From Now Until Forever by Rowan Coleman

Author:Rowan Coleman [Coleman, Rowan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781529376500
Google: FKaczwEACAAJ
Published: 2023-08-02T23:00:00+00:00

V

Grow old along with me!

The best is yet to be.

Robert Browning

Chapter Thirty-Five

Vita is cooking eggs in an ancient poaching pan. She stands in front of her cooker concentrating on the bubbling water, two pieces of toast under the grill. I found out the reason why her fridge is empty – it’s because she has a pantry where she keeps her butter and cheese. Milk, she says, is for losers.

Watching her, silk robe tied loosely around her waist, is like watching a work of art in motion. I would never get bored of sitting here at the kitchen table and looking at her, except that I can almost feel my mum clipping me lightly around the back of my head and telling to make myself useful.

‘I’ll make tea,’ I say, getting up. ‘Where’s your kettle?’

‘Oh, it’s one of the old whistling ones.’ She gestures at a dull, metal, grey thing squatting resentfully on the side. ‘You need to put it on the hob to boil. It takes about a hundred years.’

‘Don’t you ever feel like modernising this place?’ I ask as I step round her to fill up the kettle. She pulls the slightly burnt toast out from under the grill.

‘I have really good Wi-Fi,’ she says, dropping the toast on to two plates and blowing the end of her singed fingers. ‘Apart from that? No, not really. I feel at home here. It’s a house full of memories.’

‘Even if not all of them belong to you?’ I say.

She shrugs in response.

‘I couldn’t help but notice your photo of you and Dominic – the wedding photo.’

She stops mid-scooping an egg out of the pan, the milky water draining back into it, and thinks.

‘There’s a lot of me in this house,’ she says eventually. ‘I wondered if I might feel strange about it, but you know he would have liked you. Is that weird?’

‘A bit.’ I shift in my chair as she spoons two eggs on to my toast.

‘Don’t get used to this treatment,’ she says. ‘Anna is OK with me taking some time off, but I will have to go back to work soon.’

‘You can’t help it that you’re exhausted,’ I say teasingly as she sits down opposite me, the front of her gown falling open just a little. Suddenly I can think of much more interesting things to do than eat breakfast.

‘God, you’re amazing,’ I marvel. ‘I’ve never seen anything more perfect.’

She freezes, crestfallen. She pulls her gown tighter around her.

‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to freak you out.’

‘You haven’t freaked me out,’ she says, frowning deeply, her shoulders drawn up as a barrier between us. ‘No, it’s not that. The thing is, I’ve let you get involved with me when you only half-know me. I should have told you everything about me before I let last night happen. I’m worried I’ve misled you.’

‘Misled me?’ I ask. ‘You are a human being, not a house for sale. I don’t need your whole biography to know that you are absolutely wonderful.

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