Lucas stepped back and Elle thanked him politely as she trod lightly up the steps and through the saloon. But the heat of his touch clung to her skin like ink.
They locked up the boat and walked along the seafront. Elle kept her gaze on the twinkling water of the creek as she tried to parcel up her reaction to Lucas’s touch and return it safely to that folder in her memory marked ‘past’. By the time they saw Charlie and Kayleigh, waving as they dodged the traffic, she’d recovered enough for conversation.
Charlie talked enough for four, anyway, joking around on the water taxi, complaining about the slippery pavement leading into the citadel of Valletta, which glowed like rose gold in the early evening sun. Huffing and puffing, they climbed the steep roads to Republic Street, the thoroughfare of limestone buildings that ran like a spine down the length of Valletta.
Elle couldn’t remember when she’d last laughed so freely as she did that evening, gathered around the table at the pizzeria. Kayleigh’s humour was dry, Charlie’s was impish, and Lucas slid in enough acerbic jibes to keep his younger brother in his place. Having munched her way through most of a monster crusty pizza and drunk her fair share of wine, it was nearing midnight when Elle began to think that she ought to slow down on the alcohol. And then her phone rang.
She frowned. Her phone didn’t ring that often when she was in Malta. She sometimes thought she only carried it around out of habit. It took her a moment to fumble it from the tiny bag she’d slung over her chair back, hoping it wasn’t Joseph with bad news about Carmelo.
She hesitated when she saw the name on the screen. Then accepted the call. ‘Hello?’
‘This is Yvonne, duty night manager at The Briars. Am I speaking to Elle Jamieson?’
Elle’s throat went dry. ‘Yes.’
‘I’m calling about your mother. I’m afraid she’s quite poorly. It was just after dinner—’ Elle’s head began to spin as phrases like ‘doctor’, ‘ambulance’ and ‘hospital’ flew out of the phone with no real meaning.
She tried to lift her voice over the babble in the restaurant as she pushed herself to her feet, pressing the phone hard against her ear. ‘Just hang on. I’m moving outside where it’s quieter.’
Then Lucas was beside her, clearing a path so that she could stumble out of the warmth and noise into the street, where she could say to Yvonne, ‘Can you repeat that?’ so that she could force herself to understand what had been happening in Bettsbrough, far away, in another country, another time zone, another climate.
Her alcohol haze evaporated as she discussed the severity of Joanna Jamieson’s situation, running scenarios and discussing likely outcomes clinically and pragmatically. She ended by arranging to contact the day shift in the morning for her mother’s health bulletin.
Elle ended the call feeling calm and in control. She turned to Lucas, who’d waited, lounging against a wall nearby. ‘My mum—’ she began. And burst into tears.
Somehow she found herself in Lucas’s arms, face pressed against the warm fabric of his T-shirt as sobs shook through her, shocked that she was bawling in the street like a child but somehow unable to stop. Vaguely, she was aware of Charlie and Kayleigh arriving, Kayleigh shoving reams of tissues into her hands and Charlie getting them all to a taxi. The car’s interior was hot though all its windows were open, and, still unable to control the sobs, Elle let herself be driven back to Ta’ Xbiex.
All the time, Lucas’s arms remained around her, comforting and strong.
By the time the car dropped them on the road beside the gardens, she’d more or less cried herself out, but her chest ached and her eyes felt as if someone had been at them with a laser.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she sniffed. ‘I don’t know where that came from. It’s ages since I cried like that.’
‘Let’s get you on board,’ was Lucas’s only reply. Nobody asked any questions until she was seated in the saloon with a bottle of cold water and a cup of milky coffee.
Elle sucked the water down, grateful for its chill to soothe her rasping throat. ‘My mum’s had another stroke. She’d just eaten dinner when it hit.’ She swallowed a mouthful of the coffee. ‘She’s in Bettsbrough General Hospital. She’s not in immediate danger but,’ her voice wobbled, ‘the night manager said that it was too early to tell much. Mum’s pretty confused anyway, so if it turns out to be a slight stroke it might not make too much difference.’
