The First Time I Saw Your Face

by Hazel Osmond

  Pamela blinked. ‘The sheep in—’

  ‘It’s something new we’re trying; keeps them safe from rustlers.’

  ‘But, but—’

  Jennifer left Pamela’s buts behind and found Doug.

  ‘I think I’ll head home,’ she said. ‘Could you say bye to Finlay for me, tell him I’ll call him tomorrow?’

  ‘Aye, will do.’ Doug looked across at Pamela. ‘And ignore the leech, you’re doing canny. Just think, this time last year you couldn’t have handled being here at all; now you’re back and fighting.’

  Funny how Doug’s sympathy bolstered you up, not sucked the lifeblood out of you with its mawkishness. Pamela could have learned a thing or two if she’d stopped talking long enough to listen.

  ‘Bet you, this time next year, it’ll be you back auditioning for the main parts. That’ll wipe the smirk off Jocelyn’s face.’

  ‘Language, Doug.’

  ‘Sorry. That cow Jocelyn’s face.’

  ‘Much better.’

  She left the pub after that, not looking in Matt Harper’s direction.

  Doug was right, this time last year she couldn’t have sat in a crowded room; she was making huge strides. But, however big they were, she’d never arrive back where she used to be. She’d never be sitting where Lisa was now, chatting unselfconsciously to an attractive man just after meeting him, or believing that if the magic was right, she might find herself alone with him later and discover what lay beneath that horrible jumper.

  And she couldn’t imagine how that was ever going to make her feel any less miserable than she did right now.

  ‘Do you have any bloody idea what time it is?’ O’Dowd’s voice stormed out of the phone.

  Standing in the absolute blackness of a Northumberland night, perched on Peter Clarke, Mack thundered back, ‘It’s twenty past eleven, I’m still in the same time zone as you up here … and I’m ringing to tell you I’m not doing this. No. Never. No.’

  ‘Ah,’ O’Dowd said, ‘you’ve met her then? How bad is it?’

  ‘You bastard. You should have told me, you should have said something.’

  ‘Thought it might have been a deal-breaker. Anyway, think about it. This makes it easier – she’s got low self-esteem. Good-looking guy like you giving her a bit of attention bound to make her come on side quicker.’

  ‘What, you couldn’t find any blind kittens I could kick to death instead?’

  He knew he should be freezing, but all he could feel was red-hot hatred for O’Dowd. ‘I’m not doing it. Not to someone already damaged.’

  ‘You’re doing it. As agreed. Rory Sylvester has sent Cressida a car; he’s never done that before. Can you imagine if her and him get together? The bloody world’s going to go apeshit, not to mention his wife. Little South American spitfire, and her dad’s that director who wins all the prizes for foreign language films—’

  ‘Not listening.’

  There was something that sounded very much like a growl from O’Dowd’s end of the phone.

  ‘You’d better listen, my son, or I’ll start up with the little drip-feed pieces in the paper to keep the public’s anger alive. You know, something about new evidence emerging that Sir Teddy might have had a lover. Yah-de-yah-de-yah.’ That raspy laugh got a little outing. ‘I knew you’d go all touchy-feely on me. Mack the Knife? More like Mack the Old Wife. Nasty little seam of pity in you, a mewling conscience. You’re doing this, or Phyllida gets it, the whole family gets it.’

  ‘We’ll cope,’

  ‘Really, how exactly does a four-year-old cope, or a seven-year-old? They’re going to have a lovely time in the playground: Granny’s a traitor and a dipso. Probably have to leave Bath. Can’t see that brother-in-law’s business getting many orders after this, can you?’

  Mack couldn’t think of anything that would draw the sting out of those words.

  ‘Put your bleeding heart away and get the job done. Anyway, you didn’t say how bad it is. Looks repulsive in the photos. Want to know what happened?’

  ‘Bugger off,’ Mack said, but O’Dowd told him anyway.

  ‘Went through a windscreen one Saturday night after drinking at a party in Manchester. Daft bint didn’t have her seat belt on. Her and Cressida were in the car—’

  ‘Wait, what? Cressida was with her, I’ve never seen that anywhere?’ Out of habit Mack looked over his shoulder as he spoke.

