Si trailed his fingertips lightly over Clarrie’s shoulder blades as he passed her chair. Reminding her he was there; calming her. It was the little things.
‘So how’s your bet going, Simon?’ Kath asked as they tucked into their puddings.
Clarrie frowned. ‘Do we have to talk about the bet in front of Greg? You could’ve asked Si that in the kitchen.’
‘Nah, I’ve been saving it up. Good conversation starter.’
‘My love life is not a conversation starter, Mother.’
‘It is now. So, young man? Are you winning?’
‘Not yet.’ Simon’s eyes twinkled at Clarrie. ‘I will though. We’re in third place at the moment but I’ve got a few aces left to play.’
‘How many matches left?’ Kath asked.
‘Another six.’
Greg was blinking at them as if they’d started speaking in tongues.
‘Does somebody want to tell me what you’re all going on about?’
Clarrie sighed. ‘Fine, I will. Me and Si are in a pub quiz team. He bet me if we win the League this year, I have to let him take me out on a date.’
‘Oh.’ Greg’s puzzled frown stayed put. ‘Can you not go on a date with him anyway?’
‘No.’
‘Sorry, I’m confused.’ He looked at Si. ‘If she doesn’t want to go out with you, why bet on it?’
‘Because she does want to really,’ Si said, carelessly demolishing his cheesecake. ‘She’s just weird.’
Greg turned his bewildered expression on Kath, who shrugged. ‘Yeah, he is right. Much as I hate to admit it about my own flesh and blood.’
‘Tell you what, shall I leave the room so you two can really get your teeth into insulting me?’ Clarrie said, glaring from Si to her mother.
‘It’s fine, we can do it just as well in front of you.’ Si put down his spoon for a moment to give her shoulders a squeeze. ‘Ah, stop sulking. You know we love you really, weirdo.’
‘I’ve told you before that you suck, right?’
Si shrugged and retrieved his arm so he could tackle the rest of his cheesecake.
‘Is it always like this?’ Greg asked Kath, looking slightly windswept.
‘Pretty much, with these two.’
Clarrie smiled. ‘Actually, we’re on best behaviour tonight. Ready to run yet?’
Greg chucked her an answering smile. ‘No, I think I’d like to stick around. I mean, if that’s all right with you.’
‘Course it is. Welcome to the family, Greg.’
*
At the end of the evening, Si abandoned his car in Kath’s drive until the next day and he and Clarrie set off walking the mile and a half back to The Bookshelf.
‘You know, we could’ve shared a taxi,’ she said as they made their way down the main street, straggled with honey-sandstone cottages that pressed together for support. ‘I can just about stretch to half a one.’
‘I’d rather walk,’ Si said, pulling her arm through his.
‘It’s four miles back to yours though.’
He shrugged. ‘Good exercise.’
Clarrie leant against him comfortably. ‘So what were you and my mum chatting about in the kitchen while I was playing nice with Greg?’
‘Here, let’s take the scenic route,’ he said, indicating a narrow country lane off to their right.
They turned down the little lane and walked in silence for a while, past the sleeping livestock and farm buildings, until they were far from traffic and streetlights. It was a rich, earthy silence, out in the country at night-time: alive and teeming.
‘What’re you being all secretive for then?’ she asked, whipping her voice through the quiet. ‘You weren’t talking about me, were you?’
‘Clar… we’ve always told each other stuff, haven’t we?’
‘Course.’
Si stopped walking and faced her. It was dark, but in the creamy glow of a security light attached to an old stone farmhouse she could just make out his soft brown eyes scanning her face.
‘Then how come you never told me your dad had an affair?’
Clarrie winced. Hard. So that’s what her mum had been revealing during their kitchen chat.
‘I never told anyone, did I?’ she mumbled, scuffing her shoe against the cracked tarmac. ‘Didn’t want… I thought it’d humiliate her. It was tough enough, getting her through. She was so out of it those few months after he left.’
‘I remember,’ Si said softly, taking her hand and massaging it with his thumb. ‘Poor little girl. I could’ve helped, you know.’
She snorted. ‘How? You were just a kid, Si.’
‘So were you a kid. So were we both.’ He tugged at her hand to pull her to him. ‘Come get your hug then, lass.’
