Daring To Date Her Ex. Annie Claydon

two years. I’m choosing my GCSE subjects now.’

      She must be fourteen, then. ‘What do you want to do?’

      ‘History. I’m not sure about the rest, yet. I want to be an archaeologist.’

      ‘That sounds great.’

      ‘I’ve already been on a dig—last summer. They didn’t let us do much on our own, but it was pretty cool.’ Ava’s eyes lit up with enthusiasm. ‘Look.’

      She grabbed Thea’s hand and led her over to the desk. Inside the alcove, a pinboard was fixed to the wall, covered in photographs. ‘That’s Lucas and me, with my find.’

      Lucas had his arm around Ava’s shoulders and they were both pulling faces for the camera. Suddenly, seven years seemed like nothing. His hair looked as if it had been styled by the wind, and he was wearing a rock-band T-shirt that had seen better days. Longing reached into her stomach, gripped hard and then twisted.

      ‘That’s fabulous.’

      ‘Isn’t it? It’s Samian ware. That’s high-quality pottery from Italy or France that the Romans used to use.’

      Thea dragged her eyes from Lucas’s face and focussed on the piece of broken pottery that Ava was holding up. ‘How interesting.’

      ‘Yeah. That piece of pottery came from something like that.’ Ava indicated a museum postcard of a glossy red bowl, with moulding around the base, pinned next to the photograph. ‘I saw it in one of the side trenches, where the settlement put all their rubbish, and they let me pick it up after it was photographed. I was the first person to touch it since it got thrown there. Can you imagine that?’

      All that Thea could imagine at the moment was Lucas. ‘It must have been an amazing feeling.’ The board was like a memory board. Ava as she remembered her, a six-year-old with her parents. Then, growing up, with Lucas. Something must have happened and Thea dreaded to ask what that might have been.

      ‘There’s one of you here somewhere.’ Ava scanned the board and pointed to one at the top. Some older photos of Lucas, and in one of them he was sitting outside a tent, his arm around Thea.

      ‘Ah! I remember that. We were at Glastonbury.’ She’d looked so different then. It wasn’t just the hair or the clothes, she’d looked carefree. Thea wondered if Lucas found her as changed as she did him.

      ‘What did you do there? Lucas says you danced all night.’

      Not all night. Thea and Lucas had loved to dance, but there had been another pastime that they’d loved even more. Alone in their tent, however many people were passing by outside and despite the lumps in the ground under her back. Or his.

      ‘Yes, we danced all night. Got pretty muddy and didn’t have any pieces of Samian pottery to show for it.’

      Ava’s laugh was cut short by footsteps on the stairs. When Lucas appeared in the doorway it was as if time had rolled back, catapulting her into the place where she loved him. Maybe it was the photographs on Ava’s board. Maybe because of the way he was dressed. Jeans that fitted him like a glove and a rugby shirt that emphasised his broad shoulders so much better than a jacket and tie.

      He threw Ava a reproachful look, which melted into the warmth that had been missing from his face over the last two weeks. ‘Do you ladies want to eat tonight?’

      ‘You want me to lay the table?’ That was obviously Ava’s job.

      ‘I’ve already done it. Perhaps you’d like to get Thea a drink?’

      ‘Oh. Yes. We were just talking about Glastonbury. She’s told me all your secrets …’ Ava continued provocatively.

      ‘All of them?’ A flicker at the side of one eye as his gaze met Thea’s.

      ‘Every one of them. How we danced all night.’ That was all Ava needed to know, and anyway it wasn’t her place to give away Lucas’s secrets. Suddenly it mattered a great deal that there were things that only she and Lucas shared, that only they remembered.

      He gave her an almost imperceptible nod and then an exaggerated shrug for Ava’s benefit. ‘Guess I’ve been rumbled, then. What do you want me to agree to this time?’

      ‘Nothing yet. I’m storing it up for use later.’ Ava shot him a grin and Lucas laughed, putting his arm around her shoulder.

      ‘Okay. I’ll consider myself warned. Now, hurry up, or dinner’s going to be burned to a crisp.’

      ‘She seems like a handful.’ They’d eaten and Ava had disappeared into the house. Lucas tilted the half-empty bottle of wine towards Thea and she shook her head. ‘No more, thanks. I’m driving.’

      ‘She keeps me on my toes. Most difficult thing I’ve ever done. Most rewarding thing I’ve ever done.’ He propped his feet up on the empty chair opposite him, leaning back to catch the evening sun.

      ‘You’ve done a great job. How long has she lived with you?’

      ‘Since she was seven. Her parents were killed in a car crash.’

      Thea had steeled herself to hear something like that, but it was still a shock. ‘I’m sorry, Lucas. I liked your brother and his wife very much.’

      ‘Yeah.’ He ran his finger thoughtfully around the rim of his glass. ‘They were good people.’

      ‘When did it happen?’

      ‘They were killed four days before I was due to leave for Bangladesh. We were all at my parents’ house, for some family time before I went away, and they’d gone out to run some errands. Left Ava behind with me.’ His voice was flat, matter-of-fact. ‘I had to tell Ava that her mother and father weren’t coming back, my mother couldn’t do it.’

      ‘That must have been terribly hard for you.’

      ‘All I could think about was her. I promised her then that I’d look after her, and I have. My mother and father talked about adopting her, but then my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. So I adopted Ava and Mum concentrated on getting well.’

      ‘She’s okay now?’

      ‘Yeah, she’s been clear for four years now. Ava’s home is with me, but she spends a lot of time with my parents. It seems to work.’

      He still hadn’t answered the most important question. ‘And what about you?’

      ‘Me?’ He put his hand on his chest, as if to check that he was really the object of her concern. ‘What about me?’

      He’d lost his brother and sister-in-law. His mother had been seriously ill, and he’d given up his own dreams to take on the challenge of caring for a grieving six-year-old. ‘It was a lot for you to deal with as well.’

      Lucas shook his head. ‘Not as much as Ava or my mother. They were the ones …’ His words tailed off into a remembrance of grief.

      ‘You always seemed to want to go to Bangladesh so much.’

      ‘I did, once upon a time.’ Did he class his time with her like that too? A distant fairy story, which had no bearing on reality?

      ‘But not now?’

      He turned to look at her, his gaze searching her face. ‘No, not now. We all have dreams, and then we grow out of them.’

      They were almost the hardest words she’d heard tonight. ‘Is that why you asked me here? To meet Ava?’

      ‘You rang me.’ He seemed to relax the tight grip he had on his emotions a little. ‘I’m glad you came. Ava remembers you and she’s been wanting to see you again.’

      No mention of his own feelings. It was as if the tragedy of losing his brother and the sudden responsibility of a child had quenched the passion that had so defined Lucas. Seeing him so changed … It would almost have been better never to have seen him at all.