a sm-small p-place,’ he said. ‘Not m-much competition.’

I laughed and drained my wine. As I put the glass back on the table, Alex’s fingers touched mine and this time I didn’t pull back. Before I knew it we were both standing, and he was sliding his hands into my hair, pulling my mouth in for a kiss that went deep, as though sharing his secret past life had released him from some kind of obligation.

My hands gripped his shoulders. He was solid, all the muscle from building, from lifting stone and working it were tense under my fingers. His mouth moved against mine, words spoken that I couldn’t hear, then his lips were sliding along my jaw, up to my ear. ‘C-come with m-me.’

Into the passageway, the opposite direction from Scarlet’s room, and in through a door that he shut with his foot, our mouths joined again, and then our fingers came to the party too, and we were groping like a couple of teenagers who’d seen the films and wanted to find out what it was all about. His hands slid around the front of the black dress then down to ruck the hem and stroke my thighs, while I unbuttoned his shirt and let the fabulous firmness of those muscles come out to play.

‘Are you s-sure?’ Alex whispered as he encountered the edge of my rather nice knickers. Not that I’d dressed for this, but under the black dress anything else seemed like taking chips to the palace. ‘It’s o-okay if y-you want to st-stop.’

I just gave a small moan and let myself fall backwards onto the big bed.

Alex grinned a devilish grin and came with me, propping himself above my body. ‘G-good,’ he said, carefully lifting the dress up over my head, so I lay in my nice underwear and nothing else, feeling the cool of the air against my over-heated skin. A quick moment and he was naked there beside me, all tan lines and bunched muscle, hair tightly-packed from the centre of his chest down over his stomach.

Dan’s skin was smooth. He didn’t touch me for a long time, just lay looking down at me, with starlight visible through the dormer window behind his head and somehow in his eyes at the same time. No words, just the weight of his gaze brushing my skin and the long stretch of his body beside mine. Then a whisper, something in a language I didn’t know and a cool tongue drawing designs around my navel. A soft sense of understanding, as though we didn’t need any words now.

Alex was suddenly heavy. His skin smelled strange, still of the soap and shaving foam, now with added wine, but there was something about it that was off. Wrong. Something about the way his muscles flexed under the sun-tinted skin of his chest. My body screamed and shut down and I found I was curling my nakedness away from him, hunching myself into a ball to remove myself from his touch.

‘W-Winter?’ Alex moved across the bed, touched my shoulder. ‘Are y-you—?’

‘No.’ I stood up, keeping my back to him. ‘I’m sorry, Alex.’ Tears were bunching in my throat, biding their time. ‘I thought . . . I’m sorry, I can’t do this.’ I pulled my dress from where it hung on the carved oak headboard and dragged it on, not even caring whether it was the right way round. ‘Sorry.’

Alex stood up. He was still naked, but the desire was obviously ebbing from him. ‘Hey,’ he sounded worried. ‘I th-thought . . .’

I gave a half-laugh. ‘Oh, no, it’s not you. No, you didn’t misunderstand, I did want to. At least, I thought I did, but when it comes down to it . . . I can’t.’ The tears were making good their threat, overspilling my lids and tipping over my skin, hot and humiliating. ‘I don’t know what happened.’ A bitter edge made my voice catch. I couldn’t work out where the tears were coming from; my body felt desiccated, devoid of any moisture at all, as though the cold wind from the moors had freeze-dried me where I stood. ‘Sorry,’ I sobbed and, holding the dress closed across the front because I’d put it on backwards and the trendy slit back was revealing my treacherous body to the world, I ran out of the room.

Alex caught up with me as I kicked my shoes back on in the living room. ‘It’s o-okay.’ He had the sense to stop in the doorway, not try to approach me. ‘R-really, W-Winter. It’s okay.’ He had a bit of the ‘talking to Scarlet’ tone in his voice, carefully soothing, trying not to provoke. ‘It’s m-me who’s s-sorry. I sh-should have r-realised.’

‘Nothing to “realise”.’ I tried to calm my voice, to keep the tears from retching through the words but humiliation and fear and confusion were spinning my head too fast for me to have any control over anything much. ‘I just made a mistake. You’re lovely, really you are, but—’

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