The Wedding Proposal

by Sue Moorcroft

  His voice was soft, sympathetic. ‘That’s bad. I had no idea.’

  ‘Why should you?’ The words hung in the air like the ghost of an accusation.

  ‘You’re right, why should I?’ His eyes began to glitter in the last of the light. Like the creek, they were black and shining, reflecting the lights in sparks of gold. ‘I didn’t know that much about you when we were together so why should I know anything about you since you left?’

  Brushing away the encroaching fug of fatigue, she climbed to her feet and began to stack the plates and the salad bowl. ‘You left.’

  She started towards the head of the steps but suddenly his hand was on her arm, hot, hard, as he swung her around. The plates spun from her hands and clattered to the deck, scattering scraps of lettuce and chopped peppers.

  ‘I left?’ he barked. ‘You were the one who cleared her things—’

  She yanked her forearm free from the crackle of his touch. ‘You left the relationship. I left the house because it was yours and once you’d ended things I could hardly stay, could I?’

  As he began to speak, she lifted her hands, weariness pinching at her tear ducts until she was frightened that they’d overflow. She was suddenly desperate not to cry in front of him. ‘Let’s not argue, Lucas. We’ve both moved on. Let’s not allow bad memories in. They’ll rock the boat.’ She forced a smile to support her feeble joke. He didn’t smile at all.

  Chapter Seven

  As soon as she arrived at the centre the next morning, Elle made it her business to find Joseph. He was at his desk, sighing over a haphazard heap of paperwork, and looked pleased to have an excuse to turn away.

  ‘Everything OK for your first computer room session this morning? Do you need anything? Are you nervous?’

  Elle waved the nervousness idea away. She’d run large team meetings and presented in front of hundreds at seminars. Eight or so teenagers shouldn’t hold too many challenges. ‘Just thinking about the issue of anybody being able to download anything they pleased. I’ll make it impossible to use the computers without logging in with an individual user name. I’ll also make it impossible to save to the hard drive of the computer they’re using, only to a common storage area I’ve made. Space will be limited and everyone will be able to see everyone else’s files.’

  Joseph frowned. ‘Should the other volunteers be admins, too?’

  Elle hesitated. ‘It could have been anyone who misused the computer access.’ She let the thought sink in.

  ‘I see.’ Joseph tapped on his desk. Rubbing his eyes behind his glasses, he sighed. ‘Proceed as you suggest, please. We need everything here to be correct.’

  The morning passed quickly. Twelve turned up for the workshop and Elle issued their usernames. As Joseph had indicated, the kids were liberal with the term ‘drop in’ and she noticed that most of those who showed were male. Curiosity about the blonde Englishwoman might have motivated their attendance.

  But as she was there to aid computer literacy and she saw Microsoft Word as fundamental to that, she ignored the nudges and sly grins and plunged into her workshop on the functions of the Styles menu – a feature generally underused, in her view.

  ‘Losing your way around a long document’s frustrating, can muddle your information and wastes time. Most employers don’t like wasted time.’ Her fingers flew over the keyboard as she began her demonstration. Most of her workshops would be demonstration-based because English might be one of the official languages of Malta but it wasn’t always the first language of the Maltese. It was a lot easier to show than to tell.

  She’d prepared a mock document, ten pages of sample text interspersed with headings and subheadings. She got the kids on the machines, attempting to pair those who seemed less confident in their English with someone proficient.

  It would have been useful to link her iPad to the Wi-Fi at the centre and have translation software permanently open as she worked, every computer being in use. But she’d ended her tablet contract with her UK provider and had stowed it safely in her case in the lazarette, not anticipating having a use for something that had previously been only a business tool. It wasn’t as if she intended to spread her new life all over Facebook and Twitter.

  That was how Ricky had found her last time.

  Via enthusiastic demonstration, she got the kids to designate headings so that they appeared in the easy-to-navigate document map, changing the font and style of each type of heading to suit their own choices. Then they set about adding sub-headings, lists and tables, which kept her busy whizzing from machine to machine until the workshop ended, at one.

