Follow a Star (21 page)

‘I shall be very relieved to escape from here,’ Cecil said with a sigh.

With a smell of slightly over-cooked dinner and a hint of bed-pan hanging thickly in the hot air, Bill couldn’t blame him. ‘Not long now, and you’ll be a free man,’ Bill reassured him and glanced across at May. His uncle had been a bit tetchy when Bill had nipped over to see him at lunchtime, but had recovered himself at the sight of May when they walked into the ward together.

‘It’s very good of you to give up your time to console a tedious old man when you could be doing something exciting,’ Cecil told her with a wan smile.

‘Don’t be silly,’ said May, leaning closer to be heard above the neighbouring patient’s TV. Sitting across the bed from him, she clasped Cecil’s hand and smiled. ‘I wanted to wish you all the best for tomorrow anyway. I’ll come up in the morning, if you’d like someone to keep you company before they operate.’

His proud uncle looked a bit tearful, Bill was moved to see, and when he tried to speak again his voice was thin and husky. He cleared his throat and started again. ‘Naturally, from the minute one is labelled “nil-by-mouth”, the stronger one’s desire grows for a cup of tea,’ he said, looking with longing as hot drinks were offered to others. ‘No, there’s no need for you to trouble yourself, my dear. In fact, I don’t want to see either of you before the procedure. It may be superstitious of me, but I feel it would be unlucky.’

‘Rubbish,’ Bill interjected, ‘nothing’s going to happen. You’ll be out the other side before you know it.’

‘But which other side?’ he pondered. ‘So long as it’s the angels on the ward and not at the Pearly Gates waiting to greet me, I’ll be happy. I refuse to miss the chance to sail my boat now, not when I can almost touch her. Bill, dear boy, we both know there is a risk, however small, so I didn’t bring you up here to say goodbye. However, it would very much give me something to look forward to if I knew I was going to see you again when it’s all over. Would it be very selfish of me to ask you both to look in on me afterwards?’

Once they had left the hot, claustrophobic ward behind them, Bill had to make sure May didn’t feel trapped by Cecil’s request. In the car park a single blackbird was singing a fluting melodic song. May tilted her head on one side as she listened for a moment before replying. ‘It’s the least I can do, Bill, after what your uncle’s done for me. If it wasn’t for his ad, I wouldn’t have …’

What? He needed to know. Wouldn’t have realised how much she missed her ex? Unfinished business, May had said. What did that mean? And speaking of unfinished business, as a professional he never walked off a job, no matter how tough it got, and it wasn’t exactly helping him to sleep at night thinking about how close he’d come to making love to May.

‘I wouldn’t have known what a good cook you are.’ She reached out and patted his hand. Bill would much rather she found some more interesting parts of him to pat, but he was doing his best to respect her feelings and not rush her into a relationship. ‘Sure you’re all right about this? I don’t mind if you’d prefer to have an early night.’

An early night was exactly what he felt like, but not one that would give him much sleep. ‘It’ll be good to have company,’ he said lightly.

‘What’s on the menu tonight?’

A couple of rude retorts sprang to mind, but Bill ignored them. With Cecil about to go under the knife, so to speak, it was hardly the right night for romance.

‘Wait and see,’ he said with a smile, opening the van door for her. ‘And don’t get grumpy, I know what you’re like when you’re waiting to be fed.’

‘Hey!’ she protested. ‘Once! Once in a whole week, I might have got a bit snappy when I was particularly peckish.’

Bill walked round to the driver’s side and slid in next to her. It was going to be fine, he could do this. After all, he’d managed to keep his hands off her most of the time they were at sea.

In Bill’s van they fell into a comfortable silence. May liked that. Silence with Aiden was weighted with portent, the eerie stillness whilst he considered the next move in his cat and mouse mind games. With Bill, she could relax and let her train of ideas take off in any direction without fear of him breaking in, demanding to know what she was thinking. Yet, for all Bill’s protests that he was fine about Cecil’s operation, his tired eyes betrayed the strain of recent days. He was also doing his utmost to stop yawning, and May started to feel guilty at jumping so quickly at his offer to cook for her. She’d seized it as a chance to recapture some of the easy companionship they’d shared on
Lucille
. If she and Bill could be friends, perhaps it would stop her waking in the middle of the night from hot dreams about what might have been if the tide hadn’t turned against them.

