Page 2 of The Man Who Didn't Call
‘Cedric?’
‘Yes. Although I suppose it probably isn’t him. How long do badgers live?’
‘I think about ten years.’ Eddie was smiling: I could hear it.
‘Well, then it’s definitely not Cedric. But it could be his son. Or maybe grandson.’ I paused. ‘We loved Cedric.’
A vibration of laughter traced through his body, into mine. ‘Who’s we?’
‘Me and my little sister. We used to camp quite near here.’
He rolled over onto his side, his face close to mine, and I could see it in his eyes.
‘Cedric the badger. I . . . you,’ he said quietly. He traced a finger along my hairline. ‘I like you. I like you and me. In fact, I like you and me very much.’
I smiled. Right into those kind, sincere eyes. At those laughter lines, at the heavy angle of his chin. I took his hand and kissed his fingertips, rough and mottled with splinters after two decades of woodworking. Already it felt like I’d known him for years. For a lifetime. It felt like someone had matched us, maybe at birth, and nudged and aligned and planned and schemed until we finally met, six days ago.
‘I just had some very mushy thoughts,’ I said, after a long pause.
‘Me too.’ He sighed. ‘It feels like the last week’s been set to a score of sweeping violins.’
I laughed, and he kissed my nose, and I wondered how it was that you could spend weeks, months –years, even – just chugging on, nothing really changing, and then, in the space of a few hours, the script of your life could be completely rewritten. Had I gone out later that day, I would have got straight on the bus and never met him, and this new feeling of certainty would be no more than an unheard whisper of missed opportunities and bad timing.
‘Tell me even more about you,’ he said. ‘I still don’t know enough. I want to know everything. The complete andunabridged life story of Sarah Evelyn Mackey, including the bad bits.’
I held my breath.
It wasn’t that I hadn’t known this would happen at some stage, more that I still hadn’t decided what I’d do when it did.The complete and unabridged life story of Sarah Evelyn Mackey, including the bad bits.He could take it, probably. There was an armour on this man, a quiet strength that made me think of an old seawall, an oak tree, maybe.
He was running a hand along the curve between my hip and ribcage. ‘I love this curve,’ he said.
A man so comfortable in his own skin you could probably sink any secret, any truth into him, and he’d be able to hold it without sustaining structural damage.
Of course I could tell him.
‘I have an idea,’ I said. ‘Let’s camp out here tonight. Pretend we’re still young. We can make a fire, cook sausages, tell stories. Assuming you have a tent, that is? You seem like a man who’d have a tent.’
‘I am a man who has a tent,’ he confirmed.
‘Good! Well then, let’s do it, and I’ll tell you everything. I . . .’ I rolled over, looking out into the night. The last fat candles of blossom glowed dully on the horse chestnut at the edge of the woods. A buttercup swayed in the darkness near our faces. For reasons she’d never deigned to share, Hannah had always hated buttercups.
I felt something rise in my chest. ‘It’s just so lovely, being out here. Brings back so many memories.’
‘OK,’ Eddie smiled. ‘We’ll camp. But first, come here, please.’
He kissed me on the mouth and for a while the rest of the world was muted, as if someone had simply pressed a button or turned a dial.
‘I don’t want tomorrow to be our last day,’ he said, when the kissing came to an end. He bandaged his arms more tightly around me and I felt the cheerful warmth of his chest and belly, the soft tickle of his cropped hair under my hands.
Closeness like this had become a distant memory, I thought, inhaling the clean, sandy smell of his skin. By the time Reuben and I had called it a day, we were sleeping like bookends on either side of our bed, the stretch of untouched sheets between us an homage to our failure.
‘Till mattress us do part,’ I’d said, one night, but Reuben hadn’t laughed.
Eddie pulled away so I could see his face. ‘I did . . . Look, I did wonder if we should cancel our respective plans. My holiday and your London trip. So we can roll around in the fields for another week.’
I propped myself up on an elbow.I want that more than you will ever know,I thought.I was married for seventeen years and in all that time I never felt the way I do with you.
‘Another week of this would be perfect,’ I told him. ‘But you mustn’t cancel your holiday. I’ll still be here when you get back.’
