My Summer of Magic Moments: Uplifting and romantic - the perfect, feel good holiday read!. Caroline Roberts

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СКАЧАТЬ seem to be a doorbell. Damn, he must be out, maybe on a walk or something if the car was still there. She’d try later, and have to settle for bread and butter in the meanwhile. But just as she was about to turn away, she heard the scraping of a door inside, the sound of footsteps, and a shadow appeared behind the glass.

      The front door inched open, ‘Yes?’

      It was the guy from the beach this morning.

      ‘Oh … hi … I’m Claire … next door.’ And all she could think of was his naked body in all its full and gorgeous glory. She felt the colour flushing up her neck, reddening her cheeks. ‘Ah, uhm, the cooker.’ Firm buttocks, muscular thighs. Focus Claire. Get a grip. ‘It seems to be broken. I just wondered if you might be able to help at all?’ She smiled hopefully.

      He didn’t smile back, just gave her a rather annoyed look, one eyebrow raised, as though he’d really rather not help. ‘Ah, I see.’ The house behind him seemed quiet, as though he was the only one there.

      He wasn’t exactly leaping to the rescue here. Despite his good looks and the cute sandy-blond curls, he seemed a bit odd, to be honest. No ‘Nice to meet you’ or ‘Of course, I’ll pop across and check it for you’. You’d think she’d just asked him to come over and clean out her toilets or something.

      ‘I’d be really grateful if you could take a look. I have no other means of cooking,’ she tried.

      ‘Ah, okay … I suppose. Just give me five minutes.’ He had a slight Scottish lilt. And with that he closed the door, leaving her standing on the step.

      What was that all about?

      Nice to meet you too! she thought and trudged back across the drive. Charming!

      Hot bod, no personality – typical. Oh well, it wasn’t as if she had any intention of getting to know her neighbour or anyone else in an intimate or even friendly fashion in any case. She supposed he would or would not appear later.

      She’d just put the kettle on, thinking a cup of something might allay the hunger pangs, when she heard a crunching of the gravel outside, then a knock on her own door. She answered it. He was there. Tall, still not smiling, cool, green eyes fixed on hers.

      ‘The cooker, you say? Gas?’

      ‘Ah, yes. It’s just not working at all. Like there’s no gas coming through.’

      He raised both eyebrows this time. There was a twitch of annoyance at the side of his mouth.

      She lifted her brows in response, quizzically. ‘What?’

      ‘Have you checked your gas bottles?’

      ‘Uhh …’

      ‘You know, the big orange things just under your kitchen window. When they empty you need to change them.’ His patience appeared to be thread thin. Trust her to get Mr Grumpy as a neighbour.

      ‘No, I don’t know anything about those.’ It wasn’t as if the property owner had left any useful instructions or anything for guests. How the hell was she meant to know?

      ‘And I don’t suppose you know how to change them either?’

      Spot on there, matey. ‘Nope.’

      ‘Right, well I suppose I’d better show you then. Then you’ll know how to do it yourself next time.’ And not bother me was very clearly the next line, though unspoken.

      They headed round to the side of the cottage outside the kitchen. Two large orange metal canisters stood propped under the window. Ah.

      He lifted one easily; it seemed light. ‘Empty.’

      She felt a right idiot for not checking and not knowing anything about gas bottles. It just came piped out of the ground where she lived.

      ‘Okay, so turn the switch here,’ he continued. ‘Then turn this valve on top until it clicks, like this.’

      ‘Oh, okay.’ She was nodding, trying to take it in.

      He lifted the connection away from the bottle it had been on, shifted the empty canister out of the way and dragged the other into position. ‘Opposite way to fix on, screw valve back, flip switch to “on”. Pretty simple, really.’

      ‘Right, well, sorry to bother you and all that.’ It had obviously been an inconvenience to him.

      ‘And you’d better tell old Mr Hedley to get a new one in so you don’t run out altogether next time.’

      ‘Okay, will do. Thanks.’

      He just nodded. ‘Right, well, that’s me done.’ He turned and walked away, back to his tidy beach house, and closed his door. Back to his life. She wondered for a second what it was like, his life? It seemed like he might be there on his own after all. Then she put her thoughts aside. She had her own life to worry about. Her own hurts to heal. It seemed like her neighbour wouldn’t be a nuisance with noise, at least. In fact, he suited her plans for peace and solitude very well.

       4

       A hot, bubbly bath

      Awake again. The rickety bed creaked as she moved. Pitch black. There were no streetlights out here, just the sound of the rush and pull of the waves on the shore for company.

      God, her left boob was uncomfortable. She must have shifted to lie front-down in her sleep and crushed it a bit. The scar was still tight sometimes, and then that weird taut pain nipped down her arm from the armpit. She wriggled her fingers, loosening them up.

      She lay there thinking. She’d done it, made her escape to her cottage by the sea. Got away for a while. A chance to breathe again.

      It felt like she’d been in limbo since the op and the chemo, the radiotherapy thereafter. She’d grown used to that new life of appointments, hospital visits – it had structured her days and become her norm. She’d become friendly with the nurses and the other patients, and in an odd kind of way she missed them. Even though it was for the best-ever reason that she could jump ship and leave that weird journey. It had felt strange trying to settle back into her old life, which had come as a surprise after longing for that day so much. Yet nothing seemed the same once she was back working at the newspaper, catching up with her lovely friends Andrea, Jo and the girls in the office. When they started chatting about which shoes to wear with which dress for their Friday night out, it felt like a world away from where she’d just been. She should have been leaping around with joy, but she just felt quiet inside, more thoughtful than she’d ever been. Yes, it was good getting back to work, but it was like the axis of her world had shifted.

      She travelled back in her mind to the line-up of fake leather chairs, the chemo ward – sitting there with magazines and chit-chat, everyone’s lines attached to a drip like something out of a sci-fi movie. The hour’s wait, unnerving at first, but then you got used to it. She’d made it through … She felt tears prick behind her eyes. Others hadn’t. Rebecca, Leanne … the friends she’d chatted with, looked forward to seeing on her weekly visit, a nod and a wave to their families as they passed, saying hello, СКАЧАТЬ