Always You and Me

Chapter Seven

The sweep of the wipers across the windscreen sounded grainy. There was no denying that the rain, which had turned to sleet after I set off, had now mutated to snow. I cast a worried look at Fletcher on the back seat, who was pacing between the windows, steaming up the glass with his breath.

‘Sit down, boy,’ I said, automatically tightening my grip on the steering wheel as I felt the tyres begin to slip on the tarmac.

I should have listened to the weather reports. But I’d been in such a hurry to check out of the B he’d cut himself off from everyone. It had taken the love and patience of a caring foster family, and maybe, just maybe, the friendship of a young girl who lived next door, to make him whole again.

Had what happened between Josh and me six years ago been a factor in his decision to live like a recluse? I shivered at the wheel, and it had nothing to do with the temperature outside the car, which my dashboard now informed me was below zero.

As the driving conditions continued to worsen, my confidence began to waver. A couple of minor skids had really scared me, but I didn’t lose control; the tyres on my car were too new and expensive to let that happen. I sent up a silent thank you to Adam, because the promise I’d made him had kept me safe. I only hoped every promise he’d extracted from me turned out to be such a good idea.

The journey was taking longer than anticipated, and I bit my lip worriedly every time extra minutes were added to my expected arrival. I’d booked an Airbnb for Fletcher and me to stay in that night, in a village over an hour’s drive from Wildwood Furniture, which had been the closest place I could find.

I peered through the windscreen at the grey, snow-heavy sky. I realised dusk would fall hard and fast here, and the thought of travelling these slippery roads in total darkness was beginning to scare me.

I briefly considered turning back, before realising with a sigh that continuing was my best option at this point. I’d made a commitment, not only to Adam but also to myself.

My eyes were tired from continually darting between the map on my phone screen and the mesmerising fall of snowflakes which the wind was whipping into horizontal flurries. Phone signal in this area was clearly patchy, because mine had dropped out a few times. I added panic at being lost in the middle of nowhere to the list of things I now needed to worry about.

Finally, my phone chirped up with an instruction to turn right in fifty metres. I slowed the car to a crawl and saw a gap in the hedgerow. Beside it was a small signpost, almost obliterated by snow-laden foliage, confirming this was ‘Private Woodland’ and adding ‘No Entry’ for good measure.

‘Not exactly welcoming, Josh,’ I muttered as I pulled hard on the wheel to make the turn. The car bumped and jerked in protest on to the unpaved road. Around me the forest was dense and tall, but at least it shielded me from some of the falling snow. The lane twisted and turned in hairpin bends, and when I glanced at my phone the map had gone and the screen was terrifyingly blank. All I could do was keep following the unmade road and hope I was still heading in the right direction.

Reaching the clearing took me by surprise. One minute I was in the middle of a forest and the next the darkness from the trees was lifted as I drove into a large area which had been cleared of tall firs. There were two buildings here. One was a single-storey cabin-style lodge with a wraparound porch, which reminded me of saloon bars in old Westerns. On the far side of the clearing was another, much larger building which appeared to be a workshop. From within it I could hear the faint buzz of an electric saw. I switched off the engine, with fingers that I noticed were shaking.

Fletcher had jumped to his feet the moment we’d come to a stop, and I could feel his breath hot on the back of my neck as he looked through the windscreen. No doubt he too was wondering why on earth his owner had brought him here.

‘At least I know we’ve arrived at the right place,’ I told him, as I unclipped his harness and peered at the words ‘Wildwood Furniture’ that had been carved into a beam above the open barn doors. I was still looking at the opening when a figure appeared within it.

He was staring in the direction of my car with a fierce scowl on his face. Was this how he greeted all his visitors? Slowly, feeling like I was one hundred years old, my hand went to the door handle.

Josh had changed since the last time I’d seen him. His hair was longer now, falling across his forehead and into his eyes. He was also leaner and yet curiously broader than he had been. He looked muscled and strong and right now incredibly pissed off, as he strode out into the falling snow and headed towards my car. He was wearing jeans and a thin T-shirt, but didn’t appear to feel the cold, whereas I was shivering like crazy. But that could have been nerves. My legs felt far from steady when I asked them to support me for the first time in hours as I climbed out of the car.

‘What are you doing here?’

It was virtually the same greeting he’d given me twenty years ago, when I’d climbed up to join him in the Bakers’ tree.

‘Hello, Josh,’ I said quietly.

‘I mean it, Lily. Go away.’

