11
NORA HAD THE whole day to herself. It was her first proper day off in eight days, and she planned to enjoy it. She lay in bed, savouring the warmth and noticing that the sun was peeking around the edge of the curtains enough to tell of a bright spring day outside. She picked up her phone and blinked, bleary-eyed, at a WhatsApp message from Hilary inviting her out to lunch. She tapped out a quick reply and they exchanged a couple more messages arranging to meet at Oliver’s. It would be a good opportunity to see if Hilary fancied joining her for a swim sometime.
Nora threw back the duvet and pulled on her swimming costume, followed by sweatpants, a hoodie, and some woolly socks. She padded down to the kitchen and put the kettle on for her flask and a cup of tea to savour while she scrolled through some social media. All of this meant that she arrived at the lake later than usual and was sorry to see Archie walking away towards the manor house.
She cupped her hands around her mouth. ‘Archie!’ She started laughing because it felt so odd to be bellowing across the fields. Nora couldn’t even remember the last time she’d shouted so loudly.
Archie spun around with a big grin on his face and began striding back.
‘Good morning,’ he called across the water, beaming at her.
She waved and waited for him to walk around to her. He’d had his hair cut. She’d never seen such a dramatic transformation. His curls had been tamed, and what was left of them were closely cut on the top of his head with a forelock that had fallen, rather attractively, across his forehead. The cut had revealed sideburns that had presumably been lost in the curls before now, giving his jaw a chiselled look.
‘I like your new hair,’ she said.
‘Oh. Thank you,’ he said, running a hand across the back of his head self-consciously. ‘You’re later this morning.’
‘I’ve got the day off, so I’ve had a leisurely start.’
‘Good for you.’
‘No Tatty today?’
‘My mother is meeting a friend for a walk this morning, so she will take Tatty with her.’
Nora began to strip down to her costume.
‘I’m holding you up,’ Archie said, taking a step backwards.
‘No, it’s lovely to see you.’ Nora was taken aback to realise she didn’t want him to leave. ‘If you don’t mind waiting for me, why don’t you stay and we can have a cup of tea afterwards? I’ll only be fifteen minutes or so.’
‘That would be wonderful.’
They stood, grinning stupidly at each other for a moment until Nora remembered what she was doing and finished undressing. She sat on the edge of the dock and lowered herself in, allowing her breathing to become regular before she pushed off.
‘How cold is it?’ Archie asked.
‘Really not too bad.’ The chilly water felt like tiny needles pricking at her bare skin, but she loved that feeling. And she was so used to it she knew that in a couple of minutes, her skin would begin to feel warm, at least until she got out and then it would be so cold that she’d barely be able to feel whether the towel was drying her off or not.
He began strolling around the edge of the lake as she swam, keeping pace with her.
‘We had the results of the water test back,’ he said.
‘And?’
‘It’s perfect. Couldn’t be cleaner.’
‘I knew it,’ Nora said.
‘I was wondering whether you’d like to go out for dinner with me.’
It was so unexpected, that Nora turned to look at him, interrupting her stroke and resulting in her splashing around for a moment until she got back into the rhythm. She’d rather not have been swimming in the lake when he’d asked her, but she realised Archie had probably only got up the courage to ask because she wasn’t looking right at him. The same way as the best conversations they’d had so far had been sitting side-by-side on the dock.
‘I’d like that,’ she said, once she’d recovered herself, smiling as she noticed out of the corner of her eye Archie stop and grin before he started walking again.
‘Amazing,’ he said. ‘Should I book somewhere? How about Friday?’
‘That would be lovely. I’m sure you know more places than I do. I haven’t ventured further than Oliver’s coffee shop yet.’
‘I’ll have a think about where we might go,’ he said.
Archie kept pace with her as she looped the lake, and then offered her a hand up from the dock when she climbed out.
‘Good god, you’re freezing!’
Nora laughed. ‘It’s the best feeling in world. Sorry, do you mind? I need to get my costume off.’
‘Of course.’ He turned his back and walked away, taking an interest in the tumbledown section of wall that Nora climbed over every day.
