After You Left(18)

For a moment, all he could do was stare at her face. Then his gaze dropped down her from head to toe. In the glare of his scrutiny, she felt too done-up in her burgundy velvet pedal-pushers and black studded boots from a rookie designer called Jimmy Choo, which she had purchased from a Saturday market in Liverpool Street. Eddy’s rake was planted in the soil next to him, and there was a lawnmower beside a heap of newly cut grass. Despite her still being suspended in a state of shock, Evelyn’s eye for peripheral detail was sharper than ever.

He hadn’t changed. Not that she’d have imagined he would in the fifteen years since she’d last seen him at the Long John Baldry concert at the Mayfair Ballroom.

‘You look good,’ he said, clearly both charmed and reduced by the sight of her. ‘Better than good, actually.’ He laughed a little, out of his depth, and she now knew that he really was as shocked as her.

She was inwardly flustered at the compliment. He was still truly handsome; in fact, he redefined the adjective. He was tall and fit and tanned. So unlike Mark, who was average height, lean-limbed and pale, as if he had been constructed out of cigarettes. Eddy still had a full head of black hair, and his eyes were the colour of sapphires. But he’d always possessed some other appeal that couldn’t be attributed to looks alone. It was something she felt in the core of her, rather than something she saw. She couldn’t really have described it then, all those years ago, and she couldn’t now.

‘You look much the same too, Eddy. I’m just . . . !’ She laughed, nervously. ‘I’m not sure how this . . . I thought you worked for the shipyards, but here you are, in my mother’s garden . . . A gardener?’ None of this made any sense. In all their conversations, her mother had never let on. Evelyn truly couldn’t fathom it.

She had a feeling she’d been toyed with. It was like her mother to derive some pleasure from imagining the two of them might meet again one day – through her. Somewhere, up there, Evelyn was sure she was looking down and relishing this.

He was unflappable. ‘I did work for the shipyards. I was laid off. Made some changes.’

It’s a shame it’s not summer. Then you’d have met Eddy. Her mother’s words when she had come back in the winter to nurse her through cancer. It was said in a nudge-nudge-wink-wink way. Still Evelyn hadn’t connected it. If she’d had a penny for all the Eddys she’d known, she’d have filled a jar.

They were stuck in an awkward moment where neither seemed to know what else to say.

She found herself laughing again, slightly. Not because this was funny. Purely because she was still astonished. ‘Look, I need to put this down.’ She had just remembered the bag was nearly falling apart. She struggled to the door, forgetting where her key was. All her memories of how they met – that day, at a wedding she wasn’t even meant to attend – were rushing at her, and she felt the need to still them because they were so overwhelming.

‘Can I help?’ he asked.

She shook her head, and felt in her pocket, balancing the decrepit bag of groceries on one arm. She could sense his gaze on her bottom, which brought back the memory of when they had danced, his fingers pressing the small of her back. Those fingers she could still feel hours after he’d removed them.

‘I’m very sorry about your mother,’ he said, as she missed the lock with the key. She didn’t go through life feeling fluttery when men looked at her. In fact, the sensation was entirely foreign to her. ‘Mrs Coates was a good woman. We used to have our chats, you know.’

She nodded, quickly. She couldn’t talk about her mother. The grief was too fresh. And she certainly didn’t want to talk about their chats. She was still smarting that she had cooked this up. Her mother had never thought that Mark was right for her. She said he was too measured and mature. Besides, her mother had no respect for office types. Real men worked with their hands, like Evelyn’s father. It didn’t seem to matter that virtually everything Evelyn had was thanks to Mark being exactly the type that her mother disparaged. It was an argument Evelyn had had many times with her, but one she could never win.

By the time she had got the door open, Eddy had walked down from the top of the garden and was standing close behind her.

‘If you want to know, I’m as surprised to see you, as you are me,’ he said.

She turned around and met his eyes again. Those eyes she’d had such a hard time forgetting. Thankfully, they weren’t tinged with the same terrible reproach as they had been fifteen years ago in the Mayfair Ballroom, when she’d last seen him. But then again, she knew he’d married. Her mother had seen it in the local newspaper, and had made a point of telling her.

‘Oh, I’m not so sure about that!’ she chided. ‘Given you were obviously in some sort of cahoots with my mother.’ She pushed open the door and stepped inside.

‘I wasn’t in cahoots with anyone.’ He sounded mildly affronted. ‘She needed a gardener, so I’ve been helping out.’

Evelyn couldn’t meet his eyes.

‘I never expected you to walk in the garden gate, Evelyn, if that’s what you’re thinking. I can promise you. Not in a million years.’

She had placed the groceries on the table, and turned to look at him. He wiped soil from his cheek, with his knuckle. She glimpsed his wedding ring. ‘I never expected to see you again, to be honest. I avoided your mother’s funeral. I thought it best, even though I would have liked to have been there. I hope you understand.’