an hour later, they’d left the moor and were depressingly close to her house.
‘So where do we go from here?’ asked Harry as he turned into her road.
‘I’m seeing Tom later this week,’ she said. ‘He seems to be relaxing more around me now. Maybe he’ll open up a bit. If he’d just admit the existence of—’ Harry had stopped the car outside her building.
‘I wasn’t talking about the Fletchers,’ he said, in a voice that seemed to have dropped an octave.
‘I should go,’ she said, bending down to find her bag. ‘I have an early start in the morning and … it was a good suggestion about tonight. Thank you, I think it will help.’ She turned her back on him and found the door handle, conscious of being watched. She was going to have to do this quickly, she could call goodnight over her shoulder as she walked up the path. It was a short path, hardly two yards to the porch.
The engine fell silent. Behind her, Harry’s door was opening. He was much faster than she was, he would make it round the car before she was even standing up. Yes, there he was, holding out a hand, and was there any point in telling him she could manage? Probably not, and in any event, this was a new Harry, with darker eyes and who seemed to have grown taller; a Harry who didn’t speak, whose arm was around her waist as he hurried her along the path, through the downpour, to the shelter of the porch. Definitely a new Harry, who’d turned her to face him, whose fingers were reaching into her hair and whose head was bending towards her as the world went dark.
Oh, this couldn’t be a kiss – this was a butterfly, bruising its wings against her mouth, settling lightly on the curve of her cheek, the point where the smile begins.
Was this a kiss? This soft stroking of the lips? This crazy feeling that she was being touched everywhere?
And this certainly couldn’t be a kiss, not now that she was spinning away into a place lined with dark velvet. Hands were tangled in her hair – no, one was at the small of her back, pressing her closer. The rain against the porch roof felt like drums in her head. Fingers stroked the side of her face. How could she have forgotten the smell of a man’s skin; or the weight of his body, pushing her against the wall of the porch? If this was a kiss, why were tears burning in the back of her eyes?
‘Do you want to come inside?’
Had she said that out loud? She must have done. Because they weren’t kissing any more, just close enough for it to make no difference and his breath was swirling around her face like warm mist.
‘There’s nothing I’d like more,’ he said, in a voice that was nothing like Harry’s.
The keys were in her pocket. No, they were in her hand. Her hand was reaching out for the lock; his was closing around it, slowing her down.
‘But—’ he said.
Why was there always a but?
He’d brought her hand back, was holding it to his lips. ‘We still haven’t done the pizza or the movie,’ he whispered. She could barely hear him above the rain.
And you are a priest, she thought.
‘And I really don’t want to rush this.’ He released her hand and tilted her chin upwards so that she was looking directly at him.
‘That’s rather sweet,’ she said. ‘And more than a little womanly.’
At that, Harry was back, grinning at her, scooping her up and holding her tightly against him. ‘There is nothing remotely womanly about me,’ he hissed into her ear, ‘as I fully intend to prove before too much longer. Now get inside, you baggage, before I change my mind.’
When the phone rang, Harry’s first thought was that he’d only just fallen asleep and that it would be Evi, asking him to come round. He turned over in bed, unable for the moment to remember which side the phone was on. You know what? Sod it. Sod the pizza, sod the movie, sod everything, he was going.
No, that side had the clock. It was 3.01 a.m. He turned over and reached out. He could be dressed in two minutes, at her place in ten. By 3.15 he could be …
‘Hi,’ he said, pressing the phone against his ear.
‘Vicar? Reverend Laycock?’ It was a man’s voice. An elderly man.