by KE Payne
“Some things are hard to forget.” Ash slipped her thumbs through the strap of her rucksack again. “What you did is hard to forget.”
“And if I had my time again I would never have done it,” Nat implored. “I’ve gone over and over it in my head and I wish I could change what I did, but I can’t.” She came closer to Ash. “I can’t change the past, can I? All I can do is tell you how I feel about you and tell you I’ll never do anything to hurt you again.”
Ash sensed frustration from Nat. Well, tough. Nat couldn’t swan back in her life, and then think they could pick up where they’d left off all those years ago.
“I’m a different person to what I was then.” Nat pulled Ash’s hand from the strap of her rucksack and held it again. “I don’t have my father breathing down my neck, telling me what I can or can’t do. I’m free. For the first time in my life, I’m free.”
“Can you hear yourself?” Ash wrenched her hand away. “You managed okay all those years ago, didn’t you? Managed without me then.”
“Who says I managed?”
“And whose fault it that?” Ash asked. “Answer me that. We had everything we could have ever wished for but you were too cowed by your parents to stand up for this beautiful, amazing relationship you had.”
“But I’m not afraid any more,” Nat said. “Finally I know what I really want.”
Ash’s mind tailspinned. They could make this work. They could. Nat could stay in England and forget about Belfast and…
“How can I ever believe anything you say to me?” Ash asked quietly, staring down at her feet as if they held the answer to all her questions. “How can you even ask me to try?”
“You’ve felt the tension between us, surely?” Nat asked slowly. “Every time we’re together. Each time our eyes meet. There’s still a chemistry there, Ash. You know it, I know it.”
“Do you know how long it took me to get over you?” Ash snapped her head back up. “Years. I spent years trying to convince myself that I was okay. That you finishing with me hadn’t screwed me up.” She glared at her. “I stumbled around Europe, too afraid to come back to London because that was where all the bad memories were,” she said. “Then when I finally found the courage to return, all I wanted to do was hide myself in a small corner of England where I knew no one knew me.” Ash felt her face flaming. “That was all down to you. So while you were swanning around London, climbing the greasy pole with the help of some bloke you didn’t even really like, I was hiding away finally trying to make something of my life.”
The hurt on Nat’s face was deeply satisfying.
“So when you tell me you still have feelings for me,” Ash said, “you can kind of understand why I’d be sceptical. Wouldn’t you?” She stepped back, suddenly weary.
“So why did you want to kiss me when we were on Wimbledon Common?” Nat asked quietly. “I know you wanted to, just as much as I wanted to kiss you.”
Ash’s insides flipped over. “Don’t.” Ash’s voice was quiet. “Don’t do this.”
It was all so impossible. How could they ever have a future when Ash knew that the past still haunted them? They could try but Ash knew deep down all the old bitterness and regret that had corroded and stultified and eventually ended their friendship would eventually return.
“I love you.”
“I said, don’t.”
“It’s true, Ash,” Nat said, capturing Ash’s hands again. “I can’t keep kidding myself. I love you and I know you feel the same way about me.”
Pain burned in Ash’s chest.
“You’ll hurt me again,” Ash said, hating the words that came out of her mouth. “I can’t risk that.”
Ash held Nat’s gaze. She was everything Ash had ever wanted in someone: adorable, funny, generous, beautiful. She loved her. She’d never stopped loving her. The only thing hiding herself away in Europe had done was numb the pain of losing her. Now that Nat was standing in front of her, telling her she still had feelings for her, was Ash prepared to lose her all over again? All she had to do was tell Nat she loved her too, and maybe they could work something out.
Ash remained calm and rational. “I can’t, Nat,” she finally heard herself say. “I just can’t risk falling in love with you again.”
Finally, Nat released Ash’s hands. Knowing there was nothing more her racing heart would allow her to say, Ash turned and hastened to her train without so much as a backward glance.
Chapter Fourteen
Nat stared down at the small granite tablet with the ornate white engraved writing and sighed. Anyone could tell it was new, placed there just that morning. After so many people had attended Livvy’s funeral, Livvy’s mother had been adamant she just wanted a quiet family interment. Livvy’s friends had granted her that wish.