He wrapped one arm round her shoulder blades, the other clasping the back of her head into his chest, and caressed her hair with his fingertips. She cuddled against him and inhaled the mix of scents that always meant Simon Dewhirst to her.
‘Thanks,’ she whispered.
‘Who was it? Someone we know?’
‘No,’ she said, squeezing out a tear. ‘Some twenty-one-year-old on his office’s graduate programme, the dirty old sod.’
‘Bloody hell! What happened, Clar?’
‘I came home from school and… Mum was out. Dad was in. And so was she, this girl – Chloe, that was her name.’ She let a little sob escape. ‘It was… my birthday, Si.’
‘Oh God, it wasn’t?’
‘My thirteenth. I was all excited, you know… rushed home…’ She gave in, shaking with sobs against him.
‘That bastard! I mean, I knew the man wasn’t winning any World’s Best Dad awards, but Jesus.’ She felt a sympathetic tear of Si’s drizzle into her scalp. ‘You didn’t… you know, catch him at it?’
‘Nearly, I think. I must’ve been home early, for some reason. Maybe our last lesson was cancelled or something. The two of them were in the living room on the settee, and they looked all sort of flustered when I walked in. She turned away to fiddle with something – I think she might’ve been buttoning her blouse.’ She snorted. ‘Dad took me to one side and told me Chloe had just come round to go over a project for work. “Better not say anything to Mum, princess, she might get the wrong idea.” Turning the charm on full blast. You know what he was like.’
‘What did you do?’
‘I said okay, fine. He seemed relieved. Then as soon as Mum came home, I told her everything.’
He nodded with satisfaction. ‘Good for you.’
‘Turned out it had been going on for months, Mum found the emails. So I got to spend my thirteenth birthday watching her throw his clothes out of their bedroom window. Dad went off somewhere to lick his wounds, and Mum—’ She choked back a sob. ‘Well, you remember.’
‘I remember,’ Si said softly.
After Kath’s first flush of anger had worn off, she’d retreated into a state of almost zombie-like catatonia. For months after her dad left, Clarrie felt like her mum was sleepwalking; going through the motions but never quite there. It was the point in her life when Clarrie had realised that adults were just as vulnerable and flawed as children. The point she’d had to grow up.
‘I wish you’d come to me,’ Si said. ‘You told us he just walked out.’
‘I know,’ she whispered. ‘Sorry.’
‘You know you don’t ever have to deal with stuff like that on your own, Clarrie. I can’t believe you never told me all this time.’
She choked on the tears threatening to take her speech. God, she’d already cried for this. Push it back…
‘Well, it was – Mum’s thing, wasn’t it?’ she said, fighting down the sobs. ‘I don’t think she’s ever told anyone about the affair, except maybe your mum.’ She angled damp eyes up to him. ‘Why’d she tell you now, Simon? It’s been nearly fourteen years.’
‘Because of you,’ he said, smiling. ‘She said it’d been rough on you. Affected you. Told me not to give up on you just yet.’
Clarrie sighed. ‘You need to though. I gave up on me years ago.’
‘Don’t talk like that.’ He pushed under her chin with one finger so he could look into her eyes. ‘What is it with you? One minute you’re all funny and confident, the next you’re putting yourself down.’
‘Wish I knew.’
His fingers brushed a strand of hair from her forehead with unconscious tenderness. ‘Don’t let knobheads like Paul do this to you, seriously. Don’t let him win.’
‘No one did it to me. I’m just… me. Sorry, Si. I’m just me, in the end.’
‘You are, aren’t you?’ He sighed. ‘Ask you a question, Clar?’
‘If you want.’
‘You ever get lonely, being you?’
Her throat convulsed with another sob. ‘All the time.’
‘Then don’t be.’ His voice was low; full of feeling. ‘You know you don’t have to be.’
‘Si—’
‘I mean it, Clarrie. I always did mean it, from the day I first asked you out.’
She managed a shaky smile. ‘Yeah, me and every other girl in town.’
‘No,’ he said, his tone sharp. ‘Not you and every other girl in town. There’d never have been any other girls if you’d said yes to me just one time.’
She looked up at him. He sounded almost angry.
