by Kate Field
‘Sleeping in the day, Mary Black? You need to cut down on those boozy lunches.’
It was a sorry day when I was so desperate for company that I imagined Ethan was here. I reached over to pick up my book from the floor – it had slipped out of my hand, though I absolutely hadn’t been sleeping – and caught sight of a pair of shoes by the garden gate. My gaze travelled up and over a pair of jeans, a T-shirt, and a face that undoubtedly belonged to Ethan.
‘Are you real?’
‘Certainly am. Why, were you dreaming about me?’
He grinned and I rallied.
‘It’s too delightful a day to be having nightmares.’
He laughed and walked towards me across the lawn, leaving a holdall behind him.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘I’ve come on holiday. Mum said there was an empty room, and invited me to fill it.’
Audrey? She hadn’t mentioned it to me. I should have been cross – if my mum had done this, I would have been furious – but oddly, my first thought was to be glad. Company! Someone my age to talk to! I may even have smiled – until Ethan plonked down on my sunlounger, pushing my legs aside with his bottom. Then my burgeoning pleasure at seeing him turned to horror as I realised how he was seeing me. This was a girls’ holiday, which gave us a degree of laxity that we might not have enjoyed with men around. My bikini, much like me, had seen better days, and no longer fitted as securely as it once had. At my age, if I lolled on a sunlounger, random bits of my anatomy lolled too. And Ethan didn’t even have the decency to look away.
I sat up, whipped out the towel I was lying on, and threw it over me. Ethan laughed.
‘Spoilsport. Do I have to remind you that I’ve seen you naked?’
‘Please don’t.’ I tucked the towel under my arms. ‘Over twenty years and two children have happened since then.’
‘There doesn’t look much difference to me.’
‘You shouldn’t be looking! Bugger off, and save your twaddle for someone who wants it. I thought you were in New York?’
‘I flew back on Friday. Everything is going well, and they can manage until October.’
‘October?’
‘When my six-month sabbatical ends.’
I’d forgotten about that. Was he halfway through his time already? It had rushed by – and yet, in some ways, it felt as if he’d been here forever. It was hard to imagine going back to the days when he was on the other side of the Atlantic, not leaping over the hedge from Audrey’s house or luring me into his cottage for a cup of tea when I was taking Dotty for a walk around the reservoir.
‘You’re definitely going back?’ I asked. That would scupper Daisy’s plans, and perhaps I ought to warn her before she set her heart too firmly on Ethan.
‘I have to. But whether I stay is another question.’
‘And the answer no doubt depends on a woman.’ Perhaps Daisy had a chance, after all. ‘Anyone I know?’
Ethan shifted on the lounger. The tint of my sunglasses enhanced every colour, making his eyes an extraordinarily rich blue. But when he lifted my sunglasses away from my face, his eyes looked no different, dazzling straight into mine.
‘I had a drink with Daisy last night.’
‘Did you?’ Despite the heat of the sun, and the warmth of Ethan’s buttocks pressed against my thighs, a chill slithered through me. ‘Hang on. Last night? And you’re here today? Don’t tell me you slept with her and ran away?’
‘Of course not. We had one drink.’
‘One?’ I repeated, risking dizziness with the speed of my U-turn. ‘What’s wrong with her? She’s gorgeous and funny and smart. And a woman, which I thought was all that mattered to you. Since when did you get so fussy?’
‘Since always. She’s not the right woman.’ He fiddled with the edge of my towel. ‘Don’t go fixing me up with any more of your friends. If I want you to be involved in my love life, I’ll ask, okay?’
Chapter 18
Ethan’s arrival transformed our holiday. He effortlessly charmed Mum and Audrey, was cool with Ava and Chloe, and knitted us all back together as one group. We had grown lazy over the years, rarely venturing out further than St Ives, but for Ethan it was all new, and he dragged us out to places that we hadn’t been to before, or that had changed so much since our last visit that it felt like our first time. It was the best holiday we’d had for ages, and however much I rejected the thought – that was so disloyal to Leo – it wouldn’t go away.
Even simple pleasures, such as going to the beach, something Leo had never been keen on, sounded fun when Ethan suggested it. I couldn’t remember the last time we had spent a day on the beach, and certainly couldn’t remember Mum ever coming with us. But when we woke up to a cloudless sky and burning sun, and Ethan bounded down to breakfast with a cry of, ‘Let’s go to the beach!’, we all dashed round gathering up chairs and towels, balls and books, and enough food and drink for an army, as if it was the greatest adventure of our lives.
Dared by Ethan, Chloe and Ava were the first into the sea, shrieking with horrified delight, and reminding me that my little girl still lurked somewhere beneath the attitude and the indecent bikini. Ethan soon followed, stripping off his T-shirt and plunging straight into the water in a way that made me shiver to watch. I peered over the top of my book from time to time, drawn by the squeals and laughter.
‘Isn’t he marvellous with them?’ Audrey asked, catching me watching. They were throwing an inflatable ball around, and it looked as if the girls were deliberately missing Ethan by miles so that he had to swim to fetch it. ‘I know it was naughty of me, but aren’t you glad I invited him?’
