Damage (18 page)

It is. It’s him. I love him.

She didn’t know what she meant by that. She’d only known Blunt for two and a half weeks. Not long enough to be truly in love. Not long enough to know that he was the one.

She had never known anything like this, though. A heady, romantic love that both took her breath away but was also grounded in a very complicated, adult reality.

Exciting, and scary in its intensity.

But it was too soon to really know.

She didn’t love him, but she was falling. Steadily, relentlessly falling.

It was late by the time she finished her shift, too late to call Blunt. She considered texting him, but what to say?
I think I’m falling in love with you
. Not exactly the sort of thing you say out of the blue in a text message.

Next morning she was up early and out of the house by 6.30. Her breath misting on the cold air, she headed across the village green to the Dwyers’ house for her weekly ironing and cleaning session.

She hadn’t even thought the practicalities through, but now it struck her that this daily slog of college and odd jobs might actually ease a little. The cottage belonged to her father now, so there was no longer any rent to pay, and no mortgage. Just the upkeep.

Not that her father had actually been
paying
the rent, of course, but still. They had the security of a roof over their heads. Surely that must give them some options now?

Funny, thinking of it like that.

She still hadn’t quite shaken off the feeling that there had been some ulterior motive to Blunt’s grand gesture, but he’d seemed so sincere when she confronted him about it.

And even if there
had
been an ulterior motive?

Shouldn’t she feel flattered that he would make such a generous gesture just to get her attention?

Whatever his reasons, it had worked: she’d called him, they’d talked, they’d moved on and now...

It is. It’s him. I love him.

§

When she’d finished at the Dwyers’ she phoned him but her call was switched straight through to voicemail.

Had he turned his phone off, or was he somewhere without signal? Maybe his phone was just out of charge.

She was sure it wasn’t a tit for tat thing: she’d ignored his calls so now he was ignoring her.

She was feeling impatient, though. Now that she’d decided to see him, she wanted to do so
now
. She needed to know where his head was. She needed to know where she stood.

She had a sculpture workshop at college in the afternoon, though, so she only had what remained of the morning and lunchtime to track him down.

She called the Estate office, and got through to a familiar voice. “Hey, Millie,” she said. “It’s Holly here. How’s things?” The woman who’d answered was a cousin, Karen’s half-sister.

“Oh, you know,” said Millie. “What can I do for you? Is it about the transfer of title for the cottage? That’s all in the hands of the Estate solicitor. Her number’s on the letter Mr Blunt prepared for your father.”

“No, no, it’s not that, thanks. It’s Nicholas... Mr Blunt. I was trying to track him down but he’s not answering his phone. Do you know where he is?”

Was that the briefest of pauses before Millie replied?

“Oh, he’s not in the Estate office today, Holly. He’s away on personal business.”

“Sounds mysterious. Can you tell me where he is?”

“I don’t see why not. He’s at St Peter’s. That’s where Mrs Blunt is at rest.”

How delicately put: ‘at rest’.

Sarah. He’d gone to his wife’s grave.

§

She should give him some peace, she knew. Respect his privacy.

This was a personal thing. A chance for him to be alone with his memories, his past.

She didn’t have to speak to him so urgently.

Didn’t have to take the earlier bus so she would have time to get off at the stop on the edge of town, just a short walk from St Peter’s.

The church was a small one, but it couldn’t have had a more dramatic setting, perched on the steep slope of the Cotswolds as the hills dropped down into town. The graveyard occupied several levels of terraced ground cut into the slope.

At first Holly thought she’d missed him. He could easily have been and gone in the time it had taken her to get here. She followed the path round the side of the church and paused to take in the view of the town and the distant hills.

Peering around, she couldn’t see anyone else here, but then she saw that the path cut through between a pair of yew trees that had been trimmed to form an archway. Beyond, there was another part of the graveyard, lower down the hill.

She paused in the shade of the yews. The air was chilly and damp here. Creepy. Gravestones huddled together, covered in moss and lichen. Some plots were neatly tended, manicured even, while others had been left to grow wild.

