Once Upon A Winter (33 page)

This was not Silas on auto-pilot. Nell could feel his desire this time; the heat from his body, the desperation in his breath, the sheer force of his longing. She seemed to turn to liquid at his touch, even through the layers of her clothing.

‘Mum . . . ?’ said a tired voice, from very far away, it seemed.

It was Silas who reacted first, struggling to sit upright, dragging his hands through his messed-up hair. ‘Joshua,’ he murmured, his voice hoarse. ‘Um . . . Your mother and I were . . .’

As she straightened her crumpled blouse,
Nell scrabbled her wits together. She leapt to her feet as if someone had put explosives under her.

‘Josh . . . sweetheart . . . it’s getting late. I think it’s time you went to bed.’ She jostled him out of the den and up the stairs. ‘Brush your teeth, and don’t forget to do a wee.’

Nell nudged him into the bathroom, and then hurried into his room to turn back the duvet on his bed. She caught sight of herself in the small mirror bevelled to resemble a football, hanging over the chest of drawers. Her hair was sticking up everywhere, and her face and neck were flushed. She sat on the bed and tried to relax her breathing.

Joshua trotted in.

‘Will Dad be sleeping in your room tonight now?’ he asked matter-of-factly.

Nell’s eyebrows shot up. She felt herself blush even deeper. ‘In Grandpa’s,
of course,’ she spluttered, dragging her fingers through the tangle of her hair. ‘Why would you even think -’

‘Mums and dads share bedrooms. Ar
e you still getting a divorce?’

‘Er . . .’ Nell’s head seemed to be spinning. She needed a stiff drink. Or a strong cup of tea. Definitely a cold shower, although she wouldn’t be brave enough.

‘Have you made up, I mean?’ the boy went on.

‘Oh, Josh . . . it’s complicated . . .’

‘Is it? Why does it have to be? Can’t you make it simple?’

‘I wish I could . . .’

‘Sometimes, a wish is all it takes. If Dad knows magic, then he might be like a genie.’

Nell stretched out, and stroked his hair. ‘Josh, love . . .’

‘Can I get my PJs on now, in private?’ He looked at her with weary eyes. ‘You don’t have to come back to tuck me in, Mum. I’ll manage. I’m ten in a couple of months.’

Nell gazed at her not-so-baby boy
, and realised that if anyone was capable of granting wishes, it was him.

‘Goodnight,’ she
sighed, and sidled out.

She went up to the attic rooms, only to find her grandmother had drifted off to sleep, the contents of Silas’s box still scattered around her. Nell tidied up, trying not to think too hard about the photographs, or everything they represented. She switched off the bedside lamp and went back downstairs.

Silas wasn’t in the den any more. For an instant - one gut-wrenching moment - she imagined he had fled recklessly into the snowstorm. But then she heard a noise from the lounge.

He was hunched on the window-seat in the bay window, staring through a gap in the curtains at the endlessly tumbling snow. Nell sat down on the opposite end of the cushioned bench, twiddling her sapphire ring and gazing out into the white-spangled darkness.

‘What happened to your wedding ring?’ Silas asked at last.

Quietly, without meeting his eye, Nell explained how it had broken; how the jeweller had warned that it might happen again, even if he mended it. ‘Some things aren’t worth fixing,’ she concluded, hearing the bluntness in her voice, and hating herself for it.

‘I could get you a new one,’ said Silas. ‘A better one.’

‘Why? Are you feeling sorry for me again?’

‘Nell . . .’ He lunged across the narrow bench. Wrapping her hands in his, he pulled them up to his chest. ‘I was never designed to be controlled by raw emotions. I’ve seen firsthand what they did to my father. But I’ve got no choice now. I feel what I feel. And it isn’t pity. Everything is so . . . unprecedented with you. I’m not sure I even understood what it was at first, or why it was happening. And then I realised tonight, the “why” doesn’t matter. The “why” can never be explained. That’s what makes it what it is.’

‘And what is it you feel, Silas?’

He edged towards her across the cushions. Nell’s pulse quickened as her gaze locked with his again. He smoothed back her hair from her face. ‘I love you,’ he said quietly, simply. ‘Nell, do you feel the same? I thought I used to know. I always took it for granted that I could tell.’

