Two Metres From You

by Heidi Stephens

  ‘Fine. I’ll let her know.’

  ‘Love you, Dad, take care.’

  ‘You too.’ He hung up, no doubt relieved to escape the minefield of emotional declarations. If there was one thing Gemma had learned about her father over the years, it was that he’d rather direct tactical security operations in some war zone hellhole than tell his daughter he loved her.

  The rain stopped as quickly as it started as Gemma walked Mabel home, and the clouds parted to bathe the village in glorious late-afternoon sunshine. Feeling like she was in no particular hurry, Gemma headed off the main road into a small patch of woodland south of the village and let Mabel off the lead for a run about. She bounded in loops off the main path, diving into banks of cow parsley and emerging dotted with tiny white flowers. The air smelled of rain and wild garlic; Gemma picked a few handfuls for the pasta she had planned for tomorrow evening; she could use it to make pesto later.

  She did two full circuits of the woods, picking her way through glades of bluebells and dappled tunnels of rhododendrons. She stopped for a moment and watched Mabel run, leaping over fallen logs and lapping fresh rainwater from puddles. The sky was full of birdsong and the light fell in golden beams between the trees. A strange feeling of lightness overcame Gemma – a sudden sense of being in exactly the right place at exactly the right time. It wouldn’t last, but right now, in this moment, it would do.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Sunday, 19 April

  To Do

  Matthew, all day

  Gemma woke up on Sunday to sun streaming through the loft windows, feeling rested and restored. Inspired by her walk in the woods, she had spent the previous evening with one of her favourite books, Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca. It was the rhododendrons that had made her think about it, although the delicate pink buds in the woods were nothing like du Maurier’s giant blood-red blooms, which were used to symbolise the eponymous dead wife – a looming, malevolent presence at every turn. Aunt Laura wouldn’t have them in her garden; she said du Maurier had spoiled them for her, made them evil and menacing. Gemma had borrowed the book from the library and devoured it in a weekend, coming to the conclusion that none of the characters had any redeeming features and they all deserved each other.

  Her positive mood had lingered since her walk the day before, after which Gemma had decided to stop this endless wrestling with her feelings and go with the flow a little. At some point soon she needed to return to real life, but for now she reminded herself of her earlier vow to treat this situation like a holiday. It made it easier for her to live in the moment and reconcile the situation with Matthew – he was her lockdown romance; someone who would help her find herself, then wave her off like he had all the other women in his life. It was an arrangement that suited them both, so she could definitely stop over-thinking everything.

  Gemma found a pair of denim shorts and a faded pink T-shirt and put her hair up into a messy bun. Aside from the three inches of dark roots, the ends were starting to feel properly ratty, but a decent haircut was probably still weeks away. She had no idea when she’d next get a manicure or pedicure – the previous week she’d stripped off the final remnants of old polish and left them tidy and short but otherwise free of their usual glossy colour.

  She was pulling a few weeds from the border under the lilac trees when Matthew wandered over from the barn, wrapping his arms around her in a bear hug and kissing her neck before she could take off her gardening gloves. He sat on the grass for a few minutes to play with Mabel, who rolled on to her back to demand a belly rub. Gemma finished weeding and put the tools away, before joining Matthew on the grass. Mabel went into a state of bliss as a second pair of hands joined the first to scratch behind her ears.

  ‘What shall we do today?’ Gemma asked.

  ‘I thought we could go for a walk. A long one. Maybe take a sandwich so we don’t have to hurry back.’

  ‘Are we allowed out for that long?’ Gemma’s news consumption had been sporadic at best; she found the endless conflicting opinions and political point-scoring stressful and unhelpful, and some of the rules seemed a bit open to interpretation.

  ‘I think so. There’s no time limit on how long we exercise for, it just says once a day. We just have to stay away from other people, which is my favourite kind of walk.’

  It sounded good to Gemma, but before they went anywhere she needed to eat. ‘You promised me brunch.’

  ‘Yes, I did. Come this way, it’s waiting for you.’

  The table in Matthew’s barn was set with everything Gemma needed right now – coffee, fresh juice, toast and a fruit salad that he had clearly painstakingly prepared himself. Mabel had resumed her preferred position in the corner of the sofa, and looked like she was readying herself for a short nap.

