Page 20 of Love Letters on Hazel Lane

She didn’t say that to make him feel bad – the opposite, in fact. She wanted him to know that he’d been missed.

‘Sorry,’ he mumbled. ‘What was it like?’

She paused for a moment. There was only one word. ‘Breathtaking,’ she said.

She almost added, ‘22 points,’ but she didn’t want Ras to think her boring; he was bound to think that, if she admitted she loved Scrabble. She’d never met a man yet who’d understood her obsession with word games. She couldn’t admit that she sat around most evenings playing on the WordPals app; well, it hardly made her sound like scintillating company, did it?

*

It was, Jo decided as they sped along the windy lanes back towards Hebbleswick, not only her most unusual first date ever, but her most enjoyable. After an unpromising start – well, he was a bit on the quiet side – she’d found she could relax with him and she hadn’t felt nervous, except when she’d first seen that bloody great hole. She hadn’t felt the need to impress him or to be anyone other than who she was. Apart from not mentioning the Scrabble obsession and she probably could have told him about that; he didn’t seem judgy.

She glanced at her watch. Over six hours. Her longest first date too. And there’d been no awkward silences – at least, not if you didn’t count the first couple of minutes.

Come to think of it, he wasn’t saying much now, but this didn’t feel like an awkward silence. She glanced at him. He was focused on the road, lost in his own thoughts, as she was lost in hers. He was frowning slightly, probably because they were stuck behind a caravan and the road was too bendy to overtake.

When he asked for a second date, would she say yes?

She was sure he’d ask her out again; after all, he must have liked her profile to have arranged this trip to Gaping Gill, and they’d definitely got on well.

She weighed up the pros and cons. He was a) shorter than she was; b) not conventionally good-looking; and c) the scruffiest man she’d ever been on a date with.

But on the other hand, a) she’d felt safe with him; b) attraction could grow, couldn’t it? He was definitely more attractive than she’d initially thought; and c) who cared about clothes? She wasn’t exactly stylish herself. In fact, it would be a refreshing change to be with a man who wasn’t so hung up on appearances; with Si, everything had been about appearance and his need to show the rest of the world that he had made it, with his flash car and designer suits.

So yes, she would definitely say yes to that second date.

Only he didn’t ask. He pulled up outside her house and said, ‘Thanks for a lovely day, Jo. It was fun meeting you.’

That sounded a bit… final. Not like a man who wanted to see her again.

Should she ask him in for coffee? Or was that a bit silly if he’d expressed no interest in seeing her again? What would Kate do?

She unfastened her seatbelt and it pinged back into place. Kate wouldn’t ask him in. She’d remain a bit aloof. Keep her dignity.

‘Thank you again,’ she said, climbing out of the car and closing the door behind her.

9

Jo thought about Ras as she waited at Hebbleswick Station on Monday morning. And as she boarded the train when it finally arrived. And as she grabbed a seat next to a man eating a rather pungent sausage sandwich and wearing cheap earbuds, which afforded the entire carriage the dubious pleasure of hearing the tinny backing track of whatever song he was listening to.

When she stood up to let sausage man past – he was getting off at Essendale – she wondered if it mattered that he wasn’t her usual type. Ras, that is. Not sausage man.

Move on, she told herself. You didn’t like him that much anyway.

You like men who are taller.

More confident.

But he’d been so thoughtful. Such a good listener. And had encouraged her to step out of her comfort zone. On reflection, she’d had the best time.

On Sunday, she’d still been clinging to the hope he might contact her and had been disappointed when her phone didn’t ping. She’d picked it up seventeen times (at least), tapped out a short message thanking him for a wonderful date, then put it down again without sending. What was the point? He hadn’t messaged her. She wasn’t sure what had gone wrong, but something had, judging by his demeanour as he’d driven her home. The promised tea and cakes had never materialised. Something seemed to have changed between them on the walk back to the car. Had she said something that offended him? She couldn’t for the life of her think what.

She managed to put him out of her mind as the train trundled towards Manchester. She avoided looking out of the window at the Pennines; they’d only remind her of him. Instead, she focused on her phone, playing game after game on WordPals, and wondering if she’d have the guts to pitch her programme idea this morning in the team meeting.

They began every working week with a full-team planning meeting at eleven o’clock. One of Pop! Productions’ programmes was a weekly magazine show, which needed constant feeding with ideas, and those Monday morning meetings were pitching time. The researchers would have scoured the morning papers in search of inspiration, unusual stories that might make a good short film or celebrities who had a book out and were doing the interview rounds, but everyone – not only the ‘creatives’ like the researchers and producers but the admin staff like her – was encouraged to put their ideas forward. Since Leona had arrived, Jo had been reluctant to speak up in meetings, but she was determined to find the courage to do it today. If she could allow herself to be lowered one hundred metres into the ground on a little chair, she could speak in a meeting. Of course she could.

*

There was a bit of a scramble for chairs as the team piled into the meeting room – it was far too small for the growing company – and a few people ended up standing around the sides. Jo managed to get a seat next to Caroline. Opposite Leona, but you couldn’t have everything.