Page 101 of Summer At Willow Tree Farm

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, her voice coming from so far away it felt as if she were on Mars.

He stared. ‘What are you sorry for?’

She opened her mouth, but she had no idea where to even start – the bankrupt apology sitting like a lump of coal on her tongue.

She felt as if she’d been slammed back in time nineteen years, because Art had looked as indifferent then as he appeared now.

He’d made her feel so small and insignificant and stupid that day. And she felt the same now. What she’d thought had been a friendship had never been more than a convenient hook-up – two weeks of convenient hook-ups – for him.

‘What are you sorry for, Ellie?’ he asked again. Patient, persuasive and utterly disinterested.

She pushed the memory back into the recesses of her brain marked ‘never going there again’.

‘I should go.’ She wanted to rail against him, to call him out for being such a bastard again. But what would be the point? She’d only make herself look even more pathetic.

It had been a mistake to come here, a mistake to think that this was anything more than what it was. A mistake that she would have to learn to live with. Again. But one thing she wasn’t going to do was give him the satisfaction of knowing a second time how much he’d hurt her.

‘Ellie, wait,’ he grasped her arm, but she shrugged off his hold, the touch of his fingers almost more than she could bear.

She had to get out of here now. Before s

he did something really idiotic like burst into tears – or punch him.

‘Don’t go off in a huff,’ he said.

She blinked furiously before turning towards him, locking her jaw to keep her face as calm and dispassionate as his.

‘I’m not in a huff.’ Because I’d have to care about you to do that. And I refuse to do that. Any more than you obviously care about me. ‘I just don’t think it’s a good idea for us to be shagging each other while my husband’s here.’

She rushed down the stairs of the caravan and out into the night, all her beautiful, inspiring, empowering thoughts about maybe considering making a life here for herself and her son scattered at her feet like mud-soaked confetti.

It started to rain as she made her way back through the woods, refusing to look back, refusing to care. Art Dalton had only gone and shattered her a second time. But, worst of all, she’d let him.

*

Art watched Ellie dash down the side of the hill towards the tree line, the boulder on his chest growing to the size of an asteroid. He welcomed the pain, because at least it took the edge off the anger that had been driving him ever since her picture-perfect husband had stepped out of his Audi A6 convertible and the sunshine had glinted off the bastard’s designer sunglasses.

What had she expected him to say, for fuck’s sake? She said she was getting a divorce? That the guy had cheated on her all through their marriage. Which probably explained why Art had been itching to punch the bastard the minute he’d stepped out of the car. But how could he punch her husband? When he was nothing more than the rebound guy. Ellie’s casual sex fling. The guaranteed orgasm who got her rocks off each night, but who she didn’t even want anyone to know was her lover?

Every sigh and moan, every single sweet sob she’d uttered in his arms had come back to torture him as he’d trudged through the farmyard towards his workshop and spent the day and most of the evening slapping on another two coats of varnish the caravan didn’t even need, just so he could have something to do with his hands that didn’t involve putting his fingers round her husband’s neck and squeezing the life out of him.

She was sorry. For what, exactly? Sorry for looking at him like he meant something this afternoon? Sorry for getting involved in his daughter’s life without asking? Sorry for making him believe that just for a second he’d met someone who might actually care enough about him not to treat him like a piece of disposal rubbish, the way his mother had treated him? The way Alicia had treated him by always putting her next fix above him and their child?

He thumped the door of the caravan closed and finished undoing the buttons on his fly. After kicking off his boots and his jeans, he stretched out on the bunk.

His gaze roamed over the illustration of dragons and dwarves, ogres and elves.

It was his own stupid fault. Letting himself get spellbound by the sex and the hint of companionship into believing in a dopey romantic fairy tale every bit as fanciful as the one he’d painted years ago. He’d stopped believing in that shit as a seven-year-old kid, when he’d tried to protect Laura from a man who treated her like crap but whom she had loved more than she had ever loved him.

In the last couple of weeks, hell, months, while he’d watched Ellie work her butt off to make the shop a success, while he’d seen her connect not just with him, but with his daughter and her mother and with all the other co-op residents he’d started buying into the idea that he could make that fairy tale a reality without even being aware of it. That somehow she might stay, if not for him, then at least for her mum and the shop – and he’d finally admitted it to himself the moment her husband had stepped out of his Audi.

Because all he’d been able to think for a split second was that he wanted Ellie to stay. That he wanted her to choose him.

But why would she – when he had never been more than rebound guy? And why would he even want her to?

He leant over to blow out the lantern and let the darkness engulf him.

He was much better off without her. Him and Toto both. Why complicate their lives just for the sake of a great shag?

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