  ‘Where did you get juice and strawberries? They don’t have them in the shop.’

  Matthew loaded up the coffee machine and pressed the button. ‘I went to Sainsbury’s in town yesterday. Bought some nice cheese and olives too. We can take them on our walk.’

  Gemma realised it was exactly four weeks since she’d arrived in Crowthorpe, and she hadn’t left the village once. Her world had become so small, the idea of a big supermarket felt a bit overwhelming.

  ‘Can you buy everything now, or are people still stockpiling loo roll?’

  Matthew laughed. ‘Eggs and flour are still tough to find, but otherwise it’s fine. I get my eggs from Grove Farm, and Ruth has a secret stock of flour that she keeps in a cupboard for her favourite customers.’

  ‘She sold me a bag last week.’

  ‘Well, aren’t you the chosen one.’

  Gemma helped Matthew wash the brunch dishes, enjoying the everyday, humdrum normality of it. She was reminded of Fraser’s obsession with stacking the dishwasher – if Gemma put anything in, he’d rearrange it to his liking, even though there were only two of them and it was rarely full. With hindsight she’d been so grateful for his lack of financial nit-picking, she’d failed to notice all the other ways in which he was a colossal wanker.

  Once the dishes were cleared away, Matthew tried his best to lure Gemma to bed, but he had to settle for some heavy petting against the kitchen sink instead – it was such a beautiful day and it seemed a shame to spend it indoors, even if the prospect of getting Matthew naked was extremely tempting. He grudgingly relented and disappeared into the fridge to find things for lunch, putting everything into a rucksack along with a big bottle of water that they could share with Mabel. Gemma went back to the cottage to grab Mabel’s lead and a jumper in case the weather turned, and met Matthew by the side gate a few minutes later.

  It was the perfect spring day for a walk – the countryside felt fresh and green and on the cusp of flourishing, without the limp, dusty tiredness that comes with high summer. The hedgerows were packed with wildflowers and butterflies, and Mabel discovered an appetite for goose grass that Gemma had been previously unaware of – it wasn’t something you saw a lot of in London. They hiked across fields and through woods with no need for a map; Matthew had walked these paths all his life. Gemma had no idea if he had a particular destination in mind but didn’t ask; it felt liberating to just walk, and to put her trust in someone else to lead the way for a change.

  As they strolled along they talked about nothing in particular –

  Gemma told Matthew about her writing work, and he talked about the furniture projects he’d enjoyed most, and some funny stories from doing odd jobs in the village. Gemma told him about her sister, skipping over the bit about her being a closet lesbian in a loveless marriage. Matthew shared the story of a mangy dog that had trailed him around Thailand for so long he’d looked into bringing it home for his parents; even though he didn’t like dogs, it seemed worth rescuing. In the end, he’d left it with a British family in Bangkok. Gemma talked about the countless places she’d lived, and Matthew tried to explain what it was like to live in the same place all his life.

  They met a few other walkers out and abou
t and were careful to move over and give other people a wide berth as they passed, putting Mabel on her lead if other dogs were around. After a few miles of wide footpaths where they could mostly walk side by side, Gemma and Matthew climbed over a wooden stile into some woods of young ash and beech trees and started to head downhill along a narrow, winding track. The ground was a pungent carpet of wild garlic, not yet flowering although the white buds were appearing here and there. Gemma could hear a stream trickling nearby, but couldn’t see it.

  At the bottom of the hill they climbed over another stile and walked into a tiny hamlet; just a collection of a dozen or so pretty stone cottages with a single-track road in and out. A meadow of the most dazzling green stretched out in front of them, a swaying mass of daisies and dandelion clocks that would be a sea of wild-flowers in a month or two. Mabel sniffed the air hopefully, and Matthew led them along a well-trodden path through the grass that sloped gently down to the water. He stopped on a grassy bank next to a shallow pool on the bend of the river, fed by a small waterfall from the sluice gates of an old mill. He put down the rucksack and turned to look at Gemma. ‘What do you think?’

