‘Yeh. It’s sort of a cross between your dad’s sweaty socks and rotting custard, but they taste phenomenal!’
They’d arrived at the end of their meander through the Dragon Trail Nature Walk to the more authentic experience of the Butterfly Park and Insect Kingdom housed in a tropical rain forest.
‘Okay, we’re not putting it off any longer. Come on, we’re climbing to the top of the Merlion.’ Elliot shot off in the direction of the incongruous, thirty-seven-metre-tall, carved stone icon of Singapore. ‘It’s the guardian of Singapore’s prosperity and well-being. I’m not sure about you, but I intend to take my turn ringing the Prosperity Bell. Go on!’
Olivia struck the gold bell as ordered then followed Elliot up the steps to the mouth of the Merlion from where they were gifted with a full three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view of Sentosa Island and the spectacular city of Singapore beyond.
‘Come on, my feet are killing me. Let’s go for a paddle.’
They raced across the pristine sand of Siloso Beach, splashing their toes and each other with the cool rippling water of the Singapore Straits before plonking themselves down on the sand to dry off and wait for the nightly ‘Wings of Time’ water, laser, and fire extravaganza to begin.
‘So, you’ve decided not to contact Nathan whilst you’re here?’ asked Elliot, his gaze fixed on the horizon where ribbons of pink and apricot floated into the early evening sky.
Olivia tipped her head back and closed her eyes, marvelling at how her previously short, glossy bob now brushed her shoulder blades. She knew Elliot meant well, but she really didn’t want to venture down that avenue.
‘There’s no point, El. I’ve got to move on.’
Silence was never uncomfortable when she was in Elliot’s company and she appreciated his decision not to press the issue. They sat for a while longer, contemplating their own thoughts, until the glow of the setting sun spread its warmth across the rippling harbour waters.
‘Come on, the show’s about to start. We need to grab a good spot!’
Elliot took her hand and they sprinted like teenagers to position themselves in the perfect place to watch the multi-sensory story of courage and friendship played against a water-screen backdrop upon which the characters were projected, and the fact that the girl character was called Rachel, a young girl who persuaded her reluctant friend, Felix, to travel the world in search of answers, held a certain ironic resonance for Olivia.
Chapter 18
Olivia’s sojourn in Singapore whizzed by. Whenever Elliot was working, she stepped into the shoes of an intrepid tourist. She found the public transport system clean, safe and easy to use and some of the warning signs in the stations made her laugh. One reminded passengers not to chew gum or to carry the pungent durian fruit on board the MRT. There were even fines levied for failing to flush the loo.
Away from the fierce blast of air conditioning, the heat was stifling and the high humidity meant that she perspired incessantly. She made sure she had a plentiful supply of water and a sightseeing trip planned every day to prevent the intrusion of her internal monologue, always bubbling beneath the surface, asking her to examine the veracity of her reasons for not meeting Nathan whilst she was there. These usually happened whenever she stretched out on a sun-lounger, particularly by a hotel pool where alcohol was readily available, and she would not be fooled into falling into the trap.
On one of the days when Elliot was busy, she enjoyed the peaceful sanctuary of the Singapore Botanic Gardens with its fountains and waterfalls giving the illusion of cool. She had not expected the orchid-filled grounds to be overrun by wedding couples taking advantage of the picturesque photo opportunity and so, in the afternoon, she abandoned the flora and fauna for the Jurong Bird Park where she spent the rest of the day marvelling at the Waterfall Aviary, the World of Darkness, and giggling at the daily penguin parade. She even loved the simulated tropical thunderstorm until the real thing ambushed her on her way back to the hotel. Within minutes she was soaked through to her knickers.
The following evening Olivia took special care of her make-up for the celebration dinner Elliot had arranged with Ying at Clarke Quay. In honour of the auspicious occasion, she’d splurged in the designer shops on Orchard Road and invested in the crimson Stella McCartney dress now hanging on the front of the wardrobe door, which she would pair with a fake Gucci handbag. She’d met Ying several times when passing through reception, but this was her chance to get to know her properly.
