The afternoon was warm and the churchyard was quiet and peaceful, so Gemma took a moment to turn her face to the sun and breathe in the fresh air. She picked her way through the ancient, crumbling gravestones to the newer section at the back under a row of cherry trees, and wandered Mabel along each row as she read the inscriptions. She had considered the possibility that Caro’s parents might be buried here, but there was no sign of them in the handful of graves from three years ago. Caro hadn’t mentioned them being religious people, and considering her mother was born in Algiers and her father in Donegal, it seemed unlikely they would have gone to the expense of a Church of England burial. Gemma had met them briefly on graduation day, and again at Caro’s wedding and Bella’s naming ceremony. By the time Luca arrived, Caro’s mother was dead and her father was in his final months, so Caro deferred his naming ceremony indefinitely.
Mabel clearly wanted to run off the lead, so Gemma took her to a grassy space at the edge of the churchyard and threw a stick a few times. She stood under the shade of a horse chestnut tree that was just coming into full flower – Gemma had never looked at the huge bells up close before and was delighted by how intricate they were – like a mass of tiny white orchids with pink and yellow spots.
After twenty minutes Ruth’s stony face had appeared at the village hall window, like Mrs Danvers in Rebecca. Gemma crossed the lane back into the hall and settled Mabel in the office again. Fresh gloves and masks were snapped on, and by the time the job was finished it was getting dark.
Gemma could see the lights in the barn from the kitchen door, so she closed it behind her and dragged a very reluctant dog down the garden path. Mabel had headed straight for her bed after the walk home, and wasn’t remotely interested in another night-time excursion. Gemma didn’t care for Mabel’s objections – they were both exhausted, dirty and probably smelled terrible, but it felt important to see Matthew today; he must be wondering where she’d gone. She ran up the steps and knocked sharply on the door, and within seconds he was there, looking just as he had when she’d last seen him the previous week. He smiled and opened his arms, but Gemma backed away as fast as Mabel hurled herself at him.
‘Please don’t, I’m disgusting. I’ve been wiping children’s snot and drool off things all afternoon.’
Matthew smiled and raised his eyebrows. ‘You don’t look disgusting to me. Why didn’t you shower?’
‘Because I’ve only just got back and I wanted to see you. I expected to be back hours ago and didn’t want you to worry.’
Matthew let out a short laugh. ‘Gemma, did you think I didn’t know where you were? It’s a small village, and they have a WhatsApp group that has nothing better to do right now than gossip. I almost came and joined you for a walk round the churchyard earlier, but apparently you looked . . .’ Matthew made air quotes either side of his head ‘. . . quite zen.’
Gemma rolled her eyes. She should have known none of this would be news to him, but didn’t have the energy to be annoyed about it right now. She made a mental note to be pissy about it later.
Matthew opened the door a little wider. ‘Come in and have a shower. I’ll make you a cup of tea and some cheese on toast. Somebody nice put some food in my fridge.’
Gemma stood under Matthew’s waterfall shower and washed away a day of sticky toys and dusty books. His shower gel smelled a bit manly and he had no hair conditioner, but the hot water felt blissful and restorative. Helping herself to his razor for a spot of lady-grooming felt like a bit of a liberty, so she left everything in its natural state. She was too tired to care right now.
Feeling much cleaner, she sneaked a blob of Matthew’s moisturiser for her face and wrapped herself in a pale blue towel, then padded through to the bedroom to retrieve the clothes she’d left on the floor. They’d disappeared, but Matthew had replaced them with a red sweatshirt, a pair of white boxer shorts and a thick pair of grey socks. Everything hung off her, but she was clean and warm. Her skin tingled in the cool room and her stomach felt like she’d swallowed a bag of frogs; it was hard to tell if it was hunger or anticipation.
While Gemma ate cheese on toast in the corner of one sofa and Mabel snoozed blissfully on the other, Matthew leaned on the kitchen counter and told her about the project in Bristol. It had been hard and lonely work, but the job was done and Paul was grateful for his help. Matthew planned to go back after the lockdown and run some basic carpentry workshops with some of the residents in the hostel; it might help them get back into work or at least be able to do odd jobs for money.