She tried to laugh but it emerged as a croak. ‘Somehow, that’s what seemed almost too sad to bear. S-stupid, really, to be upset because she’s in such a poor way already that another stroke, more or less, doesn’t make a difference.’
‘So what’s going to happen? What do you need to do?’ asked Lucas, gently.
Elle sighed. Her head was pounding and she rubbed it with her fingertips. ‘I suppose I’ll have to ring Dad. When Mum had her first stroke I was only an hour and a half away so I did everything but this time Dad’s closer than I am. I don’t really know what the etiquette is between divorced people when something bad happens to one of them, though.’ She picked up her phone and toyed with it. ‘If you guys want to get off, I don’t mind. I know it’s late.’
Charlie hesitated, but Kayleigh took his arm. ‘Come on, Charlie, she doesn’t need us eavesdropping while she talks to her dad.’
They both kissed and hugged Elle and then only Lucas remained in the quiet of the saloon, the Shady Lady barely moving at her mooring, the road noise rising and falling outside against the constant whrrrrrrrr of the cicadas in the gardens.
His eyes were fixed on her. ‘Do you want me to disappear?’
‘Not unless you want to.’ His presence was comforting. Familiar. And, at that moment, almost essential.
‘I’ll stay.’
He watched her pick up her phone, checking the time. ‘It’ll be nearly midnight at home.’ She scrolled through her contacts, made her selection and held the handset to her ear.
Her eyes were pink, her skin blotchy, her nose and lips faintly swollen. Like many fair women, she didn’t cry prettily. Her shoulders had convulsed as he’d cradled her against him in the night-time busyness of Republic Street. He didn’t really remember seeing her cry before. Maybe a few tears at a weepy movie, laughed off in embarrassment, but not heaving, hurting, helpless sobs.
It’s ages since I cried like that. He’d actually had to quell the impulse to demand, ‘Did you ever cry like that over our break-up? Is it one more thing you never showed?’ Then felt ashamed. Tonight was not about him.
He could hear the ringtone chirruping from her phone. Then, ‘Dad, it’s me, I—’ Her voice caught.
Lucas handed her the coffee cup and she took a swift gulp.
‘Dad, Mum’s had another stroke. Someone from The Briars rang me.’ Elle took a breath and began to recount as much as she knew and, apart from a couple of wobbly moments, she coped, twisting her hair, sniffing, finding a tissue to blow her nose between sentences.
It was curious to hear her and her father conduct a polite and courteous discussion. He compared their conversation to those he had with his own parents, always bursting with enquiries about how he was and what he was doing, and he silently vowed never to be irritated by them again. Those demands symbolised the love and warmth that had surrounded him as he’d grown up. Even if his parents had given Elle a bit of a rough ride, he’d never doubted that their love for him was deep and unconditional.
In contrast, judging from Elle’s side of the conversation, Will Jamieson hadn’t even asked his daughter how she was, though her husky voice was a pretty fucking great clue that she’d been crying.
Elle’s parents had always been chilly, which she would explain away with a shrug and ‘That’s what comes of marrying the wrong man at the wrong time and in secret.’
As she talked into the phone, he wondered about that secret wedding all over again. Elle wasn’t
generally an inconsiderate person. She was self-possessed and didn’t ask much of anyone, but she didn’t disregard people’s feelings.
So why had she ignored her parents’ feelings over marrying Ricky? Had she been that crazily in love with him that nothing else seemed to matter? His stomach clenched at how much he still hated that idea.
Finally, she put down the phone and sank her forehead on her hand. ‘He’s going to liaise with the hospital and The Briars tomorrow morning and try and get an idea of the situation. Then we’ll talk again.’
Her hand lay on the table and he covered it lightly with his. ‘How are you doing?’
She covered her eyes.
‘Sorry. Stupid question. You’ve had a shock and you’re worried about your mum.’ He slid his arm around her once more, catching his breath at how right it felt to have her pressed against him. The top of her head was just below his face. He could have turned his head and laid his cheek upon it.
