‘I know. It’s gorgeous. But when you’re sixteen, you’re just pissed off that there’s only one pub in the village and everyone knows how old you are and it’s miles to the nearest clothes shops. Or whatever you’re into.’
‘Exactly.’
By the time they’d got to the viewpoint, Evie was puffing slightly – quite a lot, actually – from trying to pretend she was fitter than she was, and she was back in control of herself. They were just two friends out for a really nice walk.
‘Little rest?’ Dan said.
‘Definitely.’ She plonked herself down on a wide, smooth rock and began to unwind her scarf. ‘That washotwork.’
Dan settled himself down next to her.
‘Wow,’ he said, as she kept unwinding. ‘That’s a long scarf.’
‘It’s very clever,’ Evie said. ‘Stops you having to wear loads of layers. You can have this longer or shorter or all sorts of ways, depending on how hot you are.’
‘Genius,’ Dan said, laughing. He reached over to take the scarf from her and their fingers touched briefly. Evie wasn’t sure whether to let her fingers linger next to his, or snatch her hand away.
She watched, almost mesmerised, as Dan wound the scarf idly round his hands. His fingers were square, and strong looking, andcapablelooking, andGod, you could really start fantasising about hands if you weren’t careful. Looking now at his hands, she was really struggling not to think about all the sex in Vegas, if she was honest.
‘Evie?’
‘Mmm?’
‘You okay? Lost in your thoughts?’
Oops. Yes. Thoughts abouthim.
‘I was just thinking about the Frog,’ she said, looking towards the pub in Little Bishop. ‘My mum, your mum, Sasha and I set up a Melting village darts team once and we played in a league, and we had a match in that pub.’
‘Really? I didn’t know any of you were darts experts.’
‘We aren’t. I mean, you do improve if you play alot, and we practised really hard for about two weeks, but you do kind of lose it if you don’t use it, and we got bored. But we all always believed that we had world champion potential and it was only because we didn’t invest enough time into it that we didn’t make it big.’
‘How did you do in the league?’
‘Came bottom.’
‘You were incredibly talented but everyone else had practised more?’
‘That’s right.’
They sat there in silence – definitely companionable this time – for a couple of minutes, and then Dan said, ‘I used to play darts with my father sometimes. In my teens. In the pub. He’d buy me a pint and a packet of crisps and convince whoever was behind the bar that it was a meal so it was okay for me to be bought beer by a responsible adult, and we’d play darts or pool.’
Evie looked at him out of the corner of her eye. He was staring straight ahead, and twisting her scarf, hard, round his hands.
‘Do you miss him?’ she asked. She wouldn’t have dared ask the question before yesterday evening.
Dan didn’t answer for a second or two. Then he said, ‘I don’t even know.’
‘I’m really sorry,’ Evie said. ‘It must be hard. I hope…’ She stopped, to think. ‘I hope you don’t mind me saying this and I can’t think of a good way of wording it, and obviously your dad’s only in his sixties, but for your sake, not his, and not anyone else’s, just your own, do you think you should try to re-establish contact in case anything ever happens to him?’
‘Which it will. Taxes and death.’
‘Yep. And, I hope you don’t mind me saying, your mum’s lovely, and I’m pretty sure that what she wants is for you to be happy, and she’d rather you talk to your dad and have a relationship with him than that you never speak to him again out of loyalty to her.’
‘Yeah.’ Dan paused and then said, ‘You’re very wise, Evie Green.’
‘Yeah, course I am,’ said Evie, thinking of all her un-wise relationships and the fact that she was seeing Matthew but sitting on top of a hill next to someone else who she had feelings for.
