by Fay Keenan
‘Hi,’ Harry said, pausing to acknowledge them. Sam hadn’t even said anything, just grinned in the man’s direction but it seemed to be enough to make Harry pause. ‘Beautiful evening, isn’t it?’
‘Lovely,’ Florence agreed. ‘And this is a great spot to appreciate it.’
‘Certainly is.’ Harry seemed a little bit nervous and out of place now he’d actually stopped, and Kate wished she had something she could say to continue the small talk. She felt completely out of practise when it came to talking to new people; she’d been so entrenched in her comfort zone in Cambridge, being out of it felt nerve-wracking. Before she could try to come up with something to contribute about the niceness of the summer weather, Harry had spoken again.
‘I’m glad I’ve run into you again,’ he said, looking over at Kate. ‘I was hoping to catch you at some point in the next week or so.’
‘Oh, have you got your dry-cleaning bill?’ Kate said. ‘Let me have it, and I’m more than happy to reimburse you, as I said.’
Harry looked vaguely discomfited. ‘No, no, it’s not that at all,’ he said. ‘I did say there was no need to worry about that.’
‘Oh, okay,’ Kate said. ‘What was it, then?’
‘Well,’ Harry said, taken aback by her directness, it seemed. ‘You know you mentioned about being a painter and decorator when you came into the shop? I was wondering if you’d be able to give me a quote for a fast touch-up.’
Kate burst out laughing. ‘I’m sure you didn’t mean that quite as it sounded.’ Her laughter and Harry’s double entendre finally seemed to break the awkwardness, and as Sam and Florence joined in the laughter, they all seemed to relax.
‘Not exactly,’ Harry conceded, grinning.
‘Have a seat, mate, and tell Kate all about it while I get some more drinks in,’ Sam said. ‘Florence, can you give me a hand?’
‘Sure,’ Florence stood up, surprisingly light-footed for a heavily pregnant woman. ‘Same again, Kate?’ she asked.
‘Please,’ Kate replied.
Sam took the drink requests and he and Florence headed off to the bar.
A slightly uncomfortable silence descended between Kate and Harry as they both seemed to be contemplating what the hell to say next. Why am I finding this so difficult? Kate thought. Years of making small talk with people she barely knew on the school run should have prepared her for talking to a man over a pub table in the sun, but she found herself struggling to think about what to say.
‘So, what was it you wanted me to, er, touch-up?’ she eventually blurted out.
Harry smiled, and something inside Kate fluttered. She tried to ignore it. There was no way she was ready for any kind of fluttering to occur.
‘The bookshop, of course.’ He smiled more broadly. ‘You said you might have time to quote while you were in the area, and I was wondering if you would have time to actually do the job before the blessed Artemis Bane descends for his book signing. He’s coming in two weeks’ time, and I really want to make the place look as good as it can for such a prestigious event.’
‘Even working every evening between now and then, it’ll be tight,’ Kate said, then grinned. ‘You don’t ask for much, do you?’
Harry sighed. ‘It’s too good a gig for me and the shop to pass up. He’ll bring in more in one night than I usually take in a month, so it’s more than worth the effort.’
‘I guess,’ Kate said dubiously. ‘But I might need you to muck in a bit. I’m just a one man, er woman, band at the moment.’
Harry smiled. ‘I’m more than happy to help. Does that mean you’ll come and take a look?’
Kate smiled. ‘Of course. You do know I’m just starting out, though? You could probably get someone local who’d do it faster.’
‘Are you trying to do yourself out of a job?’ Harry asked. His eyes crinkled a little at the edges.
‘Well, no,’ Kate said, ‘I’m just trying to put you in the picture. This is a new career choice for me, and while I’ve painted a lot of houses for friends and relatives, your shop would be my first professional job.’
‘Honestly, I really don’t mind that,’ Harry said. ‘I don’t have a clue about colour, and I just want it to look tidier than it currently does.’ He looked a little foxed, suddenly. ‘Also, I don’t have that much of a budget for it…’
‘… so my lack of previous client testimonials might be good for you, in terms of what I’m likely to charge,’ Kate said wryly.
‘Well, something like that, yes.’