Nora dried herself in record time, struggling as she always did to pull her clothes on over her cold, damp skin. Her dry robe was last, cosseting her in its warming fleecy layers.
‘I’m done!’
Archie came back over and suggested they find somewhere drier to sit, so they walked to one of the wooden platforms further along the lake edge, and sat together with their legs dangling over the water. Nora pulled the flask out of her bag and handed Archie the cups to hold while she poured the tea.
‘Thank you,’ he said, wrapping his hands around it. ‘So, how did your kiln testing go the other day?’
Nora was touched that he remembered. ‘It went better than I expected, to be honest. It only took two test firings and then another just to check. So I’m back in business.’
‘That must be a relief.’
‘It definitely is. I’ve got an order I need to start working on this week and I’d started to think I might have to move the deadline. I hate doing that. It’s so important to me that we deliver when we say we will.’
Archie nodded and they sipped their drinks.
‘So, going out to dinner. Is it a date?’ She’d been wondering since the moment he’d asked. It seemed like the only explanation, but she wanted to know for sure.
‘Would it be alright if it was?’
‘I should tell you that I’m quite recently out of a long-term relationship. That’s not to say I don’t want to go on a date. I do. I suppose all I’m saying is that it wasn’t part of the plan.’
‘It’s been a long time since I’ve been on anything remotely resembling a date. We don’t have to think of it like that. I’d like to be friends, if nothing else. Shall we call it a first foray into our friendship for now?’
‘Okay.’ She turned and smiled at him, catching his eye before he looked back at his drink, smiling shyly. ‘I’m glad you asked. I don’t have many friends around here and we’re almost neighbours after all.’ She leant into him gently, feeling his arm stiffen briefly against hers before she pulled away.
After a lazy rest of the morning, having showered and dressed in something appropriate for a lunch date with Hilary, Nora set off for town. She parked at the same place as before and walked through the churchyard to the high street.
Hilary had bagged them a table and gave a wave when Nora walked in, beckoning her out of the queue.
‘Have a look at the menu board and then save the table while I order,’ said Hilary.
After a quick to and fro about who was going to pay, Nora backed down, chose a tuna melt panini and sat at the table. There was no sign of Toby today which after a handful of visits where he’d always been there, seemed unusual.
‘Where’s Toby today?’ she asked Hilary when she came back to the table carrying their drinks.
‘He’s gone to America to visit his children. They live in LA with their mother and her husband. He goes over every couple of months if he can. Plus, he has business in New York so it’s easy for him to do that at the same time.’
‘Blimey, he’s a bit of a jet-setter, then.’
‘Mmm, he is. He used to do a lot more of it from what he says, and he doesn’t miss it. If it wasn’t for the children, he wouldn’t be. A lot of the business can be done online these days, but he likes to show his face every so often.’
‘Have you been to New York with him?’ Nora had always wanted to go, but once she had the money to afford it, Julian wouldn’t accept the fact that she’d be paying for him, and so they never went anywhere that he couldn’t afford to pay for himself. To start with, she’d thought that was quite a noble stand to take, but now she felt differently; he had been a martyr, trying to spoil her fun.
‘No, but I want to. He only ever goes for a couple of days on his way to or from LA, and there hasn’t really been a good time so far. We’ve not been seeing each other that long, really. We had a holiday to California planned at Christmas, but we had to postpone it, and then Laura brought the children over here instead.’
‘I’ve always wanted to go to New York,’ Nora said, dreamily. ‘I love the idea of seeing all the places that are in the films, especially Sleepless in Seattle.’
‘Don’t you sell your work over there? It could be a business trip.’
‘I do. It’d be more fun if I didn’t have to do any work or networking, but it’d be cool to browse the shops where they sell my stuff.’
‘We ought to go on a girls’ weekend. It’d be much more fun going with you than with Toby. There’s no way he’d want to go shopping.’
Nora laughed. ‘You’re on.’ It was one of those things that she knew would probably never happen, but if it ever did, she’d be up for it. Hilary was definitely shaping up to be a good friend. ‘I’ve been meaning to ask whether you think anyone would be up for swimming at the lake? Archie’s thinking about opening it to the public and I said I’d gather a few people to get a feel for whether it’s a goer or not.’