  It was only when she started back down through the streets that she let herself think about what was likely to greet her at the boat – the evening before had ended in silence and Elle leaving Lucas to clear up the spilled food on the deck. Maybe the intimacy of eating together had been too much to ask of the fragile truce between them. They should have kept their respective distances rather than trying to pretend that ex-lovers make good friends.

  This morning, she’d found that the dishes had been put away, neat and clean. There had been no sign of Lucas. His cabin door had been closed and the boat silent. The gangplank wasn’t in place but as he often just jumped between boat and shore, that didn’t mean he hadn’t left for work. Rather than lean out to grab the cord on the gangplank and heave it into place, she’d taken a deep breath, gathered her legs beneath her and tried the jump herself. Landing safely on the quayside had brought her a sense of achievement and a stubbed toe.

  By the time she returned to the Shady Lady she was worn down by the heat. She gazed at the cool sea longingly. It was bad marina etiquette to swim near the boats, and dangerous, but she couldn’t believe that she hadn’t yet swum in the Mediterranean in the five days she’d been in Malta.

  It would be remedied on Sunday, she determined, braving the jump from quayside to bathing platform to prove to herself that the first time hadn’t been a fluke, and stepping up into the cockpit to unlock the boat.

  She made a fast change of clothes, diving into a lukewarm shower, welcoming the chance to cool her blood. She’d be overheated again by the time she reached Seadancer but even a brief respite was welcome.

  Loz was waiting for her when she arrived at the larger motor yacht, eyes hidden behind massive sunglasses. ‘Don’t bother coming on board,’ she called. ‘You and I are going straight off to do lots of lovely shopping and then Davie’s going to come along with a taxi and haul everything home. You’re still OK to hand round nibbles at the party, aren’t you?’

  ‘Of course,’ Elle agreed, brightly. The party meant that she’d be away from Lucas for the evening.

  A big turquoise bus picked them up from the far side of the road behind the gardens and deposited them fifteen minutes later in Sliema, leaving only a few yards to walk to a supermarket that was set back from the main road, a ground floor with a further two floors beneath.

  The novelty of shopping in a foreign country still high, Elle enjoyed buying salad stuff and nibbles, two cooked chickens, various cooked meats, cheeses, and an armful of fruit.

  ‘Get the blood oranges,’ Loz urged, wandering along behind the plastic shopping trolley as Elle pushed. ‘It’s such fun that they’re red instead of orange. And figs, but don’t waste them in a fruit salad. They’re gorgeous with ice cream and a drizzle of honey.’

  After a hot taxi journey back to the marina, Elle was thankful for the galley air conditioning as she helped Loz chop and wash, unwrap and arrange. It was nearly seven when Elle arrived back at the Shady Lady.

  Lucas was sitting on the cockpit seat at the back of the boat, reading. He looked up with a polite ‘Hello’ and returned to his e-reader.

  Elle responded with an equally neutral greeting and went through to her cabin to take another shower. She dried her hair with the hairdryer set on cold, sitting on
her cabin floor, then changed into a green sundress, which was only slightly crumpled from being squashed into the wardrobe. Loz had said her evening’s duties were to hand round the nibbles, get drinks and clear glasses and Elle thought the neat but pretty dress suitable for what the help would wear at a party on a yacht. Not that she’d ever been to a party on a yacht, much less been ‘the help’. Nobody who’d known her from her old life of suits and briefcases, office politics and sweated-for performance bonuses would have pictured her in such a role. They knew the Elle for whom a redundancy notice had felt like the end of the world, plunging her into icy fear that she’d never be able to get another job like that.

  Then she’d realised that she didn’t actually want another job like that.

  Status and salary had come with a hefty price tag in terms of commitment, stress and lifestyle. When had she last passed a weekend without looking at her e-mails? Or rung her line manager on Monday morning and said carelessly that she was taking a couple of days’ holiday? The line manager had barked in outrage but Elle hadn’t cared. Her concern was what she’d like her future to look like. A new life.

