by Jessica Hart
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.
CHAPTER FOUR
ALICE took her time getting to her feet. Slowly brushing down the back of her dress, she wondered how best to deal with him. She didn’t want to argue in front of Lily-how stupid of her not to have guessed who she was, but she didn’t look anything like Will-but it was obvious that Will was still angry with her.
Obvious too that he hadn’t liked finding her with his daughter. She just hoped he wouldn’t think that she had done it deliberately.
‘We were just talking about shoes,’ she said carefully at last. ‘We hadn’t got round to introducing ourselves, had we?’ she said to Lily, who had turned away from her father and was sitting hunched up, her fine hair swinging down to hide her face.
Lily shook her head mutely. With the appearance of her father, she had lost all her animation.
‘I’m Alice,’ said Alice, persevering. ‘And you’re…Lily? Is that right?’
Lily managed a nod, but she peeped a glance under her hair at Alice, who smiled encouragingly.
‘Nice to meet you, Lily. Shall we shake hands? That’s what people do when they meet each other for the first time.’
It felt like a huge victory when Lily held out her hand, and Alice shook it with determined cheerfulness. She wished she could tell Will to stop looming over his daughter. He looked so forbidding, no wonder Lily was subdued.
‘What are you doing out here, Lily?’ Will asked stiffly. ‘Don’t you want to play with the other children in the pool?’
Lily’s face was closed. ‘I like talking to Alice,’ she said, without turning to look at him.
There was an uncomfortable silence. Alice looked from Will to his daughter and back again. He had told her that he was practically a stranger to his own child, but she hadn’t appreciated until now just what that meant for the two of them. Will was awkward and uncertain, and Lily a solitary child still trying to come to terms with the loss of her mother. Neither knew how to make the connection they both needed so badly.
It wasn’t her business. Will wanted her to leave him alone with his daughter, that much was clear. She should just walk away and let them sort it out themselves.
But when
Alice looked at Lily’s hunched shoulders, and remembered how she had laughed at the butterfly, she couldn’t do it. Will didn’t have to accept her help, but his little girl needed a friend.
‘I liked talking to you, too,’ she said to Lily. ‘Maybe we can meet again?’ She glanced at Will, trusting that he wouldn’t jump on the offer before Lily had a chance to say what she wanted. ‘Do you think your dad would let you come round to tea one day?’
‘Can I see your shoes?’ asked Lily, glancing up from under her hair.
‘You can see some of them,’ said Alice. ‘I’m only here on holiday, so I didn’t bring them all with me, but I’ve got some fun ones. The others are at home in London.’
Lily thought for a moment and then looked over her shoulder at her father. ‘Can I?’
Most other little girls would have been jumping up and down, swinging on their daddy’s hand and cajoling him with smiles and dimples, supremely confident of their power to wrap their fathers round their perfect little fingers, but not Lily. She would ask his permission, but she wouldn’t give him smiles and affection. Not yet, anyway.
A muscle worked in Will’s jaw. He wished that he knew how to reach her. He knew how sad she was, how lost and lonely she must feel. If only he could find some way to break down the barrier she had erected around herself.
Torn, he watched her stiff back helplessly. He wanted to give Lily whatever she wanted, but Alice and her shoes and her talk about London would only remind her of her mother and her life in England, and she would be unsettled all over again. Surely that was the last thing she needed right now?
He was still hesitating when Beth burst through the screen door with her customary exuberance. ‘Will?’ she called. ‘Are you out here? Did you-’ She stopped as she caught sight of the three of them. ‘Oh, good, you’ve found her-and Alice too!’
