Summer With My Sister (42 page)

‘Oh yeah? Wheeling and dealing?’

She hesitated for a second. ‘Just catching up with some old mates,’ she said in the end. What a lie. She didn’t even have any old mates to speak of. But something had stopped her from telling him the truth nonetheless. It was almost as if by speaking about the interview, she might jinx this brand-new seam of luck she’d just struck.

‘Sounds good. What time are you due back?’

‘Um . . .’ Her brain was already pleasantly addled by the gin; she frowned at her watch, trying to remember. ‘About half-eight, I think. Why?’

‘I’ll pick you up. We could go for a drink maybe.’

‘That would be great. Although . . .’ She remembered, too late, her stickiness, the grime in her pores, her collapsing hairdo.

‘Although . . . ?’ he prompted.

‘Well, I’m a bit scruffy and dirty,’ she admitted, wincing as the words came out before she could stop them. Telling a man you were ‘a bit dirty’ was practically asking for trouble. Damn that gin for being so delicious that she’d necked a double already.

He laughed softly. ‘Even better,’ he said. And before she could think of any witty comeback to
that
, he’d added, ‘See you later, then’ and had hung up.

Hmmm. Time to check out the train loos and hope that she could make herself look halfway presentable before they crossed the Hampshire border. She also had to hope that Jay wouldn’t wonder why she’d got all dressed up in a suit merely to hook up with her imaginary ‘old mates’. She was smiling, though, as she picked her way along the swaying compartment. Somehow having the prospect of her job interview floating tantalizingly ahead of her made things with Jay seem less important. She’d be out of Elderchurch before she knew it anyway; what was the point of getting her knickers in a twist over him? They could have some fun together without any need for emotional dramas.

At last it seemed as if everything was falling perfectly into place.

Jay did a loud, embarrassing wolf-whistle when he saw her. Which was ridiculous, seeing as her patch-up attempts in the Ladies hadn’t been quite as successful as she’d hoped; her hair felt too dirty to style as perfectly as she’d managed that morning, and there was no disguising the grit and grime on her clothes after her long day in the capital. But she had managed a stripdown wash in the tiny cubicle, so that she smelled clean at least, and she’d put on fresh lipstick and mascara and had tidied her hair as best she could.

Still, the way Jay was looking at her so appreciatively made her feel as if her efforts had been rewarded. In fact she was quite tempted to wolf-whistle back at him, seeing him there in a gleaming white shirt and jeans, his face smooth-shaven and tanned.

‘Evening,’ she said, smiling shyly. ‘How are you?’

‘All the better for seeing you again,’ he said and pulled her to him for a second. The fresh, lime-scented cologne he had on made the hairs on her arms prickle, and something flipped over inside her. God, she shouldn’t have drunk that second gin; it had made her feel alarmingly carefree. Stay in control, Polly, she thought desperately.

‘Have you eaten?’ he asked as he let her go.

‘Um . . .’ She
was
kind of hungry, now that he asked. The buffet car on the train hadn’t had the most appetizing array of food, and she’d only eaten a bag of crisps since midday. No wonder the alcohol had gone straight to her head. ‘Not really,’ she confessed. ‘I might have to swing by the chippy on the High Street, if it’s still there.’

‘Oh, I think we can do better than that,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you come back to mine? I’ll make you something there.’

Back to mine?
Eek. ‘Sounds perfect,’ she said, with faux casualness. ‘I hope you’re a better cook than you are a driver, that’s all.’

‘Well, I haven’t killed anyone yet,’ he replied. ‘Although there’s a first time for everything, I suppose. The car’s just round the corner.’

As Jay started the Land Rover, she realized that she had no idea where he lived, or what sort of home he would have made for himself. Growing up, his family had lived in one of the modern semi-detached houses near the primary school with the bog-standard rectangle of lawn outside, but where had the adult Jay chosen to hang his hat? She tried to picture him in a bungalow like her parents, but couldn’t see it somehow. Would he have plumped for one of the houses on the new estate just outside the village? Polly hadn’t been inside them, but she remembered her parents muttering about them being eyesores and a blight on the village, some Christmases ago. She was curious to see his taste, his style, she realized. What if she got there and it was a hideous bachelor pad, decorated throughout in black and chrome, with leopardskin throws on the leather sofas, like you saw in footballers’ houses in
Hello!
magazine? She stifled a laugh at the thought, and Jay looked over quizzically.

‘What?’ he asked.

‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘I’ll just send Clare a text, so she knows where I am,’ she added, getting her mobile out of her bag. ‘Don’t want her staying up worrying about me.’

Hiya
, she typed.
Hope all okay. Gr8 day – interview next week! Just nipping to Jay’s 4 drink. See you later
.

A reply pinged back seconds later.
WELL DONE! PS Don’t 4get our deal, will you? TAKE A RISK. SNOG HIM FFS!

She gave a snort and stuffed her phone back in her bag.

‘Now what?’ Jay asked. ‘You can’t keep sniggering like that. It’s the sort of thing that makes a bloke anxious.’

She laughed again, partly at the thought of laidback Jay being anxious about anything. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Ignore me.’

He raised his eyebrows. ‘Like I’ve ever been able to do
that
.’

He was joking, of course, but his words made her feel hot all over. ‘Jay Holmes, you’re not flirting with me, are you?’ she said primly.

He glanced across at her and winked. ‘You think that’s flirting? I haven’t even started yet,’ he said, slowing to thirty as they approached the ‘Welcome to Elderchurch’ sign.

‘Is that so,’ she bantered, trying to keep her cool. ‘Well, I hope you’re up to the job. I hate to see a grown man in tears.’

