Читать книгу Single Dads Collection - Lynne Marshall - Страница 32

THERE was so much post piled up behind the front door that Alice had to push her way into her cramped hallway. The flat smelt musty and unused, and even when she had switched on the lights the rooms seemed cheerless. Perhaps it was something to do with the dreary drizzle and the muted grey light of a wet Spring afternoon, she thought, and tried not to think of the aching blue ocean, the mint-green lagoon and the vivid colours of hibiscus and bougainvillaea.

Her feet had swollen on the long flight, and she kicked off her shoes with a weary sigh as she sat down on the cream sofa. This was the home she had worked hard for, the home she had been insistent she wanted to come back to. It represented everything she had ever wanted: security, stability, being settled at last. She had decorated it with care in the cool, minimalist style that appealed to her, and it had been her refuge whenever things had gone wrong.

Until now, she had always thought of her home as calm and restful. There was no reason suddenly to find the ivory walls cold, or to notice the roar of the traffic along the busy road outside, the dismaying wail of a siren in the distance, and the intrusive blare of a television next door.

No reason to find herself overwhelmed with homesickness for a verandah thousands of miles away, where the insects whirred and rasped and shrilled, and the scent of frangipani drifted on the hot air. Alice looked at her watch and calculated the time in St Bonaventure. Will would be sitting there now, still and self-contained, listening to the sound of the sea he loved so much.

The memory of him was so sharp that Alice closed her eyes as if at a pain. Was he thinking of her? Was he missing her?

She had thought about him constantly since Roger had driven her away. The worst thing was realising that she hadn’t said goodbye, to him or to Lily.

His words went round and round in her head. It’s only ever going to be you, Alice. Lily and I will be here for you if you ever change your mind and think you can take a chance on being loved…

‘I don’t understand what the problem is,’ Beth had said. ‘Why are you putting yourself through all this misery? Will loves you, Lily loves you, and you wouldn’t be this upset about leaving if you didn’t love them back.’

‘Love’s not the problem,’ Alice had tried to explain.

‘Then what is?’

‘It’s everything else. It’s not being sure if love would be enough.’ She’d twisted her fingers in an agony of indecision. ‘Yes, I could go back to Will now, but it would mean giving up my whole life for something that might not work out. It didn’t work out last time, so why should it now?’

‘You know yourselves better now,’ Beth had pointed out, but Alice hadn’t been convinced.

‘I’m not sure that I do. I feel differently here,’ she’d said, waving her arms at the tropical garden. ‘But who’s to say that what I feel is real? It might just be about being on holiday in a beautiful place. Maybe I’m just getting carried away by the romance of it all.’

Beth had looked thoughtful. ‘Then perhaps Will is right. You need to go home and see how you feel when you’re there. He’s told you that he loves you, and he’s not going anywhere, so it’s up to you to decide what you want.’

It was deciding that was the problem, Alice thought in despair. She who had always been so clear about what she wanted before was now being tossed about in a maelstrom of indecision that was making her feel quite sick. One minute the thought of never seeing or touching Will again seemed so awful that she was ready to jump into a taxi and rush back to the house by the lagoon, the next she would think about selling her flat and committing herself to an expatriate life where they would move from house to house and none of them would be a home. And she would be swamped by memories of her childhood and all the times she had sworn that as soon as she was old enough she would settle down and make a home for herself.

She wasn’t ready to give that up, Alice told herself. At least, she didn’t think she was…

She was having to readjust so many of her ideas at the moment, that it was difficult to know what she thought. She had been astounded when Beth had told her just why Will had been so convinced that her relationship with Roger was inappropriate.

‘It’s not so far-fetched an idea,’ Beth had said. ‘Roger was in love with you for years.’

‘What?’ Alice had goggled at her, and Beth had nodded calmly.

‘He confessed to Will once when he’d had too much to drink, and he was always grateful that Will never told you. He thought it would have embarrassed you if you’d known.’

‘But I…But I…’ Alice had floundered in disbelief. ‘I had no idea!’

‘Roger knew that. He’d probably have been better to have told you and got you out of his system, but you know what fools men can be about these things,’ said Roger’s fond wife.

