by Fay Keenan
Kate stepped forward and gently placed a hand on Harry’s forearm. ‘I’m so sorry, Harry. It can’t be easy, I’m sure, coming to the realisation that children aren’t going to be a part of your life. I’m sorry that it meant your relationship ended, too.’
Harry looked up at her after a moment or two and gave a smile. ‘To be honest, I think we’d probably have gone our separate ways sooner or later. We just sped up the process. Looking back on it, it was for the best. After all, if we hadn’t been through what we had, I’d probably still be doing eighty-hour weeks in the City, working myself into the ground for investors who couldn’t give a shit. At least, this way, I’m in charge of my life, now. And the shop has been great therapy in itself.’
‘You seem very settled here,’ Kate said. ‘And the place is a real sanctuary. I’ve heard so many people talking about it when I’ve been out and about in the town.’
Harry smiled more broadly. ‘That’s good to know.’ He put his mug back on the shop counter. ‘I suppose I’d better stop baring my soul and get back to painting the skirting boards.’
Kate still wanted to linger, to show just how touched she was that Harry had chosen to confide in her, but the moment for that had passed, it seemed. Putting her own mug down on the counter, too, she walked back to her paint tray and carried on. Her heart was still thumping, but as she began to cover the walls with regular strokes from the roller, she felt herself calming once more. Painting, for her, was turning into a kind of therapy.
‘You said you were missing your sons?’ Harry asked. He was obviously keen to deflect attention from the conversation they’d just had.
Kate took a deep breath. ‘If I’m being honest… yes, I am, terribly. I also can’t help wondering if coming back to live with me after three weeks in Florida is going to be one huge let down. You know, back to the rules and routines. I’ve always been the one who’s the “fun police” in the relationship, and I think that’s not going to change any time soon now Phil and I are divorced.’
‘I’m sure that’s not true,’ Harry said, smiling at her. Kate felt something inside her flutter when he did. He did have a lovely and infectious smile. ‘You seem, er, pretty fun to me.’
‘You need to get out more!’ Kate laughed. ‘You’ve been spending too much time in this place.’
‘Tricky not to, as a business owner in the high season,’ Harry said. ‘You’re kind of chained to a place when the sun shines so you can make it through the leaner winter months.’
‘You open six days a week?’
‘And Sunday mornings in tourist season.’
‘Being self-employed is a bit of a slog,’ Kate agreed, ‘and I’ve only been doing it for a couple of weeks!’
‘But your work is much more physical than mine,’ Harry said. ‘Which reminds me, I can’t believe I haven’t asked before now, but what did you do before you decided to paint walls for a living?’
‘Nothing like this!’ Kate laughed. ‘I worked in an estate agent’s office. Admin and writing the copy for the houses mainly. That wasn’t so physically demanding, but looking after the needs of three feral boys is pretty hard work at times, physically and mentally. Especially dragging the washing up and down stairs.’
‘I can imagine!’ Harry said. ‘I was one of three boys, too. At least that means with me out of the child rearing picture, the family name continues with them.’ For a second, he sounded desolate, but then moved swiftly on. ‘Now, what do we have left to do?’
‘Another coat tomorrow morning and it should be perfect,’ Kate said. She stepped back and looked appraisingly at the much fresher wall in front of her. ‘Though I say so myself, this blue was such a lovely choice,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘It’s going to look like your wonderful mahogany shelves are resting on an endless sky.’
‘You’re right,’ Harry said. He put down his brush and stepped back so that he was right next to her where she stood, admiring their efforts. ‘It’s the perfect colour.’
The silence that descended between them was companionable but laced with something else that Kate couldn’t quite identify. She suddenly felt very aware of Harry standing next to her, of his slightly more rapid breathing and raised body temperature from painting, and his paint-splattered but lightly tanned arms in the tatty polo shirt and shorts that he’d changed into to help her finish the walls in time for Artemis Bane’s visit. Glancing sideways, she also saw that he had paint flecks in his hair.
