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‘Smile for the camera,’ Brad said, and took a snap of her on his phone with the seals in the background. She smiled at him and took a shot of him on her phone, too. Today was a good day. One to make memories.
‘Would you like me to take your photograph together?’ a middle-aged woman sitting near them asked.
‘Thanks, that’d be lovely,’ Brad said, and handed over his phone.
‘Are you on honeymoon?’ she asked as she took the photograph. ‘You look like newlyweds.’
Abigail had no idea how to answer. The truth was much too complicated.
Brad simply smiled and said, ‘Something like that. It’s a lovely part of the world,’ as if neither of them had ever been here before.
‘Well, I wish you both every happiness,’ the woman said, and handed his phone back.
‘Thank you,’ Brad said.
‘Yes—thank you,’ Abigail added with a smile.
Once they were back at the harbour, they climbed out of the boat and walked hand in hand back to his car.
‘OK?’ he asked.
‘Yes. It was lovely. I’d forgotten how gorgeous the seal pups are,’ she said. ‘And those big eyes.’ Dark and expressive and utterly captivating.
Though she could’ve been talking about Brad.
‘Sea legs holding up?’
‘They’re pretty much propped up by the sickness tablets,’ she admitted. ‘But I’m OK. You?’
His hand tightened round hers. ‘Good company and the perfect view. I’d forgotten how lovely the seals are, too.’ He paused. ‘Shall we go for a drive and find a pub somewhere for lunch?’
‘Sounds good.’
Though Abigail couldn’t shake what the woman had said about them looking like honeymooners.
This felt almost like a honeymoon. Not that theirs had been a conventional one: after Gretna Green, they’d done the coast-to-coast walk to raise money for the local lifeboat service and stayed in little guest houses along the way. They hadn’t been able to afford an expensive holiday abroad when Brad was a student, though they’d pooled their birthday and Christmas money and managed a couple of nights in Paris. His dream of trekking through the Australian outback and hers of seeing the Northern Lights had been completely out of range of their budget. But they’d enjoyed snatched days out, visiting museums and booking train tickets well in advance to keep costs to a minimum.
There had been good times. Plenty of good times. It hadn’t mattered that they didn’t have much money. The only thing that had mattered was being together. Just like they were now; they didn’t have to fill every moment with chattering. That hadn’t changed over the years, and she was glad that they could still find an easy silence between them.
And it was easy for lunch out to stretch into pottering around antique shops in one of the Georgian market towns, and then afternoon tea, and then strolling along the beach and watching the stars come out.
Outside her front door, he said, ‘I can’t quite bear to let you go yet. Come and sit with me for a bit?’
But curling up together on the sofa led to kissing. Which led to him taking her back upstairs to the king-sized bed and making love with her; and then she was too comfortable to move.
‘Stay with me tonight,’ he said, wrapping his arms round her.
Common sense meant she ought to go. ‘I have work tomorrow. And you’ve got to pack and be out of the cottage by eleven,’ she pointed out.
‘It won’t take me long to pack,’ he said. ‘And I’ll be leaving early. I have things to do in the lab.’
Back to the real world. Where no doubt Brad would think about this weekend and realise that this was all a pretty fantasy, but it couldn’t work in real life. The logistics were impossible.
‘But I’ll be back. Give me a few days to sort things out,’ he said. ‘I need to make sure the project’s still on track, and then I can call in a few favours and take a few days off.’
Maybe he would. Maybe he wouldn’t. He’d been away for a week already; what if there had been some real developments on his project while he was away that meant he had to stay in London? What if he couldn’t use his leave because some of his team had already booked holiday and that would mean the lab was short-staffed?
