Читать книгу Single Dads Collection - Lynne Marshall - Страница 25

‘YOU don’t think it would have helped her more to stay in familiar surroundings?’ Alice asked Will sharply, too irritated by his apparent disregard for his daughter to think about the fact that it was probably none of her business.

A muscle was twitching in Will’s jaw. ‘Her grandparents offered to look after her,’ he admitted. ‘But they’re getting on. Besides, we all thought that it would be easier for Lily to start a new life without continual painful reminders of her mother. She’s going to have to get used to living with me some time, so it’s better that she does that sooner rather than later.’

His careful arguments were just making Alice crosser. ‘Why couldn’t you get used to doing a job that meant you could stay where Lily would feel at home?’ she demanded.

‘There’s not a lot of work for marine ecologists in London!’

‘You could change your job.’

‘And do what?’ asked Will, stung by her tone, and annoyed with letting himself be drawn into an argument with Alice, who was typically holding forth on a subject she knew little about.

Her brittleness had vanished, and she was vivid once more, her cheeks flushed and her tawny eyes flashing as she waved her arms around to prove her point. Suddenly, she was the Alice he remembered, and Will was simultaneously delighted and exasperated.

It was an uncannily familiar feeling, he thought, not knowing whether he wanted to shake her or catch her into his arms. The rush of joy he felt at realising that the real Alice was still there was tempered by resentment of her unerring ability to home in on the very issue he felt most guilty about. He wouldn’t have minded if they’d been arguing about something unimportant, but this was his daughter they were discussing. Will was desperate to be a good father, and he didn’t need Alice pointing out exactly where he was going wrong five minutes after meeting him again.

‘Marine ecology is all I know,’ he tried to explain. ‘I have to support my child financially as well as emotionally, and the best way I can do that is by sticking with the career that I know rather than launching wildly into some new one where I’d have to start at the beginning. Besides,’ he went on as Alice looked profoundly unconvinced. ‘Lily isn’t my only responsibility. This project has taken five years to set up, and a lot of futures depend on it being successful. Of course Lily is important, but I’ve got responsibilities to other people as well. That’s just the way things are, and Lily’s going to have to get used to it.’

‘That’s an incredibly selfish attitude,’ said Alice, twirling her hand dramatically so that she could poke her finger towards Will’s chest. ‘It’s all about what suits you, isn’t it? All about what you need. What about what Lily needs?’

‘I’m her father,’ said Will tersely. ‘Lily needs to be with me.’

‘I’d agree with you, if being with you meant staying in a home she knew, with her grandparents and her friends and her routines.’

Alice knew that it wasn’t really her business, but Will’s complacency infuriated her. ‘Losing a mother would be hard enough for her to deal with even if she had those things to hang on to, but you’ve dragged her across the world to a strange country, a place where she doesn’t know anyone or anything, and by your own admission she doesn’t even know you very well!’

She drew an impatient breath. ‘Did you ever think of asking Lily what she wanted to do?’

‘Lily’s six.’ Will bit out the words, too angry by now to care whether Alice knew how effectively she was winding him up. ‘She’s not old enough to make an informed decision about anything, let alone where she wants to live. She’s just a little girl. How can she possibly judge what’s best for her?’

‘She’s old enough to know where she feels comfortable and who she feels safe with,’ Alice retorted.

Will gritted his teeth. Her comments were like a dentist drilling on a raw nerve. Did she really think he didn’t feel guilty enough already about Lily? He hated the fact that he was practically a stranger to his own daughter. He hated the fact that Lily was lost and unhappy and he seemed powerless to help her. He was doing the best that he could, and, yes, maybe it wasn’t good enough, but he didn’t need Alice to point that out.

That brief surge of joy he had felt at her transformation from a brittle nonentity into the vibrant, fiery creature he remembered was submerged beneath a wave of resentment, and he eyed her with dislike.

‘I thought you’d changed, Alice,’ he said. ‘But you haven’t, have you?’

