Never forget you, p.20
Never Forget You, page 20
He looked so dejected that I walked round to stand in front of him and drew him into a hug. ‘You’re right,’ I said quietly. ‘I do love it. It’s everything I’ve ever dreamed of, but …’
‘But?’
He looked at me with those big blue puppy dog eyes of his, and I felt myself begin to crumble. ‘Maybe we could take Mum and Dad out to lunch at the weekend, talk it over and get their blessing, rather than just presenting it to them as a done deal? If we make them part of the decision, maybe ask them to chip in for something they could afford …’
I wasn’t convincing myself they wouldn’t be hurt, but what could I do? I had to find some compromise. I was stuck between two sets of people I loved to distraction.
Justin looked sheepish. ‘The thing is … I might have already booked the castle. There was a cancellation at the end of February. Other than that, it was a two-year wait, so I just … did it. I thought you’d be pleased.’
‘February? That’s only five months away!’
‘I know it’ll be a rush to get things done, but if you scale back on work and concentrate on planning, I’m sure we can get it all done. You can build things up career-wise again after we’re married. While I appreciate you contributing to the household, it’s not as if we need to rely on your income.’
‘I …’
I didn’t know what to say. I’d been getting more and more interest in session work in recent weeks. It had made me feel like someone again, someone useful and productive. I didn’t want to let go of that unless I absolutely had to. I was also juggling thoughts of Mum and Dad, the fact I’d always wanted a summer wedding, not a February one, and that Justin had, with all the best intentions, done all this without consulting me.
‘Yes?’ He looked at me with such boyish adoration in his eyes, it reminded me of how it had been when we were first together, and I was struck by how much he loved me, how much he saw the real me. It wasn’t that he’d planned to upset me, was it? He’d tried to do something wonderful, and I was making it seem as if I didn’t appreciate his thoughtfulness.
‘Okay, yes. Let’s get married here.’
Justin kissed me properly, showing me just how grateful he was, how much he loved me. ‘You wait, Angel … This wedding will be just as perfect as our happy, wonderful lives together.’
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Now.
‘I THOUGHT I’D already explained why I gave up photography,’ Ben said as the snowy breeze whipped around them. ‘I had to come home for Willow.’
Alice frowned. ‘But aren’t there photography jobs you could do based in Invergarrig, even part-time?’
‘It wouldn’t work. I’d be … distracted. She needs me to be one hundred per cent present. I failed her mother. I won’t fail her.’ He stuffed his hands in his pockets. ‘Come on … If we go back to the main road, we can find the standing stone that’s supposed to be around here somewhere. I saw a sign.’ And he began trudging back towards the entrance.
Alice jogged after him. She wasn’t letting him run away from the conversation that easily. Not just because she was feeling nosey, which she was. Hugely. But because he was doing just that – running away. If anyone understood just how much trouble fleeing from your problems could cause, it was her.
She caught up to him and did her best to match his stride. ‘Ben … We haven’t got time to hike to a standing stone, and what do you mean you failed your sister?’
‘Oh, it’s true,’ he said, a biting edge to his words.
‘But you’re looking after her child!’
He stopped walking. ‘Yeah, well, she should have named Norina as Willow’s guardian, not me. It was a mistake.’
‘But you’re devoted to Willow, anyone can see that – and she adores you. And surely your sister wouldn’t jeopardise her daughter’s future by asking someone who wasn’t up to it to do the job.’
He let out a short, hard laugh. ‘You think? I wouldn’t be surprised if it was Cat’s way of getting revenge from beyond the grave, for all the times she moaned that I wasn’t around enough, that I didn’t care.’
‘You can’t honestly believe that,’ she said, trying to interject a bit of sanity into the conversation. ‘Anyone can see why your sister chose you to be Willow’s guardian.’
‘You don’t know me,’ he said in a low voice. ‘Not really.’ And then he began striding again.