She let out a groan. ‘It’s stupid, though, isn’t it? We’re not even close.’
‘It’s not stupid.’ He hesitated. ‘Maybe it’s grief because you’re not close.’
She paused and swallowed. ‘And the chance to be has gone? That could be insightful.’ A longer pause. ‘I phoned the home this morning and asked to speak to her so that I could tell her that I love her. She hardly knows her own name but I wanted to tell her anyway, just in case something of what I said got through. It’s as if I knew this was coming.’
‘Maybe. Some instinct.’
‘It was Carmelo who set me thinking. Poor kid. I feel as if he’s looking for someone to love him and his mother’s the obvious one. I kind of recognised—’ She stopped and started in a different place. ‘I just thought: my mum’s always been reserved, but I’m a grown-up. I don’t have to wait all my life for her to tell me that she loves me. I can say it to her. So I did.’
Shock shimmered through Lucas. ‘Hasn’t your mum ever said that she loves you?’
‘I don’t remember that she did. She was quite friendly but I used to watch other children get swooped up into huge bear hugs and wonder what it was like.’
‘“Quite friendly”,’ he repeated. He’d been one of the kids swooped up in bear hugs. Hugs, he was afraid, from which he’d often fought free.
Elle had never opened up to him like this before. Not in all the time they were together, not all the times they lay in bed talking, or chatting across the dinner table.
Had he actually known this woman at all? He’d loved her, made love to her, shared his life with her. He’d been aware that there was a lot going on under the top layer but not how to unwrap it. He remembered demanding information from her, as if it were his right, and being frustrated when she’d widen her eyes and look away with a shrug.
His conscience sank its fangs into him. Demands hadn’t been what she needed. She’d needed the opportunity to expose herself, and then the choice as to whether to take that opportunity. She’d needed someone who would make her feel safe. Someone who wouldn’t judge her.
It had never crossed his mind that he should or could provide that kind of security. He’d formed an opinion of how things should be and waited for her to fulfil his expectations.
He must be able to do better. To open his mind to ways of doing and being other than his own.
‘I know your dad wasn’t cuddly,’ he said, experimentally.
She gave a short laugh. ‘Neither of my parents were cuddly. Not even with each other. They wanted a child to be proud of; that was their minimum requirement. So long as I did well, they’d smile on me. If I disappointed them, they withdrew. They could give me the silent treatment for weeks at a time.’
‘Man,’ he said. ‘I’m not surprised that you craved affection enough to marry Ricky.’
Chapter Seventeen
For several beats, he thought she was going to ignore the comment. Then she sighed. ‘He certainly made me think he approved of me, in the early days. He was ten years older and yet he apparently fell for me like a ton of bricks and I didn’t question it. I just thought, “We’re in love! This is what everyone gets excited about. Now I’m an adult, I’m entitled.” As if it came with getting the vote or holding a driving licence.’
Careful not to push, he waited. Quiet. Giving her time. She’d only ever told him the bare facts about Ricky: that she’d met him during her masters’ year and married him before returning to her hometown of Bettsbrough. It hadn’t worked out. She’d sidestepped further questions by saying that she didn’t really want to talk about it, it was a horrible period in her life and she wanted to forget it.
Questions had often sent Elle into sullen silence. Or maybe it had been anxious silence, he acknowledged now. Maybe her parents had prompted her reserve, made her perpetually worried about saying the wrong thing.
She stirred. ‘I was young for my age. I’d got my degree at Keele and then switched to Manchester for my masters. I didn’t know anyone in Manchester so I found a place via the uni, sharing with a girl called Daisy. She was a bit of a room hermit but I made friends on my course, so I had people to go out with. After Keele, which is pretty rural, it seemed as if there were thousands of clubs and pubs in Manchester. I was ready to come out of my shell and I loved it.
‘The academic year had hardly started when I met Ricky in a nightclub. He DJed. Whether he was on the stage or on the dance floor, he always had a load of girls around him. It seemed “social proof” that he was really cool. When he began to pay me attention I couldn’t believe it. It was like being singled out by a prince, a triumph of epic proportions. We got close really quickly.’ She stopped.