She tilted her chin at him in a characteristically combative gesture. ‘What do you mean?’

‘You still hold forth about subjects you know absolutely nothing about,’ he said cuttingly. ‘You know nothing about my daughter, nothing about the situation and nothing about me, now, but that doesn’t stop you, does it?’

He gave a harsh laugh. ‘You know, I used to think it was quite amusing the way you used to base your opinions on nothing more than instinct and emotion. For someone so obsessed with fitting things into neat categories, it always seemed odd that you refused to look at the evidence before you made up your mind. But I don’t think it’s very funny anymore,’ he went on. ‘It’s pointless and narrow-minded. Perhaps, just once, you should try finding out the facts before you open your mouth and start spouting your personal prejudice!’

There was a stricken look in Alice’s golden eyes but Will swept on, too angry to let himself notice and feel bad about it.

He was fed up. It had been a hellish seven weeks. He was worried sick about his daughter, and he had a daunting task ahead to get a complex but incredibly important project off the ground. The last thing he needed was the inevitable turmoil of dealing with Alice.

This was typical of her. Time and again over the last eight years, Will had told himself that he was over her. That he was getting on with his life. That he wouldn’t want her even if he did meet her again. And then he would catch a glimpse of a straight back through a crowd, or hear a dirty laugh at a party, and his heart would jerk, and he would feel sick with disappointment to realise that it wasn’t Alice after all.

And now—now when he had so much else to deal with—here she was, with characteristically perverse timing, threatening to turn his world upside down just when he least needed it!

Well, this time it wasn’t going to turn upside down, Will determined. He had wasted the last ten years of his life getting over Alice, and he wasn’t going to waste another ten minutes. It was just as well that they had come face to face, he decided. It had reminded him of all the things about her that had used to irritate him, and that made it so much easier to walk away this time.

‘You know, I could stand here and pontificate to you if I could be bothered,’ he told Alice, his words like a lash. ‘I could tell you that you’ve thrown away everything that was warm and special about you, and turned yourself into someone brittle and superficial with dull earrings and silly shoes, but I won’t because, unlike you, I don’t believe in passing judgement on people I’ve only met for five minutes!’

Alice only just prevented herself from flinching at his tone. She had no intention of showing Will how hard his words had struck home. She managed an artificial laugh instead, knowing that she sounded just as brittle as he had accused her of being.

‘You’ve got a short memory, if you think we’ve only known each other for five minutes!’

‘You’re not the Alice I knew,’ said Will in the same, hard voice. ‘I liked her. I don’t like you. But that doesn’t give me the right to tell you how to live your life, so don’t tell me how to live mine. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go and find the daughter you seem to think I care so little about before you accuse me of neglect.’

And, with that, he turned and headed down the steps towards the pool, leaving Alice alone on the decking, white with fury mixed with a sickening sense of guilt. She shouldn’t have said all that about his daughter. Will was right, she didn’t know the situation, and she had probably been unfair. She had let the bottled-up resentment about her own childhood get the better of her. She should apologise.

But not yet.

I don’t like you. Will’s bitter words jangled in the air as if he had shouted them out loud. Alice felt ridiculously conspicuous, sure that everyone had heard and everyone was looking at her. They were probably all thinking that they didn’t like her either, she thought miserably

Her throat was tight with tears that she refused to shed. She hadn’t let anyone see her cry about Tony, so she certainly wasn’t about to start blubbing over Will. She didn’t care if he didn’t like her. She didn’t care what he thought. She didn’t care about anything.

‘You haven’t got a drink, Alice.’ Roger materialised beside her. ‘Is everything OK?’

Roger. Alice nearly did cry then. Dear Roger, her dearest friend. The only one she could rely on through thick and thin.

She blinked fiercely. ‘You like me, don’t you, Roger?’

‘Oh, you’re all right, I suppose,’ said Roger with mock nonchalance, but he put his arms round her and hugged her close. ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked in a different tone.

‘Nothing,’ said Alice, muffled against his chest.

