‘And you’re afraid of rivers.’
Gosh his eyes were dark. ‘No. I’m afraid of what rivers can do. I wasn’t going to lose you, Molly, not to the water. And then I couldn’t see you, you’d been carried too far away and …’ He stopped talking. Fumbled where his glasses ought to have been and then appeared to notice their loss with some surprise.
‘What? How did you find me? I was moving so fast.’
‘You’ll think I’m mad.’
‘Bit late to worry about that now.’
‘The lights. They were hanging in the sky above where you’d washed up. Just hanging there, Molly, like they were pointing right at you.’
‘That’s mad.’
He shook his head, wet ropes of hair coiling around his neck. ‘That’s what happened. Otherwise …’ He stopped again. Coughed. Ran the back of his hand over his eyes and then went on in a voice that choked. ‘Otherwise I wouldn’t have had a clue. I’d have had to follow the river all the way and there are fences and gates and I wouldn’t have been able to … I wouldn’t have found you.’
As though overcome with fellow feeling, Stan nudged gently at his shoulder and then bit his jacket in an exploratory way.
I felt incredibly tired all of a sudden. ‘I want to go home.’
‘You’re in shock. Here.’ Phinn legged me up onto Stan, where I collapsed thankfully, resting my face on his mane as Phinn began to lead us back to the village. The river had taken me further than I’d thought, it had only seemed as though I’d been in the water for a matter of moments and yet we had to trudge for nearly half an hour to get back to the outskirts of the village. His jacket was lengthening with every stride, the leather stretching until he had to keep shoving it up his arms to keep his hands free to manage Stan, but he didn’t seem to notice.
‘Here.’ He helped me slide down onto my garden wall. ‘Sit there a second. Okay?’
I could only nod.
Caro and Link came dashing across the road, hand in hand but arms flailing. ‘Molly! Link said … he saw you fall!’
‘He saved me,’ I said quietly. ‘Saved my life.’
Phinn leaned against Stan, who carefully ate his lapel.
‘Which he are we talking about?’ Caro looked at the pair of them and I could see her chest rising and falling with the emotion that was coming out as anger. ‘Because I am going to slowly kill the other one.’
‘And I am going to kill the one that’s left, just in case.’ Link’s face was grey with shock.
‘Both of them.’ I now felt so tired that the wall under me was spongey. ‘Phinn and Stan. What a pair,’ and then I collapsed, falling slowly backwards over my own garden wall, unconscious before I even landed on the gnomes.
Chapter Twenty-Five
When I woke up I was in my own bedroom. There were three duvets piled up on the bed, so it was a little like being buried alive, but otherwise everything seemed normal. My chest hurt a bit and cautious examination told me that I had scrapes and scratches all over me. I groaned and tried to turn over under the immense weight of wadding.
‘Oh, hello.’ Almost shyly, Phinn came through the narrow door. ‘How are you? I mean, you’re obviously better because you’re not, you know, unconscious or anything.’
He looked amazing. Okay, he was wearing a weird amalgamation of what looked like Link and Caro’s clothes, and his hair had dried into a combination of dreadlocks and quiffs, like Bob Marley doing an Elvis impression, but his smile was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.
‘You saved my life,’ I said, almost wonderingly. ‘You rode my horse into the water and saved my life.’
Another grin. ‘I hear that if I can overcome another phobia within the next twenty-four hours I get some kind of medal,’ he said and came over and sat on the side of the bed. ‘Duke of Edinburgh or something.’
I rubbed the back of my hand over my eyes. ‘Probably not that one.’ I coughed. My chest hurt and my brain felt as though I was thinking through treacle. ‘Why are you here?’
He looked wild. Gorgeous, but wild, as if he’d been up for days, unshaven and the collar of what looked like one of Link’s rugby shirts was sticking out from under an old hunting jacket on one side. ‘Reasons,’ he said.
We stared at one another for a moment or two.
‘I missed you,’ I said quietly, at last.
