by Kate Field
‘Wait,’ Paddy said. ‘What are you doing on your day off tomorrow? Have you made plans?’
‘Yes,’ I said, relieved to be back on safe ground. ‘I’m going to Bath.’
Paddy laughed. ‘Let me guess. The Roman Baths? I should have known. Haven’t you had enough of the Romans this week?’
‘As if I ever could.’ I smiled. ‘Anyway, I’m not just visiting the Roman Baths. I’m going to the thermal ones too. It’s one of my Be Kind to Yourself treats.’
‘Your what?’
‘It was Caitlyn’s idea.’ I’d forgotten I hadn’t mentioned them to him. I rummaged in my bag. ‘She made some vouchers for me when she left home. She insisted I had to do some things to treat myself after she’d gone, and send her the vouchers to prove what I’d done. Look.’ I held out one of the cards to him. I’d already filled it in.
BE KIND TO YOURSELF
VOUCHER NINE
I, Eve Roberts, have been kind to myself by going to the thermal baths!
‘Caitlyn designed this? She’s artistic?’ He ran his finger over the floral pattern that filled the edge of the card. I wondered if he was thinking back, remembering the times he had spent colouring in with Caitlyn. It had been one of her favourite activities, and Paddy had always been first choice to help her with it. ‘She’s talented.’
‘She takes after Faye.’
He nodded. Faye’s paintings had been like her: full of life, colour and brilliance, extraordinary in their imagination and execution. It was the only career she had ever considered, and her paintings were beginning to sell well in the months before she died. ‘No interest in archaeology?’ he asked.
‘None at all. She hated history.’ I smiled. I’d done my best, but she had still dropped the subject at the first opportunity. ‘She settles the nature not nurture debate. None of my influence has rubbed off.’
Paddy tapped the card in his hand. ‘This is your influence. This is kindness. Faye wouldn’t have done this. She never spared a thought for anyone but herself …’
I stared at him, surprised. What was he talking about? Everyone had loved Faye; she had dazzled and charmed wherever she went. But he only met her after Caitlyn was born; perhaps she had been wrapped up in herself and her baby then, but wasn’t that normal? He didn’t know her like I did. She had spared a thought for someone else: me. She had always looked out for me and protected me; he and Faye had been the two people I had counted on most.
‘What do you mean?’ I asked. ‘Why would you say that?’ But he looked at me, took a swig of his whiskey, and shook his head.
‘Forget it. I didn’t mean a thing. Too much whiskey and it starts doing the talking for me …’ He smiled. ‘Let me come with you,’ he said. ‘It’s years since I’ve been to the Roman Baths.’
I was about to say no, but even drunk he knew how to find my weak spots.
‘Help me out, Eve. I could do with a distraction, you know? Take me with you or I’ll only have the whiskey for company, and you wouldn’t be wanting that now, would you?’
How could I say no when he put it like that? I couldn’t in all conscience leave him to spend the day assaulting his liver, and weeping over a baby that in another life might have been his, could I? That was the only reason I agreed. It certainly had nothing to do with the brown eyes that twinkled at me in a way I had never managed to resist; nothing to do with the warm smile that wrapped around me like no one else’s had ever done. This was a favour for him, not something I would have ever chosen. So I gave him a reluctant, ‘fine’, and headed off to bed.
*
I drove us down to Bath the next morning, not confident that the alcohol would have cleared from Paddy’s bloodstream yet, although he looked perkier over breakfast than I did. I don’t know how he managed it; no one would believe that I was the one who practised healthy living. There was no sign of a hangover as he spent the whole journey talking. He told me about some of the most memorable digs he’d been on over the years; about how he had set up his own archaeology business and the sort of work he undertook with that; and he made me snort with laughter at the behind-the-scenes gossip from his TV show, and the celebrity programmes and events he had taken part in. He was indiscreet and irreverent, seeming wholly unimpressed and unswayed by the celebrity world other than as a means to an end. He didn’t mention his mum or anything about his personal life, and I was glad; there had been enough soul-baring last night.
