Chapter Eleven
The Double Date
Harri was too agitated to feel the full benefit of the Siren’s Tail’s warm welcome, where the fire glowed strong in the hearth, mouth-watering food and beery smells filled the air, and the room buzzed with good humour and community.
He scanned the room for his date. Bovis, no longer on detective duty, was already installed at the bar nursing an orange juice, no doubt Mrs C.’s informer on how the evening was panning out. He was pretending not to notice their arrival, but Harri could see his beady eyes following him in the bar mirrors. Daft old crow.
The women seated at tables around the room were all much older than Harri: coastal-path walkers in pastel raincoats with ski poles and bobble hats. No sign of Anjali amongst them.
‘Are we the first to arrive?’ Annie asked cheerfully from close behind him. She was looking around too.
That’s when a figure emerged from the kitchen doors behind the bar, unbuttoning a chef’s jacket to reveal a beatnik stripe t-shirt and lean muscle. They too were casting a furtive glance around.
When Kit’s eyes met Annie’s, Harri noticed their look of relief and he positively felt the swell of excitement in Annie.
Kit was gorgeous. Smooth cheekbones and sharp brows, full lips, and surfers’ sun-bleached hair pushed back and buzzed at the sides where it was darker.
‘Well, I’ll be!’ Harri heard Annie mutter through her smile before she launched herself towards them asking if they were a hugger.
Kit looked like they’d usually demur, but they said yes, no doubt melted by Annie’s enthusiasm. Harri stood by as they shared a hug. So far, so much like a real date.
‘Mrs C. said you were pretty,’ Kit was saying shyly, their hands now shoved in baggy black pants pockets, a full four inches shorter than the towering Annie. Neither of them seemed to mind this one bit.
Harri was hit by the anxious thought that his own date might not show up. He hadn’t even considered that as an option until now, but what if he had to watch these two being adorable together all night? As much as he hadn’t wanted to come on this date, he didn’t relish the thought of going back to the bookshop by himself and explaining to the gossips how he’d left Annie and Kit to their evening.
Kit and Annie were admiring one another’s accents. Kit was calling themself a ‘Cockney Sparra’ and making Annie laugh.
‘Drinks?’ Harri said, interrupting.
They decided on ciders and Harri was putting in their order with the barman – who clearly knew all about their date, judging by the amount of smirking he was doing – when someone appeared tentatively by his side.
‘Are you Harri?’
Anjali was small, dark-haired and beyond pretty in a midnight blue sweater and jeans with strappy black boots up to her calves. Tiny gold studs traced the shell of her left ear. Harri gulped away his nerves and tried to shake her hand, managing to knock one of the ciders so it spilled on the bar.
‘Oh god, sorry.’ He took her hand, realised too late that his was wet with cider suds, apologised yet again, and would have prayed for the ground to open up and swallow him if it wasn’t for Anjali’s reassuring laugh. She shook his hand in spite of the wetness and told him it was nice to meet him.
The barman mopped up the mess while Harri suffered.
‘You want a cider?’ he said, aware that Annie and Kit were already taking their seats at an elaborately set table by the fire. None of the other tables had white cloths and fresh cut flowers. The work of Mrs C., no doubt.
‘Coke’s fine, thanks,’ said Anjali.
‘So, you’re the vet who tackled Aldous, the ungroomable beast?’
She laughed again at this, thank goodness. ‘It was a piece of cake now he’s used to me. When he first came to us, I had to shave him under sedation.’
‘You or the dog?’ Harri blurted, then wished he hadn’t when Anjali didn’t laugh quite as much as before.
‘You take a seat, I’ll bring these over,’ Harri said. ‘That’s Annie Luna over there with Kit.’
Anjali walked away, leaving Harri alone to have a stern word with himself. Stop fumbling! It’s not an audition. It’s a date. And not even a real date. This is just to get the villagers off our backs. Only, the way Annie was laughing sure sounded like this was a great big, very real, double date.