‘But you… you always sounded so careless about it,’ she said in a faltering voice. ‘I thought you were teasing me, same as always.’
He brushed his thumb against her cheek, and his expression softened. ‘Well, I do like teasing you.’
His face, that handsome, familiar face, was different suddenly. The eyes, the mouth… his voice sounded different too. Sort of heavy. Sort of… sexy. He ran a fingernail along her collarbone, making her tremble.
‘Clarissa,’ he whispered. He leaned towards her, a kiss hanging on his parted lips, and for a second, just a second, she almost let it happen.
‘Si… please.’ She turned her face away. ‘Don’t. Don’t kiss me.’
‘You want to, don’t you?’
‘That… doesn’t matter. It’s a bad idea.’
‘Do you really not think we’re worth taking a chance on?’ he said in the same quiet voice, so different from his usual flirty, teasing tone. ‘We could make each other happy, you and me. I mean, I’d do my best to.’
‘You do make me happy. Just the way you are.’
‘What’re you so afraid of, kiddo?’
‘You want me to narrow it down to the top five?’ she said. ‘Okay then: enclosed spaces, clowns, uncomfortable social situations, pigeons and losing you. Not necessarily in that order.’
‘And you’re so certain that’s what’ll happen if we try to be more than just friends, are you? Because I’m bloody well not.’
‘No, I’m not certain. I’m not certain of anything. But it’s a risk, a big one.’ She gave a grim laugh. ‘That’s why I’ve decided to let fate make the decision for me, like you said.’
He shook his head. ‘You know, after twenty-two years I still don’t get you.’
‘Lovers come and go, Si, you should know that better than anyone. Friends you get to keep.’
‘Are friends and lovers mutually exclusive?’
‘One can kill the other. Relationships, romantic relationships – they change things between people. I’ve seen it happen, over and over. We both have.’
‘It doesn’t have to be that way, Clarrie,’ he said softly. ‘Not every relationship ends.’
‘But a lot do. Most of them, probably.’ She unwrapped his arms from around her. ‘Come on, we’d better get walking. It’ll be midnight by the time you get home at this rate.’
‘You ever going to stop doing that changing the subject thing?’
‘You ever going to stop talking about difficult stuff at me?’
‘Grown-up conversations have to happen sometimes, Clar. There’s things we have to confront, emotions to deal with. Life can’t be all cappuccino monkeys.’
‘Can’t it though?’
He looked down into her tear-trailed face and sighed. ‘Oh, all right then. Race you to that telegraph pole at the end of the road.’
She flashed him a grateful smile. ‘Thanks, Simon.’
‘On your marks, get set—’ But before he could finish she was racing ahead, letting the wind whip her hair around her cheeks and dry the salty drops.
15
‘Go on, Si, stick another on top,’ Clarrie said, shuffling the twenty-four pack of lager up her body to get a better grip.
Simon was unloading the boot of Dave’s mum’s Defender, borrowed for the weekend and crammed full of rucksacks, sleeping bags, tents and, most importantly, beer.
High above them, eclipsing the campsite that was the base for this year’s team camping trip, loomed the Nessie arches of Ribblehead Viaduct and imposing green-grey flank of Whernside. The August heat and a recent fall of rain combined to create a muddy, fermented smell that Clarrie inhaled appreciatively.
Smelled like camp. Smelled… free.
‘You sure, Clar?’ Si said. ‘You don’t have to prove anything, you know, just coz you’re the only girl. We all know you could take down a rampaging bull elephant between your thighs if you wanted.’
He stopped unloading for a moment and narrowed one eye.
‘What?’ she said.
‘Sorry. Gave myself a bit of a visual there.’
Clarrie tutted. ‘Come on, elephant pervert. Load me up.’
‘Here then.’ He placed another pack of lager on top of the one she was carrying. ‘And if you break your back, you can blame women’s lib.’
She struggled to the fire circle, a raised platform surrounded by bricks, and dumped her stack of beer next to one of the rough-hewn logs that served as benches.
‘You two going to help or what?’ she said to Dave and Sonny, who were sitting side by side, basking in the sun.
Sonny shrugged. ‘Let Si do it, he’s the biggest. We’re admiring the view.’