Alice let out a growl of frustration and jogged to catch up. ‘It’s true that we only met four days ago, but I do know what kind of person you are – by your actions, not by who you say you are. Look what you’ve done for me in that short time: taking me to the hospital, giving me a place to stay, even coming to London with me when you knew I was feeling shaky – and I’m a stranger … well, almost a stranger. So, don’t tell me you wouldn’t go to the ends of the earth for someone you loved.’
That got his attention. He stopped again and turned to face her, his gaze searing. ‘Yes, I went to the ends of the earth, but not to save my sister – I went to get away from her, from everyone back home. I did it because I was selfish. Deep down, I knew I should have done more for Cat, and I didn’t. But admitting that to myself would have meant admitting she needed me close by, not always on another continent when a crisis occurred.’
He was acting as if this was all on him, that he was the only one who had any responsibility in the matter. ‘What about your dad? Couldn’t he have stepped in?’
He let out a short, hollow laugh. ‘My mum died when Cat was seventeen. Losing her was what really started that downward spiral, and my father moved away when he remarried. Last I heard, he was in Edinburgh. But even if he weren’t, it wouldn’t have mattered. My father—’ his features twisted his face into something resembling a snarl ‘—was a big part of the problem.’
‘I’m so sorry about your mum,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know.’
He gave her a lopsided shrug. ‘How could you have done, but … thank you.’
People were walking along the pavement near the entrance. Not many, but Alice felt they needed a little more privacy for this conversation. She led Ben back towards the ruin. Soft flakes of snow had begun to fall from the sky, just here and there, and they sheltered under a wide, low arch built up against a wall. She guessed it might once have been part of a cellar or a vaulted kitchen. ‘Tell me,’ she said.
‘Can’t we talk about you instead?’ he said wearily. ‘I’d much prefer that.’
‘What’s left to say, Ben? I’m an open book to you. You know everything I know about myself, which isn’t much. You’ve seen me at my worst and my most vulnerable. You know it all. I have nothing else left to share.’ Except maybe that she was developing a crush on him the size of Ben Nevis, but that was hardly relevant to the current conversation.
She trusted him so much, which probably would sound stupid to someone else, but what she’d said to him was true. She knew him. Now she wished he’d trust her with something too, let her help him just a little bit.
‘Please?’
Ben let out a ragged sigh. ‘I don’t talk about this much. I don’t talk about it, well … ever. I’m not even sure I know how to.’ And then, in fits and starts, he began to tell her a story about an autocratic father who ruled with a rod of iron, two children who desperately wanted to please him but could never match up. He wiped a hand over his face then rested his long frame against a ledge in the curving wall. ‘Mum was amazing, filling in all the gaps he left with love and acceptance. While she was still around, things were okay, but later I always wondered why she stayed. He wasn’t always nice to her, either. She did it for us, maybe.’
Alice nodded, not wanting to interrupt him, but her heart was speared by an image of a young, lanky boy, full of creativity and passion but paralysed by fear and judgement.
‘He told me that if I wanted to waste my life taking “snaps” instead of joining him in his insurance company, then I could get out the day I turned eighteen. For once in my life, I was pleased to do as I was told. I packed my bag and left. Got the first bus out of Invergarrig, not caring which way it was going. And I never went back. Not to his house anyway … Norina had always doted on us, and she didn’t have any children of her own, so when her sister died, she said her door would always be open to me and Cat. She became something of a stand-in mum for me, but Cat … She loved Norina, but by that point, she’d lash out at anyone she perceived as an authority figure.’
She reached out, gently laid her hand on his arm. ‘No one would blame you for not doing what your dad wanted as a career. It would have been such a waste if you had.’
Ben looked away. ‘But it wasn’t just me, was it? While I was off having fun, travelling the world, building a career … I’d left Cat there on her own. She started letting off steam the only way she knew how – at first it was drink, but later she got on to harder stuff.’
‘Ben?’ She waited until he met her gaze. ‘You are not responsible for your sister’s addiction.’