Again, she saw no-one, but the path led her onwards.

At the far side the path dropped to another level, and there, across to the left in an area set off by a low iron railing, she saw him. He was on his knees before a low white stone. He looked as if he was praying, but then she saw movement, an arm reaching out for something.

She almost turned away.

She had no right to be here.

He glanced across then, and saw her. Raised a hand, gestured.

She followed a narrow path across, the long grass to either side brushing damply against her ankles.

“I called,” she said, as she came to stand in the opening in the railings. This was a side-plot, a cluster of graves slightly separate from the main area. A family area?

Blunt reached for his phone, then shrugged. “I didn’t check,” he said. “In any case, there’s no reception here. Something to do with the way the hills bunch together and cut out the signal.”

“You said we should talk,” she said. “But I guess...”

“Now’s not the time?” He smiled. He seemed unexpectedly relaxed. “No, no, it’s fine. Now’s good.”

She glanced down, away from those pale gray eyes.

Sarah Jane Blunt
Beloved wife and soul-mate of Nicholas
1982-2014

Again, she was struck with how wrong this was.

She shouldn’t be here.

She should have left him alone with his grief. His past was an anchor.

But then he said, “Whoever thought flowers at a grave was a good thing?”

She looked again: he’d been tidying up. Gardening. He’d removed a bunch of flowers, shoved them into a plastic bag for disposal.

“I’ve never thought about it,” she replied.

“You put them there and leave. Then when you come back, even if it’s only a few days, they’ve faded and wilted. Died. It’s all the wrong symbolism. And it’s a vicious circle: you have to keep coming back to tend to them and replace them. You’re not celebrating, you’re fighting entropy. But you’ll always lose that one: the flowers will always fade and die.”

He
knew
his past was an anchor. That’s what he was saying.

“So I’m tidying up.” He gestured at the bag, the sagging blooms of a bunch of red roses poking out of the top. “Taking that lot away. Not replacing them. Not all the time, anyway. That doesn’t mean I’m going to forget, or devalue the memory, or stop loving her. But I’m not tying myself to all this... this
ritual
, any more. Do you know what I mean?”

“Do you know the last time I visited Mum’s grave?” She didn’t wait for him to respond. “It was a Monday. I can’t remember which Monday, just a Monday. Sometimes when we were kids and things were quiet, Dad would take a Monday off. Colcroft’s would have been busy Saturday and Sunday, and even in the last few years when he was far more hands off, Dad would still make sure he was available over the weekend, just in case anything came up. But Mondays... sometimes we’d just pile into the car and go to the beach at Weston, or to the Wildlife Park at Burford, or anywhere really. It was never planned until we were actually in the car and driving. So sometimes I do that, visit Mum. It’s a spontaneous thing, but always on a Monday.”

He was nodding. “It doesn’t have to be routine,” he said. “Doesn’t have to be anniversaries and special occasions, does it? You just need to find what suits you best.”

He stood and brushed down his black jeans. The knees were stained from the moss.

“I wanted to talk,” he said.

She couldn’t tear her look away from those eyes now. They pinned her to the spot. She could feel her heart thumping.

“I don’t know what this thing is between us,” he said. “I don’t know what’s in your head, or in your heart. But I do know that we’ve plunged headlong in and it’s only now that we’ve had a chance to come up for breath. I’ve had time to think. I’ll do whatever you need, whatever you want. I never expected anything like this. It tears me up. It consumes me. You’ve totally captivated me, Holly.”

She opened her mouth to respond. She didn’t understand how she could feel so many contradictory things and yet, underneath it all, want only one thing. Him. Nicholas Blunt.

But he continued before she had a chance to speak: “I don’t know where we’re going, Holly. I don’t know if I can ever be with someone fully. I don’t know if I’ll ever heal completely. But I’m starting to.” He gestured at Sarah’s grave, the flowers he’d removed. “I’m starting to.”

