Never Alone

  ‘Great,’ he says. ‘Want me to do it?’

  ‘Go on, then.’

  She carries on putting things away as he fills the kettle and puts it on to boil, finds mugs. ‘I saw Sophie earlier,’ she says.

  ‘Yes,’ he says, ‘she said she was on her way to meet you.’

  He’s not going to try and wriggle out of it, then. That’s something.

  ‘She said she saw you, in London. A few years ago. Meeting Jim.’

  ‘Yes.’

  She does not reply. The shopping has been put away. For want of something to do, she gets the biscuit tin down from the cupboard and puts it on the table. The kettle boils and she takes over the tea-making, pouring water into mugs and stirring. He hasn’t taken his eyes off her.

  ‘Jim was helping me out,’ he says. ‘Financially, I mean.’

  Sarah puts the two mugs down on the table. Aiden pulls out a chair and sits down. For a moment she stays with her back to the sink, and then she gives in and sits down.

  ‘Why didn’t he tell me?’ she asks.

  ‘Maybe he thought you wouldn’t approve.’

  At this Sarah pulls a face. ‘Why the hell wouldn’t I approve?’

  ‘It wasn’t illegal, or anything like that. I don’t know why he didn’t want to tell you.’

  ‘How much money are we talking about?’

  ‘Ten thousand pounds.’ He hesitates, then adds, ‘It’s all paid back, years ago.’

  ‘A successful venture, then,’ Sarah says, raising her mug in a salute. Ten thousand pounds. The thought of it makes her feel sick.

  ‘It is.’

  ‘It’s still going?’

  ‘I’m still using the profits from that enterprise to fund new ones.’

  She wants to ask what the enterprise was, but in that moment she hears a muffled buzzing sound and Aiden pulls a phone out of his back pocket.

  He looks at the number. ‘I need to take this,’ he says. ‘Do you mind?’

  ‘Of course not,’ she says.

  He gets up from the table and goes to the front door, lets himself out and shuts it behind him before he answers. In the silence of the kitchen she can just about hear him, outside, talking. Nothing of what he’s saying, just the tone of it, and then a laugh. Her head is fizzing with it. The money, oh, the money. Did he really pay it back? Was that why he hesitated? In any case, it certainly isn’t there now. Jim must have invested it in other things, or spent it.

  It’s only a few minutes later that he comes back inside. ‘Sorry about that.’

  In a small, quiet voice, she says, ‘Jim trusted you.’

  ‘He did.’

  ‘I just wonder why he didn’t trust me.’

  He doesn’t reply for a moment. He finishes his drink instead, as if pondering his next move.

  ‘Don’t be too hard on him, Sarah. I think he was just trying to keep us apart. I think he thought I might try and steal you away.’

  Sarah snorts at this.

  ‘You think? Like I’m not able to make decisions like that for myself?’

  She’s cross at the assumption, and it takes her back to the moment when Thursday’s hangover was wearing off and she realised that the Aiden she’d been fantasising about all these years was still the lad who’d played her for a fool.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘I didn’t mean to imply that.’

  ‘No, it’s fine,’ she says.

  ‘You’re angry,’ he says. ‘It’s not fine.’

  Then she just can’t help herself any more. ‘I am angry. I’m cross that Jim didn’t trust me, and I’m cross that, even though you and I were friends years ago, good friends, and more, you didn’t think that it might be something I should know about. And that you wouldn’t have told me, even now, if Sophie hadn’t recognised you.’

  He looks as if he’s going to interrupt and disagree with this, but she doesn’t give him a chance.

  ‘And as if all that’s not bad enough, we slept together on Wednesday night and you left while I was asleep and didn’t so much as text me to say hello after that. That’s just rude, I think. So you regret it, I don’t even care, but if nothing else we are supposed to be friends and it wouldn’t have killed you just to say as much to my face instead of leaving me to feel like some slapper you’d picked up for the night in a club.’

  Sarah finally runs out of breath, and energy, and anger. She can’t bear to look at him. After a moment he places his hand over hers, warm and firm.

