Just Last Night(100)

“FINLAY HART?!” Justin mouths silently, with exaggerated enunciation, and I guilty-grin-blush.

My phone dings with a Justin text.



It’s what Susie would’ve wanted. X

I grin some more and hum along.

If our love song /

Could fly over mountains





41


The pater familial Volvo is reassuringly present in the drive as I walk up to the door of Susie’s former family home the following evening, clutching my tartan presentation tin of shortbread.

“Hello!” I say, eagerly but nervously, as Mr. Hart answers. “Sorry for appearing unannounced again. I got you this up in Edinburgh.”

I proffer the shortbread.

“Oh, that’s very thoughtful, Eve,” he says, accepting it. “I best start watching my waistline! Would you like a cup of tea? I’ve put the kettle on.”

I say, “Yes, please,” and follow him indoors.

A quick glance around suggests everything is fine. The cleaner has left it immaculate.

He’s put the kettle on, and I’ve taken a seat when the doorbell goes again.

“Someone with you?” Mr. Hart says, getting up to answer it.

“Oh, Finlay might be joining us,” I say.

“Yes, you’re right, it’s your young man,” Mr. Hart calls from the hallway.

“Hi,” Fin says, winding headphones around his phone as he walks into the room in running gear, pushing hair damp with sweat back from his glowing face.

“Hello,” I say, standing up.

“Tea for you too?” Mr. Hart says to Finlay.

“Thanks, yes. Milk no sugar, please,” Fin says, as Mr. Hart bustles off to the kitchen.

“I remember!”

I stare at Finlay and he stares back. We’re both fixed on each other, and as seconds pass, I realize neither of us is trying to pretend it’s anything other than a heart-struck gaze of mutual longing. Everything about his face is so ridiculously, staggeringly lovely to me, in this moment, I’m unable to speak.

Beauty isn’t an arrangement of features, even features as perfect as Finlay Hart’s, it’s a feeling. This is how it feels in the split second you suddenly become aware that you’re falling in love with someone. The click of a jigsaw’s last piece, the rainfall of coins in a jackpot slot machine, the right song striking up and your being swept away by its opening bars. That conviction of making complete sense of the universe, in one moment. Of course. You’re where I should be. You’re here.

“How are you?” Fin says to me, eventually, and we both break into broad smiles at the ludicrousness of having declared our feelings without saying a word. I can’t wait to talk to him properly, after we leave here. I can’t wait, full stop.

“Shortbread on the side!” Mr. Hart says, pushing the door open with his foot, carrying a rattling tea tray in the door, placing it on a footstool. The Hart home is the kind of home to have footstools that match the sofa.

We chat about nothing much and Fin sips his tea, looking at me over the rim of the cup, and I’ve never had such a tumultuous internal response to someone looking over a teacup at me.

“Mind if I use the loo?” Fin asks Mr. Hart, after ten minutes, and I guess, even if he does have a full bladder, he wants to check for things like electrical appliances in baths.

Finlay’s given directions to a bathroom he must have used for two decades.

When Finlay returns, he looks perturbed. I mouth, “What?” but he shakes his head.

After making the smallest of small talk, Fin says: “Where did you get the lamp on the landing, by the way? It looks familiar.”

“Oh, the décor’s my wife’s concern.” Mr. Hart laughs.

Fin clears his throat and darts a look at me. “It looks a lot like one from the hotel we stayed in?”

“Does it? Which?”

“The Caledonian. In Edinburgh.”

“Are you implying anything?” his dad says.

“No. I . . . wondered where it was from, that’s all. Can you remember where you bought it?”

Mr. Hart doesn’t immediately respond.

“Are you calling me a liar?” he says, in a low, even register, one that sets a warning light flashing inside me.

“No . . .”

“It sounded like you were.”

Mr. Hart stands up and, in alarm, Finlay and I stand up too.

“I’m NOT A BLOODY THIEF!” Mr. Hart roars, at a deafening volume, right up close in Finlay’s face, as I jump out of my skin. I’m not sure I knew anyone could be that loud, let alone a man pushing seventy, with no vocal training or build-up. Incredibly, Fin doesn’t flinch.

He steps backward, breathing heavily. He closes his eyes and stumbles slightly and for a moment I think he’s going to fall over.

“Are you OK?” I say, darting over to him, my hand on his arm.

He doesn’t answer, eyes still closed, and he looks as if he’s gasping for breath, his face a worrying gray. Is he having a heart attack? It’s a panic attack, says an inner voice.

Mr. Hart has turned the television on and sits back down, paying no attention to either of us.

“How about some fresh air?” I say, and Fin manages to nod with the merest incline of his head.