Chapter 7
‘Eleanor.’
Snapping her head up, Ellie looked over.
Sure enough, Murray was leaning across the passenger seat, his face appearing in the side window of his van.
Of all the people she wanted to run into now, Murray would be her last choice.
Even as she thought that, her heart constricted.
It wasn’t that she didn’t want to see him, it was just that she didn’t think she had the brain space and emotional availability to deal with whatever this was, whatever this meant for her, for them, their history.
‘Can we talk?’ Murray called through the open window towards her.
Nodding towards the sketchbooks in her arms, Ellie hoped he wouldn’t notice her eyes had filled with tears. ‘I’m a bit busy.’
‘Jump in, I’ll give you a lift. Just tell me which direction you’re going in.’ Murray popped the passenger door open and waved towards her, indicating she should join him.
‘I really can’t.’ Shaking her head, Ellie blinked as the tears threatened to flow.
She couldn’t break down, not here and not in front of Murray.
She had so much to think about, so much to try to make sense of and she couldn’t cope with the feelings which Murray’s presence was resurfacing.
She was confused enough by what she’d just discovered about her relationship with Rick, she just needed some time to unpick all that.
‘Please. Just give me five minutes, that’s all. Five minutes of your time and I’ll leave you alone. We won’t even have to talk again.’ Murray gave her a slow half-smile.
Nodding slowly, Ellie sank into the passenger seat, admittedly a little bit grateful she didn’t have to make the walk home after deciding to leave her car back at the cottage this morning, convinced the walk would ‘do her good’.
After slipping her bag into the footwell, she lowered the sketchbooks to her lap.
She didn’t want Murray to leave her alone, and she didn’t want him to think she was being awkward by not wanting to speak to him.
She did. She wanted nothing more than to feel his arms around her, to hear him tell her that everything was going to be okay.
Just as he always had when they’d been seeing each other.
She’d never felt safer than during the four years she and Murray had been dating.
But that was in the past, this was now and his arrival in Pennycress had not only opened old wounds but had poured a bucket load of salt on for good measure too.
‘I’m sorry about last night. I shouldn’t have got cross at you for changing your tyre outside my gate.’
‘You yelled at me.’ She kept her eyes focused on the sketchbooks in her lap, using the pad of her forefinger to outline a red heart Laura had drawn on the front cover beneath the words, Our Wedding.
‘I did. I’m sorry. I hope I didn’t scare you.’ Murray pulled away from the kerb, the indicator clicking rhythmically.
‘You didn’t scare me.’ He had startled her.
She hadn’t expected anyone to be about. Much less to get shouted at for choosing to change her tyre in a gateway rather than in the middle of the poorly lit narrow road to Meadowfield, but it hadn’t been that which had thrown her. ‘It just wasn’t like you, that’s all.’
‘It’s been a long time. You don’t know me anymore.’ He glanced quickly across at her before focusing his attention back on the road. ‘We don’t know each other.’
Ellie shrugged. He was right. A lot had happened in her life in the years following her and Murray’s relationship, and they would have done in his life too. ‘But you never used to get angry. Not like that. What happened?’
‘You never used to cry on street corners either.’ His words were quiet, almost as though he had been hesitant to speak them.
Opening her mouth to answer, she felt her cheeks sear with embarrassment. ‘I wasn’t crying.’
‘Perhaps. But if you weren’t, you were close.’
How had he noticed that? She shrugged. There was no point in denying it. She had been close to tears. She still was.
‘Which way am I going?’ Murray allowed the car to slow to a stop at the junction as he glanced in each direction.
‘Left.’ The cottage was only a short walk from the inn, and she’d walked half of it before he’d pulled up. They’d be there in a matter of seconds. ‘And then I’m down Sheep Street.’
Nodding, Murray turned the steering wheel, his eyes focused on the road ahead.
Glancing across at him, Ellie tightened her grasp on the pile of Laura’s sketchbooks on her lap. What did he want from her? To explain himself? To give her the answers she’d spent years pursuing, searching for? Why would he? He wouldn’t. Not after the way he’d left her.
‘Whereabouts?’ Murray hitched a forefinger from the steering wheel and pointed down the street.
Shaking herself from her thoughts, Ellie nodded towards her little cottage and cringed internally.
She really would have to find the time to sort the front garden out.
It was the scruffiest in the row of cottages hugging the side of the narrow road.
Huh, maybe she should start looking at the positives for once – no TV would equal the time to garden.
As soon as the van slowed to a stop, Ellie jumped out, clutching the sketchbooks to her chest as she bent to retrieve her bag from the footwell. ‘Thanks for the lift.’
‘You’re welcome.’ After pulling the handbrake up, Murray opened his door, joining her on the path.
Walking quickly towards the garden gate, Ellie laid her hand on the latch and looked back at him. He needed to go. ‘Thank you again for the lift.’ She spoke firmly, hoping he’d get the message and leave.
Widening his stance, Murray looked at his trainers and rubbed the back of his neck. ‘Do you mind if I come in quickly? If we’re both going to be living here, I think it’s best we have a talk.’
‘Talk?’ Ellie parroted back, her mouth suddenly unable to form any coherent words of her own.
Of course, that’s what he’d said he wanted when he’d given her a lift, but she’d been so focused on trying not to let the tears fall in front of Murray, she’d somehow let it slip her mind that he’d actually wanted to talk.
But after all this time? Which had been what? Nine years?
Letting her hand drop from the latch, she hefted her bag higher up on her shoulder.
Who was she kidding? She knew exactly how long it had been, but that was the point, wasn’t it?
Murray had always been her ‘one that got away’, the man who had scorched a scar so deep on her heart that it had taken her years to recover, had taken every ounce of her being to learn to live without him, to carve a new life for herself.
And now that she had, she didn’t know if she wanted to hear his excuses, she didn’t know if she wanted to learn the reasons he’d walked away after promising her the stars.
It had been too long. And too much had happened in both their lives for anything he said now to be of any relevance to her, to either of them, anymore.
Lifting her head, she met his gaze with more strength than she felt and shook her head. ‘I don’t think that’s such a good idea. Let’s leave the past behind us.’
Murray’s forehead furrowed as he shoved his hands in the pockets of his scruffy jeans. ‘I really think it would be good to clear the air now we’re both living in the same village.’
Ellie glanced towards the cottage. Even if she decided to relent and let him speak whatever nonsense he was planning on saying, she couldn’t very well invite him in. Not that she wanted to.
She nodded towards the sketchbooks in her arms. ‘I’m sorry. I’m really up against a tight deadline at the moment.’
Murray tore his eyes from her and leaned forward, easily opening the latch and swinging the gate open. ‘Another time then?’
‘Uh-huh.’ Hurrying through the open gateway, Ellie glanced behind her to watch him return to his van before heading into the cottage.
Closing the front door firmly behind her, she placed the pile of sketchbooks onto the window ledge and held her hip against them to stop them from falling as she looked out of the tiny hallway window, watching him leave.
What would he have told her if she’d let him in?
Apart from being completely shocked by the absolute state of the desolate cottage, that was.
And why had he been so insistent on wanting to drag up the past?
She’d needed his explanation years ago, when they’d first split up, not now.
She’d put him, their relationship, the future she’d thought they’d have together, in the past, secured them in the part of her mind which she didn’t want to access anymore.
Turning away, she picked up the sketchbooks before slipping her shoes off and heading into the living room.
No, she wasn’t about to drag up emotions she’d long ago stored away, the same emotions which had single-handedly built the walls around her heart. Not even for him.