We found a space to park near the Royal Victoria Park, and strolled in the morning sunshine towards Hot Bath Street, where the thermal baths were located.
‘Shall we meet up later?’ I asked, when we arrived. ‘I’ll be a couple of hours.’
‘No need for that,’ he said. ‘I’m coming too.’
‘Coming where? In here?’ I pointed at the entrance to the baths. Surely he wasn’t serious?
‘Yes. We agreed last night. And I thought I was the drunk one …’ He grinned.
‘But I thought you meant you wanted to come to Bath. Capital B. Not actually in here.’
‘What’s the problem? It’s not a ladies only session, is it?’
‘No.’ I despaired as soon as the word slipped out. Why had I admitted that? He’d thrown me the perfect excuse and I’d let it slip through my butter fingers. ‘You don’t have any swimming trunks,’ I said, with a flash of inspiration.
‘You mean I can’t skinny dip?’ He threw back his head and roared with laughter, presumably at the look of horror I could feel freezing my face. ‘Ah, you’re so easy to wind up. There must be somewhere I can buy a pair. Know anywhere that sells tight Speedos?’
He was having far too much fun at my expense. I rallied.
‘Go straight down there to Stall Street,’ I said. ‘But don’t go for the Speedos. They show every lump and bump – or lack of them. They’re so unforgiving to the less well-endowed, aren’t they?’
Paddy grinned and leant close to my ear. ‘No worries there,’ he murmured. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten.’ And he headed off towards the shops, leaving my cheeks flaming and my head whirling with memories I’d tried hard to hold back, and that I definitely didn’t want to be dwelling on when I was about to see Paddy in a state of undress.
He was a quick shopper and soon returned brandishing a carrier bag. We entered the baths and after a protracted argument, he insisted on paying the entrance fee in exchange for my having driven to Bath. I thought I’d be able to give him the slip in the changing room, but after being given our wristbands, towels and dressing gowns, we were directed to a unisex changing area.
‘I like this place already,’ Paddy said, and smiled in my direction. Ignoring him, I shut myself in a cubicle and changed into my bikini as quickly as I could, hoping to be safely hidden in the Minerva pool before he could see me, but my luck was out again. He was clearly as quick at changing as he was at shopping. When I peered from the door of the cubicle, Paddy was waiting for me. At least he was wrapped up in the waffle dressing gown he’d been given – no one ever looked sexy in one of those. And that was exactly how I wanted to think of him – as not sexy – not like in those memories that were fighting so hard to take root in my head. Why had I ever agreed to him coming here with me? I should have known it would lead to trouble. It wasn’t emotional distance I was struggling with today, it was physical.
My heart sank when I realised we needed to shower before entering the pool. Paddy stripped off his dressing gown without hesitation and stepped under the water. I watched. I couldn’t help myself. Not sexy? Who was I kidding? He didn’t have a six-pack, but the years of digging had given him a solid, well-defined chest that the skinny young Paddy would have loved. And I had to be honest – the young Eve would have loved it too. The old Eve wasn’t immune to it either.
‘Had a good look?’ Paddy called as he stepped out of the shower, brushing back his damp hair and smiling at me. If he was interested in upgrading from television to film, I would have cast him as a leading man on the spot. It was a mesmeris
ing performance. I pulled myself together.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘They’re not bad shorts for a quick purchase. Shame about the price tag, though. Ruins the look. Unless you’re selling yourself? In which case, I don’t think you’re worth it.’
I shuffled over in my robe, grabbed the price tag that was hanging out of the back of his shorts, and yanked at it to remove it. Or that was the plan. The actual result of my yanking was that Paddy’s shorts gaped away from his body, revealing a very shapely buttock. The label finally came off and the elastic waistband of the shorts snapped back in place.
‘When you’ve finished playing with me, Eve, do you think you could get a move on?’ Paddy grinned as I stood rooted to the spot in mortification. ‘We’ve only paid for two hours. Much as I’m enjoying the foreplay, on this occasion I think we’d better skip to the main event.’
