by Jules Wake
She tugged at her plait, in two minds as to whether to set her hair free or not.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Water lapped, gentle and insistent, at the side of the boat, the white sail brilliant in the moonlight.
Lights twinkled in the early-evening dusk, outlining the coast further east. The night air, redolent with the scent of pine, shimmered with magic, starshine and endless possibilities. Wind-twisted trees cast eerie shadows across the rocky outcrops surrounding the bay. They could have been on the very edge of Earthsea or a step away from Middle Earth.
Since Richard had picked her up in an understated top-of-the-range VW Golf, driving a few miles to a deserted jetty, they’d barely exchanged more than five sentences. Weariness seeped out of him, his eyes haunted with shadows and his face drawn. The few words he did manage seemed to be dragged from him with great effort.
When they got out of the car, he reached for her hand and held it in silent apology as they boarded a small dinghy with an outboard motor. The rip of the engine, like an angry mosquito, echoed loud in the empty bay as they bounced over the gentle waves to a yacht moored a few hundred feet away in the centre of the sheltered bay.
‘Champagne?’ he asked, as he ushered her to the stern with two cushioned benches.
‘Would a cup of tea be too much trouble?’ Champagne seemed clichéd and glib, when she sensed he needed something more. Comfort, understanding, peace.
‘Shall I make it?’ she asked. It was as if someone had sucked every last drop of energy from him.
His weary nod signalled relief as he sank down onto one of the benches.
Bringing two steaming cups back on deck, she laid one on the floor beside him and sat on the bench opposite. He’d closed his eyes, his face an impenetrable mask. She lay back and marvelled at the hugeness of the sky and the star-spattered universe beyond.
She heard him stir and lift his mug.
‘Tea. Exactly what I needed. Thank you.’
‘Are you okay?’ asked Carrie.
‘Just knackered. We’ve been filming since dawn this morning. Quite a harrowing scene. My character’s mother has died.’
‘Oh, sweetheart.’ In one fluid movement, she rose and crossed to sit beside him, taking his tea from him before threading her arm through his.
Thigh to thigh, rib to rib, fingers intertwined, just an exact tableau of that interminable night in the hospital, waiting and waiting, as the seconds crawled by at their cruellest pace, for Josie Maddox to breathe her last and slip away to peace.
‘It still gets me.’ He shifted to rest his forehead against hers, his breathing slow and sure. ‘I wish she could see me now. Know that I made it.’
Carrie tried to smile at him, but the hitch in her heart made it too difficult. Instead, she linked her fingers through his and leaned into his touch.
Face to face, their noses brushing, for a few minutes they were one, the human contact pulsing with the gentle energy of a lifeline. A sense of gratitude swelled in Carrie’s breast, and a kernel of pride. No one else could do this for him. With a dizzying burst of awareness, she realised moments like this mattered, this echo of shared emotion, stamped on their individual and shared conscious for all time. She squeezed his fingers, savouring the sensation of his heavy hand in hers.
A slight breeze lifted the lines of the boat, which chink, chinked against the mast with musical notes and rippled against the fabric of the pennant at the top.
After a while, they moved, shifting to lean back against the side of the boat, still thigh to thigh, cups of tea clutched in their hands.
‘Thanks, Carrie.’ He lifted his mug and with a self-deprecating smile drained the rest of it. ‘I needed that.’ He pulled a face. ‘So much for champagne and roses. I was going to bring you out here for lunch tomorrow.’
‘I’m not a champagne and roses kind of gal. You should know that by now.’
‘Yeah,’ he said, with a sad smile. ‘But you might have been, given the chance.’ He stretched and his eyes drooped, before his mouth widened into a full-on, knackered, too-tired-to-hide-it, gaping yawn. ‘Sorry, I shouldn’t have texted but …’
‘It’s fine. I’m glad I’m here. You need to sleep, by the looks of things.’
‘I … missed you. I wanted to see you.’
She wished she could unhear the words.
‘Why don’t you lie down and have a doze?’
His eyes held hers and as he lay down he tugged her with him. ‘Lie with me.’ His eyes danced very briefly, ‘keep me company’.
