A Summer to Remember. Sue Moorcroft

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СКАЧАТЬ time he didn’t trouble to hide his smile, not minding points being scored over him when it was done with such elegance. ‘The garden bench worked perfectly yesterday.’

      He led the way out, letting Nelson off to sniff around. Clancy sat down and waited for him to begin, apparently content to watch a blackbird hopping about a gnarly apple tree as if choosing the perfect perch from which to sing.

      ‘I’m glad you feel that family comes first,’ he began carefully, joining her on the bench, ‘because I don’t think you being here’s a good thing.’

      Her hair swung around her face as she turned to regard him, the sun picking out glittering flecks of gold in her eyes. ‘Why’s that?’

      ‘Leaving aside the fact that I don’t think you realise what it’s like living in such a tiny, out-of-the-way place as Nelson’s Bar, you have to consider my family.’

      She tilted her head. ‘Why’s that?’ she repeated.

      Aaron began to feel less amused. It might be better – for her as well as him – if he was more direct. ‘Lee was nearly destroyed by Alice. He was heartsick for so long that we were afraid for him. As you know, Alice agreed that I could buy his half of the Roundhouse and Roundhouse Row to enable him to move away and make a new start, but he’s living in the village again and you’ll be a reminder.’ He paused, then went on, feeling she might as well know the truth. ‘To give you an idea of the level of antipathy in my family, they refer to Alice as “Awful Alice”.’ He sat forward, leaning his elbows on his thighs, giving her a level look. ‘There’s resentment, Clancy.’

      Clancy leaned forward to prop her elbows on her thighs and give him a level look of her own. ‘You may be your brother’s keeper, but I’m afraid I’m not my cousin’s.’

      ‘I didn’t say I was Lee’s keeper,’ he interrupted, stung.

      Clancy overrode him in the same level but firm voice. ‘What Awful Alice did was nothing to do with me, which I’m sure Lee’s mature enough to realise.’

      He decided to become yet more direct. ‘Personally, I thought of your cousin as Princess Alice, not too worried about what anybody else wanted, expecting her wishes to be paramount even when she was crying for the moon.’ He ignored the way her eyes widened at this candid appraisal. ‘Even if you’re not like that, I’m pretty confident Lee would prefer you to consider his feelings in this and return to your life in London. And – friendly warning – he won’t be alone in that.’

      Her gaze didn’t waver, though she made a tiny movement, as if somewhere deep inside she flinched. ‘You’re mixing up opinion with fact. Anyway, I can’t go back. Lee’s not the only one things have gone wrong for. My fiancé – ex, now – has got someone else, Renée, who I suspect he’s moving into our apartment pretty much as we speak. I’m being shoved out of the business I worked long and hard to help build so, as well as having nowhere to live, I have no job. I represent Alice’s interests and therefore I appoint myself as caretaker.’

      Her voice softened. ‘I think Alice will want me to have the job. She and I – there’s a special relationship. I haven’t seen her for a while, but that doesn’t matter. That’s how it’s always been because my parents towed me around the world or they put me in boarding school or left me with Alice and Aunt Sally, when, despite your assessment of her character, she shared her home, her life, her friends and even her mother with me without hesitation. Now I’m based in the UK and she’s the one travelling I’m pretty certain she’d support my wish to come to Nelson’s Bar. But we can ask her, if you like.’ Her expression clouded. ‘I’m genuinely sorry you don’t want me here, and I can see you might think that with my history I should be inured to just cheerfully packing up and shoving off somewhere where I’m less of an inconvenience. But I need a new home, at least for now. And this is it.’ Her voice wavered and she clamped her lips shut on the end of the sentence.

      In the silence, the blackbird began to sing beautifully fluting notes. Nelson lifted his head as if searching for the source of the sound with his one eye.

      Aaron stared at Clancy, shaken to his plummeting core. He should have recognised the trouble he’d seen in her eyes yesterday. He’d watched Lee battling similar heart-wrenching grief. Now he understood why she had arrived looking so ill, why abandoning her in an empty house hadn’t made her turn tail. Clancy was in a mess. And, judging from the way her fingers were folded around each other so hard that her knuckles were white, her composure was only a very thin skin deep.

      Aaron had never been able to kick people while they were down and rarely refused to give help where it was needed – leaving aside the current uncomfortable situation with Genevieve. Nelson was only one in a succession of badly off animals he’d adopted at one time or another. He dragged up a breath from the pit of his lungs and let it out in a gusty sigh. ‘OK. I’ll get my truck. We’ll fetch the furniture.’

      A noisy swallow, then she replied, simply, ‘Thank you. May I walk along with you?’

      ‘Of course,’ he muttered.

      She locked up the Roundhouse with city-dweller punctiliousness. They began up Long Lane through the dappled sunlight created by laburnum trees, the last of their yellow blossoms floating down around them. They headed into the village before swinging towards the north side of the headland. May was mild this year and the sunshine stroked Aaron’s skin with warm hands. ‘I live further up the lane in Potato Hall Row,’ he volunteered. Having made the decision not to hurl further impediments in Clancy’s way – though he wasn’t particularly looking forward to the little chat he’d soon need to have with his family – he went on: ‘Long Lane loops right around this side of the village as far as the B&B and The Green, towards the furthest point of the headland. Then Marshview Road takes over and comes back round.’ He swept his arm in a long U-shape.

      Clancy’s hair blew in a sudden gust of wind and she smiled faintly, as if enjoying the freshness of the air. ‘Alice took me around the village a couple of times when I was here before but I don’t remember much. Do your parents live somewhere near here?’

      ‘Frenchmen’s Way. This turning we’re coming up to.’

      Neither of them said anything about the shared kiss in his parents’ garden one night, a long time ago, as they passed the opening to Frenchmen’s Way. Long Lane continued to bear right and slope upwards. Clancy strode out beside him. ‘Are your parents going to mind me being with you to pick up the furniture? Or Lee? Perhaps, to follow the alliterative style of Awful Alice,’ she went on ruminatively, ‘they’ll call me Crappy Clancy.’

      ‘They won’t be there,’ he admitted frankly, at the same time wishing he hadn’t told her about the Awful Alice thing. ‘Dad’s at work and Lee’s taken Mum shopping before my great-aunt comes home. Aunt Norma lives in an annexe at De Silva House.’

      ‘That’s nice.’ Clancy sounded genuinely touched at this sign of family love. ‘Oh, look! Those flint cottages are so pretty.’

      ‘That’s Potato Hall Row,’ he answered. ‘Mine’s the furthest one, the one with the workshop attached.’

      She nodded absently. ‘How have you and I emailed so regularly if there’s no internet in the village?’

      He was thrown by the sudden question and was sure, from the way she watched him out of the corner of her eye, that he was meant to be. ‘I have satellite broadband.’

      ‘Ah,’ she said, raising her eyebrows. ‘So the СКАЧАТЬ