‘You know me, I love a challenge,’ he replied, then turned off the main street and into a small lane lined with banks of lush, long grass and leggy, looming cow parsley. ‘Nearly there,’ he said.

‘Mill Lane – is this where you live?’ Polly asked in surprise. Well, she hadn’t been expecting that. Mill Lane was the oldest part of the village, where the original farm and grain mill had once stood. The farm had been sold off long ago and the mill-house converted to a gorgeous five-bedroom property, she seemed to remember, bought by an eccentric businessman who’d upset the locals by shooting the rooks out of the rookery at the bottom of his garden with an air-rifle. ‘Bally things kept waking me up in the morning,’ he’d explained, as if this made it acceptable.

‘Yep,’ Jay said. ‘Not the mill-house, before you get excited, though. I bought one of the outbuildings from the farm, turned it into a house.’

‘So you live in a shed, is that what you’re saying?’

‘Yeah, I live in a shed,’ he said, slowing to a crawl as they crossed the humpback bridge over the mill-stream. ‘That shed over there.’

He pulled up on the gravel drive outside his ‘shed’ and Polly fell silent. It wasn’t a shed at all, it was a gorgeous barn conversion, with great slabs of oak forming the front porch, a slate roof and a white-rendered front. Two silvery-leaved olive trees in terracotta pots stood on either side of the entrance, and a clematis with small white flowers had been planted further along. She could hear his dog barking excitedly from within at her master’s return.
This is the house that Jay built
. And bloody lovely it was too.

‘Oh, wow,’ Polly said, still gazing at it. ‘It looks amazing. And there was me thinking you’d be living in a horrible, tacky bachelor pad.’

‘Cheeky cow,’ he said, getting out of the car. ‘Come on then. It’s even better inside.’

He wasn’t joking. The front door opened into a long, open-plan living space with vast windows looking out over the fields and hills beyond. There was an open fireplace at the far left with herringbone brickwork, and the furniture was simple and rustic: a big red sofa, a chunky wooden coffee table, an aged black-leather footstool, and a solid wooden bookcase filled with paperbacks, with his beloved guitar propped in one corner. Overhead were the original beams, great thick timber struts, rising to a central horizontal peak. It felt spacious and airy, but she could just imagine what a cosy space it would be with a roaring log fire in the winter. Not that she’d get to see that, of course.

‘The kitchen’s this way,’ he said, kicking off his shoes and walking towards the other end of the house, the dog at his heels, tail wagging furiously. Polly kicked off her heels, dropped her bag and followed him.

The kitchen was simple and stylish. There was a brick-built surround housing a wood-burning stove, and the worktop was a single slab of wood above plain white units. ‘It’s amazing,’ Polly said, leaning against the worktop as she gazed around, noting the tangle of copper pans hanging from a rack on one wall, and the spice rack full of jars that actually seemed to be well used, rather than merely there for decorative purposes.

Jay smiled and slapped the worktop. ‘Recognize this, by any chance?’ he asked.

Polly shook her head. ‘Should I?’

‘It came from one of the labs at the comp,’ he confessed. ‘They were refitting the science block and I got a tip-off that they were chucking all the old workbenches out. I rescued a couple of them out of a skip and sanded this one down. Reclaimed teak – would cost a fortune new.’

‘It’s lovely,’ Polly said, running a hand along its smooth surface. She smiled. ‘Funny to think of all the Bunsen burners and tripods that must have stood here over the years.’

‘I know, and us as vile teenagers sitting at it, carving graffiti into it too,’ he replied. ‘Well, not me, of course, I was far too well behaved to do anything like that.’

She grinned. ‘Of course.’

‘Anyway – food! Will pasta and salad do you?’ he asked. ‘I’ve got a bottle of white in the fridge over there, if you want to pour us both a glass.’

‘Sounds brilliant, thanks,’ she said, pulling open the fridge door and peering in nosily. Eggs. A packet of bacon. Some chicken breasts. Salad. Her hand closed around the neck of the wine bottle and two things popped into her head at the same time.

One: if he started drinking, he wouldn’t be able to drive her home again. Sure, she could
walk
back to Clare’s later on, in theory, although finding her way down the dark lane in her heels was going to be a complete nightmare, but he might very well suggest that she stayed over. In which case she’d say . . . Well, what
would
she say? She had absolutely no idea.

Two: she was in such a fizzy mood already from her day up in London, and all the gin, that even a single glass of wine was likely to tip her over the edge and then she’d lose
all
her inhibitions. And, with Clare’s encouraging text message in the back of her mind –
SNOG HIM FFS!
– there might be no stopping her. Oh God. It was terrifying . . . but kind of exciting too.

She poured them each a large glass and raised hers to her lips. ‘Cheers,’ she said demurely. She didn’t have a clue how tonight was going to pan out, but she had a feeling she might enjoy herself all the same.

After they’d eaten platefuls of pasta in a garlic, cream and bacon sauce and an enormous green salad, the sky was darkening into sombre shades of purple and navy. They were sitting outside at a small iron patio table around the back of the house, and it was so quiet, Polly felt as if they were the only two people left in the county.

‘That was delicious,’ she said tipsily, pushing her plate back. ‘So what happens now? Is this where you start serenading me on your guitar?’

‘You should be so lucky,’ he replied. ‘No. What happens now is . . . this.’ And then, before she could say or do anything else, he’d leaned across the table and was kissing her full on the lips. Her heart almost stopped in shock. ‘Excuse
me!
’ she was on the verge of bleating, but then she noticed just how soft his mouth was against hers and how tenderly he was holding her. The words slipped away, unspoken and she felt the blood rush first to her head, and then to various other sensitive areas around her body.