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  ‘Leonard was like a wonderful uncle. Me not having a father, he filled that gap in a thousand ways.’ He frowned. ‘And it was Rosemary’s friend Megan who made him leave us?’

  ‘I’m sure of it, Gethyn dear. Megan might be a good friend to Rosemary Roberts but she made my son go away from me and I’ve never heard another word. She deprived me of a son and you of a friend. She ought to be punished!’

  They were sitting silently, each wrapped in thoughts of the absent Leonard, when a solemn-faced policeman came into the room.

  ‘I’m very sorry, sir. But I think we have some bad news for you. A body has been found up at the quarry and we believe it to be that of your mother. Can you come with us, please?’

  Gethyn stood up, his face pale and drawn, his arms trembling in silent tattoo. ‘If only Rosemary was here. I’d cope all right if Rosemary was with me,’ he said softly to Mrs Priestley. ‘Why did she have to be away at such a time?’

  As they walked towards the police car, Mrs Priestley said, ‘Very fond of Rosemary, aren’t you dear? Now don’t get too fond, not until you’re sure she feels the same way. That only leads to disappointment. Go now and I’ll be here when you get back. We’ll look after each other now, won’t we? Now we’ve both suffered a terrible loss.’

  * * *

  For several days there were visits from the police. Besides questioning Gethyn at great length, they spoke to all the neighbours, but finally they told him that it seemed his mother had either lost her balance or slipped on loose gravel. Or had become confused in the thick mist that distorted the familiar place and walked over the edge.

  ‘Why did I choose that day to go to the cinema?’ Gethyn moaned.

  ‘Don’t blame yourself. You couldn’t have done more for her than you did. Everyone knows what a good son you’ve been.’

  ‘It should never have happened,’ Gethyn insisted.

  * * *

  The funeral was a quiet affair. Gethyn’s mother had once been a well-known figure in the village but in the last few years she had gradually stopped going out. Several of her friends had passed away and fewer people called to visit her.

  The church was not full and the mourners gathered together in the first pews to make the sound of their voices carry the hymns more strongly, and give Gethyn the feeling of being surrounded by friends.

  All the time he kept talking about when Rosemary returned. Mrs Priestley wondered what had happened to make him believe that his neighbour was anything more than the friend she had always been. So far as she remembered there had been nothing more. In his grief and loneliness, Gethyn was enlarging that affection and making it into something that was pure invention. Rosemary was not in love with Gethyn and unlikely to be.

  ‘Go into town and get yourself a job, boy,’ she pleaded one day. ‘It doesn’t matter what you do. You’d be better off with some companionship.’ She had called to see if he was all right and to offer her assistance in sorting out his mother’s things. ‘Go on the bus tomorrow and see if there’s something suitable.’

  ‘I’ve tried, but there doesn’t seem to be a place for me. I worked at the offices up at the quarry almost twelve years, straight after leaving school. Knew that job so well I could do it in my sleep. But I don’t feel like starting something new.’

  ‘Gethyn, you’re twenty-seven, not fifty!’

  ‘I’ll wait till Rosemary comes home and talk it over with her. She’ll understand.’

  ‘Rosemary has her own life,’ Mrs Priestley said quietly.

  ‘Always got time for me, Rosemary has. She and I are close, always have been. When her gran lived next door she used to come for holidays and we spent every moment together. There’s a real bond. No one else would understand how close we are.’

  The elderly woman stood to leave. She had tried several times to warn him but he refused to listen. Now it was up to Rosemary to explain. She hoped the girl would be kind when she did so.

  ‘I’ll give you a hand when you’re ready to clear out your mam’s clothes. Not something you should do on your own.’ She looked at him, but he didn’t answer. He was wrapped up once again in thoughts of Rosemary and the homecoming he waited for with a kind of desperation.

  2

  When Rosemary reached the London hotel after her arrival at Heathrow, she felt disorientated and weary. Her rather harshly cut, short brown hair was untidy, her small figure in the crumpled travel clothes displaying less than her usual neatness. She always dressed rather formally, in her favourite colours, the subdued hues of autumn.