Before she could suggest that it wasn’t too late to postpone their meal to another evening, she realised that they had left the road. They were following a track which eventually led to an isolated low-slung building in a gently undulating landscape with fields behind and views across the marshes where a rising mist dissolved distant shapes to purple shadows.

‘It was almost derelict when I found it,’ Bill said. ‘Just one of those abandoned farm buildings nobody quite knows what to do with.’

‘You live here?’ said May. Knapped flint faced the gable end wall of a pretty brick cottage with a roof that sloped steeply down to a small sunroom with French doors leading out to the garden.

‘No,’ said Bill, ‘I only brought you here to impress you. I’ve got a flashy four-bed place on a brand new housing estate, with a gym in the garage and plenty of room on the drive for my van. Is that what you were expecting from a builder?’

May felt herself blush. At their first meeting she had been guilty of stereotyping him, and it had suited her not to probe too deeply on their delivery trip in case she was forced to say more about herself than she wanted. ‘Harry quickly put me right about what you really did,’ she admitted. ‘Although, I would probably have expected you to live in something more modern, which is daft, given that you conserve old buildings.’

‘I didn’t even know if I’d get permission to turn it into a residential dwelling. All I knew was that it had a lot of charm and the location was unique, so I took a chance and bought it. Fortunately, my gamble paid off. The planning authorities approved of my proposals and I was even able to add the single storey extension which accommodates my study. Of course, I didn’t know then that I might end up housing an elderly relative … I’m not sure how Cecil will cope here if the worst happens. I’ve told him I’m bringing him back here for a few days to recuperate, but I guess his long-term future depends on how tomorrow goes.’

Despite her intentions to look but not touch, May reached across and squeezed his hand. Her conscience was telling her that now would be a good time to tell Bill that it would be a better idea if he took her back to the boatyard and caught up with his sleep, but she sensed he needed to take his mind off his worries about the operation. ‘The worst is not going to happen,’ she said instead. ‘Cecil’s far too determined to take
Lucille
on the water for that.’

‘Thank you,’ he said, his expression hard to read in the evening shadows. ‘Well, are you coming in?’

A pair of part-glazed hardwood doors in the gable end led straight in to a kitchen-dining room, where something in the duck-egg-blue Rayburn was filling the air with a mouth-watering aroma. Pitted and worn red brick pamment flooring and the exposed beams added to the room’s considerable charm and painted a wonderfully inviting picture.

‘Wow! You did all this?’

‘Mostly. I’d occasionally enlist one of the blokes when they had some down time.’ He took a bottle of sparkling water from the fridge and poured them each a glass. ‘You don’t drink and I’m driving, so we’ll have to toast Cecil’s health with this instead. Come through.’

There was an opening to the sitting room where a wood-burning stove sat on a raised stone plinth in a large open fireplace and a quirky wooden staircase led up to the first floor. A high white-painted vaulted ceiling reflected what was left of the evening light, flooding the room with deep gold and warming the exposed brick and flint walls of the original building which could otherwise have looked bare.

‘Gosh, Bill, this is lovely,’ she said with a sigh, looking round at deep, mismatched sofas and some wonderful dark oak glazed bookcases. Having grown up in a house where skirting boards hung off the walls, the kitchen was only half modernised and the new pipework had never quite got boxed-in or painted, she imagined that anyone in the building trade was like her dad; always too busy or too tired to finish the work in his own home.

‘What were you expecting? Some towering monument to my ego?’ he shook his head. ‘I’m afraid I’ve been too well trained by Cecil not to waste money. All those hours I spent looking round junk shops and car boot sales for antiques mean that hunting for bargains is well and truly in my genes.’

She was very touched to see that he’d even gone to the trouble of setting a small circular table for supper in the garden room. Her mum was someone who ate to live rather than lived to eat, and Aiden enjoyed the frisson and extraneous pressures created by eating out, especially when he had anything of an audience.

‘Have a seat,’ he said, pointing to one of the wicker chairs before opening the French doors to the garden just enough to let in some mild air which was sweet with the scent of honeysuckle. May watched as he walked round lighting candles, absent-mindedly noting that he still hadn’t had time for that haircut. Tonight it looked more gold than red and as he bent forwards, it flopped over his eyes. He shoved it back off his face and the candlelight picked up the sprinkling of gold stubble and the deeper copper of his sideburns. May badly wanted to run her hands across his face and stroke his rough jaw, but instead she made herself take a sip of water and think about poor Cecil lying in hospital.

