The First Time I Saw Your Face (17 page)

‘Change of plan,’ she said with a grin. ‘I’m off. Stewie’s just finished his shift. Know what they say, “bird in the hand” and all that. Mind you I always think “two in the bush” sounds more fun.’

Jennifer was trying to work out which of Lisa’s boyfriends Stewie was when Doug plopped himself down on Lisa’s vacated stool. Matt Harper came and stood behind him,
looking self-conscious, and Jennifer was torn between wanting to run and wanting to stand up so she could get nearer to him. She fought the urge to lower her chin, even though she felt exposed to those brown eyes.

‘Couldn’t help me out, could you, Jen?’ Doug said. ‘I offered Matt a lift back home, but then remembered I’m meant to be nipping and seeing a bloke about a sundial I’m designing for him. Any chance you could give Matt a lift instead?’

Being alone in a car with Matt suddenly seemed frightening, but then she saw him shift his weight and wince as if his foot was still hurting him.

‘Of course,’ she said, ‘I have to go right past your door.’

Mack could tell that Jennifer was tense and wondered if she was always on edge. Or maybe it was a hangover from the measuring session – she’d certainly been uncomfortable when she’d had to measure his inside leg and it had made him uncomfortable too; made it hard to keep up that irritating brand of Matt Harper cheeriness. The way that she had run her fingers down his arm had particularly unsettled him – not because he found it pleasant, but that he hadn’t found it as unpleasant as he had expected. Unlike when she put her face too close to his; then he’d found it really hard not to flinch.

He supposed if he was honest, which was rich coming from him, the thing that had spooked him the most had been the urge to raise her gently back to her feet when
she had been on her knees. He had no idea what expression had been in his eyes when she’d got back up.

No point in beating himself up about it; he might be a deceiving git right at this moment, but the impulse to save someone from the discomfort of a hard floor was a natural one.

He let her settle into the drive and as she did, it occurred to him that from this side you could see nothing of her scarring so that the picture he was getting was a kind of ‘Before’ version. It was a version that would have attracted his attention, no doubt about that. In fact, he’d have probably thought she was out of his league. Those cheekbones really did give her a Scandinavian-princess look.

He stopped staring at her and looked back out of the windscreen at the white lines picked out in the headlights. Stretching his leg, he winced, to play up his ankle injury. He had three miles and that stupid extra bit to break the ice and work her round gently to at least mentioning Cressida. That was as far as he’d push it tonight.

‘They’re a lovely bunch, aren’t they?’ he started. ‘I really enjoyed myself tonight.’

Apart from during that stupid warm-up when I had to pretend I was moving a pip around in my mouth and letting it slowly grow into a gobstopper and then back to a pip before I spat it out and generally wanted to die of friggin’ embarrassment.

‘And Finlay’s a real character, so inspirational. He’s a teacher, isn’t he?’

She nodded.

‘Did he ever teach you?’

‘Yes, and he works his magic on everyone. We had hard nuts in my class who wouldn’t even pick up a script because they thought it was “gay”. By the time he’d finished with them they were in the end-of-year play with everyone else; captain of the rugby team playing a love scene in a dress, the lot.’

OK, so we’re getting somewhere now.

‘Doug’s great too, isn’t he? Can’t wait to see one of his sculptures.’

A little nod and a smile.

He persevered, talking about a walk along the Tyne Valley he had planned for later in the week; telling her how he had lost one of his notebooks. He only got the odd nod back. What had happened to that lovely smile she’d given him after his audition?

One thing left to try. Perhaps she was just sick of all this tiptoeing round her and people assuming it was her intelligence that was broken and not her face.

‘Sorry you got landed with taking me home,’ he said, ‘you probably wanted a bit of time on your own. It must be hard watching the rest of us rehearsing when you’re not acting any more.’

He wasn’t sure if he imagined the intake of breath, but he did not imagine the way the car weaved before she corrected it.

‘Yes,’ she replied after a silence which was so long he had started to wonder if he had completely stuffed it up, ‘it’s difficult.’

‘I hope you don’t mind me saying that, it’s just I heard you did a drama course and couldn’t finish it.’

She turned her head in his direction and then looked back at the road. ‘It’s all right, you can say the words “had an accident”.’