‘How cold is it?’ Hilary looked less than keen.
‘I don’t know exactly, but it’s got to be almost ten degrees by now I would have thought.’
‘Ten?’
‘Honestly, once you’re in you’ll feel amazing. I was going to ask Lois as well. She seemed keen when I told her about it.’
Hilary sighed. ‘If there’s one thing I hate more than a cold lake, it’s missing out on the fun in a cold lake. I’ll come. Do you want me to ask Jess and Patsy? See if they can rustle up any other takers?’
‘Perhaps that’s enough for now. We probably ought to keep it quiet for now in case anyone objects.’
‘No problem. I’ll make a WhatsApp group for us and we can decide on a day.’
‘Great, thanks.’ Nora took a sip of her elderflower lemonade, and decided now was the time to share about the book club. ‘Have you been to the library to choose the next book for book club yet?’
‘No, have you? You are going to come again aren’t you? Did you enjoy it?’
Nora laughed again at Hilary’s barrage of questions. ‘I loved it. It was so refreshing to be able to chat to a total stranger about the same book we’d both read rather than to people you know who might be a bit judgy.’
‘That’s definitely the beauty of it. Of course, in the end you’ll know all of us and you’ll never be with a stranger but the judgy thing never really happens anyway. I think because you’ve both made the choice to read that book out of the options, it’s not like the book is ever forced on you like a normal book club.’
‘Do you know, I never thought of it like that, but you’re right. We both picked the thriller because we preferred that over the others, so it’s a much better starting point.’
‘And you got on with Constance.’
‘I did, she was so funny. Kind of old-fashioned but she was easy to talk to. The only thing was she was trying to set me up with her son.’ Nora rolled her eyes.
‘You know who her son is?’ Hilary said, with a glint in her eye that put Nora on edge. Because who did she know here? She’d guessed almost before Hilary could say, ‘Archie Harrington.’
‘Oh god, really? That’s so awkward.’
‘Why? It’s not like you’re going to go out with him.’
Nora looked sheepishly at Hilary, whose eyes nearly popped out of her head.
‘No! Oh my god, that’s so funny! She was trying to set you up and he’s beaten her to it!’
Nora couldn’t deny that it took some of the magic out of being asked out now that she knew Constance’s — in her words, romantically hopeless son who hadn’t had a girlfriend for the last fifteen years was Archie. She groaned and put her head in her hands.
‘Tuna melt and a roasted veg?’ Oliver said. ‘Having a bad day?’
‘Not until about thirty seconds ago,’ Nora said while Hilary giggled. ‘Thank you.’
‘Thanks, Oliver,’ said Hilary. ‘She’ll be fine in a minute.’
He gave them a bemused grin and went back to the counter.
‘I can’t go out with him now. Constance is going to think I feel sorry for him or something. What if he finds out I was with her at book club and thinks I only said yes to the date because of his mother?’
‘It’s so unlikely that he knows you were her date-with-a-book. I mean so many people are called Nora. It could be any one of them.’ Hilary giggled again. ‘Sorry. But I doubt she went home and said, Archie, your love life is so tragic I asked a lovely girl called Nora if she’d go out with you. Did she?’
‘I bloody hope not.’ Nora sighed. ‘Am I overthinking this? I actually got on well with Constance if you leave aside her sales pitch, which by the way, wasn’t obvious that it was Archie.’
‘She didn’t lead with him being a lord?’
‘No, she didn’t mention anything about either of them being titled. Presumably she’s Lady Harrington.’
‘I think technically, she’s the dowager Countess, if my recollection of Downton Abbey is correct,’ said Hilary. ‘I think it’s nice that she doesn’t flaunt that.’
‘I do too. Archie hasn’t told me he’s Lord Harrington in so many words.’ And Nora liked that too. She was starting to see how his unassuming nature was Archie through and through.
‘So you’re going on the date?’ Hilary asked, taking a bite of her panini while waiting wide-eyed for Nora’s answer.
‘I’m going on the date.’