‘It’s brilliant, isn’t it, Marilyn?’ Nathan asks, and I’m glad to see he isn’t calling her ‘Mum’ as she’s insisted multiple times now. ‘Ness and I have been talking about it a lot lately.’
He hums ‘If I Loved You’ and reaches out to take my mum’s hand and give her a quick twirl across to my dad, leaving her fanning a hand in front of her red face.
He grins at me, like he knows full well that he’s charming the socks off them both, and I grin back at him, because he is, and I like him doing it, and I like him wanting to do it.
After we fill them in on our version of Ivy and the missing man and show them the hidden message carved in the panel, Mum and I leave Nathan showing my dad the intricacies of a Victorian portable steam engine as she drags me off for a walk along the beach.
‘Well, he’s lovely, isn’t he?’ She slips her sandals off and swings them in her hand, slotting her other arm through mine and pulling me closer.
‘He’s all right, I guess,’ I say, trying to sound nonchalant because I cannot tell Mum how much I like him.
‘I’m so glad you’ve finally found him. He’s the one!’
I choke on the sea breeze. ‘You’ve been here for less than three hours. You can’t make that judgement yet. I’ve only known him for a couple of weeks – I can’t make that judgement yet. Why is he the one? Because he’s good breeding stock? Because I’m so short that I have to marry someone tall so our kids have a fifty-fifty shot of making it to average height? Because you fancy dark-haired grandchildren? Because he—’
‘Because he makes you happy.’
‘He doesn’t make me happy. I don’t rely on men for happiness. I’m happy because it’s nice to be out of London and this is a pretty village to stay in, and it’s been so long since I went to a beach …’
‘You can make all the excuses you want, but mums always know these things.’ She looks over at me. ‘Answer me this, Vanessa. And you know I’m serious when I use your full name. Yes, this is a lovely little village and a charming place to stay, but would it be as nice if he wasn’t here?’
How can I answer her? She’s got a point and I know she has. No matter how lovely Pearlholme is, it would be nothing without Nathan. He is what’s making me enjoy my time here so much.
Conveniently, the thing with my mum is that she doesn’t need any answers, she just hears whatever she wants to hear anyway, and she clearly takes my silence as an affirmative and barrels on regardless.
‘At least now I see why you broke up with “poor Andrew”.’
The wind drags hair out of my ponytail and flaps it into my mouth and I paw it away, wondering how long she’ll let me get away with ignoring that remark. Conversations about ‘poor Andrew’ never end well, but I’m too curious to find out where she’s going with it. ‘Why?’
‘You knew something better was coming. You were waiting for him.’
‘Okay, first of all, that was two years ago. I haven’t known Nathan for three weeks yet. And secondly, I broke up with the hereafter forever renamed “poor Andrew” because the relationship was … you know that saying “as dead as a doornail”? Well, it was deader than a doornail. Deader than multiple doornails, even. If anyone knows what doornails are and why they keep dying.’
‘The world works in mysterious ways,’ she says, sounding like a budget version of Mystic Meg.
‘I don’t think it ends relationships for you on the off-chance that you might meet another man somewhere down the line. Besides, have you completely missed the fact that Nathan and I are just friends?’
‘Ah, but you won’t always be.’
‘I’m sorry, I must’ve missed you unpacking your crystal ball. It didn’t take up too much space in the boot, did it?’
‘You can be sarcastic as much as you want. You can tell yourself that I’m a silly old romantic fool. You can make all the excuses you want, Ness, but I’m not the one who hasn’t stopped smiling all morning.’ She gives me one of her patented no-nonsense looks. ‘Am I?’
I try to force my mouth into a frown but it doesn’t work. I feel like I’ve barely stopped smiling since I got on that train. I don’t even realise I’m doing it anymore.
‘And what about him, huh?’ Mum nudges her elbow into my ribs where her arm is still slotted through mine. ‘He’s all giggly whenever he’s with you. I was talking about you while you were outside this morning and he got this dreamy, drifty, faraway expression on his face. Haven’t you seen the way he looks at you?’
