‘I was thinking about you as a tree and me as a desert.’
He smiled. ‘That doesn’t make us very compatible.’
‘It wasn’t like that. It was . . . Oh, ignore me. I was being weird.’
‘What sort of tree was I?’ he asked.
‘I went for an oak. An old one.’
‘Can’t go wrong with oak. And I’m forty in September, so old’s reasonable.’
‘And I was just thinking how rooted you seem to be. Even though you say you still work in London quite often, it’s like . . . I don’t know. Like you’re a part of the landscape.’
Eddie looked out of the window. Below us, clumped lavender leaned on the breeze.
‘I hadn’t thought about it like that,’ he said. ‘But you’re right. No matter how many times I go up to London to fit a kitchen, play football, see friends – and find myself thinking,I love this city– I come back to this valley. I can’t not. Do you get that same wrench when you leave LA?’
‘Well, no. Not entirely. But it’s where I’ve chosen to be.’
‘Right.’ There was a slight pinch of disappointment in his voice.
‘But it’s funny,’ I went on. ‘Listening to you talking about all these things you do, these hobbies you have, I realized how much I miss all of that. You can get anything and everything in LA, at any time of night, have it delivered, downloaded . . . I mean, they’re talking about deliveries bydroneat the moment. There’re no limit to what’s possible. But for all that,I can’t remember the last time I made anything, other than my bed. I rarely exercise; I don’t play an instrument; I don’t go to evening classes.’
How flat I sound. How two-dimensional.
Eddie just looked thoughtful.
‘But who cares about hobbies if you’re spending all your time doing a job you love?’ He twirled a strand of my hair into his fingers.
‘Mmmm,’ I said. ‘I do love it, but it’s . . . challenging. Non-stop. Even when I come back to the UK for my holiday, I work.’
Eddie smiled.
‘Choice,’ I said, eventually. ‘You’re going to remind me I have a choice.’
He shrugged. ‘Look, not many people set up a children’s charity from scratch. But everyone needs downtime. Non-thinking time. It keeps us human.’
He was right, of course. I seldom delegated. I held my work close, cloaked myself in it: I always had; it was the only approach I knew. But for all that activity, all that industry, was Ithere? Was I really there, in my life, the way Eddie seemed to be in his?
This is not the conversation to be having with a man you’ve barely known twenty-four hours, I told myself, but I seemed unable to stop. I’d never had this conversation with anyone, including myself. It was like I’d turned on a tap and the bloody thing had come off in my hands.
‘Maybe it’s not a city-living thing, or even a job thing,’ I said. ‘Maybe it’s just me. I do sometimes look at other people and wonder why I can’t find time to do all the things they seem to do outside of work.’ I poked at a cuticle. ‘Whereas you . . . Oh, ignore me. I’m rambling. It’s just that it all feelsvery natural, being here . . . Which is confusing, because normally when I come home, I can’t wait to leave.’
‘Why?’
‘Oh, I’ll tell you another time.’
‘Sure. And I’ll teach you the banjo. I’m terrible, so you’ll be in great company.’ He turned over his hand and put mine in it. ‘I don’t care what hobbies you do. I don’t care how hard you work. I could talk to you all day. That’s all I know.’
I stared at him with wonder.
‘You’re great,’ I said quietly. ‘Just so you know.’
We looked straight at each other, and Eddie leaned over again and kissed me. Long, slow, warm, like a memory brought back by music.
‘Do you want to hang around for a while?’ he asked, afterwards. ‘If you don’t have anything to do, that is? I’ll show you my workshop downstairs and you can make a mouse of your own. Or we can sit around kissing. Or maybe we can take potshots at Steve, a little bastard of a squirrel who lives on my lawn.’ He rested his hands on my legs. ‘I just . . . Sod it. I just don’t want you to go.’
‘OK,’ I said slowly. I smiled. ‘That sounds lovely. But your mother . . . ? I thought you were worried about her?’
