The Little Vintage Carousel by the Sea

by Jaimie Admans

  ‘I hope they’re well up on bladder functions. If they’re not, they soon will be,’ Nath says, making me laugh. ‘Do you think she’s spent all afternoon planning that?’

  ‘Like a military operation. She would put actual military commanders to shame.’

  ‘We wouldn’t want to ruin her planning, would we? Cheers.’ His eyes are twinkling in the candlelight as he smiles. ‘Here’s to meddling mums.’

  ‘Cheers.’ We clink glasses and start eating. ‘And you can complain about the meddling, you know. I love her to death but she gets a bit much sometimes.’

  He laughs. ‘I don’t mind. I’ve never had anyone who wanted to meddle in my life. I’m quite happy to sit back and let her get on with it.’

  I bite my lip as I watch him shovelling pasta into his mouth. ‘You’re so good with her. I mean, you let her manhandle you and push you around as much as she wants. I was with “poor Andrew” for three years and he barely allowed her to shake his hand. On special occasions, she wrangled a one-sided hug out of him while he stood there like a statue questioning where his life had gone so wrong.’

  ‘Are you kidding? Oh, bless her. It’s not like she’s doing any harm, is it? She’s made me feel all special now, like I’m worthy of manhandling.’

  ‘Even when she drags you out of bed at one in the morning?’

  ‘Well, sharing a bed with you didn’t turn out to be the worst way I’ve spent a Saturday night.’ He grins. ‘Seriously, Ness, I love her. When this is over …’ He suddenly stops and looks at the table and I watch his Adam’s apple bob as he swallows.

  And I can see the dread on his face because I feel it too. I don’t want this to be over. This holiday, this visit to Pearlholme, this carousel, this … whatever this is with Nathan. I don’t know how to go back to real life after this.

  ‘When this is over and we’re both back in London, we’ll still be … friends, right?’ he finishes the sentence.

  ‘Of course. I can’t imagine …’ ever letting you go.

  ‘Me neither,’ he says, like he knows exactly what I’m thinking. He shakes his head. ‘We have to be because I can’t never see your mum again. Especially when she cooks like this. This is goo-ood.’

  ‘She’s an amazing cook. She’d probably kill me if she saw the kind of food in my fridge.’

  ‘She must have gone through the kitchen here thinking we were a pair of barbarians. Crisps, Marmite, peanut butter.’

  ‘At least the Marmite and the peanut butter don’t go together.’

  ‘Yes they do.’

  ‘Oh come on, you’re having a laugh now. I trusted you on the Marmite and crisp sandwich thing but …’

  ‘Marmite and peanut butter on toast. It’s good, I promise. I’ll make you breakfast after your parents leave and prove it. Your mum might kill me if she catches me feeding you such uncivilised recipes.’

  ‘To be honest, you’re male and you’re within a five-mile radius of my uterus. She’s probably taken out an insurance policy to make sure you don’t get damaged. She’s definitely not going to kill you.’

  He laughs until he almost chokes on his pasta. When he looks up at me, his eyes are watering and the shadow of the candle flame flickers across his face. Like he can tell exactly what I’m thinking, he grins. ‘This is a bit too formal for me. What d’ya say we relocate to the sofa and see what mindless rubbish is on TV on a Sunday evening?’

  ‘I was hoping you were going to say that.’

  He beams. ‘And you wonder why we get on so well.’

  I turn the light on in the living room and he blows out the candle as we take our wine glasses and bowls through and sit on the squishy sofa.

  ‘So what do you think of this new version of our ghost story?’ I say, pulling my legs up underneath me and turning towards him as I take another bite of pasta.

  ‘Ghost stories don’t get much better than that kind of vengeful murder and mayhem, do they? I can imagine kids sitting around campfires with torches under their chins.’ He puts on the voice of Freddy Krueger. ‘Stay faithful or dear old ghostly Ivy lies in wait to chop your willy off.’ He laughs and shakes his head. ‘I love it but I don’t believe a word.’

