Page 57 of The Start of the Story
‘There’s three feet of snow, Rowan, what could I be doing for them?’ Connor stretched himself out towards the fire, a faint blush of warmth showing on his cheekbones above the dark lines of stubble.
‘Isn’t that what you’re here for? Discovering the settlement?’ I tried to keep the emotion out of my words. What would he do after that? He was here for six months, to map out and uncover the putative Roman settlement, and then he’d be gone back to Dublin. Did I really want to start anything with a man who would leave? Despite last night, or maybebecauseof last night, I had a choice to make and for all my talk of moving on and making new memories, none of those memories or new life had to include Connor. I could make my own life.
The cat was still a possibility.
He gave me another small sideways look. ‘You know the Romans were a bit of a ruse, now, don’t you?’ he said. ‘I’m not going to be the one digging – I do the research and the paperwork, the archaeology department takes over from there. I came for a look at the site and to get a better idea of the topography. From here on in I can work from anywhere.’
‘But you’re still here,’ I said. ‘Eating my food, sleeping in my spare bed and annoying the ducks.’
‘And paying for the privilege,’ he replied, his voice still calm. ‘I think you know why I’ve stayed now, don’t you, Rowan?’
He turned to look properly at me and I returned the look with eyes fresh from new knowledge and realisations. The light reflected from the baubles glowed across our faces. ‘You stayed because of me?’
He smiled, a softening grin that made his face crinkle in an attractive way. ‘I did. And I don’t want you to think it’s just physical, although I do have to say that I find your whole person quite pleasing. You’ve a way with you, Rowan, and I like who you are.’
The flames crackled and almost as sudden as the thaw outside came the realisation that I really,reallyliked Connor.
Our mouths met, and this time it was frenzied, hungry. We tore at one another’s clothes without finesse and the sex wasalmost desperate, as though the end of the world had been announced and we had to celebrate what life we had left; desperate, but very, very satisfying, and we collapsed back on the living-room floor gasping for breath and both slightly surprised.
‘An unexpected conclusion to a conversation about my brother.’ Connor held me against his chest as we scrambled for space in front of the fire. ‘And probably as close to sex as Eamonn will ever get.’
I pulled a rug down from where its drape across the sofa had been meant to indicate that I lived a carefully curated existence in my impeccable home. Scattered cushions on the floor and the way the sheepskin in front of the wood burner had been rucked against the grate now blew that illusion, so moving the rug wasn’t going to cause Instagram panic.
‘I think it helped, not being in my bedroom,’ I said, wrapping the rug around us both. ‘Not so many memories.’
‘You’re not telling me you never had a good shag in here.’ Connor pushed my hair off my face. ‘Go on, I’ll not believe that.’
‘Oh, no, we did. But it was different.Youare different. This whole thing is different. And you’ve still got your socks on.’
‘Sorry about that.’ Connor wiggled a foot that stuck out from the end of the rug attached to a hairy ankle. ‘I’ve yet to master a sexy way of taking my socks off.’
I started to laugh. Itwasdifferent. The ghost of Elliot had left me, not in a hauntingly sad leave-taking, but quietly evaporating to condense softly in a corner of my memory. He would always be with me, of course he would. But he had no need to sit in the front seat any more. He could merge into memory and only appear on anniversaries and holidays to be gently taken out and dusted down with a smile.
I had a glimmer of a future again, with this lanky dark Irishman who was laughing alongside me, or, rather,underneath me, wobbling the covering rug so hard that it slithered off us and I had to grab it back with my spare hand.
Different.As though happiness had more than one shape, and I hadn’t realised.
24
We slept in my bed that night and woke to the distant sound of Christmas bells chiming through the valley from the little church so far away. The snow was leaving, waving a reluctant farewell in tatty little piles and ice fragments, and dripping its way out with the coming of a warmer wind and gusty showers. Connor and I stayed in bed.
‘We could go to Chess’s,’ I said thoughtfully, from my position; I’d got out of bed to lean on the windowsill to watch the melting snow receding from the river edge. ‘If we wanted. I think I could probably get the car up the hill.’
‘Do you want to?’ Connor asked from the bed behind me. ‘We can. Or I can rummage in the freezer and create a culinary delight from whatever miscellany is in there.’
‘Or we can stay in here, with a sandwich.’ I turned around.
‘Ah, now, you’re insatiable, woman!’ Connor laughed, flipping back a corner of the duvet to reveal that insatiability wasn’t unique to me.
‘Three years. More than three years,’ I said. ‘I’ve got some making-up to do.’
But it wasn’t just the sex, although that was a not inconsiderable part of it. It was the lying close with someone, breathing in their scent and watching the way their hair caught in stubble, or their sleepy bundling of the duvet. It was laughing at awkwardness and talking – about stuff. Nothing important, no futures had come into our conversation, but we talked about our pasts. We talked about history, about folklore. I told Connor some of the stories about the area, and he talked about the Roman occupation of Britain. It was a lot more fun and a lot sexier than it sounds.
We got up and cooked, draped in dressing gowns. My lack of real Christmas preparation meant that we didn’t have the full table-groaner of a Christmas dinner. Instead we had a weird scratch meal of assorted foods fried, and the ducks glared in at us with an antipathy built of a lack of toast crusts and leftovers.
‘Was this Christmas different enough for you?’ Connor asked as we got back into bed, replete in many different ways and satisfied in many others. He’d stood his little Roman centurion on the shelf, from where he watched our activities with his vaguely censorious painted expression conveying the same emotion as my mother did about my life.
‘Oh, yes.Verydifferent.’ I settled back into the comfort of his embrace. ‘I mean, there were some similarities, of course. Starting the day with sex isn’t totally unknown to me, and at least one component of Christmas dinner has to be burned or it isn’t really Christmas, is it?’
