Free The Healing Stream by Connie Monk

child.
    ‘I like cooking. When I lived on the island with Gran I always did the cooking on the days I wasn’t working at the hotel.’ A reminder to him that she had lived an adult life before she became carer-oblique-friend to Deirdre. ‘Look! I can see a light through the trees.’
    ‘I left the lamp on in the porch. We leave the car on this patch of scrub – there’s no room for it in the garden. Nearer the truth, there’s no garden; the woods are my garden. Out you hop.’ Leaning across her he unlatched the door and pushed it open for her to get out. ‘Wait there while I park, then I’ll guide you around the puddles.’ Once the lights from the car were out nothing pierced the darkness but the dull light from the porch. ‘Now then,’ Giles said as he walked unerringly to her side, ‘there’s a puddle just here, I’ll steer you round it.’ He had his arm around her shoulder; she wanted the moment to last forever.
    Grow up, she told herself, what’s the matter with you? You’ll soon be twenty. At your age most girls have probably been out with men lots of times. But I never have, this is the very first time and he isn’t like ordinary people, he isn’t just
anybody
, he’s Giles Lampton. Even now, in the light from the porch, he’s still keeping his arm around me. Does that mean he feels like I do, so churned up with – with – with what? Love? But he can’t be, not with
me
.
    ‘You’re miles away,’ he said softly. ‘What is it, sweet Tessa? Are you frightened that I’ve brought you here, just the two of us in the middle of the dark wood? Are you remembering all the wise warnings about being alone with strange men?’
    ‘Of course I’m not frightened. And you’re not a strange man. If you were I wouldn’t be here with you. I’m really interested to see your cottage.’
    He cupped her chin in his hand and raised her face. ‘My cottage is merely an excuse to get you to myself for the evening,’ he said in a voice that made it impossible for her to meet his gaze. Surely he must know how hard her heart was beating. But apparently he didn’t, for when he spoke again those last wonderful words might have been a dream. ‘Don’t expect too much of it. It’s a bit of a tip, really.’ Then releasing his hold of her and taking a large key from under an empty upside-down plant pot, ‘Although I did my best to tidy it before I came to meet you.’
    ‘You needn’t have done that. Honestly, I wouldn’t have minded. Silly, isn’t it, but if I went into a house belonging to another woman and found it a muddle I would mind. But it seems different for a man.’
    He laughed as he ushered her inside and flicking his cigarette lighter held the flame so that he could see the box of matches left in readiness to light the oil lamps. ‘A very proper sentiment,’ he said with mock seriousness.
    ‘I didn’t mean that men have to be fussed over and waited on. I don’t believe that at all. It’s just that I expect they have different priorities. Actually Uncle Richard is very tidy, always puts his wellingtons properly side by side in the lobby, folds the newspaper, opens his envelopes with a blade, things like that. But I don’t expect all men are like that. Are you?’
    ‘I’ve never thought about it. Tell you what: I’ll watch myself and let you know.’
    She chuckled as she said, ‘Silly!’ That moment of self-awareness in the porch might never have happened. ‘What a dear little house. And lamplight is so much nicer than electricity, don’t you think? So warm, sort of full of comfort.’
    Watching her, Giles thought what a delightful child she was. Child? As unworldly as a child, certainly, yet there was something wise about her for all her naivety. A delightful child, he repeated silently, that’s what she is and that’s how I must think of her. In the glow of the hurricane lamp swinging from the hook in the porch he had felt he had seen into her secret soul. Don’t be an ass, he told