  I look up in surprise. ‘Really? I thought you’d be all over that.’

  ‘Nah, you don’t spend all those years building a carousel full of so much love and attention to detail if you’re constantly looking around for the next affair. That wasn’t carved by a guy on the lookout for a quick thrill. He loved Ivy, and nothing will ever convince me otherwise.’ He gives me a cheeky wink. ‘Or maybe you’re just turning me into a sad old romantic, Ness.’

  I smile at the thought.

  ‘Just goes to show you can never trust a ghost story though. I guarantee that you could go to any other town up and down this coastline and they’d have a different version to tell.’

  He’s surely got a point there. So far we’ve heard two stories from two different places and neither version could be more different.

  ‘I also have this weird theory that it might not be such a ghost story after all,’ he says quietly, sounding cautious.

  I narrow my eyes at him.

  ‘Think about it, right? I don’t know how old Ivy was when he built the carousel for her, but people married young in those days and Camilla said something about Ivy having lots of suitors but choosing to wait for him. Chances are, she was only twenty or thereabouts at the turn of the century. She could easily have lived another fifty-odd years, until roughly the 1950s. Camilla must have been born in the 1940s. So …’

  ‘When she says she heard ghostly carousel music as a child, you think she heard actual carousel music? Ivy was still up there in the house before it became a ruin?’

  ‘It doesn’t seem that far-fetched to me. Like your mum said, people could hear this music but never knew where it came from, hence a ghost story is born.’

  ‘That’s brilliant! That makes it so much more real.’

  ‘Right?’ His whole face lights up. ‘I could be completely wrong. I have no evidence, although I think the carousel has enough wear to have been in use for about that long. It just makes more logical sense than a 120-year-old ghost story. It had to originate somewhere.’

  ‘I love that you’ve been giving this so much thought,’ I say, because I have no doubt he’s completely right.

  ‘I want to know. And not just because I need a history of the carousel for work records. I want to know why someone goes to so much effort to show their love only to disappear afterwards. I want to know if something did happen to prevent him coming back or if he just threw it all away for something better. I want to believe that love existed back then, that it’s our modern world that’s somehow spoilt it, not that it’s always been a myth. I want to believe that the carousel maker really did love Ivy that much. If anything can make you believe in love again, it’s old ghost stories.’ He stretches and leans over to put his empty plate on the coffee table and his T-shirt rides up just enough to show a hint of skin, and it takes all I have not to reach out and touch it.

  He glances at me as he sits back and pulls his top down self-consciously like he knows exactly what I was looking at. ‘Never mind all that, did your mum say something about ice cream?’

  * * *

  ‘I am never eating again.’ He folds his arms behind his head and leans back on the sofa. ‘Unless your mum makes breakfast in the morning, then I could be persuaded.’

  I’d forgotten how much I’d missed my mum’s cooking, and watching Nathan enjoy it so much has made me realise how lucky I am. Mum’s getting a massive hug when she comes in tonight, despite the meddling, and I’m going to start coming up to see them more often. I didn’t realise how much I miss them until I realised I’ll actually be sad to see them go home tomorrow, and that’s something I never would have imagined forty-eight hours ago.

  ‘I know she bought us Ben & Jerry’s and cooked us an amazing pasta bake but do you want to play your mum at her own game?’

  �
��What did you have in mind?’ I feel an eyebrow quirk up. I’m already on board, no matter what he suggests.

  ‘I’m too bloated to move, you’ll have to come to me.’ He pats the space beside him and I lie back too, my arm pressed against his, our thighs touching.

  ‘When they come in, why don’t we lie here and pretend to have fallen asleep together? Let them walk in and find us. Let your mum think that plying us with ice cream and wine was successful.’

  I love the way his mind works. ‘I think we might have to get a bit closer than this.’

  He grins, his dark eyes glinting with mischief. ‘Yeah, I think we might too.’

  ‘Well, she is very meddling, isn’t she? She deserves to be meddled with for a change …’

  ‘A taste of her own medicine.’