He inclined his head slowly.
‘You never really gave me a chance to say anything. Before you went.’ I spoke very fast, as though the words had been dammed up behind my heart for too long and were now falling over one another to get out. ‘And you’d just made love to me like no one has ever done before, like I’ve never given anyone the chance to before, and I’d just found out about my mother being ill and then you left me, Phinn. You left me.’
‘I know. And I came back to talk to you, because I wanted to make it right. I had an idea that I could try. But I still thought I was a fake, that night, I thought it was fake, and that I was jealous of Tim because he was more of a man than I could be. But really …’ He took half a step back and slowly uncurled a hand that I saw he had clenched. And if the bluey-grey colour of his knuckles was anything to go by, it had been clenched a long, long time. ‘I came back,’ he said carefully, ‘because of this.’
At first all I could see were the indentations in his palm, but then my eyes focused on a small, white piece of plastic sitting astride his lifeline. The thing he’d tried to show me on the bridge.
‘Lego? You came back because of Lego?’
‘Lego and lights and your mad horse, and Link … is there any word for “horse” that begins with L? Seems a shame to ruin alliterative moments on that monster. Love.’
Love. The word hung.
‘I thought you’d gone for good this time.’
‘I thought I had. But then there was this.’ He juggled the Lego brick from hand to hand. ‘A little boy telling me I was his hero like he meant it, and I realised that I didn’t have to be a Death Star when I really wanted to be Diagon Alley. Not any more.’ He caught hold of my hand and stood, all in one fluid movement. ‘I didn’t think I deserved you, Molly. I didn’t think I deserved anything.’
He bent down, put his face close to mine. ‘Suze and my parents and everything … I’ve worked all my life to be good enough for other people.’ So close now I could feel the heat of his skin. ‘But yesterday I realised I don’t have to be good enough for other people.’ A gentle, almost trembling hand pushed my hair away from my face, while those brilliant, dark eyes held me, deeper than space. His lips touched mine for a second, then he was away again. ‘And then Link told me … well, something that showed me I could be whatever I wanted. If I let myself. And I realised I’d really just been making excuses all this time, that I didn’t have to conform to whatever I thought I had to be, I just need to be good enough for myself … Oh, and you, obviously, I need to be good enough for you. Am I, Molly? Can I ever be good enough for you?’
I looked at him before I spoke. A pat, quick-returned reply would sound insincere, but also I really just wanted to look at him. Lean and dark, those sharp eyes softened by glasses but their quick gaze still as bright, still as full of that fierce intelligence. And I didn’t see a soft man, a man who should have been more manly. I didn’t see someone so far down the alphabet that he couldn’t touch alpha with a pole. I saw a man who overcame his fears, for me. A man I loved.
‘You don’t have to be good, Phinn.’ Now it was my turn to lean in, to move my lips to his cheek and whisper in his ear. ‘You only have to be you.’
He kicked his feet up and lay on the bed next to me, shoving several hundredweight of duvet out of the way so that we could touch. We kissed, a long, deep kiss and I closed my eyes to appreciate the taste of him, the salty smell of his skin and the feel of his body’s angles and planes resting against me. Eventually he moved, rocking his weight away from me although I stayed with my head nestled into the collar of his shirt and his hand still raked into my hair.
<
br /> ‘While you were gone, I read something,’ I said slowly. I didn’t know whether this was the right place to introduce it or not. ‘In the folklore book. About the lights.’
‘What the Alice lights?’ Phinn looked down at me. His whole face was relaxed, his eyes huge, sparkling with lights of their own. He’d got his boots up on the bed, but I didn’t have the heart to reprimand him, not when he looked like he was modelling for a soft furnishing warehouse.
‘Yep. This is Yorkshire,’ I said.
‘Um, yes.’ He held up a hand. ‘Been here a while now, think I’d have spotted it being Cornwall.’