‘He’s probably wondering what I did to him to make him agree to letting my crazy parents stay,’ I say, even though the thought makes me feel all warm and melty inside.
Mum’s selective hearing kicks in again. ‘And that song. That’s how Billy and Julie say “I love you”.’
‘What?’
‘In Carousel. When they sing “If I Loved You”, what they’re really saying is that they do love each other.’
‘Well, yeah, but outside of the make-believe world of film, it’s just one of the most recognisable songs from the musical. It doesn’t mean anything. I was humming “The Carousel Waltz” the other day; it doesn’t mean I want to jump on Nathan’s back and ride him like a wooden horse.’
‘Now that would be a sight for sore eyes.’
I roll mine. ‘You’re reading way too much into this. I don’t love Nathan. Him humming a song from a film we both like while he works isn’t some secret way of telling me he loves me because he doesn’t. He doesn’t even believe in love.’
‘Everyone says that until they feel it,’ she says with a shrug.
She definitely talked to Daphne for too long the other day. ‘Yeah well, he was humming something by Black Sabbath the other day; it doesn’t mean he’s going to start biting the heads off bats. He’s a vegetarian for a start. That would never work …’
‘Well, I for one am glad you broke up with “poor Andrew”.’
‘But you loved “poor Andrew”.’
‘Yes, I did. He was a lovely person, but he wasn’t your person. I was waiting for you to realise that for yourself instead of making all those excuses to stay with him when you weren’t happy.’
I look at her in surprise but she keeps her eyes steadfastly on the cliff in the distance. ‘You couldn’t have told me that before? I only stayed with him as long as I did because I thought you were all seeing something that I wasn’t.’
‘Your love life has nothing to do with me.’
I trip over a dead starfish and nearly die of shock, and not from the starfish. ‘All you do is try to influence my love life.’
‘Oh, it’s just a bit of harmless meddling.’ She pats my arm. ‘You have excuses for everything, Ness – to always stay in your comfort zone and never do anything scary. Someone has to try to break them down. Daphne tries, but—’
‘I’m going to change my number at work and forbid anyone from ever patching you through to Daph ever again. Things go wrong when you two get talking.’
‘You haven’t made any excuses since you got here, have you?’
‘Well, I …’
‘It’s him.’ She squeals in delight. ‘He brings out the goofy, embarrassing side that you always try to hide because of your fancy job.’
I snort. ‘There is nothing fancy about fact-checking. And I don’t try to hide anything, I just try to be a little bit more sophisticated than I would usually be because that’s what Zinnia expects. And she’s not the kind of woman I want to disappoint more than I do on a daily basis anyway. She’s professional and stylish and put-together, and I am not.’
The selective hearing is back. ‘You always tried to be something you weren’t in front of “poor Andrew”. But you’re not afraid to be yourself with Nathan, and look how happy it’s making you.’
‘I reiterate: you’ve been here for three hours.’
Mum taps her nose. ‘I could tell after three minutes.’
I sigh because she isn’t going to listen, no matter what I say. Thankfully she moves on to
one of her book club friend’s hamster’s health issues and leaves me thinking about what she’s just said.
I never thought I’d hear Mum say a bad word about ‘poor Andrew’, or that she had any clue that I was often nervous around him and afraid that he’d realise things like my legs aren’t naturally hair free, I bleach my upper lip, and have stretchmarks on my thighs. And the same with Zinnia. It’s hard to commute through London on a summer morning and arrive the other end looking like you’ve just stepped out of the pages of a glossy magazine. Zinnia manages it. I step out of the tube station looking like a frazzled poodle with the wrong shade of foundation on. I sweat, my hair frizzes if the weather forecast so much as suggests a drop of moisture in the air, and I often have a change of clothes in my bag to try to make myself a bit more presentable.
I haven’t thought about any of that stuff with Nathan.
And it does feel good.
