Page 93 of If We Were Young

“Here.” His tone scratched with gruffness and he leant across me to turn a brass handle on a white door. “I’ll get a fire on and then the kettle. The shop won’t be open until nine, so we have some time to kill before we can go there.”

He began to slip away, back into that formality we hadn’t had between us on the train. I opened my mouth, desperate to say something that would make him stay in the now, but as usual there wasn’t anything there. “Thank you.”

I eyed the hallway and he gave a short laugh. “You want to go and be nosy?”

“I do think I should see the facilities before I give up the dream of a warm hotel.”

“It will be warm I promise.” My legs quivered as he met my gaze. “Go on then. I’ll organise some tea.”

Pulling my coat tight around my middle, I paced off down the hallway, my boots echoing on the floorboards. At the end of the corridor was a kitchen that you had to step down three stairs to get into. It was all black tiles and chrome fixtures, but the walls were still the same purple of the hallway and front door. It was nice, warm and homely. “You have an AGA,” I called over my shoulder.

“I do.” I jumped out of my skin, not realising how close he stood behind me. Close enough that his breath warmed the skin on the back of my neck. “And honestly, if we don’t get the heating working, we might be drinking our tea with our arses against it.”

I laughed loudly.

“I like a nice warm arse.”

He chuckled and then did what I’d been hoping for. He pressed a kiss into my neck, and I shivered all over.

He kissed me in his house, in his safe, post-divorce space. That had to mean something, surely?

“Go on. Keep exploring.” The man was as hot as melted caramel, but he was also stupidly naive. He had no idea I was about to dive into his underwear drawer.

I followed the kitchen, past the warmth of the AGA and down more steps into what must have been an old scullery but was now a utility room with a washing machine and dryer. A back window overlooked a small courtyard garden. The sky hung bleak, and it looked green, like it held secret snow it planned to dump when everyone least expected it.

“It is weird. I can’t imagine you using a washing machine,’ I shouted back to where he was stood in the kitchen peering into a cupboard that probably housed the boiler.

“I don’t put new clothes on every day.”

“Isn’t your father-in-law ridiculously rich?”

He mumbled something that I couldn’t hear so I just ignored it and moved on. By the time I’d inspected the dirty washing hamper, finding small boys socks with dinosaur patterns and more delicious grey sweats, he was pulling mugs out of a different cupboard. I held the socks a moment; they pulled me from the dream state I’d slipped into. These small socks belonged to a boy, Matthew’s child. A child from a life he’d had without me in it.

It was stupid to feel a pang of jealousy, but it sat there in my soul all the same.

Back along the purple hallway towards the front door I dodged into the room he’d pointed out as a sitting room.

Except it wasn’t a sitting room at all. Instead it was a playroom. Grey carpet and cream walls, this time the furnishings were purple. Even down to a crocheted purple squared blanket thrown over the back of the grey sofa. It was a playroom with masculine overtones. Toy cars and a racetrack were against the far wall near the fireplace and there was a basket filled with dinosaurs.

I ached again, just like I did at the front door and then with the socks.

On the mantelpiece were frames holding pictures of Matthew and two boys with blonde angel hair. My eyes prickled as I picked one up.

Matthew was grinning, his eyes shining. The bigger boy had his arms hanging around his neck while Matthew held onto the small one, his hands so big they were nearly the same size as the baby.

It hurt so much more than I thought it would; the life he’d lived without me.

Putting the frame back down I returned to my discovery search. A stack of hardboard picture books—most of which I recognised from reading to Hannah—sat on a white shelf. My gut wrenched.

On a whim I stopped and turned back to my bag still in the hallway and fished my phone out.

Love you.

And I did. Even when she became Godzilla. Even when she made my eyes sting.

Even when she sided with Ma over me.

Even when she got suspended.