Alice regarded her curiously. ‘Didn’t you mind when he told you?’ she asked a little awkwardly, not at all sure it wasn’t a bit tacky to ask a man’s wife how she felt when she’d found out he was in love with you.

‘No,’ said Beth, smiling. ‘He told me that when he met me he realised that what he’d felt for you wasn’t the real thing, and I believe him. I know Roger loves me, Alice. He loves you too, but in a very different way. I’ve always been sure of that.’

‘It must be nice to be so sure,’ said Alice wistfully, and then her face darkened as she remembered Will’s bitter accusations. ‘I can see why Will might be suspicious, I suppose, but it doesn’t change the fact that he actually thought me capable of coming out here and making a play for Roger.’

Beth sighed. ‘He apologised for that, didn’t he? The man’s desperate, Alice! If you won’t go and see him, will you at least ring him?’

But Alice shook her head. ‘It wouldn’t be fair to do that until I was sure, the way you’re sure about Roger, and I’m not. Helen’s arriving today. It would just upset everyone if I went back now. My flight’s tomorrow, and we’d just end up having to say goodbye all over again. No, I’m going to go home, and when I can think clearly again maybe I’ll know how I feel.’

It was all very well deciding to think about her situation clearly, but it wasn’t that easy in practice. Alice was convinced that all she needed was a good night’s sleep and to wake up in her flat and suddenly she would know what to do, but it didn’t work like that.

She did her best to get back into a routine as quickly as possible. She unpacked, shook the sand out of her shoes, washed and put away her holiday clothes and set about finding a new job. She filled in application forms, bought herself a smart new suit for interviews, and contacted friends she hadn’t seen before the break-up with Tony.

Grimly determined to enjoy herself if it killed her, she went out as much as she could. Once she bumped into Tony and Sandi, and was appalled to discover how indifferent she felt as the three of them made polite chit-chat. She had been sure that Tony was the man she wanted to spend the rest of her life with, but how could she have wanted him when he didn’t have Will’s mouth or Will’s smile or Will’s ironic grey eyes? But, if her feelings towards him could change so completely in a matter of months, who was to say that her feelings for Will wouldn’t change too?

So Alice continued, miserably unsure, torn between her determination to get back into her old life and her inability to put her time in St Bonaventure out of her mind. She would be sitting having coffee with a friend, and her eyes would slip out of focus momentarily at the memory of Will’s hands around a mug. She let herself into the flat, and found herself listening for the click of the screen door, and if she caught a glimpse of a dark-haired little girl her heart would lurch with the bizarre hope that it was Lily.

She ached for Will, for his cool, quiet presence, his wry smile and his hard body. She missed the constant sigh of the sea and the soughing of the warm wind in the palm trees. She missed the hot nights. She missed Lily desperately, but most of all she missed Will.

Alice longed to hear from him. Every time she went home, she would check for an email, a message on the answering machine, a postcard, anything to show that he was still thinking about her. There was never anything. You need to go home and decide for yourself. She could still hear Will saying it, and she wanted to shout at him that she couldn’t decide. If only he would make some move, it would take nothing to convince her. Why didn’t he just contact her?

She began to set herself little tests. If she could get through the morning without thinking about him, that must mean that she was getting over him, and then she’d know she’d made the right decision. If she hadn’t heard from him by next week, she’d know he didn’t really care and that it wasn’t meant to be. If she could walk to the end of the street without stepping on the cracks in the pavement, she’d be able to make up her mind.

None of them worked.

When her dream job was advertised in the trade journal, Alice could hardly believe it. This, surely, was the sign that she had been waiting for. The job was everything she’d ever wanted. A prestigious company, a promotion, a challenging position that would launch her into a new stage of her career. If she got this job, she was meant to stay in London and get on with her life. What could be clearer?

Carefully, Alice filled in the application form, and when she passed the first hurdle and was asked for interview she had her suit cleaned, and bought a spectacular pair of new shoes to go with it. She prepared for the interview as thoroughly as she could, but she was very nervous as she waited to go in. It felt as if her whole future would be decided by that hour’s interview.

Her shoes pinched horribly, but otherwise it seemed to go quite well, and then all Alice had to do was wait.

