‘You can’t go now.’ The words tumble from me, drawn out and encouraged by her own candour.
‘It’s the middle of the night.’
‘Then stay.’
She stands, paralysed in the middle of the driveway. She looks windswept, her face is flushed, her eyes are wide, and she glows in the moonlight, as though the words hit her like a freezing blizzard.
‘Stay?’
‘Yes, stay here for the night, and I can drive you home tomorrow.’
‘With you?’
‘With me.’ She taps her chin with her finger, the options flying around her mind and the evidence of it shows on her face as her smile conflicts with the furrow in her brows.
‘I think your grandmother would have one or two things to say about that.’ Disappointment seeps onto her face and I’m sure mine is almost a mirror image.
‘Yes,’ I confess, ‘but I think she’d be equally concerned if she found out I let you go home alone at this time.’
‘I’m not sharing your bed whilst Ms Riches is home.’ Her sleepiness clearly helps to negate her usual reservations as she speaks boldly and punctuates her sentence with a yawn.
‘Who said anything about sharing a bed?’ I smirk, knowing this is a moment she will relive again and again painfully once she’s had a good night’s rest and her words dawn on her. But before she can react: ‘Wait there …’
The idea almost bowls me over as I rush up to the farmhouse, unlock the door, and creep up to my room, trying my best not to wake my grandmother. Collecting up all of the bedding I can fit under my arms, I creep back down the stairs, pausing with bated breath as trinkets rattle on their shelves as they snag on the duvet. As I scamper back through the kitchen and reach for the door, the overwhelming fear that she’s gone hits me. Why would she stay? Why would she wait for me? What must she think of me? That I’m one of those guys who give over-the-top emotional displays to make a woman feel sorry for me to eventually get into her pants? Because that couldn’t be further from my intention. I just want her close. I don’t want to have to say goodbye to her, not yet, not tonight.
I hesitate for a moment, my hand on the doorknob and my heartbeat rattling so loudly in my chest I’m afraid of it disturbing my nan in the room above. Closing my eyes, I draw on my memories, of her lips on mine in the garden of the pub, of her fingertips softly pressed against my thigh in the car, or her hands on my face as she looks at me with such affection that, for a moment, I could doubt everything in the world except for her. And that’s enough to give me the confidence to open the door and find her exactly where I left her.
‘You stayed?’ I can’t hide my surprise.
‘You told me to.’ She shrugs, her eyes drooping as she blinks at me drowsily.
‘When do you ever do anything that I tell you to?’ I smile and gesture to the barn with a flick of my head. ‘Come on.’
With my hands full, Beatrice has to slide open the doors and the moonlight floods the high wooden ceilings. The machinery stands guard across the front of the barn, the wide-open space whistles with a draught and Beatrice trembles with the cold.
‘We better not be sleeping in a tractor. They’re uncomfortable at the best of times,’ Beatrice whispers, as though her voice could wake the engines from their slumber.
‘Just over here,’ I return in a whisper. Leading her to theladder in the furthest back corner, I climb it the best I can with no arms, throw down the bedding, and wait for her at the top.
‘The hayloft?’ She’s tentative, but still she climbs the ladder and joins me on the small platform.
Just close enough to the roof to expel the draught but wide enough to sit in comfortably, the hayloft has been seemingly out of action for a while but there’s still enough of a sprinkling of hay across the floor for it to make do for a mattress for a night. Spreading out a blanket over the top of it, I set out the pillows at the head and fan out the duvet ready to crawl inside.
‘It might be a little itchy.’ I climb between the duvet and the blanket and pat the space beside me. ‘But I think it will be warm enough, just for tonight.’
Beatrice watches me with her arms folded and an eyebrow raised. ‘I know I fulfil a lot of the country bumpkin stereotypes you city folk have, but a roll in the hay? Come on. I thought you were more original than that.’ Her laugh echoes around the loft and I’m grateful that the dark hides my glowing face from her.
‘Not what I meant.’
‘I know what you meant.’ She continues chuckling as she slides between the sheets and lies down beside me.
‘I have to admit, it was comfier in my head,’ I confess as I pluck a strand of hay from poking into one of my arse cheeks and Beatrice shuffles into the makeshift bed that seems more like a nest at this point.
‘Yeah, I think you’ve been watching too many films. This isn’tThe Little House on the Prairie, I’m afraid. There’s areason we stopped sleeping on straw centuries ago.’ Lying on her side, she faces towards me, the duvet drawn up to her chin as she rubs her feet together like a cricket trying to summon her song.
The starlight squeezes through the gaps in the wooden structure just enough that it bathes her face in silver. I want to touch her, follow the path of the light as it circles around her freckles, kisses across the soft hairs on her cheeks, and floods her tired eyes with radiance.
‘You are beautiful.’ She says the words I was thinking but coming from her mouth, they stupefy me to silence and I find myself unable to catch my breath. Her lashes quiver as I watch her trying and failing to cling on to her consciousness and when her eyes don’t open again and her soft snores fill the gap between us. I press my lips to her forehead and suddenly lying in this pile of hay on the floor is the comfiest I’ve felt in my life.
