Page 40 of The Start of the Story
I picked up my own crusts and opened the window, knocking the big white duck into flappy, panicked flight down to its usual spot on the water outside. ‘Bird, Connor,’ I said, very aware that my hand was on top of his on the window fastener. ‘They fly.’
‘So they do, now.’ He didn’t move his hand either. We watched the squabbling for a moment. ‘I was forgetting there.’
I could feel his shoulder against mine, the gentle rise and fall as he breathed, and smell the fresh-laundry scent of the tracksuit that he was wearing, unflattering though it was.
The sun scythed its way in through the window, bouncing off the surface of the river in a thousand moving reflections, and still we stood there, hands on the mechanism of the window catch, unmoving.
‘D’you think they actuallylikeeach other?’ Connor asked. ‘The ducks, I mean.’
‘They seem to. They’re quite free to go somewhere else if they don’t. There’s plenty of river.’
He nodded slowly. ‘Perhaps theypretendnot to,’ he said, keeping his eyes focused on the water. ‘Maybe they think they’ll lose face if they just admit that they’re really good friends.’
‘Do ducks have faces?’
‘You know what I mean. The pointy bit at the front of their heads that they look out of. Maybe they’re worried that it’s admitting defeat if they stop being antagonistic.’ He looked at me sideways from around the dishevelled hair.
Reluctantly I dropped my hand and moved away. ‘Fascinating as ducks are, Connor, I ought to do some work. I must give Chess a ring and tell her I’ll not be in, and then get stuck into some more writing.’
He picked up the toast plates and moved to the sink. ‘I’ll clear up and then I’m off up on the moor for a bit.’
I stared at him. ‘I thought you were on holiday.’
He shrugged. ‘There’s not a lot else for me to do, to be honest. Thought I’d go and pace around a bit in a moody, Irish fashion among the heather. Try and pick up a contract modelling for Burberry.’
‘Shut up.’ But he’d made me smile, and, as I went to grab a shower and change my overnight-worn clothes, ring Chess and settle into writing, I thought that Connor could actually be quite good fun at times.
The thought that he hadn’t really been talking about ducks only grabbed me by the neck about two hours later.
I’d made myself a coffee to try to stay awake, and was rummaging through the cupboard in search of biscuits, when Connor’s words came back to me. ‘Maybe they think they’ll lose face if they just admit that they’re really good friends.’ I turned, seized with a sudden horror that made my face heat up, and stared out of the window.
Had it really been about ducks? Or was he talking about us?Had I, in my sleep-deprived state, missed an allusion? My cheeks were now so hot that my face felt as though it were on fire. I didn’t know which was worse – that Connor might have been talking about us, aboutme, not wanting to take a step away from my ‘All Historians Are Myth-Busting Bastards’ stance and admitting that he was actually quite a decent human being, or that I had been carrying on talking about ducks whilst he’d been meaning something else,and I hadn’t even realised.
At least, I thought, banging my forehead gently against the reclaimed wood of the cupboard door, he wasn’t here to see my mortification. And maybe,maybe, it reallyhadbeen about ducks, and I was tired and overthinking the whole conversation.
Yes. That was what it was. It had all been about ducks all along.
18
‘Snow’s forecast,’ Chess said cheerfully as she breezed into the office an hour late the following day.
‘Is it? Oh, bugger.’ I folded up the ancient map I’d been scanning.
‘I’d have thought you’d watch the forecast like a hawk, being stuck out where you live.’ She folded up the copy ofCosmothat she’d been reading on the bus and tucked it away into her bag. ‘Coffee?’
‘Better not, I’ve had three already.’ I was still suffering from the lack of a night’s sleep, and the avoidance of Connor that had followed my Duck Doubts. Luckily, he’d been out for most of the working day, and I’d used getting an early night to excuse myself from his company in the evening. I’d got up to come into work extra early today and had left him making packing noises in his room.
‘Yes, supposed to be a white Christmas this year, apparently,’ Chess went on, making an extraordinarily long business of hanging up her coat. ‘I’ve got your present here, by the way. Weareclosing the office for Christmas today, aren’t we?’
‘Yes, yes,’ I replied testily, having forgotten completely when I’d said we’d have our Christmas holiday. Four days to go. Four days at home, Connor in Dublin and me trying my best to break out of my widow’s weeds and celebrate. ‘And I might well come and drop in at yours over Christmas, Chess, if that’s still all right.’
Chess stopped uncoiling the gigantic scarf she’d got wound around her neck, and stared at me. ‘Oh, good,’ she said. ‘No, that’s really good, Rowan. If you don’t get snowed in, of course.’
‘Is it supposed to be that much snow? It’s a bit early.’
She shrugged. ‘Take it up with the Met Office and don’t shoot the messenger.’
‘Yes, sorry. Bugger. I’d better do a quick food shop, then, just in case.’ I stood up and reached for my jacket. ‘I can pop round Sainsbury’s quickly and leave the stuff in the car.’