  ‘Did a trade-off, dished the dirt on one of her past lovers, anonymously, of course, in return for a total news blackout on the accident. Her management are a fierce bunch. Juicy details she coughed up too, remember? It was about the guy who liked to use—’

  ‘Thanks. I’ve got the picture.’

  He finished the call and then listened to the messages on his own phone, including one from Tess saying she was glad he’d arrived safely. Trudging back to the cottage, he tried to hang on to the comfort of her voice. He sat in the armchair and stared at the depressing pile of grey ash and cinders in the grate.

  However much he rammed his head against the problem of Montgomery and Phyllida, he couldn’t force a way through. Phyllida, at a pinch, he could sacrifice, but never Tess, Joe and the girls.

  He thought of Jennifer again and closed his eyes. Perhaps then that scar wouldn’t dance in front of them. But closing his eyes only made the scar appear more livid, and so he opened them again and went upstairs, unlacing his boots, taking off his socks and just sitting there with them in his hand until the cold got too much and he wrapped himself in his duvet and lay down.

  This whole thing stunk worse than he imagined. He’d always known that he ran the risk of landing up in court, that O’Dowd would deny having hired him, but he’d reasoned that it was better he got hung out to dry than his whole family. But when he saw that face …

  Get a grip, get this back into proportion. All you’re doing is getting her trust. You’re not going to tell her she’s beautiful or try to get her into bed.

  He turned over, but his doubts and worries followed him into his new position.

  How low had he fallen? She already looked pretty fragile to him.

  He turned over again.

  It’s her or the whole family. Make a good job of it and ask for forgiveness later.

  If only he’d got a glimpse of her before she’d seen him, though, then he could have had a different expression on his face, not the one of … what was it? Disgust?

  The lousiest possible start. She’d have erected the barricades against him already. If he imagined the task in front of him as a journey from London to the Rosebys’ farm, at this moment he was somewhere off the coast of France. And, if he didn’t do something quickly, he was probably in danger of drowning.

  CHAPTER 10

  Jennifer watched Sheila throwing the books down on to the floor to form two rough piles.

  ‘But just getting community service is good, isn’t it?’ she asked.

  ‘Yeah, it means he won’t get locked up, but knowing bonehead Reece, he won’t learn his ruddy lesson.’

  Jennifer made some soothing noises, but Sheila was off again: ‘And you know what Loopy Lionel downstairs had the nerve to suggest? Massage. Not for me, mind you, but for Reece. Lowers the levels of aggression, evidently. Said the penal system in Sweden has been getting very good results.’

  Jennifer had to work very hard not to laugh. Typical Lionel, eager to help and completely misguided. She was amazed Sheila had not decked him. Still, at least Sheila did not have to put up with him smiling wistfully at her when they worked together. For a while now she had suspected that Lionel’s feelings towards her were warmer than the usual ones that existed between a library supervisor and a library assistant. It was like being cocooned in a soft, comfortable jumper.

  Sheila’s bad mood and Lionel’s galumphing naivety were welcome distractions from those brown eyes of Matt Harper’s and the way they had looked at her. In bed last night, over breakfast this morning, on the drive into work, the sharp pain of that first awkward meet
ing had kept rising up like silt disturbed in a pond. No doubt the next time they met he would either avoid her like the plague, or overcompensate by being extra friendly and extra jolly.

  Why couldn’t he have been fat with halitosis?

  Jennifer turned her attention back to Sheila’s truculent book-sorting.

  ‘I could tell you a snippet about Cress to cheer you up, if you like,’ she said and was pleased to see some of the force go out of Sheila’s hurling technique. ‘She had a paparazzi in her pool.’

  ‘What, as in “had”?’ Sheila said, perking up even more.

  ‘No. He dropped in.’

  ‘To visit?’

  ‘No, literally dropped in. Fell out of a tree. They’re all buzzing round her, trying to dig up the dirt on her love life.’

  Sheila immediately descended back into moroseness. ‘Must be nice to have some dirt in your love life for someone to dig up.’ She held out a book for Jennifer to see. ‘Scrap pile or sell pile?’

  ‘Scrap, I would think, look at the bite marks on it.’

  ‘Well, biography of Margaret Thatcher, what do you expect? Hey up, what’s wrong with Li-Li?’

