Never Alone (6 page)

It’s just starting to get dark by the time Sarah turns into the driveway. Still early, but the clouds are gathering ominously overhead, blocking the sun and what’s left of the winter daylight.

She has delayed going home to give herself time to think. Going on to Thirsk and trailing round the supermarket, then stopping in the town centre for a trawl around the charity shops for something to do, has given her a few clear hours to talk herself round in a circle. Aiden is a grown adult, after all. He can behave in whatever manner he chooses; it doesn’t mean she has to fret and feel guilty about what happened.

Just as well, she thinks, that she has composed herself and gathered her thoughts, because, as she parks the car in the open-sided barn opposite the cottage, she notices his front door is open and – damn it, no getting away from it – he is standing in the doorway.

‘Hi,’ he says, brightly. As if nothing has happened. ‘Here, let me give you a hand.’

Before she can respond he has taken the shopping bags from her and is carrying them towards the house. Even this, helpful as it is, makes her cross. She managed to carry everything perfectly well before he got here.

Still, it means she has a hand free to open the door, and it’s starting to rain so it’s just as well. She shuts the boot of the car and follows him. Having barked at Aiden and inspected him, Basil moves past him to greet her, tail wagging. He turns
around again as soon as he feels the rain.
Fair-weather dog
, she thinks.

‘Haven’t seen you for a while,’ she says.

He is unpacking the shopping on to the kitchen table, as if he’s trying to help but doesn’t want to go as far as trying to guess where everything goes.

‘I’ve been working,’ he says, folding up the shopping bags as he empties them. ‘Busy couple of days.’

‘Tea?’ she asks, half-hoping he’ll say no.

‘Great,’ he says. ‘Want me to do it?’

‘Go on, then.’

She carries on putting things away as he fills the kettle and puts it on to boil, finds mugs. ‘I saw Sophie earlier,’ she says.

‘Yes,’ he says, ‘she said she was on her way to meet you.’

He’s not going to try and wriggle out of it, then. That’s something.

‘She said she saw you, in London. A few years ago. Meeting Jim.’

‘Yes.’

She does not reply. The shopping has been put away. For want of something to do, she gets the biscuit tin down from the cupboard and puts it on the table. The kettle boils and she takes over the tea-making, pouring water into mugs and stirring. He hasn’t taken his eyes off her.

‘Jim was helping me out,’ he says. ‘Financially, I mean.’

Sarah puts the two mugs down on the table. Aiden pulls out a chair and sits down. For a moment she stays with her back to the sink, and then she gives in and sits down.

‘Why didn’t he tell me?’ she asks.

‘Maybe he thought you wouldn’t approve.’

At this Sarah pulls a face. ‘Why the hell wouldn’t I approve?’

‘It wasn’t illegal, or anything like that. I don’t know why he didn’t want to tell you.’

‘How much money are we talking about?’

‘Ten thousand pounds.’ He hesitates, then adds, ‘It’s all paid back, years ago.’

‘A successful venture, then,’ Sarah says, raising her mug in a salute.
Ten thousand pounds
. The thought of it makes her feel sick.

‘It is.’

‘It’s still going?’

‘I’m still using the profits from that enterprise to fund new ones.’

She wants to ask what the enterprise was, but in that moment she hears a muffled buzzing sound and Aiden pulls a phone out of his back pocket.

He looks at the number. ‘I need to take this,’ he says. ‘Do you mind?’

‘Of course not,’ she says.

He gets up from the table and goes to the front door, lets himself out and shuts it behind him before he answers. In the silence of the kitchen she can just about hear him, outside, talking. Nothing of what he’s saying, just the tone of it, and then a laugh. Her head is fizzing with it. The money, oh, the money. Did he really pay it back? Was that why he hesitated? In any case, it certainly isn’t there now. Jim must have invested it in other things, or spent it.

It’s only a few minutes later that he comes back inside. ‘Sorry about that.’

In a small, quiet voice, she says, ‘Jim trusted you.’

‘He did.’

‘I just wonder why he didn’t trust me.’

He doesn’t reply for a moment. He finishes his drink instead, as if pondering his next move.

‘Don’t be too hard on him, Sarah. I think he was just trying to keep us apart. I think he thought I might try and steal you away.’

