And I wasn’t going to tell him about it either, I decided. I didn’t want another argument about what I was planning to do.
The film was excellent – very different – and I thoroughly enjoyed it, though I couldn’t help feeling it wasn’t Josh’s usual fare and that he’d suggested it because he thought I’d like it. Afterwards, we went to the TGIF next door to the cinema and ordered fajitas and drinks – wine for me, a beer for Josh.
‘I’ll cook that meal for you on Saturday,’ he said as we licked our sticky fingers.
‘Promises, promises!’ I joked.
‘No – a definite plan. I’m afraid I won’t be able to see you again until then, though. I’ve got a few days off, and a pal and I are planning to walk part of the Cotswold Way.’
My heart sank. Five whole days when I wouldn’t see Josh seemed like an eternity.
‘I know – sorry,’ he said, as if reading my thoughts. ‘But this was arranged weeks ago. And let’s be fair, you’ve got enough going on at the moment not to miss me.’
‘What makes you think I’d miss you anyway?’ I teased, and his hand closed over mine on the table top.
‘You’d better!’ he said, mock threateningly. ‘And I don’t want to come back and discover you’ve been getting off with someone else in my absence, either.’
I laughed. ‘Chance would be a fine thing!’
‘That’s all right, then.’
The warmth was beginning inside me again, and with it the desire. I could feel it, electric in the air between us, and when Josh made a detour on the way home I wasn’t in the least surprised. He didn’t say where he was going and I didn’t ask, but as we bypassed Stoke Compton and pulled in through the gateway of a small, isolated cottage, I could hazard a pretty accurate guess.
‘My place,’ Josh said nonchalantly. ‘Are you coming in?’
I didn’t need asking twice.
I have to admit I noticed very little about Josh’s cottage at first beyond the fact that the tiny lobby opened directly into a long low room with rough wood beams and an open fireplace. I was rather too focused on the staircase, leading up from the corner opposite the door, and the magnetism sparking between Josh and me as he helped me climb it. Later, though, I thought what a charming little place it was, all sloping floors and uneven walls and funny little nooks and crannies. The fact that he had chosen to live here rather than a modern house or flat showed another side to Josh, one that I liked a lot. But then, to be honest, what was there I didn’t like about Josh?
When he took me home – I had to go home, of course, much as I would have liked to stay – I thought again how I would miss him in the next few days. I could hardly believe that just two short weeks ago I hadn’t even met him. Perhaps Mum and Rachel had been right, and I should have taken more time before falling head over heels in love like this. But then again, maybe this was the way a once-in-a-lifetime love struck – like a bolt of lightning. If so, the way I was feeling made perfect sense.
Next morning, after I’d fed the hens and collected the eggs, I phoned Grace Burridge and asked if it would be convenient if I came to see her on Thursday, and she said it would. Once again I felt dreadfully guilty at the way I was deceiving her, but I told myself that if I could find out who had been responsible for her daughter’s death, then maybe that would help. At present the hit-and-run driver was still unidentified; even if the circumstances that had led up to the accident proved to be upsetting, at least it would mean that Grace had some sort of closure.
When I returned to the kitchen, it was to find Mum washing the eggs I’d just collected and putting a dozen into a cardboard tray.
‘For Jeremy,’ she explained. ‘He said he’d pop by later, go through your dad’s accounts files, and try to set up some sort of system on his own computer so we can keep things up to date. We’re so lucky he was back home when all this happened. He’s been a brick, and I thought he might appreciate a nice fresh egg as a thank you. He won’t take any payment, that I do know.’
‘I’m sure he’ll be really pleased,’ I said. Jeremy didn’t keep hens – it wasn’t that kind of farm. It was much more highly mechanized than ours, and without the homely touches, though there did used to be a flock of geese strutting about in the days when his mother had been alive – I remembered being terrified of them.
‘Will you be here this morning?’ Mum asked.
‘Actually I’m popping over to Dad’s computer man to pick up a new laptop,’ I said. ‘I gave him a ring yesterday after I’d spoken to the insurance company, and he’s got one in stock that’s pretty much the same model as the one I had stolen. So if Jeremy can build some sort of database I can install it, and we won’t have to keep bothering him.’