‘You really ought to have put a cap on to paint,’ she said, turning fully towards him with a smile. ‘It’s going to take a while to get that colour washed out of your hair.’ Unthinkingly, she reached out a hand and touched one of the larger flecks of blue paint that had settled on the side of his head. As her fingertips made contact, she felt an incredible urge to slide her hand upwards, and to run it through his hair.
Kate could feel Harry’s hair tickling her palm as he leaned, seemingly instinctively, into her touch. It was a touch that suddenly felt much more like a caress as she ran her hand through his dark hair which was flecked with strands of grey as well as the blue paint. ‘You’re going to need to give it a good wash tonight,’ she said, her voice breathier than she’d expected it to be.
‘Right,’ Harry murmured. Kate’s heart skipped in her chest as she felt him raise a hand to cover hers. ‘I’ll be sure to do that.’ As if he didn’t want to frighten her off, he slowly drew her closer to him, until her hand was resting on the nape of his neck.
‘You’ve got a few splatters of blue yourself,’ he said softly. He raised his other hand to her forehead. ‘Here,’ he murmured, brushing a thumb over the laughter lines at the side of her eyes. ‘And here,’ this time along the curve of her cheekbone, ‘and here,’ as he traced a fingertip under her chin, raising her eyes to his until she felt her gaze melting into his intense expression.
‘Harry…’ she whispered. ‘What are we doing?’
‘Checking very thoroughly for paint stains,’ he said. And then he kissed her.
19
‘Oh God, Kate, I’m so sorry.’ Harry broke away from her gently, a few moments later. ‘I don’t know what came over me.’ He gave a very nervous laugh and looked down at his paint-splattered hands.
Kate, her lips still tingling from a most unexpected kiss that she hadn’t exactly ducked away from, gave an equally nervous smile. ‘No harm done,’ she said, trying to inject a brisk note into her voice as though she hadn’t responded to him with all of the enthusiasm of a water-starved marathon runner. ‘I never knew that painting a wall could be so seductive!’ She glanced at the oversized clock on the far wall of the shop. It was past eight o’clock and she suddenly felt as though every bone in her body ached. Realising that between Tom and Aidan’s house and the bookshop she’d effectively worked a twelve-hour day, she wasn’t surprised.
‘Well, I think I really ought to call it a night anyway,’ she said. She reached for the plastic bag that would keep her roller and brush in decent condition until the next time and gestured for Harry to hand her his paintbrush. As their hands touched, she felt another fizzing tingle. This time, though, she was determined to ignore it. As far as she was concerned, it was entirely too soon to be feeling those kinds of feelings for anyone else. Especially not someone who lived on the other side of the country to where she knew she had to return. She’d never been one for holiday romances.
‘Er, same time tomorrow?’ she said as she moved her painting equipment and dust sheets to the back room of the shop.
‘If that’s all right,’ Harry said, appearing to make himself busy with collecting up their mugs. ‘Look, Kate… do we need to talk about what just happened?’
‘Honestly, Harry, I think it’s better that we just move on and I finish this job ready for your world-famous author to come and trash the place again, don’t you?’
Harry, to his credit, after looking momentarily chagrined, clearly thought it was better to agree. ‘Absolutely,’ he replied. ‘I mean, it’s important that
we gave Artemis a fresh canvas to ruin, if his reputation is anything to go by!’
As Kate left the shop, she couldn’t entirely ignore the thump of her heart when she relived the incredibly exciting and definitely pleasurable sensation of Harry’s lips upon hers. But to go down that route, even for a moment more, would take her to places that she definitely wasn’t ready to go to, no matter what her heart and her tingling mouth were telling her.
Returning to Tom and Aidan’s house, she suddenly remembered that she had left her phone on the kitchen table, rather than having taken it to Harry’s shop. As she tapped the button, she was shocked to see nine missed calls from her ex-husband, Phil, and a series of increasingly concerned sounding WhatsApp messages. Swiping the screen, eyes urgently scanning the messages, her heart began to beat hard and frantically in her chest for an entirely different reason than it had when Harry had kissed her. As soon as she had got herself up to speed, she made a call.
