Good, thought Alice. We make each other laugh.
‘No, nothing like that. We met on a retreat in Italy. It was for . . .’ He twisted his mouth apologetically. ‘For people who were in need of a perspective break? It was a really amazing experience. Very spiritual and refreshing. We kept in touch after that, and met up in London, and, well, one thing led to another.’ His accent was sweet, up and down, melodic.
A faint memory stirred in the darkness of Alice’s mind: a swimming pool with a full moon reflected in it. Floating, floating away. Then it was gone. She blinked again, encouraged. ‘And I moved to Stratton?’
‘You fancied a change of pace.’ Gethin looked round the table, with a wry smile. ‘Definitely a change of pace after London. I came down a few times to see you while you were living in Archway. Very exciting, London, but not for me, not long term.’
‘Jason and Elizabeth have done much the same thing.’ Margaret pushed the biscuits towards him. She’d put them on a plate, Alice noted. ‘Downsized for better quality of life. I think it’s an excellent idea. So what is it you do, Gethin?’
He ruffled his hair self-consciously. ‘I’m a community arts project manager. I’m not an actor myself – I was in a few productions at university, but now I leave it to the professionals. I handle fundraising and getting theatre into schools. Arranging tours and exhibitions, that sort of thing. Every day’s different! And it’s great working with kids – they’re so enthusiastic.’
Alice sipped her tea. A warm feeling spread through her. A community arts worker. That was cool. She could admit now that part of her had dreaded Gethin turning out to be something boring or unpleasant. But a community arts worker . . .
‘And what was I doing?’ she heard herself ask.
‘You were working in the pub,’ said Libby, surprised. ‘You knew that.’
‘No, before that. Presumably I didn’t pack in a good job temping in the City to work in a pub?’
‘Well, no. You were temping for an agency in Birmingham, but that didn’t work out, so the White Horse is something to do while you get yourself back together. Plan your next move, kind of thing.’ Gethin helped himself to another biscuit, at Margaret’s urging. ‘It’s nice, though – it means we see more of each other. And you’re very good at it, Tony says.’
‘I can believe that,’ said Libby. ‘She made herself indispensable here within days!’
But Alice’s attention had snagged on something else. Get myself back together? Gethin noticed the slip because a flush spread across his cheeks, and when their eyes met, he looked contrite, as if he’d revealed something accidentally.
He grabbed her hand. ‘Alice is like that,’ he said, looking into her eyes.
Like what? she wanted to ask, but she focused her mind on the feel of his skin on hers. It was a relief when Margaret offered to refill her tea and she could withdraw it to pass her mug.
‘We’re really going to miss having you here.’ Libby seemed genuinely forlorn. ‘You’ve been such a help. Doing my paperwork, and walking Bob, and helping on reception. How are we going to manage?’
‘You will.’ Alice pulled her attention back to what she knew. While they’d been talking, Libby had put a cardigan on over her dress, and some of her red lipstick had come off on her mug. The glowing London Libby was fading back into the normal Libby; Alice was secretly relieved.
Gethin finished his tea and shook his head when Margaret offered him a refill.
‘I don’t want to sound rude when you’ve been so kind,’ he said, ‘but we ought to make a move. I’ve been away all week on a schools tour and I’ve had about nine hours’ sleep since last weekend.’
‘Of course, and you’ve got that long drive back,’ said Margaret with a shudder. ‘In the dark . . .’
‘You can always stay here,’ said Libby. ‘Oh, go on! Do that! Stay – don’t start driving all the way across the county at this time of night.’
Alice stared into her mug, a stubborn childish feeling pooling in her stomach. Now the moment had come, she didn’t want to leave.
Don’t be silly, she told herself. There would be a first time for lots of things now. What was there to be scared of? She glanced up and – just as she’d feared – Gethin seemed hurt by her obvious lack of enthusiasm to get going.
She smiled, awkwardly, and he smiled back after a second’s hesitation.
‘Come on, Libby, be fair – I know you don’t want your new best mate to go, but Alice probably wants to get back to her own bed,’ Jason pointed out. ‘After three weeks away from it. And her boyfriend?’