  It was a breathtakingly beautiful spot, with a sandy bank that eased into shallow, fast-flowing water that swirled around patches of half-submerged water plants that Gemma couldn’t name. Further along the bank was a deeper, still pool that Mabel immediately plunged into, paddling happily in circles until her paws found shallower ground. She ran to a sandy island above the water line and shook vigorously, before running back along the bank and throwing herself straight back in again.

  ‘It’s gorgeous,’ said Gemma, sitting on the grass and starting to remove her trainers. ‘How did you know about it?’

  Matthew sat beside her, his arms resting on his bent knees. ‘I used to come here a lot when I was a kid. Sometimes with friends to swim in the river, and sometimes on my own. I’d ride my bike to the village,’ he nodded at the houses behind them, ‘and walk here. It was a good place to read a book.’

  Gemma smiled. She too remembered the secret places she used to go to read – the ha-ha by the hockey pitch at boarding school, the oak tree in the field behind Aunt Laura’s house, the stone lookout point on the cliffs behind their house in Cyprus. A paperback tucked into the back of her shorts, maybe an apple or a peach in her pocket. Places where she could be somewhere else entirely.

  Pulling off her trainer socks and tucking them inside her shoes, Gemma dabbled her toes into the shallow water, watching it alter its course around this new and unexpected obstacle. The water was cold but crystal clear; later in the summer it would be a glorious spot for a wild swim. She and Caro had regularly visited Hampstead Ladies’ Pond in the years before Bella and Luca, but it had been a while since she’d been; Fraser wasn’t much of a swimmer, and had a particular issue with bodies of water that contained living things that might touch him, like plants or fish. They’d once taken a day trip to Whitstable and Gemma had suggested a dip in the sea, and he’d looked at her as though she was offering him up to the sharks as a light snack.

  She leaned back in the grass on her elbows, while Matthew rummaged in the bag for food. She was pretty sure that stopping by a river to eat lunch in the sunshine wasn’t part of the lockdown rules for exercise, but right now she didn’t care. There wasn’t another soul to be seen, and the combination of sun on her face and cold water flowing across her feet was heavenly. Matthew tore a strip of bread from half a baguette, then stuffed a slice of cheese and a couple of olives into the middle before passing it over to Gemma. While she ate, he pulled a plastic box from the bag with the leftover strawberries from brunch, and the thermos bottle of water. Mabel dappled around in the shallows, chasing sticks caught in the flow and periodically hurling herself into the deeper pond to cool off. The smell of food lured her over to Gemma and Matthew, who gave her a lump of cheese. She ignored the water Matthew had poured into the strawberry container for her, having happily quenched her thirst from the river.

  Once the bread was gone, they sat contentedly in the sun for a while, Gemma occasionally flicking water on to Matthew’s legs with her feet and getting a jab in the ribs in return. It was time to head off; they had a long walk back and the skin on Gemma’s arms was starting to turn pink.

  Matthew stood up and held out his hand to Gemma, who finished tying the laces on her trainers and levered herself up. He looked across the fields on the other side of the river. ‘I thought we’d take a slightly different route back, come in at the other end of the village.’

  ‘Fine by me. You lead, I’ll follow.’

  Matthew cleared his throat. ‘It will take us past my parents’ house – it would be nice to say hello as we go by.’

  Gemma’s immediate reaction was to feel wary; why on earth would Matthew want her to meet his parents? Then the feeling turned to panic – she looked like a sweaty mess, with no make-up and hair like pigeons had taken up residence. But within seconds she had a stern word with herself. This isn’t about you, Gemma. He wants to see his mum and dad. She shrugged and smiled casually. ‘Sure, no problem.’

  The shadows were lengthening as the tower of St Michael’s Church appeared on the horizon, and Gemma was hot, tired and in desperate need of a shower. Mabel looked ready for a very big nap but stayed close to Gemma’s heels as they walked along the lane, hugging the hedgerow.

  A row of three houses appeared ahead of them, each set a little way up the hill with a large front garden and a driveway that sloped down to the road. They stopped outside the last in the row; it was sixties in style, with large dormer windows in the tiled roof, and what looked like a substantial extension on the side. Gemma assumed Matthew’s father had done a lot of work on it over the years.

  ‘How long have your parents lived here?’