‘Come on, it’s just me. Was it seeing Will again?’

Alice drew a shuddering breath. ‘He’s changed,’ she muttered.

‘We’ve all changed,’ said Roger gently.

‘You haven’t.’ She lifted her head and looked up into his dear, familiar face. She had met Roger on her first day at university, and they had been best friends ever since. For Alice, he was the brother she had never had, and not Beth, not even Will, had come between them. ‘That’s why I love you,’ she said with a wobbly smile.

Roger pretended to look alarmed. ‘An open declaration of affection! This isn’t like you, Alice. You are upset!’

‘Only because Will was rude about my shoes,’ said Alice, tilting her chin. ‘They’re not silly, are they, Roger?’

Straight-faced, Roger studied the delicate sandals, decorated with sequins and blue butterflies. ‘They’re fabulous,’ he told her. ‘Just like you. Now, come and have another drink before we both get maudlin and I tell you I love you too!’

‘All right.’ Alice took a deep breath and steadied her smile. ‘But only if you introduce me to all these single men Beth promised me,’ she said, determined to put Will Paxman right out of her mind. ‘And not that guy in the awful shirt with the perspiration problem,’ she added, following Roger into the kitchen.

‘Colin,’ said Roger, nodding knowledgeably as he handed her another glass of punch. ‘No, we’ll see if we can do better for you than that!’

He was as good as his word, and Alice soon found herself the centre of a circle of admiring men, all much more attractive and entertaining than the hapless Colin. Alice was under no illusions about her own looks, but she appreciated that, living in a small expatriate community with a limited social life, these men would be interested in any single, available female, and she did her best to sparkle and live up to the reputation Beth had evidently created for her. But it was hard when all the time she was aware of Will’s dark, glowering presence over by the pool.

Alice turned her back pointedly, but it didn’t make much difference. She could practically feel his cold grey eyes boring into her spine, and the thought made her shiver slightly and take a gulp of her punch.

Why was he bothering to watch her, anyway? There were no shortage of women simpering up at him by the pool, all of them wearing shoes and lipstick and apparently indulging in small talk. Alice was prepared to concede that she might be wrong, but none of them gave the impression of being intellectual giants. How come Will didn’t find them prickly and false?

Defiantly, Alice emptied her glass and let someone whose name she had already forgotten rush off to get her a refill. If Will thought her brittle and superficial, superficial and brittle she would be!

Flirting was not something that came naturally to her but it was amazing what she could do when glacial grey eyes were watching her with open disapproval. What right had Will Paxman to disapprove of her, anyway? She was just being sociable, which was more than he was doing, and she was damned if she was going to skulk away to the kitchen just because he didn’t like her.

So she smiled and laughed and made great play with her eyelashes while she shifted her weight surreptitiously from foot to foot to try and relieve the pressure from her shoes, which might look fabulous but which were, in truth, becoming increasingly uncomfortable. Not that Alice would ever have admitted as much to Will.

The tropical sun combined with Roger’s punch was giving her a thumping headache, and Alice’s bright smile grew more and more fixed as she concentrated on being fun and ignoring Will. Still, she was doing all right until someone mentioned honeymoons and suddenly she remembered that today was Tony’s wedding day.

All at once Alice’s bottled-up misery burst through its dam and hit her with such force that she only just managed to stop herself doubling over as if from a blow. The pain and anger and humiliation she had felt when Tony had left her for Sandi was mixed up now with a nauseating concoction of shock, regret, guilt and hurt at Will’s reaction to meeting her again after all this time.

Not to mention an excess of Roger’s punch.

Unable to keep up the façade any longer, Alice murmured an excuse about finding a hat and headed blindly for the house. At least there it would be cool.

And full of people. She hesitated at the bottom of the steps leading up to the decking. The large, airy living area would be packed with people enjoying the air conditioning and someone would be bound to see her sneak off to her room. The next thing Beth would be there, knocking on the door, wanting to know what was wrong.

