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Sitting on the sofa with her laptop on her knees, Harriet pressed send and crossed another name off her list. It was going to be difficult building up momentum again, but hopefully, the fact that she had done good work for them in the past would encourage some of her old clients to come back. As she leaned across to pick up her coffee, a message pinged in. Drink forgotten, she opened it. It was from one of the people she’d emailed. It read, “Glad you’re better now. I will certainly bear you in mind when I next need some work doing. Take care of yourself.”
She dashed off a quick reply. People were responding. Phew. Slowly, she was coming back. Harriet closed the lid of the laptop and rubbed her eyes. It felt good, this reconnecting. She had lost a year, but it was okay. She could salvage things and start to live again. All thanks to Niamh and Tim. In a less than twenty four hours, they had undone months of damage. Harriet picked up her coffee and found that it had gone cold. Never mind. She fancied a glass of wine. She stood up, then sat back down again. The drinking needed to stop too. That would be the first outward sign of her recovery. But not tonight. She felt too bruised and fragile to go without. She’d only had one glass so far, she reasoned. Another wouldn’t be too much.
Putting the laptop on the floor, she hunted down the half sized bottle of white that she had in the fridge and poured herself a glass. She took the photo of herself and Richard off the fridge and took it into the living room with her. He wasn’t coming back. The best thing she could do for him now was to ride her ocean of sadness until she found somewhere to stand again. She touched his face in the picture and wondered yet again if he had somehow sent Niamh and Tim to her. She could see why he might have sent Niamh, but why Tim?
Harriet took a sip of wine, wincing at the cold. Tim. After the little spat they had in the pub, she wasn’t sure how she felt about Tim. He seemed to have done nothing but bumble around since he’d got there, but all of it had been well meaning and all of it, in one way or another, had helped. She thought of his face when he’d upset her. He had looked mortified. Harriet smiled. He was ... sweet. She recalled the sight of him in Richard’s T-shirt that was too small for him. He had muscles in all the right places too.
For a mad minute she wondered what it would feel like to be pressed against him. Then she remembered that he was Richard’s ex brother-in-law. Mel would be so angry if Harriet managed to seduce Tim. The idea made her smile.
She shook her head. No. Tim was out of bounds. Maybe if they’d met under different circumstances ... It had been so long since she’d looked at the world clearly, that it was possible that any man would look attractive right now. Anyway, he would be gone by tomorrow afternoon and she wouldn’t see him again. She’d try and keep in touch with Niamh, but she had no reason to keep any links with Tim.
She settled back down on the sofa and pulled the laptop onto her knees again. The bell rang. Someone was at the door. Frowning, Harriet got back up again. She opened the window that faced the side street and leaned out to see who it was. Tim stood outside, with no coat on, fidgeting to keep warm. What kind of a numpty went out without a coat in the middle of the night?
“Oh,” said Harriet. “It’s you. What do you want?”
He looked up. “Er ... hi. Can I talk to you? I would like to apologise.”
She felt a rush of pleasure that he’d come to look for her. But there was no sense in making things easy for him.
Harriet gave an exaggerated sigh. “You may as well come in. Everyone in this village thinks I’m some sort of marriage-wrecking floozie now anyway.”
He started to say something, but she cut him off by shutting the window. She padded downstairs and let him in. “Go on up,” she said. She shut the door and went upstairs herself.
He was standing in her living room. “Look, I’m sorry about—”
She waved the apology aside. “It’s okay.” She plugged her laptop in to charge. “How’s Niamh doing?”
“She’s all right, actually. She was upset to start with, but I think she’ll be okay. We had a chat. She knows her dad loved her.” He rubbed his arm absently, just above the bandage.
A voice in Harriet’s head observed that he had nice forearms.
Reminding herself that she had to keep her distance from him, Harriet picked up her wine. “I didn’t know if it was the right thing to tell her. It was important to Richard that she thought well of him.”
“But she had him on an impossible pedestal,” Tim said.
She shrugged. Richard wasn’t going to do anything now that would push him off his pedestal. He could have stayed there for all time, now that he was gone. “That’s not why I told her.”
She pulled out one of the dining chairs and sat down. Tim joined her at the opposite side of the table. The room felt a little bigger now that there was a table in between them.
He leaned against the table with his good arm. “Why did you tell her, then?”
“Niamh’s lost her father. She needs her mother more than ever. I didn’t want her to think that her mum was being a complete bitch and making things up to sully Richard’s memory.” Harriet tapped a fingernail against her glass. What kind of person risked hurting their child, just to get revenge on the child’s father? She disliked Mel intensely. “But Mel doesn’t exactly help herself with her attitude. Poor Niamh shouldn’t have to come and find a relative stranger to help her grieve. Her mum should be there for her.”