She walked behind the bench and pushed him. ‘Go on, you lazy bugger. You’re emasculating yourself in front of the mountain gods.’
‘Ugh. Fine.’ He grabbed Dave by the arm and pulled him to his feet. ‘Come on, ginger, or Si’s missus’ll give us an ear bashing.’
‘Not his missus, Sonny.’
‘Yeah, whatever.’
Between the four of them, they soon unloaded the Land Rover and got everything piled up by the fire circle.
‘Right.’ Si pulled out his Zippo and chucked it to Sonny. ‘You two were Scouts, sort out the fire. Me and Clarrie’ll do tents.’
‘All right,’ Sonny said. ‘And we’ll do it in the time-honoured Scout way. Here, Clar, wang us my bag.’
Clarrie dug in the pile of camping debris and chucked Sonny’s rucksack to him. He rummaged out a bottle of lighter fluid.
‘Did you both get the Advanced Pyromaniac interest badge in Cubs?’ she asked Dave.
‘Just Sonny. I got Senior Arsonist.’
‘Hey, where were you when we did this last year, Clarrie?’ Sonny asked, crouching down to gather some kindling. ‘Wasn’t much fun with just the lads. Dave nearly had to get his tits out instead, just to relieve the sexual tension.’
‘I have never got my tits out at camp, nor will I be doing so this weekend, okay?’ Clarrie unzipped one of the tent bags and tipped the contents onto the grass. ‘And I can’t remember why I wasn’t here last year.’
‘She was busy playing Hide the Chorizo with that posh bastard Ed, that’s why,’ Dave said with a grin.
‘Oh yeah,’ she said, wincing. ‘He made me go meet his parents. God, it was awful. Did you lot really think he was posh?’
‘He was a bit, Clar,’ Si said, spreading out the tent flysheet a little way from the fire.
‘Yeah, he had a cafetière and everything,’ Dave said. ‘And he used it too – didn’t just keep it in the cupboard and forget he had it like any normal person. I bet he went to Eton and grew up in
a castle.’
Clarrie laughed. ‘What, just because he had a cafetière?’
‘No. He drank red wine as well. And he knew the difference between the kinds of red wine.’
‘And he said on-velope,’ Sonny said. ‘You’d be better off going out with Si.’
‘You’re wasting your breath, mate,’ Si said. ‘She’d rather eat houmous with poshoes than give me a go.’
‘Come on, Si, you’re pretty posh,’ Clarrie said as they sorted through the tent poles together. ‘You’re a teacher. That confers automatic wisdom and poshicity.’
‘Haven’t got a cafetière though, have I?’
There was the beep of a text message from Dave’s jeans. He dumped his pile of twigs and fished out his phone.
Sonny frowned. ‘I thought we had a no phones rule at camp.’
‘Yeah well,’ Dave said, his eyes skimming the screen. ‘That was when everyone I knew was already here.’
‘Oh no. Not bloody… Yoko.’
Dave looked up to grin at him. ‘Go on, you’re just jealous. She wants to come up for a beer tonight. That’s all right, isn’t it?’
‘No it isn’t. There’s a no girlfriends rule as well.’
‘You used to bring your girlfriend.’
Sonny flinched. ‘That was different. When we started this Gem wasn’t my girlfriend, she was just one of the gang.’
‘Look, Sonny, we have to spread out a bit, the group’s incestuous enough as it is,’ Dave said. ‘We’ve only got one lass left now and Si’s bagsied her. If you force me through any more years of celibacy, I’ll end up going out with you.’
Clarrie laughed. ‘Please, that’s been on the cards for years. And I’m not available via the bagsy system, by the way.’
‘We’d love to see Lyndsey, Dave. Tell her to come on up,’ Si said. He waggled his tent pole at Sonny. ‘Hear that, sunshine? Manners.’
‘Stop trying to impress Clarrie.’ Sonny sloshed lighter fluid over the kindling he’d arranged on the fire platform. ‘You’ll be off buying cafetières next. You know she gets hot for them.’
‘I do not get hot for cafetières,’ Clarrie said. ‘Stop with the bloody cafetières, okay? You’re obsessed.’
‘Yeah, you want us to stop because it’s making you moist.’ Dave came up behind her and tickled her hips. ‘Cafetière fetishist.’
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