‘Phil? Yeah, sorry, I left my phone at home when I went out to do another decorating job. Have you managed to track him down yet? Have you checked with Kieron’s parents? What about Joe’s? Okay, okay, I didn’t mean to teach you how to suck eggs. When was the last time you saw him? No, I spoke to him last night, but he didn’t say he had any plans with anyone else today.’
For a moment, Kate paused as she remembered how distraught her eldest son had been on the phone when he’d still been in Florida. Although she’d spoken to him since they’d all got home a couple of days ago, and he’d seemed better, a horrible sick feeling started in the pit of her stomach and worked its way up her throat. She swallowed hard in an attempt to quell the rising nausea. What if…? No. That was stupid thinking; Corey had been upset but surely she’d have known, as his mother if he was considering doing something… drastic. She shook her head and tried to zone back into what Phil was saying.
‘Yes, of course I’ll let you know if he phones me,’ she said. ‘Make sure that you keep me posted as well. Do Will and Tom know that we’re concerned? Okay, it’s probably a good thing that you haven’t mentioned anything to them as yet. But if he’s not home by ten o’clock I think we need to call the police.’
With a trembling hand, Kate pressed the end call button and, finding that her knees would no longer hold her up, she sank down onto one of the kitchen chairs. All the aches and pains that she had been feeling as a result of so much painting and decorating now came a sharp second to the fear and panic that was coursing through her veins. Corey, her least streetwise, kind, quiet, sensitive sixteen-year-old son hadn’t come home and neither she nor his father had any clue where he might be.
The sharp ping of her phone signalling a new message made her heart beat even faster. Slumping back in disappointment when she realised it was a message from Harry, rather than Corey, she was at least glad for the slight distraction for a few seconds.
Again, so sorry for how things ended tonight. Just wanted to make sure you made it home all right.
Kate dithered about sending Harry a reply to fill him in on the situation with Corey, but decided it wasn’t really something she could share with him. After all, they might be developing a friendship (kiss notwithstanding), but she didn’t really want to inflict her parental woes on him. Especially not after he’d disclosed to her what he had that evening about his own inability to have children. Anyway, with a bit of luck Corey would be home safe and sound in his own bed by ten o’clock and she could stop worrying.
Although the last thing on her mind was food, it did occur to her that she hadn’t eaten since a very early lunch. Mindlessly throwing together a cheese and pickle sandwich, she spent the next half an hour ringing through to Corey’s phone and cursing each time she got voicemail. Corey was terrible at answering his phone at the best of times, joking that it was only his mother who bothered to ring him anyway and everybody else just sent him a WhatsApp. She supposed he was probably right, but it just irritated her that even though he knew this, he still refused to pick up.
It wasn’t often now that Kate missed her marriage; but sitting here at a kitchen table in a house that wasn’t her own, completely in the dark as to the whereabouts of her eldest son, she suddenly desperately wanted to feel safe, reassuring arms around her. She wasn’t one for crying, but as the possibilities of what might have happened to Corey raced unfiltered through her mind, she felt the unwelcome prickle of tears.
20
Shit. Why had he been so stupid? Harry felt a hot flush of absolute mortification spreading not only over his cheeks but also through his entire body. He felt like a hormone-crazed sixteen-year-old who’d just had his face slapped at a party for coming on too strong. Just kissing a woman like that had never been his style, and he couldn’t quite get his head around why he’d done it. It must have been something about his perceived sense of intimacy in that moment – he and Kate had discussed so many things in the time they’d spent painting the shop’s walls; it was a situation where, not needing to make eye contact, the conversation had just seemed to flow easily between them. He’d been lulled into a familiarity that, perhaps, wasn’t really there.