“Mel did her best.” Of course he jumped in to defend his precious sister.
Harriet rolled her eyes. “Oh yes, counselling. You said. It’s not like you talk about it a few times and then BAM, grief over. It doesn’t work like that.”
Tim sighed and suddenly looked very tired. “I know. I know. You’re right. It’s my fault. I should—”
“No, Tim. It’s not your fault. It’s Mel’s. Why do you always defend that woman? She’s self-centred and controlling and thoughtless. What power does she have that makes you think you have to look after her all the time?”
Tim inhaled sharply. He looked like he’d been slapped. He blinked and looked down at his hands, frowning. Harriet felt a stir of unease. She’d hit a nerve. Seconds passed. When he still didn’t reply to her, she felt even worse. She’d just shot her mouth off. Clearly there was more to this than she realised. “I’m sorry,” she said. “That was out of order.”
He put up a hand to stop her, but didn’t look up. “It’s okay,” he said. “You have a point.” He finally dragged his gaze up to meet hers and she was surprised to see pain in his expression. “Mel’s my twin ... when we were children, Mel was ill. A lot. She had childhood leukaemia and we thought she was going to die.”
Harriet’s hand rose to her mouth. Ouch. In light of this information, what she’d just said was incredibly insensitive. “I’m so sorry.”
He carried on speaking, as though he hadn’t heard. “For a while, our whole life was hospitals and treatment regimes and ... and everything focussed on Mel. The treatment worked and eventually Mel got better, but I guess we never stopped focussing on her. The slightest thing and it was back to hospital for tests. Even after we grew up and moved away from home, I kinda stuck around to make sure she was okay. I know Mel can be self-centred and demanding ... but it’s because we made her like that. So, in a way, it is my fault.”
Suddenly, other things Richard had said made sense. About how Mel needed to get her own way. About how she couldn’t stand Richard giving baby Niamh too much attention. At the time Harriet had dismissed the idea of a woman being jealous of her own child as ridiculous ... but it turned out, again, that she didn’t have a clue. What did she know about motherhood? She’d never got that far.
She reached across the table to Tim and touched his arm. He started.
She moved her hand back. “I’m sorry. I jumped to conclusions. I really must stop doing that.” She gave him what she hoped was an apologetic smile.
He blinked, but didn’t smile. “You’re a nice person,” he said. “What you did for Niamh – you know, going to get her. Making sure she was safe. That was kind.”
“Not especially. The poor child was frantic when she called. Anyone else would have done the same.”
“But telling her the truth about Richard ... even though it made you look bad. That was something special.” His gaze met hers. His eyes were blue. A surprising deep blue. “I can see why Richard liked you.”
It was the first complimentary thing he’d said to her. She felt a small flush of warmth, somewhere in her belly. “Thank you.”
He continued looking at her, as though seeing her properly for the first time. She fought down the urge to smooth her hair with her hands. He frowned.
“What?” she asked.
“You said you didn’t know ...” he said. “Earlier, in the pub, you said that you didn’t know that Richard was married.”
Oh. So that was why he was looking at her. He was trying to figure out when she’d found out about Richard’s lies. Not any other reason. She surprised herself by feeling a bump of disappointment. She must like him more than she’d thought. “Yes. At first, I didn’t know.” She looked up at him. “I’m not the sort of person who goes around breaking up other people’s marriages, honestly. Christ, I know how hard it is—” But he didn’t need telling. He’d watched his sister’s marriage fall apart, twice, by the sound of things. She cleared her throat. Keep to the subject. “Richard told me that he wasn’t with his wife any more. I took that to mean he was divorced ... but obviously ... shades of grey.” She took a large gulp of wine.
She had met Richard and her world had gone from black and white to technicolour. Falling in love had happened instantly, with no preamble. That glorious, breathless summer. She thought of that summer now and it seemed a little more distant. A little less vivid. “He ... we were together for a week and he had to go. He texted me and called me every day. And then, about four days after he’d gone back, he called me and told me he hadn’t been entirely honest. He said that he had only now left his wife.”
His gaze was fixed on her. “And you didn’t mind?”
Harriet gave a little laugh. “Oh, I minded. I was most unhappy. I think I swore rather a lot and I hung up on him. But then the world seemed suddenly so very drab, I couldn't bear it. In the end I decided that knowing that he’d once lied to me ... and then come clean about it, was not as bad as knowing that I’d had a chance at something wonderful and let it slip through my fingers.” She shrugged one shoulder. “I guess you don’t choose how you fall in love. Sometimes it’s not perfect, but then, what is?”