In return, there was little Gemma needed to tell him about the Swap Shop – he’d already heard about it on the village WhatsApp grapevine, and had found the leaflet in his mailbox earlier. She told him about her day and the kind of donations they had received, and Matthew promised to help whenever he could. It felt nice sitting there with him, eating toast and chatting. Gemma could see why Caro liked him; during her twenties Matthew would have been a beacon of steadfastness in her uninhibited, libertine life. She would have valued his kindness to her parents while she was working all hours in London, and seen him as a breath of fresh air compared to all those vain, coke-fuelled boys she couldn’t help but fall in love with. When life got a bit crazy, Caro would have called Matthew for a dose of calm, unruffled reality. Perhaps she still did.
Once Gemma had eaten, Matthew took her plate and made her a peppermint tea in a red spotted mug. He sat on the sofa beside her, lifting her feet into his lap and rubbing them gently through the massive socks, which felt blissful and also vaguely erotic. Suddenly he looked at his watch and stopped.
‘I have good news and bad news.’
Gemma looked at him, feeling slow-witted and exhausted.
‘The bad news is I have to get off this sofa, because it’s time to go and clap for the NHS. But the good news is that all your clothes are in my washing machine, so you get to stay here and drink your tea while I go and clap twice as hard for the both of us.’ He stood up. ‘I’ll take Mabel so she can do her business.’ He swiftly put on his trainers, then clipped on Mabel’s lead. ‘Come on, yellow dog.’ Mabel leapt off the sofa with a look of swooning adoration. She wouldn’t have budged an inch for me, thought Gemma.
She put her mug on the floor and stretched out full length on the sofa, wiggling her toes. She thought about what would happen when Matthew got back; it felt like he’d been away in Bristol for ages and he’d made no attempt to kiss her, even though she’d been butt naked in his shower earlier and was currently wearing his clothes with no underwear. Was he still interested, or had the moment passed? Were they now reduced to friendly chat and a chaste rub of tired feet, but strictly with socks on? And in the end, might that actually be for the best?
When Gemma woke she felt cold and discombobulated. A heavy fleece blanket covered her body, but it had slipped off her legs and left her goosebumpy and shivering. She sat up, realising she was still on Matthew’s sofa, under the pale light of the waning crescent moon shining through the skylight. She looked at her watch – it was nearly 1 a.m., and she must have fallen dead asleep before he got back from the NHS Clap. Super sexy, Gemma. Good work.
Gemma unravelled herself from the blanket and stood up, her back and shoulders aching from yesterday’s cleaning efforts. She ran the kitchen tap, gulping down two glasses of water as Mabel watched her with one eye open. She raised her head a fraction of an inch as Gemma scratched between her ears, then closed her eye again and settled back into the sofa with a contented growl. Gemma stood for a moment in the middle of the room, wrestling with what to do next. She desperately needed the bathroom but didn’t want to wake Matthew, and walking back to the cottage in the middle of the night seemed ridiculous.
Being as silent and stealthy as possible, Gemma opened Matthew’s bedroom door and crept past his sleeping form. She quickly used the bathroom, deadening any potential tinkling noise with loo paper and quietly closing the lid in lieu of flushing. Her teeth felt furry from not being cleaned before bed, so
she put a blob of Matthew’s toothpaste on her finger and poked it around in her mouth for a bit, which gave the fur a minty edge but was otherwise pointless. She tiptoed back into the bedroom, pausing to watch Matthew sleep for a moment. He was on the side nearest the bathroom, facing into the middle of the bed; the other half of the bed was untouched. Gemma wondered for a moment if that was a throwback to sharing the bed with other women, perhaps even the gorgeous Claire with her beachy hair and perky boobs that fitted effortlessly into skimpy triangle bikinis without the need for industrial underwires.
Gemma’s mouth formed a determined line as she walked round to the empty side of the bed. She slid off the jumper and socks so only Matthew’s boxer shorts remained, then slowly reversed her body into the curve of his, wincing silently at the lack of mattress. He mumbled something incomprehensible in his sleep, then shifted his left arm and gathered Gemma into the warmth of his body, his hand resting gently on her breast. She felt her nipple harden under the warmth of his fingers, but resisted the urge to wake him. She relaxed into the coolness of his pillow, and they both slept.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Friday, 17 April
To Do
Zoom therapy with Caro and Joe
More village hall nonsense 1 p.m.
