Always and Only You

Chapter Sixty-Four

CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

Present Day

Gil is busy doing whatever he’s doing on the lower floor, so I gather up my nerve and make myself a watercolour station at the long dining table overlooking the river. It’s soothing preparing the space, setting out the artist’s pad and brushes, getting a couple of tumblers of clean water. I tape a piece of watercolour paper to an old board Gil found in a storeroom.

The day is bright but slightly overcast and I check the exact colour of the sky and try to replicate it on the saucer I’m using for mixing colours. When I’ve got it just right, I take a clean brush and wet the paper, then add the paint at the top and work downwards, creating a gradient. When I’ve finished, I look at the landscape I’m trying to replicate again. I decide not to paint the village – too many houses and fiddly bits for a first attempt – but the rolling hills behind them, divided by dark green hedgerows into patchwork fields and dotted here and there with either trees or sheep, are the perfect subject.

Only painting is harder than I remember. Possibly because it’s been around a decade since I’ve held a brush, and almost certainly because it’s exposing the deterioration of my fine motor skills since the accident. I struggle to draw even a vaguely straight line with my brush to start off with.

After twenty minutes, I declare the paint-streaked piece of paper in front of me as my tester page and throw it away. The only problem is that the next three attempts go exactly the same way. Instead of the elegant little sketch of the Devon countryside I’d pictured before I sat down, all I have is a colourful soggy mess worthy of a preschooler.

Prickly warmth surges through me and I rip the wet paper off the board and squash it into a ball, then throw it across the room. And then I feel cross at myself for being such a baby.

As I stand to fetch it, I hear footsteps on the stairs. I almost knock a chair over as I dive for the evidence of my temper tantrum. Gil appears in the doorway as I’m attempting to hide it in the kitchen bin.

‘How’s it going?’ he says, following my hand as I lift my foot off the pedal and the bin lid clunks closed.

‘I suck,’ I say sulkily, even though I had intended to pretend everything was going wonderfully.

He blinks. ‘That well, huh?’

‘And I’m being a brat about it,’ I add, unable to quell the urge to explain myself. I don’t want anyone to see me struggling, let alone this man, but he’s kind of caught me red-handed, so what else can I do?

‘It must be frustrating to find things that used to be easy more challenging.’

‘It is …’ I stare at him, wondering how he knew that.

‘I read a book,’ he adds, clearly having read my telltale features.

I used to pride myself on my ‘stew face’, as I once heard someone call the calm, polite expression used by yacht interior crew the world over when a charter is going to hell in a handbasket. Nothing could make me break my mask of professionalism. But I seem to have lost that ability too.

‘On traumatic brain injuries,’ he adds. ‘When I knew you were coming to stay. I thought I should be … prepared.’

Once again, Gil has surprised me. This isn’t the Gil I knew from five years ago, who was cavalier and uncaring. Did Megan’s accident have more of an impact on him than I realized?

I’m so used to bickering with him I’m not sure how to respond, so I press my lips into a wry smile. ‘Did this book of yours tell you what to do when your painting sucks?’

‘Nope.’

I sigh. ‘Pity.’

Gil looks at the closed bin. ‘Are you going to show it to me?’

It’s my turn to laugh. ‘No.’

He shrugs. ‘Moping around isn’t going to solve anything.’

‘Ouch,’ I say, but I can’t argue with him.

He regards me carefully for a short while, then heads towards the atrium. ‘Come on …’

‘What?’ I call after him. ‘Where are we going?’

He’s disappeared out of sight, but I can hear him picking up keys from a hook in the hallway. ‘Fresh air always helps,’ he calls back.

‘Now you’re sounding like my mother,’ I grumble under my breath, but I stop guarding the bin and follow him.

* * *

When we reach the end of the lane and turn into the village, the weather has shifted. The clouds have melted away, revealing a glorious August day. Gil turns towards the river and heads across the road to the Ferryboat Inn. ‘What do you you want?’ he asks, standing in the doorway.