When he’d paid for the drinks and turned to face the room, Annie was sitting right next to Kit and telling them she loved their t-shirt. It’s just a plain old striped t-shirt , Harri thought, grudgingly.
‘How long have you and Kit known each other,’ he asked as he set down Anjali’s Coke and took a sip of his cider. He hadn’t known how dry his mouth was until the bitter apple tang hit his tastebuds and he wanted to down it on the spot.
‘We don’t,’ they both said at the same time.
‘I don’t come into the pub much,’ Anjali explained.
‘And I’ve only been chef here for a year or so,’ Kit added.
‘You’re an incomer like us,’ Annie said, and Kit agreed they sure were.
There came a moment of awkwardness when Harri settled on the chair next to Anjali, directly facing Kit, and the barman appeared with the menu, which listed a few simple, wholesome pub grub dishes. He was wielding his order pad and asking, ‘Did Kit tell you the specials tonight?’
‘Not yet, Finan,’ Kit replied. ‘It’s my individual steak and pastry bakes with blue cheese,’ they told the group.
‘You’ll be wanting fish and chips, right, Annie?’ Harri said with confidence, adding for Kit’s benefit, ‘She loved a chippy tea when we lived together in Wales.’
Annie looked straight at Harri with a fixed smile and announced that she had a hankering for Kit’s steak bake, actually.
Harri wondered why he felt stung. He fell quiet while Anjali explained she didn’t eat meat and asked for the roast Mediterranean veggie pasta. Kit said they’d join her; they weren’t all that hungry after cheffing all day. Last of the group, Harri placed his order for his long-awaited cod and chips with tartare sauce, and extra mushy peas, his favourite.
He realised his cheeks hurt a little from trying to smile. Was he being weird? How come Annie managed to be so calm in situations like this? She was already set upon interviewing Kit about the tattoos across the backs of their fingers, which spelled out the letters of their name with tiny blue swallows in flight.
Harri watched as she very nearly touched her fingertips to the inked spots, unaware it was awakening something within him that he wasn’t used to dealing with. It would be a good fifteen minutes before he recognised it for what it was: jealousy. And he wasn’t proud of it.
Anjali had drunk all her coke. They’d covered where in Wales Harri was from and she’d discovered he made coffee for a living, and he’d learned how she’d lived all her life along the promontory and that her dad was a vet and her mum was a surgeon.
‘My mam’s a housewife and Dad installs conservatories,’ he said, killing the conversation dead.
Across the table Annie was still pumping Kit for information. It was part of her charm offensive. Ask them all about themselves, people love that. It disarms them.
Kit, however, Harri was fascinated to realise, wasn’t one to be swept off their feet by an extrovert taking a deep interest in them. In fact, Kit looked overwhelmed.
‘When did you know you loved cooking?’ Annie was asking, and Kit hurriedly drank from their glass before answering like they were on a quickfire TV quiz show.
‘Um, I don’t know, when I was at school?’
Harri couldn’t help sneaking looks to watch the situation unfold. Kit was pressed into the furthest corner of their chair while Annie was leaning towards them, her chin propped on her hand and her eyes alight. Harri had seen her like this so many times, but usually the subject of her interest was leaning closer and closer to her, flattered and drawn in, desperate to share themselves with a stunning Texan woman with a drawling voice like smoke and bourbon.
‘Are you… enjoying your holiday?’ Anjali broke through his thoughts. When he met her eyes, she looked a little desperate.
‘It’s been fabulous, thanks.’ He smiled, bobbing his head to make up for his lack of words. It was like he’d forgotten how to talk like a normal person. ‘Annie’s the bookseller,’ Harri added at last, and it cut his friend off mid-interrogation.
‘What’s that?’ Annie asked.
‘I was saying how you’re the natural when it comes to bookselling. I’m better in the cafe. You’re great at knowing what books people want. Always was.’
Kit and Annie only smiled politely, and it dawned on Harri he’d singlehandedly stopped the entire date in its tracks. Now no one had anything to say.