For the first time since she could remember, Olivia found she was humming to herself. She gathered her purse and key and made for the glass elevator to enjoy another spectacular night-time view of the city as she sped down to the lobby. As she waited for Elliot to join her in the foyer, she took in the beautiful Italian glass mural of an orchid, Singapore’s national flower, and her stomach growled. Along with her battle with insomnia, it seemed she had also conquered her lacklustre appetite on this leg of her crazy pursuit of love, and she was anticipating a great dinner in good company.
She felt lighter, too; her go-to expression was now a smile and not the frown or grimace of time-pressed anxiety, and her brain ticked instead of whizzed. She wished she could wrap up these achievements with a red ribbon and transport them back to London.
Her thoughts swung to Niko. She enjoyed their regular, chatty emails in which she could hear the sexy tone of his voice curling around the written words and she was transported back to their time together. She hadn’t accepted or declined his invitation to return to Malta, and whilst he’d made it clear how happy he would be to see her, she knew he understood her situation.
Elliot arrived, looking dapper in his black dress pants and white linen shirt, and for the sake of discretion, Ying joined them as they hailed a taxi to take them to Clarke Quay. The whole place buzzed with diners and strollers, and the air thrummed with the sweet fragrance of Indonesian spices mingled with the tang of chargrilled steak and wok-fried noodles.
‘So, what is authentic Singaporean food?’ asked Olivia as they strolled along the promenade, soaking up the atmosphere.
‘It’s not one thing, but a blend of several cuisines – Malay, Indian, Chinese – and many recipes have been in families for generations, copied and adapted as tastes and the clientele in the restaurants change. Here, this is it.’
Elliot motioned them over to a restaurant where the perimeter lights looked like pearls on a giant’s necklace, and indicated a table overlooking the canal. When they were seated, he ordered a bottle of prosecco rosé and poured three glasses.
‘A toast to two of my favourite people in the world.’
Ying smiled shyly at Elliot, the dark fringe skimming her eyelashes projecting an aura of youth and beauty, which caused a frisson of envy in Olivia’s chest. Did she really wish she was twenty-six again? As she had been exactly that age when she had started dating Nathan the answer was a resounding ‘yes’. After all the things she’d learned over the last six months, she was certain that if she could turn the clock back to that precise moment in time, she would have done things differently and her destiny, and Nathan’s, would have taken a different route.
She sipped her wine, allowing the bubbles to tickle the back of her tongue, and chastised herself. What was she doing? Wishing on a star that was stuck firmly in the past – that wasn’t healthy! Hadn’t she promised to begin a new chapter in Singapore? Tonight was a celebration, not a regretfest!
She plastered a smile on her face, giggling at Elliot’s anecdotes about life in a high-end commercial kitchen, and by the time the fireworks burst into the sky and their post-dinner brandies had oiled the wheels of friendship, the conversation inevitably turned to Olivia’s quest to uncover her lessons in love.
‘That sounds so exciting!’ said Ying, leaning forward, her chin in the palm of her hand. ‘What have you discovered so far?’
Olivia delved into her memory to unearth the numerous bulletins she had emailed to Hollie and Matteo, surprised to find it took some effort as her brain
felt like it was crammed with cotton wool. She realised that her body’s defences to the onslaught of alcohol had depleted due to lack of requirement – which, of course, could only be a good thing. However, despite her wooziness, she managed to recite a couple of the missives, which caused Ying to become more serious.
‘Elliot’s the first guy I’ve dated since my divorce last year.’ Ying smiled as Elliot reached across to place his palm gently on her thigh. ‘I know the statistics for teenage marriages aren’t good, but we ignored the advice of our families. We were nineteen and in love. Love conquers all, yes? My older sister was married, so I thought I wanted that too. We were together five years and it’s only now that I understand what my parents were trying to tell me. Hattie, my sister, is divorced as well, after only three years of marriage. They have two adorable little girls, but she freely admits their relationship was not strong enough to weather the stresses children bring. She married again but that marriage too has ended – no children, thank goodness. She and Bart separated less than a year ago and they both have new partners already. Hattie is even planning a third wedding! She says she feels incomplete without a man to share her life with.’