He stared at her bleakly. ‘If I hadn’t left, things would have been different …’
‘Yes, and if your father had been a different man, things would have turned out differently, or if your mother hadn’t died, maybe Cat wouldn’t have rebelled, or if she’d had different friends … There are so many variables. You can’t lay it all at your own door.’
He gave her a look that said, Can’t I?
‘The last time Cat went into rehab, about a year before she died, Norina and I did a programme too. Cat had been turning up at Norina’s, talking about taking Willow, and the staff helped us work through setting boundaries, outlining dealbreaker behaviour with her. I’d always felt so guilty where Cat was concerned that she sometimes could talk me into giving her money. I knew deep down it wasn’t helping her, that I was just enabling her, but it was so hard to say no.’
‘I can’t even imagine …’
‘So I set boundaries and I stuck to them. No more money.
No more bailing her out of her own mess.’
‘That sounds healthy. Especially if that’s what the experts told you to do.’
Ben looked away. ‘A month before she died, I was back in Glasgow, staying at my friend’s flat, and she found me. She was clearly off her face, and she begged me for more money. I said no.’ He shook his head. ‘I turned her away …’
Alice’s heart lodged in her mouth. She so badly wanted to reach out and touch him, to smooth that torment from his brow with her fingertips.
‘I wasn’t there for her when she needed me. And not for the first time. It had always been a disaster waiting to happen, and I could have stopped it, but I didn’t. I chose not to.’
Alice stepped closer, almost between the long legs anchored against the floor to keep his backside resting on the ledge.
When he met her gaze, the rawness in his eyes tore at her soul. ‘What if I do it all over again? What if I let Willow down too? I couldn’t bear it.’
Even though it was gloomy in their little shelter, she saw his eyes become shiny, heard the catch in his voice. A single tear leaked from the corner of his eye, and she reached up and brushed it away with the pad of her index finger.
He grabbed her hand and held it between both palms, pressed it to his cheek. Alice’s heart began to pound. ‘Don’t,’ she whispered, and tears welled in her own eyes at the thought of how this wonderful man’s heart was ripping in two. ‘Don’t do this to yourself.’
Their faces were close now. She could feel his warmth, the juddering of his ribcage as he drew in a breath. His pupils were large and black, only a thin sliver of brown remaining.
Alice didn’t know how many kisses she’d had in her life, but she knew she was on the verge of one at that moment. For her, it would be like a first kiss, the kind that marks you forever purely because it’s just that. Her eyelids drifted closed, and she held her breath.
‘This is a bad idea,’ Ben murmured, his voice low and rumbly in the confined space.
‘I know …’ For all the reasons she’d already told herself. But that had been when she’d thought this was a one-sided thing, when she was just crushing on someone who’d been kind to her.
There was a moment when everything felt suspended, as if they were at the top of a giant roller coaster ride, about to plunge into something deep and scary and thrilling, and then Ben shifted, and she knew he was about to move away.
‘Can we just … you know, stay like this for a moment?’ she whispered.
Ben’s breath came out shakily as he nodded, and he rested his forehead against hers. They stayed there in silence, sensing the rise and fall of each other’s chests, only the tiniest patch of skin touching, but it felt … like an admission. Like the start of something.
Alice was just wondering if they could climb back to the top of that roller coaster, ready to start the wild and heady ride, when Ben jolted and pulled away from her and reached for his phone. Now she thought about it, her brain had registered a soft electronic pinging a few seconds earlier, but she’d been so absorbed in being close to him that she hadn’t paid any attention to it.
It was the alarm he’d set to go back to Penrith station. He tapped his phone to silence it. ‘Time to go and find out what our immediate future holds.’
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Three months before the wedding.
I KNEW I’D promised Justin I wouldn’t busk any more, but I had to. Not for the money, but because playing the violin was the only time when I really felt like me nowadays.
