Eventually the other side yielded and everyone fell in a big heap on the grass. Patrick reached out and offered his hand and Ben jumped effortlessly to his feet, face split with the mindless grin that all men seem to get when they win something stupid and sporty.
He walked towards her and she wiped a clump of grass and dirt from his flat stomach, her fingers trailing over the outline of his rather stupendous almost-six-pack, her mind already taking up residence in the gutter as she explored the hard ridges of his flesh. God, she thought, was definitely a woman – who else could have invented something as spectacular as this?
“Like what you see, Miss Harte?” he asked, raising her face up to his for a kiss. He smelled of fresh sweat and grass and sunshine. With a hint of 1970s aftershave thrown in. It was altogether too lush.
“Not really, but you’re the best I have to hand…” she replied, giving his backside a quick squeeze. “You’re going to stink on your way back to London. Glad I won’t be trapped in a car with you.”
“They do actually have showers in London, you know,” he said. “Talking of which…”
Pippa buried her head in his chest, screwing up her eyes against tears she knew were hiding there, lying in wait for a moment of girl weakness. She took a final inhale, sniffing in the scent of him, of this gentle giant she loved so very much, then looked up at him.
“I know. You need to go. Come on, I’ll walk you to the car,” she said.
They strolled, hand in hand, to the field that was doubling as a car park. He’d already explained to the kids that he was leaving, but that he’d be back. There had been a huge wave of protest and a distinct quivering of Scotty’s lower lip, but he’d averted disaster the way adults have done for centuries: by promising to bring them presents when he returned.
He pulled his t-shirt back over his head and clicked his car door open. He leaned back against it, hair shining in the sun, eyes squinting slightly against the glare as he looked down at her. She looked so beautiful, even with her hair tied up like a messy horse’s mane, wearing that old Simpsons t-shirt she loved so much. Beautiful and delicate and ever-so-slightly scared. Damn. That wasn’t what he’d been aiming for at all. So much for distracting her on this crappy day.
“So,” he said, reaching out to stroke a stray lock of blonde hair from her eyes, “how was it for you today?”
“Um…fine,” she said. “Scarily fine, actually. So fine I may well feel a bit guilty about it later, when the happy’s worn off.”
He made a “humph” kind of sound and took her face between his hands, holding it gently as their eyes locked.
“Do you think that’s what they would have wanted, your parents? For you to feel guilty about enjoying yourself, after everything you’ve done? Because I don’t. I think they’d be proud of you. I know they would. You’ve done everything right, Pippa. You’ve made a terrible situation work, for you, for Patrick, for the kids. Nobody could have asked more from you. You deserve everything the world has to offer, never mind one day of fun at the village show.”
She screwed her face up, really tight, and he realised she was trying to stop herself from crying. Yay. Way to go, Ben Retallick, he thought – every line a winning line. Kiss the girl and make her cry.
“Thank you,” she said, finally opening her shiny eyes again. She’d won the battle, but only just.
He took her in his arms and kissed her, extremely thoroughly, until her knees started to buckle and her lungs cried out for air.
“I’ll be back in a few days,” he said. “That one will have to keep you going till then.”
She hugged him, then pulled back and studied his face, storing up every line, every contour, every subtle shade. Locking them away in the memory bank. Just in case.
“Okay,” she said, voice small, battered with too much emotion. Losing her parents. Losing Ben, for no matter how short a time, when she’d only just found him. Feeling so happy. Feeling so sad. Feeling everything, with way too much intensity.
He was about to drive away from her and spend hours on a motorway, with all kinds of crazy reckless drivers. Surrounded by all sorts of potential danger. Speeding down the fast lane, oblivious to how fragile life was – how one momentary distraction, one bad decision, one drunk driver, could change everything.
