Page 25 of Echoes on the Wind (Borrowed Time #2)

I awoke the following morning to a slap on the face, and I opened my eyes to find Iris sitting on the rug, grinning back at me.

“Hello,” I whispered, and she let out a high-pitched giggle and crawled away, propping herself between Gwyn’s feet on the couch.

My sleep had been shallow and uncomfortable on the hard floor, so I was surprised that I hadn’t noticed him getting up and dressed. He smiled as I sat upright and scuffed my hand through my hair, then laughed as I tilted my head from side to side to get the ache out of my neck.

“I know that feeling,” he said. “I’m in no rush to sleep down there again.”

“Where is everyone?”

“Mair’s in the kitchen with Nellie making breakfast. They’ve not long come down. Gethin left a little while ago, and Betty and Zack are still upstairs.”

I got up and tossed my shirt on, then leaned over Gwyn, giving him a kiss on the forehead.

“What time do you want to head over to the new place?” I asked, casting a glance out the window. The rain hadn’t returned, but the sky was overcast and grey, looking like it might.

“Well, I just went over to get the keys off Mr Hughes, so we can start anytime. The sooner the better, though. The stablemen will be coming at two.”

I moved to the window and stared out at the horse, which was tied to the fence and chewing grass through the railings. “I wondered how that worked.”

“It’s nothing complicated,” he replied. “Hire a cart in one town, then drop it off in another.”

“Makes sense I suppose. We’d just load everything in a van where I’m from. Or you could hire someone to move it for you, so all you have to do is the packing. Saying that, you can hire people to pack for you, too, so you don’t really have to do anything.”

He got up from the chair and put his arm around my waist, giving me a disapproving frown. “It sounds like the people from your time have money to waste and an excess of laziness.”

I nudged against him and laughed. He loved to hear about the world as I knew it, but he had an opinion on absolutely everything. The worst part was that I had difficulty arguing a case against most of them.

“You’re such an old man,” I replied, laughing. “I can just imagine how stubborn you’d be if I ever got to show you my time. ‘No, Tom’ , I mocked, putting on a ropey Welsh accent, ‘I don’t want to take the car 20 miles to the city when I’ve got perfectly good legs to get me there. Emails? Pfft. Pass me my quill. I can have this letter to you in seven to ten business days’ . ”

“Right,” he said, tickling my side and making me burst out laughing. “Go and get that ring. It’s about time I sent you back.”

“You would never,” I replied, leaning up to kiss him.

He pulled back and scrunched his nose up. “What’s ‘emails’ ? I haven’t heard that one.”

“It’ll take too long to explain,” I said, picking Iris up and heading across the room. “I’ll tell you later.”

I made my way to the kitchen and could smell the bacon and fresh bread before I even opened the door.

“You lost something,” I said, and Iris held her arms out at the sight of her mother.

“She wasn’t lost,” Mair replied, pulling Iris into her lap, “She was babysitting you and Gwyn.”

“Can she help carry some furniture, too?”

“You’ll manage,” she replied. “It’ll be good practice for you. Have you had any luck with a new job?”

“I haven’t really done much looking,” I admitted. “So much has been going on these last few months. Betty thinks I should ask Zack to train me up.”

“You’ll be lucky.”

Nellie set a plate of bacon down on the table just as Zack came into the kitchen, and Iris immediately started climbing down Mair’s legs to get to him. She was a little unsteady on her feet, but she wrapped her arms around his legs and pulled at them until he lifted her up.

“Will you be alright on your own today?” he asked, bending down to kiss Mair on the cheek.

“It’ll be difficult,” she teased, “but I’m sure I’ll make it through a few hours without you. ”

“Well in that case, I’ll make my way to the pub once we’re done.”

He took a seat at the table while Mair fixed him a plate of food, and once she was done, she leaned back and pulled the kitchen door open.

“ Gwynfor . Dewch i mewn yma a chael ychydig o frecwast. ”

“We don’t hear much of that up this way?” I said, covering my mouth while I chewed. “It’s not like back home. Everyone speaks English here all the time.”

“Oh, I don’t think so,” she said defiantly, tapping on the table. “I’ll just have to make more of a point to speak it, won’t I?”

She said it with a mischievous grin, but I knew that she would go out of her way to prove the point if she had to, and it made me laugh as I sipped my tea.

When Gwyn finally came through to the kitchen, he was yawning and rubbing at his neck.

“I’m not hungry,” he said, leaning on the back of one of the chairs. “So I'm good to go whenever everyone else is ready. I’m on the night shift later, so the sooner we get it finished, the sooner I can sleep.”