Sarah snorts at this.

‘You think? Like I’m not able to make decisions like that for myself?’

She’s cross at the assumption, and it takes her back to the moment when Thursday’s hangover was wearing off and she realised that the Aiden she’d been fantasising about all these years was still the lad who’d played her for a fool.

‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘I didn’t mean to imply that.’

‘No, it’s fine,’ she says.

‘You’re angry,’ he says. ‘It’s not fine.’

Then she just can’t help herself any more. ‘I am angry. I’m cross that Jim didn’t trust me, and I’m cross that, even though you and I were friends years ago, good friends, and more, you didn’t think that it might be something I should know about. And that you wouldn’t have told me, even now, if Sophie hadn’t recognised you.’

He looks as if he’s going to interrupt and disagree with this, but she doesn’t give him a chance.

‘And as if all that’s not bad enough, we slept together on Wednesday night and you left while I was asleep and didn’t so much as text me to say hello after that. That’s just rude, I think. So you regret it, I don’t even care, but if nothing else we are supposed to be friends and it wouldn’t have killed you just to say as much to my face instead of leaving me to feel like some slapper you’d picked up for the night in a club.’

Sarah finally runs out of breath, and energy, and anger. She can’t bear to look at him. After a moment he places his hand over hers, warm and firm.

‘You’re right,’ he says, quite calmly, ‘that it was very rude of me to walk out and leave you like that. But you’re wrong if you think I regret what happened.’

‘Oh,’ she says.

‘It feels like something I’ve waited half my life for.’

Now, finally, she can look at him. Normally so measured, so laid-back as he is, there is something in his eyes she’s not seen before. He looks – sad. And then, just as quickly, it’s gone.

Sarah watches as he crosses the yard to the cottage and goes inside. At her side, Tess gives out a tiny whine.

‘All right, girl, I know.’

She feeds the dogs, and in the thirty seconds it takes them to eat what’s in their bowls she has pulled on her boots and her waterproof coat. Having been left on their own for most of the day, they are more than ready to go out, scampering around her feet and nearly knocking her over.

Above her, the hill rises in the gloom, dark clouds scudding across the summit and making her feel giddy. She doesn’t fancy being up there today. It’s too high, too windy; she feels too fragile. She whistles for the dogs and lets them through the gate to the path that runs around the side of the hill. Overjoyed at this unexpected change to the routine, they race ahead of her, barking.

She doesn’t usually come this way. The path crosses a stream about half a mile further on; in summer it’s fine, but often in winter the stream becomes a rushing torrent that floods the path. Beyond that, the track opens up into a series of fields in which a variety of livestock are grazed. It means putting the dogs on their leads, something she does rarely these days. But maybe she won’t take them that far.

Not for the first time, she wonders whether she has done the right thing by inviting Aiden to stay. It was a foolish thing, a spur-of-the-moment thing. It’s the sort of decision she would have made as a twentysomething, ruled by her heart, expecting nothing but the best from people and riding the wave of being young. Aiden’s return has made her feel like that again, bursting with possibility and the glorious
what if
, because nothing bad can happen, and, even if it does, well, she’ll cope, won’t she?

But now the bitter wind is stinging her cheeks, the mud heavy under her boots, making her slip and catch herself: she’s not twenty any more. She has a house, and debts, and, while she doesn’t need to worry about the children any longer, it’s a hard habit to break, worrying.

Aiden gives her a glimpse of the Sarah That Used To Be. Back then, at university, she had a series of half-relationships, friends who came with benefits, friends who were defined by the few things she had in common with them – Cath from her course, Josie from the Art Soc, Leanne and Davy who drank in the Star on Thursdays; and none of that mattered because everyone knew that was how it was; everyone did the same thing. She never gave herself long enough to form any sort of real attachment, and at the same time there was an odd sort of hollowness about it all that seemed like an unconnected thing, a side-effect of being young. But the hollowness swelled like an injury, grew into disgust at herself, and then into a fear, a dull panic that her whole life was going to be defined by a series of failures and false starts, and that, whatever she was going to face, she was going to have to do it on her own.

And then Jim came along, and suddenly it all made sense. She didn’t even love him, then. He said to her that he would promise to be there for her forever, and it was the permanence that attracted her. The idea that, whatever lay ahead, she would have Jim.

