Free Swansea Summer by Catrin Collier Page B

bought in some new lines of furniture; they’ll be delivered next week but the paperwork can wait until Monday.’ He sat on the edge of her desk. ‘I’m glad you called. I want to talk to you.’
    ‘And I want to talk to you.’ She reached for his hand. ‘I’m sorry if I interrupted something between you and Mrs Griffiths earlier …’
    ‘Please, Katie.’ He removed her hand and left the desk. Sitting in the visitor’s chair, he tried to look anywhere but at her face, pale, concerned – and beautiful. ‘Esme knows about us.’
    ‘Knows …’ She stared at him in bewilderment. ‘How can she? We’ve been so careful …’
    He hunched forward in his chair. ‘Obviously not careful enough.’
    ‘But it doesn’t change anything between us. She would have had to know eventually …’ She fell silent as she looked into his eyes. ‘John …’
    ‘Katie, you know I love you.’
    ‘And I love you,’ she broke in earnestly.
    ‘You don’t know Esme. How vicious she can be. She’ll start gossip that will wreck your life.’
    ‘I don’t care. My life is nothing without you.’
    ‘It isn’t only us though, is it, love? There’s Jack and Helen, Joe and Martin …’
    ‘When you told Martin you wanted to marry me as soon as you were free, he understood and respected my choice, as I’m sure the others will, once they realise how much we mean to one another.’
    ‘Martin didn’t understand, Katie, he only said he would try. He was shocked, just as everyone else will be. Seeing Jack with Helen today – the way things should be for a girl of your age – made me realise how unfair I’m being in asking you to wait until my divorce is finalised.’
    ‘Unfair? I don’t understand.’ Her eyes widened. ‘Is the divorce going to take longer than you expected? Is that it, because if it is, I don’t care how long we have to wait as long as we’ll be together eventually.’
    ‘Please, let me finish. I watched you with the others today. Helen and Jack, Brian and Judy, Martin and Lily, that’s the way love should be. Between young people. I’m thirty-eight, crippled and soon to become a grandfather …’
    ‘We’ve talked about that before, John. You know none of it matters, not to me.’
    ‘But it does to me,’ he said. ‘You’re eighteen. You should be going out with your friends, enjoying life, not waiting for a man more than twice your age to divorce his wife.’
    ‘But I do go out with my friends. I’m going down the Pier with Lily and Judy tonight.’
    ‘And young men will be chasing you.’ He tried – and failed – to keep his voice light.
    ‘No one will chase me because I won’t let them, but I’ll dance with some of the boys if they ask me. You know my nights out with Lily don’t mean anything. But if you prefer me not to go …’
    ‘I’m trying to tell you that you should go. And at the end of the evening you should walk home with one of those young boys, not come back alone thinking of an old fogey like me.’
    ‘And if I want to come back alone, thinking of you?’
    ‘It’s not right, Katie. I feel as though I’m robbing you of your youth.’
    ‘Don’t you understand, I love you,’ she stressed. ‘You’re everything to me …’
    ‘And you to me.’
    ‘How can you say you love me and talk like this? I want to be with you …’
    ‘But you can’t, not until the divorce is finalised and I’m free, and perhaps not even then. The gossips …’
    ‘Let them tittle-tattle,’ she said dismissively. ‘My mother used to say they can’t hurt you if you don’t listen to them and she was right.’
    John wondered what had made Esme suspicious. As Katie said, they had been careful. He also knew that her disregard of gossip was sincere. Her father’s brutality towards his family had been a talking point in Swansea for years, and she had been taught from an early age to ignore what people said about her and her family, and she did just that. But he couldn’t bear