by Fiona Harper
He nodded. ‘Wise words.’
Claire sighed. ‘This is my road,’ she said, as they turned another corner.
Dominic looked up and saw with surprise that it was. The walk home had been far too short. ‘Okay,’ he replied slowly, trying to work out what he was going to do when they got to the garden gate. Another thing he hadn’t thought through. If he walked on, it was another lie, but if he didn’t …
Claire didn’t seem to notice the battle he was having with himself. She just kept on walking. ‘All she really wanted was a home, a normal life, a happy family,’ she said wistfully.
There was sadness in her voice that Dominic told himself he should pay heed to.
‘I hope her life turned out the way she wanted it to in the end,’ she added. ‘Sometimes when you’re young you make decisions and you don’t realise how they’re going to come back and bite you on the butt. Especially when it comes to love.’ She looked at him suddenly, flushed with embarrassment under the street light. ‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘didn’t mean to say that. You don’t need to hear me wittering on about life and love, the universe and … Doris.’
‘Claire?’ He reached out and touched her arm.
She jumped away as if she’d been stung. ‘What?’ she said, more than a bit crossly.
‘Which house is yours?’ he asked softly, even though he knew. They were there. Home. But Claire hadn’t noticed and was just about to walk past the gate.
‘Oh,’ she said, and stopped dead. ‘This one.’ Then she laughed. ‘That crept up on me!’ She turned to look further down the road. ‘Which way are you?’
He swallowed. ‘Not too far away,’ he replied, making sure he didn’t look in any particular direction.
‘What a coincidence.’
He nodded.
‘Anyway …’ she said and glanced towards their shared front door. ‘I’d better get inside. Thanks for walking me back. It was very gentlemanly of you.’
Dominic felt something warm flare in his chest. Even though he knew he wasn’t being gentlemanly at all, he hadn’t realised how nice it was to hear someone say those words, to at least think it wasn’t beyond possibility that he could be like that. ‘No problem,’ he said, aiming for ‘casual’ but landing on ‘slightly gruff’.
She looked at him and he could see her chest rise and fall, just once, in the glow from the street light across the road. Her voice was low and quiet when she spoke. ‘Goodnight, Nick.’
The words hung in the air between them, slowing time, but then she turned and started to walk up the path.
‘Claire!’ he found himself calling out after her.
She looked round, her eyes wide.
He’d told himself he’d just say goodnight, but he heard himself saying, ‘I think I can make a stab at those questions of yours now.’
She walked the few steps back down the path towards him. ‘You can?’
He nodded.
‘Oh.’ She sounded disappointed. ‘Good.’
‘In answer to question one: I think she likes the outdoors, but she probably isn’t yearning to bungee jump on holiday.’
He stopped and thought for a moment. ‘Although I could be wrong – she’s constantly surprising me.’
Even though it was dark and the yellow light from the street lamp across the road fell across Claire’s features, she looked a little pale. He decided to carry on while the words were still filling his head.
‘I think she enjoys the occasional evening out and has a great time doing so, but she’s not a party animal who’s at a club every night. Sometimes she just likes her own company and a good book.’
She nodded. ‘Good. That’s the kind of thing I wanted to know. It rules out extreme sports and isolated destinations where there’s no nightlife at all, or hedonistic hotspots where there’s nothing but.’
Ah. That made sense. He was starting to see where she’d been going with those questions now.
‘I’m answering them in the wrong order, aren’t I?’ he said. ‘That was question two.’
She shook her head lightly. ‘It doesn’t matter. Carry on, if you like.’
He took another lungful of oxygen. He didn’t know where this stuff was coming from but he was going to ride the wave while it lasted. ‘I’d say she likes a bit of pampering – like most women – but a spa isn’t her thing. She’d much rather be somewhere relaxed and natural, so a summer day in the countryside might be just up her street.’
‘Noted,’ Claire said, looking very serious, concentrating as if she was committing everything he said to memory.
‘And as for fashion …’ He laughed and shrugged, and even Claire cracked a smile. ‘I wouldn’t know a designer label if it came up and bit me on the nose, not unless it was of the outdoor gear kind of variety – and I don’t think she owns a set of mountain climbing clothes – but she always looks nice, as if she’s taken care about her appearance, but that doesn’t mean she’s snobby about brands and such like either. I think she’s somewhere in the middle. I think she probably owns a few nice things, but she chose them because she liked them, because they suited her. She’s got her own style, and she doesn’t wear something just because someone else tells her it’s fashion.’
Claire frowned.
‘What’s the matter?’ he asked. ‘Wasn’t that enough detail?’
She sighed. ‘No. It was plenty of detail. I was just hoping your answer would help me decide between luxury hotel versus something boutique and quirky. From your answer, it sounds as if she’s not very easy to pigeonhole that way.’
He looked very hard at her. ‘More on the boutique side, I think. Not too quirky, but not too glitzy, either.’
Her brows pinched and she thought hard. ‘Nick? You keep saying “I think” when you talk about her. Don’t you know?’
