Page 29 of Gideon (Finding Home #3)

I wondered at first whether I’d end up going mad and talking to myself.

Although thinking about it, it’s usually the only time that I hear any sense spoken.

However, I seem to have brought a little bit of you back with me.

Thankfully, it’s not the opinionated part.

Just the bit that can sit quietly. Maybe we’ve swapped personas, and while I’m behaving like an old man, you’re hitting the town like Robert Shaw on payday.

Every morning I have fresh bread and milk delivered by a Mrs Granger who makes the cakes in the tea shop here.

She brings her granddaughter Molly with her sometimes, and they will come in and put the bread and milk away while Molly chatters to me as she does handstands and regales me with the minute details of her life, her voice as high and fluting as the blackbird who comes for the bread crumbs in the garden.

I’ve taken your advice. I’m actually wincing as I type that.

Last night I went up to the big house to have dinner with my brother and friends.

We ate chicken baked in a tray with chorizo and tomatoes and peppers.

They washed it down with a rich red wine and I drank water.

And we all mocked Oz for splitting his jeans on a house tour.

Apparently he had to wrap a tea towel round his waist because he’d gone commando.

It was a nice dinner but a bit awkward at first, like meeting people for the first time. As I’ve been pissed the last few times I’ve seen them, I suppose I was meeting strangers. A few months ago I’d have probably given up and gone out and got drunk. Instead, I stuck it out, and it got easier.

Later on, I walked back to the cottage along the gravelled paths.

The air was heavy with the scent of hawthorn and my way was lit by a huge harvest moon as bats flitted above me.

It was a beautiful night and all I could think of was how much better everything would have been if you’d been there beside me.

When I’ve finished reading it for the third time I sit back and smile. I can almost see the small cottage and the low-ceilinged rooms, and already my room seems brighter and clearer. It’s as if he’s sent me some mellow Cornish sunshine rather than the powerful white heat here.

“Four months,” I tell myself. “Then we’ll see.”

FOUR MONTHS LATER

GIDEON

I let myself into the cottage, carrying the tray gingerly.

I know anyone looking at the slightly shrivelled chocolate cake would turn their nose up, but I feel immensely proud.

I made this from start to finish. I laugh because it’s ridiculous.

I have many acting awards which are in a cupboard somewhere, but I have never looked at them like I’m looking at this slightly charred cake.

I pause. Maybe if they made the Baftas out of chocolate, I’d have been more receptive.

I look around the cottage appreciatively. It’s full of sunshine and smells of furniture polish from when the cleaner came in yesterday. The Stieg Larsson book I started yesterday is lying on the table, and I shake my head. This place is hardly party central.

Nevertheless, I’ve enjoyed this time on my own.

At first it felt strange, but as time went on, I settled into the stillness, and it became almost a triumph to be doing things for myself after all these years of employing staff to fulfil my every need.

I’ve learnt to cook, took long walks with my brother, and read nearly everything in the cottage, and in some small way I think I’m approaching who I used to be before all the layers of anger and cynicism covered me.

Eli would be proud of me, I think, then still at the pang in my stomach.

If he thought that what I felt on the ship was an illusion, he was wrong.

I still miss him every day. Nothing seems quite right.

It’s as if the day is a painting that’s missing the final hit of colour to make it a masterpiece.

I shake my head. I’m not sure I fucking know myself anymore.

Thinking of him sends a shaft of worry through me.

I’m as aware of the time passing as if I’d taken a pen and crossed the days off a calendar like a lovestruck schoolboy.

Okay, I admit it. I totally programmed a reminder in my phone.

That’s how I know that the four months were up yesterday.

It’s also how I’m very aware that he hasn’t contacted me.

Every week he’s emailed me like clockwork.

Long, gossipy letters full of funny details of his day, bossy instructions about my health, and occasionally blisteringly intimate glimpses into his thoughts and feelings.

But he’s been silent for more than a week now and I’m trying not to wonder what that means for us.

Has he met someone else? Has he grown bored with the idea of a fucked-up actor and moved on to easier pastures, like that young, dark-haired man who picked him up from the boat?

I glare at the thought and put the cake down.

Despite promising myself that I wouldn’t do it, I grab my phone and pull up my email account.

I sag. There’s nothing apart from a couple of adverts for erectile disfunction and an exhortation for me to book a holiday in the Cotswolds.

For a second I stare blindly ahead, seeing his warm, open face in my mind, full of humour and kindness.

Then I shake my head and move into the kitchen to deposit the cake on the counter.

He knows where I am. I can’t make him want me. I sigh. I wish I could.

Later that evening I sit at the table in the kitchen with the door open, letting in the scent of roses from the bush on the patio. I’m eating a mushroom risotto that I made myself and reading from a book propped against the salt and pepper grinders.

At first I try not to take any notice when my iPad chimes in the lounge, telling myself that I’m at an interesting bit in the book.

But really it’s because superstitiously I feel that if I look, it won’t be from him.

I’m therefore profoundly glad that there’s no one to see me bang my shin as I race across the room towards it or the way my hand shakes as I open my email.

To: Gideon Ramsay

From: Eli Jones

Four months have gone. My job is finished.

I read the words and then read them again, my heart hammering in my chest. Then I tap out my reply.

To: Eli Jones

From: Gideon Ramsay

Come to me. I’ve been waiting.