Chapter 17
It was over, finally. Mimi settled the bill and marvelled that something so horrible could cost quite so much. If life was fair, surely she should be the one getting paid for enduring that amount of torture.
Anyway, she’d been a grown-up and at least it was done now. She left the dental surgery and crossed the road to the café.
‘I’m tho thorry . . .’
Cal looked up from the newspaper he’d been reading. He broke into a grin. ‘Thorry?’
‘Thorry it took tho long.’ In her head, she was pronouncing the words with perfect clarity, but they weren’t coming out that way. ‘Ny ’ithdon dooth . . .’ Mimi shook her head, because it was just too complicated to try and explain that her wisdom tooth had been growing at a bizarre angle, pressing hard against the tooth next to it, which was the one that had cracked down the middle, so the drill-happy dentist had repaired the broken tooth and yanked out the wisdom tooth, showing her the spoils of his plundering with a cheery ‘Look at the roots on that!’
‘You poor thing.’ Cal was torn between sympathy and amusement. ‘Your face is so swollen.’
‘Feelth thwollen . . .’ She cupped her jaw, wincing at the new shape of it.
‘Thankth.’
‘I’d ask if you wanted a coffee, but it’s probably safer if you don’t have one right now.’ He drained his own cup and rose to his feet. ‘Come on, we should get you home.’
And in the car on the way back to Goosebrook, because her ability to speak was hampered, Cal told her about the twists and turns in his life that had led to him running the company set up by his grandfather.
‘I’d always wanted to be an architect,’ he explained. ‘I got a place at Bath to study for a BSc in architecture and started in the September. It was great, I loved it . . . then six months later my grandad had a stroke. It wasn’t that severe, but it affected the right side of his body so he couldn’t work any more. And he was distraught, because he’d spent the last thirty years building up the business. So he asked me to take it over because he just couldn’t bear to see it sold to strangers.’
Mimi murmured, ‘Oh . . .’ because at least she could make a sympathetic noise without sounding like a complete Neanderthal.
‘There wasn’t anyone else he could ask,’ Cal continued. ‘And I loved my grandad. I didn’t want to leave the course, but how could I turn him down? Since I was fourteen I’d been working with him during the school holidays. I owed him so much. So I gave up uni and took over the running of the business. And then I met Stacey. Well, you know the rest,’ he said. ‘Maybe I’d secretly wondered about one day going back and finishing the course, but it never did happen. Cora happened instead. Which we never regretted, obviously, although it came as a bit of a shock to the system when we first found out.’
Mimi tried to say: Must have been scary, but it came out as ‘Nuthdadeehthcarghh.’
‘Well, quite.’ Cal grinned. ‘Whatever that was, I completely agree with you. And OK, I didn’t end up doing what I’d originally planned, but it didn’t matter any more. Our priorities had changed. I concentrated on the business and built it up, and we bought the cottage and did that up too. Life was pretty busy, but it really couldn’t have been better. We had Cora, and each other, and we were just . . . happy . . .’
His voice trailed away, because they both knew what had happened to change that.
‘Cowth,’ said Mimi as they rounded a bend in the road and saw the herd of Friesians ahead of them, slowly making their way from the field where they’d been grazing down to the farm for milking. Tails swished, flies were lazily dispersed and the farmhand behind them made a vague gesture of apology at the hold-up.
‘Bet you didn’t have to put up with this sort of thing in London,’ said Cal.
‘Nuurgh.’ God, listen to me.
‘Well there’s no way past them, so we can either spend the next ten minutes crawling along at cattle speed or pull in here and wait.’ As he said it, a cow at the back of the herd lifted her tail and splattered the road with poo.
‘Let’th thtop,’ said Mimi.
Cal parked the car in the next gateway and switched off the engine. Overhead, cotton wool clouds scudded across a clear blue sky. Wild flowers and tall grasses swayed in the light breeze and bees buzzed like tiny drones as they darted from one flower to the next. Suddenly hyper-aware that Cal’s tanned, muscular forearm was mere inches from her own, Mimi experienced a wild urge to reach for his hand, touch it with her fingers, feel the warmth of his blood beneath the skin.
Just as well he couldn’t know what renegade thoughts she was thinking. Oh, but she’d missed him so much while he’d been away. And now that it was her turn to leave, she was going to miss him all over again . . .