  ‘You’re right,’ he says, quite calmly, ‘that it was very rude of me to walk out and leave you like that. But you’re wrong if you think I regret what happened.’

  ‘Oh,’ she says.

  ‘It feels like something I’ve waited half my life for.’

  Now, finally, she can look at him. Normally so measured, so laid-back as he is, there is something in his eyes she’s not seen before. He looks – sad. And then, just as quickly, it’s gone.

  Sarah watches as he crosses the yard to the cottage and goes inside. At her side, Tess gives out a tiny whine.

  ‘All right, girl, I know.’

  She feeds the dogs, and in the thirty seconds it takes them to eat what’s in their bowls she has pulled on her boots and her waterproof coat. Having been left on their own for most of the day, they are more than ready to go out, scampering around her feet and nearly knocking her over.

  Above her, the hill rises in the gloom, dark clouds scudding across the summit and making her feel giddy. She doesn’t fancy being up there today. It’s too high, too windy; she feels too fragile. She whistles for the dogs and lets them through the gate to the path that runs around the side of the hill. Overjoyed at this unexpected change to the routine, they race ahead of her, barking.

  She doesn’t usually come this way. The path crosses a stream about half a mile further on; in summer it’s fine, but often in winter the stream becomes a rushing torrent that floods the path. Beyond that, the track opens up into a series of fields in which a variety of livestock are grazed. It means putting the dogs on their leads, something she does rarely these days. But maybe she won’t take them that far.

  Not for the first time, she wonders whether she has done the right thing by inviting Aiden to stay. It was a foolish thing, a spur-of-the-moment thing. It’s the sort of decision she would have made as a twentysomething, ruled by her heart, expecting nothing but the best from people and riding the wave of being young. Aiden’s return has made her feel like that again, bursting with possibility and the glorious what if, because nothing bad can happen, and, even if it does, well, she’ll cope, won’t she?

  But now the bitter wind is stinging her cheeks, the mud heavy under her boots, making her slip and catch herself: she’s not twenty any more. She has a house, and debts, and, while she doesn’t need to worry about the children any longer, it’s a hard habit to break, worrying.

  Aiden gives her a glimpse of the Sarah That Used To Be. Back then, at university, she had a series of half-relationships, friends who came with benefits, friends who were defined by the few things she had in common with them – Cath from her course, Josie from the Art Soc, Leanne and Davy who drank in the Star on Thursdays; and none of that mattered because everyone knew that was how it was; everyone did the same thing. She never gave herself long enough to form any sort of real attachment, and at the same time there was an odd sort of hollowness about it all that seemed like an unconnected thing, a side-effect of being young. But the hollowness swelled like an injury, grew into disgust at herself, and then into a fear, a dull panic that her whole life was going to be defined by a series of failures and false starts, and that, whatever she was going to face, she was going to have to do it on her own.

  And then Jim came along, and suddenly it all made sense. She didn’t even love him, then. He said to her that he would promise to be there for her forever, and it was the permanence that attracted her. The idea that, whatever lay ahead, she would have Jim.

  Now he’s gone, and all he’s left for her is the house
, the debts, and his ex-best friend.

  As soon as the sun goes down behind the peaks she turns back, but, even so, it is almost completely dark by the time she heads back down through the field. She wishes she had left some lights on.

  ‘Tess!’ she calls. The dog is nowhere to be seen. ‘Tess!’

  Basil sits in the doorway, tongue lolling. It’s not often that Tess is the one being shouted at, and it looks as if he’s enjoying it.

  Sarah is about to go back up the hill to look when she sees a flash of pale fur and the dog shoots down the hill towards her. Her tail is between her legs. Sarah checks her over for injuries; perhaps she has got caught somewhere. She runs her hand down the dog’s back. Tess is trembling.

  ‘What is it, girl? Where did you go?’

  Tess gives a barely audible whine.

  Sarah looks up towards the hill, which looms up as a dark shape against the lighter black of the evening sky.

  ‘Come on, both of you. Inside.’

  She should go and look, but there is something about the darkness, something about Tess’s whine and the tremble in her body, that makes Sarah want to be inside, with the door shut behind her.