Ah. He’d inadvertently given himself away a little bit. Those were the sort of things a man in love should know about the woman in his life. His mind quickly flitted to Erica.
Night on the town. Spa. Luxury hotel all the way.
He smiled to himself. There. He wasn’t as hopeless as she’d thought he was. That hadn’t been hard at all, even after all these years.
But that didn’t help him with Claire, did it? He thought for a moment. ‘The old saying’s true, I think. You can’t judge a book by its cover.’
Her eyebrows rose in lieu of a verbal question.
‘For example,’ he continued, ‘I would have never picked you for a Doris fan in a million years, but since you talked about her on the walk home, it actually makes perfect sense.’
‘It does? How?’
Dominic shrugged. That bit he wasn’t so clear about. ‘I don’t know,’ he admitted. ‘It just does. Anyway … What I’m saying is that people aren’t always what they seem, even when you’ve known them for years.’
She let out a snort of dry laughter. ‘Ain’t that right.’
‘You sound like you have personal experience.’
Claire nodded, her expression rueful. ‘Yep and I have one ex-husband under my belt to prove it.’ She watched his reaction, must have read the surprise on his face. ‘You’re shocked. Why?’
Again, he didn’t know. It seemed he’d got those questions done just in time, because now his flash of insight about Claire seemed to be over. Every time he thought he’d got to know her, she revealed another layer, a new surprise.
He looked at Claire and saw open and warm, loyal and funny. Who wouldn’t want to stay married to her? He’d have bet money on the fact that once she had a ring on her finger, the marriage would have stuck.
‘I don’t know,’ he said, shaking his head. She seemed so together, not like the friends of his who’d gone through divorce at all.
But then he looked at her eyes and had the funniest sensation, as if he was looking in a mirror. There was pain there. Well hidden, but there. And disenchantment. Wariness. Suddenly he understood the strange push-me, pull-me effect she had on people, that drawing them close while keeping
them at arm’s length thing.
She was looking up at him, her eyes wide, saying nothing. It would be so easy to step in and kiss her. He could feel his weight shifting to the balls of his feet to do just that, but he rocked back and stepped away. Now was not the right time, not when she thought he was a decent guy who had a girlfriend. He didn’t want to be another disappointing man to add to her list.
‘Goodnight, Claire,’ he said again.
She nodded. ‘Goodnight.’
This time she walked up the path and he didn’t stop her, didn’t call out. She didn’t look back as she slid her key into the lock and opened their shared front door. It closed behind her and he stood there in the darkness, doing nothing but watching where he’d seen the last flash of her dress before she’d disappeared.
Which was stupid, really, as he realised that unless he wanted to be walking the streets of Islington for another hour or two until it was safe to creep into the house after her, that he only had a very small window of opportunity to get to his flat door undetected.
He didn’t know how, but he knew she’d look out the window once she got upstairs to see if he was still standing there. And he really shouldn’t be – for a whole host of reasons.
He’d have to time his race to his flat just right. Too early and she’d still be on the stairs. Too late and she’d see him coming up the path. He had about fifteen seconds at most – the time it took for her to close her front door and walk to the large bay window at the front of the house. And he could probably make it, if he went right about … now.
He dashed for the front door and hid under the small porch while slowly and silently turning his key in the lock. Somehow he knew she’d just entered her flat. Possibly, because since she’d left him he’d been imagining her walking up the stairs, counting each one, in the back of his mind.
As carefully as he could, he pushed the front door open, closed it just as quietly and in a combination of tiptoed creep and sprint made it to his flat door in under two seconds. He fumbled his keys in his hands and his heart began to pound. Suddenly, his fingers seemed like big fat sausages, incapable of doing anything dextrous, but then he found his door key. Moments later, he was inside his flat, breathing heavily, his back against the door.
He shook his head. This was getting stupid. Really stupid. Was all this sneaking around really necessary?
He took a moment to consider that question. Probably not, although he’d convinced himself it was.
They’d got past the surface layer now, past those first impressions.
It was time. Time to tell her. Time to put his neck on the line and see if she could forgive him for being her oafish neighbour and welcome him as the man she was attracted to. She tried to guard it well, but he could tell she was.
He let out a breath and ran a hand through his hair, relaxing even further against the door. The only problem now was how to tell her. Do it wrong and he’d probably lose any chance with her forever, and he really didn’t want that. This was about more than proving a point now. When it all boiled down to it, he just really wanted to see her again.
He chuckled as he pushed himself upright and loped into his living room. This was why he liked to move around. When he stayed put somehow he always managed to get himself into a whole heap of trouble. Now he had to work out how to tell Claire the whole story without confirming every bad thing she’d ever thought about him.
He dropped onto the sofa and picked up the remote. Seriously. His life was starting to sound like one of Doris Day’s rom coms.
Chapter Twenty-Two
I’m Beginning to See the Light
Claire picked up the remote and pointed it at the TV. She itched to go and look back out of the window, but that was just too sad. She’d already seen he wasn’t still standing there.
