“You shouldn’t. I think you’re doing just fine.” He squeezed her hand and she tried to keep her heart—and hopes—from soaring at this little exchange. As much as she liked Simon, as much as she wanted this to work, she still felt instinctively cautious.
They managed three loops of the pond before Simon suggested they take a break. The other skaters had left, and they had the pond to themselves, the air still and crystalline, the sun high in the sky.
They sat on the fallen log and Simon produced a flask of hot chocolate from his bag. “Sustenance,” he declared, and rummaged again to brandish two plastic mugs.
“This is wonderful, Simon, thank you.” Olivia took her cup of hot chocolate, savouring its sweetness.
“It was a challenge to come up with a second date activity,” Simon told her with a grin. “If we’d gone to the cinema we couldn’t have talked, and I’m not really good with parties, so that was out…”
“You’re not good with parties?” Olivia said in surprise. “I would have thought you’d be the life of the party.”
“Nope, I’m not really good with crowds.” He glanced down at his mug, and Olivia felt that now-familiar frisson of wary curiosity as she wondered what he wasn’t saying.
“So will you have Christmas with your sister and her family?” she asked, and Simon gave a little grimace.
“She’s invited me, but they’re all going to my brother-in-law’s parents’ and I’d feel like a fifth wheel. I barely know them.”
“So what will you do then?”
Simon shrugged. “I’m getting the key to Willoughby Close just before Christmas Eve, so I might just spend the holiday moving in.”
“That’s no way to spend Christmas.” Olivia hesitated, wondering if it would be far too soon to ask him to spend Christmas with her. She decided it would, and so instead she invited him to the mulled wine and mince pie evening she had planned at the shop. “It’s on Wednesday, and I’m hoping to get a crowd. There will be a bit of a carol singalong, and then a Christmas quiz. Do you think you’d like to come?”
“I’d love to,” Simon said, with such sincere enthusiasm that Olivia couldn’t keep from breaking out in a grin of pure happiness.
“Good.” Maybe this felt too good to be true…but maybe it was just good. She wanted to believe that. She chose to.
By the time they finished their hot chocolate and made another couple of circuits of the pond, dusk was starting to fall, creating pools of violet shadow among the trees.
“I suppose we should get back,” Olivia said, even though she was reluctant to end their date. They had been holding hands as they skated along and even though her toes were numb and her cheeks felt raw she didn’t want to leave.
“Yes, I can’t feel most of my feet. But you didn’t fall once, unlike me.”
“I also skated at a snail’s pace.” They sat on the bench together and unlaced their skates, and then as they started back along the twilit path, Simon reached for her hand. It felt completely natural and right to walk along holding hands, and even though the path was a little too narrow to walk alongside each other, they somehow managed it.
Olivia’s steps slowed as they came down the high street towards Tea on the Lea. Should she invite him in? Once again she was in a quandary, and then she decided she didn’t need to be. Why worry so much? Why not simply take life’s opportunities as they presented themselves? Find happiness and perhaps even love where and when she could?
She turned to him, so abruptly she nearly crashed into him. “Do you want to come in?” she asked a little breathlessly. “Have some dinner? I think I could rustle up something, or we could get a takeaway, although admittedly Wychwood doesn’t have that many options. Fish and chips…”
“I’d love to,” Simon answered, and Olivia’s breath came out in a rush of relief. Maybe this really could be easy. Maybe it could be good. And she could stop being afraid, stop worrying about the what-ifs or the things she didn’t know, and let everything unfold naturally…wonderfully.
Chapter Ten
Of course, as soon as Simon followed her upstairs, Olivia realised she had not left her poky little flat in a state to receive visitors. The kitchen was a mess of dirty dishes, an open box of cereal trailing its flakes across the counter, and her washing was hanging to dry on a rack in the middle of the sitting room, her rather worn M&S bras and pants on glaring display.
“Sorry, I wasn’t expecting…” she began in a half-mumble before whisking the rack into her just-as-messy bedroom. She returned with an apologetic smile, and Simon laughed.
“You should see the state of my room.”
“Will you be glad to get your own place?” Olivia asked as she hunted through the kitchen for something to offer. She should have done a weekly shop today, but between her mum and ice-skating with Simon she hadn’t had the time.
“Yes, I think so,” Simon said after a second’s hesitation. “It will be nice to have some space.”
“You must get along with your sister rather well if you’re able to live with her,” Olivia remarked. She had a packet of pasta and a jar of sauce. Not the most inspired meal, and she realised belatedly that the fish and chip shop in the village was closed on Sundays.
“Yes, we do, mostly. I suppose any siblings fight.”
“I wouldn’t know, but that sounds right.”
“Did you ever wish you had siblings?” Simon asked as he leaned against a kitchen counter, his long legs stretched out in front of him.
“Not really, actually. Mum and me always felt like a complete unit.”
“How is she? You saw her this morning?”
“Yes, and she was surprisingly okay. But I’m still bracing myself for whatever lies ahead… It feels so unknown.” Cue the wretched lump in her throat, the feeling that she was at sea, trying to
