by Jill Mansell
“Why, though?”
“Just makes life easier.” Sophie shrugged. “I don’t need the hassle.”
“Who says I’d be hassle?”
She smiled patiently and gave him a look. “Anyway, I’d rather concentrate on work, building up the business.”
“He’s pretty keen, you know.”
“Who?” Though she knew.
“Josh.”
“Not my problem,” said Sophie.
“You’re a cruel woman.”
“Not cruel.” She shook her head, amused. “I call it up front and honest.”
“Fine then. Talk to me about your friend Tula.”
They’d pulled up to a traffic light. Sophie’s smile broadened, because Riley was doing his best to sound casual, which definitely meant he was intrigued. Then again, he appeared to find most girls intriguing. It was pretty much his default setting.
“My friend Tula’s had a terrible time with boyfriends. Trust me, the last thing she needs is to have her heart broken again by someone like you.”
“Has she said anything about me?”
“No.”
“You see, there’s something weird going on,” Riley protested. “I actually do like her more than I thought I would. But she’s already turned me down. And not in a game-playing way, either. She really wasn’t interested.”
“You’re not her type,” said Sophie.
He looked outraged. “Why not? What’s wrong with me?”
“Too pretty, too full of yourself, too lazy. Tula grew up with a dad like that…well, before he ran off with another woman, and then another and another. She wants a boyfriend she can trust, someone who won’t let her down like her dad did. Also,” Sophie concluded, “someone not afraid of a bit of hard work.”
“Don’t tell me,” said Riley. “You mean someone like Josh.”
Sophie didn’t speak. Then again, no answer was really necessary.
With a sigh, Riley tipped his head back and said, “Yeah, it’s okay. I noticed it too.”
***
Having dropped Riley off at his cottage, Sophie drove home. She uploaded the wedding photos onto the computer and spent an hour checking through them, deleting the immediate disasters and no-hopers and making a note of the ones she was particularly pleased with.
It was one o’clock before she went to bed. Lying back against the pillows and gazing up at the ceiling, she thought about Riley’s comments in the car. It was four years since Theo’s suicide attempt, but just thinking about it still caused all the same emotions to come flooding back.
They’d had no face-to-face contact since that day in the intensive care unit when he’d regained consciousness. Having told her in no uncertain terms that he never wanted to see her again, Theo had stuck to that decision. Upon leaving the hospital, he’d put his mother’s house on the market and sold it within weeks. He’d then left Birmingham without telling anyone where he was going. The quickie divorce had been conducted entirely through their respective lawyers.
And that had been that.
Lying there in the darkness, Sophie remembered the hatred she’d seen in her husband’s eyes that last time, and concentrated on keeping her breathing slow and even. She’d stopped crying years ago. Theo wasn’t dead; thanks to the Internet, she knew that much. Of course she’d looked him up on Google. He was living in a different part of the country, nowhere near Cornwall, and running a small independent business. There was a single photo of him on the company’s rather basic website looking…well, not exactly beaming with joy, but he’d never been relaxed in front of a camera.
What was his life like now? Was he still dreadfully depressed? Rattling with pills and unhappiness? Sophie knew he never wanted her to contact him again, so she would never know the answer to those questions. But every couple months, she found herself checking the website, making sure it was still there, reassuring herself that Theo was still alive.
His actions had succeeded in changing her irredeemably and forever. The fear and terror and guilt involved in being responsible for someone else’s life—or more accurately death—meant she could never bring herself to become emotionally involved with another man.
On the surface, her day-to-day life was happy; she laughed and joked and behaved like a completely normal person. Other people regarded her as cheerful, up for a laugh, and extroverted.
But that was on the surface, purely for public consumption. Unaware of her past—simply because it was no one else’s business but her own—what they didn’t realize was that there was a permanent chunk of ice embedded in the center of her heart.
Nor was it ever going to melt. Life was easier with the ice in place. Some people might not have been able to stick to the vow she’d made to herself, but Sophie knew she could carry on indefinitely. It was like dieting; most people embarked on weight loss programs and gave up within days or weeks, first sneakily wolfing down doughnuts, then abandoning the whole notion of dropping a dress size until the next fad diet came along. Whereas others made the decision that if they wanted to maintain a low weight, they were just going to have to get used to consuming fewer calories and stick with the plan, because the end result was worth it.
Well, that was what she’d decided. Only instead of giving up chocolate and doughnuts, she’d given up men.
And once you’d made up your mind, it wasn’t that hard to do; it really wasn’t. In some ways it was quite…freeing. Sophie closed her eyes. At least it wasn’t as hard as the alternative.
***
A couple miles away, on the other side of St. Carys, in his cottage in the grounds of Moor Court, Riley finally got to bed at three in the morning. Which was ridiculous when you considered he’d only managed a couple hours’ sleep last night and roughly ten minutes in the hammock earlier. But he was used to it.
He thought about Tula for a bit, replaying in his mind what Sophie had told him about her.
Basically, Sophie was saying her friend was completely allergic to people like him.
Riley exhaled. It had never bothered him before because it had never mattered, but now he was beginning to sense that it might.
What would Tula think about him if she knew the truth?
