‘I’ll go and change on the other side of the wall,’ she said.
‘Fine.’ Angus had taken an identical pair of chinos to the ones he was wearing from his own bag. ‘I’ll stay here.’
He took off his dirty merino sweater and kicked off his completely ruined favourite pair of shoes and then undid his belt, careful not to look in Tilly’s direction as she headed towards the gap in the stone wall that was the pathway to the estate buildings. But, feeling a little exposed as he pushed his trousersdown, moments later, it was instinctive to glance over his shoulder to make sure he wasn’t being observed.
There were no cars entering the parking space. The stone wall was only waist height but Tilly wasn’t looking in his direction either. She was pulling off the top she’d been wearing over her jeans, her arms in the air, the lacy straps of her bra the only fabric to be seen on the pale skin of her back.
Angus looked away hurriedly but it wasn’t quite fast enough to stop a reaction that felt remarkably like the static electricity that had appeared from nowhere at the restaurant last night, when his fingers had brushed Tilly’s, except that this jolt was internal, in that part of his gut he hadn’t been aware of until then.
It managed to trigger, and then merge with, the uncomfortable aftermath of the pig incident such a short time ago.
That feeling of wanting to hold Tilly in his arms.
To never let her go, even?
How nonsensical wasthat?
He pulled on his clean trousers as he tried to shut down what was happening in his head.
For God’s sake, it had only been a reflex action to want to protect a woman.
He’d been schooled to be a gentleman by his father. To open doors for women, pull a chair out at the table and pay for everything as discreetly as possible. He knew it was his duty as a man to drape his own jacket or jumper over a woman’s shoulders if they shivered and ignore how cold he might be feeling himself. He’d even absorbed the totally old-fashioned notion that he had to walk between a woman and the road to shield her from any splashes of tyres going through puddles.
The sensations he was experiencing now were simply an unfamiliar form of registering sexual attraction, that was all.It wasn’t as though it was a warning flag that there was an emotional connection that put him in any danger of falling in love with Mathilde Pascoe.
Angus pulled his belt so tight he had to undo and loosen it. He needed a clean pair of socks so he delved into his bag again.
The bag that had been his father’s favourite weekender.
And, for the first time in his life, Angus found himself wondering what it might be like.
Falling in love.
What was so compelling about it that a man could be drawn back to it time and again, despite the repeated heartache that always seemed deep enough to be capable of destroying him? Maybe it had, in the end, for his father. Could an untimely fatal heart attack be somehow connected to an emotional wound beyond repair?
At least Angus was never going to facethatparticular risk.
He bent to pick up his shoes to throw into the boot and, as he straightened, he saw Tilly walking back to the car. She was holding her soft-looking flat shoes in one hand.
Her toenails were a shade of red that was remarkably similar to the Alfa.
‘I thought I could try and clean my shoes in the stream,’ she said. ‘Unless you’re in a hurry to get away from here?’
Angus shrugged. There was nothing enticing about the thought of going shopping. ‘Take your time,’ he told her.
‘Would you like me clean your shoes, too?’
‘No, thank you.’ His tone was decisive. Angus intended throwing the revolting mess of his shoes into the first rubbish bin he could find, but he found himself changing his mind as he watched Tilly walk into the shade of the old trees lining the end of the car park. They might not be wearable again but it might be worth rinsing the shoes. He liked his rental car too much to want to put anything that dirty inside it.
So he followed her.
A track led past a perfect example of the original design of army camouflage in the mottled bark of the old plane trees. Shafts of sunlight were already warm and he could hear the tumble of water over rocks competing with the constant clicking of hundreds of cicadas.
It felt like summer in a way that Angus only remembered from his childhood, where the days felt like they would never end, which was the best feeling in the world because he didn’twantthem to end. He could go fishing and skim stones on the pond or build a dam in the creek. Never alone because Robbie was his faithful shadow. A memory with this kind of clarity was one he actively avoided because the wash of poignancy it carried always left him with the feeling of a loss he suspected was more significant than he dared to acknowledge.
Because, if he did, he would have to face up to the fact that he could never again bethathappy.
That he would be yearning for what it was that had been lost for the rest of his life.