Changing her mind, Alice glanced over her shoulder to make sure that Will wasn’t watching her, and realised that she couldn’t see him. All that time she had spent simultaneously ignoring him and trying to convince him that she was having the best time of her life, and he hadn’t even been there!

Humiliation closed around her throat like a fist. She had been so sure that he was watching her—he had been at first!—and now the idea that he had got bored and gone off while she’d been still desperately performing for his benefit made her feel an idiot. No, worse than an idiot. Pathetic.

Close to tears, Alice slipped unnoticed along the side of the house and ducked beneath an arch laden with a magnificent display of bougainvillaea that divided the perfectly manicured front garden from a shady and scrubby patch of ground at the back behind the kitchen and servants’ quarters.

Beth had a maid to help with the housework, a smiling woman called Chantelle, and this was her domain. There were wooden steps leading down from the kitchen verandah where she would sit sometimes, her fingers busy with some mindless task while she sang quietly to herself. Alice wouldn’t normally have intruded, but Chantelle, she knew, was busy clearing up after the barbecue lunch, and Alice didn’t think she would mind if she sat there for a little while on her own.

The garden here was blissfully shady and overgrown, so dark that Alice was almost at the steps before she realised that she was not the only person needing some time alone. A little girl was sitting on the bottom step, half-hidden in the shadow of a banana tree. Her knees were drawn up to her chin, and she hugged them to her, keeping very still as she watched a butterfly with improbably large iridescent blue wings come to rest on her shoe.

Alice stopped as soon as she saw them, but the butterfly had already taken off and was flapping languidly in and out of the patches of sunlight. The child spotted her at the same time, and she seemed to freeze. Alice was reminded of a small, wary animal trying to make up its mind whether to bolt for cover or not.

She was sorry that she had interrupted, but it seemed rude to turn on her heel and walk off without saying anything. Besides, there was something very familiar about the scene. Alice couldn’t work out what it was at first, but then she realised that the little girl reminded her of herself as a lonely, uncertain child.

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to disturb you, or the butterfly. I was just looking for somewhere quiet to sit for a while.’ She paused, but the little girl just looked guardedly at her, still poised for flight.

She wasn’t a particularly pretty child. She had straight, shapeless hair and a pinched little face dominated by a pair of huge, solemn dark eyes. Her expression was distrustful, but Alice was conscious of a pang of fellow feeling.

How many times had she slipped off to find a place to hide while she’d waited for her parents to take her back to wherever they were calling home at the time? This child’s parents were probably having a great time by the pool, totally oblivious to the fact that their daughter had slipped away, intimidated by the other children who were noisy and boisterous and seemed to be able to make friends without even trying.

‘I wanted to escape from the party for a bit,’ Alice explained. ‘It’s too noisy and I didn’t know anyone to talk to properly. Is that what you did?’ she asked as the girl glanced sharply at her.

The child nodded.

‘The thing is, I don’t want to go back yet,’ said Alice. ‘And I can’t think of anywhere else to hide. Do you mind if I sit next to you, just for a little while? I won’t talk if you don’t want to. I hate it when people talk to me when I’m trying to be quiet.’

There was a flash of recognition in the girl’s watchful eyes, and, while she didn’t exactly agree, she didn’t say no either, and as Alice went over she shifted along the step to make room for her. Encouraged, Alice settled next to her, drawing her knees up to mirror the child’s posture.

A strangely companionable silence settled round them. In the distance, Alice could hear the buzz of party conversation, punctuated by the occasional burst of laughter, and the squeals and shrieks and splashes from the pool, but they seemed to be coming from a long way away, far from the dark, drowsy green world of the kitchen garden where there was only the squawk of a passing raucous bird and the low-level hum of insects to break the hot quiet.

She was glad of the chance to settle her nerves. Meeting Will again had left her jangled and distressed, and it was hard to disentangle her feelings about him from all the hurt and confusion she had felt since Tony had left. Between them, they had left her feeling utterly wretched.