Chapter 17
That night, I’m sitting up in Nathan’s bed with my laptop open on my knees, trying to start the third part of the article again. The dulcet tones of my dad’s snoring are reverberating through the walls like a warthog with a wind problem, and all I can think about is how small the sofa downstairs looked when Nathan threw his duvet across it and promised it was comfortable, despite the fact both his legs were hanging over the arm and his head was folded at an angle that looked akin to demon possession.
I don’t think anything of it when I hear the spare room door open and footsteps move across the landing. Dad’s still snoring so it’s probably Mum nipping to the bathroom. I think it’s a little strange when the footsteps bypass the bathroom and I hear the creak of the floorboards as she goes downstairs. She’s probably gone to get a glass of water. I hope she doesn’t wake Nathan up. He’s probably asleep by now, like everyone else. It’s gone one a.m. I’d thought I was the only one still awake, and that’s not really out of choice, it’s because when I did try to sleep, all I did was toss and turn because I couldn’t get the thought of the article out of my head, and of how angry Zinnia will be if I just don’t do it.
Part three is where I’m supposed to talk about following an anonymous tip from a reader and coming to Pearlholme, meeting him at the carousel and retelling some of the things that actually happened, culminating in telling readers that we’re falling in love with each other. I look at the in-depth email from Zinnia detailing exactly what she wants, and casually mentioning that the office is feeling a bit like Crimewatch headquarters with messages from readers with names we should check out and possible sightings of Train Man.
I stare at the blank screen, the cursor blinking at the top of it, taunting me with its emptiness. Once upon a time, there was a single girl who didn’t want a relationship, and she stalked a single boy who didn’t want a relationship halfway across the country to a perfect little village, where they didn’t have a relationship. I delete it.
Once upon a carousel … I delete that too.
Can you really make a connection with a stranger on a train? Can you know if someone is ‘The One’ with nothing more than a glance? I read that line aloud, feeling a bit like Carrie Bradshaw, minus the MacBook. They’re too expensive when you’re not on Carrie Bradshaw’s budget. Carrie Bradshaw with a scratched netbook and an F key that doesn’t work. It’s not quite staring out the window into the streets of New York and wistfully answering all of love’s greatest questions, is it?
All thoughts of Carrie Bradshaw are forgotten when I hear movement coming up the stairs again and this time, there’s a knock on my door.
I push the laptop off my legs and scramble across to answer it. ‘Is everything oka—’
Mum is standing there with Nathan, who looks more asleep than awake. She’s got one hand bunched in the duvet, holding it around him, and one hand behind his back propelling him forwards.
‘Here you go, dear, I found a stray for you.’ She pushes him towards me until he hits the doorframe and bounces off, gladly padded by the duvet.
‘What? He’s meant to be sleeping there, Mum – there are only two bedrooms.’
‘Oh, I know, Ness, but I can’t sleep with that dreadful racket your father’s making and I want to watch some TV. I can’t with him there.’ She manoeuvres him into the doorway and gives him another little push.
My mum is even smaller than I am, and the sight of this tall man being manhandled by such a tiny woman does something to me. He really doesn’t look fully awake, bless him, but she’s somehow managed to bundle him all the way up here and he’s obviously let her. Most guys would’ve told her where to go in no uncertain terms.
I step aside and let him shuffle through, putting a hand on his shoulder through the duvet to guide him in. There’s a pillow crease down one cheek, his hair is all smooshed forwards, and his eyes are dark and heavy-lidded.
‘Thanks, Ness. Nighty night!’
‘Mum …’ I say quietly so as not to wake my dad, but her selective hearing has kicked in again and she’s already halfway down the stairs. I stare at the empty landing like that five-foot-tall pyjama-wearing tornado has just been through again.
Nath yawns and blinks at me. ‘What just happened?’
‘I don’t know. What just happened?’
‘I don’t know! I was fast asleep on the sofa and suddenly she’s got hold of my hands and pulled me to my feet.’ He sinks down on the edge of the bed with the duvet still held around him, even though he’s fully dressed in tracksuit bottoms and a plain T-shirt. ‘She’s surprisingly strong for someone so small.’
