the moment, looking after all her projects, and … I just thought this was the simplest way to help. I’ve got a car and I’ve got time, so …’
‘Is there some way I can check you’re not about to drive me off into the woods and eat me?’
I splutter out a laugh. ‘Well,’ I say, ‘I could ask you the same, really.’
‘That’s true enough,’ she muses.
‘I do have a DBS certificate, if that would make you feel better?’
‘I haven’t a clue what that is,’ Nicola says. ‘But I think I’d probably be able to judge by looking at you. Shall we meet at the church? You’d have to be a real piece of work to murder me there.’
‘Lovely,’ I say. ‘Just tell me when.’
14
Eileen
It is ten o’clock at night. I am kissing a man on his doorstep. I’m wearing high-heeled boots. Tod’s hands slide beneath my jacket, and his thumb trails along the zip of my long linen dress, as though finding its way for later.
Since meeting Tod I’ve felt like I’ve opened a door to a part of myself I’d entirely forgotten about. Yesterday I caught myself giggling. I’m not sure I giggled even when I was a young woman.
It’s lovely. It really is. But underneath it all there’s a dark, guilty whispering in my belly. I’ve been doing so well putting Wade behind me, but ever since Tod and I have started stepping out together, I haven’t been able to put him out of my mind quite so easily.
I think it’s just a matter of breaking the habit. After all, I’ve not kissed a man who wasn’t my husband for fifty years. Tod’s lips feel so different; even the shape of his head, his neck, his shoulders seem strange under my palms after so many years learning the lines of Wade’s body. It’s like trying on somebody else’s clothes, kissing Tod. Strange and disconcerting, yes – but fun.
I pull away from his arms reluctantly.
‘You won’t come upstairs?’ Tod says.
‘Not yet.’ I smile at him. ‘We’re only on date three.’
That was my stipulation. I agreed to all Tod’s terms for this relationship of ours, but I said I wouldn’t go to bed with him until we’d been on five dates. I wanted the time to decide if he was a good enough man for that. I’m all for a bit of fun, but I don’t plan on – what was it Fitz called it? – ‘getting played’. Sex does mean something to me, after all, and I don’t want to share it with a man I don’t much like.
As it happens, though, I seem to like Tod very much. So much that this rule feels rather …
He quirks an eyebrow. ‘I know a wavering woman when I see one,’ he says. He gives me another long kiss on the lips. ‘Now get yourself in a cab home before we do something we might regret, hmm? Rules are rules.’ He winks.
Good lord, that wink.
I’d better get myself a cab.
*
I sleep late the next morning and don’t wake until eight. When I walk out of Leena’s bedroom, I find Martha on the sofa in tears.
‘Oh, Martha!’ I hesitate in the doorway. I don’t want to march in and embarrass her. But she turns her tear-stained face my way and waves me over.
‘Please, come and sit with me,’ she says, rubbing her belly. ‘Crying alone is a new low for me. Normally I have Leena to weep on.’ She sniffs as I settle myself down beside her. ‘You look well, Mrs Cotton. Ooh, were you out with your silver fox last night?’
I feel myself flush. Martha smiles.
‘Don’t get too attached, remember,’ she says, wiping her nose. ‘Though I’m only saying that because you told me to remind you. Personally, I think he sounds like a catch.’
‘Don’t you worry about me. What’s the matter, love?’ I hesitate. ‘If you don’t mind me asking?’
‘Yaz and I are close to exchanging on a house,’ she says. ‘I don’t like it, but she says we don’t have time to be picky now, and I said it’s such a huge decision I don’t want to rush it, and …’ She’s crying again; the tears drip off her chin. ‘I’m so worried I won’t be able to do this – that I’m not ready for a baby – and Yaz being all Yaz about the other stuff isn’t helping. The baby will be here soon, and Yaz just thinks we can still be how we were before. But