don't have any clothes!” Nicola was standing at the top of the stairs wrapped in a big white Turkish towel.
“Music to a man's ears!” she heard Jamie shout from the kitchen. And then, “Ow!”
Anne called from her bedroom, “In here, Nicki!” She'd laid out several pieces of clothing and was shaking her head. Anne was petite; Nicola was not.
“These are the biggest things I have, luv,” she said as Nicola entered. “The only thing we share is a shoe size. Good luck!”
There was an ankle-length black challis skirt with an elastic waistband and a hand-knit, V-necked yellow jumper in a fluffy angora-blend yarn, clearly the work of some loving but inaccurately knitting maiden aunt. Still, with Nicola's lush figure, it left little to the imagination. She slipped into a pair of flats Anne had left and descended to the kitchen again. Andrew was there in his own clean clothes; Roger had fetched them from his cottage.
“Woo-hoo,” Jamie crowed when she entered. This got him another cuffing from Flora.
“Go on, ya randy old man,” Flora said, smiling.
Nicola was stricken. “Oh my God; Randi!”
“Not to worry, luv,” Anne said. “Colin's got him and he's safe, if a little lonely.”
Andrew slipped his hand around Nicola's waist and she leaned into him, feeling safe, too, for the first time in what seemed forever.
Dinner was the sort of event that often follows a disaster, a mix of giddy exultation at having survived and recognition of just how close some of them had been to perishing. They ate in the kitchen, around the big table, a battery-powered radio tuned into BBC Radio Cornwall the whole time. Gradually, the news reports from Boscastle turned brighter. The number of people thought to be missing had dropped sharply. No bodies had been found in either the ruined cars or in the buildings that had been searched. With their usual penchant for hyperbole, the reporters already had begun calling it the “Boscastle Miracle.”
Jamie and Flora had spent the night on the floor of the dining room above the pub, along with others. “Gettin' too old for that sort of nonsense,” Flora complained. Jamie allowed as how it was the most romantic night he could remember.
Flora snorted. “Either your memory is rubbish or you need a better life!”
“I'm hoping for the latter,” Jamie said with a grin. Under the table, Flora squeezed his hand.
The police had cleared them out of the Cobweb in the morning, as part of the general evacuation; with no fresh water, the sewage lines broken, and many structures unsafe in the lower village, officials were taking no chances. Jamie had bundled Flora into his van, and they were bouncing along single-track lanes around the fields above town when they ran into Roger on his ATV, moving cattle. Roger told Jamie his chances of making it home were slim, given the closed roads, and invited the two of them to stay at the farm.
They lit candles as the August light waned, but, between the rich food, the wine, and the nearly continuous stress of the last two days, the celebrants were flagging by nine o'clock. It was Flora who called a halt to the proceedings.
“Right, then; I don't know about the rest of you lot, but I'm knackered. Where're we kippin'?”
Anne looked from Flora to Jamie, and then back to Flora.
“Yeah, yeah; we're regular sleepin' buddies now, we are. Just point us to a room, luv; we'll take care of the rest.”
Andrew was almost certain he saw Jamie blush. He felt a tug at his sleeve.
“Let's go home,” Nicola whispered.
“Are you sure?” he asked.
“Oh, yes,” she said, smiling.
“Me, too!” Lee cried, jumping from her chair.
“No, you don't, you little ragamuffin!” Roger said, sweeping his daughter into his arms. “It's early to bed for you, too. For all of us, I should think.”
“The sheets aren't clean,” Andrew apologized as he pulled back the coverlet on the antique double bed in his cottage.
“Good,” Nicola said, pulling the fuzzy yellow jumper over her head. Her full breasts swayed and came to rest against her surprisingly spare rib cage as she stepped out of Anne's skirt. She had nothing else on underneath. It flashed through Andrew's mind that he wished he'd known that all through dinner.
She slipped into bed, pulled up the sheets, and patted the mattress beside her. He sat.
“Andrew?”
“Yes?”
“Do you love me?”
“Yes. I do.”
“That's what you were trying to tell me on Dunn Street that night I ran away, isn't it?”
“Yes. Although, honestly, I'm not sure I really knew it