‘What’s happening about Cecil’s antique shop?’

‘Something else on the to-do list,’ Bill said, straightening up, but not before May had got a very fine view of low-slung jeans skimming over his lean hips and firm backside. ‘It’s always been more of an interest for him than a serious source of income. He roped in the friend of a friend to look after the place on a temporary basis, but I guess it all depends on how strong he feels after the op as to whether or not he decides it’s worth keeping.’

He reached across to top up her glass and May found herself breathing in the familiar Bill smell of him as she stared at the base of his throat above the navy shirt.

‘Sit tight,’ he said with a grin. ‘I’ll bring you some food.’

May made herself sit tight, especially as the bolt of rampant lust that shot through her made her worry about what would happen if she moved.

As it happened, Bill’s wonderful Thai curry and fragrant rice did a terrific job of persuading May’s body that there were other appetites worth satisfying besides the need to have hot sex with him quite urgently. The conversation was relaxed too, as they both forgot the demands from other people that came with being back on dry land. There was more room to move in Bill’s conservatory than in
Lucille’s
cabin, but the sense of both being inside and outside recalled the intimacy they had shared during the voyage.

‘So, how are you doing now? Feeling any more rested?’

‘Oh, was that a bat, I saw?’ said May.

‘Probably,’ said Bill. ‘They often flit round the garden at night. But don’t change the subject. How’s the broken heart doing?’

May put her fork down. ‘It wasn’t about my heart, Bill. I hadn’t been in love with Aiden for a very long time, I know that now, but he knew how to get inside my head. Not any more though. It’s over and it feels good to be back in control of me!’

She couldn’t stop herself breaking into a smile, knowing it was true. Bill watched her for a while then smiled back. Lovely, pillar-of-strength Bill. With that wonderful, kissable mouth, she thought, dropping her gaze to it and shivering at what he might do with it.

‘You’re cold,’ he said. ‘Let’s move back into the sitting room.’

Yes, let’s, thought May. The sitting room with its deep, comfortable sofas with plenty of room for two people to get cosy.

‘Make yourself at home. I’ll bring you some coffee.’

Reminding herself that Bill was tired and needed a rest, May resolved to put aside her wayward thoughts, drink her coffee like a good girl and ask him to take her back to the caravan. Meanwhile, she familiarised herself with the room, scanning Bill’s books and belongings whilst he moved about in the kitchen whistling another Foo Fighters number, ‘Next Year’, she thought, picking out notes that were vaguely in the right order.

‘And the song-writing?’ he called, making May sit up.

‘Oh, well, I’ve had a couple of rough ideas,’ she said as he placed cups on the table in front of her.

‘Good, because I thought this might make it easier, whatever you said about being able to write songs in your head.’ He disappeared behind her briefly and returned carrying an acoustic guitar. ‘It was my dad’s. I think he thought I might learn to play it one day, but it’s wasted on me. If you can get some use out of it, please do.’

‘Oh, Bill.’ She shook her head helplessly. ‘I can’t take this. Not if it belonged to your father, it’s too much.’

‘He’s not dead,’ he said, grinning. ‘He just happens to live on the other side of the world.’

‘Oh.’ May frowned. ‘But I thought with Cecil bringing you up …’

Bill sat down on the sofa beside her. ‘Dad met an Australian nurse when Mum was dying. The poor guy got pilloried, but Mum had been very ill for a long time and, let’s face it, you can’t choose who you fall in love with.’

Very true, thought May, nodding. ‘But how awful for you to be rejected,’ she said, patting his hand and feeling desperately sorry for the small boy that he was.

Bill shook his head. ‘It wasn’t like that either. Makayla was homesick and Dad, who’s an engineer, could see the chance of a fresh start, but I dug my heels in and refused to go, so Cecil offered me a home. It was supposed to be a temporary solution, but as time went on, I felt settled and Dad had started a new family with Makayla, and it became permanent. We never fell out, and I visit every couple of years, I just felt happier here. So, are you going to play that guitar or just look at it?’