Nell turned her head to gaze out of the window again. How was it possible to feel two such opposing things at once? As if she wanted to fly around the room like Wendy in
Peter Pan
, elated and amazed, while collapsing into a little heap and sobbing her heart out.

‘You’re not taking anything for granted, Silas,’ Nell confided softly. ‘You’re right. And it’s worse than it ever was, because you’ve shown me so much more of your real self to feel this way about. But
all this just seems like a dream, and just for tonight, I want to imagine there
isn’t
a world out there, beyond all that ice and snow, that doesn’t want to see us together like this.’ She turned back to him. ‘Can you do that for me - just for one night?’

His strong, dark brows drew together. ‘One night?’

‘That’s all we have. It’s only a dream, remember? A chapter in a storybook. It can’t be anything more than that.’ Nell cupped her hands over his, smoothing the roughness with the pads of her fingers, comforting and earnest, yet horribly certain of what she had to say. ‘At some point, very soon possibly, you’re going to need to leave me again. You’re going to need to leave Harreloe. It’ll be a compulsion, but you won’t be able to resist. Because it’s who you are. How you were made. You can’t settle and be normal. It’s not in your nature. And when it happens, it will tear everything apart again. And
that
will be the curse striking. The curse your father warned you about. Nothing else.’

‘But . . .’ Silas
grasped for the words ‘. . . what if things could be different?’

‘But they never have before now. So why should that alter or evolve somehow today, with us? What would make us so special, Silas?’

‘I . . .’ He slumped on the window-seat.

‘We haven’t somehow slipped into some parallel universe
, either, where everyone is going to accept us,’ Nell ploughed on. ‘I can believe some outrageous things these days, but never that. My family don’t want you back in my life. Not after what happened last time.’

‘But Joshua . . . Gwendolyn . . .’

‘Versus Freya, Emma and my own father.’ Nell shrugged helplessly. ‘It can’t work, Silas. I can’t defend you against them, because I understand why they’re so protective of me.’

He wrapped his large, solid hands around
hers again, almost pleadingly. ‘But the way you feel . . . The way
we
feel -’

‘Is inconsequential.’ Nell shook her head, knowing nothing ought to deter her. ‘Only a couple of hours ago, maybe less, you were telling me it was dangerous for you to love a woman, that you’d be instantly damning her if you did.’

‘And you picked holes in my argument.’

‘But the fact is, you half believe it, whatever you’re trying to tell yourself now. It doesn’t matter whether
I
think it’s true or not. That won’t make any difference. It’s what
you’ve
been convinced of all your life that counts.’

‘But, Nell -’

‘You also said you’d never want to settle down and grow old with anyone.’

‘What I said aloud wasn’t what I was feeling. I can’t see myself anywhere in this world without you.’

Nell swallowed hard, her resolve almost crumbling. ‘But feelings like that change, Silas. They swing one way and then another . . . And your nature will take over, and you might not consider yourself so . . . attached any more.’

H
is shoulders pitched in a long, anguished sigh. ‘What are you saying then? What are you asking me to do?’

‘To leave Harreloe as soon as the snow clears. To pack up and
go, without saying goodbye, even to Joshua or Freya. Make it clean and quick. Fuss-free. To trust that we’d all be better off that way in the long run. You, as much as the rest of us.’

‘My God.’ He sank his head into his hands, curling up his knuckles into fists until they glowed pearlescent and white against his hair.

‘You know I’m right, Silas.’ Tears formed in Nell’s eyes, and ruthlessly she swiped them away. ‘We can’t have “happily ever after”. So let’s just make do with “once upon a time”. It’s better than nothing.’

‘That sounds so clichéd, Nell. What do you
mean
?’

Slowly, her fingers crept over his knee. ‘I mean
, we have right now. I’ll have to check Joshua’s asleep. But we have a few hours. We’ve got my room, and I can lock the door.’

Silas lifted his head to stare at her, almost in disbelief. ‘But . . .’

‘But what? Am I being too forward?’ Nell blinked at him steadily, even as her eyes threatened to mist over. ‘Is it too much, asking that we can behave like a proper married couple in the privacy of our own room, just for a short while?’

‘But, tomorrow, the day after, whenever the snow clears - you still expect me to just leave you? The children? Harreloe?’