She’d lived through too much to trust him to fate so easily; she’d expected her mum and dad to come home that day years ago as well – but they never did. She knew she was being stupid, she knew he’d be fine, but still…what if he wasn’t fine? What if something terrible happened on that long drive to the big city? What if he never made it home again as well? What if he ended up being cut from a twisted, burning wreck as well? The thought was enough to set her heart a-flutter in her chest, a small bird beating wings against its cage.
“Ben…” she said, as he stooped to get into the driver’s seat, “Be careful. I…I love you, you know.”
He paused half-crouched, stared at her as if someone had whacked him in the head with a maypole. He frowned, his eyes darkening and his lips working as though he was trying to talk but couldn’t find any words.
The minute she said it, the minute she saw his reaction, she knew she’d made a terrible mistake. She’d broken all her own rules. Blown everything she’d worked so hard to protect. Revealed everything she’s tried so hard to hide. She’d told the man who couldn’t love that she loved him.
She was an idiot.
She turned, feeling those long-denied tears finally fight their way to the surface and ran in the opposite direction.
Chapter 13
The rest of the afternoon passed in a blur of hidden pain, fake smiles and children who seemed determined to test her to the very edges of her limits.
Patrick bailed, as she’d known he would, and took off to the pub with his ever-expanding bunch of close personal friends, leaving her alone with three tired, tempestuous youngsters at a time when she had so little left in the tank to deal with them.
By nine o’clock that night all three of them were wailing for various reasons and Pippa was fighting a desperate battle to not join in.
Lily had lost the Little Bo Peep ear muffs she’d won on the lucky dip, Daisy had a huge splinter in her thumb and Scotty, two hours past his usual bed time, was like a stick of dynamite attached to a burning fuse.
Pippa was sitting on the closed toilet lid balancing Daisy on her knee as she writhed and wriggled, trying to get away. She was holding her little hand tight to steady it as she wielded her eyebrow tweezers, after soaking the splint in warm water for five minutes first. She was screaming so loudly in her face that Pippa’s eardrums were vibrating.
“Calm down! I’m not going to chop your hand off – I know it’s sore but it’s got to come out!” she said, wishing for the millionth time since she took up her job as “kind of mother” that someone had given her lessons first. Her own mum, she was sure, would have had a fantastic method of pain-free splinter removal tucked up her parental sleeve. Something quick and easy she could lift from the “big book of mummy secrets”. Sadly she’d not passed on her copy and Pippa was left making up everything as she went, groping for answers in the dark as she tried to find her way through it all.
Lily was lying collapsed face down in the doorway to the bathroom, kicking the floor repeatedly with the fluffy pink toes of her princess slippers, sobbing that she loved her Little Bo Peep ear muffs more than anything in the “whole wide world”. Scotty was standing behind her tearing small strips off the wallpaper with one hand and holding the other over his ear to block out all the noise. He was rocking backwards and forwards and holding his breath for so long he was going cross-eyed. Daisy ratcheted up the volume an extra few notches and promptly tried to poke Pippa in the eye with her Frozen toothbrush.
Welcome to my life, thought Pippa, squinting in pain as her eye watered. This is exactly what I dreamed of when I was a little girl in my own princess slippers, about a million years ago.
She finally snagged the corner
of the tiny slither of wood with the tweezers. She tugged it till it came free, leaving a snail trail of blood, and Daisy let out a full-throttle banshee cry in protest, sliding off her knee and landing with a bump on the floor. She narrowed her teary eyes and yelled, “I hate you! You’re the worst big sister in the world!” before running off to her bedroom.
Lily sniffled, inhaling half the carpet with her, and staggered to her feet to follow her twin. She paused only to shoot Pippa an evil look as she stalked off, saying, “This is all your fault. You should have looked after my ear muffs for me! You’re a grown-up!”
Pippa closed her eyes, took a few deep breaths, and opened them again. Maybe it was all a bad dream. Maybe she’d come to and find out she was back in Kansas and her whole life hadn’t blown away in a tornado after all.