  Sarah has just come back into the kitchen when she hears a noise outside. The dogs hear it too; both of them go to the front door, barking. Basil is wagging his tail.

  She opens the door, expecting to see Aiden, but no one is there. Nevertheless Basil and Tess both rush out into the yard and disappear into the shadows. The security light, attached to the side of the workshop, comes on. Sarah thinks it might be a fox, although they do not often appear this far out of the village.

  ‘Hello?’ she calls. Just to make sure.

  Then she can hear a voice and a man steps out of the shadows near the side of the house, both dogs scampering around him. Tess leaves him and comes back to Sarah, runs into the house.

  It’s Will.

  ‘Hi!’ he calls cheerfully.

  ‘Hello, Will,’ Sarah says. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Well,’ he says, finally pushing Basil out of the way and reaching the door, ‘I could say I was passing, but that would be… you know… a bit of a fib.’

  ‘Come in,’ she says, because she can’t leave him outside on the doorstep, can she?

  He is wearing a thin hoodie, and has his guitar slung over his back, along with a rucksack. As he removes the guitar case and then the bag, she gets a sense of the weight of it from the way his arm strains, placing it gently on the floor. Basil sniffs at it hopefully and wags his tail. ‘Nothing in there for you, matey,’ Will says, rubbing the top of the dog’s head. ‘Sorry, old lad.’

  ‘Would you like a drink?’ Sarah asks. ‘Tea?’

  ‘That’d be great, thanks. If you were making one.’

  He pulls out a chair and sits at the dining table.

  ‘I thought you were house-sitting?’ she asks, because it’s patently obvious from the bag that he isn’t.

  ‘Ah,’ he says, ‘I got the dates wrong. Really awkward – it’s next weekend, not this weekend.’

  ‘And they can’t put you up in the meantime?’

  He pulls a face. ‘It seems they can’t, no.’

  She puts a mug on the table in front of him, and he wraps his hands around it. Already Sarah knows where this is heading, and at the same time as trying to fend it off, think of an excuse, she’s already feeling sorry for him. He’s only a little bit older than Louis, for God’s sake. She can’t turn him out, can she?

  ‘Have you got nowhere else to go?’

  He looks down into his tea forlornly. Doesn’t speak.

  ‘Will,’ Sarah says, ‘look at me.’

  He shakes his head, and doesn’t look up.

  A second later he covers his face with his hands.

  ‘Hey,’ she says. ‘It’s okay.’

  Sarah places a comforting hand on his upper arm, waits for him to recover. It takes some minutes. He doesn’t make a sound, doesn’t look up, but his shoulders tremble. Even through the hoodie he feels cold to the touch.

  Eventually he wipes his eyes roughly on his sleeve, breathes in, and presents her with a smile. ‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘Sorry about that.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ she says again.

  ‘Yeah,’ he goes on, brightly, ‘so I was wondering whether I could be really cheeky and sleep on your sofa for a couple of nights.’

  He doesn’t look at her while he asks, as if he is already expecting her to say no.

  ‘I don’t have anyone else I can ask,’ he says, ‘and I know it’s a big deal but I know you’ve got that separate cottage, and I wondered if you might need someone to – you know – keep an eye on it for you?’

  She goes to speak, but he hasn’t finished.

  ‘I’m good at fixing things, you know – I can do painting, decorating; I can wire up electrics. Whatever you need doing.’

  ‘I know you’re good at fixing things,’ Sarah says; ‘you helped me with the guttering when you stayed here before, remember?’

  ‘Aye, I did,’ he says, proudly, as if he’d forgotten.

  ‘But the thing is, Will, I’ve got a friend staying in the cottage at the moment. You met him, last weekend at the Royal Oak. So it’s not free. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Oh, right, I see,’ he says, but looks as if he doesn’t. A second later he drinks some of his tea and goes to stand up. ‘I’ll be on my way, then. I don’t want to trouble you, Sarah. You know you were always very kind to me.’

  ‘Hang on!’ Sarah says. ‘You don’t need to rush off.’