Like this, all the roles he played vanished. Just Richard. She could almost pretend that the last eight years had never happened. Relaxing into him, she lay down, her body sighing in recognition as he slid a hand over her waist, pulled her onto his chest and her knee slipped between his legs, each familiar move the steps of a dance they’d perfected years ago.
She closed her eyes and fought against the pinpricks of tears and the hollowness in her chest that threatened to overwhelm, concentrating instead on the pat, pat of the water lapping at the wooden hull, the rhythmic, somnolent bob of the boat and the oh-so-solid warm body underneath hers.
Cool air ruffled the hair she’d left down, but his chest radiated warmth, rising and falling with deep, even breaths. The steady thud, thud of his heart, pumping with rhythmic reliability beneath her cheek. She listened to the strong, sure beat. Why couldn’t life be this simple? One beat after another, straightforward and sure of the job in hand. Affairs of the heart, so complicated and yet the physical organ a steady workhorse.
She felt the moment he relaxed into sleep, his muscles loosening, his face slackening and eyelids fluttering. Tilting her head to one side, she studied his face, shadowed and contoured by the stark moonlight.
With a sensation of free-falling, she swallowed hard. How on earth had she gone and fallen in love with him all over again? The lump in her throat felt insurmountable, as if she’d never be able to swallow again.
Tears threatened. Fighting them, she closed her eyes and nestled into him. His arms tightened around her and she stilled, terrified she might have woken him, but he softened his hold and sighed, his breath whispering across her face.
Aching with disquiet, her thoughts churning and winding back over themselves, she lay there, a thousand clips of their life together rushing through her head. Sleep almost as out of reach as Richard, but somehow she began to drift, the clips and sound bites in her head became muzzy and confused. She tried to wrap the elusive tendrils of thoughts into coherence but they escaped, seeping away like wraiths in the mist.
Warm and heavy-limbed, she woke to Richard’s lips trailing a soft kiss across her forehead. Fighting the beguiling urge to go with it and sink back into him, she pulled back. Fatal mistake, she stared up into his face, his eyes still dazed with sleep and something else she didn’t want to define.
‘Hello you.’ The sleep-roughened voice turned her insides liquid. When his lips dropped to hers, they sparked a sensation of exquisite sweetness, stirring memories like butterflies rising in one great rush. She wrapped her arms around him and pressed the length of her body against his, the way she had done a thousand times before, the entrenched familiarity like a conductor picking up his baton, a violinist his bow and the fingers of the flautist sure of each and every note.
Everything familiar and dear, but with the added excitement of passion and thrill. With a horrible jolt, the comparison with Alan swamped her with guilt. She paused, trying to gather her wits and rein in the wayward feelings, racing away with heady enthusiasm. She remembered this, the dizzying heights of euphoria, the blood rush of joy and the golden warmth of love, but she also remembered the ice-cold chill of loneliness and the hole in her heart so big it almost consumed her when he left.
She’d built a new life, one that beckoned a few weeks from now. Her future didn’t hold yachts, starlight and handsome movie stars.
Heavy-hearted, she swallowed at the weight of the memory of sheer misery and the
shadow it cast over her life. She couldn’t do it again. Even so, with a defiant shade of the old her, she gave into one more heart-sizzling kiss, losing herself in the moment, before pulling away, regret pounding through every fibre of her being.
‘Richard, stop.’
‘You don’t mean that.’
‘I do. We have to stop. This is wrong.’
‘Doesn’t seem wrong from where I’m … ,’ he paused and stroked her face, ‘lying.’
It would be easy for her to be sucked into this moment, to be held ransom to past emotion, but these feelings were echoes. Ghosts of a previous life.
She had to walk away now because she’d barely survived last time.
Like a swimmer throwing herself into the Atlantic, knowing it would be bracing, she took a deep breath, pulled away and sat upright.
