Tilly nodded. 'It’s been hard work, but I am pleased so far. I’ve had second thoughts, to be quite honest. It’s a lot to take on, and that night of the storm wasn’t pleasant. My God, I was petrified at one point. I know I pretended I was fine, but it was quite something. First of all, I was like, oh, this is so romantic and cosy. That didn’t last long.'
'Darling storms are not for wimps. Even now, I feel as if I hear a new creak every storm. The house is usually so quiet, especially being on my own, and Darling storms are far from quiet.'
Tilly decided to strike while the iron was hot. 'Leo told me a bit about, well, you know, your wife. I hope that's all right. Actually, it was Shelly and Lucie when I went around there for drinks. I'm so sorry, Otto.'
Otto didn’t mince his words. 'Saves me doing it, frankly.’
‘Oh, right, okay.’
‘I'm not very good at talking about it, and I’m sick of people feeling sorry for me.'
Tilly leant forward to put her gin down, accidentally caught the edge of a cushion and lost control of her glass, and gin went everywhere. It wasn’t a genteel little spill, either. Ice cubes skittered hither and thither, and gin and tonic surged straight into Otto's lap before she'd so much as registered what was happening. 'Oh, no, oh, for the love of God.' Tilly jumped up, mortified, hands fluttering. 'I'm so sorry, hang on.’ Grabbing the throw, she made a sort of frantic dabbing lunge at his soaked lap before her brain had time to flag what she was doing.
'Leave it. Honestly. It's gin. I've had worse on me. Not a problem.'
'Blimey, you must think I am a right clodhopper. Usually I’m fine.’Currently, I am having to deal with a Catherine wheel as a heart, and it’s getting to be quite cumbersome.
‘All good.’
‘I face-planted a gorse bush, and I got stuck in the mud and now this. Honestly, I’m not usually as clumsy.'
‘Mymud at least.’
Tilly half sat, half fell back into the sofa, giggled and rolled her eyes. Then, before she knew what was happening, she was kissing Otto, and the Catherine wheel was spinning right off its nail. Rockets fired one after the other like crazy, and the whole sky lit up gold, red, silver and green.
Lost in the kiss, Tilly inched in further. The lamp clicked off on its timer somewhere around them, water slapped at the boards below and outside, and far off across the estuary, the foghorn gave a long, low blast into the night. Tilly closed her eyes, not sure she’d heard the foghorn at all. All she knew was that she never wanted whatever was happening to her heart to end.
43
The next morning, Tilly woke up in a bit of a daze. She didn’t want to get up, move, have to think, feel or do anything. All she wanted to do was lie in bed all day, staring at little droplets of water running down the window panes and recount the night before. Replaying the evening seemed very attractive. Watching a fat drop of water slowly make its way down the glass, she looked at the fog outside the window and thought about Otto. One thing was not in doubt; she’d jumped in for sure. Yep, oh how she’d jumped in and oh how delicious it had been.
Sitting up, she squinted at a throbbing feeling in her slightly dusty head as the gin and tonic before the first kiss announced itself. Pressing her thumbs into her eye sockets, she groaned and felt herself flood with regret as what had happened with Otto landed front and centre. Good Lord, she’d nigh-on thrown herself at the poor man! What in the world had she been thinking? She’d invited him to come back to her place, got herself tipsy and then let herself do things with him that had made the fireworks explode. She didn’t even know much about him. Actually, now she did. Quite a bit, in fact. How hard the pecs were for one.
Despite the regret, all of it flooded deliciously around Tilly’s brain; the gins, chatting, the lovely golden lamplight, the catastrophe with the cold drink all over his lap, giggling. Laughing, chuckling, happiness, leaning in. A kiss that had set the sky off. His hand in her hair. The bit where it had very nearly gone much further, and hadn't because, thank the actual good God above, Otto had eased back. At least one of them had been sensible. It hadn’t been Tilly in any shape or form. Rather, her narrative had been to throw caution and her underwear to the wind. Thankfully, someone in the room had been more sensible.
Tutting regarding her behaviour, Tilly got up, pulled on her dressing gown and with her brain turning it all over, she shook her head at what had happened on the sofa. She’d jumped on the poor man. What had she been thinking? The elderflower fizz, together with the top-up of gins and the fizzing of wheels, had made her lose her mind.
