Chapter 25
HEATHER
When she wakes, Scott is distractedly stroking her hair with one hand whilst typing frantically on his phone with the other, his lips slightly parted.
She raises herself up on her left elbow and uses her right hand to stroke his cheek.
She’s just awoken from a long, dream-filled sleep where waking to the warmth of his body and his skin on hers is the norm.
In the dream, Scott, Georgia and Brianna form a brand-new family unit, and this feeling of security and belonging becomes so familiar it is almost, shockingly, taken for granted.
‘Morning,’ she says, revelling in her memories of the night before, when he remembered what she likes.
She thinks how he’d traced his fingers to the familiar spots that had previously rendered her powerless in his hands; the way his lips lingered on the places that caused her to lose control of her limbs.
He’d remembered the right moments to pull, tweak, eek out and tease; and exactly the right time to relent to her cries. Wanting him, needing him. Now.
It’s a second or two before he stops tapping on his phone and turns to her.
‘Morning,’ he says. He slides his phone under the pillow and tilts his head to skim her lips with his.
‘Everything okay?’ she asks, partly because she’s uneasy about what’s taking his full attention at nine o’clock on a Sunday morning, and partly because she’s afraid he might be filled with regret over last night.
‘Of course,’ he says, tousling his hair at the fringe and adjusting his position to kiss the end of her nose. ‘Fancy a coffee?’
‘Hmmm.’
Brianna often teases her dad for being a coffee snob and describes the elaborate steps he takes to produce the ultimate caffeine hit at home. Heather doesn’t want to miss out on trying this for herself.
‘Ten minutes, okay?’
Heather turns languidly onto her side and watches, appreciatively, as he extracts himself from under the sheet and pulls on a pair of close-fitting boxer shorts.
The muscles in his shoulders flex as he dresses.
She slumps back on the mattress and allows herself a few moments of unrealistic daydreaming.
She ignores past hurts, entrenched behaviours, self-protective habits and allows herself permission to fall into a fairy tale place where she and Scott could live an existence where every Sunday morning follows a similar format.
She’s imagining a holiday cottage on the Devon coast when she hears a ping come from under Scott’s pillow.
The jangling brings her out of the daydream, but she quickly re-engages with the fantasy.
Perhaps they should get a dog? A beagle of some sort?
They could marvel at its ingenuity and intelligence over their morning coffee and croissants on the patio whilst listening to the sound of the waves on the shore.
The phone is ringing now. Persistent. Jarring. She reaches under the pillow in an almost reflexive action. Brianna might need him. But the name on the screen isn’t Brianna’s.
Lorraine.
Again.
Lorraine, whoever she is, rings off whilst the phone is still in Heather’s hand, and the home screen displays the first few words of a previously sent text, also from Lorraine. “Stop ignoring ….”
Her heart contracts and she scrunches her eyes closed for a moment. Don’t tell me he’s just like the rest of them. She’s frozen in position: his phone in her hand, eyes on the screen, brain in overdrive, when Scott re-enters the room with a tray. His eyes flit to the phone.
‘It was ringing,’ she says, throwing it onto the duvet by her feet. ‘Lorraine, apparently.’ She stops short of saying the word “again”. ‘I wasn’t prying. I thought it might be …’
Scott places the tray at the foot of the bed wordlessly, locates his phone, and presses the button to power it off.
Then, he hands her a cup. Heather sits up, accepts it and places it on the coaster on the bedside table.
She wills him to say something … anything.
But silence. Something instinctive makes her reach to the floor, pick up the pink dress she was wearing last night and pull it across her chest before settling onto the pillows and taking her first sip. Eventually, he speaks.
‘So, what do you think?’
Heather looks over the rim of the cup. Scott’s eyes are searching her face. She doesn’t want to seem dense, but what can he possibly mean? The last few minutes have sent her spinning.
‘About?’
Scott nods to the cup in her hands.
‘The coffee.’
The coffee? The bloody coffee? He wants to talk about coffee?
‘Ah … yes. That. The coffee.. Yes. Nice …Great. Thanks.’
She takes another sip. It scalds her tongue. She's not lying, the coffee is deeply aromatic with a wonderful smokiness. But Scott surely knows her attention has moved to other things. He nods and drinks in silence.
‘I’m sorry about earlier,’ he says when she returns from the shower, cleaned and fully dressed. Her train is in two hours, and she can’t afford to miss it. The remaining ‘trains’ today are all bus replacement services involving eight hours’ travel to Edinburgh.
He’s pulled a fresh pair of chinos over his boxer shorts and a light blue polo shirt over his head in her absence.
‘I wasn’t trying to pry, you know,’ she says, risking a glance directly into his eyes. The first proper eye contact since seeing his phone.
He steps towards her and kisses the top of her head.
‘I know that. And Heather, I promise you, it’s not what you think. Things are just a bit ...’
She pulls away from him gently. She’d thought it through whilst she was showering, got her thoughts in a more ordered format in her head. Her gut instinct tells her this man is different, somehow. And she owes it to herself to go with it for the short term, at least.
‘Complicated. I get it.’
He winces at the word. One he’s perhaps heard linked to as many disastrous relationships as she has over the years.
‘But it’s not a sign you want to play the field or aren’t that into me?’ she finds herself asking, almost needily. It's just important to know.
He shakes his head, the sinews in his neck going into overdrive.