‘I don’t think it had anything to do with watching TV. She’s slept with my dad’s snoring every night for fifty years and she’s never watched TV at this hour in her life. She’s meddling.’
He scrubs a hand over his face and looks around, his eyes falling on the laptop. ‘You’re working at this hour?’
‘Deadline,’ I mumble, hating lying about it. Even though deadline is not exactly a lie. I do have one, I just can’t tell him that he’s supposed to be the subject of it.
‘Sorry, I won’t disturb you. I’ll just sit here until she goes back to bed. Give me a poke if I fall asleep and I’ll go back down.’
‘I know my mum – if she’s gone to the trouble of getting up at one a.m. to meddle, she’s going to see it through. Just stay, Nath.’
He looks up at me and squints in the glare from the bedroom light. ‘Okay, I’ll take the floor.’
‘No, you won’t.’ He’s still half-asleep and pliant, so I touch his shoulder and push him gently, urging him to lie down. I yank my own duvet aside and get him onto the bed with his duvet wrapped around him, surprised that he lets me manhandle him too.
‘Thanks, Ness,’ he mumbles, sounding asleep again already as I flick the big light off and replace it with the bedside lamp.
‘This is your room, gentle giant,’ I murmur.
‘No one’s ever called me that before.’
For some reason, it makes me smile.
I go back round to my side of the bed and sit up against the headboard, pulling my duvet over my knees and resting my laptop on them again, but my hands touch the keyboard and go still, because if I had no idea what to write before, having Nath within touching distance is doing nothing to help.
He shifts and pulls his duvet tighter over him, his back to me, and I reach out and touch his left shoulder. I don’t even know why. The dark material of his T-shirt is showing over the top of the chevron-patterned duvet cover, and I can’t stop myself. I slip my hand over it and just sort of hold it gently, and he does a happy sigh from deep within his chest and snuggles into the bed. His fingers come up to cover mine and he gives them a soft squeeze, and I watch the curve of his spine straighten out under the duvet as he relaxes, and his hand doesn’t drop away until he falls asleep.
Usually I get fed up of my mother’s meddling, but this is one time I don’t mind letting her get away with it.
* * *
If I’d have thought about it, I’d have thought it might
be weird to share a bed with Nathan, but luckily I didn’t think about it, so I didn’t worry or make excuses not to, and it turned out to be the best night’s sleep I’ve had since I got here.
When I wake up, he’s lying on his back and I’ve turned over to face him, and somehow my hand is still on his left shoulder.
He opens his eyes when I move and smiles at me, looking soft and sleep-tousled. ‘Good morning.’
His voice has got that deep not-quite-awake rasp to it and it sends a little shiver down my spine and my fingers rub over the material of his T-shirt rather than removing my hand from his shoulder like I should do. ‘Morning.’
‘I didn’t snore, did I?’
I shake my head.
‘Drool? Fart? Other things you generally wouldn’t want a guy to do in front of you?’
I pat my fingers on his shoulder. ‘You were a perfect gentleman in sleep.’
‘Makes up for it in wakefulness then,’ he says with a laugh.
It makes me snort because I’m pretty sure we both know he’s the personification of a gentleman, conscious or unconscious.
He closes his eyes. ‘Why do you always touch that?’
His voice is quieter than a whisper and I’m not sure I’ve heard him right, but I look at my hand on his shoulder, and then up at his neck, how he turns away and refuses to look at me, just like he did at the ruin the other day.
‘Because I think there’s more to it than you’ve ever let on. You talk about it nonchalantly, but no one has years of physio for something that’s healed and back to normal within a couple of months. It must have been a traumatic injury.’
He shrugs and I feel the muscles bunch up under my hand. ‘Well, yeah, but it wasn’t just the shoulder. It wasn’t a great time in my life. But it doesn’t matter now. I got over it. It made me stronger, physically and mentally. Before, I’d spent my whole life trying to run away from my family, but it made me realise that I didn’t need their approval. I was better off alone in all senses of the word.’
The Little Vintage Carousel by the Sea Page 23