at a beginners’ furniture-making class, of all places – and had to reassess her plans overnight. The class was a birthday present from Gabbi
(‘It’ll be
full
of hot blokes, I bet you,’ she had said unsubtly when Harriet opened the envelope and frowned at the voucher inside) and Harriet, who was about as
competent with a hammer and saw as her eighty-year-old grandmothers, almost bottled it at the last minute. Thank goodness she hadn’t. Thank goodness, too, that she’d randomly sat down
next to Robert in the workshop: funny, laughing, dark-haired Robert, who helped her with the plane and took the mick out of her for squealing the first time she used the drill.
Much as she hated to admit it to Gabbi (her friend could be unbearably smug about these things), Harriet quickly found herself looking forward to Thursday evenings amidst the sawdust and wood
shavings, trying to concentrate on what Liam, the earnest tutor, was saying about dovetail joints, but finding her gaze straying instead across to broad-shouldered, gorgeous Robert. She was
tortured by the way his hair fell just a fraction too long and shaggy on the back of his neck; she found herself fantasizing about the day-old dark stubble like iron filings around his jaw and how
it would feel against her skin. By the second lesson, she’d managed to drop into the conversation that she was single and by the fourth, when she absolutely couldn’t wait any longer,
she asked him out for a drink. The rest was history. When the course finally drew to an end, Harriet might not have had a decent piece of furniture to show for her efforts – her footstool was
indeed the object of much derision from her daughter and now lived hidden away in the bathroom where it had the lowly task of supporting a small wicker basket of toilet rolls – but who cared? She’d only gone and bagged herself the loveliest man in all of London Town instead. ‘Didn’t I tell you?’ Gabbi crowed when she broke the news. ‘Didn’t I say this
would happen?’
Harriet smiled to herself in bed. Finding Robert had been worth all of Gabbi’s smugness. It was even worth putting up with a bit of drunken warthog snoring now and then. Because just look
at her now: happily married with a great daughter, secure job and a holiday on the horizon. Who could want for more?
Chapter Seven
How strange it seemed, packing only for one’s self this summer, Olivia thought, folding clean clothes into the suitcase. For the last ten or eleven years, Alec had
routinely travelled to Shell Cottage a few weeks ahead of her in order to work, and his subsequent phone calls always involved detailing the many things he wanted her to add to her case. ‘Forgot my shaver,’ he’d say cheerfully while she scribbled it at the bottom of her (already extensive) list. ‘The nights are on the chilly side, could you bring my
slippers?’ he would remember another evening.
She would tsk affectionately and call him a hopeless old man, and ask what his last slave had died of, but she never really minded. In fact, she rather liked feeling so helpful, so needed. It
was a little reminder of how indispensable she was, how tightly they were still tied together. Then, as soon as he’d finished with his novel, and had sent it off to his editor and agent,
he’d be back on the phone to her at once, for one final call: ‘I’m all yours, sweetheart. Come on down. I miss you.’
Silly, wasn’t it, that after almost forty years of marriage, she had still felt such a frisson at his low, husky words down the telephone. She’d be all packed by then, of course, her
bags waiting in the hall, the previous couple of days usually spent in an agony of limbo as she waited for her orders. Some years, his call came later than others, if he’d had to wrestle
particularly hard with a book, and she would become positively agitated for him, unable to settle to her own work, or the weeding, or even coffee with a neighbour, because her
(‘It’ll be
full
of hot blokes, I bet you,’ she had said unsubtly when Harriet opened the envelope and frowned at the voucher inside) and Harriet, who was about as
competent with a hammer and saw as her eighty-year-old grandmothers, almost bottled it at the last minute. Thank goodness she hadn’t. Thank goodness, too, that she’d randomly sat down
next to Robert in the workshop: funny, laughing, dark-haired Robert, who helped her with the plane and took the mick out of her for squealing the first time she used the drill.
Much as she hated to admit it to Gabbi (her friend could be unbearably smug about these things), Harriet quickly found herself looking forward to Thursday evenings amidst the sawdust and wood
shavings, trying to concentrate on what Liam, the earnest tutor, was saying about dovetail joints, but finding her gaze straying instead across to broad-shouldered, gorgeous Robert. She was
tortured by the way his hair fell just a fraction too long and shaggy on the back of his neck; she found herself fantasizing about the day-old dark stubble like iron filings around his jaw and how
it would feel against her skin. By the second lesson, she’d managed to drop into the conversation that she was single and by the fourth, when she absolutely couldn’t wait any longer,
she asked him out for a drink. The rest was history. When the course finally drew to an end, Harriet might not have had a decent piece of furniture to show for her efforts – her footstool was
indeed the object of much derision from her daughter and now lived hidden away in the bathroom where it had the lowly task of supporting a small wicker basket of toilet rolls – but who cared? She’d only gone and bagged herself the loveliest man in all of London Town instead. ‘Didn’t I tell you?’ Gabbi crowed when she broke the news. ‘Didn’t I say this
would happen?’
Harriet smiled to herself in bed. Finding Robert had been worth all of Gabbi’s smugness. It was even worth putting up with a bit of drunken warthog snoring now and then. Because just look
at her now: happily married with a great daughter, secure job and a holiday on the horizon. Who could want for more?
Chapter Seven
How strange it seemed, packing only for one’s self this summer, Olivia thought, folding clean clothes into the suitcase. For the last ten or eleven years, Alec had
routinely travelled to Shell Cottage a few weeks ahead of her in order to work, and his subsequent phone calls always involved detailing the many things he wanted her to add to her case. ‘Forgot my shaver,’ he’d say cheerfully while she scribbled it at the bottom of her (already extensive) list. ‘The nights are on the chilly side, could you bring my
slippers?’ he would remember another evening.
She would tsk affectionately and call him a hopeless old man, and ask what his last slave had died of, but she never really minded. In fact, she rather liked feeling so helpful, so needed. It
was a little reminder of how indispensable she was, how tightly they were still tied together. Then, as soon as he’d finished with his novel, and had sent it off to his editor and agent,
he’d be back on the phone to her at once, for one final call: ‘I’m all yours, sweetheart. Come on down. I miss you.’
Silly, wasn’t it, that after almost forty years of marriage, she had still felt such a frisson at his low, husky words down the telephone. She’d be all packed by then, of course, her
bags waiting in the hall, the previous couple of days usually spent in an agony of limbo as she waited for her orders. Some years, his call came later than others, if he’d had to wrestle
particularly hard with a book, and she would become positively agitated for him, unable to settle to her own work, or the weeding, or even coffee with a neighbour, because her
Similar Books