‘Of course, of course. Had an accident.’

She didn’t speak again for the rest of the journey, but this time he felt the silence between them was not the chilly barrier it had been earlier, and that possibly she was thinking back through his words and judging him favourably.

When they pulled up outside Brindley Villas he wondered if he should say anything else other than ‘Thank you for the lift,’ but he never even got those words out because when he looked up from undoing his seat belt it was right into those blue eyes of hers, the perfect one and the one that was clipped by the scar. There was a look of such sadness in them that it stopped him shrugging off the belt and getting out of the car.

Was there nothing anyone could do, about that scarring? Nothing to make it less noticeable? He supposed it would fade in time, perhaps it already had. It was never going to be invisible, though: it had permanently changed the contours of her face, as if plates had shifted under the ground.

He knew that her smile, when it came, was a supreme piece of acting. ‘Enjoy your walking and … thanks for being understanding about me, well, not being very talkative tonight,’ she said.

He went straight into the cottage without watching her drive away, heading for the remains of a bottle of Merlot in the kitchen. All his years with Phyllida had taught him that drink wasn’t the answer, but he needed something to take the edge off that last scene in the car. A little bit of anaesthetic to stop him thinking that if he’d have been a different kind of man, he would have tried to comfort her in some way.

CHAPTER 15

Jennifer manoeuvred the lamb between her Wellingtons to hold it steady, tipped back its head a little and put the teat of the bottle to its mouth. Immediately it tossed its head, knocking the teat away and so Jennifer gently held its mouth, aimed the bottle again, and this time with a bit of holding and wiggling on her part the lamb got its mouth properly on the teat and started to draw down on the milk. Now it had the idea, it was taking a good feed, and Jennifer knew if she looked behind her she would see its tail wagging wildly.

She yawned. It had been a long night, lying there thinking about Matt Harper, and she had a headache that wasn’t helped by the constant high bleating of the sheep. How noisy they were contrasted sharply with her recollection of how quiet she’d been in the car; almost struck dumb by the reality of being alone with Matt Harper and his brown hair and his brown eyes and all those lovely measurements. And he’d tried so hard to talk to her. She
could tell he was confused by her frostiness. Why wouldn’t he be? He thought he was just having a lift home with Jennifer; a nice lift and a nice chat. He’d have been rocked back on his heels to hear her thoughts:
Stop talking, Matt, let me just enjoy sitting here in the dark with you
.

‘I’m going to have to tube-feed that black one on the end,’ her dad suddenly said from two pens away. ‘He’s not getting the hang of the bottle at all.’

It was her who’d been rocked back on her heels in the end though, wasn’t it? How did he understand what she felt? He was completely on the button, and he’d been so tactful about the accident.

Off to her left Bryony was treating the umbilical cord of a new lamb with antibiotics. The lamb looked like a stuffed toy in her large hands.

It was funny how Matt Harper’s level of understanding was so much better than Alex’s, someone who had known her for years. Great, he was sensitive and good-looking and no doubt also kind to small furry animals. Jennifer looked down at the one she was feeding and watched it start to slow its gulping. When the teat came out of its mouth this time she reached down and felt its tiny stomach, now rounded and warm, and lifted it up gently and put it back in with its mother, before picking up another lamb and starting the process all over again.

She wasn’t going to dwell on the way she’d looked at Matt Harper before he got out of the car; felt flustered even now thinking about it. Like some lovesick cow who had the urge to say, ‘I’m in pain here, so just for a second,
if you don’t find it too off-putting, please wrap your arms round me.’

‘You look a bit peaky,’ Bryony said, wiping her hands, now free of lamb, down her overalls. ‘Not sleep very well?’

‘No, no, I’m fine.’

Jennifer did some more smiling and Bryony was either convinced or decided to back off. She looked at her watch.

‘Anything you want me to see to before I go, Ray?’

‘No, pet,’ drifted back over the pens.

‘Off for a sleep?’ Jennifer asked.

‘Yes, just waiting for your mum to come back with Louise.’

‘Where’s Danny?’

‘Putting some lambs back out. Top field.’

Ray ambled to join them. ‘You do look a bit pale, Jen. I can carry on with that if you want to go back and have a bit more of a lie-in.’