‘I know. I know! Sorry. I’m being selfish. I’ll help you get your things together, Alice.’
‘What things?’ Alice gestured at her outfit: all Libby’s.
It’s all right, she wanted to say, we’ll stay. Let me and Gethin get to know each other here, where I feel safe.
But Gethin was getting up, and Margaret was clearing away the mugs, and Jason was swearing at Lord Bob, who was lying in exactly the right place for someone to fall over him, and before Alice really had time to think about what was happening, she was standing on the front step of the hotel, hugging everyone goodbye, stunned by how fast it was all happening.
‘Call us anytime, and don’t be a stranger.’ Tears were shining in Libby’s eyes. ‘Come back whenever you want.’
‘I will.’ Alice paused. They hadn’t discussed that job offer. It had seemed inappropriate, now she was going back to Stratton, to her job at the White Horse, the old normal. ‘And you’ll tell Luke, won’t you? What’s happened?’
Libby seemed surprised. ‘If you want. But you’ve got his number? You can tell him.’
I can’t, Alice thought. She didn’t know why, but something told her that would be inappropriate. That the connection between her and Luke wasn’t . . . wrong, because it felt honest, like her connection with Libby, but she had a sense that she shouldn’t tell Gethin. Those big, brown, trusting eyes.
She had a sudden flash of Luke dumping the two sugars into her coffee. But he was in security. He noticed details. That was a detail, nothing more.
‘Go on,’ said Libby. ‘Ring me in the morning?’ Then she dropped her voice. ‘He’s a sweetheart. He’s exactly how I hoped he’d be! I knew you’d have a cute boyfriend . . .’
Gethin was standing by his car, a red hatchback. He smiled, less certainly now, and Alice’s heart lurched. He was a sweetheart. As she went over, he ran round and opened the door for her.
‘Thank you,’ she said, as she slipped in.
And then, with a wave, they were driving home.
To her real home.
Chapter Seventeen
The house was in darkness when Gethin pulled up outside and Alice almost didn’t realise they were back until he turned off the engine and said, ‘Well, here we are.’
It had been a strained journey. Conversation hadn’t exactly flowed. As soon as she was away from the familiar atmosphere of the hotel, questions began popping up in Alice’s mind, but it seemed rude to ask them outright when Gethin was so happy to see her. Like why hadn’t he come to find her? Why had she stopped temping in Birmingham? Why had she been on a retreat for stressed-out people in the first place? Instead, they’d made polite party conversation about the schools tour of A Midsummer Night’s Dream he’d been doing and what she’d been doing at the hotel.
Now, Alice realised, staring at the dark, blank face of their house, conversation couldn’t go anywhere else but back to them.
‘Oh God! We’ve no milk! Sorry, I meant to stop at Tesco.’ Gethin had started to undo his seatbelt, but now he hit his forehead with the heel of his palm. ‘I literally walked in and out when I saw your note – there’s no food in the house.’
‘Don’t worry about it,’ said Alice automatically. ‘I’m not really hungry.’
‘Do you want to go in and I’ll n
ip out?’ He looked anxious. ‘I won’t be a second. I think the garage up the road’s still open . . .’
‘It’s fine. Honestly.’ Alice touched Gethin’s hand to stop him flapping; she did it without thinking, but the connection stopped them both. She made herself leave her fingers where they were for a couple of seconds, then patted him affectionately. ‘Let’s just get inside.’
She undid her own belt, gathering her small bag of things from the footwell, but by the time she’d straightened up, he was at her door, opening it for her.
‘Honestly, you don’t have to – I’m not injured,’ she said, getting out.
‘I know, but . . . I can’t get it out of my head.’ His expression was remorseful. ‘You were in the hospital, on your own! And I didn’t know! Can you blame me for wanting to look after you better now?’
‘Really, I’m fine. Just . . .’ Alice made ‘hurry up’ gestures and he fumbled for the key and let her in.
