To Love and Be Loved(27)

‘I was hoping for a game of tennis, but they say there’s a storm coming in and I’m not keen enough to play in a downpour.’

‘They say a lot of things, these weather people, mostly rubbish. If you want to know the weather, look out of the window, that’s what my dad says.’ She took in his profile as he stared out over the skyline.

‘Is he a meteorologist?’

‘No. A fisherman.’

‘I see. And what do you say? Do you think it’s possible to go from warm sunshine on a day like this to a raging storm?’

‘Yes, I think anything’s possible in Port Charles.’

‘Is that right?’ Those eyes and that smile were enough to make her feel quite heady. ‘You’re Heather’s daughter.’

‘Yep, one of them.’ She raised her left shoulder slightly and tilted her head the way she had practised in the mirror, knowing it made her look slimmer and, she thought, a little prettier too. ‘I’ve not seen you for a long time. I remember you playing here in the garden when I came up once with Mum when I was small.’ She wished she had something better to say, something witty or interesting.

‘I’ve been away at boarding school in Bristol since I was seven and we have a place there, so I’ve tended to stay where my mates are or I go abroad during the holidays. I’ve been here at Christmas time, but I haven’t seen you in the pub or anything.’

‘Don’t really go to the pub,’ she admitted, wishing she had gone to the pub if it might have meant bumping into him, and wishing she could give him details of her fabulous life and where she did go. ‘Oh, I’m usually in a wine bar somewhere!’ or ‘My family has a yacht!’ The wine bar was in fact Bella’s dad’s shed, where they sipped and grimaced as they swigged his home-made blackberry wine from a murky, sticky-rimmed bottle, and the family yacht was the stinky little trawler Sally-Mae, named in part after her great-gran, whose portrait hung over her mum and dad’s fireplace.

‘I’m Digby.’ He gave the name she already knew and looked at her as if taking her in, smiling, seemingly liking what he saw. It made her heart give a little skip.

‘Digby,’ she repeated with a small nod, holding his eyeline.

‘Well, that’s going to be tricky!’

‘What is?’ She wondered what she had missed, lost in listening to the perfect roundness of his vowels and his accent, which placed him beyond the county boundary.

‘If you’re called Digby, too, it could be a tad confusing.’

‘Oh!’ She laughed. ‘No, I just wanted to say your name. I’m Merrin.’

‘Merrin, yes, I knew that. It’s a great name; it reminds me of the sea. Merrin . . .’ He sounded it out perfectly. ‘Why did you?’ He took a step closer.

‘Why did I what?’ She shook her head and swallowed, her heart clattered in her chest and her words stuck on her tongue.

‘Want to say my name?’ He moved closer still and leant forward, resting his forearms on the wall. The closeness of him was almost dizzying.

‘I don’t know.’ She stared at her feet, wishing she weren’t wearing her tatty daps and wanting to rewind and be a little cooler, a little less open and a whole lot cleaner.

‘Well, for what it’s worth, I like you saying my name. And I like saying yours, Merrin.’

‘Digby.’ She looked up as he turned to face her and, with the sun behind his head, lighting up the space behind him like a halo, she thought he might be the most beautiful person she had ever seen.

‘So, what is there to do here? My mum and dad love it, but I always find it so quiet!’

‘There’s not much to do; we kind of make our own busy, but I think that’s what people love – the quiet.’ She kept her voice low. It was the truth, and yet thousands of people flocked there every summer, as if wanting to confirm this for themselves; thousands of people who wanted to escape the cities and spend a fortnight making their own busy too. ‘Unless you like the sea and boats and fish.’

‘I don’t. Not particularly. Much to the annoyance of my dad, who is a bit boat crazy, always talking about his adventures on the high seas.’

‘So what do you like?’ She shook her head, trying to make her hair fall alluringly over her shoulder. This, too, she had practised in front of the mirror in the bathroom.

‘In no particular order, I like fast cars, ice cream and tennis’ – he held the racket up – ‘and sleeping and the works of Thomas Hardy, not his novels, although yes, those too, but his poetry.’ He closed his eyes and breathed in through his nose, as if inhaling the words in his memory, as if they were soft cake or a good soup. ‘Do you read Hardy?’

Digby Mortimer thought she was a girl who might read Hardy! She felt like his equal, this rich boy who had all of life’s advantages.

‘I don’t really read much at all. Or play tennis, and I’ve never been in a fast car. But I do like ice cream.’ She latched on to the one thing she could relate to.

‘Then we should eat ice cream together. For sure. Let’s do that today . . . let’s find a place and sit and eat ice cream, even if it rains. We can find a spot to shelter and wait for the sunshine. If you’d like?’

Merrin squeaked and nodded, like a compliant mouse, but one who wanted nothing more than to sit with him and wait for the sunshine. ‘Merrin?’ her mum called from inside the house. ‘You cleaned that downstairs lav yet?’