Page 20 of Love in the Air at The Cornish Bakery

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to rant.’ Running his fingers through his hair, he looked at her.

‘It’s fine. I don’t even know what to think anymore. In that moment that she’d told me, everything had become so clear. So easy. I just walked. That’s all I had to do. I just had to walk out of the relationship and then I wouldn’t have to feel like I did anymore.’

‘You weren’t happy?’

Nina sighed. ‘I was. I was so happy. Things were great, weren’t they? But playing in the back of my mind was the fact that my mum had been happy too. She’d been happy until she’d discovered what my dad had been up to behind her back. She’d been so happy and finding out destroyed her.’

‘You didn’t want to jump?’

‘Jump?’

‘Jump in. You were afraid to jump fully into the relationship in case I hurt you the same way your dad hurt your mum?’

Frowning, she looked across at him. A clump of his hair was sticking up, disturbed by him running his fingers through it. She reached up and patted it down. ‘Yes, I was scared. Maybe I believed Samantha because it was the easiest thing to do.’ Did she believe what she was saying? Did she believe him? She hadn’t given him the chance to deny it, not before she’d walked out, but now... She shook her head. She didn’t know what to believe anymore.

‘I never stopped loving you, you know that, don’t you? I would never have done anything to hurt you.’

She looked up into his eyes. He looked sincere. The deep brown of his iris leading straight into his being. Maybe she did believe him. ‘Did I throw it all away because I believed Samantha?’

‘Well, you could have asked me before running off.’ His lips tugged at the edges of his mouth.

‘Argh, I don’t even know what to think anymore. If I say I believe you, then I literally just threw everything away for nothing, but...’ Leaning her elbows on the rim of the basket, she pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes, waiting for the speckles of light and the plunging darkness. This darkness she liked, the darkness of comfort, of self-reflection.

‘It broke my heart.’

‘Great, yep, just carry on sticking the knife in.’ She held her breath, listening to the air rushing past them.

‘I didn’t mean it like that. Who knows how things would have turned out between us.’

She felt as he leaned his back against the basket, his side brushing her arms. ‘We’d probably have 2.4 children, a dog and a little cottage in the country somewhere.’

‘That or we’d have just got back from backpacking across Thailand or Australia.’

‘Yep. Not Australia, though. Maybe New Zealand.’

‘Oh, yes, the spiders. How could I have forgotten the number of times I had to rush round to yours and put out a tiny money spider for you in the middle of the night?’

Taking her hands away from her eyes, she looked across at him and smiled. ‘They were never money spiders, not in my gran’s house. You must remember the size of the beasts that lived there.’

‘Ha-ha, that’s true. I’m sure you fed them steroids or something.’ He grinned. ‘Are you still there? At your gran’s?’

‘Yep, and she’s still living in Australia, and no, I haven’t flown out to visit her yet.’ Her lack of visiting and her fear of spiders remained a running joke in her family, but the truth was she didn’t want to visit her. She didn’t want to visit her because then she’d have to say goodbye all over again. Her gran visited twice a year, once at Christmas and once in the summer. Nina didn’t think she could cope with any more goodbyes than that. ‘How about you? How are your parents?’

Rowan smiled. ‘They’re just the same. Nothing’s really changed.’

‘That will be our landing point today.’ Nigel called across to them. ‘Do you see that field over there? That’s where we’re heading, so hold on.’

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