‘Richard. This isn’t real. It has to stop. We have to be sensible. I know what this is.’ She gave him a serious, grown-up look. ‘Lovely as it is, you are harking back to a time when you and me were together, when people didn’t know you. When you could be normal. This is a break from your reality as much as it is from mine, but for both of us it’s a novelty. In a couple of weeks, you’ll be back in the States and I’ll be back at school.’ With a lift of her chin, she straightened, ignoring the tightening of her gut and said, ‘I need that divorce. We can’t let this be any more than it is. A diversion.’
‘Pardon?’ As if the shutters had come down on every emotion, his face went blank. ‘A diversion?’
‘Come on, Richard. You heard. In a couple of weeks, you’ll have moved on. Nothing is permanent for you, is it? You don’t even have a home or a base. It’s all transient. Like acting. You adopt a new role every so often. Another life. That’s what this is.’
‘Is that what you think?’
Quick and sharp, his words sliced through the air, at odds with his slow, weary demeanor as he rose to his feet and gathered the tea mugs. ‘I can’t even begin to tell you how shit that makes me feel, or how disappointed I am in you. You, Carrie. You know me, or at least I thought you did. Of all the people, you are the last person I thought would dismiss me as,’ he mimicked speech marks, “bored movie star, having fun with nearest convenient female.” It’s a convenient cliché. Surely you could have done better than that, if you’ve decided to chicken out.’
Without another word he crossed, heavy-footed, down to the galley kitchen below.
Left on deck alone, she examined the clear starlit sky. Each of those pinpricks of light had been there for millions of years, shining down, steady and enduring. Before this week, she’d been steady and sure. Her direction all mapped out. Richard crashing in to her life was too much like a crazy meteor shower, in danger of pushing her off course. Hell, yes, she was chickening out.
A crash downstairs, and the tinkle of broken china had her crossing to the hatch.
‘You okay?’ she called down.
‘Fine.’
‘Do you need a hand?’ She started to edge down the steps.
‘No.’ The growled answer made her stop in her tracks.
‘Okay.’ She sighed and crossed to the side of the boat. The moon’s reflection licked across the surface of the waves, their silver tops spreading in a long slick out to the horizon. She held the side with both hands, her fingers gripping hard.
‘Right. Shall we go?’ Richard locked the hatch doors and was already crossing to the ladder down to the dinghy.
‘Wait!’ Her voice broke. ‘Don’t …’
He waited for her to finish. She hoped he’d break the silence and fill in the words. The coward’s way out. She’d done this. Why should he rescue the situation when she’d deliberately brought things to a head?
She shrugged. He turned and climbed down the ladder.
Even though he ‘radiated heartily pissed off’ with her vibes, he still took her hand as she came down the ladder and steadied her into the dinghy, waiting for her to sit and be safe before he fired up the outboard motor.
He sat at the back of the boat, watchful eyes roving the shore and beyond, anywhere but at Carrie.
As they neared the jetty he killed the engine, letting the boat drift round into the wooden deck, allowing him to grab one of the bollards to guide them in.
Once the boat was tied up, he did finally look at her.
‘I’ve never loved anyone the way that I loved you.’ He scooped a small pebble up from the bottom of the boat and tossed it up before catching it.
The sentence weighed heavy between them.
‘It seemed so …’ He tossed the pebble up before snatching it out of the air, ‘at the time, I thought we’d burst from it, that sheer wonderfulness of it all, so huge, so big, so special. I thought it was unique. That you and me were forever and that nothing could …’ The words spilled from him, strong and confident. Recognition hit her hard. That overwhelming sensation of the two of them being invincible.
His hands tapped a fast beat on the tiller of the motor.
‘I hadn’t figured that you’d change so much.’ He dropped his voice, his mouth crumpled in a scornful line. ‘You’re not the Carrie I knew. Crazy Carrie. She was fearless, brave and adventurous, wanting to taste everything, try everything, live every beat of life and move with the rhythm of every dance.’
Carrie tensed, the words sliced deep.
‘I thought if we spent some time together … she’d come back.’ With a mirthless laugh, he tossed the pebble high and long into the sea, ‘I was wrong.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Carrie woke for at least the ninth time in the night, tired but full of scratchy energy and not sure what to do with herself. When she hurled herself in the pool as the sun rose, welcoming the shock of the cold in the cooler morning air, it still didn’t clear her head.