  She went to the desk and collected her key without looking at anyone in the foyer of the hotel. Head down, her blue eyes staring at the floor, she seemed to want to be invisible. Yet someone was observing her.

  At a small table, sipping coffee, a young man followed her progress across the muffling carpet and to the stairs. He was tempted to run and help her with her suitcases but did not. Best, he decided, to wait until the scene he had planned could be acted out. He slowly finished his coffee.

  The city of New York had been a contrast so great it might have been on a different planet from the place where she lived. The visit, with its hectic round of sightseeing and museum visits and late night discussions, had been fun, but only for a while. Now she knew she would be content to settle back into the routine of her quiet life and the pleasant job in the library of the Welsh market town.

  She threw down her luggage and flopped on the bed. It seemed an effort to undress and bathe and she was tempted to simply lie there until sleep claimed her.

  The hot, soapy water made her feel marginally better and when she went down to check on the opening times of the libraries and museums she planned to visit on the following day, she realised she was ravenously hungry. She chose a small Greek restaurant; she wished she didn’t have to eat alone.

  Back in the hotel foyer, she stopped to telephone her friend Megan to tell her she had safely landed.

  ‘I imagined every disaster I’d ever heard of and you were in them all,’ the softly spoken Welsh voice admitted. ‘There’s glad I am that you’re back.’

  ‘I’m not back for a few days yet,’ Rosemary reminded her. ‘I’m taking the opportunity of doing some research for my next book while I’m here.’

  ‘Well, hurry home, girl, we all miss you.’

  ‘Has anything exciting happened while I’ve been away?’ Rosemary asked.

  ‘Your neighbour, Mrs Lewis, has died.’

  ‘What!’ The shock of losing her neighbour, who had taken the place of her grandmother in her affections came like a blow. ‘But how? It must have been very sudden, she was fine when I left. Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. She was a friend of my grandmother’s for years. And poor Gethyn! He’ll be lost without his mother. He never was much for making friends, he relied on her for everything.’

  ‘Gethyn came into the library a few days ago and asked me when you were due home,’ Megan went on. ‘Strange he was, all quiet and lost, and looking as if he hadn’t slept for weeks. He seems anxious to talk to you about it.’

  ‘I’ll see you at the weekend,’ Rosemary promised. ‘Tell Gethyn, if you see him, that I’ll be back late on Saturday, will you?’ Rosemary left the booth. Standing near her, in the foyer of the hotel, a young man was struggling to open a map and was spilling some books held precariously under his arm. Instinctively, Rosemary went to help.

  ‘Gee thanks,’ he smiled. They bent down together to gather the recalcitrant books and rescue the crumpled map. Rosemary saw two brown eyes sparkling with amusement, and tousled brown hair that seemed to have a mind of its own quite as determined as the books.

  ‘American!’ she said.

  ‘Well, little lady, how did you guess!’ he said in an exaggerated accent.

  She joined in his laughter and told him she had just that day returned from New York.

  ‘Like it?’ he asked.

  ‘Warm, friendly, exciting, surprising, and utterly different from the quiet place where I live,’ she re
plied.

  ‘That sounds like my home town.’ He smiled.

  ‘You live in New York?’ she asked.

  ‘You look as if you can’t believe anyone actually lives there! Yes, it’s my home. I’m a New Yorker born and bred and I love it, noise, bustle and all.’ The map was finally folded and he handed it to her and asked, ‘Can you help me find a place called Covent Garden? I was told to be sure and see it.’

  Rosemary, attracted by the friendliness of the American and conscious of returning the many kindnesses she had received on her recent stay in his country, said, ‘If you like, I’ll show it to you.’

  The man held out his hand and said, ‘Glad to meet you, my name is Larry.’

  Rosemary took his hand, feeling the warmth of it enveloping her arm and spreading around her body.

  ‘I’m Rosemary,’ she smiled, wishing she felt less travel-worn, wishing she was as attractive as some of the other women sitting around the foyer. She caught sight of her reflection in a large mirror. Her clothes were out of place here in the capital city. She felt so drab she could vanish into the wall and not be seen. For the first time in her life she was unhappy with herself. She looked well beyond her twenty-five years.

