‘You do know that we could all have been killed, don’t you, Miles?’
Miles shook his head slightly. ‘Michael didn’t want to see you dead. Only me. He wanted you, Alex and Grace to pay for it. He wanted you to suffer.’
‘Well I think we’ve all been doing enough of that for ourselves,’ said Sasha. ‘But Miles, you worked with the man for five years. How could you not have known?’
He glanced at the floor. ‘I’ve spent twenty years forgetting that night. I thought he was dead. I thought my father had got rid of the body.’
‘Is that why you hated each other?’ she asked softly.
His eyes flashed at her briefly, then he looked away again. ‘Is that what he told you?’
‘No,’ said Sasha. ‘We never talked about you.’
‘Well, it’s all in the past now. My father, Michael Marshall, the island, all of it.’
She looked at him. ‘Is it? We still left that boy for dead. Yes, it was twenty years ago, but you almost killed him that night.’
He stuck his chin out. ‘But I didn’t.’
‘Everything has a consequence, Miles.’
He blinked, longer than necessary, and when he opened his eyes, she thought she could see the shimmer of a tear.
‘I’m sorry, Sash.’
She looked at him and realised that she’d hated him for almost half her life. Hated him for his rejection of her on the island. Hated the power he had over the business by being their first backer. Hated his reaction after the death of Robert Ashford. And underpinning everything, she had hated him for the secret he had made Alex, Grace and herself carry for all these years. But of course the truth was they had carried it for themselves, not because Miles had made them. They had thought it would be easier to keep quiet, to let the memories fade, but they had been wrong. Dead wrong. Those memories had stayed with them, festering, spreading into their lives, colouring their decisions, changing the way they were. And now, at the other end of all that misery and heartbreak, Sasha found she drew no comfort from the ordeal Miles had just been through. It had always been her weakness; she wanted to please Miles. After all this time, she still wanted him to be happy. Not that he deserved it.
‘Actually, there’s one thing you can do for me, Miles.’
‘What is it?’
‘I know you put Assad up to buying my company. You can call it off.’
Miles bristled. ‘Simon is his own man,’ he said. ‘This is a business investment. It’s nothing to do with me.’
‘Miles, you’re lying.’
He looked thoughtful and then nodded. ‘I’ll have a word.’
‘Thank you. I appreciate it.’
There was a discreet cough behind them. ‘God, I can’t believe you’re actually talking business,’ said Philip, walking in with two drinks.
Miles stood up, hearing his cue to leave. ‘Remember, you two. If you want time out after all this, pick a hotel. Call me on my cell and I’ll sort it for you.’
‘Thanks, Miles,’ said Sasha. ‘I mean it.’
He looked at her quickly, then nodded and walked away.
Philip smiled into his Pepsi. ‘I leave you for two minutes and you’ve got Miles Ashford’s balls in a vice.’
‘I’m battered and bruised but I’m not brain-dead,’ she said, pulling herself slowly up on the pillow. ‘He was feeling weak. I used my moment to gain the commercial advantage.’
‘You never stop,’ he said, perching on the bed and taking her hand.
‘My hero.’ She grinned.
‘Is a mistress of the universe allowed a hero? I thought feminism had killed them off.’
‘We’re allowed to make an exception for heroes as cute as you.’ She held his hand and sighed. ‘Is it true I can leave hospital in a couple of hours?’
‘I think the doctor wants to take one last look at you and then you can be discharged.’
‘Then get me back to reality as soon as possible, wherever that is.’
Philip looked down into his drink. ‘Were you being serious about what you said at the hotel?’
‘Sorry, I’m a bit fuzzy about stuff at the moment. Which bit?’
‘What you said about that night at my flat. How you wished you had said yes.’
‘Phil, we’re in hospital. This isn’t the time to talk about that.’
She felt flustered. It must be the medication. Or the heat. She was Sasha Sinclair. Always in control. An independent woman in charge of her future. Except that when she thought about the future, she wasn’t entirely sure about anything any more. Whether she could keep her stake in Rivera. Whether she wanted to keep her stake, or whether she should sell up, ship out and take her considerable talent and fortune to a new business, a new challenge. The only thing about her future she felt sure of was that she wanted Phil Bettany in it, and that was what was scaring her the most. Not the crazed killer or the mercenary with his arm around her throat or the terrible consequences of that one dark night. No, what was scaring her was love.