‘Yes. You’re going to eventually anyway. But we’ll always have this night. The truth about how we once felt. And no one can take that away from us.’ She stood up and offered him her hand. ‘Let’s finish what we started, Silas.’

He gazed up at her, then rose to his feet, looming over her proprietorially. Her tall, dark, granite tower. Conquered. His arms went around her, and his mouth crushed her
own, so sweetly and completely and honestly and irrevocably, that for one strange, blissful, dizzying moment, the snow outside seemed to be suspended in the darkness and the very earth beneath them seemed to shift . . . just a fraction.

But just enough.

‘Grown-ups never unde
rstand anything for themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them’

Antoine de Saint-
Exupéry

As glimmers of daylight filtered through the thin, ivory curtains, Daniel blinked blearily up at the ceiling. The first night back in his own bed - and everything had changed. Over the last few days, away from Harreloe, opportunities had opened up and declarations had been made. Everything was for the taking. The world at his feet.

If only Daniel had the courage or the inclination.

He groaned, and hauled himself into a sitting position. Before he could even think about rebooting his life, he needed a coffee.
And possibly a toasted bagel.

On auto-pilot he showered quickly, the water in the boiler still not quite hot enough, then remembered there was no great rush. The school was closed until tomorrow at the earliest because of heating problems. Mr
Frennison had been bombarding Daniel’s phone with emails about it.

Harreloe Primary had already been closed Monday and Tuesday because of the compacted snow and ice in the playground and the pavement in front of the gates. Health and safety gone bananas, because the kids would all be out on their sleds and toboggans anyway, risking life and limb - but mainly limb - on the slopes around the village.

Daniel dressed in whatever clean, casual clothes he could find, before consuming two toasted bagels for breakfast and a strong black coffee.

A walk
, he decided next. To clear his head
.
The caffeine hadn’t accomplished as much as he’d hoped.

Swaddled in coat, scarf and an old, bobbly, black hat - the only one he could seem to find hanging from the pegs this morning - he ventured out into what could only be described as slush. A perfect, peerless word, he’d always thought, for the squelching, semi-liquid, grey-white mass under his boots.

Sunlight hammered down on his eyeballs, albeit without any real warmth. Daniel squinted, and looked up at the dazzling whitewashed walls of Bryn Heulog before turning his back on the house and walking away.

He’d texted Nell last night to say he was home, not wanting to disturb her. She would probably have been getting the kids to bed, anyway; and Daniel had other reasons for
not wanting to face her.

‘Glad you got back safely’
had been the eventual response. Hardly effusive. But then, it was no less than he deserved, even if Nell didn’t know that. He had been dishonest with her about his reasons for going to Manchester. And even if he’d had good cause to be, what had happened on the way home yesterday merited no excuse. Daniel didn’t want to dwell on it, even though he could hardly think of much else. The recollection kept coming back to taunt him.

Walk. Just walk. Breathe the fresh, cold air and just let it all go
.

He was barely aware of taking any deliberate route, but when he heard barking, he shook himself out of his trance and realised where he was. Close to the clearing and the crooked cottage in the woods. The barking also sounded familiar. A frenetic sort of yapping.

Truffle.

Daniel would have turned around again. Would have backtracked, fleeing from a potential confrontation with Silas Jones, and whoever else might be with him. Emma or Nell. One of them was always walking that scruffy, psychotic dog. But why would Emma be there, unless she was overseeing some work in the cottage?

It was muzzy-headed curiosity that propelled Daniel to the edge of the clearing. The reaction to an instinct, rather than a fully-formed, conscious decision.

Silas Jones’s car wasn’t there anyway, so he probably wouldn’t be there, either. The front door of the cottage was wide open, the barking coming from inside.

Maybe there was a problem . . .

Daniel ventured nearer. And then he noticed it - the wooden plaque hanging beside the
small porch. It hadn’t been there the last time he had passed by the place. Not the
‘Gamekeeper’s Lodge’
, which he knew was the correct name for the cottage, but
‘The Gingerbread House’
. The words were carved beautifully and intricately into the mellow, tawny wood.

The yapping grew louder, and suddenly Truffle bounded out, snapping playfully at Daniel’s boots. Daniel bent down and pi
cked up the terrier, cuddling Truffle in a firm grip.

‘Hey, little fella. What’s the problem, huh?’ He stepped inside the shadowy house. ‘Hello? Is anyone there . . . ?’