For a moment, Tim said nothing. He seemed to be thinking this through, turning the concept over. Finally, he said, “That’s very generous of you.”
It was. But it was also entirely the opposite. Generosity involved giving something away while you still had use for it. All she had done was to keep him, which was what she’d desperately wanted to do in the first place.
“I’m a generous person,” she said. She looked down at her glass, now nearly empty. She couldn’t offer Tim a drink, because there was hardly a glassful left. Maybe coffee? Partway through this thought, she realised that she didn’t want him to leave. Not yet. She had missed this. Company. Companionship. She lived in a village full of people, yet she’d chosen to make herself lonely. It hadn’t been a conscious choice. It had just happened. She was only realising it now. As though she was waking up. “Would you like a drink?”
Tim glanced at the wine.
“I meant, coffee ... or tea. I don’t have any wine left, sorry.”
“I was just going to say, I’m not really a white wine drinker.” He smiled, making his face light up. “Coffee would be lovely. Thank you.”
****
Tim looked out of the window at the quiet street outside. Nothing moved. Nothing. For someone like him, who had grown up in the city and got used to watching the passing headlights sweep across the ceiling while he fell asleep, it might as well have been on another planet. Glancing up, he saw the stars. So many more stars than he was used to seeing. He tried to picture living here all the time, in a place where the stars shone so bright.
And Harriet. The more he got to know her, the brighter she became. There was something about her, a barely contained energy that was out of place in this sleepy village. She came out of the kitchen, the light catching her hair and making her glow. For a fleeting instant he wondered what it would be like to kiss her. What was wrong with him?
She came up and handed him his drink.
“Can I ask a question?” Tim said.
“Sure.”
“Why here? You said you moved here, but you didn’t grow up here. You work online, so you could have moved down to be with Richard, but you chose to stay here. Why?”
She gestured to the window. “Look at it,” she said. “When the sun’s out and the birds are singing ... there’s nowhere so beautiful.”
He looked and saw stars and dark hillsides, rising up either side of the village. He had seen it in the daytime and thought it beautiful. Now, in the velvet night, it looked altogether too quiet.
She came to stand next to him, so close that there was barely a gap between their shoulders. “See those houses over there?” She gestured towards a distant glow at the top of a hill. “That’s the new housing development. Richard looked at a house there. He was going to buy it and I was going to live in it. But ...” She turned back and faced the flat. “But I didn’t want to. This ...” She waved her glass to sweep the living room. “This is mine. I can afford the rent on it ... it’s my home. I didn’t want to leave it.” She smiled. “So, we abandoned that plan. He was only ever up here at the weekends anyway. He had to stay near Niamh.”
Tim turned around too and looked at the flat properly. It was small, he’d noticed that from the start, but it was homely. It looked more lived in than his sparsely furnished place.
“You never considered moving down?”
An odd looked flashed across her face. She shook her head. “No. I lived in London once. When I was ... oh, too young. And stupid. When I came here, I wanted to get as far away from London as I could and ...” She took a sip from her drink, slowly, as though buying herself time. “Well, can you think of another place that is less like London than this?” When she moved her hand down, it trembled.
Tim stared at her and sensed something enormous behind her decision to leave London. “What happened?” he said, softly.
She glanced at him sideways and said nothing.
“You don’t have to tell me,” he said. “I didn’t mean to pry. I’m sorry.”
She blinked, slowly. “No. It’s okay.” She sighed and leaned against the windowsill. “I grew up on the other side of the Pennines. Not far from here, but far enough.” Her mouth twisted into a bitter half smile. “I left home young. Very young. I met a man ... well, he was almost still a boy, really. Geoff. He was nineteen and I was seventeen. My parents were very ... well, they would never have let me do it ... so we ran away. My parents disowned me. We were so sure of ourselves. So stupid.”
She put down her mug. “We thought we were happy. Then I got pregnant ... and he realised he wasn’t so happy after all. The baby ...” Her voice sounded thin and distant. Her hand curled into a fist and rested against her side. “The baby went. And a few weeks later ... he went too. He moved to Spain and got a job running a bar. I was left with nothing. No baby, no boyfriend ... just a bedsit I couldn’t afford to rent and this huge, huge sadness.” She was staring into the middle distance now. Her hand unclenched and dropped limp at her side.
“Oh, Harriet.” He didn’t know what to say. She had lost so much and now she’d lost Richard too. He wanted to reach out, put an arm around her, comfort her, but he couldn’t. Could he? He moved a hand tentatively in her direction.