Nat wasn’t sure what it was that had compelled her to visit Livvy’s ashes so soon. When she’d heard the tablet was in place, she’d determined to leave it awhile before visiting it, but she’d woken the day after Ash’s departure from London feeling so low, she knew the only person she could talk to was Livvy.
The flowers Nat had brought her were perfect, she thought. Well, it was more of a pot plant than flowers, but then Livvy had always liked cyclamen, so Nat had thought it fitting. As Nat crouched and nestled the pot next to the small posy of flowers laid down by Judy and Chloe, her thoughts drifted to the day before. She glanced around the small church graveyard, making sure she was alone, then, feeling slightly self-conscious, spoke quietly.
“So what do I do?” Nat settled herself down on the grass. She pulled her knees up closer and hugged them. “About this whole situation?”
She looked about her again, convinced someone would hear. The graveyard was empty.
Nat stared down at the tablet, choosing her words. “I only saw her yesterday, you know. Ash. But I miss her already. There. I said it, Liv. I miss her already.” The inevitability of it sat in her stomach like a rock. “Want to hear a secret?” She looked about her again, then spoke. “I feel like I need to be near her again, sort of, all the time, you know? Just like before.” Nat frowned. “We can spend hours together but the second she’s gone, I miss her.” And missed her like crazy. “Which is all a bit silly really, considering I thought I’d buried my feelings for her away so deep I’d have to get a JCB digger to find them again.”
Perhaps not.
“You know what this all means, of course. It means I still love her.” Nat stared down at the stone. “Yes, I know, I know,” she said. “I know what you’re going to say.” She lifted her head and looked out across the churchyard. “Why did we never tell you we were together all those years ago?” Nat sighed. “Maybe we should have done. But I suppose we both just got to a point when it seemed too late to tell anyone.” She picked a blade of grass and rubbed it between her finger and thumb. “Then all that stuff happened”—Nat flicked her hand—“and Ash left, and…”
And what? Nat wasn’t sure. All she knew was, at the time, she’d had no desire to confess to Livvy that she was responsible for it all. Nor in the years later, either, when the secret dragged on.
“I guess this is my punishment, hey?” Nat said. “Wanting her, and knowing she’ll never want me again.”
The yew trees in the churchyard were groaning with berries, their distinctive, sharp odour filling the air. Summer was still clinging on by its fingertips, but Nat knew within the next few weeks, once they were properly into November, autumn would make its presence well and truly felt.
November.
Nat’s stomach balled.
November meant just one thing: a decision about Belfast, looming ever closer, bringing with it increasing and unwanted feelings of fear. The excitement and anticipation of starting over somewhere new had gone, to be replaced with reluctance and panic. Only a few weeks before, Nat had been making plans, not knowing that Ash would appear just around the corner and make her question everything that had seemed so clear to her.
“It’s not a surprise, you kn
ow,” she said aloud. “Falling for Ash. I should have known the moment I set eyes on her again it would happen. I suppose it’s not like I ever really stopped loving her.” Nat sighed. “But of course nothing is ever going to happen, is it?” she said. “Between me and Ash, I mean.”
Hadn’t Ash made that abundantly clear at Paddington?
“So it seems moving to Belfast is the best thing I can do,” Nat said, “for both of us.” She thought for a moment. “Well, for Ash anyway. I’m not so sure about me.” At the unwanted sharp prick of tears, Nat roughly swiped at her eyes. “Not that she cares either way.”
A dog barking somewhere in the distance lifted Nat’s attention away from her tears. She gazed out across the churchyard, expecting to see someone, but instead saw a pair of male blackbirds sparring with one another, each keen to hold on to his own territory.
“But I want it to, Liv.” Nat turned back to the granite tablet. “I want it to matter to her.” She pulled her hands through her hair. “Yes, I know I’ve only got myself to blame and I know it’s all too late.” She dusted an ant from the tablet. “But I can’t stop myself from feeling how I feel, can I?”