And yet, Harry thought, she did kiss me back. Admittedly for only a few moments before she’d broken away, but she had responded to him, her lips parting in the soft, tentative way of nearly all first kisses. Kisses that were wanted, desired, craved. His presumption hadn’t been undesired or overly forceful, he was sure of that. It was just that way they’d left things, as if both of them couldn’t quite believe what had just happened. But was that so surprising, under the circumstances? Perhaps it was because Harry knew that Kate was only in Willowbury for the length of the summer that he’d taken the risk. Should she have rejected him outright, he’d only have had to have seen her again for the duration of the decorating job, and then she’d be out of his life, out of Willowbury and back in Cambridgeshire. Gone from his life as quickly as she’d entered it. But there was a part of him that kicked against that notion, now they’d got to know each other. His natural sense of pragmatism made his head tell him that a long-distance relationship was no good, at his time of life, that it would be unworkable to try to pursue anything other than a friendship, but his heart, even after that one soft kiss, was suggesting exactly the opposite.
He chided himself gently as he loaded the two mugs into the dishwasher in his flat. It had been a few decent conversations and a single kiss; hardly a secure basis upon which to start making future plans. He’d obviously been on his own too long; celibacy didn’t agree with him, that was for sure, if he could massively overthink one little kiss to this extent. He’d better ring Jack and suggest both of them have a night out in Stavenham, or, even better to purge this romantic malaise, head up to Bristol for a proper session. Cricket, beers and bars was definitely the way to go to purge all thoughts of romance. Not for the first time, he felt lucky that he didn’t have any long-term ties to anyone else; after all, he could just up and go out if he wanted to; he was a free agent. Sometimes, caught up in the sleepy, quirky atmosphere of Willowbury, he forgot that. The fact that this train of thought was completely the opposite path to the easy intimacy that had sprung up between himself and Kate was something that didn’t even occur to him as he texted Jack, suggesting a drink sometime next week when Gracie had gone back to her mother.
But it was no good, even once he’d firmed up a night out with Jack, his mind kept drifting back to the kiss. And what it would have been like to have properly taken Kate in his arms, whisked her upstairs, out of the paint-splattered overalls and into his bed. He couldn’t deny that the attraction he felt for her was a strong one. Talking to her, and kissing her, felt so different to anything he’d ever felt before; the women he’d had relationships with in the past had been mostly in the same field of work, as driven and successful as him, carefully versed in the world of high City finance and perfectly poised in all things. He’d always been more of a fancier of the Natashas of this world than the Bridget Joneses, a lover of order, elegance and financial
and emotional restraint. Kate, while certainly guarded and arguably emotionally restrained after her experiences of marriage and divorce, had a braveness about her that he found intriguing. A mother of three boys, throwing caution to the winds to start a new business and find a new home, even though there were huge odds against her, made him curious, made him feel an attraction that stirred him more than anything had in a long, long time.
But there was no point in thinking that way, he reminded himself again; Kate would be gone when September arrived, and he just didn’t have it in him to commute back east once in a blue moon to see her. The shop, while running well, couldn’t stretch to another full-time member of staff just yet, although he had a wonderful lady called Joan who covered a couple of afternoons a week so he could do his accounts and order stock in peace, so he was needed here for the foreseeable future. Cursing himself for overthinking everything, he settled down in front of the television to catch up on the latest episodes of the crime drama he’d got addicted to. Something about the emotionally remote detective in the snows of Sweden appealed to him, right now. Had he known the turmoil that Kate was going through, sat alone on the other side of Willowbury, as she waited for news of her eldest son, he might have been compelled to rethink his options.
21
It seemed an age that Kate sat there, alone at the kitchen table, willing her phone to ring. With every passing moment, the urge to just get in the car and drive back to Cambridgeshire intensified; that pull of the invisible umbilical cord growing stronger and stronger as the moments ticked by with still no word from Corey. She’d rung Lorna shortly after speaking to Phil, just in case Corey had headed back for a look at the old house. Lorna hadn’t seen him, but promised to keep her eyes open, and offered to go out and look for him, if he didn’t turn up soon. Kate felt hugely grateful to have a friend in her corner.