Barefoot Bride

by Jessica Hart

Someone like he had been, Alice thought involuntarily, and swallowed the sudden lump in her throat.

  ‘Why, Will, you’ve turned into a poet!’ she said, deliberately flippant. ‘Have they started doing an agony column in Nature and Science Now?’

  ‘I read books too,’ he said, unmoved by her facetiousness. ‘So, do you?’

  ‘Need love?’ Alice leant down to put her coffee mug on the table between them. ‘No, I don’t. I used to think I did, but I’ve discovered I can manage quite well without it.’

  ‘That’s sad,’ said Will quietly.

  ‘Love would be great if you could rely on it, but you can’t,’ she said, wrapping her arms around herself as if she were cold. ‘You can’t control it. You think it’s going to be wonderful and you trust it, and then you end up hurt and humiliated.’ Her jaw set, remembering. ‘If you want to be safe, you need to look after yourself, not put your whole happiness in someone else’s hands.’

  She glanced at Will. ‘You asked me what I need. Well, I need to feel safe, and that’s why I’m not looking for love any more.’

  ‘You’ve been hurt,’ he said, and she gave a short, bitter laugh.

  ‘You can tell you’ve got a Ph.D., the speed you worked that one out!’

  Will ignored her sarcasm. ‘What happened?’

  He thought at first that she wasn’t going to answer, but suddenly Alice needed to tell him. It was too late to pretend that her life was perfect now. Will’s clearly wasn’t, so he might as well know the truth.

  ‘I met Tony four years ago,’ she began slowly. ‘I’d had a few boyfriends, but there hadn’t been anyone serious.’

  There hadn’t been anyone like Will. Alice pushed that thought aside and carried on. ‘I hadn’t exactly given up on meeting someone special, but I’d decided it probably wasn’t going to happen. And then Tony came to work in my office.’

  She paused, remembering that day. ‘He was everything I’d ever wanted,’ she said, oblivious to the wry look that passed over Will’s face. ‘We clicked immediately. We had so much in common. We liked doing the same things, and we wanted the same things out of life. I really thought he was The One,’ she said, with an effort at self-mockery.

  ‘Tony’s careful,’ she went on, even though she knew Will wouldn’t understand. ‘I felt safe with him. He’s committed to his career, and he makes sure he invests his money sensibly. He thinks before he acts. He doesn’t take stupid risks. That’s why…’

  She stopped, hearing her voice beginning to crack like a baby. Swallowing hard, she forced herself to continue. ‘That’s why I found it hard to believe that he would do something so out of character.’

  ‘What did he do?’ asked Will, part of him still grappling with disbelief at the idea that his lovely, vibrant Alice had decided after all to settle for safe, sensible and boring. He wouldn’t have minded so much if she had fallen in love with someone wild, passionate and unsuitable, but how could she choose a man whose main attribute seemed to be a sensible approach to financial investments?

  Alice drew a breath. ‘He went out one day and fell in love at first sight.’

  For a moment, Will was nonplussed. ‘It happens,’ he said, remembering that dizzy, dropping feeling he’d had the first time he’d laid eyes on Alice.

  ‘Not to someone like Tony,’ she said almost fiercely. ‘We were together three and a half years, and I thought I knew him through and through. He was never impetuous. He never did anything without thinking it through.’

  God, Tony sounded dull, thought Will. He wasn’t a particularly reckless man himself, but he got the feeling that he would seem a positive daredevil next to Tony. What on earth had been his appeal for Alice?

  ‘I couldn’t believe it when he told me,’ she was saying. ‘He was very honest with me. He said that he’d thought that he did love me, but he realised when he met Sandi that he hadn’t known what love was. It had taken us three years to decide that we would get married,’ she added bitterly. ‘It took him three minutes to know that he wanted to marry Sandi.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Will, not knowing what else to say.

  ‘Sandi’s sweet and good and kind and pretty,’ Alice went on. ‘She really is,’ she insisted, seeing Will’s sceptical look. ‘It’s really hard to dislike her, and, believe me, I’ve tried. No one who meets her is at all surprised that Tony fell for her. The only surprising thing is that he thought he loved me for so long. Sandi’s about as different from me as she could be.’