Regret burned hard and bright, despite the lengths she racked up, churning through the water with an almost desperate determination. Richard didn’t still love her. She didn’t love him. Her shoulders ached. Her brain hurt. She needed that divorce. Alan would be there in the future. Richard would be long gone, on location in Mexico, Australia, outer space, for all she knew.
Fifty-seven lengths later, her arms screaming in protest, she hauled herself out of the pool, lying on the side, gasping for a few minutes.
‘There are easier ways to kill yourself.’
Angela sat on a nearby lounger looking faintly amused.
Carrie rolled over, wincing as her lungs complained with a pinch of pain.
She crawled to the sun lounger and sprawled face down on it.
‘Coffee?’
‘God, yes please.’
Her sister was the official coffee fairy. Managing to turn over and haul herself up, she cupped both hands around the cup. It gave her something to do and avoid Angela’s candid observation.
Her sister would have been brilliant in MI5 or something. She didn’t say a word, just watched with that bloody knowing look on her face, the you-know-you-want-to-spill-your-guts-and-you’ll-feel-so-much-better-for-doing-it look.
‘No I won’t,’ muttered Carrie.
‘No, you won’t what?’ Angela’s quick frown at least confirmed she hadn’t acquired mind-reading tricks as well as Grand Inquisitor talents.
‘Never mind.’ Carrie took a long slurp of coffee.
‘What went wrong?’
How did her sister do that? ‘Who said there’s anything wrong?’
‘Twenty lengths are a holiday health kick. Thirty, sexual frustration. Forty-plus, pissed off. Fifty, mightily pissed off.’
‘The White Witch of Swimming prophecy strikes again. Who knew?’ Carrie glared into her coffee.
‘Human psychology … plus I know you. Did you have a row with Richard?’
‘You don’t row with Richard. He lashes you with sentences without even raising his voice, which gets quieter and quieter. You have to strain to hear him tell you how disappointed he is with you.’
‘I’m sure he didn’t do that.’
&n
bsp; ‘He did, but to be fair, he had a point.’
‘Good lord, are you ill?’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Nothing.’
‘I do concede people are right … sometimes.’
Angela pursed her mouth.
‘Okay, I don’t very often.’
‘What did he say to upset you?’
‘He didn’t. It was me,’ Carrie ducked her head, not wanting to meet her sister’s frank query. ‘I said that he was … I suggested that … I said that he was being …’
Angela raised a stern eyebrow in silent contemplation, waiting with that mothers-know-best attitude combined with the you-will-spill-the-beans-with-or-without-the-thumb-screws look.
‘I told him he was using me as a diversion,’ Carrie blurted it out in one garbled sentence, like a child thinking if I can’t see you, you can’t see me, except it was, if you don’t hear it properly, you won’t ask again. ‘Which,’ she added, ‘is true.’
She traced the whorls on the towel on the sunbed. ‘He’s in the Riviera with a million different women to choose from. Why pick me? I know him. A spontaneous idea that he hadn’t thought through. Typical Richard.’
‘Or he’s met up with his wife. The woman he loved enough to marry and he wants to spend time with her to see if that spark is still there.’
‘Oh, bollocks. Whose side are you on?’
Angela let out a delighted laugh. ‘Is that what he said? I was guessing.’ She clapped her hands in delight.
‘I don’t know what you’ve got to be so happy about. Why is it everyone keeps forgetting … I’M. ENGAGED. TO. ALAN.’
Angela sobered. ‘Sorry.’ She frowned. ‘It’s tricky. Richard falling in love with you is just so romantic—’
‘He hasn’t fallen in love with me. It’s not romantic.’ Carrie waved her hand in front of Angela’s face. ‘This is not a film. It’s real life. Rich, successful movie stars do not meet up with old flames, whether they are still married or not, and fall in love with them all over again.’
‘Why not?’ asked Angela, her head snapped up and she pinned Carrie with a piercing glare.
