Page 7

Of all the things Temperance had ever imagined saying to Abel if she ever saw him again, ‘You’re in the fairy ring,’ was not at the top of the list. She’d rehearsed angry things, cutting things, flirty things and faux-nonchalance, but never sounding like a deranged children’s TV presenter.

‘Oh, what?’ He took a huge step to the left, as if she’d pointed out he was about to tread on a rattlesnake. ‘That’s . . . that’s new.’ He nudged a toadstool with the toe of his boot. The hollow paper shape wilted to one side.

‘Well, don’t knock it over,’ she tutted and bent down to straighten it, congratulating herself on morphing seamlessly into a nagging children’s TV presenter.

She stood up again and became very aware of her hands just hanging there, obvious and awkward.

She shouldn’t hug him. Should she? Did you hug your ex-best friend and one-that-got-away after they deserted you? Was that a thing?

‘Sorry. Sorry.’ He shoved his hands into the pockets of his grey jeans.

Temperance didn’t want to care about how he looked, but she’d already memorised his entire outfit: authentically worn-in jeans, workmen’s boots, a cobalt blue checked flannel shirt over a grey T-shirt.

He looked really good. She was suddenly really aware of how stretched out the neckline on her favourite Blondie T-shirt was, but she’d only been able to think of very strong builder’s tea and toast this morning, not looking casually yet effortlessly hot.

And Temperance wasn’t just taking in the detail of what he wore, she was greedily noting how his eyebrows had filled out, now he was a proper grown-up; the pattern of his stubble, a little patchy at the hollow of his cheeks; the way his mouth now held itself entirely flat, whereas all her memories of him were smiling, talking, always in motion.

She realised she’d been holding her breath. She still didn’t know what to do with her hands.

Even though she was full-on staring at Abel, he wouldn’t make even the most fleeting eye-contact.

His eyes darted over the green, to her fluffed-up bedhead, over to the pub then down at her baggy grey joggers.

It was as if the state of her was too much to bear, but too gross not to goggle at, all at the same time.

Eventually he ran his hands over his mouth and chin, and spoke.

‘Hi, Temperance.’

‘Hi.’ Somehow she dragged the one syllable into three nervous gasps of sound. And still her hands dangled there in confusion.

‘I um—’

‘What are you-—?’

She laughed as they spoke over each other, expecting that the old Abel she’d known would laugh too.

Abel let out a sigh. ‘Strange to be back here.’ He looked over her shoulder at the pub again. As if Temperance was hardly even there.

‘Twelve years.’

He nodded. ‘I know.’

Temperance tried to steady her breathing, somehow giving herself a bubble of heartburn, which she swallowed painfully. ‘So what are you doing here?’

His brow furrowed. ‘This . . . is going to sound weird. Pretty weird.’ He shuffled his feet on the spot.

‘I had a dream last night. This massive storm wrecking the village, and I sort of knew there was trouble coming. I woke up thinking—worrying maybe something had happened to Gran? She didn’t answer her phone this morning, so I jumped in my car and came straight here.

I just parked up two minutes ago.’ He pointed his thumb to the right and a dented white van on the thin strip of gravel by the green. ‘I know it sounds insane.’

You have no idea .

Temperance pushed down the stickiness in her throat. ‘Margie is fine – I’ve been with her this morning. She probably didn’t hear the phone, what with all the festival stuff going on at the pub.’

Abel closed his eyes for a beat. ‘Thank Christ. Wait, what festival?’

‘The Fairy Festival. It’s become quite a big deal over the last few years. I’m surprised Margie hasn’t chewed your ear off about it.’

He looked away, studying the broken roof tiles on one of the holiday cottages. ‘She knows that I don’t really need to hear village news anymore.’ Once again, the Abel Temperance had expected was overtaken by this strait-laced, sombre, buzzkill of a man. There was a stinging behind her ribs .

‘Right.’ Temperance stretched out her T-shirt an inch further.

Of course he didn’t care. He left this place so long ago.

The old Abel would have cared: the teenage Abel that Temperance had once known inside out.

The boy who used to give her his last Dorito from the bag and always helped Susie with her Brownie badges.

But that boy overnight became the kind of man who just disappears on his friends, never to be heard of again. So why expect anything more?

In one of her many rehearsed scenarios, Temperance played this cool: barely making eye contact, perhaps casually sipping a Negroni with impeccable coral lipstick.

But Abel was so laid back, so unruffled, that he seemed to suck all the cool out of the air, leaving Temperance a twitchy, awkward and strangely sweaty mess.

