It felt incredibly strange to be getting ready to go on what I supposed could be termed ‘a date’, and I was actually quite nervous. I’d been with Tim for so long I was totally out of practice and the prospect of having to relearn the protocol of dating was daunting.
I had a shower and washed my hair, leaving it to dry naturally into the waves that fell almost to my shoulders when I didn’t tie them up with a hair band, and set about deciding what to wear. This was something of a problem; I’d brought only a few changes of casual things home with me and most of my ‘going-out’ clothes were still at the flat. I was pulling things out of the wardrobe and discarding them when my phone rang. My first thought was that it was Josh, cancelling, and was surprised at how my heart sank before I realized it couldn’t be him – I hadn’t given him my mobile number. Alice, then? I hadn’t expected her to return my call, but perhaps I’d been wrong about that.
I grabbed my phone from the dressing table.
‘Hello?’
No one spoke, though I was fairly sure the line was open.
‘Hello?’ I said again. ‘Sorry – I can’t hear you.’
Still nothing.
‘This is Sally. Is that you, Alice?’
Still silence. Then the line disconnected. I checked the call log, but whoever had called had ensured that their number stayed hidden. Frustrated, I tossed the phone down on to the bed. Had it been a wrong number? Or was it Alice, and she had changed her mind about speaking to me at the last minute? If it was, I could only hope she’d ring again. And I still had to decide what I was going to wear for my date. Time was getting short, I couldn’t waste a minute of it if I was to be ready for Josh.
I went back to pulling clothes out of the wardrobe and eventually found a pair of palazzo pants and a silk tunic that I quite liked. The wide pants really called for high heels, but since they were out of the question I had to settle for pretty pumps. Drop earrings and a narrow silver bangle completed the outfit, and I did a quick make up and sprayed on a squirt of the perfume that Tim had brought me when I was in hospital. I wasn’t normally a perfume person, but it did smell rather nice, and very expensive – Tim had picked it up in duty free, I imagined, and with Tim nothing but the best would do.
I was just about ready when I heard a car out in the farmyard and I hurried downstairs as fast as I safely could. All very well to tell Mum she’d be able to check out Josh, but I didn’t actually want her or Dad answering the door as if I were a schoolgirl.
I’d just reached the foot of the stairs as the doorbell rang.
‘It’s OK, Mum, I’ve got it,’ I called.
Josh was standing on the doorstep, back turned towards me – looking, no doubt, for the source of the frenzied barking that came from the direction of Scrumpy’s kennel. As I opened the door he turned towards me, a slightly wary look on his face.
‘It’s OK – she’s on a leash,’ I assured him.
‘I’m glad to hear it! I thought maybe I was on the menu for supper.’
I laughed.
‘She’s pretty harmless, anyway.’
‘Don’t all owners say that? I’ve met farm dogs before – even been nipped by one.’
‘That’s not going to happen,’ I promised. ‘Do you want to come in while I get my coat?’
Josh stepped into the hall. He was wearing his leather jacket over a roll-neck pullover, and looked extremely nice in a very casual way. There was none of Tim’s polished grooming – rather it was as though he had no idea how gorgeous he was, hadn’t tried too hard, if at all, and I liked it.
Unable to resist, Mum had come into the hall.
‘Oh sorry . . .’ she said, as if her presence was entirely unintentional.
‘This is my mother,’ I said, a little apologetically. ‘Mum – Josh.’
‘Hello, Josh. Nice to meet you.’
‘And you. I’ll take good care of Sally, I promise.’
I shrugged into my coat, recovered my crutches.
‘Let’s go then,’ I said, thoroughly embarrassed.
Josh helped me into his car, the Peugeot estate he’d been driving this morning, and put my crutches on the back seat.
‘Where are we going?’ I asked, as he drove down the lane, his headlights cutting a sharp path through the inky blackness.
‘I thought the King William at Ulverton,’ he said. ‘Do you know it?’
‘Um . . . yes! I was born and brought up here, remember?’
Ulverton is a tiny village six or seven miles outside Stoke Compton, and the King William an old coaching inn. Josh parked in the narrow street opposite an archway that led to the pub entrance, then seemed to have second thoughts.