  ‘They moved in after they got married; it was a wedding present from both their parents, back in the days when buying your kids a house wasn’t completely insane. So mid-eighties, I guess.’ Matthew got out his phone and pressed a button, then turned to smile at Gemma while he waited for someone to answer.

  ‘Hey, Mum, it’s me. I’m fine, I’m actually outside, we’re on our way back from a walk. Thought you might want to pop out and say hello.’ There was a short pause. ‘OK, see you in a minute.’

  Gemma was interested that Matthew hadn’t had to explain who ‘we’ was – had he already told his parents about her? She attempted to smooth the tendrils of hair that had escaped from her ponytail and wiped the dusty sweat off her face with the back of her equally dusty hand.

  The front door opened, and a woman stepped out of the door, leaving it open behind her. She was elegantly dressed in flowing linen trousers and a long tunic, with her fair hair wound tightly into a bun that was secured at the nape of her neck. She smiled warmly at both of them as she walked down the drive, stopping a few metres from the garden wall and blowing Matthew a kiss with both hands.

  ‘Hello, love, sorry I can’t come closer. What a lovely surprise.’ She turned to Gemma. ‘You must be Gemma. I’ve heard a lot about you. I’m Christine.’ Her eyes twinkled as she lifted her hand in a wave, and Gemma desperately wished she didn’t look like she’d slept in a hedge.

  She smiled and waved back. ‘Hi, nice to meet you.’

  Christine turned her attention to Mabel, whose tail was wagging furiously. ‘Hello, Mabel.’

  Mabel tugged at her lead until Gemma let her go, then slipped under the wooden gate at the bottom of the driveway and bounded over to Matthew’s mother, who knelt down to scratch under her chin. Gemma looked at Matthew in surprise, and he shrugged.

  ‘I’ve brought her here a few times on our walks. She’s made herself quite at home in the garden.’ On cue, Mabel turned on to her back and offered up her belly for a rub, like the attention whore she was.

  ‘Your dad is dicing with death up a ladder in the garage, so I don’t think he’ll be joining us. You both look like you’ve caught some sun; where did you get to?’

  Gemma wante
d to beg for permission to run home for a shower and a change of clothes, then come back looking less like Ray Mears. She was annoyed that it bothered her so much – what did it matter if she impressed Matthew’s mother? She was hardly interviewing for future daughter-in-law.

  Matthew was explaining the route they’d taken, ‘. . . so we stopped at Oldford Brook for lunch, and Mabel had a swim. And then we walked back.’

  ‘Goodness, that IS a hike. Still, lovely day for it.’

  Gemma watched the dynamic between Matthew and his mother and felt a tinge of jealousy. She couldn’t remember ever being that relaxed and comfortable with her parents; conversations always felt loaded, and old resentments died hard in the Lockwood family. The grinding of teeth at family events created a four-part harmony.

  She realised she hadn’t uttered a word other than a perfunctory greeting, and pushed herself to make the effort. ‘Your garden looks lovely.’ It was banal, but true. The borders had that casual cottage garden abundance that looks artless and natural but takes huge amounts of planning to achieve; Gemma knew it well from Aunt Laura’s house in Norfolk. Right now Christine’s garden was holding back, waiting for the warmth of May to unleash a mass of summer colour.

  ‘Thank you, dear, I’m sorry you can’t come through and see the back. I’ve been planting vegetables.’ Gemma thought of her poor dad, toiling in the veg and cursing every bloody courgette and runner bean. ‘Perhaps you can come and have a proper look when this is all over. Stay for lunch.’ Christine looked from Gemma to Matthew and back again, her face full of hope. With a sinking heart, Gemma realised that Matthew’s mum knew she wasn’t just the woman next door, and had no idea Gemma wasn’t planning to stick around.

  Matthew smoothed over the awkwardness with farewells and promises to pop by in the week with their shopping, and Gemma called Mabel back from the garden and said goodbye with a smile. They walked back through the village with little to say, Gemma feeling like they needed to talk but not wanting to spoil what had been a wonderful day. With barely a word, she took Matthew home and gave Mabel her dinner, then settled her down in her bed by the window. Matthew watched her, his face a mask of intensity and nervous energy. In silence, Gemma took his hand and led him upstairs for a shower, and they didn’t come back down for a long time.