She looked at him. Stepped forward, and his arms came around her. She placed her hands on his chest, tipped her head up and kissed him softly on the cheek, then stepped back.

“You have to do that,” she told him. “You have to heal yourself.”

She looked into his eyes and saw that he was still damaged; his words only served to confirm that.

“You need to do what
you
need, not what I need. You need to open up those shutters, clear away all the dead flowers. Stop shutting yourself away in your big house. Stop hiding in the crowds at your parties. You need to learn to live again, Nicholas.”

Then she turned and walked slowly away.

§

She didn’t know what she’d done. Didn’t know if he’d understand.

He had to heal himself.

She didn’t know how long it would take, but it had to come from him. It wasn’t something she could do for him. It wasn’t a case of forgetting or burying all those treasured memories. But the time had come for him to learn to live again, to assimilate all the loss and the memories and the experience into the person he wanted to become for the rest of his life.

There could be no undoing or forgetting, but... the time had come to heal.

§

She skipped college and headed back to the village.

She’d not seen much of her father since the previous day, when she’d squashed his good news with her bitchy response. She wasn’t really considering moving out, or abandoning him. She didn’t know where that thought had even come from.

He was there in his favorite armchair, crossword on his knee, reading glasses perched on the end of his nose, and a mug of tea steaming at his side.

“Hey, Dad.”

“Holly. I thought...?”

“I took the day off.”

“You can do that?”

“I just did.”

He smiled at that.

“You want to come and visit Mum?”

“But it’s not Monday.”

“We can do that, you know.”

She didn’t hear from Blunt at all that day. Or the next.

She passed the Friday in a growing panic, worrying that she’d sent the wrong message, or that she’d said the wrong thing. Did he think she had rejected him? Had she somehow triggered another descent into darkness, losing him to the anguish and torment of his past?

On Saturday morning two cards arrived, hand-delivered to the cottage door, one addressed to Holly and one to her father.

Your company is requested at the Hall
Saturday, 7pm
Refreshments provided

“What do you think it is?” her father asked, from his seat at the kitchen table.

Holly shrugged.

“And what am I going to wear? I’ll have to get my suit out. Do you think it still fits?”

§

Holly wore her heels, and the little black dress from New Look. It said a lot about her life that she only seemed to have this one option when it came to dressing up for an evening. It really was time she did something about that.

She had no idea what to expect, but perhaps the last thing she would have anticipated was the sight that greeted her when she emerged from the cottage with her father.

The night was dark and crisp, stars pricking the sky, but apart from that there was nothing ordinary about this evening. Next door, Mrs Patterson had emerged, her white hair pinned up in a bun, her son supporting her arm. Beyond, the young couple who had recently moved in and whose names Holly didn’t yet know stood in the road. Just then Mr and Mrs Livermore came along the lane, arm in arm.

“Are we all going to the same place?” asked Holly’s father jovially. “You know, I think we are.” He nodded across the green to where other couples and families were walking, all in the same direction. Even The Bull was in darkness.

They set off, exchanging greetings with the others around them. There was an almost festive atmosphere to it all, like a moving street party.

As they came to the Hall’s driveway, the streams of people came together in a procession that could have been straight out of a fairy tale. It was as if a Pied Piper had called them and now the entire village was drifting, dream-like, towards the Hall.

The trees along the drive were lit up with long lines of fairy lights, strung high in the branches, and the Hall itself was in darkness, unlike the previous weekend. The only light came from the strings of bulbs in the trees, and from a marquee on the lawn.

“Well, I say,” said her father, nodding towards the marquee. He paused then, and turned to Holly, offering her his arm. “Shall we?”

Arm in arm, they joined the flow of people approaching the Hall. As they drew close, music drifted out to meet them. Something by Mozart, Holly thought.

As the drive opened out into the wide graveled area before the Hall, waistcoated staff greeted them with trays of drinks.

“Sir, madam. May I show you to the dressing area?”

There was a dressing area?