I hadn’t exactly expected a warm reception, but the hostility in his eyes, his voice, in every single fibre of his body, shook me a little. For a man who’d once claimed to love me, he certainly seemed to hate me right now.

I gave a small, nervous laugh. ‘I was just in the area, so I thought I’d pop in and say hi.’

Humour had definitely been the wrong way to go, and the tightening of his jaw and the angry glitter in his eyes lit a flare of fury within me.

‘I messaged you yesterday, Josh. Three times.’

I fully expected him to deny all knowledge of my attempts to contact him, so it was a bit of a shock when he replied, ‘I know. I ignored them all.’

‘That was rude,’ I couldn’t help shooting back.

‘Perhaps it was my way of telling you that I didn’t want to speak to you. Something I’m pretty sure I made perfectly clear several years ago.’

He was breathing harder and faster now, as though he’d been running, and yet nothing about him had moved. He was like a statue, standing there with his arms crossed, his body language so eloquent he had no need to confirm in words that I wasn’t welcome here.

From behind me in the car I heard the scrabble of claws against glass. Fletcher had jumped into the front seat and was trying to get out.

‘Can I let him out?’ I asked, nodding towards the car.

‘No,’ Josh replied, shaking his head as though he couldn’t believe I’d had the nerve to ask such a thing.

I ignored him and sprung open the door. A very grateful Fletcher headed straight to the bushes to relieve himself. It had been a long time since we’d last stopped and it occurred to me that I was in similar need of a bathroom.

‘Look, I know my presence here isn’t exactly welcome,’ I began.

‘You don’t say,’ Josh interjected with a sardonic note that I’d never heard in his voice before.

‘But I really do need to speak to you.’

‘We have nothing to say to each other. We said it all six years ago.’

Finished with his business, Fletcher bounded up and went straight to Josh. He was always the most sociable dog in any park I took him to, with an almost pathological need to befriend everyone. He wasn’t used to being ignored and clearly couldn’t comprehend why the man standing before him had no desire to pet him. That made me even angrier. Josh could be as rude as he liked to me, but blanking Adam’s dog was a step too far.

‘Look, do you think we could get out of the snow and go inside for a minute?’

‘No,’ Josh said. It seemed to be his new favourite word.

‘I have been driving for many hours to get here—’

‘That was entirely your decision, not mine,’ he pointed out.

I ignored him. ‘I’ve been stuck in that car for a very long time, and I need to pee. Quite badly, in fact. So, it looks like we have two choices: I could do it out here in the bushes like my dog, or you could be a decent human being and invite me into your house.’

For one dreadful moment I thought he was going to go with option a), but thankfully he hadn’t lost all memory of how to interact with people.

‘Five minutes. That’s all you can have. Then you need to climb into your car, turn around, and head back to wherever it was you came from.’

He spun on his heel and strode towards the cabin with Fletcher and me trotting behind. The front door opened into a surprisingly spacious hallway. The walls were lined with wood, and it reminded me of a ski lodge where Adam and I had stayed for our second anniversary.

‘Bathroom is down the hall on the right,’ Josh said curtly, turning in the opposite direction towards a room that appeared to be the kitchen.

More than his abrasive manner and lack of social graces, the shelves in the bathroom confirmed that Josh lived alone. A solitary toothbrush sat in a mug by the basin and the toiletries on the shelf were sparse. There was a single comb and a razor on a glass shelf, and none of the clutter that graced my own ensuite. The room was clean, the towels smelled fresh, but there was something incredibly lonely about it.

Very aware that the clock was ticking on the five minutes I’d been allowed, I washed my hands and tried to stop my eyes from straying to that lone toothbrush.

As I headed down the corridor, I could hear Josh’s voice and wondered if he was on the phone. Probably calling the police to have me forcibly removed from his property , I thought with a wry twist of my lips.

But I was wrong. Although Josh instantly clammed up at the sound of my footsteps, I realised he must have been talking to Fletcher from the way the dog’s tail was still waving back and forth. On the floor beside my pet was a large bowl of water, which Fletcher bent to lap from eagerly. That pulled a thread in me that I really didn’t want to be tugged on right then.

‘All done?’ Josh asked brusquely. ‘You need to be heading off now.’

I looked at him for a long moment, this stranger wearing my old friend’s face. Had I done this? Was I the reason he was now a granite facsimile of the person I used to know?

‘If it’s not too much trouble, could I also have some water before you evict me?’

His lips tightened, but he reached for a glass on the draining board.

‘And if it’s at all possible, could you heat it up and throw in a tea bag and some milk?’ The one thing we had always shared was a sense of humour, and for just a millisecond I thought I glimpsed an incoming smile, before the ice in his veins froze it out.