A side door took Miles out on to a back street. He closed his eyes and inhaled the hot, dusty air. He was glad Sasha was all right; it had been important to him somehow. Now he just had to take care of Michael Marshall. Fraud. Attempted murder. Possibly a nice secure mental hospital would be the best place for him. Either way, Miles had wasted years of guilt on that boat boy. But now it was over. He would push the Fairmont deal through as fast as possible and bury the whole episode next to that non-existent body. He certainly knew he would never set foot on Angel Cay again. At the end of the alley, the main street looked bright and he walked towards it, stepping out into the sun feeling light, happy and back to full strength. Nothing like a gun to your head to pep you right up, he thought with a smile. No, he felt good. In fact, the last seven days was already beginning to feel like a simple irritation. That was the key to life. Let problems wash over you. And if they wouldn’t wash, screw ’em. There was always another deal to be done.
Grace sat on Catseye Beach, running the oyster white sand through her fingers as she stared out to sea. She was glad she had chosen to stay on Angel Cay once the police had left. Miles had volunteered to accompany them back to George Town to fill in the blanks, which everyone said was nice of him. Grace, however, knew her brother well enough to guess that he had an ulterior motive. He certainly wouldn’t want Michael Marshall – or whatever his name was – shooting his mouth off, telling his side of the story in open court. People would have to be paid off, ears whispered into, hands shaken. She laughed to herself. She could imagine her brother at the pearly gates, trying to cut a deal with St Peter. No, whatever happened, Miles would never change and there was actually something quite comforting about that. The island, however, would never be the same. The innocent, idyllic paradise of her youth was long gone, but at least they had found some peace again, which Grace wanted to enjoy one last time before it was finally sold.
Ahead of her, the clear waters stretched out towards the horizon and blended seamlessly with the sky, which was so cloudless and blue it was almost impossible to believe that yesterday a storm had circled the island. How fluid life was. How quickly things could change. She thought of the moment she had caught Julian with Olivia. And the phone call from Miles telling them a body had been found on Angel Cay. It had been like stepping on to rotten floor-boards and falling into a deep, dark well.
But that was life, wasn’t it? Things jolted you from your comfortable groove and put you on to a different track, but it wasn’t always a bad thing. She was free of her loveless relationship and she was back on the island she never thought she’d see again. Although the last twenty-four hours had been a surreal nightmare, it had been the most liberating time of her life. There would never be an absolute finality to what had happened on that hot summer night in 1990, because Grace knew she could never forgive herself for leaving the body. But there were plenty of positives in the situation. The boat boy wasn’t dead. Miles hadn’t killed him. Her father hadn’t covered anything up.
It was too late to mend that relationship, but life was full of possibilities. There was still time to work on Olivia – even Miles.
And then there was Alex. Squinting in the sun, she could see him waving at her as he came down the dusty track from the house. Giving him a lop-sided grin, she walked up the beach to meet him.
‘A plane is coming for us at four to take us to Nassau, which gives us an hour to kill. Where are you going to take me, Ashford?’
‘I know a lovely little rock over there. Very exclusive. Very you.’ She smiled.
‘Sounds good. Let’s walk.’
They ambled along the shoreline in the sun, Alex picking up pebbles and throwing them into the surf.
‘So are they going to be able to charge Michael and Carlton with anything?’
‘Miles will get the hottest lawyers on the planet to make sure they can pin something on them.’
‘Either that or make it all go away.’
Grace smiled. ‘Exactly what I was thinking.’
‘Imagine if Sasha hadn’t come and recognised that picture of Michael. Or should I say Bradley.’
‘I don’t want to imagine it,’ said Grace, shivering.
‘I hope Sasha is going to be OK.’
‘I’ve already called the hospital in Nassau and spoken to her. Sore, but fine. She’s a tough old bird.’
They rounded a headland on to another stretch of beach. The shore was littered with a trail of tiny white shells that crunched as they walked across them.
‘So you are coming back to mine when we get back to London?’ asked Alex. ‘That’s an invitation, by the way, not an ultimatum.’
‘I’m sorry for being such a pain, but I can’t go back to Toddington or the Spitalfields house and a hotel room feels too soul-destroying.’
‘You’re not a pain, Grace. You’re very welcome. And we’ll get it sorted.’
She puffed out her cheeks. ‘I’ve been trying to think of what I’m going to say to Olivia the next time I see her.’
‘So you’re going to see her?’
‘After everything that’s happened in the last twenty-four hours, it just seems like another thing I’ve got to do. Nothing feels too difficult.’
Alex looked at her sideways. ‘You know this island saw a lot of firsts for me. It was the first time I’d ever been somewhere so beautiful. The first time I’d had a perfect martini and tried oysters, even snorkelling . . .’ He paused. ‘And it was the first time I realised that people will disappoint you. That some people aren’t very nice. Some people will never be what you want them to be. Like Miles.’
‘Like Olivia?’
He nodded. ‘But maybe she’s young enough to change.’
‘And even if she doesn’t, she’s still my daughter. I’ll love her whatever happens.’
‘What about Julian?’
She snorted. ‘What about him?’