  ‘You live here?’ Larry waved his arms to encompass the hotel and she shook her head.

  ‘I live in a small Welsh village. But I’m staying in London for a couple of days before returning home.’

  ‘I plan to visit a place called Aberystwyth.’ He surprised her by his careful pronunciation and she praised him for it.

  ‘My full name is Laurence Madison-Jones and my antecedents are Welsh,’ he said proudly.

  ‘I am Rosemary Roberts and I’m pleased to hear it!’ she replied.

  * * *

  ‘What do you do, Rose Mary?’ Larry asked, as they set out the following morning. He pronounced her name as if it were two separate words and she smiled at the pleasant sound of it.

  ‘I’m a librarian and I write stories for children.’

  ‘I’m a historian and I’m here for a few months hoping to learn something about my own family. Perhaps you can help me?’

  ‘If it’s Aberystwyth you’re heading for, that isn’t very far from my home,’ she told him.

  ‘What a marvellous coincidence! I believe my grandfather was from there.’ He took out some photographs of his family and included in them was one very old black and white photograph of a baby in a pram, with a woman standing beside it, a smile on her face.

  It was taken by a street photographer way back in 1962, Larry explained. ‘I’m hoping someone might recognise the woman.’

  ‘I recognise the place. It’s Aberystwyth,’ Rosemary said.

  ‘I reckon you’re right.’

  ‘The woman, she’s a relative?’ Rosemary asked.

  ‘Kinda related, yeah.’ Larry was vague, his eyes staring at the photograph.

  ‘That seems very unlikely. That someone would recognise her, I mean.’

  ‘Coincidences happen.’

  ‘Of course, and I wish you luck,’ she smiled. He looked at her then, his face relaxing into a smile so warm that she felt as if she were melting. His hand reached out and touched hers.

  ‘Surely you believe in coincidences, Rosemary? Or why are we here together, at this moment? Talking about a small part of the small country of Wales we are both connected with?’ He was rewarded with one of her dazzlingly beautiful smiles.

  * * *

  The near kinship seemed to relax the remaining hint of their being strangers in a strange town. Meeting Larry felt like an extension of her holiday and she found the prospect of returning home less and less of a draw.

  ‘I thought London was new to you,’ she said curiously, surprised that he seemed so at ease with taking shortcuts Rosemary herself was unfamiliar with.

  ‘I studied the street plan before we set out,’ he admitted, ‘and luckily, you chose to show me the part I had half remembered.’

  She was tired but refused to admit it and when Larry suggested they ate she was grateful for the prospect of a rest.

  He hailed a taxi and they were driven to a small Italian restaurant not far from Oxford Circus where all the food was home-cooked. The marble floor was bliss to Rosemary’s aching feet and Larry teased her by threatening to run off with her shoes. Without the proprietor’s seeing, he lifted her feet onto his knee and massaged her feet and ankles in a way that made her forget their tiredness. The movements were sensual but he still had that attractive and irresistible sense of fun in his dark eyes.

  ‘Tell me about your village, Rosemary,’ Larry asked, when they were enjoying a coffee after their meal.

  ‘Life is quiet and, for someone like you, probably dull. Nothing ever happens. Not even any grafitti or litter to complain of. You can walk for an hour along some of the country lanes and not see a car. Life seems to slip along on a conveyor belt, each day similar to its predecessor.’

  ‘But you love it.’

  ‘I love it.’ Her eyes softened as she thought of it, imagining walking along the quiet lanes hand in hand with him.

  ‘You have good neighbours?’

  ‘Oh yes. They’re all friends really. It’s hard to imagine but there are still doors that are rarely locked, and once you have seen a person twice you can call him a friend. I bought the cottage from my grandmother when I wanted to leave home. I preferred the idea of living in a house I knew rather than renting a flat in the town. The people in the five cottages making up the terrace are long-standing friends, almost part of my family really. Over several generations we’ve always lived near each other and we are bound up in each other’s joys and tragedies.

