Five Winters(91)

“Did you see stars?” I asked him a long time later, lying in bed next to him, feeling as liquid and boneless as if I’d been filleted.

He sounded slightly breathless, as well he might. “About two hundred billion trillion and one of them, yes. And numbers. A long, beautiful line of numbers stretching on into infinity.”

I made a sound.

“What? You’ve got to remember numbers are my nirvana.”

“Something definitely went wrong with your wiring when you were put together. Except for just now. Your wires are in exactly all the right places just now. I didn’t know it could be like that, did you?”

He stroked my hair back from my face, laying a line of kisses down along my collarbone. “Absolutely no clue, no.” Then he sighed. “Think of all the time we’ve wasted.”

“Maybe not. Maybe we needed all that wrong stuff, all that life, to get to this perfect moment.”

“Maybe. You know, I think I first got an inkling of my feelings at the folk festival, watching you fall in love with that song.”

“‘Carrickfergus’?”

He nodded. “Yes. Your mouth was hanging slightly open. You looked as if you’d been slapped.”

“It really spoke to me. The tune. That guy’s voice. The words.”

“The man saying he’d swim over the deepest ocean to be with his love?”

“Yes.” Just thinking about it, I was coming over all swoony again.

“That’s me, you know now. I’d do anything for you, Beth. I love you so much. I know I joke around, but half the time it’s to give me something to hide behind. I adore you. You make me feel . . . I don’t know. Seen.”

“Like you have permission to be wholly you?”

“Yes.”

“That you don’t need to change a thing about yourself?”

“Yes.”

“Me too. I feel that too.”

“Of course you do. You’re perfect.”

He kissed me, pressing me to him, and it started up all over again, that great tumbling washing machine of passion which—for the moment—blocked out thoughts of absolutely anything else.

A long time later, Mark pulled the bedroom curtain aside to look out. “It’s really snowing hard now. It must have settled, I think. Fancy making some snow angels?”

“I’m not sure there’s enough space for snow angels in my garden.”

“Come on, let’s go and see.”

His excitement was contagious. We pulled on our clothes as quickly as we’d taken them off and rushed outside. The snow had covered the paths, the branches of the plane tree, and the shrubs in the borders. Everything was coated in a glittering, sparkling, magical blanket, as if someone had waved a wand over it. But the only possible space to make snow angels was on the patio, which was sheltered slightly by the house and therefore had a lot less snow. So when we threw ourselves down on the paving slabs and moved our arms and legs up and down, we were actually moving as many bits of stick and old leaves as we were snow.

“Scarecrows are the new snow angels,” joked Mark.

He looked ridiculous with leaves and bits of old twigs in his hair. Gorgeous, though. Happy too. Definitely happy.

“Did you know,” Mark said from the paving slabs, “experts estimate that Mount Everest weighs three hundred and fifty trillion pounds?”

There were snowflakes on his eyelashes. I had no idea whatsoever why he was spouting random facts about Mount bloody Everest, but God, he was beautiful.

My stomach gave an unromantic lurch. Well, I hadn’t even had breakfast. The croissants I’d bought to share with Rosie were still in their packet on the kitchen table.

“Wait a minute,” he said, looking at me. “Was that cement-mixer sound your stomach?”

“Might have been,” I said cagily.

He laughed, pushing himself off the ground, holding out a hand to pull me up. “Come on, I’ll cook you some lunch.”

Indoors, we took our wet jackets off.

“The snow’s gone right through my jacket,” Mark said, pulling his damp jumper away from his skin.

“Want to borrow some clothes? I’ve probably got something to fit you.”

His gaze narrowed. “Not if it’s that T-shirt you lent to Eagle Man last year.”

“Eagle Man? Oh, you mean Jake,” I said, transported straight back to that awkward encounter in the hallway with Jake, gorgeous and bare chested, holding the I’M NOT RUDE, I JUST HAVE THE BALLS TO SAY WHAT EVERYONE ELSE IS THINKING T-shirt.

“Did anything ever happen between you two?”

I shook my head. “It might have done.”

“Only I ruined it by turning up when I did?”

I nodded. “That’s what always happened. I’d meet someone, think, This could be it at last. This could be something. Then I’d see you, and suddenly . . . Nobody ever matched up, that’s all.”

“I’m sorry.”

I shrugged. “Jake’s in love with someone else now. It’s fine. Anyway, are you going to cook me some lunch or what?”

He hung his sodden jacket up on a coat peg, suddenly becoming businesslike. “I am. Go and sit yourself down. Leave me to it.”

I did as I was told, watching Mark move about the kitchen, pulling ingredients from the fridge and the store cupboards with a big, stupid grin on his face, which was no doubt echoed on my own. Tossing bell peppers into the air and catching them like a cocktail bar manager. Making me giggle when he held a leek suggestively low at the front of his jeans and twerked it playfully. Flipping the switch on the radio and breaking into a dance that involved a great deal of butt wiggling.