Authors: Jane Lovering
Slightly Foxed (25 page)
their attention or to make me jealous, I never knew. It was
almost as though she couldn't stop herself. Like an addiction,
a drug, do you know what I mean?"
"Oh, Leo." I looked him square in the face. "Honest, cross
my heart and hope to die, I was
not
flirting with Piers."
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Looking into Leo's beautiful green eyes as deeply as I could, I
whispered, "I wouldn't do that."
Unfortunately, coming to sabotage my openness was the
memory of Piers's arm circling my waist. The feel of his body
tight against me. My awareness of him so close. But surely
that wasn't flirting, was it? My eyes must have clouded,
because Leo frowned. "What? What is it?"
"Nothing. Really, Leo, nothing." Thankfully, I heard the
telephone ring in the living room. "Perhaps we'd better go
through. They'll be wondering what we're doing in here. And
it might be a call for me."
"One minute, please." Leo started scrabbling about in the
pockets of his jeans. "I wanted to give you..." he withdrew a
piece of paper, folded so many times it formed a small
square, about the size of a matchbox, "...this to read. But,
can I just ask. Will you let me leave the room before you
open it? I'm a bit shy, I suppose, about these things."
He took my hand, opened my palm and dropped the paper
into it, then went out of the kitchen, leaving me listening to
the sounds of my own party going on. Was this the poem?
The paper had been so tightly folded that it seemed to weigh
heavily against my hand. It felt cold.
On the other side of the wall, the whole decibel content
seemed to drop. Was I being oversensitive or were they all
listening to me? Was Leo in there with them? I began to
unfold the paper between my fingers. As I did so, something
heavy dropped away from between the creases, making me
jump. Was it a beetle? I didn't see it land, my attention was
distracted by hearing Florrie, distinct through the wall and the
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silence on the other side of it, say, "I'll tell her, yes." I
stroked the now-open sheet of paper smooth on the work
surface and put myself into poetry-reading mode, letting my
eyes run over the words arranged in sentence-like structures
on the page.
Dear Alys
I know that we haven't known each other very long, and
opportunities to be together have been few. However, I am
totally and completely certain of my feelings in a way I never
have been before, and since we share a depth of
communication and understanding, I truly believe that we
also share these feelings.
Since we last met I have thought long and hard over the
best way to resolve our situation and find it impossible—I just
want to be with you.
Please, darling Alys, would you marry me?
Love Leo
I stood totally still, as though I'd been shot and had yet to
fall. I read the words over again, moving my lips as I
searched for a rhyme scheme or structure. What—?
He'd
proposed
?
But...
But
what
? He's attractive, sensitive, gentle. You reckon
you don't deserve this by now, Alys?
It's so
sudden
. No, not sudden. More than that,
abrupt
. I
hardly know him! We've spent only a handful of days
together.
So? You'd barely known Alasdair's
name
when you decided
you were going to marry him, had you? Stability, Alys.
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Stability for you,
and
Florrie, and she seems to like him too.
And remember the poetry...
But I
hate
horses.
Look, love. You're thirty-six and, as Florrie so generously
said, things won't stay pointing upwards forever. Maybe you
should stop agonising and go for it. After all, at your age you
shouldn't look gift horses in the mouth. Ha ha.
I shifted my weight and stood on something prickly.
Without thinking I looked down and moved my foot to reveal
a square cut sapphire, surrounded by tiny diamond chips set
into a gold ring. Shit. Well, no way now I could assume it was
a particularly unusual free-form poem. What should I
do
?
Half of me wanted to leap up and shout
yes!
But was that
because it was
Leo
proposing, or because I'd actually got a
proposal, and from a man who didn't think football was better
than sex because it lasted ninety times as long? The other
half of me—the tiny, slippery half—was floundering. Why?
Why me? What had I done to make him want me?
What
happened when he stopped?
Without knowing what else to do, I walked back into the
living room at the same time as Leo came in from the
bathroom. We tried not to meet each other's eye. He looked
poised, although whether it was for triumph or
disappointment I couldn't tell. Jace, Florrie and Piers were
just standing. Did they know? Had he told them? Were they
also waiting for me to say something?
"I..." I began, but Florence interrupted.
"Mum." She sounded strained. "That was the hospital. It's
Mrs. Treadgold."
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"What's happened?" And then I had a clear vision of Mrs.
Treadgold's faded blue eyes in that china-pale skin.
She was
ill. And I'd hardly noticed. "
Shouldn't they be calling her
family? Oh God."
Mrs. Treadgold had a son and a daughter, I knew that. And
quite a lot else besides, Mrs. Treadgold being something of a
chatterer where her family were concerned. Thomas was a
veterinary assistant in Abergavenny, had a very nice partner
called Dave but that was all right as long as he was good to
Tom. Vivienne was a flight attendant currently on long hauls
to Dubai, no plans to marry but happily seeing a pilot who
was suspected of being married himself but no proof yet. And
Mrs. Treadgold didn't like what she'd done with her hair.
"Apparently she's asking for you."
"I'll go now." I felt a sudden pang of guilt, quickly stifled.
I'd taken her advice, hadn't I? Leo loved me as I was, I felt
different when I was with him. I felt
myself
. "I'd better ring
the hospital. Make sure I'm allowed." I sat down and picked
up the phone.