He’d gone home. To his lovely girlfriend. The paragon of femininity he’d been describing to her only moments earlier. She shook her head, silently lecturing herself. Don’t torture yourself, Claire.
She stopped flicking channels and marched off to the kitchen. She’d gone past beer and needed wine now. A nice glass of cool Sauvignon. When she’d poured herself a large one, she sank back down on her couch again and stared blankly at the television screen. Some documentary. She couldn’t be bothered to keep surfing. Besides, her mind was churning far too much for her to concentrate on anything.
As she sipped her wine, she checked inside herself. She was feeling all out of sorts. Stupid woman, she told herself. You shouldn’t have said yes to a drink with him, however innocent. It had only made things a thousand times worse.
Yep. What she was feeling …? She now had a name for it.
Jealousy. Pure and simple.
Because she’d realised that even through the whole of her five-year marriage, Philip could not have answered those three questions about her. He’d always bought her chocolate liqueurs at Christmas, even though she’d told him repeatedly that she hated her alcohol and her chocolate mixed, but that had been Philip all over – too absorbed in himself and what he needed from those around him to truly think about anyone else.
That girlfriend of Nick’s? Well, Claire hoped she appreciated him. Yes, he was a little rough around the edges. Yes, he often plugged his mouth with both his feet. But there was something to be said for a man who really, truly stopped thinking about himself for one second, who stopped constantly taking from the woman in his life, and tried to give something back to her. Even if it wasn’t easy for him.
Maybe especially if it wasn’t easy for him. What he lacked in finesse, Nick got ‘A star’ for in effort.
See? And she’d gone and got the wine, put the television on to help her stop thinking about him, and she’d done nothing but. Focus, Claire. There’s no point mooning over what you can’t have.
She took another sip of her wine and turned the volume up on the TV, hoping it would snag her attention better. Instead of flicking through more channels, she decided to just stick with what was on. It seemed much better than quiz show reruns or late-night shows with rude internet videos or reality shows about fishermen, truck drivers or cheating spouses. She wriggled down further amongst the sofa cushions and paid better attention.
It was a documentary about an orphanage in Uganda, one in the slums of Kampala. It had started more than twenty years ago, by a local couple whose hearts had been so moved by the homeless children they’d met that they’d taken them into their own. The civil war and the sweep of the AIDS epidemic across the country had left countless children with no one to care for them.
It wasn’t long before she was completely absorbed in the unfolding story. As she watched, she saw the attitude of some people to the street children, who just saw them as urchins or beggars, who passed them by in the same way as Londoners ignored the Big Issue sellers on their high streets or the rattling charity boxes at the entrance to their local supermarkets. But these were children. Cold and hungry with sad eyes and quivering lips. They way the story was told showed just how extraordinary the couple with two children of their own had been.
They had seen. They looked past the prejudice others couldn’t get round and they had seen.
Over the next forty minutes, she learned how they’d secured help from a UK charity through a visiting minister, how their overcrowded house had filled even further, and then how they’d built not one but three schools in the area. How they’d given hundreds of children a home and an education. How they’d stopped the cycle of poverty and disease for so many, helping them to go on to university or get jobs. It was truly remarkable. And all it had taken was two people – not a nation, not even an organisation – who’d had the courage to take their blinkers off and see what was under their noses.
Claire reached for a tissue as the credits rolled and blew her nose. Halfway through making a rather unattractive sound, she froze. Then she hit the pause button and rewound the live feed to watch what she’d seen again.
It was still there, in large white letters on the b
lack background:
Director
DOMINIC ARDEN
*
She shook her head. Surely not. Surely it couldn’t be …
But then she thought of all those geeky video magazines she shuffled through like piles of autumn leaves on her doorstep. It was too much of a coincidence to be otherwise.
Well.
She’d have never guessed that in a million years.
She hadn’t really thought about what kind of work he did with all that high-tech equipment of his, but if she’d had to think about it, she’d have probably said he did something nerdy like make YouTube clips about shoot ‘em up games or, even worse, corporate training videos.
It seemed her annoying downstairs neighbour had hidden depths. Who’d have thought? She took another large glug of wine as she fast-forwarded through the adverts and onto the next programme – a rerun of Friends. The one with the Thanksgiving video. She’d seen it a thousand times, but she watched it anyway. She needed something safe, something familiar. Because everyone else – especially the men – in her life were behaving most unexpectedly today.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Young At Heart
Claire clattered up the stairs and into the upper room of The Glass Bottom Boat. Tonight, the sky was overcast, making it seem more like April than June, and light rain showered the dusty streets off and on. Even so, she pushed open the sash windows as far as she could, enjoying the freshness of the damp, if slightly chilly, air.
She pulled out her case of DVDs and hooked up the player to the big screen as Peggy appeared in the doorway. ‘What is it this week?’ she asked.
‘Young at Heart,’ Claire replied, one of Doris’s biggest hits, her one film with Frank Sinatra.
Peggy walked over to her. ‘I thought that was one of your favourites. You’re not looking very excited about it.’