When her phone rang a few hours later, she practically jumped out of her skin. She had spent the afternoon prowling restlessly about the flat, unable to settle to anything. Too jittery to take off her suit, she was barefoot on the carpet, her poor toes enjoying a respite from being pushed into the shoes that might look fabulous but were in fact extremely uncomfortable.

This was it. Alice stared at the ringing phone for a moment and then picked it up. ‘Hello?’

‘Ms Gunning?’ said a voice she recognized from the interview that morning. ‘Thank you so much for coming to see us this morning. We’re absolutely delighted to offer you the post.’

The rest of the conversation was a blur of congratulations, but it finished with a suggestion that she go in and see them the next day to sort out the practicalities of salary and starting date. In the meantime, they would courier over her contract so that she could read it at her leisure.

‘Thank you so much.’ Alice put the phone down slowly.

So the job was hers. Finally her decision had been made for her. She was to stay here, with a great job, a nice flat, and friends. She had a good life, and she was safe and settled again, just as she had always wanted.

She was ecstatically happy and relieved, naturally.

She burst into tears.

Aghast at herself, Alice sank on to the sofa, brushing the tears angrily from her face. What on earth was the matter with her? She had wanted a sign, and this was it. She should be delighted, not sick to her stomach with disappointment.

But, the more she tried to convince herself that she had got what she wanted, the more she cried, until her face was blotched and piggy, and her throat was clogged with sobs.

As if that wasn’t enough, the doorbell pealed imperatively. ‘Oh, God, now what?’ mumbled Alice. She didn’t want to explain her wretched state to a neighbour, and she was in no mood for a survey, but it might be the contract. She would have to check.

Cautiously, she put her eye to the peephole and peered through the door. If it was a courier, she would open the door, take the contract and close it again. If it was a friend or a neighbour, she would just have to pretend that she wasn’t there.

But it wasn’t a friend or a neighbour, or a market researcher, or even a courier. Standing on the other side of the door were the very last people she had expected to see.

Her parents.

Alice was humming as she jumped off the bus and walked back to the flat past the little parade of shops. She waved at the owner of the Turkish greengrocer, and the young boy who helped at the Indian corner shop that sold everything she could ever want in the middle of the night. Stopping at the street market, she bought a bunch of hyacinths, and sniffed appreciatively as she passed an Italian restaurant where something very garlicky was cooking. Two elderly ladies swathed in black were coming towards her, deep in conversation, and Alice smiled as she stood aside for them.

She loved this multi-cultural side to London. The city was looking at its best in the spring sunshine. In the centre of town, the great parks were green and bright with flowers nodding gaily in the breeze, and the very air seemed sharper and clearer, as if the world was conspiring to reassure her that she had made the right decision. Even the bus had come just when she wanted it, and she had enjoyed the ride on the top deck back to her suburb. It might not be as attractive as the centre of town, but it had its own vibrancy and charm. Yes, this was a great city to live in.

Alice couldn’t believe how much better she felt for making up her mind. Filled with a sense of well-being, she was smiling as she turned into her street, and it wasn’t until she was halfway along that she saw that someone was standing on her doorstep. Someone whose shape and stance was achingly familiar.

Her steps slowed in disbelief, until she stopped altogether with her hand on the gate, her smile fading. He turned at her approach, and as they looked at each other the beat of the great metropolis, the jabber of languages, the constant throb of traffic, the rattle of trains, the blare of music, and the car alarm that everyone was ignoring, faded into a blur. And then silence, until there was just the two of them, looking at each other.

Will.

Alice drank in the sight of him. He looked tired, she thought, but it was unmistakably him. It was as if a high-definition lens had been slotted over her eyes so that she could see him in extraordinary detail: every line around his eyes, every crease in his cheek, the way his hair grew, the set of his mouth…

Oh, that mouth…Her knees went suddenly weak, and she had to hang on to the gate.

‘Hello,’ she said.

‘Hello, Alice.’

He didn’t smile, he didn’t rush to sweep her into his arms, he just stood there and looked directly back at her. But that was the moment nonetheless when the last piece clicked into place for Alice, and she realised that she wasn’t even surprised to see him. All that misery, all that indecision, all that dithering…all had led inevitably to this time and this place, to this certainty that everything would be all right.

