something to say, she boasted she’d met half the Tory shadow cabinet at dinner on Saturday. Then thought what a fatuous thing to have done. Jake was bound to be wildly left wing. Conversation didn’t improve with the arrival of food. There were long silences. Jake, unsmiling, said very little. Helen was beginning to rattle. Gloom swept over her; she had no charm; she was boring him as she bored Rupert and obviously Dino. She looked down at the silver bodies of the whitebait in their coats of batter and could see their glassy little eyes staring at her.
Suddenly Jake leaned across, took her knife and fork, and put them together and beckoned the waiter: “Could you take the plates away, and bring our next course; but there’s no hurry.”
“Anything wrong, sir?”
“Nothing. We just weren’t as hungry as we thought.”
Helen gazed down at her hands, which were frantically pleating the white tablecloth.
“I’m sorry,” she mumbled. “What a dreadful waste.”
Jake stretched out his hand and very gently began to stroke her cheek. For a second she shied away, then gradually relaxed under his touch.
“There,” he said softly, “there. It’s all right, pet. I’m just as scared as you are.”
“Are you?” she glanced up, startled.
“More so, I should think. I was so terrified you’d say no. I couldn’t work up the courage to ring you until six o’clock. I hung round the phone box, steeling myself.”
“And I figured you weren’t going to call.”
“And I thought you’d probably cry off this morning, so I booked in under the name of Smith, and went out first thing, so you couldn’t reach me.”
“And when I got cold feet and rang up to cancel and found you hadn’t booked, I got in a blind panic because I thought you weren’t coming.”
They both found they were laughing. Then she told him about the hassle with Davina and the NSPCC.
“What was
“I said I was going to look at a horse. Tory looked at me as though I was barking. We haven’t got enough cash for a three-legged donkey at the moment.”
“And I left all that whitebait.”
“Doesn’t matter. Nice treat for the restaurant cats. D’you mind if I smoke?”
As the match flared, she noticed the beautiful, passionate mouth, with the full lower lip and for the first time realized his eyes were not black but a very dark sludge green matching his shirt.
“Have you really got gypsy blood?”
“Sure. My father was pure Romany. I ran away back to the gypsies when I was six. After my mother died, I tried to find him, and lived with the gypsies for three years before the social security people caught up with me and slapped me in the children’s home.”
“So you’ve really had no family life to speak of?”
“I’ve got one now, and when I see what Tory’s mother did to her, I reckon I was well off.”
“What was it like living with the gypsies?”
“Cold, sometimes, and always with the feeling of being moved on by the cops. But I enjoyed it, I learnt a lot. They taught me to recognize a good horse, and treat all nature as a medicine cupboard. Which reminds me.” He put his hand in his pocket and produced a bottle of gray-green liquid.
“For you. For neuralgia.”
Helen took it wonderingly. “You remembered. What is it?”
“Extract of henbane. Deadly poisonous, neat. Crippen used it to murder his wife.”
Helen looked slightly alarmed.
“But that’s very diluted. It’s a marvelous sedative and a painkiller. Try it, but keep it in a safe place.”
Helen was so moved and touched, she had to make a joke out of it.
“D’you eat hedgehogs as well?”
“No,” he said coldly, “nor do I tie them on top of poles, like your husband.”
Oh dear, thought Helen, I’ve upset him.
Then he said, “Did you know hedgehogs’ prickles go all soft when they’re with kind people?” and suddenly smiled.
God, he’s attractive, thought Helen. She felt as if she were on top of a snowy mountain, perched on a sled, with her hands and feet tied, hurtling into the unknown with no way of stopping or steering.
“Do you tell fortunes?”
He shrugged. “A little. It’s really a con trick. The hand betrays the calling: if it’s rough, or pampered, or the nails are bitten. You look more for the face behind the eyes, the droop of the mouth.”
Helen held out her hand. Her engagement ring, far too loose, had fallen underside down. For a second the huge sapphires and emeralds on her third finger caught the light, then fell back into place. Jake examined the palm for a second.
“It tells me a small, dark stranger has entered your life.”
“You think so.”
“I know.”
“Is he going to remain there?”
“That’s up to you.” He ran his finger lightly along the heart line. “Whatever you may think to the contrary, you’re extremely passionate.”
Neither of them made much headway with their second course, but finding so much to talk about now, they drank their way through a second bottle of wine.
“Were you really intending to ask me out at Crittleden?”
“No, I was far too preoccupied about riding again.”
“What changed your mind?”
“I suddenly wanted you like crazy.”
Helen blushed. “Ever since you bought me lunch at the pub, I’ve kept thinking about you. I thought it was gratitude, now I’m not sure.”
Jake undid one of the zips on her flying suit: “Pretty. Does this lead anywhere?”
“Only a pocket.”
“Nice. I’d like to live in your pocket.”
Looking down at his hand at her collarbone, involuntarily Helen bent her head and kissed it, then went crimson.
“I didn’t mean to do that,” she said, appalled.
“I know you didn’t. I willed you to.”
Still they lingered, oblivious of the yawning waiters looking at their watches, ostentatiously re-laying tables on either side of them. Seeing her slowly relax, and those huge eyes losing their sadness, Jake couldn’t tear himself away. He’d always thought her very overrated as a beauty. Now she seemed to blossom in front of him — lovelier every second.
In the loo, Helen was amazed to see her own face. She couldn’t believe she hadn’t turned into someone else. It took hours to get her flying suit half off and have a pee. She kept undoing the wrong zips. She realized she must be very tight. She was appalled, looking at her watch, to see it was a quarter to four.
She was glad that, in her flat boots, she was at least an inch shorter than Jake. As they walked to her car, he put a hand on the back of her bare neck under her hair, warm and reassuring. It was nice walking beside someone the same size. Rupert always dwarfed her.
“I must go back,” she said wistfully. “I’m dreadfully late.”
As he opened her door he said, “Drive a couple of miles down the road towards Penscombe. There’s a little wood on the left. Wait for me there.”
The wood was full of primroses and violets. For a dreadful moment she’d thought she’d found the wrong copse or that he wasn’t coming. Then at last he appeared over the hill, stuck behind a trundling farm tractor carrying bales of hay. Taking both hands off the wheel, he raised them in a gesture of despair.
He was out of the car in a second, leading her into the wood, beech husks crunching beneath their feet. Then, as Helen tripped over a bramble cable, Jake caught her, drawing her behind a huge beech tree, laying her against the trunk, taking her face between his hands, examining every freckle and eyelash and yellow fleck in her
