The Country Escape - Jane Lovering Page 0,67

push my hands through that hair that the wind had already had a good go at. But I didn’t want him to think I was pitying him, or that the fact he’d been bullied made him somehow ‘lesser’ in my eyes. So I did what I did when Poppy started to lapse into self-analysis when I just didn’t have the time – I went practical.

‘Right, you’d better get your coat off, then. We can put it in the living room and I’ll light the fire. I’ll get the stove going in here too, and you should dry out quite quickly. You might steam a bit, mind.’ I gave him an upbeat grin. ‘The other pumpkin is still in front of the log-burner. It might be getting a bit wrinkly but it should still be fine, and if we sit in there it will be warmer.’ I picked up his rucksack. ‘And crisps? As Pink so memorably said, let’s get this party started!’

I just wanted to wipe that look off his face. That look that said he knew that he’d been friend-zoned, but I couldn’t. I didn’t dare. To be anything more to Gabriel meant, as Mary repeatedly pointed out, opening myself up, and I couldn’t do that. So was it better for him to think that I really did consider that doing crochet and making those beautiful quilts made him somehow not quite a real man in my eyes?

Oh, shit, this was complicated.

As he gathered up his materials and moved through into the other room, I glanced out of the back window, into the orchard. Patrick was over the far side, chewing something in the hedge with a thoughtful expression and his ears cocked sideways. Granny Mary was standing on the steps of the van, looking right at me. I knew, absolutely knew that she hadn’t been able to hear any of that conversation between Gabriel and me, yet there was something very knowing about that direct blue stare. As though she was somehow telling me that it was time to make up my mind.

Okay. Okay, I could do this.

13

Darkness pulled tight against the walls of the cottage, but we hardly noticed, because inside we’d lit all the candles and were singing ‘Mambo No. 5’ at the tops of our voices. The WKD was gone, as were the crisps, and we were halfway through Granny Mary’s blackberry wine and some posh cheese that I’d bought to eat in my solitude while Poppy was away and couldn’t complain about the smell.

‘This is great!’ I said, twirling around to Backstreet Boys, which meant that my hoodie and I parted company for a while until it caught up with me again and wrapped itself around me like a mummy’s bandages. ‘You were right, Gabe! The kids shouldn’t have all the fun!’ I took another swig of the wine. It tasted like a cross between fruit cordial and cough mixture and was going down a treat. I was doing that dance that involves holding one arm up in the air, punching to the rhythm, whilst jiggling about with my head down. I’d tried twerking but had fallen over and we’d laughed so much I’d worried I’d be sick.

‘Yeah.’ He’d taken his coat and jumper off, and was dancing in his shirt and chinos, although his dancing was more in the nature of rotating both shoulders and wriggling his hips, like Elvis doing the Locomotion. He refilled his glass.

We’d lit both pumpkin lanterns and they, and the glowing logs in the stove, provided the only light, which meant I kept tripping over things, and eventually I fell over the ancient CD player, causing Destiny’s Child to stammer over ‘Independent Women’ and skip straight into Dido. Gabriel reached out a hand and pulled me back up.

‘You can’t dance down there.’

I stayed where his rescue landed me, pulled up close against him. The blackberry wine made my arms go very heavy and I put them around him so I could rest them. His arms came up and around me and suddenly I was much, much closer to him than I had been, feeling his warmth through his shirt and his breath on my forehead. I rolled my face upwards so that I could see him.

‘This is nice.’

‘Yes, you are.’ His voice was very quiet, and I felt the words rise up through his chest rather than hearing them. He was looking down at me now, glasses making his eyes huge and the low-level lighting making them very