The hall smelled stale, like a house that hadn’t been lived in for a few weeks. Alice took a few surreptitious sniffs; it didn’t smell unfamiliar. The walls were pale blue, with a staircase opposite the door leading to the bedrooms, carpeted with a striking red and gold runner. The radiator was boxed in, and on top of it was a wicker basket of post and some framed photographs.
She picked up the nearest: a selfie of her and Gethin on a shingle beach, their faces pressed close together to get into the same frame. A wild and leaden sky loomed behind them, merging with the iron-grey sea, as they laughed up into the camera lens, their windblown smiles framed by their furry parka hoods like Eskimos.
That’s me, she thought. I was there, in that moment. There’s a negative of this picture somewhere in my head. The original, with the data trail of words, emotions, sensations attached.
‘Where’s this?’ she asked.
‘Oh, Aberystwyth. That was a good weekend. My birthday.’ Gethin paused, hoping she might remember. ‘In October,’ he added, when she didn’t. ‘The twenty-first. I’m a Libra.’ His eyes scanned her face as he stressed the details, and they shared their first rueful understanding that this was how it was going to be. ‘We stayed in a hotel on the seafront, and you were particularly taken with the full Welsh breakfast.’
‘Really?’
‘Really. Extra laver bread and all the trimmings. You finished mine off, which was a novelty.’ He grinned.
‘A novelty? Why?’
Gethin’s grin froze, momentarily; then he recovered. ‘Because you don’t normally eat breakfast. You normally just have a coffee. The calories. I keep saying you’re just perfect as you are, but . . . It must have been the sea air!’
Really? Alice had been eating full Englishes without any problem all week; Libby had been practising her poached eggs on her. Were she and Gethin still in that ‘too in love to eat’ honeymoon stage? Or had she pretended she ate delicately? She pushed it to one side. ‘Did I give you something nice? For your birthday?’
‘You arranged the mini-break. It was a surprise – we’d been talking about holidays we’d had as kids, and I’d been telling you about going to Aber with my family. I had no idea you were booking it. It was extremely thoughtful.’
She smiled, pleased that she’d done something nice. And she liked the lyrical way Gethin spoke, the flourishes on certain words, the expressive accompaniment of his mobile eyebrows. ‘It looks like we’re having fun.’
‘Oh, we had a fabulous weekend. We walked along the seafront, until the rain started; then we sat in a café and had fish and chips, and worked out which of the flats we could buy if we won the lottery. We said we’d go back this year.’ He paused. ‘I like the fact that you and I can have a good time in simple places. It’s something we clicked on from the start.’
He was looking at her with a loving expression, but Alice couldn’t quite meet his gaze; it was too intimate, too soon. She pretended to be engrossed in searching her own face in the photo for clues. Her eyes were partially hidden by the fake fur on her parka, but her smile was wide and laughing. Was that parka upstairs? Would she wake up in the morning and have that glow of romance about her?
‘I’d like to go back,’ she said. ‘To Aberystwyth, I mean.’
‘We can.’ Gethin touched her shoulder, gently, and this time she didn’t flinch.
They sat at the kitchen table with a can of Coke from the fridge, and Gethin explained that he’d been living here for three years, and she’d moved in about eight months ago.
‘I was sharing with my friend Ricky to begin with,’ he told her. ‘Then we started seeing each other, Ricky moved to Bristol, and you decided you needed a change of scene, so you moved in. It was one of those synchronicity moments – we talked a lot about it on the course, actually. When something’s right for you, everything else just falls into place.’
Alice turned the cold can round in her hands; this course was sounding better and better. If only she could remember it. ‘And when was this retreat?’
‘April last year.’
‘And I moved in here . . . ?’
‘September the tenth.’ He reached for her hand. ‘It sounds like we rushed into things, but it’s been so good. We . . . we make each other really happy.’
Alice thought of the photo of them on the beach. There were others in the kitchen: her in denim shorts and a sombrero at a campsite, her and Gethin at what looked like a festival. It did look right. It looked like they’d fallen madly in love.