‘Gemma. I need to go, I’ve brought you coffee.’ A whispered voice wormed its way into Gemma’s subconscious, but she couldn’t remember who it was, or pinpoint where it came from. It made her feel warm and happy though, so she decided it could stay.
She opened one eye, her head still buried in the pillow. Matthew was perched on the edge of the bed, fully dressed in his workshop shorts and an old grey T-shirt with holes under the armpits, holding another mug, this time covered in blue spots. He smiled softly as she battled her way out of the fog of sleep. ‘Hey.’
Gemma lifted herself up on to one elbow, suddenly aware that she’d fallen asleep with wet and un-conditioned hair last night; right now it probably looked like an enormous wicker basket. She surreptitiously patted it down, mentally calculating its height and girth. ‘Where are you going?’
‘Downstairs. I need to finish the table and benches. This time last week I had loads of time, now I have to deliver them tomorrow. I need to start oiling.’
‘Sounds exciting.’ Gemma shifted into a sitting position and winced as the wooden bed frame dug into her hips. She bruised like a peach, and right now it felt like she’d taken up Mexican wrestling. She took the mug from Matthew and clutched it with both hands. It smelled like proper coffee from a machine, the first Gemma had had in the best part of four weeks. If he’d asked her to marry him in that moment, she’d have said yes.
‘How do you sleep on this mattress? It’s like lying on a door. I feel like Kate Winslet at the end of Titanic.’
Matthew laughed and shrugged. ‘I like a thin mattress, it stops me lazing around in bed. I lie on it to sleep, and when I’ve stopped sleeping I get up.’
‘So you have a bed that actively repels women,’ Gemma teased. ‘No wonder you’re single.’
‘It didn’t repel YOU. You definitely weren’t there when I fell asleep.’
‘I woke up cold and needed the loo. You looked irresistibly warm.’
‘That’s the nicest thing anyone has ever said about me. And now I have to go to work. I’ve already let Mabel out and popped into yours to give her breakfast, so no rush. Can I come over later? I’ll be done by seven.’
Gemma pretended to think about it. ‘I’ll check my diary, but it should be fine.’ She smiled and hugged her knees to her chin in what she hoped was a vaguely adorable just-woken-up pose.
Matthew walked to the bedroom door, then turned back to look at Gemma. He stared at her for a moment, and Gemma was pleased to see he was struggling to leave. ‘You are lovely. I’ll see you later.’
As soon as the bedroom door closed, Gemma fell back on to the pillows and squealed as her spine made contact with solid wood. Honestly, this bed was the worst; the mattress was barely more than one of those cushions you put on a pool lounger on holiday. It felt like a masochistic way to sleep – no doubt Matthew was also the kind of man who swam naked in frozen rivers and whipped himself with birch twigs to get his circulation going. Gemma liked furniture that cushioned and cradled her – her bed at Warwick Mews had pillows for reading, pillows for sleeping and pillows that served no purpose other than giving her something soft and comforting to hug.
She slid gently off the edge of the bed and took another quick shower, humming Switzerland’s 2019 Eurovision entry (came fourth, should have won) and resisting the urge to bellow the chorus in case Matthew could hear her downstairs. She put on her freshly washed and dried clothes from yesterday and dropped Matthew’s T-shirt, boxers and socks in his laundry hamper, then made the bed and washed up her mug. Attempts to hustle Mabel off the sofa to go home were futile; She’s found her happy place, thought Gemma. I know how she feels.
Her watch told her it wasn’t quite 9 a.m.; she had a WhatsApp video call scheduled with Joe and Caro at 10.30. She couldn’t call yet – Joe was a night owl and considered any kind of human conversation before 0930 to be inhumane, and Caro would probably be trying to force-feed Cheerios into Bella and Luca so she could park them in front of CBeebies and start work. But it was raining outside, so there was definitely a case for calling them from here rather than in the garden. She’d kill half an hour, then try them both at 9.30.
Gemma spent ten minutes working out Matthew’s coffee machine, finding ground coffee in a canister and scooping it into the portafilter, then tamping it down like they did in cafés and twisting it into the machine. She pressed some random buttons until it started making all the right noises, then heated half a mug of milk in Matthew’s microwave and added a double shot of espresso. It smelled like heaven and tasted even better.