Discovering that she was able to move after all, Alice pushed open the gate and pulled out her keys as she walked towards him.

‘Have you been waiting long?’

‘About forty minutes.’

About ten years, Will amended to himself.

Alice looked wonderful. The mere sight of her was enough to lift his heart, but he was conscious of a sinking sense of consternation too. Part of him, admit it, had hoped that she would have been wretched and miserable without him, and that it would have showed, but there was no evidence of that. Instead, she looked glowing and confident in a short jacket with a long flowing skirt and boots, and flowers in her arms. Her hair fell to her shoulders, and when she stood at the gate it shone gold and copper and bronze in the spring light, and her eyes were full of sunshine.

She looked happy, Will realised dully, and he was terribly afraid that he had left it too late.

Alice went into the kitchen and put the hyacinths into some water, bending to breathe in their heady perfume. ‘Coffee?’ she asked.

‘Thanks.’ Will wasn’t sure how to begin. He stood to one side and watched her moving around the kitchen. She hadn’t asked what he was doing there, but presumably she could guess, and surely they had known each other long enough for him not to need to dance around with polite conversation before coming to the point?

‘I’ve been wondering if you’d thought at all about what I said before you left,’ he said abruptly. ‘Have you decided what you want yet?’

Alice had sat on a chair and was pulling off her boots, but she stopped in the middle of unzipping the second one and smiled at him. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, I have.’

‘I see,’ said Will bleakly. She had decided to stay in London, that was obvious. You didn’t buy flowers for a home you were about to leave.

‘Shall we go into the sitting room?’ Alice suggested before he could say any more, and she carried the tray into a bright room. It was cool and uncluttered, and Will sat gingerly on the edge of a cream sofa. She looked perfectly at home here. If this was her life, he wasn’t surprised that she hadn’t wanted to give it up for a rickety verandah and creaking ceiling fans.

Alice pushed the plunger into the cafetière and poured out the coffee, wriggling her toes on the carpet. Will was so used to seeing her in shoes that the sight of her bare feet was strangely arousing, and he looked away.

‘What are you doing here, Will?’ she asked as she handed him a mug of coffee. ‘I thought you were going to wait for me to decide what I wanted to do?’

‘I was going to—I meant to wait—but there came a point when I couldn’t wait any longer.’ Will put down his coffee without drinking it. ‘It’s terrible since you left, Alice,’ he told her honestly. ‘Lily has closed in on herself again.’

Alice bit her lip. ‘Doesn’t she get on with Helen?’

‘Helen’s all right. She’s done her best. It’s not her fault that she’s not you,’ said Will. ‘The truth is that Lily and I are in a bad way. I can’t sleep, I can’t eat, I can’t work properly…We don’t seem to be able to do anything but miss you.’

A wry smile touched his mouth. ‘I know this sounds like emotional blackmail, Alice, but it’s not meant to be that. It’s just that it suddenly seemed stupid to just sit out there and hope for the best. I couldn’t just watch my daughter getting quieter and quieter. I realised that if we wanted you back in our lives—and we do—I would have to do something to make it happen.

‘So I’ve applied for a job here in the UK,’ he told Alice. ‘It’s as a consultant with an engineering company, doing environmental impact assessments for their marine projects. I’d be based in the North, not London, but it’s a permanent job, and a good one. I’d still have to do research overseas, but it would be in short stints, so we could buy a house and settle down somewhere. Lily could go to school, and you could carry on with your career…’

Will stopped, realising that he was in danger of babbling. He looked at Alice, who was clasping her mug with a very strange expression on her face, as if she couldn’t quite believe what she was hearing.

‘I suppose what I really came to ask you, Alice, was whether it would make any difference to your decision if I did get that job.’

Very slowly, Alice shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘No, it wouldn’t make any difference.’

‘I see.’ The belief that deep down Alice still loved him had been keeping Will going through the last ghastly weeks. He knew that she was scarred by her restless childhood and he knew how important the idea of home was to her. Once he had made the decision to change his own career, he had thought that would solve the problem, but he could see now that it had been arrogant of him. Alice had never promised anything beyond the short term.