‘I’m fine, Dad, honestly.’ She didn’t need more solitary time in which to think. ‘I’ll just go and mix up some more milk. Where did you say Mum’s gone?’

‘Just to—’

‘Buy some bacon,’ Bryony cut in.

‘Aye, bacon, that’s it,’ Ray agreed. ‘That’s it. Bacon.’

Mack emerged from Sonia’s shop with a lot more than his groceries. As he’d suspected, Sonia had proved to be a fount of gossip. He’d had a lucky break when he’d found her and her cleavage leaning on the counter reading a magazine in which Cressida was modelling several thousand
pounds’ worth of jewellery and couture. How flabbergasted he was at the news that she was Jennifer’s cousin and as his reward got a bucketload of information, including some tasty stuff about Alex Lambton, one of Jennifer’s old boyfriends from school.

Now he knew how rich Alex was because his family owned, rather than rented, a huge farm further north; that the Lambton sheep had as good a reputation as the Rosebys’ and that although Jennifer had kicked Alex into touch when he went off to agricultural college, people suspected he would marry her on the spot if she said yes. Sonia didn’t think that was likely as a little bird had told her (tap of the nose) that Jennifer had recently made it clear she saw Alex only as a friend, which would have annoyed Brenda Roseby, who had always looked favourably on him.

As Sonia had worked through Mack’s shopping list, she’d also confirmed O’Dowd’s version of the accident. Local people, evidently, knew Cressida had been in the car, even if the public at large didn’t, and they suspected drink was involved, although Jennifer had been too badly hurt to be breathalysed. Sonia was of the opinion that it didn’t matter if it had been Jennifer’s fault, she was the one who’d suffered.

Mack had tried not to listen to the next bit about how Jennifer had fallen apart completely after coming out of hospital. How she wouldn’t eat properly, couldn’t sleep, had to be persuaded to let friends visit. By the end of it the pained expression on his face was genuine.

A phone call had halted Sonia’s flow, and Mack had heard her, beyond the beaded curtain, talking and giggling with someone called ‘Gregor’. They seemed to be arranging a date in Tyneforth. Mack presumed it was the foreign hunk he’d seen before and the flushed look on Sonia’s face when she returned seemed to confirm that.

‘Appreciate you coming in here for your stuff,’ she’d said as she packed his groceries. ‘You could get the supermarket to deliver. A lot do.’

‘Oh no,’ he’d replied, ‘I like to support the local community.’

And the supermarkets are rubbish at providing this standard of gossip.

As he knew she would, she came out of the shop after he’d left to slip his glasses back into the pocket of his fleece.

‘You’re hopeless. Does your girlfriend normally have to look after you like this? I bet she does. I bet she makes sure your mittens are on an ’ickle string round your neck.’

‘Oh dear,’ he said, grinning in a boyish way. ‘I think my secret’s out.’

Back in the cottage, he was cosying a packet of rice up to a tin of tomatoes in one of the crappy cupboards when the doorbell rang.

The woman on the doorstep was Jennifer’s mother; he could see that straightaway. She had the same high cheekbones and good posture and a kind of haughtiness that made him think of a duchess. Her eyes were the same
blue as Jennifer’s too, but whereas Jennifer’s were often cast down, these eyes had locked on to his.

‘Morning,’ she said sharply and he knew that whatever was coming was a test. He had to remember that good old Matt Harper had nothing to hide, so he’d probably be a bit confused by her visit.

‘Um, hello,’ he said, ‘can I help you?’

‘I’m Brenda Roseby, Jennifer’s mother.’

‘Jennifer’s mother? Jennifer from the Drama Club? Well, I’m really pleased to meet you.’ He smiled and held out his hand, and she grasped hold of it firmly, gave it one shake and then let go.

‘Jennifer’s been very welcoming,’ he said, ‘the whole Drama Club has, and it’s very nice of you to come and introduce yourself.’

‘You’re a writer?’

He did some rapid blinking. ‘Just a little book on Dorset coastal walks—’

‘And one on North Somerset. Yes, I know. Found them a bit dry to be honest.’

Whoa … you’ve actually bought them?

‘Dry? You think so?’

Her face was merciless. ‘Mind you, I’m not fond of writers. We had some other people calling themselves writers here before – in the village, outside our farm. Journalists.’