I marched off ahead, anxious, suddenly, that he’d changed his mind. What if he’d got carried away up on that roof, like I had at the top of the Eiffel Tower?
‘Maddie, can we stop a sec?’ he called after me.
I stopped, hesitating before turning around. Whatever he had to say, I was going to have to face it. I’d got over him before, I supposed I could do it again, if the worst came to the worst.
‘You’ve ended things with Nick?’ he said, looking as though he couldn’t quite believe it.
I nodded.
‘I wasn’t expecting that,’ he said.
‘Neither was he,’ I replied.
Aidan came closer, not stopping until there was hardly any space between us at all. He reached out and ran his fingers along the length of my arm, from my shoulder to my wrist.
‘Are you OK?’ he asked.
‘I think so,’ I said, melting into his shoulder, letting myselfremember what it had been like to touch him. I breathed in the scent of him.
‘So what does this mean for us?’ asked Aidan, his voice low, his breath warm on my neck.
I didn’t care about the locals passing us, bulging bunches of flowers in arms, or the tourists taking photos of the pretty arches. Following my instincts for once, I clasped his head between my hands, rose up on to the tips of my toes and kissed him lightly on the mouth, just for a second or two. He put the flat of his hand on the small of my back, pulling me in to him, and kissed me back, first on my eyebrows and then on the tip of my nose and then, finally on my lips. Harder this time, with no holding back, as though he was making up for the years we’d been apart. I never wanted it to end.
‘Is this really all happening?’ he asked, pulling back at last and looking at me with a kind of awe.
I nodded, laughing, breathless, also not quite able to believe it. ‘I think it really is.’
Epilogue
Aidan had grown up on the outskirts of London like me, in a non-descript road flanked with slightly tatty semi-detached houses a bit like the one we’d lived in when my mum and dad were still together.
‘I used to ride my bike up and down this street for hours in the summer holidays,’ said Aidan, throwing his arm easily around my shoulders and pulling me close to him so that he could kiss the top of my head.
‘I bet you rode like a maniac,’ I replied, enjoying the crunch of golden leaves beneath the heels of my boots.
I loved this time of year best, the lead-up to Halloween and fireworks night, when the air felt breezy and crisp but a little bit smoky and you felt like sitting in cosy pubs nursing a glass of red (which Aidan and I seemed to do a LOT).
‘I want to say I was very careful …’ said Aidan, laughing to himself, ‘but I think my mum was probably relieved when I got home in one piece.’
I slipped my arm around his waist so that there was no space between us.
‘How are things between you, now?’ I asked him, running my fingertips under the hem of his jumper and stroking the cool skin just above his waistband.
‘Better,’ he said. ‘I’m beginning to understand why they didn’t tell me. We’ve talked it through and I might not agree with it, but I get that they had my best interests at heart.’
I nodded. ‘It wasn’t a decision they took lightly, was it? I bet they’d been agonising over it for years.’
‘Yeah. They said they had.’
‘What about your mum’s vision?’
He shrugged. ‘No worse for now. I think it’s a case of watching and waiting.’
We reached a house that looked sunnier than the others. Brighter and more inviting, with pink curtains and a neat front garden with a bench in it and a bird box and a knackered-looking Ford Fiesta parked in the driveway.
‘This is us,’ said Aidan.
I hesitated.