  ‘Or village gossip for tomorrow morning.’

  He shrugs. ‘Half the village think we’re together anyway. I don’t care if we add a bit more fuel to their fire, do you?’

  I grin at him. ‘Not at all.’

  He lies back so he’s in the corner of the wide sofa and pulls his long legs up, caging me in, and I stretch out along his side. I nestle my head against his chest and slide my arm under his back. His arm drops around my shoulder and pulls me tighter against his side, and his chin comes to rest on my head.

  His body is warm and he smells ridiculously sexy, that peppery coconut aftershave again, and I let out a deep breath and relax against him.

  ‘And just pretend to be asleep when they come in?’

  He nods silently against my hair.

  ‘She’ll love that.’

  ‘Mmm.’ He does that happy sigh thing again and snuggles further down into the cushions, holding me even tighter against him. I think she might not be the only one.

  ‘Don’t think she won’t come over and lift your eyelids to make sure you really are asleep. She has no concept of personal space.’

  He laughs and it reverberates through me as well, making me smile against his chest.

  I should probably get up and sit normally until they come back. Now we’ve tested the position, we can just dive back into it when we need to, but I glance up at him and his eyes are closed. He looks so relaxed, and I watch the smile spread across his face when he feels me looking at him.

  ‘What?’ he murmurs.

  ‘Just thinking we should get up and only reassume the position when we hear them at the door. They might not be back for ages yet.’

  ‘Yeah, we should.’ Instead of making any attempt to move, his arm tightens around me, holding me closer and he nudges his knee underneath mine. ‘But if we do, we might not get back into position quickly enough, and they’ll never believe we’ve fallen asleep together if we’re all red and puffing and sweaty in the rush to get back into place in time.’

  ‘They might be even happier to come in and find us all red and sweaty and puffing with exertion, but I doubt sleeping will be their first assumption.’

  I love how red his cheeks go.

  Instead of moving, I make up excuses for all the reasons he’s right and we should definitely stay cuddled up here for the foreseeable future. Daphne would think I’d been replaced by a pod person if she could see me now. Usually I only think up excuses to avoid meeting men, now I’m doing everything in my power to persuade myself that convincing my mum I’m having a relationship with this man who I’m not having a relationship with is a good plan. That sentence doesn’t even make sense to me, and yet, I can’t remember the last time I was happier than I am now.

  I’ve never understood the term ‘falling’ when it comes to love before. I’d thought I was in love with ‘poor Andrew’ at first, but there was definitely no falling involved. I never felt the butterflies that I’ve felt from the first moment I saw Nath. I never felt relaxed around him like I do with Nath. I never looked for reasons to spend more time with him, and yet, I’ve been doing everything I can to help Nath at the carousel because I like being near him – to the point where I’m slacking off in my own job. I know I’ve been lax and rushed with fact-checking, and the article is a disaster. Part three is due at the end of the week and I haven’t even got a first line I’m happy with yet.

  But as I rest my chin on his chest and look up at him, his dark lashes resting on smiling cheeks, stubble darkening his jaw, I can’t think of anything that describes it better than falling. I smile every time I look at him, I laugh whenever he opens his mouth, and every time he touches me, no matter how small the touch, I just want to cling on and hold him closer.

  I’ve been trying to hold back because of the article, and the smiles on a train that led to it. I’ve tried to convince myself that he isn’t special, that you can’t make eye contact with a stranger, and then meet them and fall in love, but the more time I spend with him, I know it’s just another excuse. He is special, and I am falling in love with him.

  And I don’t know what to do about it, because as he’s mentioned tonight, this will end. We won’t always be living in a sandy bubble in Pearlholme, and even though I know he’s opened up to me, and I get the sense that he likes me too, he’s never suggested we’re anything more than friends.

  I know above all things that I don’t want to write about him. I don’t want to be part of a false campaign to find him. I don’t want to share personal pictures from his phone, including one of a carousel horse that clearly links back to him, because he wouldn’t want that. He’s shy, quiet, and private. He’d hate the idea of anyone using him like this.