Ying reached out for her glass of fizz and began fiddling nervously with the stem, her thoughts clearly in a different place than the buzzing, laughter-filled restaurant on Clarke Quay.
‘My parents persuaded me to seek counselling and this time I’m grateful that I took their advice. My counsellor advised me to wait two months for every year of my divorced relationship, to allow my emotions to heal and to think clearly about my future. It gave me the opportunity to find happiness as a single person, to build up my career and discover my own personality. I know this advice has helped me make better choices.’
Olivia watched as Elliot leaned over and brushed his lips across Ying’s. Being witness to the exchange of affection between her friend and his girlfriend caused a perfect image of Nathan’s handsome face, every contour as familiar as her own, to float across her vision as though playing on a film reel, and she experienced an overwhelming yearning to be with him so she too could lean over and brush his lips with hers and enjoy the swoop of emotion his kiss always delivered. She swallowed the last of her prosecco, pushed back her chair and stood up, her feet unsteady in her stilettos.
‘Time for me to leave you both to enjoy the rest of the evening. I’ve got some packing to finish for the flight tomorrow night.’
‘Okay, I’ll see you tomorrow, Liv. I’m really looking forward to our lunchtime Tiffin accompanied by several Singapore Slings to send you on your way.’
‘Me too, me too.’
She kissed Ying, hugged Elliot and tripped off towards the promenade, pushing her way through the milling couples to hail a taxi, tears dotted along her lower lashes. Once at her hotel, she scrubbed off her make-up and slipped her new dress back onto its hanger. She’d lied to Elliot – she was already packed. It hadn’t taken long. She flopped onto the huge bed meant for two and stared out of the window at the vast kaleidoscope of multi-coloured lights, their twinkly presence added to by the occasional blast of fireworks.
She wasn’t tired so she dragged her laptop from the top of her holdall and checked her emails, anxious to connect to a friendly missive from home. She was rewarded with a brief note from Hollie bemoaning the loss of one of her longest running criminal trials, an embarrassingly awful first round of golf for the Surrey County Ladies and demanding an update on the lessons in love.
Olivia thought of her conversation with Ying and the experiences her sister, Hattie, had encountered, and spent the next hour on the internet researching and drafting two new bulletins for Hollie and Matteo’s avid consumption. What she found surprised her, and the discovery had, inevitably, jettisoned her mind back to Nathan.
Olivia Hamilton’s Lessons in Love: No 11. “Childless couples are statistically happier in their marriages than their counterparts who are parents. Marriage satisfaction levels drop as soon as a couple has children. The younger the parents and the earlier in a marriage the child arrives, the greater the impact.”
In fact, this evidence was also borne out by the relationship she had witnessed between Sarah and Graeme at Katrina’s party. They had spoken to her but she had felt excluded, superfluous to their insular orbit of togetherness.
Olivia Hamilton’s Lessons in Love: No 12. “The likelihood of divorce increases with the number of previous marriages a couple has entered into.”
Olivia had pressed ‘Send’ before realising that neither of the two new ‘lessons in love’ applied to Hollie and Matteo. Neither had been married so there was still a chance the dire statistics for subsequent marriages would not apply to them, and neither had children. She slumped against the stack of plump pillows to contemplate her research. Lesson No 11 had come as a surprise. She had assumed she and Nathan would have children one day, at some vague point in the distant future, and that their arrival would enhance their marriage not increase the likelihood of its demise.
She knew one of the reasons Nathan had decided to move on was that he wanted a family before it was too late. For a fleeting second, she had the urge to email her findings to him, but she knew that was ridiculous on a number of levels.