  She doesn’t particularly want him staying in the house with her, on her own, but she can’t imagine sending him out into the darkness again with nowhere to go. But then, she’s not on her own, is she? Aiden is there. He is just a few yards away.

  ‘I can sleep in the workshop,’ he suggests. ‘I don’t mind. I won’t disturb anything.’

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ she says. ‘It’s not exactly warm out there.’

  ‘I’ve got my sleeping bag,’ he says. ‘Seriously, don’t worry – anything’s better than the bus shelter.’

  He says that as though he’s done it before. The thought of it makes Sarah want to weep.

  ‘Look,’ she says, ‘you can have the spare room tonight…’

  He looks up, overjoyed, his bright blue eyes shining, ‘Serious? Are you serious? Thank you, thank you so much…’

  ‘… but tomorrow we need to find you somewhere better, okay?’

  ‘Aye,’ he says, but looks doubtful again.

  ‘We’ll worry about that in the morning. Are you hungry?’

  He is, of course he is. And he needs a bath. While the oven’s warming up, Sarah goes upstairs to put clean sheets on the bed in the spare room, the one at the back of the house. She turns the radiator up while she’s in there. Normally she leaves it just about ticking over. Seems little point in keeping the whole house toasty when it’s just her here.

  When Sarah gets back downstairs Will is asleep, his head resting on his arm. He is breathing deeply. She does not wake him but puts the pot of chicken casserole she had defrosted into the oven to heat through, prepares some vegetables. Even the chopping and the boiling pan don’t disturb him. She goes into the living room while the vegetables are cooking, switching on the television. The news is just finishing and the weather report indicates that heavy rain is due overnight. There is a risk of localised flooding. Not up here, she thinks, thank goodness.

  When the oven timer sounds to remind her about the dinner, she goes back into the kitchen. Will is awake now, sitting back in his chair.

  ‘That smells so good,’ he says.

  She wants to object, reply that it’s only chicken, that anything would smell good if you were as hungry as Will clearly is, but instead she smiles and accepts the compliment as it has been given. She fills a plate and puts it in front of him. Then she dishes up her own portion and sits at the table to eat with him. It’s nice having company. It does feel a little odd that it’s just t
he two of them, especially after what’s happened with Sophie. She wonders whether to bring up the subject, considers that he might be too tired – and too emotional – to talk about her now. It can wait, she thinks. After all, Sophie doesn’t even need to know he stayed here. He will probably be gone in the morning, or certainly after the weekend.

  ‘This is great,’ Will says. He has nearly finished already.

  ‘You want some more? There’s a bit left. Help yourself.’

  He gets up from his seat and takes his plate over to the Aga, spooning the last bit of casserole out. The last few mouthfuls he tries not to rush. She watches him while he eats, and when he catches her looking he smiles at her. He really is beautiful, she thinks; it takes her by surprise. Under the tangle of short curls, he has clear skin, and that makes the blue of his eyes even more vivid. A pierced nose – not so common in young men, but not at all effete, because he has a good strong nose that suits a silver stud, and white, even teeth. A beautiful boy, he is.

  No wonder Sophie is attracted to him, she thinks. No wonder she was, herself. But she isn’t going to think about that right now. She told herself she wasn’t going to think about it again.

  She doubts that he even remembers.

  Sarah stands at the bathroom door with an armful of dirty clothes, while Will sinks into the warm water with a blissful sigh.

  ‘I’ve put the clean clothes on the dresser there,’ she says. ‘Just some things of Louis’s. They might not fit, but, you know, better than nothing.’

  ‘That’s great, thanks,’ he says. His eyes are closed.

  She turns to go, shuts the door behind her. Well, that was awkward. She had brought the clothes to the bathroom door, suggested he hand the dirty clothes over and swap them. The door was wide open and he’d just stripped off, there and then, before she could even say anything.

  Even so, she had tried to avert her eyes as he passed over the pile of clothes with a smile.

  Downstairs, she puts Will’s clothes in the washing machine with the other things he has dragged out of his rucksack, adds detergent, and sets the machine running. She rinses the dishes and loads the dishwasher, and then sits down.