Page 74 of Be More Capybara

‘I should go,’ he said.

‘Why?’

‘Because if I stay, what will Harry think when he sees me leave in the morning?’

Helen snuggled in closer. ‘He probably won’t even notice. And if he does, so what? We’re all adults.’

‘I know, but I was an adult when I walked in on Dad.’

‘That was different. There’s a lock on my door. He’s not going to catch us in the act. And you saw your father with a strange woman when he was still married to your mother. Harry probably thinks we’ve been having sex for weeks. Or he doesn’t think about it at all. Most likely the latter.’

The noise of the wind was joined by the sound of heavy rain lashing against the bedroom window.

Helen held him closer. ‘And I’d be worried about you walking home. I’ve waited years to wake up with you, Nigel Farnham. I’m not letting you leave in this storm and get blown off a cliff.’

‘You know I snore.’

‘So do I. The joys of getting older. Anything else?’ She pushed herself up on her elbow so she could look at him. ‘Because if you’re genuinely regretting this, I’ll call you a taxi.’

‘No, nothing else. And I am absolutely not regretting this. My only regret is that we didn’t do this a long time ago.’

‘Me too.’ She kissed him tenderly. ‘Me too.’

56

HELEN

Helen walked into her living room holding two mugs of hot chocolate.

She smiled at Nigel snoozing on the sofa with Rocky sprawled across his lap. It felt like he’d been living here forever, in a good way. Although he hadn’t officially moved in, he’d only been back to the Grange twice in the past week to pick up clean clothes.

He’d been surprisingly helpful on the domestic side of things, for someone who was used to having cooks and cleaners. And he’d mastered the art of making meringues.

Rocky looked like he was happy Nigel was here, too, following him around like a lost lamb or just lying down on Nigel’s feet, while he was working on his laptop.

And Harry drifted in and out on his own timetable, and didn’t seem to have clocked that anything had changed.

Helen put the drinks on the side table and squeezed in next to them. She grabbed the blanket from the back of the sofa and put it over all of them.

She closed her eyes. For the first time in years, life felt good.

57

NIGEL

Nigel headed downstairs to the cottage’s kitchen. Helen hadn’t been in bed when he’d woken up this morning, which was unusual. He was the one who got up first and made her a cup of tea. But she’d been worrying about a proposal for a potential new client, so perhaps she’d got up early to work on that.

As he walked into the hall, Rocky came bounding out of the living room to meet him.

‘You’re going to knock me over one of these days,’ he said, scratching Rocky behind his ear. ‘It’s very quiet. What have you done with everyone?’

The kitchen door was shut. That was unusual too. Rocky ran over to it and alternated between sniffing along the gap at the bottom and looking back at Nigel.

‘I guess you want me to open that so you can get to your food bowl.’

He walked over to the door and turned the handle.

‘Happy Birthday!’