‘Twee?’ He looked confused, and Pepper grinned.
‘You’re so fluent, I forget that English is not your first language,’ she said. ‘Twee means too quaint and cute – excessively pretty.’
‘That is why it is the perfect home for you,’ he said, not missing a beat.
‘Oh, stop!’ She laughed, but Finn didn’t join in. He was looking at her thoughtfully.
‘Remind me again,’ he prompted. ‘How do you and Sam know each other?’
‘Samuel? Oh, he works at one of the residential homes where I volunteer, looking after kids and young adults with severe brain damage.’
‘Because of your sister?’ he asked. ‘Was she sick like that before she died?’
Pepper did not want to talk about Bethan today. Finn was supposed to be the happy part of her life, the person who enabled her to put thoughts of her late sister to one side for a few hours.
‘She had epilepsy, and it was a fit that caused her accident,’ Pepper muttered, her words tumbling out one on top of the other.
‘This is difficult for you to talk about.’
Finn shifted closer to her on the blanket. The beach was busy with families, groups of friends and waddling toddlers with buckets full of shells in their pudgy hands – Pepper felt as if every single pair of eyes was on her, pitying her.
There’s that weird loner who teaches art. The one with the dead sister.
Finn didn’t say anything for a few minutes, just pressed his bare leg against her own – a gesture of solidarity that almost broke through Pepper’s resolve not to cry.
‘You miss her still?’ he asked. ‘You feel like it is unfair that she died, and you survived?’
‘Yes.’ Pepper nodded. ‘I do.’
Finn ducked as a football appeared from nowhere, narrowing missing his head.
‘First a bat and now a ball – everything is out to get me in this place!’ he exclaimed.
Pepper saw that his smile was back in place and felt her whole body sag with relief.
‘Come on,’ she said, clambering to her feet and reaching for his hand. ‘It’s high time you found out just how cold the North Sea can be.’
Wincing as the sharp edges of pebbles dug into their bare feet, they wobbled down to the shoreline, both gasping as a freezing wave splashed up over their legs.
‘Scheisse!’ swore Finn. Letting go of Pepper’s hand, he dived forwards under the water.
‘Nooo!’ Pepper shook her head when he re-emerged and beckoned for her to join him.
‘It is not all that cold once you get in,’ he promised, through teeth that were definitely chattering.
‘I’m perfectly fine where I am, thank you,’ she said, but before she could retreat to dry ground, Finn stood and started pulling at her arm until she half staggered, half fell into the sea.
Pepper laughed as she swam after him, her flailing arms bashing water into his face until he gripped her wrists, lifting her up with ease until her legs were wrapped around his waist. Conscious of the children paddling only a few feet away, she wriggled clear, swimming further out until there was a decent distance between themselves and prying eyes.
‘It’s bloody freezing!’ she wailed, squeezing icy water out of her hair.
Finn slid his hands across her bottom.
‘Are you getting warmer now?’ he asked, and Pepper felt herself stir. She and Finn had made love on her sofa the previous night, and then again in her bed that morning, each of them driven by the same uncomplicated longing that was coursing its way through her now.
‘I want to tell you something,’ he said.
‘Um, I think I can guess what . . .’
‘Oh.’ Finn glanced down at his shorts. ‘No, not that.’
‘It’s actually very impressive,’ she observed. ‘In water this cold.’
Finn smiled but didn’t laugh.
‘I have been thinking about perhaps taking a break soon,’ he told her. ‘From Freunde.’
‘You have?’
Pepper pushed Finn’s wet hair off his forehead. Her own she had bundled up into an untidy knot, but strands of it had escaped and were stuck like seaweed to her cheeks and throat.
‘I want to focus on my website for a while,’ he went on. ‘Get it ready to launch in the springtime.’
‘Good idea,’ she said, wondering where he was going with this.
‘So, I also thought,’ he added, his hands closing around her waist. ‘That perhaps I could work here?’
‘In England?’ Pepper was startled. ‘What – you mean here? In Aldeburgh?’
‘At the moment, I think it makes more sense to call it Cold-Brrrr,’ he replied, lifting his arm out of the water to show her his goose bumps. ‘But yes – here.’
Pepper opened her mouth, then closed it again.
‘I know it is still the very beginning for us,’ he went on. ‘But I feel––’ He stopped, taking a breath. ‘No, I know. I know that I want to be with you – to try and make things work between us. I do not like being away from you, and today I realised that perhaps I do not have to be. Clara and Otto will be fine for a few months without me. I can move here while I finish the website, then after that we can see.’
‘And you would want to stay with me, in my little house?’ Pepper asked, even though she knew that must be exactly what he was planning. She felt all at once equal parts terrified and exhilarated at the prospect, at his confidence in their connection and his desire to be a permanent fixture in her life. It was happening so fast, maybe even too fast. But then again, hadn’t meeting Finn been the best thing that had happened to her for years? Wasn’t it true that she had wanted to be swept off her feet by a man who was both capable and romantic her entire life?
‘Of course, this can only happen if it is what you want,’ he added. ‘If you get fed up of the sight of me, I promise to go.’
‘No, no!’ Pepper hushed him with a kiss. ‘I could never get fed up of you.’
‘Danke,’ he said, his smile now every bit as wide as it had been that first day in Lisbon.
‘I mean it, what I said before,’ he told her, gathering her against him until Pepper could knit her feet together in the small of his back. ‘About wanting to be with you.’
‘You are a smitten kitten,’ she teased, blinking as small waves splashed up and over them.
‘The fact is,’ he murmured, cupping her face in his hands. ‘I am falling in love with you.’
Chapter 30
Finn’s declaration of love lifted Pepper up so high that for days after he flew home to Hamburg, she still felt as if she were floating.
Love. Finn was falling in love with her.
She had faltered when he said it, her words falling out in a tumble as she tried to make sense of what was happening. She felt as if she’d been yanked up into a jet stream of feeling and had no choice but to let herself be swept away by the moment. She knew that it was all happening fast, just as she knew that it was all utterly bananas, but she also knew that she had never felt this way about anyone before, and never been made to feel this full by someone else. Pepper was fit to bursting with unbridled joy, with possibility, with generosity – she wanted everyone in the world to feel as she did, to be loved and to love.