‘I’m not turning this into a social occasion, Lily. You need to leave.’

‘I will. But surely after all the years we’ve known each other, you can spare me the time it takes for the kettle to boil?’

‘I’d rather not,’ he said, his voice dour, but he reached for the appliance and began filling it.

‘Thank you,’ I said softly.

‘Don’t thank me.’ His voice was gruff. ‘Just drink your tea and go.’

Unaware he was acting like a traitor, Fletcher inched closer to Josh’s legs, his tail beating out a tattoo on the wooden floor. Absently, Josh reached down and rubbed the dog’s head. Truly that animal had no loyalty. Adam would be positively spinning in his grave if he saw this. The thought brought me back to the present with the force of a slap.

I wasn’t here for tea, or small talk, or an afternoon of Do you remember when . . . ? We hadn’t left things in a good place six years ago, and it was foolish of me to have thought that the intervening years would have changed anything.

‘Adam died.’

I hadn’t meant to blurt it out like that. I hadn’t known the words were even in my head until I saw the stiffening of Josh’s shoulders as he reached for a mug from the cupboard. He extracted one – not two, I noticed – and set it down carefully on the worktop before turning slowly to face me.

‘I know.’

‘How? How do you know? Who told you?’

There was a ghost of a smile on his lips that held no humour at all.

‘I saw it online. I’m not completely cut off from civilisation out here. I do have internet and phone contact with the outside world.’ I felt a blush colouring my cheeks that I knew I wouldn’t be able to stop.

‘That’s not what I meant. I was wondering why you’d bothered keeping tabs on Adam . . . or me,’ I added, my voice fading away to a whisper.

‘I didn’t. But Adam messaged me about eighteen months ago. Said we needed to talk.’

‘What? Why did he contact you? What did he want to talk about?’

Josh gave a very eloquent shrug. ‘I don’t know.’

‘You never asked?’

‘I never replied.’

My embarrassed blush turned into a flush of pure anger. Eighteen months ago, Adam had already known he was dying. He’d reached out to Josh, for God knows what reason, and my bastard of a friend – ex -friend, a voice in my head immediately corrected – couldn’t even be arsed to reply to him.

I shook my head, my heart no longer sympathetic to Josh and his isolated existence. ‘I don’t know who you are anymore.’

That arrow hit home. I saw him flinch from it, even though he tried to hide it.

‘There’s no need for you to. We’re not part of each other’s worlds any longer.’ He paused, and then surprised me by adding, ‘But for what it’s worth, I was sorry to hear about Adam. He was far too young to die.’

Of all the times I’d never wanted to cry about losing my husband, this had to be the worst moment to feel the burn of tears stinging my eyes. I acknowledged his words with a slight nod of my head, and then tried to hide my surprise when he poured in exactly the right amount of milk and the correct number of sugars I took before passing me the mug. I’m not sure why I felt something stir in me just because, after all these years, he still remembered how I took my tea. But it made me think that somewhere beneath this arctic exterior, the old Josh I’d known still lived on.

‘I’m here today because of a promise I made to Adam,’ I told him. ‘One of the last things he asked me to do was to find you.’

‘Why?’

That was a very good question. I’d had an entire year to ponder it, and I still didn’t have an answer.

‘I was hoping you’d be able to tell me that.’

I saw the shutters coming down in his dark brown eyes.

‘I have no idea. Whatever the reason, he’s sent you on a wild goose chase.’

‘Adam told me that I didn’t know the whole story. That I should ask you what happened.’

Josh gave a shrug that tried to appear disinterested. ‘I have no idea what he was talking about.’ He turned his eyes towards the window. Perhaps he was checking the weather, or perhaps he didn’t want to risk that I might still be able to read what he was thinking from his eyes.

His gaze was fixed on the falling snow when I added, ‘He also said that I had to forgive you . . . and forgive him.’

Josh’s hand tightened on the worktop. I saw the knuckles turn white, but his voice gave nothing away. ‘I really don’t know anything about whatever it was he was talking about. Perhaps he wasn’t thinking straight at the time.’

It was a knife that slid straight into my heart. ‘Adam knew what he was saying. He was lucid right up to the end. He did everything in his power to stay with me. This . . .’ I waved my hand between us, indicating our unwanted reunion. ‘This was important to him for some reason, and I drove all this way because he wanted you to tell me something.’

I thought for a moment I was reaching him. His tongue unconsciously ran over his lower lip as though it was suddenly dry, while a muscle beside his eye began to twitch.

