amongst a sea of bad jokes, slushy sentiment and poorly drawn hearts and flowers. Doggedly Carol dragged her attention away from the book and the memories, but it was like trying to take a steak away from a terrier.
‘Have a good drive,’ Raf was saying, ‘and don’t worry about anything or anybody here. We’ll be just fine. I’m considering renting a few of those films you said you don’t ever want in this house, and filling up on fast food, pizzas, beer and take-out burgers.’
She couldn’t think of a smart reply quickly enough, so Carol plumped for looking at Raf all damp-eyed and feeling guilty instead. She’d done nothing at all and yet she felt guilty, horribly guilty. Ridiculous. She took a deep breath and squared her shoulders. Ridiculous.
Raf put his arm round her waist and kissed her, and Carol immediately found herself wondering if Gareth would kiss her when they met. Did he still kiss the same as he had all those years ago? She seemed to remember he was a re ally good—and then, suddenly horribly aware of Raf’s lips on hers, Carol hated herself for thinking about Gareth. What a cow she had grown up to be.
Raf looked her up and down admiringly. ‘You know, you’re gorgeous,’ he purred. Carol softened. This man adored her; he cared for her, stood up for her, stood up to her and wanted to be with her. Raf wanted to marry her, for God’s sake—how crazy was that? Over a glass or two of wine out on the terrace he would look up at the stars and wax lyrical about the house they would buy together, the house they would love and grow old in together. He cooked, he bought her flowers and presents that she liked and wanted. He made her laugh; when she was sad or feeling down he brought her carrot cake with proper cream cheese icing from the baker’s on Bridge Street, or lemon drizzle cake with crystallised sugar on the top. Carol looked up into Raf’s big brown smiling eyes and tried very hard not to cry.
Carol loved Raf and she knew he loved her and yet…and yet, that thing, that, that little zing wasn’t there, that thing that made something happen in your gut every time you saw someone. It was the bastard factor that was lacking, that little edge of unpredictability that adds a bit of a challenge, a bit of bite. Raf was too nice, and it worried Carol. What if she got bored; what if, despite all evidence to the contrary, Raf wasn’t the one after all? What if loving him turned out to be a terrible mistake? What if…? The possibilities haunted her. Raf was so safe, so kind, so right for her—so why was it exactly that she was thinking about the might-have-beens with a man she hadn’t seen for twenty years?
Raf drew Carol closer still and kissed the tip of her nose. He smelled of sunshine and a hint of aftershave all wrapped around by a warm musky man smell. She felt safe curled in his arms; it was one of the things that had made her hang on and try to quell the fear. Maybe, just maybe that she had got it right this time and she wasn’t making a terrible mistake.
‘Now you be careful,’ teased Raf. ‘We’re expecting you to phone home every night. Don’t go talking to any strange men and if they offer you sweeties or to show you their puppies—’
‘I’ll tell them to bugger off, pull out my plastic dagger and then get Diana to flash them the wart.’
‘Good, now have you got a clean hanky?’ he continued in the same jokey paternal tone.
Behind them Jake thundered down the stairs, taking the last few steps two at a time and then swung round the newel post so he was standing right in front of her. ‘And there’ll be no staying up late, no drinking, no drugs and no monkey business,’ he said, wagging a finger at her.
Carol stared at him. ‘What?’ she spluttered.
‘You know exactly what I’m talking about. Just make sure you behave yourself, young lady,’ he said, all mock-parent and raging acne.
To her horror Carol felt her colour rising furiously as she hugged Jake goodbye. Of course she would behave herself. Wouldn’t she?
‘Ollie?’ Carol called, struggling to regain her composure. She glanced down at her watch to hide her discomfort; it was high time she was gone.
Ollie was in the kitchen, excavating something from the Mesozoic layer in the bottom of the fridge.
‘I’m off now, love,’ she said cheerily.
‘So’s this yoghurt,’ he huffed miserably. ‘I might have got food poisoning or something.’
Carol took the offending article out of his deeply disgusted paw and dropped it into the pedal bin. ‘For God’s sake, Ollie, you’re a new lad, you’re not supposed to read the sell-by dates,’ Carol growled. ‘You’re meant to eat it and then burp appreciatively, green hairy mould and all.’
Ollie’s expression of unrelenting disdain did not waver. Carol held up her hands in surrender. ‘OK, OK, my mistake. You can go and buy more tomorrow. Organic, low fat, no fat—whatever.’
He sniffed.
Carol pulled him closer and brushed her lips across the top of Oliver’s spiky hard-boy haircut. ‘And don’t worry, I’ll be back on Sunday evening to mop up any unused emotional blackmail and residual maternal guilt.’
His eyes twinkled but his expression remained steadfastly hard done by. ‘Just as long as we’ve got that perfectly clear,’ he said.
Carol resisted the temptation to scrunch his carefully teased and heavily gelled hairstyle into prepubescent fluffiness. ‘Have a good time without me.’
‘Yeah, right, we will. Bye, Mum,’ Ollie said grudgingly.
At least he helped her to feel slightly better; resentment and grumpiness made Carol feel she had every right to go. After all she did for them, ungrateful buggers. She sighed; who the hell was she trying to kid? Although she did want to go and meet everyone and see what they had been up to—she and Diana had got a brilliant response from their ad on Oldschooltie’s message board—Carol knew that the main reason she was going was so that she could take a long hard look at Gareth Howard. Not only to see what the years had done to him but also to see if there was a flame still burning after all.
What if she had met Mr Right all those years ago and had been too blind or too young or too naïve to see it? Maybe it wasn’t too late to go back and pick up the pieces.
She’d had a thing for Gareth for years—but it wasn’t until they started rehearsing the play that he suddenly seemed aware of her for the first time.
‘I was looking for you,’ he’d said, bounding up to her in the corridor on impossibly long legs. ‘I was wondering if you’d like to read the script through some time before we start rehearsals?’ Carol had been hurrying out of the common room, her arms full of books.
‘Sorry, that was the bell—I’m supposed to be in History…’ Ah, that was it. And she had turned away and Gareth had caught hold of her elbow and turned her back towards him. ‘When’s your next private study? It would be good to go through the play a couple of times—you know, get a feel for it.’
Carol could feel her colour rising; wasn’t this what she had been daydreaming about for years? Her annoyance at being held up faded to a kind of self-conscious discomfort. Get a grip, she thought, and tried smiling.
‘This afternoon, after lunch I’ve got a double free,’ Carol had heard herself saying, stumbling over the words, trying to forget the pile of work she had to catch up on.
And then Gareth had grinned and brushed his fringe back off his face; he had been playing cricket and tennis and had a tan that made his eyes seem far too blue. ‘Great. Me too, any idea where we could go?’
Carol stared at him; where the hell did you go with somebody you had been lusting after since you were fourteen?
‘How about the library?’
He pulled a face; so maybe it wasn’t the best choice but it was all Carol could come up with under pressure. ‘Someone is bound to complain about the noise. We need somewhere quiet where we can read through without being disturbed. How about if we go over to the pavilion; we could sit out on the veranda. At least