Mum clutched a hand to her throat in a slightly over-the-top theatrical gesture. ‘Oh, my goodness. Did you see that? Was that a prowler?’
I was already on my feet and halfway to the front door. I threw it open, but Tom could move surprisingly quickly for a man on the wrong side of seventy-five. He’d already covered half the distance between Amelia’s cottage and his.
The wind was nowhere near as fierce as the night before, but I could still feel it whipping the cry from my lips. ‘Tom. Tom. Hang on a minute. Wait up.’
There was little wrong with his hearing, I’m sure, yet he hesitated for a moment before slowing his pace and turning on the pathway to face me.
‘Good morning,’ I called out.
‘Mornin’,’ he shouted back, making no move to come any closer. He stamped his feet on the path, looking decidedly uncomfortable, as though he really was the ‘peeping’ Tom my mother had feared.
I felt a rush of affection for the lonely old man and an inexplicable urge to draw him out of his solitude – whether he wanted me to or not. Perhaps the apple hadn’t fallen that far from the tree after all.
‘You were checking up on me just now, weren’t you? Checking I was alright after the storm?’
Tom looked shamefaced, as though he’d been caught in the act of covering up a crime.
‘Checking you hadn’t burned the place to the ground, more like,’ he said. But there was something new in his growled reply.
‘Won’t you join us for some breakfast? We’ve cooked far too much for just two people.’
I’m not sure who jumped more in surprise at the invitation, Tom or me. I hadn’t even heard Mum leave the cottage to come and stand beside me.
Tom fidgeted on the sandy footpath, and although it was hard to tell with a complexion as ruddy as his, I thought I detected a new flush on his cheeks.
‘I wouldn’t want to be intruding.’
‘You wouldn’t be,’ Mum replied, dismissing his objections as though they were of little concern. ‘And besides, it’s the very least I can do to thank you for looking out for my daughter – for looking out forbothmy daughters, actually.’
I turned to her in surprise. I hadn’t mentioned that from the things Tom had said, he’d unintentionally revealed that he’d been keeping a watchful eye on the cottage at the end of the row, with its solitary female occupant. And yet somehow Mum had known it.
I thought there would be far more bluster and protests. I felt sure he’d conjure up some invented reason not to join us. Tom was, after all, a man who openly claimed he didn’t much care for the company of others. But with a nod and a little shuffle on the pathway, for the second time in less than twelve hours he chose to accept an invitation from a member of the Edwards family to join them.
I’m not sure exactly when it happened. But somewhere between the eggs and bacon and the numerous refills of his mug of strong, three-sugared tea, I witnessed something I hadn’t expected: the birth of another new friendship. A cynic might have questioned what an old hermit of a sea dog and a retired schoolteacher might have in common. But between talk of the area where they’d both grown up, the changes they’d seen since their youth, and a shared love of birdlife – of all things – I hardly spoke a word, and I don’t think either of them even noticed.
*
‘You two certainly got on like a house on fire,’ I teased, as Mum and I cleared away the breakfast things after Tom had gone.
‘Stuff and nonsense,’ said Mum, making it sound as though I’d lost my mind. I kept my smile hidden, because at some point during the meal I’d realised that in her own way Mum might be every bit as lonely for a friend her own age as I suspected Tom was. It was just that neither of them would ever have admitted it.
‘It’ll be good to have someone on hand to keep an eye on Amelia when I can’t be here and you’ve gone back to America, that’s all,’ Mum said. There it was again, that sudden uncomfortable frisson I kept feeling at the idea of me leaving.
We left the dishwasher to deal with the dishes and were about to climb into the car when Tom suddenly appeared from around the corner of the cottage. Bizarrely, his arms were full of daffodils. I’d noticed there was a small, sheltered plot of land beside his cottage covered with an early flowering carpet of them, a carpet that I suspected might now be considerably depleted. He’d wrapped a bunch of the cheery yellow flowers in a sheet of newspaper, which for some reason I found totally charming.
‘Thought your sister might like these to brighten up her room,’ he said, holding out the flowers to me. ‘They can be gloomy places, them hospitals.’
And then, with words spoken so low only the wind and my mother could hear them, he produced an identical bunch and passed it to Mum. In a morning of revelations, the most surprising thing was that I wasn’t surprised at all.
12
It was ten days since my humiliating visit to The Willows Veterinary Surgery. It had taken that long for my toes to stop curling in embarrassment whenever I thought about it. Even so, I suspected Nick Forrester’s polite but firm refusal would live on in my memory for some time yet – filed under the heading ofWhat the hell were you thinking?
I’d altered the route of my morning run on the beach to ensure our paths didn’t cross, something I imagined he’d want to avoid just as much as I did. In fact, I’d done everything I could to put the incident behind me, so the last thing I wanted or expected was to spot him right in front of me in the busy shopping mall.
There were several towns I could have chosen for my Saturday morning shopping trip. Was it just bad luck that I’d picked the same one he’d decided to visit, or was Fate determined to put us on a direct collision course? At least this time I had the chance to avoid another uncomfortable meeting. Nick was so much taller than the surrounding crowd that he’d been easy to spot, which had given me enough time to peel off from the throng and duck into the first shop doorway I came to.
‘Can I help you, madam?’ enquired a helpful assistant, coming to the open door to coax me inside.