I was – until my book was snatched out of my hands, and icy water dripped onto my legs.
‘That’s enough reading,’ Ethan said. ‘Teenagers turn evil when mixed with sea water. I need back-up.’
It was lucky that I was wearing my sunglasses, because my eyes must have dangled out of their sockets at the sight in front of me. Ethan was wearing nothing but a pair of wet beach shorts that clung to him in eye-catching fashion. Water trickled from his hair, down his neck, and across an unbelievably well-defined chest. Was that a real six-pack? I’d never seen one in the flesh, and certainly not so close that with one twitch of my arm I could stroke my finger along those grooves …
‘Earth to Mary. Are you asleep again?’
The chest loomed far too close as Ethan leaned in and poked my shoulder.
‘Get off!’ I batted him away, inadvertently swiping the six-pack as I did. My cheeks blazed. ‘Shouldn’t you have more clothes on?’
‘I’m on the beach. What do you expect me to wear? Waders and a cagoule?’
That sounded an excellent idea, preferably teamed with a balaclava to hide the smile.
‘There are impressionable young girls about. You look too …’
‘Too what?’
It was a good question. All sorts of words were racing through my head, none of which I wanted to admit to by letting them out of my mouth: hunky, attractive, sexy. God help me. Was this the effect of sunstroke or had I gone mad?
‘Too male,’ I said, flapping my hands about as if I were being attacked by midges. ‘Too James Bond.’
I really wished I hadn’t said that when Ethan shook with laughter, sprinkling me with more water. He held out his hand.
‘Come on. You can be Ursula Andress.’
I hated being cold and wet, but as anything would be better than continuing this conversation, I ignored his hand and stood up. Turning my back on Ethan – as if that would magically prevent him seeing me – I pulled off my shorts and T-shirt.
‘What the hell is that? I know you like all things Victorian, but isn’t a vintage bathing costume taking it too far?’
‘I bought it last year,’ I said, trying to muster some dignity while I folded my clothes in a tidy pile. It was my public swimming costume, designed to be serviceable and to cover up as much of me as possible. It was nowhere near as bad as Ethan w
as implying and, to my mind, infinitely better than the scrap of bikini he’d caught me wearing before.
‘From an antiques shop? I’m surprised you didn’t demand a Victorian changing hut too. Watch out! I can see your ankles.’
Laughing, I walked down to the sea – running would have highlighted my wobbly bits – and paddled in deep enough to cover my ankles.
‘Not far enough.’ Ethan waded past me, shaking his head. ‘Up to your knees, at least.’
I shuffled forwards, but stopped as a gigantic wave sloshed against my thighs, numbing my legs.
‘One more step.’ Ethan offered his hand again, and this time I took it, as I had lost all sensation of having legs below the level of the water. I didn’t know how Ava and Chloe could bear being so far out, bobbing about up to their waists with occasional waves splashing over their shoulders. Ethan needn’t think he could cajole me out that far …
With one tug on my hand, Ethan pulled me over and I fell forward into the sea. My head went under the water, and for a second I flailed as the shock and the cold numbed my reactions; and then my face crowned the water again, the sun burned into my hair, and two strong hands grasped my waist and lifted me back onto my feet.
‘Bastard!’ I shrieked, pummelling his chest. I shivered as the breeze skated over my damp skin. ‘What did you do that for?’
Ethan laughed, and pulled us both down so that our shoulders were under the water. His hands were still securing my waist, and our legs tangled.
‘Because sometimes, Mary Black, you have to stop thinking about things and take the plunge.’
Time cranked to a halt. The world shrank to this tiny space, less than a metre square, in which I was aware only of the scent of coconut sun cream and the sensation of swirling water massaging my skin, the sun’s rays stroking my face, and Ethan’s fingers curling around my back. The cries of the seagulls, the shrieks and the laughter of children, were muffled as if an open window had been slammed shut, and all I could hear was Ethan’s words – or more than that: a whole different message that seemed to come from his eyes rather than his voice. And the sea around us suddenly felt so hot that it could have poached an egg in seconds.
‘Mum! Mum!’ Ava’s call filtered into my mind, and the weird moment dissolved. Reality rushed back in, chasing away my wild imaginings. I swam over to her, savouring the freedom of coasting through the fresh water. Ethan overtook me and as I stood up I caught him high-fiving the girls.
‘What’s going on?’ They all collapsed with laughter. ‘Was this a trick to get me in the water? Did you not need help?’
‘You’re such a sucker,’ Ava said. She was smiling at me, which was a rare event, so I didn’t take offence at her words.
‘You can read anytime,’ Ethan added. ‘We thought you needed rescuing from being boring.’
‘Boring?’ I wasn’t going to forgive that however much he smiled. Grabbing the beach ball, I hurled it at Ethan, hoping it would clobber him on the head and knock that smile away. I should have known better. The combination of his athletic prowess and my lack of it meant that the ball was an easy catch for him.
