Valentine’s on Primrose Hill. Nikki Moore

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СКАЧАТЬ wandered past hand in hand, bundled up in scarves and woolly hats but not looking like they felt the frigid temperature at all, too wrapped up in each other. Cars zipped past, making their way in and out of Camden Town. At the bottom of the hill was Primrose Hill Bridge, spanning Regent’s Canal. If she didn’t come he’d walk down there, take a tube to Oxford Street and distract himself by trekking around the shops.

      He checked his watch. Five to twelve. He’d asked to meet at noon, but had wanted to get here early.

      As bitter as the weather was, he’d prepared a mini-hamper filled with champagne and gourmet foods, had thought they could sit on one of the benches and share a feast and the view, the backdrop they’d met against. It was probably a crazy idea given the near sub-zero temperatures but he’d thought it would be romantic and had limited the madness by also bringing a rucksack stuffed with two blankets, some hand warmers, and two bobble hats as well as panda ear-muffs for comedy value. He’d once joked he’d need to wear them to block out her constant chatter, a tongue-in-cheek comment given how hard it could be to get her to open up. Still, with time and patience, he’d got to know her over the past four weeks.

      And when you dug under that shy, sometimes fragile exterior, once she forgot what had happened to her, how she now looked or thought she looked, her smile could light up the whole park. You could see shades of the intelligent, outgoing girl she’d been before and would be again. Since that first meeting he’d known what she needed, apart from a friend. To see and believe that although she might never be the same person as before the accident, she’d become someone stronger and more capable because of what she’d been through. And that whatever she might think or feel, she was still attractive to the opposite sex; love wasn’t something that was forever out of reach if she didn’t want it to be. Hopefully he’d been showing her those things over the last month. What he hadn’t realised until it was too late was that she’d been unwittingly showing him something along the way too. How to fall in love.

       Shit. Double Shit.

      He would never forgive himself if the challenge his friends had set for him – to find a date for Valentine’s Day and finally get a love life – had ruined what little self-confidence she’d built, as well as their friendship. Because if being friends was the only thing he could have of her, he would accept it in a heartbeat.

      Swivelling around, searching the numerous paths for her tall figure, he blew out a long, slow breath. He was the only single person here without a dog. On Valentine’s Day. Talk about sad. Ironic too. All those years with no-one he’d wanted to spend it with, so wasn’t bothered by covering for colleagues who wanted to leave early, and now there was someone, and the day cupid was famous for was actually on a weekend…and she wasn’t here.

      The question was, would she be? A few more minutes and he would know.

       Before

      Georgiana Dunn yelped as a wriggling weight landed on her chest, wrenching her from the foggy doze she’d been having cocooned in her duvet. Instinctively bringing both hands up to protect her face, her fingers encountered the scarring around what used to be her right eye. She flinched, placing her hands against the covers instead.

      ‘Don’t be silly,’ she muttered to herself. ‘You should be used to it by now.’ But it wasn’t as if the damage could be forgotten during the day either because the itchy, annoying eye patch she wore dug lines into her forehead and cheekbone. It also did a crap job of covering the scar running from her cheekbone down towards her mouth.

      Something sharp pressed into her shoulder and thudded on her stomach, driving the air from her lungs.

      ‘Eurgh, oof!’ she grunted, pushing upwards against the duvet in search of escape. What had been a comfortable nest a moment before now felt like a hot, suffocating tomb. Flexing her legs, the muscle in her upper right thigh protested, the one under the wound that always felt hot and achy even though it’d been four months since the accident and should have healed completely by now.

      Accident. Disaster. Trauma. That’s what the doctors, nurses, surgeons and physiotherapists had taken turns calling it. To her it would always just be the worst day of her life. Who would have thought that someone else’s unexpected heart attack at the wheel could change her world so radically?

      Feet drumming against the mattress, lifting her head, her long plait somehow wrapped around her neck. She sucked in a panicky breath and with a grunt of effort managed to flip down the duvet, freeing herself from the hair noose at the same time.

      ‘Thank God!’ Her relieved exclamation muffled a thud somewhere near the end of the bed. Fresh air and sunlight hit her and she winced, turning toward the wall. Then she bolted upright, wondering what had been on top of her. She twisted her head back and forth to see as much as the bed as possible, but there was nothing there other than a rumpled purple throw.

      ‘Good morning, darling,’ her mum sang brightly.

      ‘Jeez!’ George jumped, hand clutching her chest as she swung her head around to a spot a few feet from her bed. ‘You almost gave me a heart attack. Why are you on the floor? Praying for patience?’ she joked, sweeping aside the covers and swinging her feet down to the thick dark grey carpet. It reminded her of brewing storm clouds, the complete opposite of the sunny wooden laminate floor in her childhood bedroom, which they’d left two weeks before. However hesitant she’d been about moving initially, she had to admit that although she missed their old place, the en-suite bathroom here was fab because there was no need to stumble to the other end of the house in the middle of the night.

      ‘Well? What are you doing?’ George prompted her mum. ‘It’s not like you to be so quiet.’ She smiled to take the edge off the comment.

      ‘As much as I may soon have to pray for patience,’ Stella said, sinking back on her knees, ‘if you insist on staying in so much, no, that’s not my current activity.’ She fussed with some kind of round, quilted cushion. ‘I was leaving you a gift.’

      ‘Another one?’ George sighed. ‘Mum, you don’t have to keep bringing me things. I’ll be fine. I just need more time, that’s all. It’s sweet, but presents aren’t going to miraculously cheer me up.’ It made her feel cared for, but didn’t change how she felt about herself. She didn’t know if anything ever would. The new therapist kept telling her she needed more time, and to focus on the positives. She was trying her best, she really was, but it wasn’t just the physical scars she had to contend with. There were emotional ones too.

      ‘Mmmmm.’ Stella made a non-committal sound and dropped her head to plump up the cushion.

      George knew she’d hurt her mum, and bit her lip. Well, at least she hadn’t shouted like in the weeks after first being released from hospital. Those had been dark days, and she’d been to some dark places. She’d just been so unbelievably angry all the time at the unfairness of it all. Some days that rage still surfaced, but she’d learned to get a better handle on her emotions, to stop striking out at those around her.

      She smiled sadly. It wasn’t that long ago she’d attended lectures and gone out shopping with friends to blow her student loan.

      It was Saturday today. On a Saturday at uni she’d have studied in the library in the morning and worked in the bar from lunchtime onwards before dancing and drinking the night away in a club, tossing her hair over her shoulder before turning to see how many guys were checking her out.

      That might be only a handful of months past, but in reality it felt like forever since she’d laughed and grinned and had fun like a normal twenty-one year old. But she wasn’t normal any more, nothing was. The СКАЧАТЬ