Page 30 of The Start of the Story
‘Ah now, you’ve a wee tendency to hang on to the old memories, don’t you think? You’re using the stone as a symbol of the unchanging nature of things, when we all know things have to change. Otherwise, well, evolution would have been a dead loss, now, wouldn’t it?’
I took a deep breath and tried to stay rational. ‘The wholepointof my research is looking to the past!’
‘But it’s not necessarily a healthy thing, now—’ he began, but, probably just as well for his own health, there was a knock at the door that stopped us both into rigid immobility.
‘Was that…?’ I asked, half holding my breath.
‘Sounds like it. Out here, on a night like this?’ Connor glanced towards the door. ‘Should I open it?’
We stared at one another. And whilst I absolutelyknewthat it wasn’t the sidhe come knocking to tell him that he disturbed their resting place on penalty of curses, I did have the tiniest hope that it might be.
‘You’d better,’ I whispered. Who the hell would be out here on a foul evening like this? I hadn’t heard a car, the nearest bus stop was over a mile away, nobody would walk the five miles from town, not with the wind howling down the lanes and the rain turning every surface into a dark mirror.
‘All right, now.’ Connor sounded nervous too. ‘If it’s big and evil, I’ll be the one under the table.’
He stood up, looking surprisingly vulnerable, I thought suddenly, in his socks, and shuffled over to the back door. A hesitation, and then he flung it open onto a flight of cold air and the increased sound of rain and agitated ducks.
There was a moment’s silence. I found myself in a corner, reaching behind me for a weapon, but there was nothing on the worktop more alarming than a breadboard, so I wielded that, like a knight with no right to a heraldic design.
Connor was still standing blocking the door. Occasional draughts came past him. I could hear them rustling my paperwork in the other room and sending sheets to the floor. Finally he spoke and his voice was odd. Deep, but guarded, as though he didn’t want to be talking.
‘Saoirse?’
It was more of a grunt than a name.
I moved slowly around the edges of the kitchen, keeping the worktop at my back until I could see around Connor’s blocking of the door. Outside on the step, wearing a too-big parka that was clearly soaked right through, was a woman, nothing but pale skin and huge grey eyes in the illumination that made it past Connor’s shape.
‘Saoirse?’ He said it again, and this time there was a response, but too low and mumbled for me to hear.
‘For goodness’ sake, let her inside,’ I said. ‘We’ll be getting the ducks moving in if we don’t close that door.’
I sounded sharp, and I hadn’t missed the way that the possessive ‘we’ had slipped out, joining Connor and I in a domestic arrangement that we certainly didn’t have. I didn’t know who this was, but, from Connor’s immobility and reluctance to step away from the door, I had my suspicions.
Without another word he turned and walked back into the kitchen, leaving the door open. No invitation, but then she’d clearly heard me and it would be stupid to stand on the doorstep any longer, given how the rain was still sluicing down and the unsuitability of her coat.
She shuffled over the step and into the kitchen, leaving the door flapping wide to the night. ‘Hello, Connor,’ she said, and her voice was soft with the same accent as his. ‘I’ve left Michael and I came to find you.’
I closed the back door and went to hide in the bathroom.
14
It was surprising how much I could find to do upstairs. The shower needed a good clean and then I moved on to tidying my bedroom, putting away the heaped bedside reading onto the bookshelf, dusting the surfaces and rearranging the few ornaments across the beams. Then I plumped the pillows, shook out the duvet and refolded all the blankets, smoothed the sheet, picked up a few bits of fluff from the carpet, and sat on the end of the bed with my head in my hands.
Well, I should be happy, shouldn’t I? Connor’s lost love had come to find him. Done the decent thing, left her husband, and searched him out. Wasn’t that lovely?
But a darkness rumbled underneath my attempts to feel satisfied that he’d leave me alone in my cosy house now. He’d disappear into the dark night with his lover, move on to a fabulous life and stop pestering me. It was what I wanted, wasn’t it? Him gone?
A tiny, treacherous voice whispered into my ear, as though those fairies whose existence I fought to maintain despite everything were caught in my hair.You expected him to stay. Until spring at least, when the nights are lighter and you canlose yourself in working until bedtime; you thought you could keep him here to alleviate the boredom and the loneliness. Besides, you quite like him, don’t you? I mean, obviously, he’s a Class A git with his threats to move the stone but he’s easy on the eye and he cooks and he’s chatty. And he seems to like you, even when you are an equal git about the stone. He’s interested in it too, from the other side, and maybe you should try being less entrenched…
There were voices coming up the stairs. Oh God, they weren’t about to cement their relationship in my spare room, were they? I didn’t think I liked the idea of Connor being all… all…affectionateon the guest duvet.
He tapped at my door. ‘Rowan,’ he half whispered. ‘Is it all right if Saoirse has a shower? She’s soaked to the skin here and I don’t want her catching her death.’
I stifled a momentary urge to say that it would serve her right, walking all the way over here in a stupid coat, it would be a lesson to her, but I didn’t. Of course I didn’t, it would be cruel and my newly arisen possessiveness towards Connor was my own fault. ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Make sure she’s got plenty of towels. And… here.’ I fumbled at the back of my bedroom door for a moment and clutched down the spare dressing gown. It had been Elliot’s, and I held it to me for a moment, but it no longer had the traces of him that I’d looked for so urgently before. ‘Tell her to put this on afterwards.’ I opened the door a crack and thrust it at him.
Connor caught at it and got my hand at the same time. We stood, him in the shadowed dimness of the landing, and me in the newly tidy bedroom with the bright lampshade swinging slightly in the draught. ‘Thank you,’ he said softly.
‘No problem.’ I disengaged myself and withdrew so fast that the draught caught the door and slammed it in his face.