There was a pause between them, but this time Kate didn’t feel awkward. Something about Harry’s open face and attractive smile put her at ease. Just for a moment, she felt as though she really was on holiday, and as the faint scent of the blossom from the rambling roses on the pub’s walls reached her, that sense of relaxation intensified. She felt lighter, somehow, and definitely happier.
As Sam and Florence returned to the table with fresh drinks, though, Kate came back to Harry’s proposition. ‘Well, how about we do a deal, then? I’m up to my eyes in paint for my brother Aidan’s house. If you think you could muck in on your Sunday afternoon when the shop’s closed, I’ll try to get it done in good time for Artemis Bane’s visit. I can come in after you close of an evening and do an hour or two each night, and whatever I don’t manage to finish by next Sunday, you can help me finish off then. That way, I can keep costs down and you won’t have to close while I’m doing the work.’
‘If you’re okay with that, it sounds great,’ Harry said. ‘And, of course, I’m more than happy to help out where I can.’
‘It’s a deal.’ Kate stuck out her hand, and Harry shook it. ‘How about I come over tomorrow evening and you can show me what you want, and the colours?’
‘Sounds great,’ Harry said. He took a long gulp of the pint of cider Sam had bought him. ‘And how much will it cost?’
‘I can measure up tomorrow and give you a figure for my labour, and then it’s just a case of adding in the paint on top of that, unless you’ve already bought that?’
Harry laughed. ‘I wasn’t even thinking about repainting it until I got the email from Artemis’s publisher asking me to host the event, so colours haven’t crossed my mind!’
‘Well, we can take a look tomorrow and perhaps I can make some suggestions,’ Kate said.
‘Now that really does sound like a good idea.’ Harry took another sip of his pint. ‘I’m not very adventurous when it comes to colour, and my inclination is to paint it all magnolia, but I’m sure you can come up with something a little more creative.’
‘Definitely,’ Kate said.
As Sam and Harry chatted, Kate was content just to sit and listen. For the first time since she’d moved into Aidan and Tom’s house, she felt the stress lifting. Long may it last.
16
After Harry had left them to it, and the three of them had enjoyed some wonderful food at the pub, Kate said goodnight to Florence and Sam. She’d enjoyed seeing them, and it had been nice to chat to Harry as well. She took a long, hot bath, trying to unknot some of the muscles she’d been using since she started redecorating.
Just as she was getting out, her mobile rang. Suppressing a flash of irritation that it always happened when she needed to relax, she smiled when she saw Corey’s name appearing on screen. She’d intended to call her sons before she went to bed, as the time difference meant that they’d be well into their day.
‘Hey,’ she said as she swiped the phone and held it to her ear.
‘Hey, Mum,’ Corey replied.
Immediately, Kate’s mum radar (her mum-tenna as she’d often joked to Phil in the old days) perked up. There was something, even in those two words, in Corey’s voice, that immediately concerned her.
‘Have you had a good day?’ Kate asked. She was tempted to jump right in and ask him what the matter was, but despite what she’d learned about having three boys in the house, with Corey it was often better to tread carefully as he tended to clam up if she blunder
ed on in too soon.
‘Not bad.’ Another pause.
Kate imagined her son, still in the lanky stage of his adolescence, legs too long and feet too big, sprawled, perhaps, over a sofa or a bed. His blonde hair, which was the same as hers and Sam’s, needed cutting before the school holidays ended.
‘What have you been up to?’
‘Nothing much.’
‘What, with all of the Everglades to explore? You must have been up to something.’ God, this was going to be harder than she’d thought. She tried another tack. ‘How are your brothers?’
‘Annoying.’
No change there, then. ‘Was there something you wanted?’
‘Not really.’
‘Just to hear your mum nagging you from a few thousand miles away, then?’
There was a laugh, or it could have been a sob, at the other end of the phone. ‘Something like that.’
Kate’s heart ached, and she wished she could just jump in the car and go and see her eldest son face to face. After what felt like an eternity, Corey spoke again.
‘Look, Mum… it’s not working out.’
Kate’s aching heart sank even further. ‘In what way, lovely? Aren’t you enjoying the holiday?’