‘Alice, Phinn.’ I coughed again. ‘We’ve been hearing it as A.L.I.C.E, because we’re not from round here. But it’s not.’
His eyes flickered, he was doing that thing he did, where he slotted ideas in, made connections. Link was right, it was phenomenal to watch him. ‘Allus,’ he said, after a moment. ‘They’re called the Allus Lights. As in …?’
‘As in “always”, Phinn. Dialect.’
A serious look. ‘Always is a long time, Molly,’ he said, quietly. ‘I’ve been promised “always” before.’
‘But never backed up by UAPs, though.’ I reached out a hand from under the covers and touched his face. ‘And I’m pretty sure the universe knows what it’s talking about.’
ARTICLE IN MILES TO GO MAGAZINE,
VALENTINE’S EDITION, FEB 2016.
The Allus Lights of Riverdale
– by Molly Gilchrist and Dr Phinn Baxter
Riverdale is a fairly typical North Yorkshire village, farmworkers’ cottages, farmhouses, medieval bridge … and mysterious lights in the sky. Not only are the lights mysterious, but, in the words of Jack Edwards, in his Tales from an Ageless Village, ‘they can only be seen by two people at any one time’. Two people who, so the story goes, are destined to be together ‘allus’ in Yorkshire dialect, always.
The lights have been seen and documented since the eighteenth century, the first recorded sighting being in 1769 when a local farmer, writing to a friend in London, told of ‘a circlet of lights, as if the lamps of God shone forth, witnessed by myself and Ellen, who was in the yard at that time’. Whether he and Ellen got together after the event is unrecorded but, given the number of subsequent sightings followed by the wedding of the observers, it has to be a possibility!
Jack Edwards goes on to list several couples of his own acquaintance who have come together either during a sighting or as a result of separately seeing the Allus Lights and – at the end of his book he lets the reader in on a little secret – that he and his own wife, Betty, saw the lights together one Christmas Eve, after they’d attended Midnight Mass in the local church. ‘No one else even looked up,’ he says, ‘it was like the Star of Bethlehem and all its attendants danced there beneath the clouds for our eyes only.’ Jack and Betty were married the following Christmas, having seen the lights several more times during their courtship, ‘to make sure we knew’, as Jack says.
Molly Gilchrist is a regular contributor to the magazine and her new book, Riding for the Weak and Feeble is released in March.
Phinn Baxter is another regular contributor, a lecturer in astrophysics and presenter of BBC Four’s The Science behind the Fiction.
They live in what they call ‘a shambling farmhouse’ in Riverdale, North Yorkshire and are expecting their first baby very soon. They really hope the story of the Allus Lights is true, because their two best friends have just seen ‘something’ in the sky.
About the Author
Jane was born in Devon and now lives in Yorkshire. She has five children, four cats and two dogs. She works in a local school and also teaches creative writing. Jane is a member of the Romantic Novelists’ Association and has a first-class honours degree in creative writing.
Jane writes comedies which are often described as ‘quirky’. How I Wonder What You Are is Jane’s sixth Choc Lit novel. Her UK debut, Please don’t stop the music, won the 2012 Romantic Novel of the Year and the Romantic Comedy Novel of the Year Awards from the Romantic Novelists’ Association.
Jane’s Choc Lit novels are: Please don’t stop the music, Star Struck, Hubble Bubble, Vampire State of Mind, Falling Apart and How I Wonder What You Are.
For more information on Jane visit
www.janelovering.co.uk
www.twitter.com/janelovering
More Choc Lit
From Jane Lovering
Please don’t stop the music
Book 1 in the Yorkshire Romances
Winner of the 2012 Best Romantic Comedy Novel of the Year
Winner of the 2012 Romantic Novel of the Year
How much can you hide?
Jemima Hutton is determined to build a successful new life and keep her past a dark secret. Trouble is, her jewellery business looks set to fail – until enigmatic Ben Davies offers to stock her handmade belt buckles in his guitar shop and things start looking up, on all fronts.