  ‘She doesn’t sound very interesting,’ Will said, but Alice wasn’t to be consoled.

  ‘Tony doesn’t want interesting. Interesting is too much like hard work,’ she said. ‘I thought I was making an effort for him, but it turned out I was “challenging” him,’ she remembered, bitterness creeping back into her voice. ‘I don’t know how. I didn’t think I had particularly high expectations, but there you go. Apparently I’m very demanding.’

  ‘You’re not easy,’ Will agreed. ‘But you’re worth the effort. If Tony couldn’t be bothered to make that effort, you’re better off without him.’

  ‘It didn’t feel that way,’ said Alice bleakly. ‘We have lots of friends in common, so I see Tony with Sandi quite often. I don’t think he’s regretted his decision for a minute. In fact, I think he wakes up in a cold sweat sometimes, realising what a narrow escape he had!’

  She tried to sound as if she didn’t mind, but Will could hear the thread of hurt in her voice.

  ‘They’re still together, then?’

  ‘They got married last week,’ said Alice, her eyes on the dull gleam of the sea through the darkness. ‘The day I met you at Roger and Beth’s party.’

  Will remembered how tense she had been that day. Alice had always been too proud to show how much she hurt inside. He should have guessed that something more than the passage of time was wrong, but he had been too shaken by his own reaction to give any thought to hers.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said again. ‘It must have been difficult for you.’

  Alice lifted her chin. She had always hated any suspicion of pity. ‘I survived,’ she said curtly. ‘But that’s why I’m doing without love at the moment.’

  ‘You know, we all get hurt sometimes,’ said Will mildly. ‘Some of us more than once.’

  ‘Once is enough for me,’ said Alice.

  Silence fell. They sat together in the hot, still night, each wrapped in their own thoughts, while the insects shrilled frantically in the darkness and the lagoon whispered onto the sand.

  Alice was very aware of Will beside her. It was strange, being with him again, feeling that she knew him intimately, and yet hardly at all. He wasn’t the same man he had been, she reminded herself for the umpteenth time. He was harder, more contained than he had been, and he had grown out of his lankiness to a lean, solid strength.

  Her eyes slid sideways under her lashes to rest on the austere profile. She couldn’t see them in the darkness but she knew there were new lines creasing his eyes, a tougher set to his jaw, a sterner line to his mouth.

  That capacity for stillness was the same, though. She had often watched him sitting like that, his body relaxed but alert, and envied his ability to withdraw from the chaos and just be calm. She had loved his competence, his intelligence, the ironic gleam in the humorous grey eyes. Even as a young man, he had had an assurance that was understated, like everything else about Will, but quite unmistakeable.

  There was something insensibly reassuring about his quiet presence. Whatever happened, you felt that Will could deal with it and everything would be all right. Even now, after everything that had happened, he made her feel safe.

  If only that was all he had made her feel! The initial attraction she had felt for the ordinary-looking student had deepened into a dangerous passion that made Alice uneasy. She didn’t like feeling out of control, and the strength of her emotions scared her.

  Will had started out a good friend, a good companion, and he had become a good lover, but soon it went beyon
d even that. Alice was out of her depth. She didn’t like the feeling of needing him, of not feeling quite complete without him. All her experience had taught her to rely on herself, and she had forced herself to resist the lure of binding herself to him for ever.

  Because she had been so in love she hadn’t seen that they wanted very different things out of life. The future Will enthused about hadn’t been the one Alice had dreamed of. She had yearned all her life for security, and that had been the one thing Will couldn’t offer. He’d wanted to continue his research, to work wherever he could find a coral reef, to do what he could to protect them. She’d wanted a wardrobe, somewhere she could hang up her clothes and never have to unpack them. She’d wanted a place she could call her own. She’d been sick of scrimping and saving to put herself through university. She’d been sick of window shopping. If she saw a pair of wonderful shoes in a window, she wanted to be able to go in and buy them.