  In this new life she had to be careful with money for the first time in years but it was worth it. Even with Lucas inconveniently turning up in it.

  After applying make-up and putting up her hair it was nearly eight and time to leave. She tucked her key in a small pocket in her dress and skipped back up the steps to the saloon and out into the cockpit, where Lucas still sat, one ankle across the other knee, his e-reader balanced against his calf.

  ‘Bye.’ She brushed past his seat and balanced her way neatly across the gangplank, which was back in place.

  He stood up. ‘Hang on.’

  She paused as he stowed the e-reader inside the saloon, locked up, crossed the ever-shifting gap between boat and shore and hauled back the gangplank. ‘What?’ She felt too aware of him and she so didn’t want to talk over what had happened last night. That can of worms was a wriggling mess best left securely shut.

  ‘We might as well go together.’

  ‘Go?’

  ‘To Loz’s party.’ He held up a bottle of red wine.

  Elle’s surge of dismay, as she realised that cool black cargo shorts had replaced his usual denim cut-offs and his bare feet had been pushed into deck shoes, was like standing on one boat when the wake of another passed beneath. ‘Loz invited you, but then—’

  ‘—you outed me as your ex, Loz went all quiet and Davie began to send me suspicious looks,’ he finished, calmly. ‘But they didn’t uninvite me.’ He stuck his hand in his pocket. ‘So we might as well walk along together.’

  ‘Shit,’ she said, succinctly, as she turned and headed for Seadancer.

  Lucas lengthened his stride to keep up with Elle. She stared straight ahead, outrage in her every line.

  He had to hide a smile. Elle, so full of secrets, was annoyed that he hadn’t told her he’d decided to take up the invitation to the party.

  Today had been his rest day and he’d been fidgety. Reluctant to hang around the boat, he’d walked into Sliema, then up Tower Road to Ghar id-Dud, where steps led down onto the rocky foreshore that was strewn with tourists like sausages on a giant barbecue.

  He loved strolling across the rocks, pausing to look into the pools where hermit crabs picked their way from nook to cranny. When the glare of the sun began to make his head ache, he threw off his T-shirt and dived into the waves, first shaking off his fidgets with a fast crawl, then floating on his back and watching the occasional clouds in the intense blue sky.

  After, with no towel or change of clothes, he let the sun dry him, his mind absently circling the conundrum that was Elle.

  For his sanity, he had to put her behind him – easier said than done when they were trapped together on the boat and, whether she was hot and tired or freshly groomed, she looked fantastic.

  Life would be easier if he had no burning need to understand what went on in her head. It was as if he’d put down a cryptic crossword with the last few clues unsolved, the necessity to know the answers gnawing at him. He wished that satisfaction were as simple as buying the next day’s paper and turning to the solution.

  He was pretty sure that allowing Elle to put distance between them as she had last night wasn’t the way to satisfy his curiosity. But spending more time with her? That might do it. He might gain her confidence.

  Failing that, he might just irritate the answers out of her.

  Just striding along beside her now seemed to be giving him a head start in the irritation stakes.

  They reached the Seadancer and Elle marched up the gangplank ahead of Lucas and halted on the deck. ‘I suppose I’d better show you through to the saloon.’

  ‘Or I could find my own way.’ Her dress blew against her, neat and plain. Pale lemon bra straps peeked out beside its green fabric. When she’d worn the corporate plumage of a plain and sober suit she’d often compensated with satin and lace underwear in wild colours. It had been one of his little treats to discover the colours of the day. He wondered whether her knickers matched her bra, which, in his experience of women, indicated plans to show the underwear off. The thought tingled through him.

  She sighed. ‘No. I’m here to help with the guests, and you’re a guest. Come on.’

  He followed. He’d normally leap at a chance to look around a yacht this size but today his attention was all on the rear view of Elle. Her hair, plaited down the back of her head, dangled between her shoulder blades and pointed down at her behind as if inviting him to check it out. Nice.