But Ben has secrets too. When Jemima finds out he used to be the front man of hugely successful Indie rock band Willow Down, she wants to know more. Why did he desert the band on their US tour? Why is he now a semi-recluse?
And the curiosity is mutual – which means that her own secret is no longer safe …
Visit www.choc-lit.com for more details including the first two chapters and reviews or visit the store where you purchased How I Wonder What You Are.
Star Struck
Book 2 in the Yorkshire Romances
Our memories define us – don’t they?
And Skye Threppel lost most of hers in a car crash that stole the lives of her best friend and fiancé. It’s left scars, inside and out, which have destroyed her career and her confidence.
Skye hopes a trip to the wide dusty landscapes of Nevada – and a TV convention offering the chance to meet the actor she idolises – will help her heal. But she bumps into mysterious sci-fi writer Jack Whitaker first. He’s a handsome contradiction – cool and intense, with a wild past.
Jack has enough problems already. He isn’t looking for a woman with self-esteem issues and a crush on one of his leading actors. Yet he’s drawn to Skye.
An instant rapport soon becomes intense attraction, but Jack fears they can’t have a future if Skye ever finds out about his past …
Will their memories tear them apart, or can they build new ones together?
Visit www.choc-lit.com for more details including the first two chapters and reviews or visit the store where you purchased How I Wonder What You Are.
Vampire State of Mind
Book 1 in the Otherworlders
Jessica Grant knows vampires only too well. She runs the York Council tracker programme making sure that Otherworlders are all where they should be, keeps the filing in order and drinks far too much coffee.
To Jess, vampires are annoying and arrogant and far too sexy for their own good, particularly her ex-colleague, Sil, who’s now in charge of Otherworld York. When a demon turns up and threatens not just Jess but the whole world order, she and Sil are forced to work together.
But then Jess turns out to be the key to saving the world, which puts a very different slant on their relationship.
The stakes are high. They are also very, very pointy and Jess isn’t afraid to use them – even on the vampire she’s rather afraid she’s falling in love with …
Visit www.choc-lit.com for more details including the first two chapters and reviews or visit the store where you purchased How I Wonder What You Are.
Hubble Bubble
Book 3 in the Yorkshire Romances
Be careful what you wish for …
Holly Grey only took up witchery to keep her friend out of trouble – and now she’s knee-deep in hassle, in the form of apocalyptic weather, armed men, midwifery … and a sarcastic Welsh journalist.
Kai has been drawn to darkest Yorkshire by his desire to find out who he really is. What he hadn’t bargained on was getting caught up in amateur magic and dealing with a
bunch of women who are trying really hard to make their dreams come true.
Together they realise that getting what you wish for is sometimes just a matter of knowing what it is you want …
Visit www.choc-lit.com for more details including the first two chapters and reviews or visit the store where you purchased How I Wonder What You Are.
Falling Apart
Book 2 in the Otherworlders
In the mean streets of York, the stakes just got higher – and even pointier.
Jessica Grant liaises with Otherworlders for York Council so she knows that falling in love with a vampire takes a leap of faith. But her lover Sil, the City Vampire in charge of Otherworld York, he wouldn’t run out on her, would he? He wouldn’t let his demon get the better of him. Or would he?
Sil knows there’s a reason for his bad haircut, worse clothes and the trail of bleeding humans in his wake. If only he could remember exactly what he did before someone finds him and shoots him on sight.
With her loyalties already questioned for defending zombies, the Otherworlders no one cares about, Jess must choose which side she’s on, either help her lover or turn him in. Human or Other? Whatever she decides, there’s a high price to pay – and someone to lose.
Visit www.choc-lit.com for more details including the first two chapters and reviews or visit the store where you purchased How I Wonder What You Are.
Introducing Choc Lit
We’re an independent publisher creating
a delicious selection of fiction.
Where heroes are like chocolate – irresistible!
Quality stories with a romance at the heart.
See our selection here:
www.choc-lit.com
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