by Jessica Hart
But Romy had had enough pretending, she realised. ‘I’m in love with Lex,’ she told her mother abruptly, and it was a huge relief just to say the words.
Molly’s eyes rounded and for a moment she looked exactly like Freya. ‘With Lex? But how…? When…?’ She shook her head to clear it. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ And then, unable to help herself, ‘Does Faith know?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘But, darling, this is wonderful news!’ In deference to the other mourners, Molly kept her voice down, but she couldn’t resist giving Romy a hug. ‘Why the big secret? And why move to Somerset? I thought you wanted to get back together with Freya’s father!’
‘No.’ Romy’s steps slowed. She was remembering all the reasons why going to Somerset had seemed such a good idea. Was still a sensible idea. ‘I just wanted to get away from Lex. I don’t want to love him, Mum. You know what Lex is like. We’re too different. Anyway,’ she said, ‘we agreed it wouldn’t work.’
‘Ah.’ Her mother’s gaze rested thoughtfully on Romy’s face. ‘Does Lex love you?’
‘I think he loves me, yes.’ Romy sighed. ‘That isn’t the problem,’ she said, just as she had to Willie Grant. ‘What if love isn’t enough? What if it doesn’t last? You and Dad loved each other, and look what happened to you!’
‘Oh, Romy,’ said her mother a little helplessly. ‘Yes, I loved your father, but it wasn’t all perfect. It takes two to make a marriage, and two to let a relationship break down. I know how much it hurt you when he left, but I’m not sure it would have been better for you if he’d stayed. Would you really have wanted to have grown up in a home where the adults resent each other, knowing that you were the only reason they stayed together? I don’t think so.’
Romy stopped at that and stared at her mother. ‘Are you saying you think it was a good thing that he left us?’
‘No, never that. Not knowing what it did to you. But it wasn’t actually the end of the world, was it?’ Molly took her daughter’s arm and made her keep walking. ‘I was very unhappy for a time, but then I met Keith, and I’m happier being married to him than I ever was with your father. I don’t have any regrets about marrying Tony, though. We had you, didn’t we? How could either of us regret that? And now I can remember the good times.’
She smiled at her daughter. ‘There are no guarantees when it comes to love, Romy. Maybe it won’t work out with Lex, but maybe it will, and if you never take the risk, you’ll never know how happy you could be.’
Lex’s jaw felt rigid but he kept a smile in place as he went to greet his godmother. He had always been fond of Molly, who had luminous dark eyes just like her daughter’s, but he had been avoiding her, just as he had been avoiding thinking about Romy, who stood now by her mother’s side.
He had been feeling so alone in the church, and then suddenly Romy had been there. The feel of her hand in his had been so comforting that Lex had almost convinced himself that he had made it up. His mother had been too bound up in her own grief to notice anything, and Romy had slipped away when they followed the coffin out to the graveside. It was almost as if she had never been there at all.
But he had seen her as soon as she came into the house with Molly, and he had spent the afternoon torn between joy at her presence and despair that he was going to have to get used to her not being there all over again. He hadn’t talked to her. He didn’t know what he would say. The only thing he could think of to say was, ‘Come back, I miss you,’ but what was the point? Romy had made her choice, and he had to live with it. Better not to say anything at all.
So Lex moved through the afternoon like an automaton, talking to guests, agreeing that they would all miss his father, not letting himself think. Especially not letting himself notice Romy, slender and vibrant in the dark suit she had used to wear to work. Today she had substituted a dark purple top for her usual brightly coloured blouses, but she still looked more vivid than anyone else in the room.
She was a flame, constantly catching at the edge of his vision. It didn’t matter that she was only talking quietly to other guests. She spoke to his mother, to Phin and Summer. She did nothing to draw attention to herself at all, but Lex was intensely aware of her all the same. She might as well have been the only other person in the room.
Now Lex kissed Molly’s cheek, and let himself look properly at Romy at last. She looked gravely back at him, her eyes dark and warm, and as his gaze met hers there was such a rightness to it, as if everything were suddenly falling into place, that Lex was sure that everyone in the room must surely hear the click of connection.
