They finally separated early evening Sunday, when Rhys headed to Nana for dinner, and Viola stayed in the flat - to clean up and to prepare for the week ahead. She was replacing the bedding, smoothing the sheet as she always did, in an unconscious pattern of her hand movements - and she froze, staring at the backs of her palms.
***
They'd spent the most wonderful weekend together, having done everything she'd offered on Saturday morning - meals, coffee, treats and sweets, and two long walks. They'd held hands, kissed without worrying who was watching, laughed, and talked. Those hadn't been profound conversations, just chats about things that had happened while they'd been apart, about places they'd seen, about mutual acquaintances.
There had been a funny moment on Sunday morning. While she was making the second cup of coffee for them, he was lazily chewing his marmalade toast, and started flipping through a book she'd moved onto the counter from the table Friday night.
"Oh, I know her," he said and tapped his long index finger on the photo on the back cover.
Viola looked at him over her shoulder.
"You know Olivia Dane," she repeated incredulously.
"Yeah, she was at John's wedding," he said and bit another large piece of his toast. Rhys had an exceptional memory for faces, so Viola didn't doubt him. "Her husband designed my cottage," he added.
Viola put aside the towel she had in her hand, slowly turned, and stared at him.
He searched his memory and said, "John Dowling. Well, not the cottage, but the renovations I've made in it." His cheek was protruding with food behind it in the most adorable way. "What?"
"Nothing," Viola said and shook her head with a laugh. "I just sometimes forget how connected your family is."
"Seeing that I'm a village oik?" he said sardonically and bit into his bread again.
They'd bought the loaf in Cornflower & Sparrow on Saturday. Rhys thought it wasn't as good as the Russian girl's bread, but Viola had enjoyed two slices nonetheless. At the moment, he was chewing with such a gusto she considered joining him.
"You are, but you're my village oik," she said, and kissed his rounded cheek. "And it's funny. Not that John Dowling can't possibly design your lovely cottage. But there's this persistent rumour among her readers that she tests all her sex scenes on her husband first, so technically when one reads about shag in them, one knows how he is in bed. And I just sort of didn't think about him as a real person, while you've met him."
"I have," he said and took a large sip of his coffee. "An ace bloke. Sort of quiet, but knows his stuff."
"Yes, he does," she drew out, and Rhys gave her a raised eyebrow look. Viola burst into a series of ridiculous giggles.
"So, that's what it's about, the book?" he asked and started reading the description on the back. "Shag?"
"Among other things," Viola said with a chuckle. "Fiona suggested it to me. And apparently, Will approves."
Rhys twirled the book in his hand and put it aside. "Seeing she's up the duff, I can't see why he'd need to read something like that," he dismissed.
"He just complimented the quality of writing, love," Viola said and turned back to the stove. "He didn't comment on the content in any way."
"Well, he's one of the other Holyoakes, you know," Rhys grumbled. "They are bookish."
"That didn't sound like a compliment," Viola commented and poured the coffee into their mugs.
"It's not," he said firmly. "Will's alright, and so is Oliver, but I don't get why John needs to go all toff and hipster. We aren't Bjornssons or Oakbies. Why pretend to be what you aren't?"
Viola added cream to their coffees, put it away, and was going to take the chair opposite from him, when he patted his thigh. She smiled and climbed on his lap. He quickly kissed her and went back to his third slice of toast. He tasted like marmalade.
"I don't think he's pretending," Viola said and took a sip of her coffee, savouring the aroma and the creaminess. "He moved so long ago, he's more comfortable in the city than here now."
"Are you?" he asked sharply. Viola hummed, encouraging him to elaborate. "Are you more comfortable in a big city?" he asked quietly. "I mean, you grew up in one, and we never fully settled in Fleckney when we got married, and then you moved again. There's nothing to do here, and you can't buy your posh clothes, and–"
"My posh clothes?" Viola laughed.
"Well, those shoes you have that cost like a car," he grumbled, and Viola giggled.
"These days I wear wellies, love," she said and then aimed and snogged him.
She definitely fancied marmalade flavoured Rhys. He dropped the toast on the plate, cupped her face, and returned the kiss. The man never did anything half-heartedly, did he?
It was a while until Viola finally resurfaced for air.
"And yes, I'm definitely much more comfortable - and much happier - in Fleckney than in any other place I've lived in," she said, picking up her mug again.
"Good," he affirmed and drank his brew. "One less thing to argue about."
Viola stopped in her tracks and looked at him over the rim of her cup.
"Why would we argue about it?" she asked, and he gave her one of his stone face looks. "Rhys?"
"You didn't want to move to the village last time," he said with a shrug.
Viola lowered her coffee.
"I did," she said, and he gave her a sarcastic look. "Rhys, I did! I've always wanted to live in Fleckney. Why do you think I moved back? I fell in love with the place the first time we visited!"