Planning the wedding was filling all of my time, so I’d had to turn down quite a few offers of session work, some of them jobs I would have killed to do. The awful thing was that even with all the extra time on my hands, I wasn’t doing a very good job of getting the wedding sorted. Everything I picked or booked often needed to be tweaked or changed completely, and I’d begun to second-guess every decision I made.
Last night Justin had sat me down and had a talk to me about my attitude. He knew I was finding it stressful, but it wasn’t fair if I was moody and tense with him if he tried to make suggestions on how I could do things better.
I couldn’t deny it. I was stressed. Which is why I needed to play, why I needed to busk. We were only a couple of months away from getting married, so I was proving my commitment to him. Surely he’d be more secure about the whole thing now? Besides, if I slipped away quickly and was only out for an hour or two, he’d never know.
It was a bright, chilly November day, so I dressed up warmly, adding a crocheted scarf my nan had made me. I’d hidden it underneath some other things in the dressing room, so Justin didn’t find it and chuck it away. As I left the flat, I felt buoyant but also jittery, as if I was doing something vaguely illegal.
Initially, I headed west towards High St Ken Tube station, but when I was standing in front of it, looking at the large blue-and-white sign, I reconsidered. I’d told Justin I wouldn’t busk, so maybe I shouldn’t. But he’d never said anything about playing outside, not for money or practice, but just for fun. It was a technicality, I knew, but I was prepared to run with it.
Instead of descending into the dusty depths of London’s Underground, I turned and headed back the way I’d come, towards Kensington Gardens.
Once inside the park gates, I headed away from the palace and formal gardens, choosing one of the broad wide paths. On a hot summer’s day, the park would be packed, but at this time of year, there were only a few lone souls strolling along, eclipsed every now and then by the occasional runner, puffing small, hot clouds as they passed.
I ended up on a broad expanse of lawn not far from one of the park’s lakes. Right there, I saw the perfect spot to play. An old-fashioned bandstand with delicate iron struts holding up the onion-shaped roof. Nobody was about, so I ran up the steps to the small raised platform, pulled Octavia out of her case and began to play.
At first, I gravitated towards the old favourites from my busking days, familiarising myself with the feeling of the instrument in my hands, but, eventually, I moved onto pieces that spoke to me, that required me to reach into my soul and pull something out of it to make the music come alive. I closed my eyes and totally lost myself.
I had no idea how long I’d been playing when I came to the end of a piece and heard a smattering of applause. I opened my eyes to see a mum with two designer-clad children, an elderly gentleman and a female runner standing there. I coloured, taken aback by their presence, but managed to smile and give a small bow.
‘Play something else,’ the little boy said. ‘It makes me feel tingly inside.’
How could you resist a request like that, even if it did mean I was performing to a very small audience? But there wasn’t a man of datable age in the vicinity, so no one to gawp or ogle. ‘Okay,’ I said, and I began a couple of pieces from Peter and the Wolf, ending with the swan’s melody. I kept my eyes open as I played this time, enjoying their smiles. I didn’t feel like my audience had teeth and fangs, that they were an enemy to be faced.
It made me realise that not much in my life felt simple any more, and I wasn’t sure why. When had things got so complicated? At the Conservatory? Afterwards? I thought things had become more straightforward for a while when I’d first got together with Justin, but now everything felt … tangled.
And I supposed I might have to get used to the fact that, as much as I loved him, Justin was not a simple man. Maybe that’s why I loved him. But his darker moods were becoming more and more frequent, and sometimes I felt exhausted from constantly walking on eggshells around him.
He said the same of me, of course – that I was oversensitive, that I took the littlest thing he said or did out of context or made a big deal about it. I suppose I did. Sometimes.
It was the stupid wedding that was making us both tense. My parents had been wonderful about the venue, but I could tell it had hurt their feelings, which had taken some of the excitement about getting married at the castle away from me. I was tempted to suggest jetting off somewhere warm and getting married on a beach, just the two of us, but Justin was far too invested in the wedding we’d already planned for that. Besides, he’d lose loads of money if we backed out now.