His jaw was clenched so tightly he could feel the tendons standing out in his neck. ‘Thank you for coming,’ he said.
There, he hadn’t seized her in his arms. He hadn’t humiliated himself by begging her to come home. It wasn’t much of a victory, but Lex felt as if he had negotiated a long and arduous obstacle course.
‘Faith looks all in,’ said Molly, apparently not noticing the way her daughter and Lex were staring desperately at each other.
With difficulty, he dragged his eyes from Romy’s. ‘Yes. Yes, she is. Phin and Summer are going to take her home with them.’
‘And you?’
‘I’m going back to London too.’
‘On your own?’
‘Yes,’ said Lex, unable to keep the bleakness from his voice. ‘On my own.’
There was a pause. ‘I think I’ll go and say goodbye to Faith,’ said Molly.
Lex was left alone with Romy. The moment he had longed for. The moment he had dreaded.
Romy drew a breath. ‘Can I come with you?’ she said.
‘Where?’
‘To London.’
The dark eyes were drawing him in. Lex could feel himself slipping. Any moment now and he would be falling again, tumbling wildly out of control once more. He made himself look away.
‘I think I need to be on my own,’ he said.
Romy put her hand on his arm. ‘No, you need someone with you,’ she told him gently.
‘Romy, I can’t…’ Lex broke off, groped for control. ‘I can’t say goodbye again.’
‘We’re not going to say goodbye.’
Mutely, he shook his head, and Romy shattered what was left of his defences by stepping closer so that his senses reeled with her nearness, with the warmth of her hand, the piercing familiarity of her fragrance.
‘Lex, you buried your father today,’ she said. ‘I know you’ve been strong for your mother, but you need to grieve for yourself. Now let me be strong for you. Let me drive you. You don’t have to do everything on your own.’
The longing to be with her, to put off the moment when he had to watch her leave, was too much. Strong? He had never been strong where she was concerned. Lex did his best to resist the temptation, but then handed over his car keys. It felt deeply symbolic. He wanted to say, ‘Be careful, that’s my heart I’m giving you there.’
He didn’t, of course, but Romy smiled reassuringly at him anyway. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘I’m a careful driver.’
Lex was used to being driven. He often sat in the back of limousines, but this was different. He was sitting in the passenger seat of his own car, and Romy was at the wheel, and he was very aware of having ceded control. It felt dangerous. And it felt like letting go.
Letting go of responsibility.
Letting go of the pretence that he could be happy without Romy.
Letting the jumble of feelings overwhelm him. Guilt and grief and resentment for his father. Love and loneliness and joy and despair and desire and everything else that Romy made him feel, everything he had been trying not to feel for so long.
Tears were unmanly. Gerald Gibson had taught his son that long ago, and Lex hadn’t cried since he was a very small boy. He didn’t cry now, but inside he could feel himself crumbling. He stared straight ahead, his face set like stone, his mouth pressed into a rigid line, and his throat too tight to speak.
To his intense rel
ief, Romy didn’t try to make conversation. She just drove him back to the apartment, unlocked the door with the key he handed over without a word, and poured him a great slug of the whisky he had bought for Willie Grant a lifetime ago, all without a word.
Lex sat on the sofa, head bent, the glass clasped between his knees. He swirled the whisky, letting the warm, peaty smell of it calm him before he drank, and its mellowness settled steadyingly in his stomach.
Romy sat quietly beside him, her hand on his back infinitely comforting.
‘He never said well done.’ The words burst out of him without warning. ‘Not once. But do you know what he did? He left me a controlling share in Gibson & Grieve. I had to listen to some lawyer tell me that my father thought I’d done well. That I’d shown I was worthy. He said he was confident that he was leaving the company in capable hands,’ said Lex bitterly.
Romy’s throat ached for him. ‘He was proud of you.’