‘No. Never, ever that.’
She already knows he isn’t a talker. So, she allows him to pull her into his arms. She snuggles into the place she’s already begun to associate with comfort and belonging.
‘This thing between us,’ he says into her hair.
‘I know.’
The longing in her voice is impossible to dampen.
‘We said it was a one-off,’ he continues.
She laughs.
‘Some one-off.’
‘I know. The thing is Heather. When it comes to you…. One-offs? I just … I just can’t.’
What’s the right response? Me neither? She lifts her head and they kiss. A long, lingering kiss. She can feel him through his chinos and the corresponding reaction in her underwear. There’s something undeniable between them. A chemistry.
‘But neither of us wants a relationship, right? We don’t want to go there?’ She repeats the words almost verbatim, because an element of it is true.
Scott nods.
‘And we don’t want to confuse the girls,’ he says, as though perpetuating this game of denial.
‘No. Absolutely. We don’t want that.’
If there’s anything about this messy situation that Heather’s certain of, it is this. Georgia has had enough men enter their lives and leave with no trace. She’s not about to subject her daughter to that level of rejection again.
‘So, where do we go from here?’ His eyes search hers. ‘Because the one thing I know is that I don’t want this to never happen again.’
The idea of never feeling his body, tight against hers, feels like an affront.
‘Me neither.’
Her throat is taut, her voice tight.
‘So what, then? We agree that this is just something we do? Two consenting adults. Not wanting anything more?’
His fingers are on the buttons of her dress.
‘Mid-lifers who know what they want in life,’ she adds, as she fumbles with the button at his waist. Because what’s the harm? What’s the real harm?
He unfastens her dress and slips his hand into her underwear. She gasps.
‘Scott. My train’s in—‘
His lips find hers, stifling the objection.
‘There’s time,’ he says, withdrawing his fingers. He places his hands under each of her thighs, lifts her to straddle him and walks them both towards the sofa.
She very nearly misses her train.
SCOTT
Closing the door to an empty home just about knocks Scott for six when he returns after dropping Heather at the train station.
How’s it possible for a woman he’s known only six months to consume him like this?
The one thing he knows for certain is he’s glad there’s an agreement between them where they can still see each other.
Imagine coming home to this sense of solitude if, alongside it, was an understanding that Heather would no longer be in his life in that way?
The idea is intolerable. A tiny inkling of a question about his all-consuming desire to spend more time with her needles him, but he doesn’t let his brain go there.
He can’t. It’s good for now. It’s enough.
He slumps on the sofa and glances at his phone.
Lorraine. Another three missed – or ignored – calls.
What must Heather think when she hears the litany of pings and alerts coming from his phone during their most intimate moments?
That she trusts him when he says “it’s not what you think” is testament to the belief she has in him.
But, like him, Heather’s been hurt in the past – there’s only so long he can get away with fobbing her off – and he knows it.
It’s three o’clock in the afternoon, but Scott opens his drinks cupboard, finds his twenty-five-year-old malt and pours himself a generous measure.
If he’s going to do this, he will need some sustenance.
He replaces the lid on the bottle, throws the measure down his throat. Winces. Then dials.
His former sister-in-law answers on the second ring and greets him with a frank, ‘About bloody time.’
‘Lorraine. I’m sorry. It just felt … It felt too soon,’ he says.
There’s a pause down the line. Lorraine will not be expecting to hear his vulnerabilities offered up so freely.
‘I know. I get it,’ she says. ‘The thing is, Scott. It’s time whether we’re ready for it or not. Ten … twelve weeks, tops. And taking this next step is essential for us all.’
‘You’ve done it, then?’
‘Twice. Three times, actually.’
‘And?’
‘And it helped. Like, really, really helped.’
He doesn’t want to hear that mediation with his wife’s killer helped her sister.
It’s enough to force himself to not shout ‘traitor’ at her and end the call.
The idea something this monumental can be part of a healing process feels about as counterintuitive as you can get.
Like placing maggots on an open, festering wound.
Something that just can’t be right – even when the professionals tell you it is.
‘You should do it, Scott. Brianna, too.’
His heart freezes at the mention of his daughter’s name.
‘No way. No bloody way.’ The words are out like a reflex action, no filtering through the brain required. This response is hard-wired. Instinctive. His job is to protect, right? It’s a value he knows Heather would get without a moment’s hesitation.
‘Scott—,'
‘No, Lorraine. That’s it. End of.’
He can hear muttering in the background as Lorraine senses defeat.
‘So it’s a hard no?’ she asks, as if clarification is required.
‘A very hard no. Lorraine. Do not go there.’
Scott stands up, pours himself another scotch, and swallows it in one gulp.
‘So, what about a visit back here?’
The very idea of going back to the place he and Brianna left mere months after Lucy died is like forcing a stake through his heart.
‘Lorraine,’ he says, hearing the note of pleading in his own voice.
‘It’s time, Scott,’ she says. The shackles off. The truth distilled into two short words. He leaves her hanging. ‘Will you at least think about it?’
Scott takes a third drink to mark the end of the call and sits on the couch, completely bereft, and doesn’t smile again until he receives a text from Heather with an attached image of two strangers sitting behind a train table, covered with empty miniature bottles of wine.
“Found my tribe in first class” she types.
Scott gives the image a heart emoji, changes into his running gear, and leaves the house.
He knows he’ll need to tell her soon.