"Of course this is so." Jace began bustling around. "I will
be going to my home. Piers, you is to be taking Florence
away, and you." She flicked fingers at Leo. "Are you staying?"
"I don't know." Leo looked uncomfortable. "It's up to Alys
really." I saw him glance down at my hands and wondered
what he was doing, before it dawned on me that he was
trying to see whether I'd put the ring on.
"Jace, don't go. I need to talk to you."
"You need to be doing other talking more."
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"I'm not going until I know what's happening." Florence sat
herself down firmly next to me on the sofa. "Mrs. Treadgold is
a nice old thing. I hope she's not
too
poorly. She knitted me a
rabbit once."
"Then it looks like you're stuck with me too." Piers sat in
the armchair opposite, looking like James Bond's younger,
more disreputable brother. I wondered idly why he'd worn
that sexy suit and bow tie.
"Do you want me to stay, Alys?" Leo was hovering, having
opened the front door for Jace. "I mean, I can go, if it makes
things easier for you. I could phone you." He left the words
for your answer
unsaid, but I could feel the pressure building
already.
"Yes, you might as well stay too." As I said it I realised
that I'd been ungracious and tried healing my words with a
smile in Leo's direction, but he'd already adopted a slightly
wounded expression. "I'll call the hospital and take things
from there."
The hospital refused to tell me anything since I wasn't a
relative, only that Mrs. Treadgold had indeed been asking for
me, but was now sedated and couldn't see anyone until
tomorrow.
"You want me to drive you?" Piers asked after I put the
phone down. I turned. There was something in his eyes which
rolled my heart over. Maybe we looked at each other for too
long because the next thing I knew Leo was inserting himself
between us.
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"
I
could take you." Leo rested an arm around my
shoulders. He couldn't have spelled out
she's mine
more
clearly if he'd taken out a full-page ad.
"Yeah, but we were going out anyway. To visit the cat and,
like, maybe do stuff."
"I'll get myself to the hospital, thank you both." I stepped
away from Leo, away from Piers. "It's hardly a cross-
continental epic journey. Now, Piers, Florrie, you go."
Muttering about being left out, Florence picked up her
trendy shoulder bag and shuffled to the front door, Piers
trailing behind. At the door he flicked his eyes to Leo, who
had his back to us, piling plates from the table on top of one
another, and mouthed "I'll call".
I shook my head but he flashed me a smile, tossed, "Nice
to have met you!" into the flat over his shoulder and
shepherded his stepsister, trailing shoelaces, down the stairs.
Energy fell out of me through the soles of my feet.
"I'm sorry, Leo. I don't think I'm going to be any kind of
company tonight." I slumped against the wall. "I feel
completely exhausted."
"I'm not surprised." He came and stood in front of me,
taking both my hands. "Do you want to talk?" He turned my
hands over and examined them closely. I think it was an
excuse to avoid my eyes. "It wasn't a great way to spring a
proposal on you, was it?"
Carefully, so as not to cause offence, I slid one of my
hands from his grasp and used it to push my hair out of my
eyes. "I am going to need time, Leo. I mean, I'm assuming
that you'd want me to move down to Devon, that you weren't
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thinking of selling the stud and moving up here?" His horrified
expression told me that this hadn't even crossed his mind.
"So I'd have to leave my job. And Florrie, her father lives
here. She'd not see nearly as much of him if we moved
south."
Leo came towards me with new eagerness. "Yes, yes, I've
thought about all these things. You could get a part-time job
in the bookshop in Charlton. Isabelle knows the owners. I'm
sure she'd put a word in for you. It'd give you plenty of time
to learn all you need about the stud business. Florence could
have her own flat in the house, a job down on the yard. And
there are trains, Alys, if she wants to go and see her father
or"—Leo seemed to swallow the words but they crept out
anyway—"her stepbrother."
The walls inched towards me. He'd thought it all out. From
where I'd work, to where Florence would sleep. I looked up at
him, into his face. There was no guile there, just a keen and
loving enthusiasm.
"I love you, Alys." Leo let go of my hands and turned
away, talking to the opposite edge of the carpet. "I love you
and I would like us to be together."
"And I..." I
wanted
to say it, wanted to throw him the
crumb of comfort he deserved but in the end what came out
was, "...and I need time to think about things. Forgive me,
Leo, if I seem to be messing you around but I really,
really
want to think carefully about this."
"But you're not saying no, are you?"
Say no? To a sexy man in possession of all his faculties,
own teeth and hair, and a sizeable slice of Devonshire real
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estate? Who professed to love me, wrote heart-stoppingly
beautiful poetry (although admittedly not to me) and who
drove a car with a current tax disc? I'd have to be insane.
"I'm thinking, all right?" I smiled. "A girl's allowed thinking
time. It's traditional."
Leo returned the smile. It softened the contours of his
whole face, and I realised how stressed he'd been. "Maybe I'd
better go. You'll think clearer if I'm not here, and you've got
enough to worry about, with your friend being ill and
everything." A momentary pause. "You're not going to go out
with—what's his name, Peter?—are you?"
"Piers. No! He's—Piers is a friend, that's all. He's been very
good." Another tiny shiver at the memory of Piers standing so
close. God, I needed to get a grip. "To Florence," I finished.
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