"You were miserable and missed the city," he said.
"I didn't! I never did!" She looked him over in shock. "Where did you get this idea?"
"You kept going back, for dance classes, and then all those evenings with Yolanda," he grumbled.
"I missed dancing and Yolanda," Viola said. "That's not the same."
"You were miserable," he repeated stubbornly.
"Only at the end, and it had nothing to do with where we lived. Just with how we lived," she said quietly.
"And how did we live?" he asked, his voice growing unpleasant.
Viola felt the familiar desire to smooth out this tension, to say something pacifying to redirect the conversation - but that hadn't exactly worked out for them last time, had it?
"Like flatmates," she said. "You came from work and went straight to your computer. We never talked. We spent no time together outside family visits. And sex."
He was frowning, but to her surprise he was listening.
"I never knew if you still slept with me because you wanted me specifically, or just because I was there," she said. He opened his mouth, to argue no doubt, but Viola gently brushed the tips of her fingers to his chest halting him. "I know, I know what you're going to say. But I just felt... invisible. Did you know that before this Winter, I wasn't sure you knew much about me?" she said in a lighter tone - not for his sake, but because it suddenly seemed rather funny to her. "My favourite flowers, my favourite films. And then it turned out you do, and you remember, and–" She smiled at him tenderly. "It makes me feel so good. It's just– Sometimes people need to be seen, to be appreciated and cared for. We all do. I'm not blaming you for anything, for our divorce, and for my depression. We were young, and then we lost them, you know." She could see in his face he knew she was talking of the older Holyoakes. "And it all was just so hard and so horrible for all of us. And it was easier to live elsewhere because everything here reminded me of the better times. But no, darling, I wouldn't want to live anywhere else now that I have a choice."
He kissed her tenderly, and she could feel his mouth curl up in a melancholy smile under her lips.
"Alright then," he said a few minutes later. "So, we'll just argue about the other things then."
"What other things?" she asked, and he gave her a pointed look.
"Now that we're back together, there will be things to discuss and arrange," he said. "And you have your opinions, and I have mine."
To think of it, there would be, of course, things to 'discuss and arrange' - because unlike her, he wouldn't be able to simply keep and enjoy the status quo, would he? And of course, they both knew that the question of moving in together would pop up - and Viola's answer would be 'perhaps, but not now.' And being a Holyoake, he would eventually approach the subject of yet another wedding, and her answer would be 'please, no!' because putting on that daft white dress for the third time would just make her look desperate and like a serial monogamist. And Rhys being Rhys, he had already thought them through, had arrived at his decision, and now she had a battle of wills ahead of her. Viola sighed and hid behind her coffee.
"How about we just enjoy our brekkie?" she said.
"Suit yourself," he said with a chuckle. "I'd assume you would go for 'rip the plaster' sort of approach, but we can just enjoy our brekkie for now."
He took his half-eaten slice off the plate and offered it to her. Viola took a big bite, mostly to silence the anxious thoughts in her head.
"But you might want to prepare your answers for the next time when you visit Nana," he said, cocking his left eyebrow. "You know, she will pester you about it."
"Or you could forget to tell her we're back together," Viola grumbled and bit into his toast again.
"Oh I won't tell her anything," he said with a laugh. "But she always knows."
***
Viola was staring at her hands, and the conversation with Nana from the day at the bake came back to her memory. Where were her rings, Viola suddenly wondered - and why all of a sudden did she think of them as 'her' rings, for the first time in ten years?
He proposed to her a week after they started dating, and she laughed because she thought he was joking. He wasn't. He repeated the question after another week, and she said she would. Why wouldn't she? It felt like the most natural thing. He gave her Nana's ring, the one Patrick Holyoake had proposed to Mable with: one single diamond, set in a square white gold head, with two blue sapphires as accents, on a band of rose gold. Viola fell in love with it the moment she saw it, long before she knew its significance. When they got married, she started wearing it with her so-called Holyoake band - a thin white gold ring, embossed with a pattern reminiscent of oak leaves - just like the one all Holyoake wives wore. Most of them were copies of the original Art Deco design commissioned by Patrick's grandmother, but Viola's was authentically vintage.
She didn't wear a ring with Hani, to his family's additional indignation. The rings that they had exchanged at the wedding simply sat in her jewellery box. They would be in the way of their work. When they divorced, Hani had taken his, and Viola's was still in one of the little drawers at the bottom of the jewellery case. She never wore any other rings in her life.
Viola wiggled her fingers on the sheet, suddenly remembering the sensation of Rhys' rings sitting on her finger. She could even remember the habit of fidgeting with them: she used to spin both rings with her thumb. Her hand made the unconscious movement - except the ring finger was empty. Shaking off the odd preoccupation, Viola huffed, cursing Rhys for planting ridiculous ideas in her head, and went back to making her bed.