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Sitting in a Tree
When she came back down from the farmhouse, Matt and Oliver had emerged from the campervan, which gleamed brightly in the evening sunshine.
‘Everything okay?’ Amy asked tentatively.
Oliver glowered, and Matt said awkwardly: ‘Oliver and I’ve had a good chat, haven’t we, Olly?’ He looked hopefully down at his son, who looked at the floor. ‘We’ve talked about how sometimes mums and dads get sad, like you boys do, and sometimes mums and dads need a kiss and a cuddle too, to help them feel better. I explained you were upset about your mum.’
‘Yes, that’s right,’ Amy took the cue from Matt. ‘I was feeling sad because I’d been missing my mam, and your dad … he gave me a kiss to help me feel happy again.’
‘He snogged you, you mean.’ Harry giggled. Amy shot him a “be quiet, Harry” look which he ignored. ‘Mam and Matt, sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S —’
‘That’ll do, Harry!’ she said sharply. He subsided, but didn’t stop giggling.
‘Now, why don’t you two boys go and have a game of Goat Gunge while Amy and I have a chat?’ Matt suggested.
She felt a surge of emotion that was at once fear and anticipation, so strong it was like a physical feeling of nausea.
‘Remember what you promised?’ Oliver said with an undisguised air of threat in his voice.
‘I do. We’ll stay right here where you can see us both, so you know I’m keeping my promise.’
They boys climbed up into the campervan, and though the Goat Gunge game came out, every time Amy glanced over at the windows of the campervan, her eyes met Oliver’s, glaring back out at her. Hostile was an understatement for the look in his eyes.
‘What’s going on? Is Oliver okay?’ she asked quietly.
‘He’s upset and confused. I can’t blame him. I swore I’d always put him first and … Wait a minute, here, sit down.’ He pulled one of their space-age padded camping chairs out of the awning and into a patch of sunlight and she sank into it. It was way more comfortable than the stripy canvas folding chairs she’d brought for herself and Harry, even if it didn’t look as attractive.
‘I can see he might be confused,’ she said. ‘It must be hard for him to think about you being with someone else. It’ll take time. But does that mean —?’
He cut her short before she could ask the question that was burning in her mind. ‘Oliver’s the most important thing in my life right now. I have to put him first, before everything else. He needs me.’
‘I understand that,’ she said. ‘But where does it leave us? Are you saying we should forget what happened this afternoon? That it’s over?’
As she spoke, Matt was pulling the other camping chair from the awning. He placed it carefully, close, but not within touching distance, and then he glanced over his shoulder at the campervan. Two pairs of eyes looked back at them, almost accusingly, their faces lit by the eerie green light of a game of Goat Gunge.
‘It’s not over, Amy, but we went too far, too fast for Oliver. He still needs time and space to come to terms with what happened to Stella.’ He leant forwards towards her, resting on his elbows. ‘He’s very fragile, still. He cries a lot. He gets very upset about things. It’s too soon for him.’
‘I can see that.’
‘Amy. I told him …’ An almost interminable pause hung in the air as Matt visibly wrestled with the words. ‘I made him a promise. I had to. You know that, you’d do the same for Harry.’
He didn’t have to tell her what the promise was. She could see it in his face. He had promised Oliver nothing else would happen between the two of them. ‘I see.’
‘We have to be sensible about this. I have to put Oliver first. It doesn’t mean I’m not … that I don’t find you attractive.’
He swallowed, hard, as if trying to suppress something he wanted to say. His eyes said it for him as he looked at her with undisguised longing.
‘And I’m … attracted to you … too,’ she said, carefully mirroring his choice of word, not wanting to say too much or too little.
There was a long silence as Matt studied a daisy at his feet, amidst the prickly turf of the campsite. Was he counting the petals? He loves me, he loves me not, he loves me, he loves me not. Where would it end?
‘I hope one day Oliver will come round and accept I might have feelings for someone other than Stella. For you, Amy. But right now …’
‘I understand. At least, I think I do,’ she said hesitantly.
He let out a long sigh of relief. ‘I’m so glad you said that. I didn’t know how I was going to explain to you. One minute I’m kissing you, and then …’ He leant back in his chair again, looking up at the sky. ‘I shouldn’t have kissed you like that. Even as I did it, I knew it was wrong, but I couldn’t help it. You looked so sad, and so lost, and I wanted so badly to make you feel better. I still do. But it’s not the right time or the right place.’
She could see in his eyes he still wanted to kiss her, as much as she wanted to kiss him. ‘Yes. Oliver’s more important to you than anything else. Don’t blame yourself entirely. You didn’t kiss me. We kissed each other.’
