Page 104 of The Cornish Cream Tea Holiday
‘Hang on, Thea. I’ll have you out of there in a couple of minutes.’
‘I want to say something first,’ she rushed.
‘This’ll take two minutes,’ Ben said again. There was a short pause and then he added, ‘Are you hurt?’
‘No, no, I’m fine. And I’ve been here for – I don’t know how many hours, and no giant spiders have got me yet. But I want to say something.Please.’
‘Now?’ He sounded bemused, but his voice had softened. The buzzing from his drill stopped, quiet settling over their corner of Cornwall once more.
‘I don’t want you to get me out of here and then just leave,’ she said. ‘I know that sounds horribly ungrateful, because you’ve come to rescue me, but I don’t – I need to say some things.’
‘What things?’ He sounded closer, and she looked past the beam and saw him, peering at her through the misty glass of the door between them. She could see what a good face he had: the best face, really. She had missed spending time with him.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry that I said those things to Esme. That I wasn’t honest with her about how I felt about you, that I dismissed what we had. I promise that I never thought of you as temporary, because even before I met you, I was planning on moving to Cornwall.’
‘Right,’ Ben said, his tone giving nothing away.
‘And I’m sorry I wasn’t completely honest about Alex from the beginning, that I gave the impression that there was something between us. But there never,everwas. Not before, and not since he’s been here.’ She paused, waiting to see if he’d fill the silence. He didn’t, but his eyebrows rose slightly, and she knew she had to go on. ‘My feelings for Alex were more about being comfortable, feeling safe. Mostly, I was grateful to him.’
‘Grateful?’ Ben asked. ‘What for?’
Thea swallowed. ‘Last summer, at the library, there was an … incident.’
‘What kind of incident?’
‘There were these guys – they must have been teenagers, though they weren’t exactly small. They’d been hanging about, making a nuisance of themselves. We’d asked them to move on, but they said they were doing research for college projects. There wasn’t much we could do, because they weren’t causing damage or offending anyone, and I’m sure they were just trying to amuse themselves.
‘But then I ended up leaving late – I’d been working with some local schools on an anti-bullying campaign, of all things …’ She cleared her throat. Even now it was hard to go through it again: not because she was still afraid, but because she was ashamed.
‘What happened?’ Ben asked, his voice echoing against the glass.
She noticed that he’d pressed his fingers against one of the lower panes, and for the first time, she felt an inkling of hope. It was ironic that he was listening to her when, now more than ever, he could walk away and she wouldn’t be able to follow.
‘I locked up the library,’ she continued, letting the memories crowd in. ‘It was dusk, and I thought I was alone. It was a lovely, warm summer’s evening, so I knew town would be busy, but by the library it was quieter. They walked out of the shadows – the same boys who’d been inside, messing about all day. They didn’t want to hurt me, I don’t think, but they were intimidating, walking close behind me, saying things too low for me to hear, then laughing. One of themtugged on my handbag strap, but when I turned around, they backed off. When I walked faster, they kept up with me.’ She closed her eyes. ‘My flat’s twenty minutes from the library, and it’s a quieter, residential part of town, so there were no restaurants or pubs I could duck inside. I felt helpless, panicky. I didn’t know what to do.’
‘Alex turned up?’ Ben guessed, and Thea nodded.
‘He was as laid back as usual. He told the men to leave me alone, but in a way that wasn’t threatening – there was no challenge for them to rise to – and after a few, uncertain moments, they just walked off. Proving, I suppose, that they weren’t ever going to do anything to me. But since then I’ve felt so grateful, so warm towards him, and so I – I guess a part of me thought—’
‘You don’t have to say anything else,’ Ben said.
‘I want to.’
‘You’ve already said enough. I’m the one who didn’t listen.’
Thea didn’t know what to say to that, and in the space where she should have replied, the drill started up again. She deflated. So that was it, then. She’d opened her soul to him, and he wasn’t interested. She rested her forehead against the beam, feeling it vibrate under Ben’s ministrations towards the building.
She heard murmuring, then Ben’s voice, whispered but forceful. ‘I want to get heroutfirst. I’m not doing it through a bloody door!’
She heard the tinkle of hinges falling to the ground and the door listed sideways, a fresh blast of sea air reaching her through the gap. She saw Finn shuffle into place, gripping the door so it didn’t fall unchecked. Ben croucheddown, and the drill whirred again. Thea felt the beam, rough and warm beneath her palm, and wondered how long it had been in place, secured above this doorway, before her footsteps had brought it crashing down.
There was a crack, another metallic clink, and then Ben and Finn were moving the door out of the way, and it was Ben who came back and held his hand out for Thea to take, so she could slip past the beam, step over the debris that had come down with it.
Scooter whined, and Finn crouched down and held the dog’s collar.
‘Careful,’ Ben said, his warm fingers wrapping around her hand the moment she pressed her palm into his. She dropped her gaze, navigated her way over the fallen plaster and wood, past the beam, through the narrowed doorway, and was suddenly out in the sunshine.
‘Thank—’ she started, but Ben pulled her forward, wrapping his arms around her and bringing her flush against his chest. It was sudden and unexpected and very, very welcome. She slid her arms around his waist and rested her cheek against the soft cotton of his shirt, the heat of his skin beneath turning her relief into something else, something that made her stomach pulse low down. But she couldn’t think those thoughts, so she forced herself out of his embrace.