Musing on the evening, she shook her head and pursed her lips. Darling was meant to be a new start. Kissing someone surrounded by fog had not been part of the equation. She’d not activated her exit plan in Fiji and trekked around the world to Darling Island to have any sort of relationship. She’d arrived alone tobealone. That had been the entire point, the whole premise of her drastic and dramatic move. She’d vowed to embrace her inner introvert, chill out, regroup, enjoy the art of loneliness. The plan had been for no neighbours, no men, no relationships, no anything really. She’d plumped for being solitary, content and answerable to nobody. That had already changed. A man who’d set off fireworks did that for plans.
She'd crossed half the planet and sunk her divorce money into a derelict shed precisely so that she could pull up the drawbridge and be,gloriously, on her own. No more waiting around for a man. No more arranging her life around somebody else's. Just Tilly, the hazy Darling Island sea, a load of fog and anew start. Now she’d already messed it up. What had she gone and done before her feet were anywhere near under the table of her new life? She'd got tipsy on gin and snogged the one man on the entire island she could not, under any circumstances, avoid.
Otto Carrington worked not that far from her front door. His oyster beds were the view from her kitchen window. She would see him every single morning for as long as she stayed in the shed. If this went wrong, and where Tilly and men were concerned, things always, always went wrong, there would be no escaping him. She couldn’t just pull the plug at any time, really. With him right next door, it would be tricky for a clean break, exit plan, or never-have-to-see-you-again strategy. Just horribly awkward and raw, sharing a jetty, mud and stilted greetings. Tilly had, in short, shot herself in the foot. Ten out of ten, Tilly Bloomwood. You could not make it up.
Why had she done it? Easy-peasy. Otto had picked her up by the shoulders and plonked her into a whole new world. One where Catherine wheels fizzed, and bangers exploded. It had never happened to her before, not even a sliver of it, and let’s not beat around the bush, Tilly absolutely adored it.
Underneath sparkly fizzes, though, the horrid realism of a morning after poked up its head. Who was she kidding, being wooed by fireworks? Past experience of coercion and waiting waved flags of caution. She’d not done well with her previous two partners. Most probably, the next one, if this turned into that, would be the same.
Her first attempt at a serious partnership, in actual fact, had turned out to be not far off a horror story. Sometimes when she thought about her marriage, it still took her breath away. A bona fide victim of coercive control, when she let herself, she wondered what would have happened if she hadn’t escaped. Not only that, she’d often pondered how she’d got herself in the situation in the first place. It had taken a lot of counselling towork out. At first, Andy had been a kind, adoring, sweet, tip-top boyfriend on steroids. Not only had he been lovely, nope, but he’d also actually full-on love-bombed her from the word go. Plus, he’d been an expert at it.
Right up, that was, until the day after the honeymoon, when as quick as a flash things had started to change. It had begun gradually when one day Andy had gone through her wardrobe, telling her what she could and could not wear. After that, slowly, day by dreadful day, changes to her diet had been put in place. Then came the mileometer checks every evening. Next, the control of her funds.
With all of the above going through her mind, Tilly made a cup of tea as the Tilly who was married to a monster filtered through her brain. Stirring a couple of tea bags around the teapot, she remembered the absolute terror that had been her day-to-day life. The self she'd folded away smaller and smaller until there’d been almost nothing left. Andy had stripped her back to nothing, and she would never ever, ever hand a person that kind of power over her again.
Taking a mug out of the cupboard and milk out of the fridge, Tilly’s brain moved from Andy to Lennixx and how she’d ended up with him. He was so the other way that initially it had suited her down to the ground. She’d fallen into the relationship, been attracted by the footloose and fancy-free and travelling the world. In the end, though, that had soured, too.
Now here she was thinking about another man, and the thing that was throwing her? This felt like a whole different kettle of fish. She'd genuinely believed that the lovey-dovey, hearts-in-eyes scenes from the movies were just made-up things that didn’t happen to real people, at least certainly not her. Now she knew exactly what it felt like. She was in her very own personal romantic movie for one. Shaking her head as she poured tea from the pot into the mug, Tilly made a face. There was no wayshe could go forward with whatever it was with Otto. No way was she getting herself into something where she was vulnerable. Nup, she’d have to initiate some sort of damage limitation plan whereby she’d be as little affected as possible. However, as she popped a couple of crumpets into the toaster, all she could think about was the goings-on of the sofa. It had just been so, so, so, so nice.
Telling herself it was simply a tipsy mistake between two lonely people with too much elderflower fizz, she felt a bit better. Really, there was no harm done, as long as nobody made a meal of it. Yes, too easy. She would be cool, breezy and perfectly fine about it the next time she saw Otto and treat it as a silly, gin-soaked aberration. When she saw him out on the slipway, she'd give him a nice neighbourly wave and carry on as if nothing whatsoever had occurred. That would put it to bed.
