Guilty

She got up at six o’clock. She had been wide awake since five, and only the knowledge that she would have no excuse for being up any earlier had prevented her from going downstairs as soon as it was light. But six o’clock seemed reasonably acceptable, and as the others hadn’t come to bed until some time after midnight Laura doubted she would disturb anyone.

Drawing the blind in the kitchen, she saw it was a much brighter morning. The sun was sparkling like diamonds on the wet grass, and the birds were setting up a noisy chatter in the trees that formed a barrier between her garden and the lane that led to Grainger’s farm.

The cottage was the second of two that stood at the end of the village, the other being occupied by an elderly widow and her daughter. Laura knew that people thought she was a widow, too, and she had never bothered to correct them. In a place as small as Burnfoot, it was better not to be too non-conformist, and, while being a one-parent family was no novelty these days, people might look differently on someone of Laura’s generation.

After putting the kettle on to boil, she opened the back door and stepped out into the garden. It was fresh, but not chilly, and she pushed her hands into the pockets of her dressing-gown and inhaled the clean air. The bulbs she had planted the previous autumn were beginning to flower, and the bell-shaped heads of purple hyacinths and crimson tulips were thrusting their way between the clumps of wild daffodils. The garden was starting to regain the colour it had lost over the winter months, and Laura guessed that sooner or later she would have to clear the dead leaves, and dispose of the weeds.

It was a prospect she generally looked forward to, but this morning it was hard to summon any enthusiasm for anything. She felt depressed, and out of tune with herself, and, hearing one of Ted Grainger’s heifers bellowing in the top field, she thought the animal epitomised her own sense of frustration. But frustration about what? she asked herself crossly. What did she have to be frustrated about?

The kettle was beginning to boil. She could hear it. It was a comforting sound, and, abandoning her introspection, she turned back towards the house. And that was when she saw him, standing indolently in the open doorway, watching her.

He was dressed—that was the first thing she noticed about him. He was wearing the same black jeans he had been wearing the night before, but he wasn’t wearing a shirt this morning; just a V-necked cream cashmere sweater, that revealed the brown skin of his throat, and a faint trace of dark body hair in the inverted apex of the triangle. Unlike herself, she was sure, he looked relaxed and rested, although his eyes were faintly shadowed, as if he hadn’t slept long enough.

And why not? she thought irritably. She had still been awake when Julie had come to bed, even if she had pretended otherwise, and by her reckoning he could not have had more than five hours. Hardly enough for someone who had driven almost three hundred miles the day before, in heavy traffic, with goodness knew what hangover from the night before that.

Laura was immediately conscious of her own state of undress, and of the fact that she hadn’t even brushed her hair since she’d come downstairs. It was still a tumbled mass about her shoulders, with knotted strands of nut-brown silk sticking out in all directions.

Laura’s hand went automatically to her hair, and then, as if realising it was too late to do anything about it now, she clutched the neckline of her robe, and walked towards him. Pasting a polite smile on her face, she strove to hide the resentment she felt at his unwarranted intrusion, and, reaching the step, she said lightly, ‘Good morning. You’re an early riser.’

‘So are you,’ Jake countered, moving aside to let her into the house. ‘Couldn’t you sleep?’

Laura went to take the tea caddy out of the cupboard, and dropped three bags into the pot before answering him. The steady infusion of the water sent up a revitalising aroma from the leaves, and Laura breathed deeply, as she considered how to reply.

‘I—er—I’m always up fairly early,’ she said at last, putting the lid on the teapot, and having no further reason to avoid his gaze. ‘Um—would you like a cup of tea? Or would you rather have coffee? I can easily make a pot, if that’s what you’d prefer.’

‘Whatever you’re having,’ he said, closing the back door, and leaning back against it. ‘I’m—what do you say?—easy.’

Laura’s lips twitched. ‘Milk, or lemon?’

‘You choose,’ he essayed flatly. ‘Tea is tea, whatever way you drink it.’

‘I doubt if the connoisseurs would agree with you,’ declared Laura, setting out three cups and saucers. ‘Tea used to be regarded as quite a ritual. It still is, in other parts of the world. China, for instance.’

‘Really?’

He didn’t sound as if it interested him greatly, and she guessed her line in small talk was not what he was used to. He evidently enjoyed the kind of sexual innuendo Julie employed to such effect. But Laura wasn’t experienced in innuendo, sexual or otherwise, and, aware of how she had monopolised the conversation at dinner the previous evening, she knew she had to guard against being boring.

Then, remembering her hair, she started towards the door. That was something that couldn’t wait any longer, and she paused, uncertainly, when he asked, ‘Where are you going?’

‘I—won’t be a minute,’ she answered, loath to admit exactly where she was headed. ‘Um—help yourself; and Julie, too, if you want.’

‘I’ll wait,’ he said, leaving the door, to pull out a chair from the table, and straddle it with his long legs. ‘OK.’

Laura hesitated a little bemusedly, and then nodded. ‘Of—of course.’

Brushing her hair entailed going upstairs again, and as she stood at the bathroom mirror, tugging the bristles through the tangled strands, she felt a helpless sense of inevitability. The last thing she had expected was that she would have to face another one-to-one encounter with Jake so soon. Her assessment of the day ahead had already gone badly awry, and she hoped the rest of the weekend was not going to prove as traumatic.