When she’d been quiet for a minute, he tried a gentle prompt. ‘But you didn’t have any reason not to.’
‘But I was too naive to notice his lack of substance. That he didn’t seem to have many mates to hang out with and those he had were always younger than him. The girls he went for were younger, too. Looking back, I suppose it’s because people his own age saw how superficial and phoney he was. At the club, he used to say he “helped out on the promotions side” and was “an ideas man”. In reality, I suppose he was a mouthy DJ with a big opinion of himself, but I took everything he said at face value. He wasn’t that smart but he was crafty.’
Her sigh seemed to come up from the soles of the bare feet she’d curled beside her on the sofa. ‘He boasted about things that were hard to check, like being an ace on a surfboard – we were miles from the sea. He’d been brought up in East London and I never really knew what had made him leave because he countered a lot of questions with answers like “That was a different me, babe” or “You don’t expect me to tell you all my secrets, do you?”’
She covered her eyes. ‘I was so stupidly trusting. A couple of guys actually took me aside to tell me I should be careful. They told me—’ She paused for so long that he thought she wasn’t going to start again. Then: ‘They told me he owed them money. When I asked him about it he said he’d “had a word and sorted everything out”. When I wanted to know what there was to sort out he got sharp. “If you’re going to listen to people you don’t even know, what future have we got?”’ Another hot sigh. ‘Then he flattered me with a lot of “You’re the one person I thought understood me, babe”, stuff. I fell for it, even when he didn’t want to introduce me to his family and said he wasn’t close to them, and put on a big sad face.’
She sniffed and reached for her bag, sorting through it to find a tissue. He was almost afraid to breathe in case she stopped filling in all the blanks that had irritated him so much and for so long.
But when she’d blown her nose, she returned to her story. ‘I never knew whether his mum had really died tragically after being given the wrong dose of something in hospital and if his father had really beaten him up on a regular basis but treated his sisters like princesses. Or whether it was just fantasy.’
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For a moment Lucas forgot his strategy of not asking questions. ‘Why would he make stuff like that up?’
‘Maybe it was to support his gripe about not having parents to help him through university. I wouldn’t put anything past that bastard. I discovered – too late – that when he opened his mouth it was usually lies that rolled out. I closed my eyes to the fact that he probably hadn’t been to university because he wasn’t bright enough. I was too gullible, young and in love to properly question his “poor me, I never got the breaks” act. And I never asked why he hadn’t made his own breaks.’
Lucas’s fingers had come to rest on her neck. Absently, he moved a thumb over the delicate skin. ‘I can see that he might not be the kind your parents would go for.’
She snorted a bitter laugh. ‘Not much.’ Then, reflectively, ‘I must have acknowledged it to myself because I didn’t tell Mum and Dad about Ricky. I was spending as much time as I could with him, so I wasn’t going home to Bettsbrough much. My parents decided to come up and check I was working hard and it was an unfortunate first meeting with Ricky. They arrived one Sunday morning and Daisy let them in. By the time Daisy banged on my bedroom door and shouted that they’d arrived, they’d heard Ricky’s voice through the door. We had to get dressed before I could introduce him.’ She winced at the memory. ‘Not the greatest start.’
‘Oops,’ said Lucas. His Green Jealousy Monster began to stir at the thought of Elle in bed with Ricky, but he resolutely chained it down. Jealousy directed at past lovers was futile at best.
‘Not kidding. They asked way too many questions for Ricky’s liking, and he was too charming, or “soapy” as Mum called it, to impress them.’
She groaned. ‘I took his side against them. I said they were too caught up in their middle-class standards to value someone like Ricky. After a host of icy remarks they left, still spouting about how important my masters was.’
Slowly, she sat up, taking her water bottle from the table and drinking from it. The place on Lucas where she’d been pressed felt cold and empty. She stretched, easing her neck. Then she leaned back into him, tilting her head to rest once again on his arm. He was shocked by the degree of relief he felt.
The Wedding Proposal Page 17
