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‘Claire was so busy I didn’t like to disturb her.’ Polly stopped as she reached the tall figure, her hand automatically going up to nervously knot her hair, only to fall away as she spoke. ‘I wondered if maybe you wanted some lunch, if I could buy you some lunch. I...er...I crossed a line earlier. I need to apologise.’
She let a shuddering breath go and waited.
Lunch, work, an excuse not to face up to the past, to push it away for another decade.
‘That would be nice,’ he said after a long moment. ‘But there’s somewhere I need to go first. Polly, I’d really like it if you came with me.’
* * *
The river rushed along, white-topped as it bubbled over rocks and dropped over mini falls. The path along it was flat, easy walking. Left the mind free to wander.
Polly wasn’t entirely sure that this was a good thing. She searched for something to say.
Nothing.
Now didn’t seem appropriate to discuss work and she had already ventured into personal territory once that day. Look how well that had gone down, a clear indication to mind her own business.
Only... It was just...
He had asked her to come along.
She hadn’t gone all the way into the rather macabre cemetery with its carved headstones, statues and family vaults, as different from a tidy Church Of England graveyard as a Brie from Cheddar, rather she had waited by the wall as Gabe had walked steadily to a white marble gravestone, topped with a carved cherub, and dropped to one knee in front of it. He had stayed there for five minutes, head bowed. Polly couldn’t tell if he was weeping, praying or just frozen in silent contemplation. Either way discomforting shivers had rippled down her spine.
She had witnessed something deeply personal.
So she should say something, right? Wasn’t that the normal thing to do when someone allowed you to see a part of their soul?
Only it had never happened before. She had no compass for this kind of thing. No guidance.
Even at her very proper boarding school there hadn’t been a lesson on how to handle this kind of situation.
How to greet an ambassador? Yes. Royal garden party etiquette? Of course.
But this? She was clueless. She was going to have to go in blind.
‘Are you okay?’
Not the most insightful or original icebreaker in the world, but it was a start.
‘Oui.’ Gabe turned, looked at her, the dark eyes unreadable. ‘Thank you.’
Polly stopped, tilting her head up to meet his gaze. ‘What for? I didn’t do anything.’
He shrugged. ‘For being there. I needed a friend.’
Her eyes dropped; she was suddenly, oddly shy. ‘I owe you.’ Unable to resume looking at him, she started walking again and he fell into step beside her. ‘Who was it?’
He sighed, low and deep. ‘Who was your first love, Polly?’
‘My what?’ Flustered, she pushed her hair away from her face. ‘I don’t know. I thought we’d already covered that I don’t really do love.’
‘But there must have been someone, a crush, a passion. Someone who made your world that bit more exciting, your pulse beat that bit faster. Someone who made your blood heat up with just the thought of them.’ His voice was low, his accent more pronounced than usual; each word hit her deep inside, burning.
You.
But she didn’t say the word; she couldn’t. That wasn’t who she was, what they were. They might have crossed a line from colleagues to friends but the next line, from friends to lovers, was too far, too high, too unattainable.
And Polly didn’t have many friends. She didn’t want to screw this new understanding up.
First love? She dragged her mind back, to her lonely teenage years.
‘I had a huge crush on my school friend’s brother,’ she admitted. ‘I was sixteen and staying there one Christmas holidays. He kissed me on New Year and I went back to school convinced we were an item. When I next saw him he was with his girlfriend and barely acknowledged me.’ She grimaced. ‘I wept for a week. What a silly idiot I was.’
‘Non.’ To her surprise he reached over and took her hand. His long fingers laced through hers. Every millimetre where his skin touched hers was immediately sensitised, tiny electric shocks darting up her arm, piercing the core of her.
She shivered, all her attention on her hand, on her fingers, on the way he was touching her, the light caress.
It wasn’t enough.
Just friends, remember? she told herself sternly. But who was she fooling? As if it were enough.
‘That’s how we learn, that complete single-mindedness of the teenage heart.’
‘Learn what?’
His fingers tightened on hers. ‘That feelings are not always worth the price.’