I peer into the gloomy interior of the centuries-old pub, with its thick walls and beams on the ceiling. It’s the last week of the summer holidays and even on a Friday lunchtime, it’s packed, and the noise level is far from comfortable. ‘Um … I’m okay.’

He gives me a look. ‘Sit on the wall over there and I’ll bring it out to you.’

I turn and spot a low wall at the edge of the road that leads past the jetty. The thought of sitting there in the sunshine watching the boats bob up and down on their moorings, a cold glass in my hand, fills me with relief. ‘A sparkling water, please.’

He nods and disappears inside. I find a pleasant spot on the wall and support myself on my arms while stretching my legs out. Gil appears a couple of minutes later. ‘Thanks,’ I say as I take my drink from him. He’s holding what looks like orange juice mixed with something fizzy. ‘I thought you’d go for a craft beer or something.’

He shrugs and looks out across the water. ‘Simon said a while ago that he’d given up the drink while you couldn’t have any. Thought I’d take the same approach.’

I’m strangely touched by this. I don’t remember being that appreciative when Simon made the same gesture, but I suppose I was still numb inside my post-coma ball of emotional cotton wool. Looking back, it’s as if my feelings were there but greyed out and insipid when I first woke up, and they’ve slowly been regaining colour and vibrancy as the weeks have gone by.

I squint against the sun. ‘Well, he did … but only for about a month after I got out of hospital. You know Simon and his red wine.’

Gil’s lips curve into a smile. ‘Oh, yes. I do.’

For the next ten minutes, we sit in silence and sip our drinks. When we’ve finished, Gil takes the glasses back inside and then leads the way down the jetty. The tide is right in, covering the strip of shingly, muddy beach and all four of the long pontoons are floating on the water. We walk to the end one, feeling the breeze from the river ruffling our hair, a wonderful counterpart to the midday sun.

There are two boys on the pontoon next to us, almost identical in looks, but one is slightly taller than the other. I’d put them at about fourteen and sixteen. Each has a bright plastic bucket at his feet and is holding a fishing line wrapped around a plastic contraption.

‘How many have you got?’ the taller boy asks, peering at his brother’s bucket.

‘Three,’ the younger one replies, and then adds, ‘More than you!’

‘Are you crabbing?’ I ask them, trying to peer inside their buckets.

The older one looks at me suspiciously, but the younger one nods. ‘Dad’s challenged us to catch ten each.’

I look around, but I can’t see anyone who looks like their father. ‘Where is he?’

‘In the pub.’

‘What’s the prize?’

‘A portion of chips instead of just another packet of ready salted crisps,’ the younger one says. He looks hungry in a way that only teenage boys can get hungry.

‘Crabbing’s lame …’ the older one says. He looks as if he wants to throw his line in the water and walk away.

I’m hit by a sudden surge of nostalgia for family holidays before my parents split up. Dad taught me how to crab on a trip to Cornwall when I was five, and I begged to do it every holiday we went on after that, whether we were by the sea or not. ‘Can I have a go?’

The boys look unsure.

‘I’m quite good,’ I tell them. ‘My record in one session was twenty-eight. I’ll get you those chips in no time.’

That does it. The older one hands me his crab line before his brother has a chance. The younger one scowls at him. ‘I’ll have a go with yours if you want, mate?’ Gil says. The boy grins and hands Gil his line.

I pull the weight and hook to the surface and check the bait – bacon rind. Nice. Crabs love that – and then I drop it back into the dark green water and wait. The brothers sit down on the opposite site of the pontoon and dangle their legs in the water.

Gil checks his line and nonchalantly says as he throws it back into the water, ‘In the summer, Simon and I used to do this for hours. On this very pontoon.’ He shoots a look across at me. ‘My top number was thirty-two.’

There’s a moment where we hold each other’s gazes and a flash of something familiar passes between us, like our old sense of one-upmanship, only lighter and more playful. ‘You’re on,’ I say, accepting his unspoken challenge. ‘First one to ten.’

We each catch a crab almost straight away, and I call out the number of crabs in my bucket each time I add more. Gil does the same.