  Lionel was standing in the doorway. ‘There’s a young man downstairs for you,’ he said. The set of his mouth suggested he felt put out about that.

  Jennifer saw who it was as soon as she started to come down the staircase: Matt Harper, a carrier bag in his hand and a dark-red rucksack over one shoulder. She concentrated on the metal steps. He was smiling cheerily at her; one of those fixed smiles she’d come to loathe.

  She could do this, show him she didn’t care about yesterday and she really didn’t care about him. Only problem was, just at that moment she couldn’t raise her chin.

  ‘Hello,’ he said and she nodded at his brogues, two shoes that were perhaps among the most horrible ever made. Lionel was watching them under cover of checking out books and was being quite rough with the date stamp.

  ‘I’d like …’ Matt Harper said, and then stopped.

  She waited, and when he didn’t start again, she did look up and registered the deep brown of his eyes and that unruliness in his hair which made him look as though he’d had a busy time in bed.

  God, you’re good-looking.

  His attention had obviously been taken by something behind her.

  Jennifer saw that Sheila had come downstairs and was hanging around, not very subtly, pretending to tidy the newspaper rack.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, looking confused, ‘that woman, I just thought she was somebody else for a second.’

  ‘Sonia at the village shop. In Brindley?’

  He nodded, looking more perplexed.

  ‘It’s her sister. Sheila.’

  ‘Ah. Small world. Right.’ Out came his cheery, irritating smile again. ‘Look … sorry … I’m making a hash of this. Is there anywhere a bit quieter we could go?’

  ‘This is a library,’ she said, ‘everywhere’s quiet,’ and saw him look surprised that she had a sense of humour. That figured. Scarred face equalled not quite up to speed. It was a piece of arithmetic she’d met before.

  ‘More private, then,’ he said, gently.

  Lionel came round the desk.

  ‘Everything all right, Jen?’

  Jennifer looked at Lionel and saw the familiar layers of wool waiting to be wrapped around her. She looked at Matt Harper and didn’t know what she saw, but something was pushing her to find out.

  She led Matt Harper to the modern literature section.

  ‘Bright chairs,’ he said in a distracted tone, putting his carrier bag down on one, and irritation that Sheila and the furniture were proving to be more interesting than she was began to outweigh her embarrassment. She concentrated on Matt Harper’s jumper, which was another horrible one and the same style as Lionel’s. He didn’t look like Lionel in it, though. That icky cord jacket was a mistake.

  ‘Sorry, this is a bit tricky, but I knew I had to come and do this,’ he was saying. ‘You must be sick of it – people looking put out when they see you, and then pretending they weren’t and being over-the-top normal.’

  She felt as if he’d shoved her. Or peered into her brain and seen her real feelings.

  He was talking again, his hands moving as if smoothing over the words.

  ‘When I saw your face in the pub, I didn’t react very well. I fear I looked as if I found it disturbing.’

  She had changed her mind: she did want to go and be wrapped in Lionel’s jumper. Matt Harper’s hand had come up in a kind of ‘Stop’ gesture as though he sensed that.

  ‘Please listen,’ he said, ‘my only excuse is that I was knocked back by the contrast with everything else about you.’

  Oh God, her throat was going. She felt herself blinking too fast, but somehow her brain was processing that beneath the breath-taking, brutal honesty was something that he probably thought was a compliment.

  ‘Meeting new people must be hard enough for you without them standing there like a wounded goldfish.’

  His eyes seemed to be searching her own for clues about how she was feeling. There was a little furrow in his forehead as though he was struggling with a headache.

  ‘I … don’t … you …’ She dried up.

  His hand went to one side of his face and he rubbed it slowly as he spoke, as if he was at some deep level trying to process the subject of faces and skin and scars. ‘I’m very afraid I’m making this worse and humiliating you even more.’ His hand stopped and he gave her a self-deprecating smile. ‘I spend too much time walking or staring at a blank sheet of paper; not enough time with people … or so my girlfriend says.’

  This time her words came: ‘No, it’s all right. It’s just you’re very … direct.’

