send Michael up to have a look,” Nan says. “He should be back from town any minute.”
“Thanks.” Daff smiles. “I’m having a lazy morning in bed reading and waiting for the fog to clear.”
“It will be gone by lunchtime, then it’ll be a perfect day for the beach. Are you around for lunch?”
“Oh don’t worry about me,” Daff says. “I may go to the village and grab something.”
Nan shrugs. “Fine. Oh listen. That’s Michael’s bike on the gravel. Let’s go and ask him about that damned window.”
A few minutes later Daff perches on the bed as Michael starts to work and, again, she has that feeling she had just the other day. Lust.
Until the other day, when this first happened, she might have said that she fully expected never to feel this way again, that perhaps it wasn’t possible, once you hit your forties, to feel this, that it was just for kids, for younger people in search of a thrill.
But no. It is quite clear that this is lust, and Daff is stunned. She has been aware that she likes Michael, that she feels safe with him. She likes the way he places his hand in the small of her back to guide her into a room. She likes that he looks after his mother, that he seems to want to look after her too. She wakes up in the morning and smiles at the thought of seeing him stumble around the kitchen to refill his coffee cup; she thinks he looks like a cute little boy with his hair mussed up and his eyes filled with sleep.
“Ah-ha! I’ve got it.” Michael groans as he reaches up. “It’s this bit that’s sticking. Can you pass me that box knife?”
Daff goes to the toolbox and passes him the knife, feeling another shiver as her fingers accidentally brush his.
Oh for God’s sake, she tells herself, embarrassed. You’re a grown woman. Stop behaving like a teenager. But still, she has to fight the urge to glance at herself in the mirror on the other side of the room, checking that she looks okay.
“All done,” Michael says, and for a second they just stand there, looking at each other, the air suddenly charged as Daff fumbles for something to say.
“Are you going to the party?” Michael asks softly, and Daff nods. The party Jack from the garden center has invited them to is this evening. Daff is surprised to realize she is excited about tonight in a way she hasn’t been excited for ages.
Michael reaches out and slowly tucks a strand of hair behind Daff’s ear.
“Wear your hair down,” he says. “You look beautiful.” Then, turning, he walks out of the room, leaving Daff to sink down on the bed with a hand on her fluttering heart.
Jess scuffs around Wal-Mart, looking like any other young teenager, not meeting anyone’s eyes, covertly checking for security guards.
She doesn’t call it stealing. Jess would never steal, and anyway, this isn’t from a person, it’s from a huge conglomerate, therefore it doesn’t count. In the couple of weeks since she started, she has amassed a startling amount of goods. Both drawers in her bedside table are stuffed full, and she has taken to locking her bedroom door just in case her dad or Carrie should walk in and question her.
She lines up her wares in silence, feeling, in an odd way, safe when she is surrounded by this stuff that is hers and only hers, for only she knows about it.
Occasionally, as she looks at it all, she feels a pang of guilt, but she shoves it away by remembering the exhilaration, the burst of adrenaline and excitement when she first gets out of the store, the pockets of her coat containing some small thing, the fact that she got away with it making her dizzy with power.
Today she has decided to do things differently. Today is her first time at Wal-Mart, and why not get something for her? Something she actually wants, something she might want to buy?
She moves past the tables piled high with sparkly T-shirts, and stops, unfolding one, attempting to look nonchalant, look like every other girl as she slowly slides one from the bottom of the pile into her tote bag.
She leaves the T-shirts, shaking her head as if she has changed her mind, and moves on, to a table with hats. Again, the same motion, pretending to be focused on one thing as she covertly slips another item of clothing into