‘This isn’t going to work, Connor,’ she said. ‘Let’s just forget it.’
Rustling sounds from behind her suggested that Connor was collecting his clothing. Kate didn’t wait to see him get dressed or show him out of her house. She went into her en suite bathroom and closed the door behind her.
* * *
The French doors were closed and locked now.
The barbecue turned off, the uneaten food packed away in the fridge. The music had been silenced and the candles had been snuffed out, but Kate didn’t bother turning on any other lights.
She was sitting, curled up on one end of the couch, her back to an armrest and her knees drawn up so that she could hug them. Like the way she’d been sitting on the bed when she’d wanted to hide her nakedness.
She was fully clothed again now but she still felt naked. Exposed. Taken back to place she would never be able to escape from. The horror of being shouted at and ordered to do things that terrified her. The pain of that attack. The repercussions.
Locking it away had seemed to be the answer that had come to her with blinding inspiration that day she’d found the rusty old key in that junk shop. How could it have occurred to a broken teenager that it would all come back to haunt her? That it was an obstacle she would never get past no matter how badly she wanted to?
Well, she would just have to deal with it. Much safer to be alone and not risk the kind of pain that came from realising what she was missing out on.
What Connor could have given her.
What she could have given him.
Bella had hit the nail on the head when she’d said that Kate had a gap in her life. What she hadn’t been right about was saying that Kate didn’t know what it was. She knew exactly what it was.
That magic that was so much bigger than the simple addition of two parts. The power and strength that was created by a shared love between two people who chose to share their lives intimately. Kate was too miserable to notice that the kitten had climbed onto the couch and snuggled its way into the gap between her knees and her chest. She barely noticed the way she responded to the push of the little grey head by stroking it.
There was something comforting about the movement, though. Kate stroked the kitten from its head to where that ridiculous triangle of a miniature tail began. Again and again.
She could feel the softness of its fur. The tiny knobs of a spine. The rumble of the purr. The sensation filled her fingertips and travelled into her hands and up her arms. All the way to her heart, and Kate knew that Bella was right about something else, too.
She was falling in love with this kitten.
She could feel the pleasure of stroking it. Her nerve endings were hungry for it. And they weren’t going to get switched off by a mechanism Kate couldn’t control because she knew perfectly well that this touch was not threatening in any way.
And finally, the tears came. Years and years and years’ worth of tears.
9
Nobody had come knocking on the door to claim the kitten.
Kate actually seemed keen to keep it now. She had given it a name. Bib, because that’s what the white patch under her chin looked like.
Bella should have been delighted by this turn of events, and normally she would have been. Over the moon, in fact. But something was wrong.
She’d come back on Sunday night. Kate had cooked the most amazing dinner of deliciously marinated steaks and crispy, crushed potatoes, but she hadn’t been hungry herself so why had she gone to so much effort?
It hadn’t taken Bella very long at all to work out what it was that was bothering her so much. She had, in fact, recognised what it was before that dinner was even finished.
It was that glow. Kate just didn’t have it any more and it seemed like the sun had stopped shining or something. When she asked whether Kate had had a good weekend, her aunt had answered with that kind of brightness that let you know you were being fobbed off. That something was very wrong but it wasn’t any of your business.
Bella hated being shut out. Always had. And hadn’t that refusal led to the close bond she had with Kate in the first place? She’d seen her go off, looking so miserable that day, and had gone after her, despite her parents telling her to leave Kate alone. That she wasn’t happy and probably needed a bit of time to herself to get used to things. Following her instincts had turned out all right that time, hadn’t it?
But Kate wasn’t storming off anywhere this time. She was just being… Kate. Tidy and organised and working all hours. Maybe that was the problem. She’d seen Kate break out of that normality the day she’d gone off on the back of Connor’s bike and she’d liked that. A lot.
Something had happened to change things.
Maybe it had something to do with Connor.
Or maybe it had something to do with her grandfather getting out on parole and trying to contact his children.