Nat looked down, irritated to see another ant attempting to cross Livvy’s tablet. She brushed it away, thinking how lovely it would be if humans could brush away their thoughts with such ease.
“You know she went home yesterday?” Nat said. She lifted her face to the waning sunshine. “And now I’m counting the hours until I see her again.” Her laugh was hollow. “Even though I was thinking of making up some excuse so I wouldn’t have to go down to Cornwall on Sunday.” Nat glanced back at the tablet, then held up her hands. “I won’t, don’t worry. I’ll go and I’ll make it through the next week, then leave and we can both go back to living our individual lives again.” She hauled herself to her feet, brushing debris from her trousers. “I’ll accept the job in Belfast and all this”—she spread her arms out—“will be history.” She turned to go, casting one final look down to the tablet, the heaviness in her chest returning. “Just like Ash will be.”
❖
The boat was annoying Ash. The boat never annoyed her though. In fact, Ash often thought that Doris the fifteen-foot boat was the only thing that kept her sane—but not today.
Ash sat in her small bridge, feeling the hull rock back and forth as her passengers, aided by Gabe, stepped inside. The air inside the bridge was stale and thick with the smell of diesel, a smell which Ash could usually ignore. Today, though, it was making her feel nauseous, which only added to her displeasure. She tossed a look back over her shoulder to her passengers, a small group of eight men and two women. Perhaps it was the passengers, rather than Doris, that were irritating her. They’d never bothered her before, but then, before she’d not had so much to think about. She’d done a great job of putting Nat to the back of her mind over the past few days, forgetting everything they’d said to one another at Paddington, but now, with just a calm stretch of water in front of her and no distractions, Nat and her declarations of love were creeping back into her thoughts. Ash looked out of her side window, to beyond the harbour and out to the sea expanding endlessly towards a shimmering horizon. She sighed. Perhaps the incessant chattering was interrupting her train of thought, and that’s why she was so edgy. The same train that kept storming up to London and back to Nat at a hundred miles an hour.
“All in.” Gabe appeared at her side. “Harbour guys say we’re good to go.”
Ash nodded, throttling the engine so it gave out a roar. At Gabe’s tap on her shoulder, she eased out of the harbour and made her way out between a line of bright orange buoys bobbing in the water. The chattering behind her increased now that the boat was on its way, audible even over the sound of the engine. Most of the summer tourists had now long gone, to be replaced by various groups who liked to hire the boat—and Ash and Gabe’s services—for an afternoon out at sea. Today it was a photography group from the next town, hoping desperately to see an obliging seal or, even better, a whale or basking shark.
Ash and Gabe often played a game on these particular trips: pretending that sightings were rare, then enjoying seeing and hearing their passengers’ reactions when a creature was spotted. The truth was, Ash knew exactly where to take her passengers for a guaranteed view, and just the right things to tell them. The passengers, grateful at the glut of sightings, were always more than generous with their tips when they eventually returned to the harbour and left the boat.
Ash smiled to herself as her boat slapped and bobbed over the waves. While the business allowed her to live comfortably, the tips afforded her the odd luxury, such as replacement parts for her battered truck. Ash looked back over her shoulder to the happy faces of her passengers. Perhaps today the seals would put on an extra-special performance and her much-needed cam belt could become a reality.
As the boat finally settled into a steady rhythm, Ash’s mind slotted itself back into its familiar pattern of Nat thoughts. She heard Gabe’s low voice rumbling somewhere behind her as he talked to their passengers, leaving Ash free to reflect in peace. Nat would like it here, Ash was sure. She stared out over the nodding horizon and determined that one of the first things she would do when Nat and Chloe arrived on Sunday would be to fulfil her promise of taking them out on the boat.
The familiar shadow of apprehension flickered in Ash’s stomach. What would Nat really make of Ash’s life down here? Her eyes automatically fell to her clothes, grubby from work, and to her hands, tanned but weather-beaten. Ash fisted her hand, then turned it over and splayed out her fingers, frowning at the obvious roughness on her palm. Nat’s hands were perfect. As were her clothes. She’d only seen Ash out of context, clean, not weather-beaten, and certainly not smelling of boat diesel.