There were men’s toiletries on the glass shelf above the handbasin, she saw, with an unwelcome twinge of trepidation. No doubt they were responsible for the spicy smell of cologne that lingered in the atmosphere, the unfamiliar scents of sandalwood and cedar. There was a razor, too. Not some sophisticated electrical gadget, as she would have expected, but a common-or-garden sword-edge, with throwaway blades. The man was a contradiction, she thought, frowning, hardly aware that she was running her fingers over a dark green bottle of aftershaving lotion. He was rich, and sophisticated; he wore handmade shirts, and Armani jackets, and he drove a Lamborghini. All aspects of the lifestyle to which he was accustomed. And yet, he had seemed genuinely pleased with the simple meal she had served the night before, and he had dried the dishes afterwards, as if it was a perfectly natural thing for him to do.

She realised suddenly that she was wasting time. It was at least five minutes since she had come upstairs, and, apart from anything else, the tea would be getting cold.

The hairpins she usually used to keep her hair in place were in the bedroom, and although she wouldn’t have minded waking Julie, it was going to take too much time. Instead, she found the elastic headband in the pocket of her dressing-gown that she sometimes used when she was pottering about the garden, and, sliding it up over her forehead, she decided that would have to do.

Going downstairs again was harder, but she steeled herself to behave naturally. After all, so far as Jake was concerned, she was just Julie’s mother: a little eccentric, perhaps, and obviously nervous with strangers.

He was still sitting where she had left him, but he got politely to his feet when she came into the room. However, Laura gestured for him to remain seated, and he sank back on to the chair, stretching the tight jeans across his thighs.

Laura knew her eyes shouldn’t have been drawn to that particular area of his abdomen, but somehow she couldn’t help it. He was disturbingly physical, and her stomach quivered alarmingly as she endeavoured to pour the tea.

‘W—would you like to take Julie’s up?’ she ventured, the spout hovering over the third cup, but when she reluctantly glanced round at her visitor Jake shook his head.

‘I doubt if she’d appreciate being woken at this hour, do you?’ he remarked, his dark eyes intent and wary. ‘When she’s not working, she considers anything short of double figures the middle of the night. But you must know that yourself.’

Not as well as you, I’m sure, Laura was tempted to retort, but she restrained herself. After all, it was really nothing to do with her how they chose to live their lives, and just because she was finding the situation a strain was no reason to blame Jake.

However, he seemed to sense her ambivalence, for as she set a cup of the strong beverage in front of him he said quietly, ‘What’s wrong?’ and the anxieties of the last fifteen minutes coalesced.

‘I—beg your pardon?’

‘You don’t have to be so formal, you know,’ he told her, making no attempt to touch his tea. ‘I asked what was wrong. Do you resent my getting up so early? Would you rather I had stayed in bed?’

Yes. Yes! The simple answer sang in Laura’s ears, but she couldn’t say it. Not out loud. Besides, she wasn’t even sure she meant it. It might be reassuring to pretend she would rather avoid talking to him, and quite another to consider the reality of doing so. The truth fell somewhere in between, and she was too conscientious to deny it.

‘I—I—don’t mind,’ she said at last, not altogether truthfully. ‘Um—would you like some sugar? I—know men usually do.’

‘And how would you know that?’ enquired Jake, still holding her gaze, and she knew a sudden spurt of indignation.

‘Why shouldn’t I? Just because I’m not married, doesn’t mean I haven’t had any experience where men are concerned,’ she retorted, resenting his implication, and then could have bitten out her tongue at the recklessness of her words. She had no idea whether Julie had told him of the circumstances of her birth. And if she hadn’t…

But Jake was speaking again. ‘I know about that,’ he countered mildly. ‘You had Julie while you were still in high school. And I didn’t imagine that was an immaculate conception.’

Laura flushed then, his cool, faintly mocking tone reminding her of how inexperienced she was when it came to his kind of verbal sparring. But she refused to let him think he had disconcerted her, and, squaring her shoulders, she added crisply, ‘I am almost forty, you know. Why do young people always think sex wasn’t invented until they came along?’

‘Is that what they think?’ Jake arched one dark brow, and, wishing she had never started this, Laura nodded.

‘You tell me,’ she responded tautly. ‘It’s your generation I’m talking about.’

‘My generation?’ Jake pressed his left hand against his chest, his expression mirroring his amusement. ‘Dio, how old you think I am?’

‘It doesn’t matter how old you are,’ declared Laura, trying to steady the cup of tea in her hand. ‘All I’m saying is, you shouldn’t jump to what you think are obvious conclusions.’

‘Did I do that?’

‘Yes.’ Laura drew a trembling breath. ‘And I wish you’d stop answering everything I say with a question of your own. We—we hardly know one another, and I—I don’t want to fall out with you.’

‘Fall out with me?’ Jake adopted a puzzled expression. ‘What is that?’

‘Argue with you—quarrel with you—oh, I’m sure you know exactly what it means,’ declared Laura crossly. ‘Anyway, I don’t want to do it.’