‘It’s too late for him to tell me now! Why couldn’t he…?’ He broke off, too angry and frustrated to speak.
‘Why couldn’t he tell you?’ she finished for him. ‘Perhaps he was afraid to, Lex. Perhaps, deep down, he was afraid that if he gave you the approval you craved, you wouldn’t need him any more.’
She rubbed his back, very gently. ‘I think you and I need to forgive our fathers,’ she said. ‘I certainly need to forgive mine. I loved him so much, but I wanted him to be somebody he couldn’t be. I didn’t understand that he was just a man, wrestling with his own fears.’
Lex said nothing, but she knew he was listening. ‘And your father,’ she went on, ‘he didn’t know how to be a man who could admit weakness. I think he didn’t know how to tell you how important you were to him, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t love you. He just couldn’t say it. But he did the best he could, and maybe my father did the best he could, too.’
Lex took a slug of whisky, felt it burn down his throat. ‘I thought you would never forgive your father.’
‘I thought so, too. It was only when I talked to my mother today, and she made me think. And watching you bury your father, I was imagining how I would feel if it was my father who had died.’ Romy swallowed. ‘He’s the only father I’ve got. Perhaps I should just accept him for what he is.’
‘He hurt you.’ Lex looked up at her, pale eyes fierce. ‘He left you.’
‘He left my mother, not me,’ said Romy. ‘I think the truth is that I left him when I refused to see him. I thought that he had chosen his other child over me, but now I think that he chose happiness over duty. Perhaps I need to learn from that. Perhaps we both do.’
‘Learn? Learn what?’
‘We could learn to be happy,’ she said.
‘Happy?’ Lex stared into his glass and thought of the long, lonely weeks since she’d been gone. The wasteland he had trudged through every day. He thought of the years he had spent trying to forget her, the years he would have to spend forgetting her all over again. ‘Happy? Hah!’
‘I thought I could make myself happy,’ said Romy as if he hadn’t spoken. ‘I was afraid to rely on anyone else for happiness. I thought all I needed was to be able to provide for Freya and keep her from being hurt, and I can do that now, but I’m not happy.’ She took her hand from his back. ‘I can’t be happy without you, Lex.’
He did look up at that, his eyes narrowed in sudden attention.
‘I don’t know if this is the time for it,’ she said, ‘but there’s something I want to ask you.’
‘What is it?’
‘Will you marry me?’
Lex straightened abruptly, sloshing whisky. ‘What?’
Romy’s heart was knocking against her ribs but she made herself look levelly back at him. ‘Will you marry me?’ she said again. ‘I’ll understand if you say no,’ she said, when he just stared at her. ‘I probably deserve it. I had a chance to marry you and I turned it down. We could have had the last twelve years together, but I was too afraid that it would all go wrong.’
Lex put his glass on the table, very carefully, and turned to look at Romy. She was twisting the bangles around her wrist, her eyes huge and dark. ‘What’s changed? Why aren’t you afraid now?’
‘I am afraid,’ she said. ‘But I’m more afraid of spending the rest of my life regretting that I was too much of a coward to take a chance at happiness. I’m afraid of spending the rest of my life missing you, the way I’ve missed you the last few weeks. I’m afraid of never really being happy again without you.’
‘Romy…’
‘I’m afraid that it might not work,’ she said again, ‘but I want to take the risk, if you will.’
Lex was looking stunned and Romy took her bottom lip between her teeth, all at once regretting the words that had come tumbling out of her. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said remorsefully. ‘I shouldn’t be talking like this, not today. Today should be about your father, not about me. Oh, Lex, I’m sorry,’ she said again. ‘What was I thinking?’
‘Perhaps,’ Lex said slowly, ‘you were thinking that this is exactly the day we should be talking like this. Perhaps it takes death to make us realise how we want to live.’
Might it be all right after all? Romy took a breath and let it out very carefully. ‘I don’t want to live without ever seeing my father again,’ she said. ‘But most of all, I don’t want to live without you, Lex.’