Her stomach contracted with anxiety that she’d had something good, something once in a lifetime, and now not only had she lost it, but she couldn’t remember what it had felt like.
She wanted to ask, What was it that made us fall in love? She wasn’t feeling the special physical pull, but attraction was more complicated than that, wasn’t it? It was a collage of coincidences, flashes of wordless understanding, the right words at the right time, shared reactions to moments that had been and gone forever now. Memories. A million tiny shared memories.
‘You look tired, Bunny,’ said Gethin. ‘Do you want to go to bed?’
There must have been something in Alice’s face, because he blinked and said, quickly, ‘I don’t mean like that, but . . . Um, sorry. I meant . . .’
She struggled for the right thing to say. Only three weeks ago, they’d been as close as two people could be, relaxed with each other’s skin and taste and smell. Now a complete stranger was suggesting she get into bed with him and all she could think was, No.
‘I know what you meant.’ He was a decent guy, she told herself. She could read that in his eyes. They looked right together in the photos. They were a couple. They weren’t embarrassed about taking cheesy selfies.
It would come back. The memories were all still there, somewhere.
‘I’m . . . I’m just going to the loo,’ she said. ‘Upstairs, I take it?’
‘First on the left,’ said Gethin. ‘And the door jams, so don’t lock it.’
‘Thanks,’ said Alice. ‘That’d be a first night to remember, getting locked in the loo! Unless I’ve already done that?’
Gethin smiled, but didn’t say anything.
Alice shut the bathroom door and tried to get herself together to deal with what was coming next: bedtime.
Two blue towels over the stainless-steel towel rail. A white bath. Big white tiles, granite on the floor. Libby would approve of this bathroom. She sat on the closed loo, breathing deeply, staring at volumising shampoo she must have bought, a toothbrush that must be hers, and her eye fell on a make-up bag.
I can’t have been running away to Longhampton if I didn’t take my make-up bag, she reasoned, and felt unexpected relief. It was a fact. A solid brick of logic on which to build.
Alice got up and tipped the contents quietly into the sink: foundation, eyeliner, concealer, mascara, eyebrow pencil. Nice make-up, some of it expensive. She hadn’t worn any mak
e-up for the past few weeks; Libby had offered her some, but she hadn’t felt she needed it.
She picked up a blusher brush and stroked it thoughtfully along her jaw. It brought back a distant memory of layering on the make-up she wore for work, waking up hung-over skin with bronzer, layering concealer over dark shadows, putting her face on with her eyes still half closed with sleep. Don’t go back, she thought, and her eyes snapped open.
There was a knock on the bathroom door.
‘I’ve got you a clean towel,’ said Gethin’s voice. ‘There should be hot water now, if you want a bath?’
‘Thank you!’ She waited a couple of seconds until he’d gone and then slowly opened the door. A towel, with a pair of pyjamas folded on top.
Thoughtful. He’d anticipated what she might be feeling. That was a good sign.
Alice had a quick bath, changed and stepped out onto the landing. There were two rooms upstairs, either side of the bathroom; a soft light was on in one and she guessed that was where Gethin was.
Our bedroom.
She took a deep breath and walked in. It wasn’t familiar: a king-size bed with a slatted wooden headboard, white duvet, plain bedside cabinet, two big prints of seaside scenes on the walls. Pebbles and sea and sky.
Alice knew she was taking in the details to avoid the issue: Gethin, in a T-shirt, sitting up in bed waiting for her.
‘Everything OK?’ he asked brightly.
‘Yes. Fine, thanks.’
The question hovered between them. She knew she had to take a step forward, or say something, or . . .
Gethin resolved it for her. ‘God, I’m sorry,’ he said, throwing back the duvet. He was wearing a T-shirt and blue boxer shorts; he had a sturdy body. Warm, thought Alice, trying to imagine it holding her, covering her. ‘I don’t know what I was thinking. Well, I do know what I was thinking. I thought you’d remember . . . that it’d all come back . . .’
‘I don’t think it’s going to be as easy as that,’ said Alice. She paused, wishing she could explain. ‘I’m so sorry.’