  There were no shoe shops on coral reefs. If she’d married Will, as he had asked her to, she’d have had to give up all her dreams to live his. Alice had decided that she couldn’t, wouldn’t, do that.

  She had made the right decision, she told herself, but there was no denying that the physical attraction was still there. It was very hard to explain. There was nothing special about the way Will looked. He had a lean, intelligent face that could under no circumstances be called handsome, but the contrast between the severe mouth and the humorous grey eyes made him seem more attractive than he actually was.

  The first time Alice had seen Will, she hadn’t been conscious of any instant physical attraction. Later, that seemed strange. She’d thought he was nice, but it was only as she’d got to know him that she’d begun to notice those things that made him uniquely Will: the firmness of his chin, the texture of his skin, the angle of his jaw. The way the edges of his eyes creased when he smiled.

  Once she had start noticing, of course, it had been impossible to stop. It hadn’t been long before Alice had found her body utterly in thrall to his, and she’d only had to look at his mouth for her breath to shorten and for her entrails to be flooded with a warmth that spread through her until it lodged, tingling and quivering with excitement, just beneath her skin.

  The way it was doing now.

  Alice tucked her feet beneath her once more and drew herself in, willing the jangling awareness to fade. ‘It’s not enough,’ she had told Will at Roger’s wedding, and she knew that she had been right. If she let herself be sucked back into those dark, swirling depths of sexual attraction, she would lose control of her life and her self completely, and the last ten years would have been for nothing.

  She swallowed, hard. ‘So, what about you?’ she asked to break the lengthening silence. ‘Do you know what you want?’

  For years Will would have been able to say instantly that he wanted her. And then he would have said that he wanted to forget her. Now…

  ‘Not really,’ he said slowly. ‘I’ve learnt not to want anything too specific. I don’t want a Porsche or a knighthood or to win a million pounds. But I want other things, I suppose,’ he went on, thinking about it.

  ‘I want to keep Lily safe. I want her to grow up with a sense of joy and wonder at the world around her. I don’t want her to be afraid of it.’ he turned his head to look at Alice. ‘I don’t want her to end up frightened of love or too proud to admit that she needs other people.’

  ‘Oh, so you don’t want her to end up like me?’ Alice asked flippantly, but there was no answering smile on Will’s face as he met her gaze steadily.

  ‘No,’ he agreed. ‘I want her to be happy.’

  Was that really how he saw her-unhappy and afraid? Alice lay in bed that night, scowling into the darkness, hating the memory of the pity she had seen in Will’s face. She didn’t need him to be sorry for her. She was fine. She could look after herself. She didn’t need anybody.

  She had thought that she needed Tony, and look where that had got her. She had placed him at the centre of her life and told herself that she was safe at last. Tony hadn’t made her head whirl with excitement, it was true, but it wasn’t passion that Alice was looking for. She had had that with Will, and the power of those unmanageable emotions had left her uneasy and out of control. With Tony, she had felt settled and as if her future was safe at last. It had been a wonderful feeling.

  Until Sandi had come along, and her carefully constructed world had fallen apart.

  All those years she had dreamed of feeling secure, and with one meeting it had been shattered. Was it the loss of that dream that hurt more than losing Tony himself? Alice wondered for the first time. And did that mean that she had never really loved Tony at all?

  For some reason, it was that thought that made Alice cry in a way she hadn’t been able to cry since Tony had left. Trapped in a straitjacket of hurt and humiliation, she had taken refuge in a stony pride, but all at once she could feel the careful barriers she had erected around herself crumbling, and she lay under the mosquito net and wept and wept until at last she fell asleep.

  Her eyes were still puffy when she woke the next morning, but she felt curiously released at the same time. Having spent her childhood trying not to let her parents guess how unhappy she was, Alice felt uncomfortable with crying. Until now, it had just seemed another way of admitting that everything was out of control, and she’d been afraid that, once she started, she might never be able to stop.

  But this morning it felt as if a heavy hand had been lifted from her heart.