Chapter 16
Falling in love didn’t always bring happiness and everlasting joy. Lawrence Strachan had discovered this to his cost following the day he’d met Aurora Beauvais on the beach. It had been a coup de foudre so powerful and overwhelming his subsequent actions felt as if they were beyond his control. The last thing he’d wanted to do was break up his own happy marriage and decimate the life of Dot, whom he also loved. But it had ended up happening anyway.
He wasn’t proud of himself for having done that. But having been the instigator of so much misery, he’d at least imagined that as time passed, Dot would find another man worthy of her, and he and Aurora would carry on being a happy couple. In his more optimistic moments, he’d even been able to envisage the four of them socializing together. Okay, maybe that was pushing it, but it wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility; some couples and their previous partners managed to get along together just fine.
Except it hadn’t worked out like that, had it? There’d been no time for any of them to—
The cup slipped from Lawrence’s hand, splashing its contents across the café table. Hot coffee soaked into the newspaper he’d just bought and dripped down onto his trousers. Lawrence barely noticed; he was too stunned by the sight of the man who’d just emerged from the shop opposite.
“Oh no, look at you. How did you manage to do that?” The middle-aged waitress came bustling over with a damp cloth and a roll of paper towels. As she cleaned the table and removed the sodden Telegraph, Lawrence gazed, transfixed, across the street.
What on earth was Antoine doing back in St. Carys?
“Shall I get you another coffee, love?” Lowering her
voice, the cheery waitress said, “Don’t worry; on the house.”
“Um…” As Lawrence hesitated, barely able to concentrate, he saw Antoine turn and make his way toward the esplanade. Within thirty seconds he would be out of sight. “No, don’t bother. It’s okay. Thanks anyway.” Pushing back his chair and getting clumsily to his feet, he threw down a handful of change and left the café.
His previous train of thought had been prompted by the momentary glimpse of someone who’d reminded him of Antoine entering the newsagent across the road. It hadn’t occurred to Lawrence for a moment that it could actually be him.
But it was. Eleven years after leaving Cornwall and moving back to his native France, Antoine had returned.
With absolutely no idea why he was doing it, Lawrence began to follow him. Keeping close to the shop fronts, he prepared to duck inside one of them if Antoine happened to look around. His heart was thumping inside his chest at the subterfuge; he was like James Bond with dodgy knees and hypertension.
Antoine was undeniably looking well, though. He carried himself easily and had kept himself trim. How old was he now…in his early sixties? He’d always been a stylish dresser; not too many British men of that age could carry off a pale pink linen jacket worn with a dove-gray shirt and immaculately tailored dark trousers. He had also managed to hang on to his hair, which was combed back from his tanned face. Basically, he did look like Hollywood’s idea of a secret agent.
Lawrence, who was currently wearing an old checked shirt and faded navy corduroys, stopped in his tracks as Antoine, ahead of him, paused to take a phone from his jacket pocket and speak into it. Who was he talking to? What was he doing here, anyway? And had he remarried? Presumably, after this length of time, he had met someone else.
Lurking behind a revolving rack of postcards, Lawrence glimpsed his own reflection in the window of the shop currently sheltering him from view. He pulled his stomach in, as he always did when the sight of it caught him off guard. Then the phone call ended and Antoine was on his way again.
This time there were no more interruptions. Antoine walked the length of the esplanade. At the end, Lawrence expected him to turn to the right and take the path leading down to the beach. Either that or turn left and carry on up the road to the main parking lot.
But Antoine did neither. Instead he took the footpath beyond both those turnings—the one leading up to Mariscombe House.
What?
Why?
Bemused, Lawrence watched as he disappeared from view. When a minute had passed, he took out his own phone and speed-dialed the hotel.
“Hello, Mariscombe House, how can I help you?” It was the new girl, Tula; Dot liked her staff to know how to help out on reception.
“Tula, it’s Lawrence. Listen, has a man in a pink jacket just walked into the hotel?”
“Ooh, yes, he has. Would you like to speak to him? I can pass—”
“No,” Lawrence blurted out. “No, don’t say anything. I just wondered what he was doing there. Is he meeting someone, do you know?”
“Um, no idea. He’s on his own, as far as I can tell. He’s just going up to his room,” said Tula.
“Up to his room? You mean he’s booked in?” Lawrence hadn’t been expecting this. “Who with?”
“Hang on. Let me just check. He arrived last night.” He heard the sound of the computer mouse clicking as she searched for the information. “Ah yes, here we are. Mr. Beauvais, room seventeen. No one else with him,” said Tula. “On his own.”
“And how long’s he taken the room for?”
“A week.”
“Right. Okay.” Lawrence exhaled. “Thanks.”
Clearly keen to impress with her dazzling reception skills, Tula said cheerfully, “You’re very welcome! Anytime.”
Lawrence ended the call, then turned and headed back along the esplanade.
He wondered whether Dot knew Antoine was there.
Either way, he knew he definitely needed a drink.