No such luck. Scotty was still standing there, in his pyjamas, rocking backwards and forwards, lower lip wobbling. Oh poo! She knew what that meant. She held her arms wide and he flew into them, burrowing his small blonde head into her chest. She felt the tears well and his tiny body shake with emotion as she cuddled him close.
“I w-w-w-want B-b-b-ben!” he wailed, so upset he’d developed a brand-new stutter. He felt so fragile, so delicate, heaving with anguish in her arms and expecting her to fix it all. God, she wished she could – but she’d made a giant mess of everything and had been so utterly selfish that she’d dragged her babies down with her. They were all caught in a whirlpool of pain – and swirling right down the plughole by her side.
Pippa couldn’t hold it in any more and felt her own tear ducts open up in sympathy. What a bloody disaster! Ben couldn’t get out of Cornwall fast enough, both the girls hated her and Scotty was missing the only father figure he’d ever known. She couldn’t even keep a pair of ear muffs safe – what hope was there for the rest of them?
“I want Ben to come home!” shouted Scotty, just in case she hadn’t got the gist of it first time around.
“Darling,” she said, stroking his hair back as he wiped snot all over her t-shirt, “I know exactly what you mean. Now come on, let’s get you to bed.”
Eventually, he’d calmed down. She’d learned that with kids emotions ran fast, furious and frenzied – but they passed quickly. She knew Lily and Daisy would forgive her in the morning. Scotty might need a bit more time, but he’d be all right. She’d have to make sure he was. It was her job and it was about time she started doing it properly again.
Yes, they were upset. But they were young, they were resilient and they were open to bribery.
She, on the other hand, felt about 108 years old as she eventually collapsed on the couch with a mug of coffee. She was covered in snot and tears – most of it Scotty’s, some of it rather pathetically hers – and utterly drained, physically and emotionally.
Now the kids were finally in bed and she was finally alone, she felt weak beyond belief. While they needed her – for splinter-removal, cuddles and as an emotional punching bag – she hung on. Kept a grip on sanity. Stayed strong for them. Used the domestic carnage to block out that last view of Ben’s face as he hovered by his car door: the shock, the disbelief, the…well, horror didn’t feel as though it was too big a word to use. All because she’d told him she loved him. It had been so quick, so spontaneous. Just a few tiny words that came tumbling out of her mouth because she was upset. A few tiny words that had changed everything, had turned an already topsy-turvy world even more on its head.
Would she take it back, she wondered, if she found a magic time machine in the old cowshed made out of rusted tractor parts? Something HG Wells had left behind when he was in Cornwall on holiday? If she was standing there again in that field, knowing how he would react, would she still say it?
Yes. No. Maybe. Saying nothing would be the easy option. By saying nothing, she kept everything. Ben would have driven away with happy in his head and a marrow in his pants, and she would be left with the memory of that kiss and that sensational pep talk, to keep her warm at night. More importantly, if she’d kept her stupid mouth shut, he would have come back again. Back to her arms, her bed, her life. They could pick up where they left off, with the fun and the friendship and the freakily good sex. Option A – not being a complete moron – had a lot to recommend it.
But easy, she knew, wasn’t always right. Wasn’t always for the best. And while Option B hurt like hell, perhaps it had been needed. Things would have ended with Ben eventually. It was inevitable. Doing it like this, at least, had been like ripping the plaster off with one short, brutal tug, instead of meandering along, on the receiving end of the emotional version of a slow, steady sandpapering to the face. It was pulling the splinter out instead of letting it fester in the flesh – and she’d expected a nine-year-old to be brave about that.
For the last few months she’d been living out a fantasy. The kids were fine, the business was doing well and even Patrick was morphing into someone new, someone better. But…there were small things wrong. Like the fact she’d forgotten to book the gas servicing for the cottage boilers; that she’d missed Scotty’s check-up at the dentist; that the oil light on the Land Rover had been flashing for weeks. That she hadn’t yet started panicking about her appointment with Social Services the next morning, when she normally kept several calendar days clear to practise her anxiety attacks.