‘I don’t want to talk about it over the phone. Can I come and stay with you when we get back?’
‘Oh, Corey…’ Kate sighed. ‘I know this is all really odd, but give it a bit of time, okay? Dad feels like he’s missed out on a lot because of what happened, and he really wants to spend some time with you this summer to make up for that.’
‘Yeah, right.’
‘Have you spoken to him about how you’re feeling?’
‘No way, Mum. He doesn’t give a toss.’
‘I’m sure that’s not true.’ Kate felt a real stirring of unease at Corey’s words, and the urge to see him face to face hit her again. ‘Why do you think that?’
‘Because he’s too wrapped up in Jennifer and the new baby to even remember that I exist.’
Kate nearly dropped the phone. ‘The new what?’
‘Oh, shit. Mum, I’m so sorry.’ Corey’s voice was absolutely mortified. ‘I wasn’t supposed to tell you until it was official.’
‘When’s it due?’ Kate asked numbly.
‘I dunno,’ Corey replied, with characteristic teenage boy ignorance of the actual details. ‘Some time in February, I think.’
Despite the divorce, despite the fact that she and Phil had been growing apart for years, and that she’d agreed without a struggle to separate, it still hurt. Emotions, it seemed, were not so easy to walk away from, even with that amount of water under the bridge. A lump rose in her throat and the wild mushroom risotto she’d eaten at the pub was threatening to make a reappearance. Struggling to stay in the moment for Corey, not wanting to burden him with her own feelings when he was obviously having a hard time himself, she forced herself to speak. So that was why Jennifer had been looking so peaky when I dropped the boys off, Kate thought.
‘I’ll give Dad a ring in the morning,’ Kate said, glad that, to her ears at least, her voice sounded normal. ‘See if he’s happy, when you all get back home, to send you over to me for a few days.’ Then, she had a thought. ‘What about your brothers?’
‘They’re okay,’ Corey said. ‘They love it out here, and they’ve stuffed themselves stupid on junk food and Coke every day.’
Nothing new there, then, Kate thought. Corey, as the eldest, always took things harder than his siblings.
‘Let me talk to Dad in the morning, and I’ll see what I can do.’
‘Thanks, Mum.’ Another pause. ‘Love you.’
Kate flushed with pleasure at her son’s uncharacteristic admission of affection. ‘Love you too. Goodnight, Corey Dorey.’
She heard a laugh on the other end of the line, which made her heart flip with love and relief. ‘Don’t call me that.’
As they ended the call, Kate remained sitting on the side of the bath, where she’d sank when Corey had revealed the news about Jennifer’s pregnancy. It hurt more than it should have. Such obvious evidence of her ex-husband’s new life stung, even though she wouldn’t change what had happened, not now anyway. Feeling a wave of self-pity washing over her, she thought for a moment about going next door to share the news with Sam and Florence, but then decided against it. They had enough on their minds at the moment; they didn’t need her adding to it. She’d never found it easy to confide in people, anyway, and needed some time to mull this new information over before she spoke about it. Not to mention that she felt even more worried about Corey, now. He was obviously taking the news hard, and she wished she was there to reassure him. She’d definitely ring Phil in the morning when she’d had some time to think and had slept on it. She didn’t want to be the kind of hysterical ex-wife who spent her time haranguing and screaming about everything that happened. A new baby was a big deal, though, and she was pretty pissed off that Phil hadn’t told her the news himself; that she’d had to find out second-hand from Corey, who was obviously struggling. This was more than just a conversation about paying for school shoes.
As she fell into bed a little time later, she wondered, not for the first time, about the shift in emotional dynamics a divorce brought. Years of marriage, of knowing each other’s moods, reactions and triggers, counted for very little when it was over, it seemed. Or maybe it was just her marriage. Drifting, later, into sleep, she welcomed the temporary relief from her buzzing thoughts.
17
The next evening, having managed, finally, to get hold of Phil on the phone and have a brief conversation about Corey’s state of mind, Kate felt somewhat better. Phil had promised to keep an eye on their eldest son, and to try to spend some more time with him while they were all under the one roof in Florida. He hadn’t mentioned Jennifer’s pregnancy, though, which left Kate feeling as though things were a little unfinished. Why would he have told the boys, but not said anything to her? He must know that one of them would eventually let it slip to her. Perhaps it was a conversation he’d broach when they were back on the same continent. The omission unsettled her, but she was far more concerned about the children she had, rather than any new additions.