Somehow he managed a smile. ‘I understand,’ he said. ‘Now that I’ve seen you here, I can appreciate what this place means to you.’ He looked around the room, approving its simple, tasteful décor. ‘It’s nice here. You’ve obviously got a good life, and I know how important your career is to you. I hope you’ll find just the job you want,’ he added heroically.

‘It’s funny you should say that,’ said Alice, a smile hovering around her mouth. ‘I was offered the job of my dreams just a couple of days ago.’

‘Well…great,’ said Will heartily. Abandoning his coffee, he got to his feet. He wasn’t sure how he was going to tell Lily, but he would have to find a way. She had been happy to see her grandparents again. Perhaps he should think about moving to the UK anyway, just as Alice had once suggested. ‘Good luck then, Alice.’

‘Where are you going?’

‘I should go and pick Lily up. It was good to see you again,’ he said, looking into Alice’s golden eyes for the last time. ‘And…Well, there doesn’t seem much more to say.’

He was turning for the door when her soft voice stopped him in his tracks. ‘Even if I tell you that I didn’t take the job?’ Very, very slowly, Will turned back. ‘You didn’t take it?’

Alice shook her head, her smile a little wavery. ‘You haven’t asked me what decision I made yet,’ she reminded him.

‘I thought…I assumed…’ he stammered as a tiny spark of hope lit in his heart. ‘You look so happy, so at home here.’

She tutted. ‘That’s not very scientific of you, Will. I’d have expected you to look at the evidence, not make assumptions on how you think I look.’

‘Evidence?’

Getting to her feet, Alice went over to the table and rummaged among some papers, pulling out a rectangular card. ‘Evidence like this,’ she said, putting it into a flabbergasted Will’s hand. ‘It’s a plane ticket,’ she told him unnecessarily. ‘Open it.’

‘It’s to St Bonaventure.’ Will lifted his head from the ticket to stare at her, a smile starting at the back of his eyes.

‘And it’s in my name.’ She took the ticket from him and tossed it back onto the table before turning back to him and taking his hand, smiling as his fingers closed convulsively around hers. ‘What does that evidence tell you, Will?’

‘Alice…’ Unable to find the words for how he felt, Will pulled her into his arms. He didn’t kiss her, he just held her very tightly, his eyes squeezed shut, his face pressed into her hair as he breathed in the scent of her, and felt the iron bands that had been gripped around his heart ever since she had driven off with Roger start to loosen.

‘I made my decision, Will.’ Alice turned her face into his throat and clung to him. ‘I chose happiness. I chose you.’

Will’s arms tightened around her even further, but she didn’t mind. ‘You were right about me looking happy,’ she went on, rather muffled. ‘I was happy because I’d just finished making all the arrangements to let this flat and could go back to you and Lily.’ ‘But Alice, this is your home,’ Will protested.

‘It was, but when I came back from St Bonaventure it wasn’t home any more,’ she said. ‘It was just a flat. For a while it seemed as if I didn’t have a home at all, and then I realised that I do. It’s just not bricks and mortar. Home is wherever you are.’

‘Alice…Oh, Alice…’ Will pulled back slightly so that she could turn her face up to his, and their lips met at last in a long, sweet kiss. He felt almost drunk with relief and happiness. He wasn’t sure quite how it happened, but his dream had just come true, and the proof of it was Alice’s lips beneath his, her arms around him, the softness and scent of her hair. ‘Tell me that again,’ he said raggedly when they broke for air.

‘I love you, Will. I think I’ve always loved you, but I was too stupid and afraid to realise how lucky I was to have found you.’ Lovingly, she traced the line of his cheek with her fingers. ‘I’ve walked away from your love three times now, and I don’t deserve to be given another chance, but, if you will, I promise I’ll never walk away again. I just want to be with you, and I don’t care where we are, or what we do, as long as we’re together.’

‘And you’re sure?’ asked Will as he bent to kiss her again, and she smiled against his lips.

‘Yes, this time I’m sure.’