If only she could rewind time and do things differently, this afternoon at least, Alice thought miserably. Seeing Will hadn’t been at all the way she had imagined. He wasn’t the man she had imagined him to be. If she had become brittle and superficial, he had grown hard and bitter. The young man with the humorous eyes and the reassuring steadiness had gone for good. Now that she knew what he had become, she couldn’t even dream of him the way he had been.

The realisation that the Will she had loved was lost for ever felt like a bereavement. Alice’s throat worked, and she pressed her lips hard together to stop herself crying.

There was no point in this, she told herself. She was upset because it was Tony’s wedding day, but that was no excuse. She had behaved badly. She had been defensive and unsympathetic and rude. No wonder Will hadn’t liked her. Now he had obviously left the party without saying goodbye, and she might not have another chance to say that she was sorry.

It was no use trying to tell herself that she didn’t care. Here in the quiet garden with her restful companion she could acknowledge that she did.

‘There’s the butterfly again.’ The little girl broke the silence in hushed tones, and they both sat very still as the butterfly alighted on an upturned bucket. It was so big that it seemed almost clumsy, its wings so heavy that it blundered from perch to perch, flapping slowly through the hot air as if barely able to keep itself aloft.

The child’s eyes were huge as she watched it. ‘I’ve never seen such a big butterfly before!’

She obviously hadn’t been on the island that long, Alice reflected, although she could probably have told that anyway from her pale skin.

‘When I was a little girl I lived in Guyana,’ Alice said. ‘That’s in South America, and it was hot and humid, like this. Our house was on the edge of the jungle, and the garden was full of butterflies—blue ones and green ones and yellow ones, and butterflies with stripes and spots and weird patterns. Some of them were enormous.’

‘Bigger than that one?’

‘Much bigger.’ Alice spread out her fingers to demonstrate the wing span. ‘Like this.’

The girl’s eyes widened further as she looked from the butterfly to Alice’s hand and back again, clearly trying to imagine a garden full of such creatures.

‘It must have been pretty,’ she commented.

‘They were beautiful,’ Alice remembered almost in surprise. Funny, she hadn’t thought about the garden in Guyana for years. ‘I used to sit on the verandah steps, just like we’re doing now, and watch them for hours.’

The little girl looked solemn. ‘Didn’t you have any friends?’

‘Not then,’ said Alice. ‘It was very isolated where we lived, and I didn’t know many other children. I used to pretend that the butterflies were my friends.’

How odd to remember that now, after all these years! She smiled, not unkindly, at her younger self.

‘I imagined that they were fairies in disguise,’ she confided to her small companion. It was strange how she felt more comfortable sitting here with the child than she had in the thick of a party thrown especially for her. Alice had never been a particularly maternal type, but she felt a strong sense of affinity with this quiet, plain little girl with her dark, wary eyes.

‘Fairies?’ the child breathed, riveted.

‘At night I thought their beautiful wings would turn into silk robes and gorgeously coloured dresses.’ Somehow it didn’t sound silly in this dark, tropical garden. ‘You know the sound the insects make when it’s dark here?’

The girl nodded but her mouth turned down slightly. ‘I don’t like it. It’s loud.’

‘It was loud in Guyana, too,’ said Alice. ‘I used to think it was frightening, and then my father told me one night that it was just the sound of all the insects having a great party!’

Her father had been good at nonsense like that. He’d told the young Alice extravagant stories, embellishing them until they were more and more absurd, and she had struggled to know how much to believe. She ought to remember the good times more often, Alice thought with a sudden pang. It wasn’t often that she thought of her childhood with affection, but it hadn’t been all bad.

‘So after that, whenever I couldn’t sleep because it was too hot, I’d lie there listening to the noise and imagine the butterflies talking and laughing and dancing all night.’

She laughed softly, but the little girl looked struck. ‘I was a bit frightened by the noise too,’ she confessed. ‘But now I’ll think about them having a party like you said, and it won’t seem so strange.’