So what, if she had at last admitted to her conscious self what her subconscious self had known all along? She did want children, and now, as she approached her fortieth birthday, she could hear the thump of her biological clock for the first time. It was yet another sparkling nugget of newly discovered desire that would have to join the debris of her other dreams amongst the flotsam and jetsam of the wreckage of their marriage. What good would it do to admit this revelation to Nathan?
And, more to the point, what would he say if he found out she had been in Singapore for almost two weeks and had not had the decency to contact him?
Tears trickled down her cheeks as her gaze rested on her ‘lessons in love: No 12’. Any new relationship she formed had the odds stacked against it. And as she had now admitted that she did want a family, that did not bode well for her future children’s stability – that was if she could even conceive a child. And then, once again, she was reminded of an earlier revelation – except this time it hit her with such intensity that she felt as though she’d been hit by a runaway rollercoaster.
Nathan had been her soulmate.
Rachel, Hollie, Henry and anyone else brave enough to express their opinion after the fact, were right. Looking down the list of bulletins, applying each one separately, it didn’t take Einstein’s younger sister to tell her that they had been a perfect match!
The shock was so powerful that the breath was whipped from her lungs and she finally succumbed to a deluge of sobbing before drifting into a fitful sleep – her last in South East Asia. She couldn’t wait to get back to London where she could hibernate from the lonely world of her own making.
Chapter 19
The next morning Olivia woke with a blaze of determination in her heart. Her mother had always advised her to sleep on difficult decisions and, as usual, it turned out to be true.
She had decided to contact Nathan.
She intended to talk it over with Elliot when they met at the Tiffin Room at Raffles Hotel, then arrange to meet Nathan for a drink after work before she left for the airport and her overnight flight back to Heathrow – that way the meeting could not drag on because she had a plane to catch. It would force her to say everything that had been milling around in her head over the last six months, to his face and without preamble.
She stuffed the last of her toiletries into her holdall, selected the cream summer dress she’d worn for the Garzias’ party in Malta, smoothed down her hair with a drop of coconut oil, and applied a slick of apricot lip gloss. To complete the ensemble, she slid her toes into her stiletto sandals, which could always be relied upon to deliver a spurt of confidence.
A surge of optimism raced through her veins. Her two-week sojourn in Singapore with Elliot had performed its magic on her floundering emot
ions, and the anvil-heavy weight she had carried on her shoulders since the arrival of the divorce petition at the beginning of the year had shifted, her appetite had returned with a vengeance and she no longer fought a nightly battle with the dreaded sleep monsters. Now that she had made her decision to call Nathan, she felt calm, clear-headed and optimistic.
She wondered how she would feel when she saw him again after six long months of thinking about him daily, and how he would react when he saw her. One of the many things she loved about Nathan was how his eyes lit up when he saw her, making her absolutely sure that he didn’t want to be anywhere else than there by her side. She remembered the time in the first year of their marriage when he had asked her to take a week’s holiday from work and he had organised a new experience for them to enjoy together for each of the nine days they were free of all the other demands on their time, free to simply reconnect and revel in each other’s company. She had thought it was the most romantic gesture, which must have taken a great deal of planning.
They had spent one day making bespoke chocolates, another learning the Tango, and another at song-writing school, which Nathan in particular had loved. However, the day she had enjoyed the most was the ‘throw a pot’ class with echoes of Ghost swishing through her mind leading to a very romantic evening once they got back home. Every single activity had ended in laughter and had brought them even closer together, and at the end of the week they had made each other a solemn promise to repeat their ‘date week’ every year, taking it in turns to decide on the itinerary.
Sadly, it had never been repeated.
Olivia gave herself a mental slap on the arm. Today was not going to be a day of wallowing in the past, it was all about the future. She swung her handbag over her arm and caught the elevator down to the lobby where she’d arranged to meet Elliot. It wasn’t far from the Pan Pacific to the iconic Raffles Hotel so when he suggested they walked, she linked her arm through his and they sauntered in the sunshine along the pristine pavements.
A Year of Chasing Love Page 16