Reluctantly Home(75)

‘I’ve had better times,’ he said without looking up. ‘Being single is crap.’

Pip touched his shoulder gently, her palm feeling his warmth through his T-shirt.

‘I’m so sorry, Jez,’ she said gently. ‘It’s shit. Have you seen her at all?’

He shook his head. ‘She came to get her stuff, but I was at the farm. She knew I’d be out, arrived then on purpose.’

Pip shrugged sympathetically, although she would probably have done the same herself.

‘I went to the hotel,’ Jez continued, ‘to see if we could talk things through again, but they told me she was in a meeting. They were probably lying.’

‘Maybe it’s for the best that you haven’t seen her,’ suggested Pip, aware of how much she sounded like her mother. It was hard to know what to say without sounding trite or patronising. This must be what it had been like talking to her recently, not being able to find the words, worried that you would accidentally say the wrong thing and make matters worse.

He took a deep breath, sat back in his chair and looked straight at her. ‘Let’s just get pissed,’ he said. ‘Horribly, disgustingly pissed.’

Pip couldn’t remember the last time she had been even tipsy, let alone the level of drunk that Jez seemed to have in mind. She had avoided alcohol since the accident, worried that if she started drinking, she might never stop, but what harm could one evening do? It wasn’t as if she would be driving anywhere.

‘Go on then,’ she said, a broad grin creeping across her face. ‘But if you puke or you start doing that stupid dance you used to do, then I’m out of here.’

With a new sense of purpose, Jez’s mood seemed to improve, and by the time he began his third pint he seemed to have forgotten he had been miserable. Pip had no hope of matching him drink for drink – she was out of practice and she could never drink as much as him anyway – but she held her own. As the alcohol seeped into her bloodstream she felt an uncoupling inside her, as if someone had taken away the burden of her body and left her with just her mind, and she knew at once that she had been right not to drink her way through the last dark months.

By the time they had got to their sixth drink they had begun to play a rather raucous game of ‘who would you do’. It wasn’t something Pip had thought about in years, but now she remembered how much fun it was to consider a room full of people and rank them in terms of sexual attractiveness. Jez’s choices didn’t surprise her in the least, but her own were not what she would have predicted. Dominic was broad and dark with a patrician profile, but the men who caught her eye in the pub were quirkier, less alpha male and more cheeky-looking. In fact, they were a lot like Jez.

The second this thought crossed her mind, she knew exactly where the evening would be heading unless she did something to prevent it. It seemed as if the thought had crossed Jez’s mind at almost the same moment, because he focused his slightly glazed eyes on her and said, ‘And, of course, I’d always do you, Pip.’

Not having had time to work out what she felt, Pip tried to fend him off with jokes. ‘Oh, you always did know how to flatter a girl, Jez. Just how far down that list did I come?’ She grinned at him to show she knew he was joking and that she was, too, but instead of returning her smile he was now just staring at her as if he was seeing her for the first time.

‘I’m serious,’ he said, the joshing tone of the moment before now gone. ‘You’ve always been special, Pip. You mean the world to me. You always have done, ever since we were kids.’

His words went straight to her drunken heart. Who didn’t want to be told they were special? Suddenly she felt cherished in a way she hadn’t for a long time. And he was right. There had been a bond between them since the first time he had led her, nervous but excited about what was to come, up the rickety ladder in the old hay barn. Sex in a hay barn was such a cliché, but no less lovely for that. It hadn’t been his first time – of course it hadn’t; they were seventeen – but Pip had liked to think the memory of it occupied a precious place in his heart. It certainly did in hers.

She could do it, she thought. There was nothing to stop her. They could leave the pub and walk the short distance to his tiny cottage. It would be safe and easy, and she longed for someone to take care of her, to hold her tight and let her drift away from the last few months, if only for an hour or two.

But Jez was drunk and heartbroken. The last thing he needed was a confusing night with an old flame who was barely holding it together herself. And yet . . .

Pip pushed herself up from the table and looked straight into the familiar hazel eyes.

‘Come on,’ she said softly. ‘Let’s go.’





45


Evelyn had ventured out of the house.

She had dressed with care and walked to the hardware shop to buy sturdy black plastic bags. The man behind the counter had assured her they were the strongest he stocked, although he hadn’t enquired what she intended to do with them. Evelyn was tempted to hint that she had chopped up a body that she needed to dispose of. She’d had such fun with people sometimes, back when she used to have fun. They were so easy to wind up, and she was great at playing whichever part might suit her story. Perhaps she should get in touch with that Evelyn Mountcastle and invite her to come and stay.