Small things, but piling up. And then, she forced herself to acknowledge, there were the big things. One enormously huge thing, in fact: she was in love with a man who could never love her in return.
When it had been just about sex it had been fine. But love…well, that was right up there on the list of “important stuff to not mess up”, wasn’t it? She loved him. Adored him. Needed him. And in return, he…liked her. A lot, admittedly, but that wasn’t enough. It would never be enough, no matter how desperately she wanted to fool herself that it was.
She deserved better than that. She deserved someone who felt exactly the same about her. That might never happen, she knew – but that wasn’t an excuse for continuing to treat herself like a second-class citizen.
So, she decided, even if I do find that time machine – I wouldn’t change a thing. I may feel mangled and twisted and broken beyond repair, but I will bounce back. Possibly when I’m on a zimmer frame, but I will.
As she mulled it over, examining it all in her battered mind, she even started to feel a twinge of anger. A tiny spark, which she found herself nurturing. She knew it wasn’t fair, and she knew he’d always been honest, but still, it was there. Why did he have to be so screwed-up? Why did he have to cling so stubbornly to his insistence that he could never fall in love again? Why couldn’t he just open his eyes and realise that they could have something truly special together? Then she wouldn’t be sitting here feeling sorry for herself, she’d be doing something way more interesting, possibly involving whipped cream.
What was wrong with her? Wasn’t she good enough for him? Perhaps the whole dramatic “I’ll-never-love-again” routine was fake, even if he didn’t realise it. A kinder way of telling her that while he was happy with the bonking, she could never be anything more.
He’d certainly been horrified enough at the thought of staying with her – from the look on his face, he’d be setting new land-speed records getting back to London. He was undoubtedly in his posh city flat right now, breathing several sighs of relief at his lucky escape. Maybe now he’d go off and find himself another Johanna, someone elegant and sophisticated and clever. Someone who knew how to do French braids and had manicures and watched art-house movies at the Barbican. Someone who didn’t smell of cow shit, quite frankly.
Well, she thought, pulling herself to her weary feet to stick the kettle on again, he could sod right off. He could take his anguish and his self-pity and his drool-inducing body and stick it where…the phone! The phone was ringing!
She sprinted from the kitchen to the hall with speed that would have made Usain Bolt weep with envy, desperate to grab it before the answering machine kicked in. It could be him
. It could be Ben. He could be phoning to tell her he was coming back, to swear his undying love, to make everything feel all right again. Huh, she thought, picking up the receiver – so much for that brief and unconvincing “I Am Woman” moment.
“Hello?” she said cautiously, feeling her heart squeeze so tight she thought she might choke. Please God, let it be him! Let all my stupid delusions come true. Let it be Ben.
“Miss Harte? Pippa Harte?” said an unfamiliar male voice. Disappointment washed through her like bitter coffee and she nodded before realising that the person on the other end – “he who was not Ben” – couldn’t actually see her.
“Yes, speaking,” she replied.
“This is Matthew Dale, I’m a reporter based in London. We’ve seen the photos of you and Ben Retallick and wondered if you’d like to give your side of the story at all? I’d be happy to drive over to meet you and there would, of course, be some remuneration involved – we wouldn’t expect you to give up your time for nothing. I could be there first thing in the morning? We’re great fans of Ben’s here and I’m sure the public would be thrilled to see him happy at last…”
Pippa dropped the phone, watching but not reacting as it slithered from her hands and clattered to the stone-flagged floor. She could hear a faint tweetering noise coming from it as the reporter carried on talking. Carried on trying to convince her to splatter her whole life over the front page of a newspaper. Carried on and on and on, a disembodied voice that might just as well have been saying, “Hi – you don’t know me, but I’ve come to completely screw your life up.”
She pulled herself together, scooped it back up, and muttered a quick “no, thank you” before cutting him off.
She looked at the flashing light on the answering machine and felt terrified of what would happen if she pressed the replay button. Finger trembling, she reached out and did it anyway.
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