  ‘Tactless is what you mean, but you’re too kind to say, I suspect … but I’m glad you’re taking it like that, such a relief.’ Suddenly he had his hand out. ‘How about we start again and I promise not to be so in your face?’

  All Jennifer could hear was the blip of the barcode reader followed by the thump of the date stamp. A quick look at him confirmed that the words had been a nervous blurt, not intended, but they had felt like little thorns nonetheless.

  His hand was still extended towards her, although looking a little limp now. It was a nice hand, attached to a good-looking man, but it was beyond her.

  ‘I have to get back to the desk,’ she said and walked quickly past Stephen King and Hilary Mantel and George Orwell. She knew that it must have seemed abrupt and strange, but if she hadn’t moved then, she suspected she would have sat down on the floor.

  He had followed her back to the desk and she got herself behind it and on to a chair. Sheila appeared like a shot. Lionel was still in a sulk.

  ‘Bye, then,’ Matt Harper said, with that cheery smile which looked rigid. He nodded at Sheila and Lionel and was gone.

  Sheila didn’t even wait for the door to close. ‘Right, Jen, who is that, why is he talking to you and just how peachy is that backside?’

  ‘Sheila, not in the library,’ Lionel snapped, ‘there are children here.’

  Jennifer told them who he was and why he was in Northumberland, but not why he had come to the library. Sheila gave her a sly look. ‘Well, you kept that quiet, missy. I’m seeing that play of yours in a whole new light now. Sulky Neale squeezed into a pair of big bloomers and tights wouldn’t get me away from Coronation Street, but he would. Tea break, I want all the gen on him, Jen.’ She laughed at her own joke.

  ‘Writing a book on Northumberland from a walker’s perspective?’ Lionel said, his mouth looking a bit funny again. ‘How utterly ground-breaking.’

  Jennifer buried herself back up in the office, but she was still focused on Matt Harper. That hand extended in friendship, why hadn’t she taken it? Because of that last nervous blurt of his? All that blunt honesty?

  Or because she knew that putting her skin against his was going to make her feel all kinds of things she hadn’t felt for a long time; things that w
ere pointless for someone who looked like she did now to feel for someone who looked like him?

  Mack wondered whether anyone would notice if he stood outside Tyneforth Library and repeatedly hit his head against the wall. ‘In your face’. Brilliant. The one thing he shouldn’t draw attention to and he’d done it.

  He found a coffee shop and mainlined a double espresso and chocolate muffin. Jeez, what a mess. Despite practising his apology on the bus it had been a lot more difficult faced with the flesh-and-blood reality of that face. The way she walked away at the end without shaking his hand, was that a sign that he should just hand Phyllida a shovel and tell her to get digging?

  Still, out of the wreckage he’d picked up some things that might be useful. Like the fact the guy on the desk obviously had a thing for Jennifer; that Sonia had a scarier, bigger sister called Sheila and, Jennifer’s tone suggested, all was not right between them. Oh, and that he had the same taste in jumpers as the woolly Romeo. He’d almost laughed out loud when he’d seen that.

  He looked around. Finding one of these coffee shops up here in the frozen north was a bit like finding a sushi bar in the desert.

  That scarring was horrible, though. You couldn’t stop staring when you were talking to her. Took your mind right off those high cheekbones and blue eyes. She had a bit of an Eastern European look, or, with that blonde hair, perhaps it was more Scandinavian. The thought of Vikings made him remember Lisa’s comment about pillaging and he spent a few, satisfying minutes thinking about her breasts.

  Still, Jennifer wasn’t the slightly out-of-it, sad soul he’d imagined from the way she’d acted yesterday in the pub. Genuine sense of humour lurking in there, which he supposed shouldn’t surprise him: if she’d been set on being an actress she must have been outgoing, pretty confident.

  He got another coffee and the code for the Wi-Fi, found a seat where he couldn’t be overlooked and retrieved his laptop from the rucksack. He’d missed being able to dig into the Internet or speak on his mobile whenever he felt like it and spent the first few minutes answering emails, giving the impression to friends he was still in Bath. Then he did a bit of research on the village Tess thought he was living in. Bloody typical, that one had a pub. Trawling through gossip sites he saw that Cressida had rescued a drowning member of the paparazzi. Nice bit of PR. She’d probably been tempted to push him right under.