‘Six!’ I yell as I pull my line up and discover two tiny greenish-brown crabs with beady black eyes clinging on for dear life. I shake them both into my bucket of river water to join the others. But then I catch nothing more for a good five minutes, while Gil hauls in another three, overtaking me.

I am not about to let him win, not when it was my idea to do crabbing in the first place, so I pull up my line and move it to a fresh spot. It works. I add crabs number seven, eight and nine to the bucket in quick succession, but Gil is hot on my heels. The boys end up turning round to watch us, and the older one cheers me on while the younger hypes Gil up.

Only one more to go and I’ve won! I keep glancing over my shoulder to see how Gil’s doing, scared I’ll lose my lead, but I’m not paying proper attention when I try to shake crab number ten off my line into the bucket. Instead of plopping into the water, it lands on the pontoon and scuttles towards me, angry claws snapping. I drop my line and run away screaming. The boys roar with laughter and so, much to my surprise, does Gil. The crab thinks better of getting its revenge, shoots sideways off the pontoon and back into the water.

I laugh too until I see Gil has snagged his final crab. I rush back to my line and pick it up. ‘That’s cheating!’

Gil laughs even harder. ‘Is not. It’s not my fault if you abandoned your line!’

He holds the crab above his bucket, a challenging glint in his eye.

I sigh as I pull my line up again and find it empty. ‘Go on, then,’ I say wearily. ‘Gloat all you want.’

But before he can rub his victory in my face, the older of the brother’s shouts, ‘There’s Dad!’ They both rush over and gesture for us to give us the lines. ‘He might not get us the chips if he thinks we didn’t do it ourselves,’ the younger one says with pleading eyes.

Gil reaches over to hold his line above my bucket. The valiant little crab loses its grip and splashes into the water below. I frown gently, sending him a silent question with my eyes. He looks pleased with himself. And something else … but I haven’t the slightest idea what he’s thinking.

We thank the boys quickly so we don’t give the game away and march back down the pontoon, then walk back to Heron’s Quay in comfortable silence.

When we get back inside, Gil notices my painting station and looks thoughtful.

‘I’m struggling to make the finer, smaller strokes,’ I tell him, feeling it would be petty to hold an explanation back. ‘My handwriting’s also a bit off at the moment. But it’s been improving slowly. I’m sure this will too.’

One of my discarded attempts is poking out of the closed bin lid. Gil walks over and presses the pedal with his foot. ‘May I?’ I nod and he picks up the ball of crumpled paper and opens it out. After studying it for a moment, he looks up at me. ‘My mum went to classes for a while. They encouraged her to be less … careful. Her teacher always said she ought not just to try to copy perfectly what she saw in front of her but to bring something of herself to the painting, even if it was wilder, less … I was going to say “accurate” but I suppose it’s a different kind of authenticity. Maybe acrylics might be better to start with?’

‘Maybe …’

‘You can paint up on the roof when it’s fine,’ he adds. ‘I promise I won’t sneak up on you and try to look.’

I see the earnestness in his eyes before he turns and walks away and something inside me shifts. ‘Gil …?’

He stops and turns. ‘Yes?’

I swallow. ‘Thank you for all of this – for letting me stay and finding me the paints and, well, everything. I feel I ought to do something for you, to make it up to you.’

‘You don’t have to,’ he replies. ‘I didn’t do it because I was expecting anything from you when I suggested to Simon you stay here.’

I stare at him. ‘It was your idea?’

He nods. ‘Simon said you needed to get away … It seemed like the obvious solution.’

I’m struck by both his generosity and the fact that I know he wasn’t expecting anything back from me because I’m usually such a bitch to him. And there was me thinking he had me here under sufferance because Simon had begged him. I realize simple thanks is not enough.

‘I also … I want to say I’m sorry.’

He frowns. ‘For what?’

Here goes. ‘For judging you too harshly in the past. I think … I think I might have been wrong about you.’

He stares back at me, dumbfounded. ‘Then you don’t need to do anything in return. That’s all the thanks I need.’