Thankfully Finan was back with their food, and everyone pushed it around their plates; everyone except Annie who hoovered up her steak pie with the blue cheese oozing out from a golden pastry lattice.
‘Oh my god!’ she said between bites. ‘Kit, you’re a genius!’
The chef accepted this with a shy grin.
‘You know Harri bakes?’ Annie said across the table to Anjali, sounding like a proud parent.
‘That’s… nice,’ said the accomplished, professional Anjali, clearly unsure how she was supposed to respond to the information that a grown man possesses a basic life skill.
Why did Annie have to go and say that? Like Minty said at the village meeting, you can’t force things, attraction just happens, and it clearly wasn’t happening for Anjali.
‘So you went to uni together?’ Kit asked, trying to rescue things.
‘We sure did,’ Annie grabbed at the topic. ‘No clue how we got as far as graduation; we missed so many classes to fit in work.’
‘And gigs, and hangovers,’ said Harri, before adding wickedly, ‘thanks to Annie. She’s a bad influence, this one.’ It sounded odd and overly familiar, even for them.
Generously, Annie scoffed at this. ‘Hardly!’
‘Oh yeah?’ Harri brightened. ‘Who was it that had to fake your doctor’s note that day you sneaked out to see Christine and the Queens when you were supposed to be in our Shakespeare final?’
‘Who was it came with me to see them?’ she challenged back, eyes shining. ‘Was it fake laryngitis?’
‘Glandular fever.’
‘That’s it! And because we missed the exam, we got to spend the summer in Wales having a blast… and doing our re-sits.’
‘ Such a bad influence,’ Harri said with a ‘ tisk tisk ’ and a head shake.
‘I regret nothing.’ Annie laughed, but it faded fast when she realised their dates were sitting courteously by, listening to them showing off.
Harri inhaled through his teeth, shooting his eyebrows up. ‘Soooo,’ he said pointlessly, unable to come up with another topic.
Nobody talked until Kit threw a lifeline, saying they were thinking of adopting a dog.
‘Really?’ Anjali’s face transformed with happiness, before launching into telling Kit all about the two fosters she had at the surgery at that moment, two elderly greyhounds, ex-racers, both needing a quiet life with beach walks and plenty of naps.
‘I had to stop Elliot taking them both,’ she said, and Kit laughed and remarked how Elliot and Jude had already rehomed three dogs. ‘That’s probably enough to be getting on with.’
Annie finished her food and quietly crossed her cutlery on her empty plate.
‘More drinks?’ Harri said, and Anjali momentarily stopped describing the dogs’ various ailments to say she was fine, thanks, and Kit asked for a second cider but kept their attention fixed on Anjali like those old greyhounds were the most fascinating thing in the world.
‘I’ll help you,’ Annie said, springing to her feet.
‘So… what do you think?’ she asked in a whisper as soon as they slid onto stools at the opposite end of the bar from Bovis (who probably thought he was texting surreptitiously; no doubt updating the gossipmongers of Clove Lore).
‘Think of what?’ Harri said, taking an exaggerated interest in the different ciders in the pumps.
‘Of Kit? They’re super cute, right?’
‘Sure.’
‘What do you think of Anjali? She’s gorgeous, right?’ she pressed.
Harri screwed his nose. ‘Yeah, she’s lovely.’
‘But?’ Annie leaned closer. Her warm almond blossom perfume swelled around them.
‘But, things aren’t exactly flowing,’ he said, amazed she hadn’t picked up on that.
They both glanced back at their dates who were leaning elbows on the table now, mirroring each other, exchanging easy conversation. Anjali was more animated than she’d been all evening.
‘Besides,’ Harri put in, ‘I thought we were just here to get off the hook with Mrs C. You’re not really into Kit, are you?’
Finan made his way down the bar and took their drinks order, preventing them getting into it further. They kept quiet while he worked the pumps and took their money.
‘Would you have been up for a thing with Anjali?’ Annie whispered, as soon as Finan left.