  Perhaps she should try tears more often, Alice thought wryly.

  Will had gone by the time she got up. She found Lily in the kitchen with the cook, a severe-looking woman called Sara. Alice was quite intimidated by her, but Lily seemed to accept her and was already picking up some words of the local language, a form of French Creole.

  Alice was relieved not to have to face Will just yet. She might feel better for a good cry, but she had told him more than she wanted about herself last night, and now she felt exposed. At least she hadn’t cried in front of him-that was something-but he had still been sorry for her, and that wasn’t a feeling Alice liked at all.

  She spent the morning exploring the garden with Lily, and together they crossed the track to the beach. In the daylight, the lagoon was a translucent, minty green, its surface ruffled occasionally by a cat’s paw of breeze from the deep blue ocean that swelled and broke against the protecting reef. The leaning coconut palms splashed the white sand with shade, but it was still very hot and Alice was glad to keep on the shoes she had put on to pick her way through the coarse husks and roots that littered the ground beneath the trees.

  She had bought the sandals on impulse at a market the previous summer, and Lily was frankly envious. They were cheap but fun, their garish plastic flowers achingly bright in the dazzling sunshine.

  ‘I wish I could have some shoes like that,’ said Lily wistfully.

  ‘Let’s see if we can find you some in town,’ Alice said without thinking, and Lily’s face lit up.

  ‘Could we?’ She sounded dazzled by the prospect.

  ‘We’ll go this afternoon,’ said Alice.

  ‘Look what I’ve got,’ Lily said to Will when he got home that evening, and she lifted one foot so that he could admire her new shoes.

  There hadn’t been a great deal of choice in town-St Bonaventure would have to give some thought to modernising its shops if it wanted to attract large numbers of tourists and relieve them of their money, Alice thought-but they had found a pair of transparent pink sandals in Lily’s size, and she could hardly have been more delighted if they were Manolo Blahniks.

  Will shot a glance at Alice before studying the shoe Lily was showing him so proudly. ‘They’re very…pink,’ he said after a moment.

  ‘I know,’ said Lily, deeply pleased.

  ‘Lily and I thought we’d do a spot of shopping,’ said Alice, who could tell that Will was considerably less delighted with the shoes but was trying hard not to show it.
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  ‘So I see.’

  Lily looked earnestly up at her father. ‘Alice is good at shopping,’ she said, and Will’s jaw tightened.

  ‘There are more important things to be good at in life than shopping,’ he said.

  ‘Did you have to be quite so crushing?’ Alice demanded crossly much later, when Lily was in bed. ‘She was so thrilled with her shoes. It wouldn’t have killed you to have shown some interest.’

  ‘How can you be interested in a pair of shoes?’ snarled Will, who was in a thoroughly bad mood, exacerbated by guilt at so comprehensively pricking his daughter’s balloon earlier.

  It had been the first time Lily had volunteered any information when he’d come home. Part of him had been ridiculously moved that she had come to show him her new shoes without prompting. She had been chattier than usual, too, but he had had to go and spoil things by his thoughtless comment.

  Will sighed. He was very tired. It had been a long day, dealing with the fall-out from yesterday’s accident, and it hadn’t helped that he had slept badly the night before. His mind had been churning with what Alice had told him about her broken engagement. In the small hours, Will had had to acknowledge that he didn’t like the fact that Tony had obviously been so important to her.

  It was Tony who had given her what she wanted, Tony she was missing now. Alice could say all she wanted about not needing anybody; it was clear that she had loved Tony, and that he was the one she was always going to regret. Will knew exactly what that felt like.

  He was sorry, of course, that she had been hurt so badly. But his pity was mixed with resentment at the years he had spent believing that he would never find anyone who could make him feel the way she did, the years spent hoping that somehow, somewhere, she was missing him too, and was sorry that she had ended things when she had.

  And all the time she had been in love with Tony, dull, safe, sensible Tony who had broken her heart! Will was furious with her for making it so clear how ridiculous his fantasy had been all along, and more furious with himself for caring.