“ Yn Gymraeg? ” Mair asked, prompting him to repeat it in Welsh.

“Don’t mind her,” I said. “She’s just feeling patriotic this morning. Are you sure you don’t want anything to eat?”

He cast an eye over the contents of the table and shook his head, so I rushed through the last few bites, brushed the crumbs from my shirt, and stood up to go.

Zack, who’d barely even started eating, looked at us both, huffed, then got back to his feet. “Fine. Let’s go. But I’m bringing this,” he said, waving a half-eaten bacon sandwich at us.

The new house had stood empty for a couple of months, so there was a musty smell in the air that hit us as soon as Zack pushed open the door. It was otherwise clean and tidy, though, and felt far more spacious than the cottage in Cwm Newydd.

It had a short hall, just long enough to fit the living room door on the right-hand wall before the stairs went up to the second floor. At the top, on a small landing, were three more doors.

“I like it,” Zack said, walking into the living room for the first time. “Once we get the fire on and open some windows to air it out, I think we can really make it home.”

“It’s a good size,” Gwyn added as he turned circles in the living room. “Separate kitchen, too. You’ve done alright for yourself.”

I followed him through the door at the back of the living room into the small galley kitchen, and had my first look around. It only had a small stove and two cupboards, but after coming from the cottage, where the stove was built into the fireplace in the living room, this would prove considerably more convenient for the family.

“Is the yard big?” I asked, turning the key that had been left in the lock.

We stepped out into the small, enclosed space at the back of the house, and both Gwyn and Zack folded their arms and began nodding approvingly .

“Very nice,” Gwyn said, and Zack seemed equally pleased.

Three red brick walls enclosed the yard, with an outhouse tucked in the bottom corner, away from the house. There was also a coal house, though it was built so close to the back door that it looked impossible to open both doors at the same time without becoming trapped between them.

“I don’t see what you’re both so happy about,” I said, shrugging.

“This,” Gwyn said, slapping his hand against the dividing wall between the yards.

“New build,” Zack added. “No sharing.”

I stared at them both, missing out on the point, until Gwyn came over to explain.

“Most old terraces have to share a privy between them. It’s usually about three houses to one outhouse. That’s a lot of strangers to share with. These must have gone up after the law changed a few years ago.”

“That’s disgusting,” I said, scrunching my face up.

“Don’t you have that in Cambridge?” Zack asked, cocking an eye at my lack of knowledge on the subject. “Did you never see the back of the terrace in Cwm Newydd opposite the church? You don’t know disgusting until you run out first thing in the morning and open the door, only to find Mr Davies staring back at you.”

“You aren’t allowed to build them like that now, but most of the old houses still have to share. They got lucky with this one.”

On the first day I arrived in the past, Mr Hopkin had put a paper in my hand, pointed me towards a shack on the opposite side of the yard, and told me that it was the toilet. I was horrified, but I at least had the benefit, if you could call it that, of only having to share with the family that had taken me in. But sharing a single toilet with multiple houses? With upwards of fifteen people? Outside? With no running water? I couldn’t think of anything worse. Suddenly it made sense why they were both so pleased.

“I don’t think I’ve ever felt more grateful for Nellie and Gethin’s inside bathroom,” I said, casting a judgemental eye at the outhouse. “I’m not giving that up for anything.”

“Well, about that,” Zack said, switching his gaze between Gwyn and me. “There’s an extra room upstairs, and this place has got to be cheaper to live in the Gethin’s house, so we were going to ask you both to move in. We could really do with the extra income while I’m looking for work. And I know it would force you to keep sharing when you probably want your own rooms, but Mair didn’t seem to think you’d mind.”

I turned to Gwyn and shrugged. I didn’t hate the idea, and it would definitely help us to save, but it wasn’t just my decision to make.

He turned to look up to the window on the second floor, as though it might help him decide, then brought his attention back to Zack. “How big is the room?”

“I’ve no idea,” he replied, shrugging. “I’ve never been up there.”

“It can’t be any smaller than Nellie’s box room,” I said. “Let’s go take a look.”

The three rooms upstairs weren’t very big at all, as it turned out, but Zack assured us that Iris would take the smallest, and two beds could fit reasonably comfortably in the room at the front, so it was ours if we wanted to take it.

“It's bigger,” I said when Zack went downstairs to start unloading the cart. “And we’d be paying less, so we could save more.”

He stared out of the window onto the street, then turned to face me with his arms crossed. “It’s the privacy I'm more concerned about. We never get five minutes to ourselves. We’d be swapping one houseful for another. At least Nellie works, so the house gets empty sometimes. Mair doesn’t. I can’t exactly kick her out just to get some time with you.”