Harri shrugged. It might have been nice if she’d liked him a tiny bit. Maybe he would have asked her out for a proper date. ‘Would it have mattered?’ he said, taking his drink in his hands but not wanting to go back to their table for four.
‘What? To me?’ Annie seemed confused. ‘Why would it matter to me?’
‘Because we’re on holiday together? Would you have minded if she’d been into me?’
Annie’s expression was unreadable, and a little alarm bell sounded in Harri’s brain warning him not to pursue this, whatever it was, any further.
‘I want what’s best for you.’ Annie shrugged. ‘Do I think a rebound holiday fling would be good for you? Probably not, but I wouldn’t stop you.’
Harri took a quick drink from his cider, unaware he was jogging his feet up and down on the footrest.
Annie glanced back at their dates. ‘They’ve forgotten we’re here. I guess there’s going to be another match made in Clove Lore. Dunno if Mrs C. will be pleased or not?’
Harri sniffed a wry laugh. ‘Jowan will be pleased. He did say his money was on us two.’
He wished he hadn’t said it. He was being a dick. And yet, inside he was fighting a losing battle with the self-sabotaging part of himself. Don’t say it , the gentler part was warning. Don’t say it. But the ill-fated double date and seeing Annie flirting with Kit, and of course, the cider, had loosened up the words, and out they came, all in a rush. ‘Annie, when did you have a crush on me?’
Annie’s eyes narrowed. ‘Huh?’
He pulled his lips together, regretting all his life choices. He knew he was being petty but evidently couldn’t stop himself. ‘It’s just I heard you talking the other night at the Big House, saying you had a crush on me, back in the day.’ He forced cheerfulness into his voice, but Annie wasn’t easily fooled.
‘Oh, that was nothing,’ she said, shrugging it off. Annie stood and lifted her drink. Harri followed, only just remembering Kit’s pint as well as his own.
‘I’d have known,’ Harri said briskly, wishing he could shut up.
Annie stopped in her tracks, right in the middle of the bar room, fixing him with a look both pleading and impatient.
‘If you liked me. I’d have known,’ he said again.
‘Well,’ she said with a wry smile. ‘I guess you don’t know everything about me.’
That was a warning shot, he knew. Yet still he wasn’t satisfied. ‘On what day was it that you liked me?’
‘Does it matter?’ Annie was on the move again back to the table.
‘Seriously, when?’ This time it was insistent. He hated himself for it.
Their eyes locked. Annie’s were fierce. ‘Right before you met Paisley,’ she blurted. ‘At the beginning of third year, okay? Happy now?’
She left him standing there, absorbing her words. Not just the words. The tone . Her voice had cracked. She was upset, and she was cross.
He watched her rejoin the others. She looked so incredibly tired all of a sudden. Shit!
He thought of his mum on Friday, still reeling from the news he’d split with Paisley, and telling him not to go upsetting Annie, like she’d instinctively known he somehow would.
Mournfully, he took his seat and listened to Anjali and Kit enthusing about their childhood pets like they were the only two people in the world.
Annie didn’t meet his eyes once, not until they had skipped dessert, said their goodbyes to their oblivious, absorbed dates and made their way silently up the blustery slope, discovering the lights in the bookshop still ablaze when they got there and Jowan dozing with Aldous on his lap by the fire, no sign of anyone else.
‘You’re still here?’ Harri asked him when he jumped awake, and Aldous let out a sharp bark of alarm.
Jowan told them in a whisper how they’d waited all evening for officer Zo? to ring them back with an update, now that they knew the man’s name. ‘But nobody’s looking for him.’
‘No one?’ Annie said, moving closer.
‘There’s no missing person’s report. He hasn’t gone AWOL from a care home or ward, nothing. He doesn’t seem to be from anywhere. And he’s got no ID on him, so,’ Jowan shrugged, ‘he’s being picked up by Social Services in the morning.’
Harri looked around, suddenly suspicious. ‘Where’s he now?’