‘You’ll soon get used to it,’ Alice reassured her, and then nudged her, pointing silently as the butterfly came lumbering through the air towards them again. They both held their breath as it came closer and closer, fluttering indecisively for what seemed like ages before it settled at last on Alice’s foot.

The child’s eyes widened in delight as she noticed for the first time that Alice’s shoes were decorated with tiny fabric butterflies, their beads and sequins catching the light, and she put a hand to her mouth to smother a giggle.

‘He likes your shoes,’ she whispered. ‘Do you think he knows those butterflies aren’t real?’

Alice considered. ‘I’m not sure. Probably not. He doesn’t look like a very clever butterfly, does he?’

A laugh escaped through the rather grubby little fingers, rousing the butterfly to flight once more, but Alice didn’t mind. It was such a pleasure to see the small, serious face lighten with a real smile. She guessed it didn’t happen very often and her heart constricted with a kind of pity. A little girl like this should be laughing and smiling all the time.

‘I like your shoes,’ she said to Alice, who stretched out her legs so that they could both admire them.

‘I like them too,’ she agreed. ‘But somebody told me today that they were silly.’ Her face darkened as she remembered Will’s comment.

‘I don’t think they’re stupid. I think they’re really nice.’

‘Well, thank you.’ Alice was ridiculously heartened by her approval. She peered down at the small feet next to her. ‘What are yours like?’

‘They’re just shoes,’ the child said without enthusiasm.

Alice could see what she meant. She was wearing sturdy leather sandals which were perfectly practical but lacked any sense of fun or fashion.

‘When I was little I wanted a pair of pink shoes,’ she said sympathetically. ‘I asked my parents for years, but I never got them.’

‘I’d like pink shoes too, but my dad says these are more sensible.’ The little girl sighed.

‘Dads don’t understand about shoes,’ Alice told her. ‘Very few men do. But, when you grow up, you’ll be able to buy any shoes you want. I bought a pair of lovely pink shoes as soon as I was earning my own money. Now I’ve got lots of shoes in different colours. Some of them are lots of fun. I’ve got shoes with polka dots and zebra stripes,’ she said, illustrating the patterns by drawing in the air. ‘Some of them have got sequins, or bows, or fancy jewels or—’

‘Jewels?’ she interrupted, starry-eyed. ‘Real ones?’

‘Well, no, not exactly,’ Alice had to admit. ‘But they look fabulous!’

The child heaved an envious sigh. ‘I wish I could see them.’

Alice opened her mouth to offer a view of the collection she had brought with her, but before she could ask the little girl her name a voice behind them made them both jump.

‘Lily?’

Will stepped out of the kitchen onto the wooden verandah, letting the screen door bang into place behind him. He had been looking for his daughter everywhere.

Unable to bear the sight of Alice flirting any longer, he had been avoiding the front lawn, and had endured instead a tedious half-hour making small talk in the air-conditioned coolness of the living room. Only when he’d thought that he could reasonably make an excuse and leave had he realised that Lily was not among the children around the pool where he had left her.

Since then he had been searching with rising panic, flaying himself for ever taking his eyes off her in the first place, and now acute relief at finding her safe sharpened his voice.

‘What do you think you’re—’

He stopped abruptly as he reached the edge of the verandah and saw who was sitting at the bottom of the steps next to his daughter, both of them staring up at him with identically startled expressions.

‘Alice!’

Will glared accusingly at her. If Alice hadn’t annoyed him so much, he wouldn’t have left the poolside, and he would have kept a closer eye on Lily. This was all her fault.

‘What are you doing here?’ he asked rudely. It was bad enough when he had imagined her out front, making a spectacle of herself with all those fawning men, but it was somehow worse to find her here with Lily, a witness to his inadequacies as a father.

Why did it have to be her? He wouldn’t have minded finding anyone else with Lily, would even have been glad that his daughter had found a friend, but not Alice. She had been free enough with her opinion of him as a father earlier. There would be no stopping her now that she had met Lily. Alice would have taken one look at his quiet, withdrawn daughter and decided just how he was failing her, Will thought bleakly.