The sense of failure, never far away, shimmered under the surface.
“Nice and calm today.” Gabe flopped down in the seat next to Ash. “Think we’ll see Old Bruce?”
“Most definitely.” Ash grinned, glad he’d interrupted her thoughts. Old Bruce was the name of one particularly grizzled bull seal who liked to droop himself over the rocks and glare at them as their boat came closer to his colony. Ash and Gabe were never sure whether he saw them as a threat to his seal harem, or whether he objected to the flash of a dozen cameras in his face. It was possibly both.
“Gabe?” Ash asked.
“Mm-hmm.”
“Do I smell of diesel?” Ash whipped off her beanie and leaned closer to him.
Gabe sniffed.
“No,” he said. “Why on earth would you ask me that?”
“I don’t want…” Her brow furrowed. What didn’t she want? For Nat to think of her differently when she saw her in her home environment? “I don’t want to smell, that’s all.”
“Are you worried about Nat?”
Ash threw him a look. The guy was a mind reader.
“No.” She paused. “Yes.”
“Because despite you constantly denying it,” Gabe said, “you care what she thinks.”
“Only because I want her to see that I’ve done okay for myself,” Ash replied, wishing she could tell Gabe the truth, but not knowing quite where to start. How could she tell Gabe that the woman she’d spent years alternately telling him she loved, she hated, she loved, had found herself into her heart again? Ash dipped her head to look out of the window as a seagull flew precariously close to the boat. “And I want her to know I haven’t spent the last sixteen years or so pining away for her,” she added.
“Even though you sort of have?”
Ash looked down at Gabe’s hand on her leg.
“It’s been my choice to be alone all these years,” she said. “Anyway, no one would have ever wanted to be with someone who lives in a ramshackle old cottage with a stinking Labrador, and who spends half her life on a boat.” She gave a light laugh, one that masked her disquiet.
“Nat will love it here.” Gabe stood as the boat slowed on its approach to the rocks. “And if she doesn’t,” he s
aid, “she’ll have me to answer to.”
“I…”
A loud caw from another passing seagull right next to the boat drew their attention away from each other briefly. They both watched it in silence as it wheeled overhead, before finally becoming a white dot in the distance.
“You think they’re okay back there?” Gabe asked, looking behind him.
Ash followed his look. Her passengers were in their own worlds, snapping photographs from the side of the boat, and talking amongst themselves.
“They’re fine,” Ash said. “Gabe?”
“Mm?”
“You are right about Nat.” Ash didn’t meet his look.
“That you care for her?”
Ash nodded. “I can’t stop thinking about her.” She let out a sigh. “She told me yesterday she still loves me too.”
“Ah.”
“Yes. Ah.”
“I’m guessing, knowing how stubborn you are, that you’ve not told her how you feel,” Gabe said. “Even though you know how she feels about you.”
“No.” Ash shook her head. “I have a hard enough time admitting it to myself.”
“So you’re going to have to see her again,” Gabe said, “knowing you like her, and she likes you, but you’re not going to do anything about any of it?”
“Looks that way.” Ash gazed out of her window. “Because I’m here, she’s there, and it didn’t work sixteen years ago, so it’s not going to work now.” Ash cut the engine as her boat approached a bed of seal-covered rocks. She stood, expertly negotiating the boat through the rocks towards the waiting seals. “And because, as I told her yesterday, there’s a good chance she’d do to me what she did all those years ago”—the boat slowed to a stop alongside the rocks and she moved from her wheel and placed a hand on Gabe’s shoulder—“that thought alone will be enough to keep me from ever admitting my feelings to either of us.”
❖
“Natalie.”
Nat allowed the embrace to last no more than two seconds before she pulled away. She’d never been particularly tactile, although, she thought with a hidden smile, it had never been a problem with Ash, and certainly not at Paddington two days before. And Jack Greene, the cardiologist at St. Bart’s who’d taught her everything she knew, certainly wasn’t one to be too overly touchy-feely with.