Jowan tipped his head towards Harri’s bedroom door.
‘He’s in my bed?’
‘Come on, Aldous,’ Jowan said, still whispering. ‘We’ll leave you to it. Mr Sabine’s had his dinner and his antibiotics and is fast asleep after a bath. You’ll have to listen for him waking…’
Harri didn’t know how to baby-sit a grown adult. ‘Do I… go in there with him? Watch him?’
‘No, no, you two get some sleep, an’ keep an ear out for the door in the morning.’
Harri was a few steps ahead. He’d have to sleep out here on the armchair. And after weeks spent sleeping on the couch at Paisley’s. He was ashamed to recognise that he felt sorry for himself. This evening was doing nothing for his sense of selflessness.
Jowan, with Aldous at his heels, bobbed out the door and was gone. Harri thought he might have seen a smirk at the corners of his mouth, and couldn’t account for it until Annie spoke.
‘You’re sharing with me, then?’
Harri stared back blankly.
‘There’s only one bed now,’ Annie said, matter of factly. ‘You’ll freeze to death sleeping in the shop.’
‘Uh…’ He ran through how awful he’d been this evening, showing off how well he knew his friend, trying to spite Kit, probably making Anjali feel rotten, and then he’d pushed and pushed for the grim details about Annie liking him once upon a time when they were basically kids.
‘You comin’?’ Annie was at the foot of the stairs.
Harri meekly followed.
Tucked up, two wide-eyed faces peeped over white covers in the dark, and four hands clutched at the edge of the duvet, as they lay ruminating, listening to the creaking in the rafters as the wind buffeted the Borrow-A-Bookshop.
Annie’s annoyance had ebbed away ages ago. She wasn’t the sort to hold a grudge. Besides hadn’t Harri been through a lot recently? She should have known a date was too much for him to handle, should have put her foot down and protected him. He wasn’t ready to be out there again.
She thought of Kit and how attractive and friendly they were, and yet, she wasn’t all that sure she’d been seriously into them, and why having thoroughly scared Kit off, she’d insisted on flirting so madly. She’d wanted to push Harri, she supposed, after the whole ‘Annwyl’ revelation.
In the dark, Harri rolled his head to look at her. Annie flicked her eyes shut.
‘I’m sorry about tonight. I was being a twat,’ he said.
‘You were such a twat,’ Annie drawled, her eyes still closed, her body still. ‘But I forgive you.’
She heard him chuckle, hoping he would drop the touchy subject of how she’d liked him back in third year. She didn’t like to remember it, the way the crush had struck her, all of a sudden, back when fancying Harri had been the strangest, simplest thing.
It had come towards the end of the May break, the night before their assessment results were coming out. Harri had been confident he’d be fine; Annie, less so. She’d worked hard enough but had missed a few Classics lectures and had only read the SparkNotes on The Oresteia Trilogy instead of reading the plays.
Harri had been confident generally that spring term. She’d noticed a change in him. He was smiling more readily, his body seemed relaxed in a way she’d never noticed before, and yes, his shoulders were noticeably broader, and she was sure he’d grown taller. He’d been making more of an effort picking out clothes too.
One day, as his Waterstones shift was ending and hers was beginning, he’d breezed past her in a rush, the neck of his shirt open. She’d never noticed the thickness of his throat or the hard curve of his Adam’s apple before. He’d had his hair cut with velvety-looking buzzed sides that seemed to her in that moment very strokable. He’d smelled good too, of something new. ‘No time to stop,’ he’d said, and he’d kissed her cheek as he ran past, and she’d felt a curious weakness in her knees.