‘There is nothing I have to tell you, Lily. Nothing. You’ve had a long journey for no good reason. We could have sorted all of this out on the phone.’

‘Yes, well, that would have required you to actually answer my messages, wouldn’t it?’ I challenged.

‘Touché,’ Josh said, with yet another ghost of a smile.

A sudden gust of wind rattled the windows. The lodge appeared to be solidly constructed, but it was still being battered by the elements.

‘You really need to leave right now, Lily,’ he said, sounding almost human as a tinge of concern crept into his voice. ‘The storm is getting worse. I’m surprised you ignored the forecasts and set out in it in the first place.’

‘I didn’t listen to them,’ I admitted, feeling foolish.

Josh shook his head in disbelief and began walking towards the door. Clearly, I was expected to follow him. I did, slipping my fingers beneath Fletcher’s collar and tugging him along.

‘Where are you heading?’ Josh asked, pausing at the front door to pluck a padded jacket from a hook.

I named the village with the Airbnb I’d booked, and then frowned as I saw Josh slip his arms into the warm jacket.

‘I’ll follow you down the track and back on to the lane until you reach the main road again.’

‘No, you won’t,’ I said, pulling my car keys from my pocket. ‘I don’t need some eleventh-hour act of chivalry from you. You don’t want me here. Fine. You don’t want to talk to me. Also fine. But you don’t get to play protective hero. I’m perfectly capable of finding my own way back.’

‘Are you? What if your phone loses signal?’

‘It won’t,’ I said with totally misplaced conviction.

‘It happens out here all the time in severe storms. The mast has a habit of coming down in bad weather. And this storm is predicted to be one of the worst we’ve had in years. Which you’d know if you’d bothered to listen to the forecasts.’

I narrowed my eyes, and wondered if he could feel the flames shooting out of them.

‘You’ve made your point, Josh. There’s no need to rub it in. And there’s definitely no need to follow my car. If you won’t talk to me . . . well, then there’s nothing more I want from you.’

I stepped on to the veranda and was almost catapulted straight back into him with the force of the wind. He was right. The storm had intensified in the short time I’d been there. My body bowed into the wind as I fought my way through the falling snow to my car. I flung open the car door and whistled to get Fletcher’s attention. He was still sitting in the doorway of the cabin, which was looking remarkably cosy and appealing from my current position in the middle of swirling snowflakes and biting wind.

‘Fletcher! Come on.’ My dog’s reluctance to join me felt like the final straw. Normally he couldn’t leap into the car fast enough. It took three more attempts before he finally ran at speed across the clearing and jumped into the back seat. I fastened his harness quickly before he changed his mind.

Josh was now standing beside my car, looking not at me, but at the darkening skies.

‘Wait. I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to leave right now. This storm is worse than I realised. You’d better come back inside.’

I tightened my grip on the driver’s door, which the wind was trying to tug from my hold. ‘Josh, nothing – I repeat, nothing – could induce me to return to your home. You’ve made it perfectly clear that you don’t want me here, so now I’m going.’ I climbed into the car and reached for the seat belt. I clicked it into place and went to pull the door shut, but he had a firm hold on it.

‘I don’t want you to go.’

For just a moment his words affected me in a truly visceral way, because it made it sound like he cared, but I knew from his actions that he didn’t.

‘Careful,’ I warned. ‘You’ll get whiplash from changing your mind that fast.’

‘I’m not joking, Lily. Get out of the car. It’s not safe to drive in these conditions.’

‘Well, that’s my decision to make. Not yours. You wanted me to leave and now I’m leaving. And the quicker you remove your hand from my door, the quicker I can reach my destination and you can forget all about me. Again.’ I didn’t know why that last word had come out so plaintive. That certainly hadn’t been my intention.

‘I never forgot about you.’ Josh looked shocked, as though the words had escaped unbidden.

This wasn’t a conversation I wanted to have. Not now, in the middle of a raging blizzard. Not ever, in fact.

‘Try,’ I said, yanking on the door handle and somehow managing to pull it from his grasp. ‘And don’t follow me,’ I added, seconds before slamming the door shut.

My tyres skidded on the snowy ground as I put the wheel on full lock and accelerated faster than I should have done out of the clearing.

‘This was not one of your better ideas, my love,’ I told the Adam who lived on in my head and was always happy to hear whatever I had to say. Unlike the man who I could still see in my rear-view mirror, who was standing in the blizzard, staring after my car until the red of my brake lights was swallowed up by the forest.