‘Oh, Theo, I had no idea… I’m so sorry for your loss.’
‘It’s fine, I don’t know why I’m feeling like this tonight. Mum passed away over ten years ago, when I was twenty and my brother was twenty-three. I’ve had counselling, I’m doing fine, it’s just sometimes… sometimes… the smallest thing…’
‘I know exactly how you feel.’
Lexie inhaled a deep breath, not ready to say the next sentence but she was going to say it anyway.
‘When Dad died it was like… like the pain was physical, not emotional. It was like someone had taken a red-hot blade and plunged it into my heart again and again and again. Even now, five years later, the wound still glows like an ember, sometimes barely there, sometimes like an inferno. I understand, Theo.’
Theo took Lexie’s hand into his and gave it a squeeze.
‘I’m sorry, Lexie. I didn’t mean to bring back difficult memories for you.’
Lexie decided it was better for both of them if she changed the subject.
‘So your mum was a golf pro – is that why you started to play when you were three?’
‘Yes, and I loved it. You are actually looking at the Somerset county junior champion two years running! And I have trophies to prove it!’ He laughed, his face losing its sharp creases as he recalled his success on the golf course. ‘I was really torn when I was deciding what to study at university, but journalism won out in the end. However, I still played golf whenever I got the chance. That is, until this happened.’ Theo patted his leg. ‘Although I can still get a round in if I use a buggy! Golf can become an obsession if you’re not careful.’
‘No chance of that for me,’ giggled Lexie, swinging her putter between her legs.
‘Oh, I don’t know, maybe if…’
‘Not a chance! For one thing I don’t think I can pull off one of those jumpers with the pattern on the front, and don’t get me started on the shoes! They look like something a Morris dancer would wear to hike the hills. Okay, shall we finish the… Oh, my God!’
She had been so intent on listening to Theo’s story that she hadn’t noticed the dark clouds scudding into place above them, surreptitiously preparing to deposit their contents on their unsuspecting prey. What had started as a little light drizzle that hadn’t yet penetrated the canopy of trees overhead was now becoming a downpour.
Theo grabbed her hand and together they ran towards the exit, dropping their putters and golf balls in the waiting basket and then sprinting, as fast as he was able, towards the car park where they arrived out of breath, but giggling. Lexie was soaked to the skin, her hair plastered to her cheeks, and she suspected her mascara had given up and headed south, but as she waited for Theo to search his pockets for the car keys – no remote-control in the seventies – she smiled at the way he couldn’t have cared less what she looked like.
‘Jump in! Quick!’
Lexie plonked herself into the passenger seat and Theo turned on the ignition, twisting a knob on the dashboard to fill the car with heat, and yet Lexie still started to shiver violently.
‘Here, take this!’
Theo whipped off his denim jacket and leaned to the side to drape it over Lexie’s shoulders, pausing for an infinitesimal moment, his eyes on hers as if debating something important, before settling back into his seat and putting the car into gear.
‘Sorry…’
‘No need to be sorry!’ Lexie grinned. ‘That was the best game of mini-golf I’ve ever had.’
‘I thought it was your first?’
‘It was!’
Chapter Sixteen
‘Okay, the least I can do after that soaking is feed you. Are you okay coming back to my place?’
‘Your place? I thought you lived in Bath?’
‘Well, not my place, but the cottage the Gazette has booked for the week so I can cover the wedding. Apparently, the website described it as ‘cosy’ and ‘bijou’ – two words my editor thinks fit me perfectly.’
‘Mmm, not the words I would have chosen,’ smiled Lexie.
‘I bet you haven’t eaten since breakfast.’
‘Well, no, unless you count a selection of high-end French patisserie?’
‘How about I cook something for you?’
‘Cook for me? I didn’t know you could cook.’
‘I can’t, but it’ll be fun trying!’ Theo paused and cast a glance at her from the corner of his eyes. ‘Don’t take this the wrong way, but before you came down here to Cornwall, when was the last time you had fun?’
‘I have fun all the time!’
But as soon as she’d said it she knew that wasn’t true, because she had to search through her memory for an example, only coming up with a night out she’d had with Pippa and her friends from Zumba class when they’d had a cocktail competition which entailed starting at the top of the cocktail menu and working your way to the bottom until the last woman was left standing. She, as Pippa had so eloquently put it when she’d begged to be allowed to call a taxi, was a complete lightweight. But that was January and they were hurtling towards the end of April.
‘Okay, but in my defence, I have been busy co-ordinating and managing a catwalk show for an internationally renowned, famously fastidious, French fashion designer for the last three months,’ she replied, leaving out the fact that she’d simultaneously been organising a country wedding that was due to take place three hundred miles away from her home!
‘So don’t you think it’s about time you indulged in a little “me time”?’
‘I will when Zara and Jason are safely on their honeymoon. So, what are you going to cook?’
‘I thought I’d keep it simple, but delicious.’
Theo slowed the car down as they pulled into a little Cornish village, its one narrow street lined with houses that could easily have adorned the front cover of Homes & Gardens. It was typical of many of the villages and hamlets in that part of Cornwall; picturesque, cosy, flowers dancing in ceramic pots everywhere, a bright red post box with King George VI’s coat of arms, a resident’s bicycle, complete with wicker basket and casually discarded at the garden gate, a neighbour’s dog asking for its evening constitutional.
Theo came to a stop beneath a sprawling oak tree, its trunk endowed with a home-made bird box and a sign informing the reader that they could donate to the cause of the RSPB by dropping any spare change through the letterbox of number five.
What had started out as rain had now turned into a monsoon and Lexie was grateful for Theo’s considerate parking. Within seconds he’d leapt from the driver’s seat and run round to the boot, extracting two huge brown paper carrier bags of shopping, then sprinting to the front door of the quaint cottage his newspaper had rented for him, which looked more like somewhere a hobbit would choose to spend his summer holidays. With its sunshine yellow door and matching window boxes, a frill of wisteria growing around the lintel, and a garden showcasing a profusion of colourful flowers, it was the cutest place Lexie had seen – except there was no time to stop and stare at the floral beauty because even on the short dash from the car to the house, droplets of rain had started to drip down the back of her neck.