And far from barely making eye contact, she found her gaze glued to this very adult version of Abel.

She could have been studying an impressionist painting in a gallery: searching for clarity, for meaning, for the secret.

That patchy but golden stubble. A new tiny scar under his left eye.

His skin was no longer that impossibly soft, peachy perfection of teenage youth: it had texture, it had a story.

A story Temperance wasn’t part of.

‘So, you’re . . . still here?’ he asked flatly, not really dredging up enough polite energy to make it sound like genuine curiosity.

Another nail in the coffin for the old sunny, silly and open teenaged Abel. This grumpy sod had risen from his grave.

Her pride stiffened. Her defence mechanisms coiled back on their springs, ready to pounce.

She was used to her college friends and bad dates laughing at the fact that she’d never left her tiny, cutesy village, and had no aspirations to, but she didn’t expect that kind of snobbery to come from one of their own.

Well, someone who had once been one of their own, anyway.

She winched up her best cheesy smile. ‘Absolutely! There’s no place like home.

I’d say you’ve got to be dead inside to want to walk away from this place. ’

As if on cue, a loud roaring crash of the waves on the beach reached their ears. Like the East Prawle tourist board were listening in and wanted to play their part.

‘Hmm,’ he started to walk away before he’d even finished talking, ‘well, I’d best just check on Gran, to be safe. See you.’

Temperance watched the retreating back of Abel Gulliver, taller and broader these days than she’d imagined.

See you?! Twelve years vanished off the face of the earth and ‘see you’ is all he’s got to say?

! In her daydreams of a time when Abel might saunter across the green again, she’d imagined shouting and insults and fireworks, but she’d never imagined a dull whimper like this.

Even if it wasn’t rosy, she thought she might get some answers.

Why did you go, Abel? Why did you leave us ?

She watched his back walking further away as the words echoed in her head.

Temperance knew she should feel relieved, that the awkward reunion was finally over: she never had to do that again.

Maybe she should feel angry, that he clearly gave zero fucks about seeing her and even sneered about the fact that she still lived in the village.

Or maybe some stirring of old love or lust or even nostalgia should be whirring around inside her heart?

No.

Her heart said something else as her eyes were trained on that cobalt shirt, looking bobbled in places but still invitingly soft.

Her heart said doom. Very loudly, it said doom .

Already panting, Temperance burst in the front door and took the stairs two at a time. ‘Get out of the bathroom if you’re in there, Susie!’

‘I’m not,’ came a reply muffled by toast crumbs.

‘Good!’ Temperance slammed the wonky bathroom door and threw her clothes off her body and onto the floor as she started the shower.

Susie crept up the stairs, munching on her sourdough and honey. She plonked herself down on the top step. ‘What’s going on? You weren’t sick on yourself, were you?’

‘Ugh,’ Temperance thought for a beat as she stepped under the steaming water, ‘worse.’

‘Oh sis! Like . . . a code brown?!’ Susie swiftly put down her plate.

‘No! Imagine the most embarrassing thing that could ever happen when your hair is a sandy greaseball and you smell like stale rum.’ She scrubbed the shampoo bar deep into her roots.

Susie picked up her breakfast again. ‘You bump into someone you fancy.’

‘Or?’

‘An ex. But you don’t have any exes round here.’

‘No, but what about one that we assumed was far away, never to return.’

‘No!’

‘Yes.’

‘NO! Abel ?! Here ?’

Temperance finished rinsing her hair and let the hot water run over her shoulders for a minute. ‘Right here. On the green. Just now.’ She could feel each hair on her arms rise as she thought about Abel standing there, like a vision plonked down directly from her daydreams .

‘Wha . . . How . . . What did he look like?’

Temperance closed her eyes. Taller than six foot, cropped blonde hair and a stubbled jaw. She was suddenly extra aware of how naked she was. ‘Good,’ she said wistfully.

‘Hence the rush to clean yourself up, right.’

‘No! It’s not that,’ she stepped out of the shower and wrapped a big towel around herself. Temperance pulled open the door, a puff of steam unfurling behind her onto the landing. ‘I had this dream last night. And I think it was about Abel.’

Susie crunched down on the crispy toast, her eyes wide. ‘And it was so filthy you needed a shower.’

‘What?! Suse, I’m trying to tell you something real here. I had a dream – a really bad dream. One of those nightmares that feels so real that you have tears on your face when you wake up.’