Now he’s gone, and all he’s left for her is the house, the debts, and his ex-best friend.

As soon as the sun goes down behind the peaks she turns back, but, even so, it is almost completely dark by the time she heads back down through the field. She wishes she had left some lights on.

‘Tess!’ she calls. The dog is nowhere to be seen. ‘Tess!’

Basil sits in the doorway, tongue lolling. It’s not often that Tess is the one being shouted at, and it looks as if he’s enjoying it.

Sarah is about to go back up the hill to look when she sees a flash of pale fur and the dog shoots down the hill towards her. Her tail is between her legs. Sarah checks her over for injuries; perhaps she has got caught somewhere. She runs her hand down the dog’s back. Tess is trembling.

‘What is it, girl? Where did you go?’

Tess gives a barely audible whine.

Sarah looks up towards the hill, which looms up as a dark shape against the lighter black of the evening sky.

‘Come on, both of you. Inside.’

She should go and look, but there is something about the darkness, something about Tess’s whine and the tremble in her body, that makes Sarah want to be inside, with the door shut behind her.

Sarah has just come back into the kitchen when she hears a noise outside. The dogs hear it too; both of them go to the front door, barking. Basil is wagging his tail.

She opens the door, expecting to see Aiden, but no one is there. Nevertheless Basil and Tess both rush out into the yard and disappear into the shadows. The security light, attached to the side of the workshop, comes on. Sarah thinks it might be a fox, although they do not often appear this far out of the village.

‘Hello?’ she calls. Just to make sure.

Then she can hear a voice and a man steps out of the shadows near the side of the house, both dogs scampering around him. Tess leaves him and comes back to Sarah, runs into the house.

It’s Will.

‘Hi!’ he calls cheerfully.

‘Hello, Will,’ Sarah says. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Well,’ he says, finally pushing Basil out of the way and reaching the door, ‘I could say I was passing, but that would be… you know… a bit of a fib.’

‘Come in,’ she says, because she can’t leave him outside on the doorstep, can she?

He is wearing a thin hoodie, and has his guitar slung over his back, along with a rucksack. As he removes the guitar case and then the bag, she gets a sense of the weight of it from the way his arm strains, placing it gently on the floor. Basil sniffs at it hopefully and wags his tail. ‘Nothing in there for you, matey,’ Will says, rubbing the top of the dog’s head. ‘Sorry, old lad.’

‘Would you like a drink?’ Sarah asks. ‘Tea?’

‘That’d be great, thanks. If you were making one.’

He pulls out a chair and sits at the dining table.

‘I thought you were house-sitting?’ she asks, because it’s patently obvious from the bag that he isn’t.

‘Ah,’ he says, ‘I got the dates wrong. Really awkward – it’s next weekend, not this weekend.’

‘And they can’t put you up in the meantime?’

He pulls a face. ‘It seems they can’t, no.’

She puts a mug on the table in front of him, and he wraps his hands around it. Already Sarah knows where this is heading, and at the same time as trying to fend it off, think of an excuse, she’s already feeling sorry for him. He’s only a little bit older than Louis, for God’s sake. She can’t turn him out, can she?

‘Have you got nowhere else to go?’

He looks down into his tea forlornly. Doesn’t speak.

‘Will,’ Sarah says, ‘look at me.’

He shakes his head, and doesn’t look up.

A second later he covers his face with his hands.

‘Hey,’ she says. ‘It’s okay.’

Sarah places a comforting hand on his upper arm, waits for him to recover. It takes some minutes. He doesn’t make a sound, doesn’t look up, but his shoulders tremble. Even through the hoodie he feels cold to the touch.

Eventually he wipes his eyes roughly on his sleeve, breathes in, and presents her with a smile. ‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘Sorry about that.’

‘It’s okay,’ she says again.

‘Yeah,’ he goes on, brightly, ‘so I was wondering whether I could be really cheeky and sleep on your sofa for a couple of nights.’

He doesn’t look at her while he asks, as if he is already expecting her to say no.

‘I don’t have anyone else I can ask,’ he says, ‘and I know it’s a big deal but I know you’ve got that separate cottage, and I wondered if you might need someone to – you know – keep an eye on it for you?’