Page 20 of The Wedding Pact
At the bottom of the stairs, as he opened the door, Abe said, ‘Just to be clear, Mrs Haverley, my mother, will be your landlady. This house belongs to her. She is who you go to for any questions before and after you move in. However,’ he lowered his voice a little. ‘Here is my card, please store my number. She won’t like to think you’re coming to me behind her back, but if you need to, this is how you reach me.’ He paused, fiddling with the card before handing it over, a small wash of sadness seeming to drift past his eyes. ‘She’s … well … we’re all getting older I suppose. I really don’t mind, please do let me know if you need anything.’
With that, Abe seemed to pull himself together, right as August was about to reach her hand out to touch his, probably very expensive, suit arm. ‘Right, so you’ll be dropping the contracts back around in an hour or so?’
‘We will,’ answered Flynn. ‘Thank you,’ he said.
‘Yes, thank you,’ August said, genuinely.
‘And thank you,’ said Abe. ‘I’m glad my mother has found some very nice new people to share her home. People that she’s actually happy with.’
He closed the door with a nod, and August watched his face disappear from view, hoping that she really would live up to expectations.
August waited. She waited until the two of them were out of the house and curling their way down Elizabeth Street’s hill before she let herself breathe and happy tears spilled over. She dropped Flynn’s hand and covered her mouth.
She looked up at him with soggy eyelashes and a pink face, unable to speak any words.
August was going to live there. Finally. Finally, her dreams were coming true. ‘I can’t believe this is happening,’ she managed to choke out.
‘It’s happening,’ he laughed. ‘And there’s nothing on this application form about marriage, or proving we are married.’ He was flicking through the document on the street. ‘We need to give a deposit, which will be put into a tenancy deposit protection scheme, but if you want you can transfer me some money and I’ll do that. Or the other way around. And we need to give an address for at least one of us, so we’d better put yours if that’s okay?’
‘Yes, that’s okay. Flynn?’
He looked up. ‘Yep?’
‘We’re going to live together!’
And luckily, instead of this realisation dawning on him and him running for the hills, he just let a huge grin cross his face. ‘I don’t know anybody else in Bath I’d rather live with.’
August was happy. ‘Come on, let’s go and get that paperwork out the way, and then tonight I’m taking you out for dinner. Pizza?’
‘You don’t have to do that,’ he said.
‘Oh, do you have big plans with room service in front of terrestrial TV?’
‘Good point, pizza would be great.’
She nodded, satisfied. ‘Back to the coffee shop at the bottom of the hill? I hope you liked it, because it’s soon going to be our local.’
Chapter 15
August
August floated about the rest of the day, making imaginary plans about how she’d spend her days on Elizabeth Street, drafting an email notice to her landlord about leaving her current flat, lapsing into long daydreams where she remembered visiting the house with her grandma.
This really felt like the start of something. A new beginning. The first, and longest, dream coming true and paving the way for her other goals to follow suit. She knew she’d returned to Bath at the right time, and that the temporary flat she was in now, and the temporary James whose heart hadn’t aligned with hers, were just fillers, warm-ups for the bigger acts of her life.
When the time came to head out for dinner, August was still on cloud nine.
She walked down the narrow street towards the pizza restaurant, and paused on the corner, seeing Flynn already inside, seated by the window. He’d changed out of his suit jacket and into a blue sweatshirt, and seemed to keep pushing the sleeves up, then pulling them down, then pushing them up again. His dark hair flopped on his forehead as he looked down, and his strong, open face was framed by the window pane. He was quite a pretty picture really, August observed.
Her circumstances were very different from his, but there was something soothing about the knowledge things were slotting into place. He was a nice guy.I’m glad I met you today, she told him, silently.
She opened the door of the restaurant with a tinkle, and Flynn looked up, beaming when he saw her. She was the only person he knew in the city, and although he’d only met her this morning, to her it seemed that he relaxed with happy familiarity that fizzed through seeing her again.
He grinned as she came towards him, and she kept her smile as bright as the colours of her outfit, which bounced against the cool, dark tones of the pizzeria, and seemed to contrast against the cool, dark tones of him.
‘Hello, again,’ she said.
‘Hello, again to you,’ he replied, and stood up.
