The Country Escape - Jane Lovering Page 0,68

dark. The reflections of twin pumpkin lanterns burned in both pupils, like looking into tiny inviting hells. ‘You are lovely.’

And then I was stretching forward and upwards against the length of him, and he was leaning downwards and our mouths met in the middle, all fire and blackberries, and his mouth was warm and tasted of the autumn. Also, slightly, of crisps.

We drew apart and Dido sang sadly about her lover leaving. I put my head against Gabriel’s chest and we danced together circling in the glow from Scream and The Walking Dead as they threw spooky shadows into the room and the logs crumpled into ash in the wood-burner. Dido stopped singing, and nobody took her place, but still Gabriel and I circled, arms around one another, my head in the crook of his neck and his chin resting on the top of my head. It felt good. It felt right.

Eventually we stopped and just stood. I looked up at him, his eyes black in the candlelight. ‘I need to tell you something,’ I said. ‘But I can’t.’

I felt him inhale. One deep breath against me. ‘Then don’t,’ he said.

‘It’s not fair if I don’t.’ My wine was still at the end of my arm. That surprised me. I’d been holding the glass between Gabriel’s shoulder blades, but he’d put his down to rescue me from Destiny’s Child.

He went very still, almost as though he’d stopped breathing, and there was a very faint tightening of his hold. ‘Please,’ he whispered. ‘Please, just let’s have this.’

There was a pause. Just enough time for the world’s heart to beat once, as I lingered there in his arms, wishing I could forget, let it go. But Granny Mary, damn her, had been right: I had to tell him. Although he was right too, and we could just have this…

I took half a step back so I could bring my arm round to drink, and he didn’t let go of me. He smelled of the blackberries in the wine, and of clean washing and the outdoors. ‘You smell nice.’

‘So do you.’ He put his cheek against my hair. ‘Sort of fruity.’

‘Might be the wine. Might be Poppy’s really expensive perfume that her dad buys her and I borrow when she’s not around.’ I took another breath. ‘Mmm. Nice. Not that I’m sniffing you or anything.’

‘I wouldn’t mind if you were.’

‘But I can’t… I can’t… you and I, we can’t… because I can’t, and it wouldn’t be fair.’

‘Okay, coherence has gone. What is this stuff anyway?’ He intercepted my hand and drank some of the wine from my glass. ‘Have you been using it to strip paint?’

‘Granny Mary.’ For some reason my eyelids felt really, really heavy as well as my arms now. I closed them. It was fine. His chest was taking the weight of my head, because that felt heavy too.

‘Oh dear.’

‘Why? Wassup?’ I tried to look up into his face, but could only see the bottom of his chin. ‘You’re very tall. Why you so tall?’

‘Granny Mary’s wine is leggy… legundo… ledgery. Dangerous stuff.’ His voice was slow. ‘We should blow the candles out. Before we. Before. Thing.’ He let go of me equally slowly, sort of unwinding himself from around me, and bent down. His glasses fell off. ‘’S not safe.’

A few ineffectual puffs and a lot of giggling and we managed to blow out the candles, which put the room in near total darkness. Only the red glow of the fire illuminated a small patch of the carpet and the sofa, which suddenly seemed very attractive.

‘Let’s sit down,’ I said.

The next thing I knew was a steely cold stream of water running down the outside of the windows. I watched it for a while, dispassionately, wondering why I was so warm underneath and cold on top and how it had got light so quickly. My eyes felt a bit sticky, so I blinked hard once or twice, then tried to rub my face, but couldn’t.

‘I think I’m paralysed,’ I said.

And then jumped when a voice underneath me said, ‘That’s because I’m lying on your hand.’ Slowly I turned my head. It chafed against a half-buttoned shirt and the velvet of the sofa, and ended up staring into Gabriel’s face, where he lay underneath me, without his glasses but with a big soot mark down one cheek. His eyes were closed. ‘If I open my eyes, am I going to regret it?’

I did a quick mental inventory. I was fully