‘Piggy in the middle!’ he yelled, and tossed the ball over my head to Ava, who in turn threw it over to Chloe. And so began a series of games, races and competitions, mostly at my expense, during which I saw Ava laugh more than she had probably done in the last three years, in my company at least. At one point she even clung with her arms round my neck, her slippery little body trying to wriggle on top of mine as if I were a surfboard, exactly as she had done in the public swimming baths when she had still been my adoring little girl. We hadn’t been so close in months, physically or emotionally. And I couldn’t help thinking that I had Ethan to thank for this. These precious moments wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t joined our holiday. Our three weeks would have slipped away, one beige day after another; and instead here we were, living a day that sparkled and shone with colour.
I had hardly registered the knock on the door before it opened and Ethan walked in.
‘What are you doing?’ He was the last person I expected or wanted to see in my bedroom. ‘I could have been getting dressed.’
‘I know. Curse my rotten timing.’ He grinned, and I looked away, towel-drying my hair for the second time in a bid to hide my face. Two minutes earlier and he would have found me in my bra and knickers, and how would we have ever moved past that? Saggy underwear seemed so much more intimate than a bikini. ‘Come on. We’re going out for breakfast.’
‘Breakfast? Surely no one else is up yet?’
‘No one else is invited.’
I folded the towel in half, then quarters, then eighths.
‘I can’t do that,’ I said, when the towel defied my efforts to tidy it any further.
‘I need to take Dotty for a walk and make breakfast for everyone.’
‘No, you don’t. The mothers can cope – and if they can’t, two teenagers certainly can. They won’t come to any harm if you take one morning off.’
He held the door open, waiting for me to go through, and before I knew what was going on, we had crept out of the silent house and were on the coast path walking towards St Ives. It was a gorgeous bright morning, and the sun was burning off the early sea mist, revealing spectacular views across to the bay of St Ives in one direction and Godrevy Lighthouse in the other. Even after ten years of holidaying here, I wasn’t tired of this view.
‘Where are we going?’ I asked, as we walked down the hill towards Porthminster Beach.
‘Here.’ Ethan indicated the Porthminster Beach Café. ‘There can’t be a better spot, can there?’
He led the way inside, straight through the cheery white-washed main restaurant and onto the terrace. It was busy here, but the waitress led us to the one empty table for two in the prime spot on the front row, directly above the sand.
‘You have the devil’s own luck,’ I said, as we took our seats at right angles to each other, so we could both face out to sea. ‘Fancy one of the best tables being available just as you turn up.’
‘An amazing coincidence, isn’t it?’ He grinned, in a highly suspicious way, but he was looking down at his menu so I couldn’t read his eyes.
We gave our orders: poached eggs on sourdough toast for me, and a stack of pancakes with maple syrup and bacon for Ethan.
‘Pancakes? You really have turned into a native New Yorker, haven’t you?’
‘Only where food is concerned.’
‘So you haven’t entirely lost your heart to America?’
‘My heart never left Lancashire. Coming home has made that clear.’
I was about to make a joke – he’d been through so many women over the years that it was a wonder he had any heart left – but he looked up, and my flippant words withered, and I fussed about pouring tea instead.
‘You must love New York too, to have stayed so long. Is it exactly like we see on TV and in films?’
‘It was hard to believe it was real, at first. You turn a corner and step onto a movie set. You should have come to visit. I’d have loved to show you around, the famous sights and the secret ones.’
‘We couldn’t come,’ I said, and though I tried hard not to sound wistful, I failed. ‘It was never the right time. And there’s no way we could have afforded it.’
‘I offered to pay.’
‘Leo wouldn’t have accepted.’
‘I know. That’s why the year before last I went ahead and bought the tickets. October half term – I checked the dates with school. The kids would have loved the Halloween parade. I couldn’t believe it when you still didn’t come.’
‘I didn’t know.’ I put down my tea cup. If Ethan was telling the truth – and instinctively I knew he was – where did that leave Leo? ‘Leo never mentioned it. He can’t have known. Did you post the tickets? They must have got lost.’
‘Leo knew. We talked about it.’
An inflection in Ethan’s voice on the word ‘talked’ suggested it hadn’t been
an amicable discussion. But it still made no sense. An all-expenses-paid trip to New York? Leo wouldn’t have turned that down, not when he knew how much I would have loved to go.
‘There must have been a misunderstanding. Leo wouldn’t have kept that a secret.’
‘It’s not the biggest secret he’s kept from you, is it?’
I gripped my cup between my hands, and held them there even when the heat of the contents spread and tingled along my skin.
‘Sorry.’ Ethan’s finger traced a line down the back of my right hand, so now both sides tingled. ‘It still annoys me that you didn’t come. Would you really have liked to?’
I nodded.
‘I love it here,’ I said, indicating with my hand the sweep of the fine sand in front of us, now filling with families, and the sea beyond that stretched until it became indistinct from the sky. ‘But occasionally it would be good to experience places and not just read about them.’
‘You must have been on holiday somewhere else.’
I shrugged, and leant back as our breakfasts arrived.
‘The odd weekend in the Lake District. A wet weekend in Wales.’ I stabbed an egg with my fork, and the runny yolk bled over the toast. ‘Never abroad. Jonas and Ava have travelled further on school trips than I have. I’ve not been abroad since I came with you to France.’