‘Daniel . . . ?’ Nell appeared in a doorway, gripping the edge of the wooden frame, as if unsteady on her feet.

‘Hi . . .’ Daniel swallowed hard, and mustered a faint smile. ‘Is everything OK? I heard Truffle barking from about a mile away.’ He shuffled his feet awkwardly on the scrap of a hall mat. ‘Well, not a
mile
away, but . . .’

‘It’s nice that you’re home,’ she said. Her face gave nothing away, though, as if a screen had come down ov
er it. Her hair hung in a limp, unwashed mess around her shoulders. ‘I was walking Truffle,’ she said. ‘I thought I’d just come here to check . . .’ Her voice seemed to crack. She turned and drifted back into the room she’d appeared from. In spite of wanting to spin on his heel and run, Daniel’s better nature took over.

He followed her. ‘Check what? What’s wrong?’

Nell was staring around the bare room. There was no furniture. Nothing. Aside from the window, door and fireplace, the walls were bereft of colour or detail. A stark, bleak room. Oddly enough it hadn’t seemed that way the last time Daniel had peered through the window several weeks ago, even though it had been just as empty back then.

‘He’s gone,’ said Nell. ‘I knew he had . . .
Huw told me . . . But I -  I needed to see it for myself.’

Daniel glanced around blankly. Then it all fell into place. ‘Shit.’ He stood immobile for a few seconds, then shook his head. ‘Silas has left you again?’ As Nell turned to him sharply, D
aniel waffled on, like an idiot, ‘I mean, not
left
you - not like last time - but he’s left Harreloe? For good?’

Nell looked at him, aggrieved. ‘Don’t say it like that. Don’t judge him.’

Daniel blinked at her. ‘But -’

‘He only went because I asked him to . . . And because he knew it was the right thing to do.’

Truffle squirmed in his arms, and Daniel put him down. The little dog immediately started chasing its own tail.

‘I don’t understand, Nell . . . How - How are the children taking it? Joshua can’t be happy, surely . . .’

‘No one seems to be happy,’ said Nell dully. ‘But it had to be this way . . . Sooner. Rather than later.’

‘Where are the kids now?’

‘Emma’s got them. Rose and Ivy are trying to keep their minds off it. I think it’ll help when they go back to school again. Distractions always do.’

‘Isn’t Freya . . . pleased, though?’

Nell shrugged derisively. ‘Well now, you’d think it, wouldn’t you? Considering the way she acted around him. And Emma, too . . . I thought she’d be so self-satisfied. So full of “I told you so”s . . . But no one’s been like that.’

Give people a chance, thought Daniel bitterly, and they’d be as smug as anything. Brimming with self-righteousness while pretending to empathise.

‘Nell, he can’t have been gone long, though? I mean, just a day or so . . . ? He was still around when I left last week, and the weather being the way it’s been . . .’ 

‘Silas was gone as soon as the roads were clear . . . Farmer Pike cleared the tracks around Bryn
Heulog the day after the blizzard; he’s been going around on that new snow plough of his, making sure people aren’t cut off.’

‘I don’t follow, Nell. Why did you ask Silas to go? Why
now
? What about the divorce? Wouldn’t it have been easier if he was around? Do you even know where he’s gone?’

She looked at him, her eyes glinting, as if tears might be forming. ‘I’m not getting divorced, Daniel. Not at the moment. I’m not ending the marriage because I don’t want to. I don’t want to be free.’

He peeled off his hat, and rubbed a hand through his hair. ‘I see.’

‘I’m sorry.’ Nell’s stony expression suddenly crumpled and softened. Daniel realised her sympathy was directed at him, but he didn’t deserve it. ‘I’m sorry to hit you with this, Daniel, out of the blue . . .’

‘“Out of the blue”?’ He shook his head. ‘It’s hardly that, Nell. From the minute that man came back, I’ve been competing with something I couldn’t match up to. And even before he was here in the flesh, between you, Calista and Joshua, I was imagining all sorts. When I actually met him, I knew something about him didn’t add up - but not in the way I wanted it to. I kidded myself that he was just an ordinary, weak-minded prick. But he isn’t anything of the kind . . . is he? There’s very little that’s ordinary or weak-minded about him. And I’m the only prick around here.’