That had been her first inkling of really noticing Harri. Then, waiting for their results to come out that night in the flat when everyone else had gone out to the pub, she’d been struck with the period cramps that could ruin whole days at a time, and he’d not even had to think about it, hadn’t even asked, he’d just grabbed his wallet and disappeared, coming back half an hour later with a box of Cadbury Creme Eggs (one of her absolute favourite things about living in Wales), salt ’n’ vinegar Chipsticks, and, bless him, a big blue packet of Bodyform Night Time towels. For some reason he’d gone for the twenty-four pack, not the eight, and somehow that had made her glow with affection. He’d stood there, not wanting praise or thinking he’d done anything particularly special, and he simply handed them all over and said one word, ‘Tea?’, and that’s when she melted for sure.
It had been, she could admit to herself now, excitingly painful to fancy her friend. She’d talked it over with Cassidy on whispered Skype calls late at night.
‘You gotta tell him!’ Cassidy had insisted.
‘But how do I tell him? He sees me as a friend. He’ll think I’m a creeper, crushing on him all this time. I’m like a sister to him!’
‘He’s a guy; he’ll love it.’
‘Harri’s not like that.’
‘Says who?’
‘Says twelve yellow roses on Valentine’s Day. Says him brushing his teeth and scratching his butt in front of me for two whole years. Says us being work colleagues and roommates. If it was going to happen it’d have happened by now.’
Annie conveniently left out how she’d only recently started to like him, and she’d never even considered sweet, funny, friendly Harri as a potential boyfriend until then, and that she’d never given him any indication she liked him whatsoever, so how could it have happened before now?
Besides, this was Harri she was talking about. Lovely, nerdy Harri. Her best friend on this side of the globe. She could flirt with other people around campus, but not Harri. It’d feel artificial somehow and, well, icky.
Annie distinctly remembered Cassidy accepting her list as very good reasons not to tell him, and instead of protesting that if she liked him she should tell him, Cassidy told her it’d be best not to blow the friendship.
Undergraduate Annie, only just embarking on her twenties, had let it go, suffering in exquisite silence for weeks until the reason for Harri’s newfound confidence presented herself in the flat one morning.
Annie had heard the giggling and Harri’s throaty laughter over the sounds of the shower running. Later, they’d emerged, their hair wrapped up in matching towels. Harri had introduced the woman wearing his Swansea City football top as, ‘Paisley, my girlfriend.’
Annie had to throw her hands to her cheeks thinking her reddening face was about to crack from smiling so fixedly. Paisley must have read the situation correctly; she hadn’t liked Annie on sight.
So, she’d deliberately shrunk into the background, minimising her feelings, trying to ignore how mortifying it all was, staying late at the library to avoid overhearing Harri and Paisley in the room next to hers. It had been kind of hideous, but come autumn when the new semester began, after a summer of angst and longing, mixed with Harri-avoidance and self-denial, Annie told herself sternly that enough was enough.
Paisley was hanging around every day by that point and Harri was happy, which was all that mattered. Annie congratulated herself on beating her crush, and she didn’t dare think of it again. Not until Sunday night at the village meeting when Jude was prying it out of her, and the confession had felt innocent enough. She’d liked him once, but they were better off as friends. She hadn’t intended him to overhear. That had been stupid of her. But what she’d said remained true, nonetheless. Friendship was all that mattered.
Tonight had proven that Harri wasn’t emotionally equipped for a relationship, even a casual date had been too much for him. The last thing he needed was more complicated feelings on top of his Paisley heartbreak, and god knows, she couldn’t bear to lose another friend after the mess with Cassidy.
‘We okay?’ Harri was asking now, lying by her side in the dark, a large expanse of no-man’s-mattress between them.
Annie considered for a millisecond addressing the way he’d let her think ‘Annwyl’ was just his cute nickname for her when all along it may have signified something more, but she squashed the urge.
‘We’re good,’ she told him, walking her hand along the top of the covers to his. She closed her fingers over his and squeezed them tight, hoping Harri, who had fallen silent now, couldn’t feel her body sending out hot crackles of electricity, surprising in their intensity. She released him, just in case.
She glowed wordlessly in the dark until, deep in the night, she finally fell asleep, forgetting all about their guest in the room downstairs, thinking only of the next ten days of bookselling and how she was going to get through them unscathed.