AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘Moron is a bit harsh.’ Her face was blotchy, her eyes filled with pain, but her lips wobbled in a half-smile. ‘Twit, maybe.’
Hell, he’d take twit any day. ‘I let you down, and I’m sorry. I don’t regret not selling the house,’ he qualified quickly. ‘At the time you were too raw with grief to know what you really wanted. But I do regret not telling you. At first I didn’t want to upset you by talking about it. Then, well, our conversations on the phone were so brief.’
‘I was always hurrying you up, wasn’t I?’
‘You did seem to be very busy. I tried to tell myself it wasn’t that you didn’t want to talk to me. Maybe I always phoned at the wrong time.’
Lizzie shuffled so she was sitting up on the bed. ‘Now it’s my turn to apologise. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to talk to you, it was just . . .’ Her breath caught. ‘Oh, Nick, whenever I spoke to you, it reminded me of Robert. I deliberately brushed you off because it was too painful. Then, after I’d put the phone down, I was so angry with myself. You were kind to phone me, and I was rude.’
He sat up, moving so they faced each other. ‘Hey, don’t worry. It wasn’t the first time in my life a woman had given me the brush off.’ She gave him a tremulous smile and for a moment his heart lightened. Maybe, just maybe, they would get through this with their friendship still intact. ‘Come on. If I remember correctly, there’s a great little pub around the corner. Let’s go and have a drink.’
Chapter Nine
They found a quiet corner of the village pub, far enough away from the other drinkers that Lizzie, after hastily donning the dark wig she permanently kept in her handbag now, wouldn’t be noticed. Checking nobody was watching, she removed her sunglasses and waited while Nick fetched the drinks. A small beer for himself and a large glass of wine for her. She figured she deserved it. Shrugging off her jacket, she glanced around, the familiar surroundings sending prickles down her spine. She might have gone off to America almost as soon as she’d been old enough to drink in here, but still there were plenty of good times to remember. Nick’s sombre-looking face, on returning with the drinks, told her he was thinking the same.
‘Did you used to come in here a lot?’ she asked, taking a big gulp of wine.
He nodded, his eyes taking in the unchanged deep red walls and dark wood beams. ‘I think it’s fair to say Robert and I have drunk many a pint in here. Your father, too. We used to get together during the breaks from university. Robert and I would arrange to meet here, and your dad would sneak in later, telling us he was supposed to be walking the dog.’
Lizzie was amazed to find herself laughing. ‘Well, that explains why the poor thing grew so fat.’
For once Nick didn’t laugh with her. Instead he fiddled with one of the beer mats. ‘About the house. I know you wanted me to sell it, and at first I did try. But once I’d cleared out all the obvious stuff I knew you wouldn’t want, like the clothes, well . . . I couldn’t work out what to keep and what to discard. You’d said you didn’t want anything but . . .’ He sighed. ‘To be honest, I couldn’t bear to throw it away. I kept going back and each visit was slightly less painful. I started to think, what if she wants to buy a house in England one day? Surely she’d want something from her old home? Perhaps a mirror, or a table, her father’s chair.’
Lizzie placed a hand over his arm. ‘I was wrong,’ she told him softly. ‘It was unfair of me to ask you to do what I did. How could you possibly decide what I needed?’ She shook her head. ‘And you were right. At the time I was too numb with shock and grief to make any sort of rational decision. I couldn’t bear the thought of seeing any of their things ever again. I just wanted it gone so I could try and look forward, not back.’
He sipped at his beer. ‘I do think it was important for you to come back here, Lizzie. Granted I should have warned you first—’
‘But then I might not have come,’ she added, cutting him off.
‘I would have made you, eventually.’
‘Oh, yes?’
He laughed. ‘I’m meaner now. Not the same pushover I used to be.’
‘I didn’t mean it like that. You were never a pushover.’
‘I was where you were concerned.’ For several heart thumping moments he held her gaze and her heart began to dance. Wasn’t there more to his words, to his look, than those of a brother?
But then he stared back down at his beer and she knew she was reading too much into his simple statement. If he’d seen her as anything other than Robert’s kid sister, he’d have taken her up on her offer all those years ago. Maybe if she hadn’t gone to America, things would have been different, but she couldn’t dwell on that. During the last two years she’d spent too long running what if scenarios through her head. What if she hadn’t asked her parents to come and see her? What if she hadn’t sent them that limo but they’d got into a taxi instead?
All it did was magnify the pain and intensify the loss.
‘Who looks after the house?’ she asked after a while, speaking into the now awkward silence.
Nick finally raised his eyes from his glass. ‘I found a local couple happy to go over every week and check up on it. The husband sorts out the garden and the wife cleans inside and tends to the flowers.’ He shrugged awkwardly. ‘I didn’t want it slowly falling into disrepair. I always had in mind that at some point you’d come and see it, and then decide what you wanted to do with it.’
‘But how could you afford all this?’
His expression tightened. ‘I had the compensation money from my parents’ accident.’
She vaguely remembered being told they’d died from a faulty heater. ‘Didn’t you have it earmarked for anything else?’
‘For a long while I didn’t want to touch it. Profiting from their death . . .’ He grimaced. ‘. . .it seemed wrong.’
‘But it wasn’t like that. The money was to try and make up for their death.’ Even as she said the words, she realised she knew where he was coming from. No money could ever come close to helping.
‘I didn’t need it. I already had their London place, and my salary can easily cover the mortgage on the barn.’