It was only then that Grace realised she had barely thought about him. It was Olivia’s treachery that had torn a hole in her heart, not the loss of Julian.
‘I’m not sure I ever really liked him. Let alone loved him.’
‘Then why were you with him so long?’
She wanted to remind him of something he had once told her about his own relationship with Melissa: how they were two people brought together by circumstance rather than compatibility. It had been exactly the same with herself and Julian. They had met the night she had found out that Alex was getting married, the day before her father had been killed in a car accident. She had needed him then; love hadn’t come into it. But she didn’t want to ruin the moment, to remind him of his own mistakes, so instead she just shrugged and said: ‘You know how it is.’
Alex smiled. ‘I do indeed.’
She looked at him and for the first time she noticed the lines on his forehead. They suited him. Experience and hard knocks had rubbed away his pin-up prettiness, but even so, he was still the most handsome man she had ever seen in her life. She felt a flutter in her stomach and suddenly she was twenty years old again, thinking of that letter he had sent her, signed off ‘Just Like Heaven’.
He was glancing at his watch as the sun started sloping down the sky. ‘We’d better head back.’
‘Just a bit further,’ she said, not wanting it to end. A line of dark rocks blocked their way and Alex put out his hand to help her across, but she slipped on some seaweed and he caught her as she stumbled, their faces just inches apart.
‘What’s so funny?’ she said, catching his smile. ‘You never seen a lady slip before?’
‘It’s not that,’ he said. ‘I was just remembering this spot.’
They were on North Point Beach. The very place they’d been skinny-dipping the night they’d found the body.
‘That night, right here,’ he said, ‘I was about to kiss you.’
And immediately Grace could remember it as if it had just happened. He had! He had held her hand to cross the rocks and she remembered feeling as if she never wanted him to let go.
‘The whim of a drunk, horny eighteen-year-old,’ she said, trying to make light of it.
‘Not really,’ he said, kicking some seaweed. ‘I just had a bit of a crush on you.’
Grace stopped and gaped at him. ‘You?’ she said with amazement. ‘You had a crush? On me?’
‘Don’t sound so surprised.’ He looked more like an awkward teenager than a thirty-something rock star.
‘But I am,’ said Grace. ‘I mean, that letter you sent me in Bristol, boasting about your sexual conquests at Danehurst, then copping off with Freya that night. I thought . . .’
Alex looked affronted. ‘I never copped off with Freya.’
She grinned. ‘I forgot. She was gagging for it but you beat her off with a stick. You were such a shy, retiring youth.’
‘I didn’t kiss her, because I wanted to kiss you,’ he said seriously, like it was the most important thing in the world.
Oh God, oh God, she thought. Her heart was hammering so loud she felt sure that he could hear it. The thought of what she wanted to do next, could do next, made her light-headed. We never really grow up, do we? The thought of two decades of wrong turns and missed opportunities ignited something inside her.
Just do it, Grace, she told herself as she stepped towards him, taking his face in her hands. And as their lips touched, his hand slipped behind her neck, pulling her in for a deep, warm, sweet kiss that seemed to stop time. Opening her eyes, she saw him look at her wide-eyed, his cheeks flushed with surprise and pleasure.
‘Why didn’t you do that twenty years ago?’
She breathed deeply, opening her heart, sharing his air. ‘If I’d have known it was going to be that good, I would have done.’
He wrapped her in his arms and spun her around, laughing.
‘I love you, Grace,’ he said. ‘I really do. And you know what? I think I always have.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘The timing was never quite right, was it? Here on the island. In Ibiza. You know I really wanted to kiss you in the nut-house but I thought better of it. You’d have called the nurses and told them to top up my meds.’
‘Better late than never.’ She smiled, kissing him again.
They began to walk back down the beach, hand in hand. He reached up to help her back across the rocks, but she paused, bending down to touch their warm surface.
‘What are you thinking?’ said Alex.
‘Oh, just about those little decisions that we don’t think are important at the time but which actually change our lives.’
‘You mean how different things might have turned out if I had kissed you right here? If we’d turned around and gone back to the house for a long last night in bed together?’
She nodded, her mind distracted for one split second away from the delicious thought of them in bed.
‘Well, we wouldn’t have found the body.’
‘I would have gone to the Royal Academy, maybe never ended up in a band.’
; ‘I wouldn’t have gone to Australia, I wouldn’t have met Gabriel. I might not have two children.’
‘Hey, Sasha might have married Miles.’
Grace puffed out her cheeks. ‘Doubt that.’ She smiled. ‘But we’ll never know.’
Above them, they heard a roar as the small aeroplane swooped over the beach and banked, heading towards the landing strip.
‘God, I wish I had kissed you that night,’ said Alex as they jumped down on to the sand together.
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