Sod him, I thought, as he continued to watch me, waiting. Why was I dithering? I wasn’t normally so self-conscious. I didn’t care about stripping off in front of a group of strangers. Paddy was just another one, wasn’t he? There was no reason to think he might look and judge, noting the changes of almost twenty years, even though I had done exactly that with him. He mixed with celebrities now. My pale, athletic body would hold no interest for a man used to orange skin and surgical enhancements. I stripped off my robe and stepped under the shower.
I closed my eyes as the water ran over my face. When I opened them again, Paddy was standing in front of me, offering a towel.
‘Looking good for forty,’ he said.
‘I’m not forty yet,’ I pointed out – although I hoped I wasn’t going to go to seed in the few weeks left before my birthday. ‘And that’s not even old. You should know.’
‘You’re right. There’s still a lot of life left to enjoy.’
‘We can only hope so,’ I said. He reached out and rubbed my shoulder, his bare flesh touching mine for the first time in years, but it was the understanding behind the gesture that affected me more than the physical contact. I had lost Faye and Dad, and he would lose Alison. There was a new bond between us that had never been there before.
I could have filled out every remaining ‘Be Kind to Yourself’ voucher over the course of the morning and still have needed more. The spa was fantastic, and I would have enjoyed it on my own, but Paddy made it special in the way only he could. We swam, relaxed in the whirlpool, floated in the open-air rooftop pool, and all the time we shared conversation, laughs and an easy silence that made me feel twenty again and as if anything was possible. But it was all an illusion, as temporary as the steam rising from the pool and drifting away beyond sight. I wasn’t twenty, and there were no possibilities here. I should know better than this.
When our time was nearly up, we stood at the edge of the roof terrace and looked out over the Bath skyline, seeing the Abbey, the Circle, the Royal Crescent in the distance, and the hundreds of people hurrying about their daily lives. It was time for a reality check.
‘Don’t do this, Paddy,’ I said, as the sun dried our hair and his arm rested against mine.
‘Do what?’
‘This. Being charming. Reminiscing. Flirting,’ I added, because there was no other word for what he’d been doing today, whether he had meant it or not. ‘Trying to make me fall in love with you again.’
‘Again?’ He turned away from the view to look at me. A loose curl, drying in the sun, blew across his face. ‘You mean you stopped?’
‘Of course I did. It’s been a long time. What did you expect, that I spent the years wearing black and pining for you?’
‘Would have been nice …’
I laughed. And this was exactly why it was so dangerous to spend time with him. Whatever I said, whatever I thought, my heart had a mind of its own where Paddy was concerned.
‘Would it be such a bad thing to try again?’ Paddy asked. His finger traced an entrancing loop around my wrist and across the back of my hand.
‘Yes. Been there. Done that. Got the scars. Don’t want to do it again.’
‘You think you can stop yourself?’
And that was the question, because, despite everything, I really wasn’t sure I could.
‘I don’t know,’ I admitted. ‘But you can stop it. If you ever cared about me in the past, do this for me now. Don’t let me fall for you again. My heart’s been broken too many times already. Leave it alone, won’t you?’
‘I won’t break it again,’ he said, and sealed his promise by pulling me into a damp hug and kissing the top of my head.
Chapter 20
‘So have you invited him to your birthday party?’ Tina asked. ‘Now that you’re on such close terms?’
‘Not close,’ I corrected, wondering if she had listened to a word I had told her about the time I’d spent with Paddy at the dig. She was definitely putting her own interpretation on what I had said. ‘Not as distant.’
I was splitting hairs, we both knew that – luscious curly black ones. I deserved the withering look that Tina gave me as she pulled up a weed and threw it into the wheelbarrow. I began to wish I hadn’t volunteered to help her renovate her back garden over the summer, but when she’d mentioned the plan and that her husband Graham would be at work, I hadn’t been able to resist offering my assistance. I had plenty of time to kill now, as she was fond of pointing out, and plenty of experience at digging. And aside from the relentless inquisition, and although I still ached from the excavation the week before, I was enjoying it. If I couldn’t find a future in archaeology, I could always fall back on labouring …
‘Anyway, it’s not a party,’ I said. ‘Only some friends gathering for a meal. It would seem very tame after the sort of parties he’s used to, with wall-to-wall celebrities, champagne by the bucketful and goodie bags worth more than we could earn in a month.’