‘Daniel!’ Nell took a step closer. ‘Of course not! The way I feel isn’t because
you’re
not a good man. You’re brilliant. Amazing. You’ve been my best friend when I was desperate for one, and you don’t know how grateful I am for that . . .’ She hesitated, folding her arms over her chest as if she was cold. And probably she was. There was no heat in the cottage. Silas Jones must have extinguished the stove when he left. ‘But I can’t stop loving him,’ Nell added. ‘I can’t stop being his wife, even if he isn’t around to be my husband.’

‘And how does
he
feel?’ said Daniel. ‘Not the same way, or he wouldn’t have left.’

‘If he’d felt any differently, he would have stayed, for a while longer at least,’ said Nell, with a wan, ironic smile. ‘Not that I expect that to make sense to anyone. But we had time to tal
k. He was stranded up in the house with Nana, Joshua and me when the snow came. It was very . . .’

‘Intim
ate?’ offered Daniel, on a dry note.

‘In
tense,’ said Nell, looking at her feet.

‘So that business with Lauren . . . was Silas trying
to make you jealous? Was it deliberate, asking her to meet him at the house like that?’

‘It was deliberate, yes . . . But I don’t think making me jealous was his intention. It was a side-effect. He wanted to see how I’d react to her. If I’d still allow her to get to me. He was never interested in Lauren the way we thought, whatever her own motives were at the start.’

‘Yes, I know he wasn’t,’ muttered Daniel, and then, too late, realised what he’d said.

‘You know?’ Nell studied him, a small frown denting her brow.
Daniel knew coming clean would be the decent thing to do, but it was also the hardest. ‘I saw Lauren yesterday,’ he admitted. ‘In Chester, on my way back here. She’d asked me over . . . For a chat. She’s renting a flat there already, waiting for the house sale to go through, which will be soon enough. It’s nice. The flat. Bijou, as they say, but definitely to her taste. She’s going backwards and forwards between Chester and Harreloe these days, trying to sort out all her stuff and -’

‘Daniel,’
Nell cut in, ‘what did she say about Silas?’

‘Just what you already know. That he wasn’t interested in her
in that way. They only went for a drink. She’d come home that night feeling it was more of a counselling session than a date. He obviously had other things on his mind. Or someone else he was hung up on. Not that he wasn’t attentive, he just wasn’t falling for her charms.’ Daniel ran a finger around the inside of his coat collar.

‘The thing is,’ said Nell, ‘I wasn’t the only one who was jealous that night, was I?’

Acutely uncomfortable, Daniel shuffled his feet. ‘Well, we’d already established that I was, too. You said yourself it was a natural reaction.’

Nell took a step closer, facing him squarely. ‘But what if you we
re jealous because you still have feelings for her?
Genuine
feelings?’

‘What?’ Daniel flapped his hand. ‘That’s -’

‘Not ridiculous at all,’ said Nell, tilting her head to one side and narrowing her eyes.

The inquisitor, thought Daniel, and broke out in a cold sweat.

‘After all,’ Nell insisted, ‘you didn’t want your marriage to Lauren to end, did you? You weren’t the one who instigated the separation.’

‘No, but . . .’

‘You can tell yourself as much as you like that you need to move on, but if you don’t really mean it -’

‘I do mean it,’ said Daniel, and instantly regretted snapping at her. Nell wasn’t at fault here. ‘Lauren is my biggest weakness. She probably always will be. The way Silas is with you.’

‘Then why don’t you -’

‘What? Do what?
Fight
for her?’ Daniel grunted. ‘It wouldn’t be much of a battle, trust me.’

‘I think she still loves you.’ Nell reach
ed down and took his hand, as Truffle snuffled around their legs, weaving in and out like a possessive cat. ‘I think Lauren regrets breaking up with you.’

‘Did Silas tell you all this? Because Lauren more or less admitted she’d poured out her heart to him. A virtual stranger. But maybe he has that effect on people, I don’t know.’ Daniel squeezed Nell’s hand and then let it drop. ‘I’ve been
tying myself up in knots at the thought of facing you since I left her place yesterday evening, and as it turned out . . . I needn’t have been. You possibly haven’t been behaving any better. Although, in your case, it was more than just a quick romp between the sheets. Am I right?’