Chapter Twenty One
‘That was really delicious.’
‘Should I be offended that you sound surprised?’ Josh asked, swiping the plate from my hand when he saw I was about to get to my feet.
‘I’m not an invalid,’ I protested, wobbling alarmingly as I struggled to position the crutch beneath my arm.
‘It’s not you I’m worried about,’ Josh threw over his shoulder as he walked towards the dishwasher. ‘I just don’t have enough crockery for you to keep smashing it all to smithereens.’
‘One plate. One tiny plate,’ I muttered under my breath, knowing without even looking up that he would be grinning.
‘So why did you think I’d be inept in the kitchen?’ he asked, upending a can of creamed rice and shaking it into two waiting bowls.
‘Well, a) you have an awful lot of tinned goods for a man who can actually make a very decent casserole,’ I said, still satisfyingly full following the meal he’d made from scratch. ‘And b) because when we were kids the only thing you ever made were peanut butter sandwiches.’
Josh gave a shrug that seemed to hold more secrets than it should. ‘I think we’ve both changed many times over since we were next-door neighbours, Lily.’
That was definitely true, but it was a hornets’ nest of a comment that I had no intention of poking.
He set the dessert bowls on the table and then brought over two mugs of steaming black coffee.
‘Was Adam a good cook?’
The question shattered the mood like a stone through a window. Josh saw me flinch and his face immediately twisted into an expression of remorse.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, his head bowed as though spooning sugar into his mug suddenly needed all his concentration. Perhaps it did, because he appeared to have forgotten he never took any in his coffee. ‘I don’t know what made me ask that. It was thoughtless of me.’
I shook my head, watching as he sipped the brew without apparently noticing how sweet it was. ‘Do you want to know one of the worst things about losing your husband?’ I asked, my voice small but steady.
Josh looked up and his eyes met mine across the width of the kitchen table. He nodded.
‘Nobody wants to hear about him. They don’t ask you what he was like, or what were the things he loved. No one wants to know what made him laugh or drove him crazy. They edit him out of every conversation because they believe it’ll be too painful for you to talk about him. But really, the most painful thing of all is never getting to talk about him.’
‘You can talk to me.’
That had been true once, long ago. There had been a time when I’d happily have shared my every thought with him. But now?
Josh nodded, encouraging me.
I felt a door slowly swing open in my head, as a very different smile found its way to my lips. It was my Adam smile.
‘Those questions are almost too easy,’ I said, as I checked the responses off on the fingers of one hand. ‘Adam was kind and considerate. He was the sort of person who everyone wanted as their friend.’
Josh’s expression didn’t change, although I saw the twitch of a muscle at the corner of his eye.
‘And the thing he loved most . . . that was me. And he told me so, every single day. I always knew how he felt about me, because he was incapable of lying.’
The muscle twitched even more as I continued.
‘And Fletcher made him laugh. He adored that dog.’
Josh made a small sound that sounded like agreement. ‘And what was it that drove him crazy?’
I paused, like a cautious diver preparing to leap off the high board. ‘You. You drove him crazy.’
‘Me?’ I could tell my answer had shocked him. ‘Why?’
It was suddenly hard to meet his eyes. ‘I don’t know. But just the mention of your name . . .’
‘What possible reason was there to ever mention my name?’
Trust Josh to go for the one question I wasn’t prepared to answer. I lost my composure, stumbling over the words as though they were suddenly too awkward to get past.
‘I didn’t. We never really spoke about you. I guess it was just knowing you’d been there in my past . . . that there’d been history between us—’
‘Ancient history,’ Josh corrected, looking about as uncomfortable as I felt.
The truce between us suddenly felt in danger of collapse and, determined to salvage it, my tongue set off at a sprint, without waiting for my brain to catch up.
‘Anyhoo, in answer to your question about cooking: Adam had a three-dish repertoire that peaked at fish finger sandwiches. Everything else he incinerated.’ I gave a laugh that sounded a little too high to be natural. ‘He’d have set off every smoke alarm in the house if he’d attempted anything like you pulled off tonight. You’re definitely a better chef.’
Josh got abruptly to his feet and strode across the kitchen in scissor-sharp strides, to scrape his uneaten dessert into the rubbish. There was no doubt he was angry; the proof was right there in the pedal bin.
‘I don’t need you to throw me a bone here, Lily. Adam and I aren’t in competition with each other anymore.’ His laugh held very little humour. ‘The best man won, didn’t he . . . and then he got to be the groom.’
As closing lines go, I had to admit that one would be hard to beat.
The wind, which had been steadily picking up since late afternoon, matched the mood in the kitchen by angrily rattling the glass in the window frame. It gave Josh an excellent excuse to walk away from me, something he was particularly good at doing. I wasn’t surprised when he snatched up his coat and muttered something about having to go outside to ‘check things out’.
With a switch of allegiance that irritated me more than it should, Fletcher hurried to Josh’s side, exactly as he used to do when Adam took him out for his last walk of the night. Wordlessly, Josh bent to clip on the lead and disappeared out of the kitchen with my dog.
I’d always found cleaning to be a great way of relieving tension. When Adam was really sick, and our future was hanging by a thread, our flat had never been more spotless. But tidying up Josh’s messy kitchen scarcely even dented my frustration. I suspected it would take more than a few gleaming work surfaces to stifle my irritation with the man who lived here.
I wasn’t snooping. But I’d seen Josh delve into this drawer for clean tea towels and I needed one to dry the glasses. As I reached for a folded cloth, I felt it snag on something at the back of the drawer. I tugged a little harder and it came free, bringing whatever had been lodged behind it.
‘Oh!’ The tiny exclamation sounded loud in the empty room as I stared down at the snow globe sitting incongruously on a nest of kitchen odds and ends.
I recognised it instantly. The laughing polar bear sitting in a clearing of tall pines was just as cute and amusing as it had been the first time I’d seen it. I carefully reached for the ornament, as though the glass was as fragile as a soap bubble. I shook it gently, settling it in the palm of my hand as the artificial snow fell on the trees and engulfed the jovial bear in swirling flurries. The price label was still on the base, and I wondered if the globe had spent its entire life hidden away at the back of the drawer, like a guilty secret.
I breathed in deeply, and suddenly my nose was filled with the memory of crisp winter air and mulled wine . . .