He’s almost past her when he stops, turns. And frowns at her. ‘I know you,’ he states, completely apropos of nothing.
She comes to a stop too, raising her eyebrows. ‘I don’t think so,’ she says, offering a smile of apology.
His gaze flickers over her face. ‘I do,’ he insists. He has an Irish accent, she realises. ‘I just don’t know where from …’
She peers at him a little closer, taking in the strong jawline, the graze of stubble. The green eyes, giving way to amber at their centre. She realises she can feel it too – that jolt of recognition. She can’t thinkwhereshe knows a random Irishman from, but her gut tells her she does.
It hits them both seemingly in the same moment, and she laughs. ‘Are you actually kidding me? Paddington?’
‘Yes!’ He stares at her. ‘Wow.’ He lets out a low whistle. ‘Can’t believe you remembered.’
She laughs again. ‘I can’t believe I remembered either.’ But she can see him now, almost exactly fifteen years ago, handing over her passport. His gaze locked on hers as she turned to glance back. ‘Small world, huh? Well, clearly we’ve both aged well, if we’re instantly recognisable.’
He grins. ‘I’ll take that as a compliment.’
‘You should,’ she says, and he grins again.
‘So was it worth blowing me off?’ he asks.
She rolls her eyes, running with the joke like they are old friends, like they’ve known each other years rather than seconds. ‘I had a plane to catch, remember? And yes, it was worth it.’ Because if she’d stayed to talk to him, she might not be where she is now.
‘So you live here?’ He gestures around to the cliffs, the grass spreading in one direction, ocean the other.
‘Yep,’ she says easily. ‘I’ve got a cave just down the way.’
He nods seriously. ‘Can’t beat a good cave.’
She snorts a little. ‘I run these camps,’ she starts.
‘The bereavement camps?’ he says immediately. ‘Or, sorry, I know that’s not actually what you call them, but … those camps?’
She raises her eyebrows. ‘Yeah.’
He shrugs in answer to her silent question. ‘I’ve seen some of your activities since I’ve been here. Team-building and stuff? Drawing? And netball. Swear I saw a bunch of kids doing netball.’
‘That’s part of it,’ she agrees. The netball was Elsie’s addition. She’d insisted that years of being on the netball team at school had to be worth something. The drawing, of course, was all Ally. She’d felt over the years that art had helped her, and she wanted to incorporate it somehow. Some of the kids just like painting a pretty picture, but with others, she can see the way it really helps them to get out their feelings.
‘They look cool,’ says the man – Theo, she even remembers his name.
She smiles. ‘They are cool. So you live here too?’
‘Nah, just visiting. Well, a prolonged visit. I lost my dad a while back,’ he admits.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says, in that automatic way.
‘No, it’s okay. I mean, it’s never okay, is it? But he had a good life. He went through a rough period, but he came through it and it was … Sorry, you don’t need to know all this.’ She wants to know, though. It doesn’t really make sense, but she wants to hear this stranger’s story. ‘Anyway, I saw this cottage right on the cliff, and I thought, well, why not.’
Her eyebrows shoot up. ‘As in, the only cottage around here? The one practically falling into the ocean?’
‘That’s the one. And it’s not fallen inyet.’
‘I love that place,’ she admits. ‘Well, to be fair, I’ve never been inside. But I love the idea of it. Although maybe not the idea of falling off the cliff while making coffee one day.’
He laughs. ‘Well, I always did like living on the edge.’
They’re walking together now – before, they were going in opposite directions, but somehow they’ve fallen into step beside one another.
‘So what do you do?’ she asks him.
