Chapter 41
The rest of the night had whooshed by in a blur of chatting and that very simple thing known as having a nice time. Otto had arrived back on the scene, and just behind him, the fireworks arrived too. Otto and more Otto worked for Tilly.
As the oyster event itself had wrapped up, Tilly had found her body following Otto into the pub as if she’d totally lost control of it.
Like she’d not had any choice in the matter.
In the pub, a plate of lovely hot chips doused in salt and vinegar had gone down well, as had a slow stroll under the moonlight back home.
Now, Tilly stood in the little kitchen, staring out the window with her hands gripping the side of the old worktop, two glasses in front of her, loving how her evening had turned out.
It was fair to say that she was over the moon that Otto Carrington was now sitting waiting for her on the sofa.
Funny old life, really, because bizarrely she felt as if she was no longer the one waiting but controlling the game.
The Catherine wheel had taken on a life of its own.
On the walk home, it had spun and spat and showered sparks down to the very tips of Tilly’s fingers and told her in no uncertain terms that it liked the company it was in.
Pulling a bottle of Hendrick’s from the cupboard, Tilly shook her head about the turn of events.
How on earth had she ended up in what was little more than a shed on an island off the south coast about to share a nightcap with a man?
A rash decision to implement her exit plan had got her a long way.
One minute she'd been on the other side of the planet, perspiring into a sundress in a tropical bar, waiting.
The next on a foggy little island anchored to England by a chain ferry, in a tumbledown shed she'd bought sight unseen off a Facebook post, making a nightcap for a gorgeous oyster farmer while fireworks went off behind her ribs.
You could not, as her dad would have said, make it up.
Regarding Lennixx, the hurt, the Australian women and all of that, Tilly found, to her quiet astonishment, nothing there at all.
Not a twinge, flicker, feeling, or anything about any of it.
Forty-eight months of her life, cruise ships, tropical sunshine, hotels, hibiscus clip and all the waiting had gone up in one quick little poof.
She had no interest, no inclination even to look at Lennixx.
It appeared that Tilly’s feelings had jumped ship.
They’d leapt and landed somewhere much better.
Her feelings, or lack thereof, for the wannabe entertainer had floated off down the estuary without a backward glance.
Tilly couldn't summon up much at all about the man beyond a faint, distant embarrassment that she'd given him loads of herself for so very little in return. You live and learn. You really do.
Shaking her head as Tilly unscrewed the top from the Hendrick’s, she mused how a whole chapter of her life had come to an end.
Weirdly, her forty-eight months of globetrotting almost felt like a dream.
As she took a cucumber out of the fridge, cut off two slices and popped them along with some ice into the glasses, a few things struck her.
Firstly, she was calling the shots, in control, steering the ship.
Secondly, it seemed as if she’d somehow come home.
Her mind zoomed back to her ex-husband as she stirred the drinks.
She’d been in control then but in a very different way.
A careful way with everything as he’d checked her mileometer, her clothes, her money, her petrol.
He’d controlled how she looked, what she spent and how she lived her life.
In the end, before her exit plan, she’d been careful with everything: thoughts, hopes, dreams, inner feelings, any feelings.
Keeping the best of herself folded away.
Staying small, keeping quiet. Now she was in control. Boom shakka.
With all that in mind, what in the world was she doing making a double gin and tonic for a man she didn’t know from Adam?
The whole point of the move was to be solo.
To explore her inner introvert, partake in having no neighbours, enjoy zero men.
That had been the entire point of the Boat Shed.
Ha, that hadn’t lasted long. Who even was she?
Fizzing from head to toe, feeling as if things in her body were on fire.
Wanting to be the opposite of careful and go for her life.
To just, for once in her sensible, self-protecting, much-waited life, jump in with six feet.
Revel in the fireworks, wade around in the sparkles.
Follow your intuition, Tils. It's always worked for me.
Smiling as Tilly thought about what her dad would have said, she put the Hendrick’s in the fridge and picked up the drinks.
Gulping a very hefty swig from one of them, she nodded.
She’d crossed half the world to start again and be on her own, and now look at her.
Against every single one of her own carefully laid plans, being on her own was the last thing she wanted. She wanted company in her bed.