Page 70 of The Last Kiss

She equivocated, but he could see she knew he was right. “I wish you’d stay a little longer, Ashleigh. I don’t like to think of you down at the cottage on your own.”

Neither did he, but he put on a brave face. “I’ve nothing to do here but mope. I’ll be better off down there, working. There’s so much to be done.”

“I’ll come down and see you soon.” She reached across the table to take his hand. “And promise me you’ll come straight back here if you feel” — a squeeze of her fingers — “too lonely.”

He turned his hand over beneath hers and squeezed back. “You don’t have to take care of me, Olive. I’m not your responsibility, remember?”

She lifted an eyebrow. “You are my friend, Ashleigh. More than that, you’ve made my new life possible. So, I beg your pardon, but I’ll take care of you if I choose to. Now finish your breakfast before you leave.”

“Doctor’s orders?”

She grinned. “I very much hope so.”

***

In the small hours of Monday morning, when Harry couldn’t sleep for the unbearable knowledge that Ash would be leaving London that day, he crept from the bedroom he shared with Kitty and the girls and went down to the kitchen below.

He ached down to his bones, couldn’t close his eyes without seeing Ash leaving that bloody alley, dashing away tears Harry had put there. Him who would have given his life for Ash! Still would. He’d gladly give his life for Ash, but how could he risk destroying Kitty’s just because he was lonely?

Lonely.

What a pale word. Empty, desolate, hopeless — they were closer, but no words could ever fully capture the agonising gash in his heart or his wretched certainty that it would never heal.

By the light of a dim lamp Harry sat at the kitchen table and began to re-read Ash’s precious letters. He knew it was ridiculous, but it was all the comfort he had.

My dearest West…

My dear friend, how I miss you…

I remain your most affectionate friend…

I love you, he’d have written if he could. Harry read it in the formal words anyway, remembered how sweet it sounded on Ash’s lips, how he’d breathed it between them with such honest feeling…I love you.

His chest constricted and he doubled over, struggling to stifle a sob. And that was how Kitty found him, head on the kitchen table, silently crying over a pile of old letters.

“Harry?”

He startled upright, scrabbling to gather the letters before she could read them. “What are you doing up?”

“I heard you.” She pulled her shawl tighter around her shoulders. “Bloody cold down here, Harry.”

He turned away, out of the lamplight so she couldn’t see his face. “Go back to bed. I’m sorry to have woken you, I’m — ”

“You’re miserable is what you are. No, don’t try to deny it. You’ve been miserable as sin since you came back from Hampshire, and worse since Mr Ashleigh visited.” She looked at the letters under his hands, then back to his face. Her expression was difficult to read in the lamplight as she sat down on the other side of the table. “What did he come here for, Harry? Don’t lie. I know it weren’t just to buy you a drink.”

Harry tightened his fingers on the letters, drawing them closer.I can’t live a lie, he’d told Ash. But here he was, lying to his sister and she knew it. “He — ” His throat closed, he cleared it. “He wanted me to — to — work with him. Back down in Hampshire. He wants to start breeding horses.”

“Him and his wife?”

“Yes.”

“And you said no.”

He looked down at his clenched hands, uncomfortable under her direct gaze. “I — I’d miss you and the girls.”

“Bollocks. That ain’t the reason, Harry West. I told you, don’t lie to me. A gent comes all the way to Bethnal bloody Green to offer you a job, breeding horses of all things, and you say no? And then spend days sobbing into your cups like your heart’s broken?” She drew her shawl tighter, lips thin as she carefully said, “Look, it ain’t none of my business, but was you… was you in love” — Harry’s heart stopped dead in his chest — “with that girl Mr Ashleigh married? Is that why you don’t want to go down there?”

Relief came so swift and harsh it burst out of him in a soggy laugh. “No, it ain’t that.” But he instantly regretted his honesty because Kitty had just given him the perfect explanation and he’d thrown it away.

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