  ‘When Gran died a year ago, the terrace grieved with us. Yesterday I learned that my neighbour, who had been Gran’s closest friend, has died. Gethyn, he’s the son, will be devastated. But he won’t feel alone. Everyone will support him and share his sadness. Gethyn will be anxious for me to get home; he and I have been friends since childhood and he’ll want to talk to me about it.’

  ‘Boyfriend, is he, this Gethyn?’

  ‘Oh no. Just a neighbour, part of my extended family, a close friend.’ Larry’s hand tightened its grip. His eyes looked deeply into hers and he asked with a sigh, ‘There’s a boyfriend?’

  ‘No.’ She smiled and shook her head.

  ‘I’m glad.’

  On the following day, Rosemary rang Megan to tell her not to expect her until Monday morning.

  ‘I’ve met this American,’ she confided, ‘and I know what everyone says about holiday friendships and I know that’s all this is, but I can’t resist extending it for another day.’

  ‘Gethyn will be disappointed,’ Megan told her. ‘So will Sally and I of course, but poor Gethyn is hovering around the library hoping for news of your return. Very impatient, he is.’

  A moment’s guilt was soon washed away as Larry came to join her for their second onslaught on the sights of London.

  ‘Perhaps today,’ she suggested brightly, ever conscious of her dowdiness, ‘we might do some shopping?’

  Larry’s idea of shopping was not hers. She thought of C & A, Marks & Spencers … Larry took her to Piccadilly and through Burlington Arcade. They walked to New Bond Street where, under his persuasion, she bought a lemon dress and jacket that cost more than a month’s salary and he insisted on buying her shoes and a handbag from Gucci.

  ‘I want you to accept them as a thank you gift for being so generous with your time,’ he said as she protested. ‘I know how much you really want to be back in your little grey stone cottage beside the stream.’

  ‘No, I’ve loved seeing London with you,’ she insisted. The parcels packed in the distinctive Gucci bag hung heavily on her arm like a steadily increasing burden as they walked to their next destination. Somehow, receiving such expensive gifts had spoiled everything.

  They had lunch at Fortnum & Mason and tea at Simpson’s. Yet, although they talked as freely as before, the gift and the ‘thank you’ had change
d everything. She was nothing more than a kind stranger. She knew that now. His hand no longer searched for hers. After leaving her hand close to his and getting no response, she filled her arms with the parcels to disguise their emptiness.

  When they returned to the hotel, Larry carried her parcels in for her from the taxi. At her door she hesitated, inexperience making her unsure of what she should do. Should she invite him inside, or thank him at the door? Then he smiled, his eyes looked into hers as he said, ‘Open the door, woman! I can’t drop all these on the floor, can I?’

  ‘I hadn’t realised there were so many.’

  He put the parcels and bags on her bed and sat in a chair beside it.

  ‘I want to see you wearing the new dress,’ he said.

  ‘Of course. I’ll wear it tomorrow.’

  ‘I can’t wait that long!’ he laughed. ‘Go on, it won’t take a minute to slip it on.’

  Amused, she went into the bathroom and pulled the dress over her slim figure. There was only a small mirror in the bathroom but even in that she could see that the colour did something for her. The slim, fitted line of the dress gave her figure a lift, instead of disguising its trimness as skirts and blouses had done. Stepping out into the room, she saw Larry’s face show admiration and a blush suffused her face.

  ‘Rose Mary, you’re beautiful! Why have you been hiding yourself?’ he murmured.

  When she removed the dress, Larry’s reflection appeared in the bathroom mirror. Immediately panic seized her. Did she want this? How could she accept what was in his eyes? But how could she refuse? He was a stranger and someone she might never see again. But it might be the beginning of something wonderful.

  She felt his fingers relieving her of the rest of her clothes, his lips kissing her slowly revealed body. She was losing control and she didn’t care. Her own body was responding to his touch in a way that she had never imagined and there was no turning back. This was something she wanted so badly that even if she regretted it for the rest of her life, the here and now demanded she abandoned her fears and give herself completely to this man.