“Do I?” Olivia was not about to admit she’d been thinking about love. “Just…this and that, really.” And then she blushed, which gave the game away.
“And what was this?” Simon asked with a teasing smile. “Or that?”
“Oh…” She could feel her face going positively scarlet, which was really not a good look for her. She had a comfortably round face to match her figure and when she flushed she tended to look like a tomato. “Well, if you want to know the truth,” she said recklessly, her heart pounding at the thought of her daring, “I was thinking about romance.”
Simon’s eyebrows rose as he put two plates of pasta on the table and then sat down opposite her. “That sounds intriguing.”
“I just wondered what made a person fancy another. Or fall in love, for that matter.” Had she gone too far? Time to get this conversation under control. “You mentioned you were engaged a while back. What made you fall in love with your fiancée?”
“I don’t know if I could pinpoint it exactly,” Simon answered after a moment. “We had fun together, we liked the same things, we shared the same values. Or I thought we did, until she moved on.” He shrugged. “Can you boil it down to a formula or an equation? I suppose scientists and philosophers have been trying to figure that one out for eons.”
“Yes, I suppose they have.” Olivia thought of Rob, her most serious boyfriend from a decade ago. What had made them a good couple, if they even had been a good couple? She wasn’t sure anymore that they had been; she had been the one to cool things off, at any rate, because she hadn’t been able to see a long-term future together. Rob had been nice enough, but he’d been ambitious and impatient about it, and Olivia had known she wouldn’t fit into his lifestyle in the long run.
“I think it’s more of a feeling rather than a formula,” Simon said, his chin propped in her hand. “One of rightness, that this fits, that you can be yourself, your true self, with a person. You can’t pinpoint why, although I suppose sometimes you can pinpoint why not.”
“Yes…” Olivia half-wished she hadn’t started this conversation. It felt like too much, too soon, but at her age, how long did she really want to wait to tackle the big stuff? “So, is it just you and your sister?” she asked in a rather obvious bid to change the subject. “Or do you have other siblings?”
Simon’s alert, interested expression—the crinkled eyes, the ready smile, suddenly shut down. It was odd, like watching a curtain come down, something being wiped completely clean. He took a bite of pasta, chewed and swallowed before answering carefully, “It’s just the two of us now. My younger brother died eighteen months ago.”
“Oh.” She’d really put her foot in it, that much was obvious. “I’m so sorry, Simon.” She hesitated, unsure whether to probe, yet it felt insensitive to simply change the subject. “I can’t even imagine how hard that must be.”
He nodded slowly. “Very hard. It’s why I moved to Wychwood, actually.”
“Is it…?” She gazed at him encouragingly, waiting for more. She’d never seen Simon look so bleak, his face drawn into stark, serious lines. It made her ache for him; she wanted to go around the table and put her arms around him, but their relationship wasn’t there yet and in any case he seemed a bit distant, retreating into himself before her very eyes.
“You know your friend who had heard rumours about me?”
Olivia swallowed and nodded. Was he going to tell her whatever the dark secret that had been lurking in the shadows was? Did she want to hear it? “Yes, I remember.”
“Of course you do.” He gave a twisted smile. “I suppose I should have told you before. I know things have been swirling about, whispers in the school playground and so forth.”
“Well, I’m never in the playground, but I know what you mean.” She took a quick, steadying breath. “But, Simon, you don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to. I mean…we’re getting to know each other on our own terms, aren’t we? That’s enough for me.”
“I’m glad we’re getting to know each other, but this is part of it, isn’t it? To tell the truth of who we are, where we’ve been.” He propped his elbows on the table, giving her a direct, resolute look, the shadows still visible in his eyes. “It’s not easy to talk about, and I fully admit I made a pretty big mistake.” Now she was feeling really nervous. “But…after my brother died, I was in a bad place. He died in a rock climbing accident… We were climbing together, in Switzerland. Andrew was all about extreme sports, and he wanted to go climbing for his thirty-fifth birthday. I wasn’t as into it, but I agreed.” He paused, his gaze distant, and then released a long, low breath. “So we went, and we were rappelling…both of us on ropes with fixed anchors, right next to each other.”
Olivia nearly shivered at his flatly delivered description, knowing what had to come next.
“His anchor came loose,” Simon explained in that same, flat voice. “And for a few seconds he dangled there, knowing it was coming out and that he could fall hundreds of feet, most certainly to his death.” He swallowed hard. “I was close enough to grab on to him, and I did. But my anchor couldn’t hold both of us, and Andrew realised that. As I held him he let go. I watched him fall.”
Tears rose to Olivia’s eyes and she furiously blinked them back. “Oh, Simon, I can’t even imagine how…” She couldn’t continue; any sentiment seemed trite, falling far too short of the grief he’d experienced. “I’m so, so sorry.”
Simon nodded, accepting. “It was the hardest and
