Page 102 of The Christmas Retreat
‘Nice!’ I commented.
‘Turned out he’d already moved another woman in. It was Verity who’d given him my number and, to give her her due, she seemed more upset than I’ve ever seen her, but then, she and Anniehadbeen best friends since school.’
That made me feelslightlywarmer towards Verity: I expect losing her best friend had been a huge shock.
‘I was in the States when Finn Flint texted me to collect Annie’s stuff, but Nerys picked everything up and sorted it out. This box is full of things she thought Cariad might like to have one day, to remind her of her mother. There were also two sculptures in her studio and a lot of maquettes, plus some drawings. Those are on permanent loan to a gallery in South Wales. Cariad can decide what she wants to do with them when she’s older.’
He bent and hefted the box into his arms.
‘I think it’s more than time to clear out the past, so I’ll put this box in the family sitting room and perhaps Nerys will go through it with Cariad later. There are a few ornaments and odds and ends that she might like to keep, as well as the jewellery, but nothing very expensive, Nerys said.’
‘I don’t think Cariad is very interested in things like jewellery at the moment anyway, but she might like to wear some of it later,’ I suggested.
‘We’ll see, but I’m glad I spotted it. It reallyistime to close the door on the past and move on.’
He rested the box on top of a chest of drawers and then looked searchingly at me.
‘And you must have realized by now thatyouare the person I want to move on with, Ginny – to spend the rest of my life with – and we’ve already wasted too much time. I should have known from the moment we met that it would never work out with Annie and that you and I belonged together.’
He came closer, looking down at me, his amber eyes dark as honey in the dim light.
‘Don’t you think now that we might have a future together,Ginny?’ he asked softly. ‘It can’t be just me feeling like this, can it?’
‘I … don’t know. It’s too soon …’ I stammered, backing away and fetching up against the laundry basket. ‘And … I think Annie would always come between us. Can you ever get rid of the past? Won’t she always haunt you? She wassobeautiful and talented.’
‘I don’t see why she should, Ginny.’ He came closer, reaching out for me, but I fended him off.
‘Wait,’ I said. ‘Rhys, there’s something you don’t know, something I’ve been putting off telling you, and it concerns Annie.’
‘About Annie?’ he echoed, surprised. ‘I can’t imagine what that could be, because you never met, did you? But it’s obviously a day for discoveries and revelations, so if you’ve got something you’re burning to get off your chest, why don’t we go somewhere more comfortable than this dusty attic to have it out?’
He brushed the dust off the box of Annie’s belongings with the sleeve of his already filthy jumper and then picked it up again.
‘Come on, we’ll go to my room, where we can at least sit down and have a coffee while we talk.’
And without waiting for a reply, he headed for the steep stairs down.
*
Rhys’s room was actually a whole apartment, complete with a small hall and kitchen, and he explained it had been made for Nerys’s step-grandmother, Rose, who had been wheelchair-bound for the last years of her life and had a nurse-companion.
‘That’s when the lift was put in, too.’
He’d dropped the box in the small hall, to take down later, and led the way into a large sitting room, which also obviously served as library and study, for he had a big desk in the window that overlooked the back of the house, like mine.
‘You can be quite self-contained here,’ he said over his shoulder as he went into the kitchen, leaving the door open so I could see him putting on the kettle and taking down mugs from a shelf. ‘But I always leave the door to the hall open, because I don’t want Cariad ever to feel I’m shutting her out, even when I’m working.’
‘I should think all the family feel like shutting themselves away sometimes when you have guests, especially the large groups,’ I said, looking around at the rich old carpets on the dark-stained wooden floor, a few quirky ornaments and a lot of books. Normally I’d have made a beeline for the books on the shelves, but I was too nervous about the coming scene to do that right then.
He came back in with two mugs and put them down on the coffee table in front of a small sofa.
‘Come and sit down,’ he invited and, when I did, sat down next to me and turned his amber eyes on me, one eyebrow quirking upwards.
‘OK, so what is this mysterious revelation about Annie that you don’t want to tell me?’
‘It’s that – I wasthere,’ I said with a rush. ‘It happened not far from my cottage and I was driving home. I came on it mere seconds after it had happened. In fact,’ I added with a shudder, ‘I heard the crash.’
I swallowed and carried on, not looking at him, whichsomehow made it easier. ‘It was dark and in a narrow lane. I went round a bend and there the car was, smashed up against a tree.’