“Neither is perfect,” I replied. “But until we can afford a place of our own, it will have to do. Besides, Mair needs the money more than Gethin does.”

He took another look around the room and nodded in agreement. “I guess we’re moving in.”

When we got downstairs, Zack was making a start on the wagon, and we went outside to give him a hand. Most of their things were still soaked through, so we carried them through to the backyard to give them a chance to dry out, and Gwyn hoisted the wagon cover over them like a canopy, just in case it rained again.

“Wouldn’t it have been easier to ride the cart around to the lane?” I asked, leaning over to catch my breath after carrying a particularly heavy unit.

Gwyn wiped the sweat from his brow and let out a heavy breath. “I didn’t think of that.”

Zack gave us both a tap on the back, then slumped down into one of the armchairs we’d shifted. “If you can just get that unit from the living room to the back bedroom, you can get going. I should be able to do the rest on my own. ”

We gave him a nod and headed inside, and each took one end of an old sideboard that had been left by the previous tenant.

“Bloody hell, it’s heavier than it looks,” he said, straining to keep it steady as we angled it towards the stairs.

I moved out onto the pavement with my end to allow Gwyn enough room to get into the hallway, then once we straightened up he started walking backwards, step by step, up the stairs.

“Maybe paying people to do this isn’t such a bad thing after all,” he said.

His face grew redder, and his panting heavier, as we strained to manoeuvre up the staircase. Whatever the sideboard was made of, it weighed a ton.

“Not much further now,” I said, trying to convince myself as much as Gwyn that we’d be able to make it.

When we finally reached the landing and put it down, we both slumped over it, exhausted.

“Do you think we can just slide it the rest of the way?” I asked.

He looked down at the heavy legs, then stared across the wooden floor to the bedroom, shaking his head. “Not if you don’t want to leave scratch marks all along the floor.”

I let out a sigh and rubbed my face into my shoulder, trying to get rid of some sweat. “Ok, let’s just get it done,” I said, and I squatted down to grab it from underneath. “Go.”

We aimed for the back wall of the bedroom and began to lower it down again, but as we did, Gwyn let out a yelp. He jerked back, swearing as he grabbed his shoulder, and dropped his end down with a thud that echoed loudly around the empty room.

“Are you ok?” I asked, rushing over to him.

“I’ll be alright. I think I just twisted it.”

“Let me look,” I said, pushing his hand out of the way. I felt around his shoulder and pulled his collar aside to see if I could spot any bruising.

“That feels nice,” he said as I began to rub his shoulder, and he threw his head back, enjoying the relief my hands were bringing.

“Oh, yeah?” I said, smiling. “And how about this?”

I leaned in and kissed his bare skin, right where his neck curved into his shoulder.

“That definitely helps.”

He looked down at me, grinning, then let his head roll back as I kissed a trail up his neck and slipped my hand inside his shirt. His fingers traced the curve of my back, drawing me in tight to his body, and I wrapped my arms around his waist as our lips finally connected.

“How’s it going up there?” Zack called out.

We pulled apart from each other with such speed and force that I slammed into the dresser, knocking it back along the floorboards and leaving a mark in the wood.

“All done,” I shouted, and Gwyn shook his head as he sighed, acknowledging the close call.

We helped Zack with a few more things, and by the time we headed for home, the house was really starting to take shape .

“Do you think Mair will like it?” I asked as we turned onto the main road.

“We’ll soon find out,” he replied.

He pointed through the crowd on the high street at Mair, who was headed in our direction, pushing Iris in a pram.

“Have you finished, then?” she called out.

“We’ve done what we can,” Gwyn said, putting his hands in his pockets and looking proud of himself. “It’s a nice little house. Shame it’s so close, mind. I quite liked you being on the other side of the country. Are you heading there now?”

“I am,” she replied as she pulled the pram over into the doorway of an empty shop. “I still haven’t had a good look at it.”

“We’ve taken the biggest bedroom,” he said, grinning. “You can have the settee.”

“Zack invited you to stay, then? I begged him not to, but he was insistent.”

“And we’re very grateful,” I added. “Now we just have to work on finding somewhere for Lee. Maybe Nellie will let him take our old room once we move out.”

“I’m sure you’ll find something,” she replied, then she knocked against the glass of the empty shop. “I still think you’re letting a good business opportunity go to waste.”

“What’s that?” Gwyn asked, and I shook my head at him, dismissing Mair’s suggestion.

