Page 54 of The Start of the Story
He’d propped a branch in the old log bucket and hung it with duck feathers. We were sitting underneath it, illuminated by the flick and twist of candlelight and the steady roar of the log burner, heating soup in a saucepan on its hot metal top.
‘New memories,’ he said cheerily. ‘Remember?’
I stretched my feet, now in dry socks, towards the blaze. ‘Well, all right. But next year we get a proper tree.’
He didn’t look up, he carried on prodding the wrapped package along the floor in my direction. ‘New memories,’ he said softly. ‘I’ll bet you’ve got all your old decorations tucked away in the loft, now, haven’t you?’
I had another of those jolts of memory. The last Christmas Elliot and I had had, and packing away the carefully chosen ornaments and baubles, tissue-wrapped, into their box in the corner of the attic. I hadn’t even looked at them since. ‘Yes.’
‘But it would be a touch of bad taste for me to get them out and hang them, wouldn’t it?’ he went on. ‘They were yoursand his. It would be like me editing myself into your wedding pictures.’
I laughed. ‘It wouldn’t bethatbad. But I see your point.’
‘New memories, Rowan.’ He picked up the parcel. ‘Sometimes it means other things need to be new. Ah, well, next year, as you say.’
Neither of us mentioned Dublin, his job or the distance.
‘I didn’t get you a present, but there’s this.’ I handed over the badly bundled heap, which was more tape than paper. ‘You might like it.’
Solemnly we opened our presents. Despite the amount of tape, Connor got into his first and laughed. ‘Ah, now! He’s got the expression that I always assume when I’m faced with a big pile of research to read through!’
I’d dug the disillusioned Roman soldier out from his position guarding the crease in the back seat of my car and given him to Connor. He did, indeed, look like someone being faced with a distasteful task – his painted plastic face was realistically pissed off.
‘He’s very accurate too.’ Connor turned the figure over. ‘Yep, they’ve got the clothes right, maybe not quite enough hobnails in the boots, but, otherwise, pretty good effort there.’ Unexpectedly he leaned over and kissed my cheek. ‘Thank you.’
My face had gone hotter than the fire could account for. ‘Sorry I didn’t think to?—’
‘Hush. It’s fine. Now open yours.’
It was a beautifully printed book of illustrated folk tales. Nothing new, no stories I hadn’t already heard, but the pictures were gorgeous, deep and dark and layered. ‘It’s fabulous.’ I ran my finger over the embossing on the cover. ‘Really beautiful. Thank you.’
He did one of those shrugs that mean the shrugger is quietly pleased with the result but wants to look as though it wasnothing, whilst wanting the shruggee to know that it took them weeks to find that exact thing. ‘You’re welcome. Now, for the love of God, can we have something to eat that isn’t toast?’
We drank our soup and we played cards until the darkness got too much for usand the fire started to burn down low into a bed of ash. The shadows of the hanging branches made us look as though we were lost in a forest.
There was a silence. I became very aware of the feel of Connor’s arm alongside mine, the flex of his fingers on the deck of cards and the way his skin looked pale and unearthly in the firelight against the darkness of his hair when he pushed it back.
‘Rowan.’ His hand left the cards and found my forearm, tracing a complicated pattern on my skin as though he were putting an invisible tattoo on my wrist.
I blinked at him. My breath had gone thick in my throat, as though I were breathing water, and my heart had risen to somewhere just under my collarbone, from where it was trying to tunnel out.
‘Rowan…’
‘Yes.’
He leaned across, bracing his weight on his arms, and his mouth found mine. My hands were in his hair, and then we were stumbling our way upstairs together, limbs wound around one another, kissing and tugging at clothes until we reached my bed. When we fell together under the duvet, we laughed as if a little shocked at what we were doing. The darkness helped – I didn’t have to think that nobody had seen me naked since Elliot, because we couldn’t see anything anyway. Even the moon had got the evening off, replaced by a sheet of cloud that kept even starlight from reaching us, and the dark was so thick that we occasionally elbowed one another in the eye or put a knee into an unfortunate place.
But then…
‘Are you all right?’ Connor had stopped. We were pressed together. Everything had been fine, everythingwasfine. There’d been kissing and hands everywhere and we were naked, and I was…
I was crying.
Just tears leaking out of my eyes, no drama. No huge, body-heaving sobs, but definitely crying, almost without being aware of it.
‘I… yes. Yes, I’m fine.’ I wiped the back of my hand over my eyes, surprised at the volume of tears.
Connor sat back, scrunching the duvet around himself. ‘No, you’re not fine, are you? It’s all right.’