‘Romy,’ he said again, laying a hand against her cheek. ‘Romy, what if I can’t make you happy? You’re so…alive. You need warmth and laughter and love.’
‘You love me, don’t you?’
He half smiled. ‘Yes, I love you. I’ve never stopped loving you,’ he said, unable to stop his fingers slipping under her hair to the nape of her neck. ‘Loving you isn’t the problem. You were the one who said that. But love wasn’t enough before. We’re still different people. I’d like to think I can change to be more like you, but what if I can only be like my father?’
‘You’re not your father,’ said Romy, ‘ and you’re not my father either. You’re you, and I love you the way you are. You don’t have to change. You just have to be brave enough to love me and believe that I love you too, just as I need to be brave enough to trust that you won’t leave me and Freya. Love isn’t enough,’ she said. ‘We need courage, too, just like Willie said.’
Lex’s hand was warm at the nape of her neck. ‘Then we’ll be brave together,’ he said and drew her towards him.
It was a gentle kiss at first, like a first kiss, as if he couldn’t quite believe that she was there, that she was real. Then it was tender and it was sweet, and the world shifted and righted itself at last.
They kissed and kissed in a torrent of relief, sinking down into the soft cushions until the sweetness grew hard and hungry, but when they broke for breath the world was still right. This, this, was right. Romy was lying tucked into him, her arms round him, her face pressed into his throat. Lex could feel her lovely mouth curved into a smile against his skin and the tight band that had been clamped around his chest for so long unlocked and loosened.
He tried breathing in and out experimentally, and the ease of it made his head reel. Wrapping his arms around Romy, he held her close.
‘Romy, are you sure?’
‘I’m sure,’ she said, tilting her head back to kiss his jaw. ‘Are you?’
‘What about all those practicalities that were such a problem before?’
She wriggled up so that she could look at him properly. ‘I suppose we could always take Willie’s advice and compromise. Maybe you could learn to live in a less than perfectly ordered flat, and maybe I could learn to tidy up more. I don’t think it would be easy, but we could both try.’
‘This flat isn’t suitable for Freya anyway,’ said Lex. ‘Why don’t we buy a house in Somerset?’
‘Somerset’s not very convenient for the office,’ she pointed out.
‘Then we’ll have a house in London as well.’
‘But you like this flat! It’s perfect for you.’
‘It wasn’t perfect when you left. I hated it without you,’ he said. ‘I missed you both so much. Every night I’d sit here with the phone in my hand and think about calling you and begging you to come back.’
Romy pulled away slightly, wondering what she would have done if he had called. ‘But you never rang?’
‘I thought you’d say no. I thought you wanted Freya to get to know her father, and I thought that was the right thing to do. Michael’s her father, not me.’ Lex hesitated. ‘You said it, Romy. You said your father was the only one you’d ever have.’
‘But that was me,’ she said. ‘There was no one else for me. Being a parent is about more than biology,’ she told him. ‘I hope Michael will always be part of her life, and if he is Freya is going to be lucky. She’ll have two fathers, and I hope she’ll love you both, but you’re the one who’s going to teach her to play the piano and comfort her at night when she’s teething…oh, and change her nappies, of course!’
Lex laughed at that. ‘When you said I had to be brave, I didn’t think you meant that brave!’
‘Losing your nerve?’ she asked, smiling, and he pulled her against him for a hard kiss.
‘No, I don’t mind what I do, as long as I’m with you. I’ll even change nappies!’
‘Now I know you love me,’ said Romy, kissing him back.
‘Always,’ said Lex.
Pushing herself up so that she could lean over him, Romy rested her hand over his heart. ‘You haven’t given me an answer yet,’ she reminded him. ‘I asked you to marry me. Will you?’ Stupidly, she could hear a hint of anxiety in her voice.
Lex didn’t answer immediately. ‘Are you sure you want to be married, Romy?’ he asked seriously. ‘I know the idea of commitment isn’t easy for you. We can be together without marriage if that’s more comfortable for you.’