More cheeringly, after another day of hefting furniture back into place from where she’d moved it yesterday, Kate looked back and surveyed her efforts in the living room. It’s gone surprisingly well, she thought as she looked at the walls, now the mellow shade of Farrow and Ball’s Purbeck Stone, a beautiful colour reminiscent of the rocks of the Jurassic Coast. When Aidan and Tom had shown her their colour choices for the house, she’d been secretly relieved; the thought of painting the whole place magnolia, or, at the other extreme, a series of outrageous ‘statement’ colours for each separate wall, had filled her with dread. But while Aidan would have been more than happy for her to paint it beige everywhere, Tom had taken a more elegant view, and she had to admit, he had an eye for colour. If the acting work ever dried up, perhaps she could take him on as an interior design consultant. She smiled at the thought; she was barely even up and running as a painter and decorator herself: she certainly shouldn’t be thinking about a business partner just yet.
She was just slumping down onto the squashy pale grey sofa, and thinking fondly that when Sam and Florence’s baby came along Tom and Aidan might have cause to regret that choice of colour, when she remembered she was supposed to be going to see Harry and give him a quote for painting the bookshop. Springing up again, she dashed upstairs and checked herself over in the bathroom mirror to make sure the Purbeck Stone hadn’t crept under her decorator’s overalls, squirted a bit of deodorant and ran a brush through her thick shoulder-length blonde hair. She also gave her teeth a quick brush, just in case the raw onion in the salad she’d had for lunch still lingered. Since she hadn’t given Harry a precise time to come over, she hoped it wasn’t too late and he’d have shut up shop for the day.
Taking a brisk walk towards the High Street, she again noticed the quirkiness of
Willowbury. It made her smile that her strait-laced brother Sam had found a home here, not to mention Aidan. As she passed an archway that led into a small alcove of shops behind the High Street, she noticed a beautiful mural of a woman, bathed in moonlight, heading down to a lake. Amused, as well as impressed, she wondered if it was ever warm enough in Somerset to go skinny dipping. If there was ever a place to do it, she figured, Willowbury would be it.
Harry’s shop, she reflected as she drew closer, was hardly the archetype of a Willowbury ‘woo woo’ establishment, though. Vale Volumes, and its owner had both looked reassuringly normal on the occasions she’d encountered them. In her mind’s eye, before she got to the front door of the shop, she pictured Harry’s dark hair that was running to grey, and she remembered with a small flutter the turned down, deep blue eyes that crinkled up at the sides when he smiled. A moment later, as she entered Vale Volumes’ cool, welcoming space, she almost had cause to reconsider that thought. There, standing behind the counter, wearing what looked like the helmet of a medieval knight’s costume, combined with a rather startling red and black striped jersey, Harry looked like a cross between Denis the Menace and King Arthur, complete with a large replica Excalibur in his hand.
Kate couldn’t help but laugh as she drew closer and said what she hoped was a businesslike but brisk ‘Hello!’
Harry, obviously unaware that someone had walked in, owing to the lack of visibility from the helmet, jumped a mile and dropped the sword. It landed with a clatter on the varnished oak floorboards.
‘Sorry to startle you,’ Kate continued, smiling as Harry whipped off the helmet before ducking down to retrieve his dropped weapon. ‘I’ve just popped over to measure up and give you a quote for the painting.’
Harry smiled apologetically as he straightened back up. ‘Sorry about the strange get-up,’ he said as he put Excalibur onto the counter and then pulled the jersey over his head. His hair stuck up in all directions as he emerged, which he tried to remedy by rubbing a hand through it. ‘I was just trying out some of the props that I ordered for Artemis Bane’s book signing. Much as I loathe fancy dress, Bane’s publisher suggested I get some bits and bobs in to set the scene for when he does his reading. I’m hoping that it’ll be a scorcher that night and I’ll just be able to get away with placing them strategically around the shop, rather than actually having to wear them myself.’