‘What made you change your mind?’ Will asked much later when they were lying, lazily entangled, in Alice’s bed. He smoothed the hair tenderly from her face. ‘You were so insistent that you had everything you needed here.’

‘Everything except you and Lily,’ said Alice, rolling onto her side to face him. ‘It didn’t take me long to realise that I might have the security of material things, but none of them were worth anything without you. I knew I loved you, and that you loved me, but I still couldn’t bring myself to trust that feeling.

‘I was afraid to let go of what I had,’ she confessed. ‘It was just what you said. I was afraid to give it all up for the chance of happiness.’ She linked her fingers with his. ‘Once you know what you want, it all seems obvious, and I can’t believe now that I hesitated for so long. But then I was going round and round in circles, not knowing what I wanted or what I really thought.

‘Strangely, it was being offered that job that convinced me,’ she remembered. ‘I’d told myself that I would take it as a sign that I should stay here if I got it, but of course, when it happened, I realised it wasn’t the sign I wanted. I felt a fool,’ she told him with a twisted smile. ‘I’d just been offered the job of my dreams, and all I could think was that I didn’t want it if it meant I couldn’t be with you and Lily. Then my parents turned up.’

‘Your parents?’ Will sat up in surprise. ‘I thought they were in India?’

‘They were. Now they’re on their way to keep bees in Normandy.’ Out of habit, Alice rolled her eyes, but her smile held a kind of wry affection as well. ‘They thought they would call in and see me on their way through London, and, being them, they didn’t think to give me any warning. They simply turned up on my doorstep, at the very moment I’d just realised that I wanted to be with you, and I was in a terrible muddle about everything.’

Will twisted a strand of her hair around his finger. ‘Did they help?’

‘Well, that’s the funny thing. They did.’ Alice pulled herself up to sit next to him, and adjusted a pillow behind her back. ‘They’ve never been what you’d call conventional parents. They’re two old hippies,’ she said with an affectionate smile, thinking of her mother with her anklets and long braid, her father with his tie-dyed T-shirt and his grey hair pulled back into a pony-tail. ‘But when they saw what a state I was in, they swung into their traditional roles straight away! They sat me down and made me tea, and got the whole story out of me.’

She ran her hand over Will’s shoulder, loving the sleekness of his skin. ‘I told them about you and Lily, and how much I loved you, and that I’d let you down three times now. I told them I was afraid of doing it again, that I was scared that it wouldn’t work unless I was sure that I could get it right this time and that it would be perfect.’

Her mother had simply shaken her head. ‘Alice, you can never be sure,’ she had said. ‘All you can do is trust each other and be true to each other and believe in each other. Love isn’t something that comes and goes. It’s something you have to make together, and if you both work at it, if you’re kind and patient and prepared to compromise, if you can stay friends through thick and thin, then you can make it last, but you can’t ever be sure of it.’

Alice would never forget the way her mother had smiled at her father then, and suddenly they hadn’t seemed like faintly ridiculous hangovers from another era, but two people who had found their own way and loved each other a long time.

‘Loving someone completely isn’t easy,’ her father had added. ‘It’s hard work, and you can decide it’s easier never to try, but, if you never do, you’ll never be completely happy either.’ He’d reached out and took her mother’s hand. ‘Yes, it’s a risk committing yourself to loving someone for the rest of your life. It’s a leap in the dark, but it’s a leap out of the dark too, and if you don’t take it you’ll never know the joy and the wonder and the real security which is loving and being loved.’

Alice felt quite teary with emotion as she told Will what her parents had said. ‘As I listened to them talk, I realised that I’d spent my whole life running away from the unsettling effects of my childhood—the moving from place to place, never having any real friends, never feeling at home—when I could have been thinking about all the wonderful things my parents did for me.’

She shook her head at herself. ‘They gave me the best example I could have of a loving relationship. My father didn’t wear a suit, and my mother didn’t put on an apron and stay in the kitchen, but they were always friends and always lovers. They laughed and they talked and were true to each other. They took me to places most children never get to see, and showed me how wonderful the world is.

‘I had the most incredible experiences growing up,’ Alice remembered. ‘But, instead of realising how lucky I was, I turned it all into something negative. I became afraid of change, and I confused the security of place with the security of love.’ She curved her hand around his cheek and leaned over to kiss Will’s mouth softly. ‘I won’t do that again.’