It wasn’t an exaggeration; he had told me about attending a party just like that. After our trip to Bath, we had taken to sharing dinner together in the pub each night, and he’d made me laugh until I cried with his description of some of the things that the more desperate minor celebrities had done to catch the attention of the press at one of those parties. Paddy had sold his free gifts afterwards to raise money for his mum.
Perhaps I had hoped that Tina would contradict me – insist that Paddy would want, even expect, me to invite him to join us on my birthday. But she missed her cue, and instead, she nodded in agreement.
‘The French place is posh, but it can’t compare to The Ivy, can it?’ She straightened up from where she had been bending over a flower bed, and rubbed her lower back. ‘Did you see him on the sidebar of shame yesterday? He was leaving a London club, with a busty blonde clinging on to his arm. It’s a pity she didn’t cling so tightly to her modesty. Her dress left nothing to the imagination.’
‘I didn’t see it.’ I was deliberately not looking online. I didn’t want to stalk his movements, or to keep thinking about him when my feelings had tiptoed so close to the edge of forbidden territory during our time in the Cotswolds. On the other hand, perhaps it would cure me of any softer sentiments if I watched him parade around with a stream of attractive women, and hang out with busty blondes only hours after sharing a farewell breakfast with me? But that would only work if I believed what I read in the newspapers. Paddy had already told me how contrived it was – how his agent would often pair him with someone on a night out, specifically to boost his career or hers. Blondes were the preferred choice because of the contrast with his dark hair, he had said. His personal taste had never been for blondes, as I well knew …
I shoved my spade into the ground again, trying to push away such thoughts. Tina had decided to dig up a row of rose bushes to make way for a vegetable patch, and that was my job for the day. The bushes did look tired and straggly, and I should have approved of the interest in healthy living, but I couldn’t help a pang of sadness as I levered the spade under a root to lift out the plant. I would miss seeing them when I visited Tina. Paddy had been the first person t
o buy me roses – the only person who ever had: six perfect red blooms, because it was the six-month anniversary of the day we had started going out. He had said that six was his lucky number, and that he would buy me six more for our six-year anniversary. Would he have remembered, if we had made it so far? One more thing that I would never know.
‘Have you no plans to see him again?’ Tina asked. She had the easier job, resting on her kneeler, genteelly weeding. I was beginning to wish she had a more physical job so that she would run out of breath for talking.
‘No. Why would I?’ I carried on quickly, in case she felt inclined to answer that. ‘Although I suppose I will see him on Friday. Only because he’s coming to officially name and launch the minibus at The Chestnuts,’ I added, when Tina looked more interested than the comment deserved. ‘Gran is insisting that I attend too, although I’m not sure why. I’ve done my bit with the fundraising.’
‘But don’t you want to see him?’ she asked. ‘I thought you said you got on well when you met in the Cotswolds. Did sparks not fly again?’
‘Absolutely not.’ There she went again, putting words in my mouth. I was sure I hadn’t told her that we had got on well; although if I was being honest, it was probably accurate. We had got on well, better than I could have expected – and definitely better than I could have wanted. It wasn’t sparks flying that I was worried about. They could be stamped out. It was the slow-burning fires causing the sparks that were much more dangerous, quietly taking hold and spreading until it was too late, and you were consumed. That wasn’t a position I wanted to be in again.
‘I’ve managed without Paddy in my life perfectly happily for seventeen years,’ I said. ‘I don’t need him in it now.’
‘Don’t you?’ Tina smiled at me. ‘I’m not sure you can claim perfect happiness unless you try the alternative, can you? What if there’s more happiness on offer? You wouldn’t want to miss out on that, would you?’