Hugging her mug, Gemma gave the bookshelves another inspection. She liked the way they were organised, by genre rather than alphabetically by author or (God forbid) by colour. A whole section of classics, separated into British, American, other works in English by non-British authors (a lot of Irish writers here, Matthew clearly had a soft spot for James Joyce) and English translations of foreign classics. Modern fiction was a little more haphazard, covering several shelves in the middle section and vaguely categorised into literary, crime, science fiction and Scandinavian, although one whole shelf seemed to be taken up by books that didn’t really fit anywhere else, which Gemma loved – have a system, but don’t lose your mind over it. Non-fiction, biography and travel filled the space around the bedroom door, with a deep shelf along the bottom that held reference books, carpentry manuals, books that were too big for the other shelves, and a lovely set of coffee table books about classic interior design that Gemma guessed had been a gift from his mother.
Her eyes lingered on the travel section, feeling a twist of guilt and shame that she was blatantly scanning it for more travel journals or photo albums, because apparently she wasn’t done with making herself feel like shit just yet. Other than Claire’s delightful keepsake album, there were none that Gemma could see. She ran her finger along the edge of a high shelf and found no dust, then hated herself for checking. Oh God, I’m turning into my mother.
After fifteen minutes leafing through a beautiful book called Time by the British sculptor and photographer Andy Goldsworthy, Gemma decided it was an acceptable hour to call Caro and Joe. She picked up her phone and opened WhatsApp, then quickly wrote a message in their three-person group. Can we video now? I have WiFi without standing outside. Gx. A thumbs up emoji appeared from Joe within a few seconds – he lived on his phone and was very likely lacking more attractive offers right now. Gemma stroked Mabel’s head and waited for Caro – five minutes later she appeared online and started the video call.
‘Sorry, was just putting Peppa Pig on for the kids. Bella knows how to skip to the next episode so they’ll be fine indefinitely.’
Gemma waved and smiled at them both – Caro’s dark hair was wet
and her face make-up-free; she had clearly just got out of the shower and was now clutching a mug of coffee. Joe’s head was freshly shaved to his skull and he looked like he’d just been let out of prison.
‘Wow, Joe. That’s quite an extreme look.’
‘Desperate times. Could be weeks before I can see my barber, so I took matters into my own hands. I quite like it.’ He ran his hand over his snooker-ball head, then shrugged doubtfully. ‘It’ll grow back.’
Caro’s eyes were scanning the background of Gemma’s camera feed. ‘Wait, Gem. Are you at Matthew’s again?’
Gemma smiled sweetly. ‘I am. He’s in his workshop, and kindly let me use his WiFi again so I could speak to his undeserving friend.’
Joe’s eyes narrowed. ‘Bit early to be knocking on his door, isn’t it? He must be a very early riser.’
Caro snorted her coffee and they both fell about laughing. God, I miss them both, thought Gemma. She missed their Sunday afternoon coffees and impromptu cocktails. She missed Joe’s 3 a.m. drunk party texts and early Friday breakfasts in Borough Market before Caro went to work. She missed the days when she worked in Caro’s office and they bunked off for half an hour to eat huge cinnamon buns from the Nordic Bakery in Golden Square, calling it a ‘briefing meeting’ so Caro could put them on expenses.
Caro pulled herself together, wiping the tears from her eyes with her sleeve. ‘Come on, Gem. We need details. My sex life is a wasteland, Joe is reduced to sending dick pics to strangers. No, hang on, he’s always done that. You need to spill the beans.’
Gemma wanted to play along with the fun but didn’t know where to start. Right now she had no idea where she stood with Matthew, or how she felt about him. When she thought about it, she found herself feeling confused and anxious.
Joe peered a little closer to the screen. ‘Hey, Gem, are you OK?’
She smiled thinly. ‘I’m fine, guys, really. Things just feel a bit confusing. The stuff with Fraser, being here on my own. Matthew is lovely but in lots of ways he’s really not my type, and I’m really not sure I’m his either. I don’t want to make things more complicated than they are already. I’m just not sure this is going to be a fairytale ending, sorry.’
Two Metres From You Page 15