The Things I Know(28)
‘Thank you,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t like it neither.’
With a shrug, she continued along the lane, her pace now slowed. The two walked in silence until they came to the path that meandered down to the river’s edge and back to the rocky stretch of beach. With no one else around, the air was still, quiet, and the swollen river had calmed. Hitch made her way across the pebbles and sand to the flat rock and placed the folded blanket on the top before settling on it with her legs crossed.
‘You look like a gnome on a lily pad,’ he noted.
‘Good.’ She smiled at him. ‘That’s what I was going for.’
She patted the space next to her and Grayson sat down with his hands on his knees, sitting at a stiff right angle, as though waiting for a job interview.
She unscrewed the top from the bottle of cider and took a swig, letting the cold, sweet, honey-coloured liquid dance on her tongue before handing it to him.
‘What do you usually do of an evening?’ She was curious about life in the big city, picturing her two day-trips, when she’d been taken along by her mum, who wanted to visit Buckingham Palace, and of course their visit to the Chelsea Flower Show, where the tickets had come courtesy of Mrs Pepper, who had some vague connection, meaning the tickets came free. As darkness had drawn and they had boarded the Bristol-bound bus home, she had sat with her face pressed to the window, stealing glimpses inside flats and houses lit from within, capturing images of chandeliers, gilt-framed paintings and a woman in a turtleneck sweater dumping a grocery bag on a table. Londoners: sophisticated dwellers of this magical place where she would love nothing more than to spend the night. She had walked among the bright lights of Covent Garden, where people dined and smoked al fresco and glamorous girls, wearing the shiny, pretty, red shoes she could only dream about, walked with suited and booted boys, tripping arm in arm over the cobbles. They were to Hitch like no other species she had encountered. Neat, clean, glossy and artfully painted, with knowledge of what to wear, how to act and where to go, knowledge that was beyond her. These were not lessons she had learned in her twenty-odd years of living in Austley Morton with only her chicken girls for company and the odd evening spent up the Barley Mow.
‘Nothing.’
‘Nothing?’ She found this most disappointing, having hoped to add to her mental repertoire with his tales, in the way she now stored an image of Mrs Silvioni and her dawtah on the streets of NYC.
‘I don’t do anything. I get home, I have my tea and I go to my room.’
‘It sounds like punishment!’ She laughed at this, not meaning any offence.
Grayson, however, looked at her with such anguish that she regretted the off-the-cuff remark, spoken half in jest. He took a large glug of the cider and wiped his mouth.
‘It feels a bit like that too sometimes.’ He drank again.
‘What are you being punished for?’ she asked softly, feeling a beat of compassion that resounded loudly in her chest.
‘I don’t know.’
She watched as he kicked the ground and let his shoulders sink.
‘You never go out with your friends?’
‘I don’t have any friends.’ He held her gaze and spoke without any edge, as if this was not what most people might consider a failing, but just a state over which he had no control.
‘I don’t have any friends either,’ she confessed, taking the bottle and sipping the cold cider that slipped in bubbles of joy down her throat. ‘I sometimes chat to Shelley up at the pub; she works behind the bar. I’ve known her since school, but we’re not really friends.’
‘I suppose I have Reggie, or at least I did.’
‘Reggie the murderer?’
‘Yep.’ He nodded.
‘I’ll be your friend, Grayson.’ She spoke in earnest and handed him the bottle, watching him drink eagerly, quickly.
‘I’ll be your friend, Thomasina.’
She put her hand out to retrieve the bottle, but instead Grayson Potts slipped from the rock and put the bottle on the ground. He walked around until he stood in front of her, quite blocking the view. She opened up her legs to let him come closer. And there they rested, she sitting and he standing so near to her.
She felt a flutter in her chest and a quickening to her breath as he stared at her.
‘I’m glad you’re my friend. I feel like I’ve known you for a very long time, as if I know you from some time before, some place I don’t remember.’
Far from finding his statement comical or dismissing it as a cheap attempt to woo her, Hitch felt the intensity in his stare and his words and her heart raced accordingly.
‘I think you’re . . .’ He looked away and swallowed, as if searching for the right words – or having found the right words, was anxious about putting them out into the universe.
‘What?’ she whispered.
He gazed back at her, his hands grasping at the air in front of his chest as if unsure of where he should place them. ‘I think you’re beautiful.’
Hitch felt the swell of tears sting the back of her throat. This was the first time in her life anyone had said this to her.
The first time ever.
His words were a sincere balm that warmed her from the inside, making her feel happy and hopeful. This man! This man who she had known for no more than a few hours. Slowly, hesitantly, Grayson leaned forward and, taking his time, allowing, she suspected, time for her to protest or refuse, he drew closer and closer, until there were mere millimetres between them. And then Mr Grayson Potts, his actions chaste and considered, did something that no person, no man, had ever done in her whole life . . . He closed his eyes and very gently touched his lips to hers.