‘Your parents sound like great people,’ said Will when he had kissed her back. Alice had never talked much about her parents when they’d been students. He had the feeling they had been in South America then, so he had never been introduced. ‘I’d like to meet them.’

‘That’s good, because they’re coming out to St Bonaventure.’

‘They are? When?’

‘For our wedding,’ said Alice calmly, and a smile twitched the corner of Will’s mouth.

‘Oh, we’re getting married, are we?’

‘Yes, we are.’ She leant over to Will until he slid beneath her, and her face was suddenly serious. ‘You’ve asked me to marry you four times now, and each time I’ve been the fool that said no, so this time it’s up to me. Will you marry me, Will?’

‘Alice.’ He cupped her face with infinite tenderness. ‘My heart, I’ve wanted to marry you since I first laid eyes on you fourteen years ago, but we don’t have to get married if you don’t want to.’

‘I do want to,’ she said, dropping soft kisses over his face. ‘You know what a thing I’ve got about security, and, now I’ve decided that you’re my security, I want to tie you up as close as I can!’

‘The tying up bit sounds fun,’ mumbled Will between kisses. ‘You can tie me up as tight as you like!’

‘Good, I hoped you’d agree,’ said Alice with satisfaction, and then her blizzard of kisses had reached his mouth and neither of them said anything more for a long time.

‘We don’t have to get married in St Bonaventure,’ Will pointed out some time later, when they had both discovered that they were starving and were in the kitchen making cheese on toast, which was the best Alice could do. ‘If I get this job, we’ll be moving back to the UK and we could have the wedding here if you like.’

Alice picked a piece of cheese from the grater and studied him. ‘When’s the interview?’

‘The day after tomorrow.’

‘I think you should ring up and cancel,’ she said. ‘Let’s go back to St Bonaventure and finish the project. If I’m married to you, I’ll be able to find a job doing something, and as long as I’ve got something to do I’ll be fine. I could sort out your fund-raising for a start! Then, when the project’s finished, we can think again. Maybe that’ll be the time to come back to the UK, and Lily can settle in a school here.’

Will slid his arms about her from behind and kissed the side of her neck, making her arch with pleasure. ‘You’re a dream come true,’ he said, and she smiled.

‘That’s the plan.’

The sun was just starting to sink towards the horizon as Alice took Lily’s hand and walked down the garden and across the track. Ducking under the trunk of a coconut palm that leant down at an extraordinary angle, they kicked off their shoes and walked barefoot across the beach to where Will was waiting for them.

Lily was in a pale pink dress, which she had been allowed to choose herself, and her dark curls were held in place by a satin headband decorated with rosebuds. Her tongue was sticking out slightly as she concentrated on remembering her bridesmaid’s duties. Next to her, Alice was wearing a very simple cream-coloured dress with fine straps that left her arms and shoulders bare, and the chiffon stirred against her legs as cat’s paw of wind ruffled across the lagoon. There were frangipani flowers in her hair, and she carried a spray of vivid bougainvillaea.

The sky was flushed with a pink that was deepening rapidly to a brief blaze of red and orange as Will turned to watch them walk across the sand towards him, and he smiled. Their plans for a small ceremony had been overtaken by the insistence of the entire project staff on being invited, together with Roger and Beth, Alice’s parents, his mother, Sara and a whole lot of other people who’d seemed so genuinely happy for them that it had seemed churlish not to include them in the wedding party too. They all gathered round as Will stood with Alice and Lily before the celebrant.

Alice bent and handed her flowers to Lily, who took them as if they were made of glass and stepped carefully back to join her grandmother. Will took Alice’s hand and, as they turned to face each other, his grey gaze travelled lovingly over her, from the tawny hair to those golden eyes and the warm, generous mouth, and then down over the enticing curves of her body to stop at her bare feet.

‘What, no shoes?’ he murmured as the celebrant cleared his throat. ‘How are you going to run away?’

She smiled back at him. ‘I’m not running anywhere,’ she said. ‘From now on I’m staying right by your side.’