“Well, you’re going to need a job at some point,” she added, causing continued confusion in Gwyn. “Nobody else around here is doing it. ”

“Something will come up. Anyway, we better get a move on,” I said, pulling Gwyn by the arm. “I’ll call over in the morning to see if you need any more help.”

She waved us off and headed home, and we crossed the road to make the trek up the hill. All the work moving furniture had left me aching, so our ascent was slow and tiresome, but the clouds had made way for the first glimpse of sun we’d seen in weeks.

“So what was that about a business?” Gwyn asked as we rounded the top of the hill and turned onto the street.

“It’s nothing,” I replied. “I told Mair about estate agents, and she thinks I should become one.”

“That’s the shop where you buy houses, right?” he asked, “It’s not the worst idea. You’ve run a business before, and– Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me.”

Gwyn’s tone changed as he cut himself off, and he rushed towards Ellis, who was standing in the lane between the houses, watching us.

“What did I tell you?” Gwyn demanded, shoving Ellis in the chest.

He had his hands in his pockets so he was unable to keep his balance, and the force sent him flying onto his arse.

I grabbed Gwyn’s arm, pulling him back, and tried to keep myself between the two men, but as Ellis got up and brushed himself down, he winked at Gwyn and laughed, only enraging him further.

“That’s a nasty temper you’ve got, Gwyn,” he said with a smirk. “I’m just out enjoying some fresh air.”

Gwyn pulled free and got up into Ellis’ face, body tense and fists clenched .

“He’s trying to goad you,” I said, trying once more to pull him back. “Don’t fall for it.”

He relaxed his fists and eased back, but Ellis continued to smile at him. “You’re not worth it,” he snarled. “You’re just a sad, lonely little boy who nobody wants to be around.”

Gwyn’s words must have cut deep because Ellis’ smile faded, and he turned his stare on me. For a moment, I felt the full force of his ire, then, like a switch went off, his whole demeanour relaxed and he smiled warmly at me, giving me the creeps.

“It’s good to see you, Tom,” he said, doffing his cap. “Despite the company you keep.”

He barged his shoulder into Gwyn as he walked past, but continued to smile in my direction until he turned onto the street.

“I swear, I’ll kill that man,” Gwyn said, keeping an eye on him all the way down the road.

“You will not,” I replied as I tugged on his arm. “Come on, let’s go.”

We walked the last few steps in silence, and by the time we reached the front door, Ellis was completely out of sight.

“Ah, here he is,” Tish said as I walked into the hallway. She was standing at the foot of the stairs with a huge smile on her face, and threw her arms around my neck as I approached.

“What brings you here,” I asked. “Is Lee ok?”

“He’s fine. Daddy sent me. He thinks it’s time to build bridges. He wants to invite you all to dinner tomorrow. Well, you and Gwyn, Nellie and Gethin. He’d like to apologise to you all. Please say you’ll come. ”

I looked over her shoulder towards Nellie, who was standing at the kitchen door shrugging, looking as bewildered as I felt by the suggestion. I had no desire to break bread with Mr Awbrey, but the pleading look from Tish as she clasped her hands together awaiting my reply made me cave.

“What time would you like us to arrive?” I asked, accepting for everyone.

“Be there for six,” she said, clapping with excitement. “Oh, this is wonderful, isn’t it?”

I gave her a nervous smile, unable to muster the same enthusiasm, but she didn’t seem to notice. She grabbed me by the shoulders and kissed my cheek, then with an excited squeal, she hurried down the hallway and out of the house.

“I suppose I better find something to wear,” Nellie said as the front door slammed to a close. “I wonder why he wants to apologise now after so long.”

“That’s what I was wondering,” I replied, feeling more than a little suspicious by the turn of events. “I have to admit, though, it does make me curious.”

“Well I’m not going,” Gwyn said. He folded his arms and leaned against the staircase, mind made up.

“What? Why?”

“I have work. And even if I didn’t, I don’t want to sit and make pleasantries with him. And neither should you.”

“He’s your boss. Surely he will allow you the time off?” Nellie questioned.

“Perhaps, but he won’t pay me for it, and I need the money. I’m not going.”

“Suit yourself,” I said. “It looks like it will just be the three of us then. ”

“Well, actually,” Nellie replied, “Gethin will be in Cardiff tomorrow, and is staying overnight. Another work thing, apparently. So you’ll have to accompany me alone, if it’s no bother?”

“None at all,” I replied, smiling. “I look forward to it.”

Though I hoped I was exuding confidence about the invitation, I couldn’t help but feel uneasy about Awbrey's motivations. He didn’t strike me as the type to let bygones be bygones, so I had to assume that if he was willing to apologise, it was because he wanted something in return.