  And above all, I don’t want to share this with anyone. Something’s happened here in Pearlholme, something that’s better than any romantic movie I’ve ever seen, and it’s personal, between me and Nathan, not something I want to use to further my career, and I have no idea what to do about it, because Zinnia is not going to let me off without firing me.

  ‘I can hear your mind whirring,’ he says without opening his eyes.

  I open my mouth to tell him the truth. I talked about you in work every time you smiled at me, and when you dropped your phone, I made the mistake of telling my boss, and she thought the universe had spun on its axis to put us in the right place at the right time, and now there’s this little matter of an article that thousands of people have read …

  ‘Tell me about your ex?’ I say instead. How can I tell him? If there was ever a time, it was the evening I spoke to him on the phone, or the first day I arrived here at a push. The longer I’ve left it, the worse it seems.

  ‘There isn’t much to tell. It was a crappy relationship that made me very keen never to venture into one again.’ His voice sends a low vibration through my chest as he speaks.

  ‘You were married for eight years?’

  He pulls his head back and looks down at me with narrowed eyes, but he’s got that soft smile on his face like he knows I’m wheedling for information but he knows he’s going to tell me anyway. ‘I was down on the Kent coast when I had the accident. I was staying there in the week and only going home at weekends.’ He lets out a long breath, closes his eyes and settles back again. ‘I was only in hospital for one night, and I’d killed my phone in the fall so I couldn’t get in touch with my wife. Obviously the nurses offered to call her but I knew she wouldn’t answer an unrecognised number, and I thought it was best not to worry her. I thought if I just went home the next day and she saw me and knew I was okay, it would be better than making a big fuss. My boss came down to drive me home and dropped me off at our flat, and it was a Thursday afternoon. I wasn’t due home until the Friday night …’

  My fingers clench in the material of his T-shirt because it doesn’t take a genius to work out where this is going.

  ‘I walked in and she was curled up on the sofa watching a film. With another guy.’

  I unclench my fingers and smooth out the creases I’ve made in his T-shirt, using it as an excuse to keep stroking his chest even after the soft material looks like it’s been freshly ironed.

  ‘I think it would have been easier if I’d wa
lked in on them having sex. It was how cosy and comfortable they looked that got me. It had been years since she and I had sat together and watched anything, and I’d never seen her look as happy as she did with that bloke. Turned out that every time I’d been away for work, she’d been going to stay with him or he’d been coming to our flat. It had been going on for years and I’d never had a clue.’

  ‘What about the injury?’

  ‘Never told her. I mean, she knew something had happened – my face was cut and bruised and there was barely an inch of me that wasn’t screaming in agony. It must have shown, but she was too busy telling me how in love she was and how I must’ve known our marriage had been over for years and how she was only sticking with me because one day my father would kick the bucket and leave us all his lovely money.’ He shakes his head. ‘I’ve long been disinherited, but at least it explained why she was always so pushy for me to get a “real” job and reunite with my family.’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ I murmur, tightening my arms around him until it gets difficult to breathe. ‘I’m so sorry, Nath.’

  ‘Like I said, the accident did me a favour in the long run. If I hadn’t got home at the wrong time, how much longer would it have gone on without me knowing? It’d probably still be going on now.’

  ‘You really didn’t know?’

  ‘Not a clue. I mean, I knew we’d been distant for a while. Most of our time together was spent on our phones, and most of our conversations revolved around when I was going to get my brother to give me a proper job so we could all be a big, happy, rich family. My hours can be unpredictable, and she worked late all the time – and I only then realised that no one does that much overtime – so we didn’t see much of each other, but I trusted her completely. I still thought she loved me. I didn’t think there would ever be a version of the world where we would split up.’

  I tilt my head until I can see his face and watch the way his teeth pull his lower lip into his mouth. I can’t stop myself reaching up and stroking through his hair, and the butterflies take off in my stomach again when he turns in to the touch.