Debbie Johnson - Pippa’s Cornish Dream

He raked his hands through his hair, reminded himself that he needed to get it cut. Without the need to head into an office every day, these things had a tendency to slip. He sipped the whisky, grimaced as it burned down his throat.

Finally, he looked up. Met the cornflower-blue gaze, glanced at the determined tilt of her head, the stubborn set of her full lips. A child, really. That’s all she was – and yet she was having the strangest effect on him, making him feel calm and settled at the same time she made him feel hyper-aware of her physical presence. The way his body was responding to it. It was hard to think straight and unlikely to get any easier the longer he let this moment linger.

“Some of the stories were right,” he said, staring off through the window into the still darkness of the courtyard. He hadn’t told this story before – not properly – and he needed a small sense of distance to allow him to get the words out.

“It was partly the pressure. I’d been prosecuting for while by then, and I did the best I could. But you always feel the dice are loaded against you. The paperwork, the bureaucracy, the loopholes. McConnell got to me and I shouldn’t have allowed him to. Maybe a year earlier, he wouldn’t have done, who knows? But that case…he was so clearly guilty . He’d destroyed the lives of so many people, older people who’d worked hard all their lives. People like my granddad, who lost his farm to the banks when he couldn’t make farming work any more. Maybe that’s why it touched a nerve, I don’t know.”

He paused, poured himself another drink. God knew he needed it. Pippa remained still and quiet, her legs tucked beneath her as she listened. The neon-orange flip-flops had dropped to the floor, lying there criss-crossed.

“I always knew it would be hard to make the case,” he continued. “The evidence was flimsy, when it came down to it. He’d been clever, covered his tracks well. I knew, his lawyer knew, the jury knew that he’d done it. But the way our system works, we couldn’t make it stick. It was depressing and even before I’d been thinking of quitting. I couldn’t take it much more and watching him walk was the final straw. I thought it was – at least. Until that night, when he found me in my office. He was drunk, been out celebrating his freedom.

“He came to gloat, to push, to confess. Rub my nose in it. He actually laughed about the man who killed himself, said it was survival of the fittest, that he’d done his wife a favour, because at least she had the insurance money now. There was no remorse – he didn’t even see them as people. Just old, weak victims.

“What can I say? I lost my temper. I hit him. He hit me back. We fought. You know what happened next. I shouldn’t have done it – I know that. I’ve always regretted it, not just because of what happened to me, but because it was wrong. Stooping to that level, it made me as bad as the people I’d been trying to put away. The papers can talk as much as they want about me being on the side of the angels, but I was wrong. I’d never done anything like that before and I never will again. Afterwards, when I looked down at him crumpled on the floor of my office, when I called the ambulance and saw my knuckles were scraped and scarred and my hands were covered in his blood, I was sickened. Sickened by what I’d done. What I’d allowed myself to become. And I’ve regretted it every single day since.”

He stopped, looked at her, his eyes shining with the pain of the memory, his voice rough, tense, his breath coming in fierce bursts, as though he’d worn himself out forcing the words she’d asked him to share.

“Is that what you wanted to know?” he asked, as she studied him intently, still silent. “Because I can tell you more…I can tell you how many times I hit him, how it felt when my fist slammed into his jaw; how hard it was to control myself and stop…or do you want to know what prison was like? How I’ve walked outside every single day since I got out, to try and clean myself of the memory? Do you want to know what my fiancée said about it on the day she left me there? Is that what you want to know?”

“No,” Pippa replied quietly, getting to her feet and tugging her top down, tucking stray hair behind her ears. She slipped her feet back into the flip-flops and looked up to face him. “That’s enough. That’s all I need. Thank you for explaining. I know it was hard for you, but I needed to hear it.”

He stood, looked at her, feeling the familiar anguish well up inside him. Waiting for the “but”. It had been a long time since he’d discussed this with anyone and he felt sick to his stomach even thinking about it. The whisky ran warm through him and he realised – completely inappropriately – that it had also been a long time since he’d been with a woman. Almost two years since he’d felt the touch of soft skin, the drape of long hair in his hands, since his fingers had skimmed delicate curves.

He closed that thought down and waited for the verdict, hovering next to her as she prepared to leave. With Johanna, he had expected forgiveness. The reassurance that she loved him and they would get through this together. The touch of her fingers twined in his, the feel of her lips promising she’d be there for him. That she understood, and that she’d wait for him – that they’d still build a life together.

He’d been wrong to expect any of that, and the memory of the cold sheen in her eyes was something he would always carry with him. It had been a stark lesson in what women were capable of: a ruthlessness he’d never seen before. She’d shut him out, closed him down, thrown him out with the trash and moved on to better things. The papers could call him a hero as much as they liked – but headlines didn’t keep you warm at night. They didn’t love you, give you hope or belief in the future. He hadn’t had any of those things for a very long time – thanks to his own actions and Johanna’s response.

And now here he was again, having poured out his heart, waiting for a woman’s verdict – and with almost as much tension as he’d felt in court. This was the part, he knew, where Pippa Harte told him to pack his bags and leave, and did it all with a sweet smile. Off you go, Mr Retallick! Don’t let the barn door hit you on the arse on the way out…He was braced, he was ready. In fact he hadn’t even unpacked at all, just in case – just plugged in the laptop to charge, showered and changed clothes, and left everything else in his bags. He had his polite smile ready for when she told him to sling his hook – or at least phoned him a cab, because he’d drank far too much whisky to be driving.

Instead, she reached out. Took one of his hands and gently squeezed it, as he’d seen her do with Scotty that afternoon. He felt the shock of the unexpected contact like a delicious slap: her slender fingers in his, all that glorious hair only inches away. The tempting shape of her body beneath her shabby old clothes.

“That’s enough,” she said. “The rest is private. I know what I need to know. I’m so sorry that happened to you, all of it. And we’d be glad to welcome you at Harte Farm for as long as you need to stay. Just try and keep a low profile – the last thing I need is the villagers deciding to throw you a street party or storming the castle with pitchforks. But…stay. Enjoy the place, for as long as you’re here.”

He was stunned. Silent. Flooded with emotion at her gentle acceptance, the way she looked up at him, her eyes liquid. Her hand, warm, soft, still in his. Sweet Jesus – this slip of a girl, this virtual stranger, had given him more comfort and consolation in that one short speech than he’d received in the last eighteen months. It warmed him even more than the whisky.