I blink at him.
He clears his throat. “Okay. So—Grandad’s?”
I tilt an ear toward the hall, straining for any unfamiliar sound in the house. The hairs on my arms remain settled.
“Will you stay here?” I ask him. “With me?”
When he doesn’t reply immediately, I’m afraid he’s going to say no. My gaze slides to the door.
“I’ll have to pop back to the cottage and let Grandad know,” he says. “But sure. Okay. I can do that.”
It’s only after he’s gone to check on Michael that I allow myself to replay his words:“I missed you, Seraphine.”But he doesn’t want to talk about that tonight. By the time he returns, I am clearing up the kitchen, wiping the surfaces and tipping my rubbery cheese on toast into the trash bin.
He has brought back some thick slices of ham wrapped in the white greaseproof paper of the village butcher’s shop. He makes me a sandwich, and while I munch my way through it, we share a beer at the kitchen table. Our conversation is stilted at first, trying to find safe ground in the small news of the village and the mild drama of the current heat wave, but soon we are reminiscing over shared childhood experiences, and we begin to relax.
“Do you remember our signal system for raiding the greenhouse?” Joel asks.
“The birdcalls? A wood pigeon if it was your grandad coming, a seagull shriek for Granny Vera.”
“Wasn’t it a seagull whisper you ended up doing that time your gran showed up?”
“Well.” I demonstrate my refusal to accept responsibility with a wave of my bread crust. “You were bound to get caught sooner or later.”
He laughs. “We were always so hungry in those days. I mean, big meals, and then an hour later we’d be starving again.”
“Remember corn on the cob and potatoes on the bonfire?”
“They were the best.” He sips his beer. “With melted butter, and we had to use the camping forks ’cause your gran didn’t want the good cutlery lost outside. I still can’t believe you made us take the whole bonfire apart that time.”
“I definitely saw a hedgehog under there.”
“And yet—” He spreads his fingers.
I’m laughing now. “I really did see it, you know.”
“Sure,” he says. “And Edwin really didn’t mind his potato being raw.”
“I gave him some of mine, I’m sure.”
“It was usually me you shared things like that with,” hesays, and suddenly our eye contact feels heavy. I look down at my empty plate.
“Because I liked you.” I shrug. “You weren’t as annoying as my brothers, anyway.”
“You know, I had to go that night.” His voice is lower now. “After Edwin’s graduation party. I was always going to go straight back to university that night—I was in the middle of exams still.”
I nod slowly. “Okay.”
“But I should have come back. Talked to you about it.”
We look at each other.
“It was my fault,” I say. “I mean, I didn’t know Ralph was going to hit you, but...”
“We could start over. Try again.”
I stare at him, my pulse skipping. Does he mean friendship? Does he mean more than that? I open my mouth, but I can’t think how to respond.
“I know,” he says. “You need to get through the next couple of days first.”