  ‘Here’s Lucas,’ she announced as she preceded him into a spacious saloon with its doors to the foredeck flung open. He tore his gaze from her behind. Only a couple of guests had so far arrived and Davie was helping them to champagne in tall frosted flutes.

  ‘Oh.’ Loz bit her lip.

  ‘Right.’ Davie’s hand halted in mid-air.

  Lucas tried to charm them out of their obvious dismay. ‘Thanks again for the invitation. I couldn’t resist the temptation to see your fantastic yacht. I hope you don’t mind that I’m one of the first but I thought I might as well walk along with Elle.’

  Elle turned her back on him. ‘Do you want me in the galley, Loz?’

  ‘Have a glass of bubbles first. Nothing for you to do, yet.’ Davie put a glass in her hand, lifting his own to clink with her. Then, making it an obvious afterthought, added, ‘Champagne for you, Lucas?’

  ‘Great.’ Once the glass was in his hand he found himself looking at three turned backs, Elle’s, Loz’s and Davie’s. The charm wasn’t working.

  So maybe being irritating was more his forte. He crossed to the other guests, hovering on the steps between the saloon and the foredeck. ‘I’m Lucas Rose. I live with Elle.’

  ‘Did you think you were funny, tonight, telling people that we’re living together?’ Elle led the march back under the lamps along the deserted quayside to the Shady Lady. Behind them the party was still going, but the eating and the heaviest of the drinking had wound down. Having cleared everything she could and left the dishwasher empty in case Loz and Davie were tempted to reload, Elle had called it a night at midnight. She was working at Nicholas Centre in the morning.

  Lucas dug his hands in his pockets. ‘But we are living together.’

  ‘We’re sharing. That’s not the same as “living together”.’

  ‘But it’s what you told that Oscar dude.’

  ‘Purely an Oscar-avoidance tactic, as you know very well.’

  ‘So we should only be honest when it’s convenient?’

  She glared at his profile. ‘You and the Great God Honesty.’

  ‘There are worse gods. Especially when honesty is not a convenience but a principle.’

  Elle knew that she’d never win any argument with Lucas that centred on honesty.
It was bad enough to have to acknowledge to herself that, in a way, all his old suspicions of her truthfulness were justified.

  For a mad second she almost gave in to the urge to confess, to explain, to blurt out the total truth. Ricky’s power to hurt had surely begun to wane. He was unlikely to find her here.

  Then she thought of Lucas’s girlfriend and realised that confession would be pointless. He could believe every word and still say, ‘Good to know. But it’s so long ago and we’re over. Doesn’t really matter now, does it?’

  Worse, what if he didn’t believe her? He’d hate her all over again. She wasn’t sure she could survive him thinking worse of her than he already did.

  ‘It’s not as if you were ever that easy to live with,’ she muttered crossly and inconsequentially.

  Lucas said, ‘Ow!’ and clutched theatrically at his heart.

  Elle tried not to laugh, taking a long, deep breath and consciously slowing her steps so that she could enjoy the Maltese night. Gżira Gardens was a study of moonlight and shadows. The road, for once, was quiet, the few passing cars all but drowned out by the drone of insects from the twisted and stunted pines.

  ‘Those buzzy things make a lot of noise.’ Elle peered into the shadowy trees.

  Lucas had slowed his steps to match hers. ‘Cicadas. The males make that noise flexing their abs, according to Simon.’

  ‘Impressive.’ She couldn’t spot any ab-flexing cidadas in the trees. Maybe they were watching the moths dancing in the halos around the street lamps. With a yawn, she resumed her course for the Shady Lady.

  Lucas positioned the gangplank, standing back in an invitation for her to precede him. ‘Loz kept looking at me tonight as if waiting for me to do something evil.’

  ‘Make me cry,’ Elle supplied, stepping aboard. For the first time since Elle had arrived, the Shady Lady was restless at her moorings. The other boats along the marina were the same, like huge dogs pulling on their leads. Elle paused to watch as Lucas checked the fenders and the lines. ‘She cornered me in the galley and asked if it was likely.’