‘So anyway, I know the last few years have been hard.’ Cal resumed the story he’d begun. ‘But life goes on. And it does get better, thank God. Last year was an improvement on the year before, and this year is better than the last one. I used to think I’d never get over losing Stacey, but it’s happening. I’m used to her not being here. I’m surviving without her.’
Mimi nodded. ‘That’th goo.’
‘I used to want to yell at people when they told me I’d meet someone else,’ he continued drily. ‘But I can cope with that now, because I suppose I want it to happen too. Whereas before I couldn’t bear the thought of it.’
Another nod. As he gazed ahead through the windscreen, Mimi studied his profile in detail, taking in the way his sun-streaked hair fell across his forehead, the set of his jaw, the high curve of his cheekbone. Earlier, she’d observed him from a distance and now she was doing it close up. Suddenly Cal turned his head and looked straight at her, and the expression in his dark, thickly lashed eyes caused a fountain of butterflies to explode inside her ribcage.
‘I was looking forward to painting you,’ he said. ‘We seem to have missed our chance. Maybe some other time, when you come back.’
Mimi had seen Titanic enough times to know that sometimes you just had to seize the moment. Look what had happened after Kate Winslet had told Leo’s character to paint her like one of his French girls. Spurred into action, she said impetuously, ‘Or we could do it tonight . . .’
Except it came out as: ‘Orghhgudurghduergh.’
Of all the times to completely forget your mouth was numb and your tongue felt like a car tyre and you couldn’t speak.
‘What was that?’ Cal frowned. ‘You sound like Chewbacca.’
Maybe it was just as well he hadn’t been able to understand. Mimi shrugged and shook her head, indicating that it really didn’t matter.
‘Oh you poor thing.’ A flicker of a smile lifted the corners of his mouth as he studied her face. ‘It’s going to be agonising once the anaesthetic wears off. You’re even more swollen now than you were when you came out of the surgery.’ As he spoke, he moved closer and carefully moved a single strand of hair out of her field of vision. ‘There, is that better? Sorry, it was about to go into your eye.’ He paused, then lowered his hand a few inches and touched the side of her inflamed jaw. ‘Can you feel that?’
Oh dear Lord . . .
Mimi did her best to swallow without making a gulpy noise. She shook her head a fraction. ‘Nurgh.’
‘How about this?’ He moved his hand and she sensed that his fingertips were now brushing her cheek.
Another tremulous shake.
‘You can’t feel this at all?’
Mimi looked at him and silently shook her head for the third time. Was he remotely aware of the havoc he was causing in her body? Because she knew he was touching her lower lip now. And whilst it wasn’t intended to be a seductive gesture – it was, she knew, purely in the spirit of exploration – she was beginning to feel very light-headed indeed.
Seriously, this much adrenalin overload couldn’t be good for you.
If she were to close her eyes now, Cal could bend his head and kiss her on the mouth and she wouldn’t even be able to tell it was happening.
Apart from the fact that she could sense him, and smell the faint clean scent of his cologne, and hear the regular sound of his breathing.
Silence.
More silence . . .
‘Hey,’ murmured Cal, and her eyes snapped open once more. Had it happened? Had he done it? Had he just kissed her and she’d completely missed it? He raised an eyebrow. ‘Did you just fall asleep?’
‘Nugh.’
He grinned, then reached past her to open the glove compartment. ‘Here you go.’
Bemused, Mimi took the mini packet of Kleenex he was offering her. A split second later she realised why, and a shudder of mortification zapped down her spine.
Oh, the glamour.
‘Thorry.’ What else could you do but laugh? Even if it did involve gurgling yet more saliva and sounding like the Elephant Man. When you were a hostage to excessive drool, it simply wasn’t the time to be fantasising about taking a friendship to the next level.
‘No need to apologise.’ Cal’s smile broadened. ‘It’s been fun. More fun for me than for you, admittedly. But this is a day I don’t think either of us will forget in a hurry.’
You’re not kidding. Mimi pulled a face and nodded mutely in agreement.
‘Well, the cows will have reached the farmyard by now.’ He checked his watch. ‘The lane will be clear. And I need to be back before Cora gets home.’
Mimi nodded. Who knew how long it would be before they saw each other again? She dabbed at her mouth in case the drool had restarted and said, ‘Let’th go.’