***
They never really went away, but Antoine’s return brought the memories flooding back in Technicolor detail. When Aurora had broken the news to her husband that she’d fallen helplessly in love with someone else, he had—understandably, perhaps—not taken it well. As Aurora herself had freely admitted, anyone looking at the pair of them would assume that if one of them was going to leave the marriage, it would be Antoine. He was a composer, intelligent, handsome, and stylish, with a faint French accent that just made him that bit more irresistible to women. Lookswise, Aurora had been more ordinary, her way with clothes more haphazard. Their marriage had been happy, but she’d known the outside world considered her to be the lucky half of the partnership.
Antoine had been both devastated and furious. He’d come to Lawrence’s home and confronted him, stating quite plainly what he thought of him. He’d said, “I would like to kill you. The only reason I won’t do it is because I don’t want to go to prison. But trust me, I wish you would die.” He’d paused, then continued, “I think that’s the only thing that would make me happy. If you were dead.”
It hadn’t been a threat, simply the honest truth. And Lawrence couldn’t blame him. He’d tried to apologize, but Antoine wasn’t interested. He’d left the house, left St. Carys, left the UK, and returned to France.
Lawrence and Aurora had moved into a seafront flat in nearby Bude and prepared to spend the rest of their lives together; now that the hard part was out of the way, they were looking forward to some happiness.
And they were happy, even though the guilt at what they’d done was overwhelming, and they were aware that after causing so much pain and grief to Antoine and Dot, they didn’t deserve to be.
The happiness, however, lasted only seven weeks. Feeling tired and indescribably unwell, Aurora took herself off to the doctor’s office for an examination and blood tests. Within days, she’d been referred to the hospital for scans and X-rays. The diagnosis hit them like a meteor crashing out of the sky. Aurora was suffering from a form of cancer that had been busy metastasizing inside her body, silently spreading from its primary site in her left lung and invading her liver. Moreover, it was advancing at speed; this wasn’t the leisurely kind of cancer that gave you time to come to terms with it.
Exploratory surgery was carried out, but there was no possibility of a cure. Aurora had lost the battle even before the first symptoms had made themselves known. Weakened and unwell, she longed to live but knew it wasn’t going to happen. The happily ever after they’d looked forward to had been wrenched away, and not just for a while, either—for good.
The ensuing weeks had been the worst kind of nightmare. Lawrence felt as if he’d forgotten how to breathe. It was like being plunged underwater and never being allowed up for air. He genuinely couldn’t begin to imagine how the rest of the world was managing to carry on as if everything was still normal. He spent every possible minute at the hospital, at Aurora’s bedside, willing her to astound the doctors and get better. Aurora accepted her fate as the punishment she deserved for being the cause of so much misery.
“You didn’t make this happen,” Lawrence told her over and over again. “If we’d never met, you would still have become ill.”
“Would I?” Her face greenish-white against the pillows, Aurora shook her head. “You think that, but you don’t know for sure.”
Lawrence was no longer sure of anything. Aurora had irrevocably changed his life for the better, and now she was changing it for the very much worse. When she held his hand and said, “God, I bet you wish you’d never met me,” he was torn in half. Because this was the woman he loved more than anything, but just seven weeks of being together before the cancer had taken her captive… Well, it was a pretty rough deal. Seven weeks simply wasn’t long enough. He’d been happy with Dot. If he hadn’t met Aurora, it wasn’t as if he’d be miserable…
Shit, maybe
she was right and it was all a matter of karma, nature’s way of ensuring the sinners got their just deserts.
It was a salutary lesson for Lawrence. He’d always been a popular man, liked by all. But since abandoning equally popular Dot, he’d experienced the cold chill of disapproval from acquaintances and friends. And he’d completely understood that, accepted it as his due.
Now, though, it was almost unbearable knowing that although no one had said as much to his face, a lot of these same people would be feeling he’d gotten what he deserved, that maybe he understood how it felt to have your world ruthlessly torn apart.
As the weeks went by and Aurora’s condition worsened, the unthinkable ending drew nearer. In the end, the unthinkable became almost desirable, she was in so much pain. Antoine flew back from France and Lawrence waited outside the hospital while he visited his wife. Whatever passed between them remained private; Lawrence didn’t ask what had been said and Aurora didn’t tell him.
Was a Frenchman familiar with the expression schadenfreude? Either way, Lawrence recalled the look in Antoine’s eyes when his rival had wished him dead. Did Antoine remember that moment too?
And was the curse set to be all the more painful, with Aurora being the one to die and Lawrence himself left behind, forced to carry on without her?
She succumbed, finally, just two months after the initial diagnosis. Aurora was at peace, but for Lawrence the grief had only just begun. He hadn’t seen or been in contact with Dot, although she obviously knew what had happened; everyone in Bude and St. Carys did. And while there was sympathy for his situation, there were also still plenty of people who felt he’d been a foolish man who’d made a foolish decision and ended up—deservedly—managing to lose both the women in his life.
But time had passed and gradually he’d gotten over the worst of the grieving process. Eighteen months after Aurora’s death, Lawrence moved back to St. Carys. The week before Christmas, he bumped into Dot on the high street.
She looked thinner but was otherwise as elegantly dressed as ever, in a scarlet coat and gleaming navy boots. They were still officially married, but the third finger of her left hand was bare. Which was understandable.