Harriet drew in a sharp breath. “Anyway,” she said, snapping back into the present. “I survived. I moved to a shared house. Worked as a temp in an office for a few years. Did copywriting by night until I had enough clients to be self-reliant. As soon as I could afford to, I came back up North. I couldn’t go see my parents, obviously, but ... it’s cheaper up here. And nicer.”
Tim moved his hand back. She clearly wasn’t going to appreciate a hug. He had been a sounding board for Mel’s anger and for Niamh’s confusion. He had been able to comfort them by being there. But this was new to him. He could hear the pain in her voice, see it in the tremor of her fingers. But she didn’t want comforting. She definitely didn’t want his sympathy. “It is nice here,” he said, carefully. “Lots of ... sky.”
Harriet gave him a small smile. “This flat was a little more expensive than the other places I’d looked at, but when I got here, I went for a walk around the village ... and I had the strangest feeling that the place had been waiting for me to come and find it. Like I belonged here.” She put her head to one side and a small smile pulled at her lips. “I met Richard within half an hour of that and then I knew. This was where I was meant to be.”
Her gaze rose to a photo of her and Richard framed on the mantelpiece. There was a small white feather stuck onto the frame. She swallowed, muscles moving on her elegant neck. “Richard’s not here now ... but I think I still belong here. I just forgot to look around properly for a while.”
There was a lump in Tim’s throat. Here he was, carrying around a stupid grudge that belonged to his sister, when this woman ... all alone ... was dealing with so much grief. Old grief. New grief. So much sadness. “I’m so sorry. It must be hard, dealing with Richard’s death all alone.”
“Oh, I’ll be okay. Now that people know, they’ll be ... supportive. They may be nosy and annoying, but the people here look out for me, just as I’d always look out for them.” Harriet’s smile warmed. “I can’t believe I’d forgotten that until Frank reminded me this evening.” She reached behind him and pulled the curtain shut.
He smiled back. “I’m really sorry about what happened in the pub, by the way. I didn’t mean to sound like I was accusing you. I—”
She laughed softly and moved away. “Don’t worry about it. It’s not exactly unjustified anyway.”
He raised his eyebrows over his mug.
She shrugged. “Since Richard died ... sometimes, when I have a drink, I get so ... desolate. I need someone to hold me. It gets so bad, that need. Sometimes I go into town, go clubbing ... just to have some contact with someone ... anyone.” She looked straight at him, chin raised, defying him to judge her.
“Oh.” Tim spoke without thinking. “I know exactly how that feels.” He realised what he’d just said and felt the blood rise in his face. He looked up. Harriet was looking at him. Her gaze met his. The texture of the air changed. His heart kicked up a notch. He should say something to break the tension, but he couldn’t take his gaze off her lips.
Harriet very deliberately put her mug down on the table and took a couple of steps towards him. Tim’s heart thundered in his ears. His body, of its own accord, moved to meet her. He took her face in his hands and kissed her.
She tasted of wine and coffee. He forgot everything else and gave himself up to the moment. Her mouth against his. The press of her breasts against his chest, the thrill of her fingertips in his hair. He pulled her closer and her legs brushed against his thighs. It had been so long and she felt so soft ... so good.
It was only when she pulled away so that she could unbutton his shirt that rational thought intruded. Niamh was in the pub across the road. She was safe, but what would she think? He couldn’t risk upsetting her by making her life more complicated than it already was. And Mel. Mel would be furious with him. As much as he wanted this, he had to think about his sister and niece first. His sleeping with Richard’s ex would never be a good thing for either of them. He caught Harriet’s hands in his and moved them away.
She looked up, the fire in her eyes dimming under a frown. “What’s wrong?”
Oh, he wanted to carry on kissing her. But he had to be strong. “This is a bad idea,” he said. “You’re Richard’s—” Richard’s what? Widow? Ex? He wasn’t sure what to call her. “Richard’s ...”
She stepped back as though he’d stung her, wrapped her arms around herself. “I’m not Richard’s,” she said, quietly. “I’m not anybody’s. I’m mine.”
“Harriet, I’m so sorry.” He reached towards her, but stopped when she flinched away from him. “I’m sorry. It’s me. I’m just—”
She shook her head, not meeting his eyes. “You’re right. It’s a bad idea. You should go.” Without looking at him, she opened the door for him. “If you pull the main door to behind you, it should lock itself.”
Tim nodded. “I’ll message you in the morning, before we go.”
Harriet didn’t reply.
He had hurt her. He wanted to touch her, give her a hug, but he couldn’t trust himself any more. “I’m sorry, Harriet,” he said, again. “Goodnight.”
Her silence followed him all the way down the stairs and out into the cold, empty street.