Page 56 of The Start of the Story
‘Oh,’ he said, draping his coat over the table. ‘Oh!’
I didn’t say anything. I thought the Christmas tree was suitably illustrative of my desire to move away from my past relationship and really hoped that he wasn’t going to ask any questions – I was a touch wobbly on the subject and still not entirely sure I’d done the right thing.
‘This is grand.’ He toed off his boots in the doorway and kicked them across the kitchen, then, obviously with the voice of his mother in the back of his mind, he went over and put them neatly together by the back door.
‘Remind me to thank your parents at some point,’ I said. ‘The training stuck.’
‘Five boys.’ Connor bounced across to stand in front of the fire, warming his hands. ‘If it hadn’t, we’d have been living in squalor after the first five years. You’ve reminded me, I need to speak to Eamonn. You all right here?’ As though his socks had springs in, he moved across, touched me briefly on the top of my head, and went out. I heard him rattle up the stairs and then, after a moment, the muffled sound of his voice talking in his bedroom.
He hadn’t acknowledged the tree with its old decorations causing multicoloured lights to spiral around the room like a seventies disco. He’d seen it and knew what it meant. Therewould have to be new baubles, some of these had too many memories attached for them to be truly assimilated into any new household I might make, but they would do for now. Spun glass in seasonal colours, jewel-coloured birds, two pinecone hedgehogs and a plus-sized acorn made of balsa hung innocently from their pine supports, ushering in Christmas but showing out my old relationship in a carefully understated way. They’d been there that last Christmas when Elliot and I had been reading up about IVF and the possibilities it invoked. When we’d dared to dream that the impossible might actually become possible or, at least, more probable that it had been. When he’d given me the eternity ring that now languished in its tiny box upstairs, guarding the wedding ring that I’d torn off in a fury the night he’d died, so angry that he could have left me. That tiny box that I’d put under my pillow and slept with, with the memories wrapped around my mind as I’d wrapped Elliot’s dressing gown around my body.
Gone. Elliot was gone.
But that didn’t mean I had to stop living. His ending was not my ending.
I leaned back against the sofa, listening to the sound of Connor pacing up and down, his voice a rise and fall of Irish cadences in the background. Elliot hadn’t been able to talk on the phone without walking either, I thought with a smile. It must be a guy thing.
Outside the cottage the wind was getting up. I could hear it slapping the river surface against the old mill supports and humming its way through the trees down the lane. The weather must be changing. I looked out of the window and the snow that had ironed the scenery flat beneath its weight was tattering at the edges into icy lace as a thaw moved in, borne on the wind and hastened by the splatter of rain that came with it.
Good. We’d be able to get out. Maybe even tomorrow the hill would have enough clear patches for me to be able to drive up, and Christmas Day could be diluted by Chess and cocktails.
I wondered what Connor would do. Whether we had moved into the kind of relationship where he would come to Chess’s with me, hold my hand on her sofa and drape himself casually around me to the music playing in her living room. Or whether we were still at the cautious distance stage, and he would go to his lecturer friends for food, make Lego models with their clever ten-year-old children on the floor in front of the fire and sleep over in the careful décor of their spare room.
Which version of Connor did I want?
Feet rattled on the stairs, and he erupted into the living room, making the branch-tree sway dangerously in its bucket.
‘Eamonn is coming over,’ he said, as though this were the result of a conversation we’d already had. ‘After Boxing Day though. Mam will have a stupendous amount of leftovers and she’ll probably kill him if he doesn’t eat his own weight in turkey before he leaves.’
‘Oh,’ I said weakly.
‘Ah, now, it’s fine. He won’t stay here. After all, we’re an unmarried couple, cohabiting under the same roof. He might spontaneously combust.’
My expression must have been one of startled horror, because Connor started to laugh. ‘Your face! No, Eamonn likes his creature comforts, he’s not one for the spare bed or the sofa. He’ll take himself to a hotel around abouts. And you’ve no worry, he’s a twenty-first-century man, he’s not going to castigate us for living in sin. He’s got a great line in censorious frowning, though, I’ll warn you now.’
‘But why,’ I asked faintly, ‘is he coming at all? Not just to bring you your share of the leftovers?’
Connor wandered over and sat down beside me, close enough that our bodies touched all down one side. He didn’t look at me but stared ahead with his eyes focused on the flicker of flame in the log burner. Reflected red light caught his hair from the glass baubles and his eyes were very dark.
‘I think we might need him,’ he said.
‘I’m not bloody marrying you,’ I said snippily. ‘And there’s no other conceivable reason to bring a priest into this.’
Connor turned his head and gave me a little wink. ‘Ah, sure, you’re not meaning that,’ he said jauntily. ‘I’m irresistible. But—’ and my shoulder got a little nudge ‘—that’s away in the future. For now – well, I was up at your Stane today, for a wee bit of the research, and I think I want my brother here.’
‘It’s…’ All I could think of was fairies, breaking through into the world and being fought off with the power of the Church, but the whole idea was too Gothic even for me. ‘What on earth for? Bell, book and candle?’
He opened his mouth as though he wanted to say something, but then closed it again and shifted his weight to put some space between us. ‘I’m not quite certain yet. I’ll tell you when I am.’
‘Get you, man of mystery.’ Then, after a moment’s consideration, ‘You didn’t lift the stone, did you?’
Connor reared back and stared at me, then lifted one arm to demonstrate his unbulging biceps. ‘Er, I said I was irresistible, not Thor. Have youseenthe weight of that thing?’
‘So what were you doing up there? You were gone ages.’
‘Oh, you know. Looking. Bit of scrabbling in the old bog there. Checking sightlines, nothing important.’
‘No Romans, then?’
