‘If Alex were here now and could see how much that poor woman wants to find her brother, he’d want to help. No way would he stand in the way of a reunion.’
‘I don’t know, Tobe – what if I’m wrong about Joe?’
‘If you are, then it’s no harm done.’
The door from the stairwell opened then and Angela came back towards them, a phone charger clasped in her hand. As she neared the table, Toby threw Kate a meaningful stare.
‘Tell her,’ he said.
Angela froze. ‘Tell me what?’
‘If you don’t, then I will.’
Kate took a deep breath, her eyes flickering from her brother’s firm gaze to Angela’s desperate one.
‘Please,’ she begged. ‘This is the first solid lead on Josh I’ve had in over ten years. If you know something, you have to tell me.’
‘It might be nothing,’ Kate warned. ‘I could be mistaken.’
But as much as she did not want to get Alex into any kind of trouble with his friend, Kate couldn’t ignore the plight of this poor woman, her large dark eyes spilling over with tremulous tears and her clothing creased from the long flight – the one she’d booked the moment she’d received the merest hint of news about her brother.
Toby was right; they all had a duty to help.
‘There is someone in Hvar who knows a Josh,’ she said. ‘And I can take you to him.’
Chapter 52
It was with conflicting emotions that Kate led Angela towards the harbour later that evening. Having been convinced not to let Alex know in advance that she was bringing someone to meet him, she couldn’t stop worrying about how he would react.
She and Alex were finally in a positive place and the first thing she’d done was go behind his back. How would he respond when confronted by Angela and all her questions? What Kate should have done was keep her suspicions to herself until she’d had the chance to ask him for more information on Josh. If she was mistaken and Joe was not Angela’s missing brother after all, then she would have abused Alex’s trust and raised Angela’s hopes for nothing.
But it was too late now; she had no choice but to see it through.
Alex had sent her a text not long ago: Podrum is booked. See you there in an hour. P.S. I have something to show you that I think you’ll like . . .
She’d hated having to reply with a simple, Can’t wait! It felt like she was hoodwinking him.
Angela was silent beside Kate, but feeling her gaze, she turned and smiled shyly.
‘Thank you again,’ she said. ‘For doing this. I know I’m asking a lot of you.’
‘You’re not,’ Kate assured her. ‘And Alex is a good man. If he can help you, he will.’
‘This all feels so surreal,’ Angela went on. ‘Nothing has happened for so long, no news, no word, no hope whatsoever – and suddenly here I am, on my way to meet someone who might actually know where Josh is. It doesn’t feel real. I keep waiting for a camera crew to burst out from behind one of these plant pots and tell me it’s all been a big joke.’
‘I imagine there isn’t much about this situation you can find to laugh about?’ Kate replied, and Angela bit her lip.
‘No,’ she agreed. ‘In the beginning, I kept thinking he would come back. Show up on the doorstep one day as if nothing had happened. I told myself that if he did, I wouldn’t even ask him where he’d been, I would simply welcome him back, be thankful that he was alive.’
Her voice had caught as she said the last, and Kate waited for a few moments before she spoke again.
‘I can’t even begin to imagine what you’ve been through,’ she said. ‘What you’re still going through. The article moved me; the way you talked about your brother and the things you said to him in that letter were so raw and honest. You must be extremely brave.’
‘No.’ Angela’s dark hair fell across her face as she dropped her chin towards her chest. ‘Not brave at all – quite the opposite. If I’d been braver, then Josh might never have left. If I’d been less selfish, perhaps . . .’ She trailed off, and Kate stepped ahead of her as they passed through a narrow lane overhung with lime trees.
‘If there’s one thing I have learnt this summer, it’s that people are responsible for their own actions,’ Kate told her. ‘Whatever happened to make your brother leave home, it was his decision to do so. The responsibility lies with him, not you.’
Angela nodded, but she did not look convinced. ‘I have to know the truth, though,’ she said. ‘Even if the news is bad. So that I can move on. When someone disappears, it’s far worse than when they die, because all you’re left with is this lingering hope that they’ll come back. The longer they choose to stay away, the deeper that yearning carves its mark in you. It starts to define who you are, the choices you make, the way in which you live your life. I can’t move house in case he comes back, or writes to me and I never receive it. I can’t go on holiday or progress any relationship in a meaningful way. The idea of having a child terrifies me, because what if they are born with the same problems as Josh? I couldn’t help him and so how would I help them?’
Kate wanted more than anything to offer words of comfort, but every phrase she composed in her head felt useless, empty, patronising. ‘I wish I knew what to say.’
‘Don’t worry.’ Angela took a breath and composed herself. ‘I shouldn’t go on and on. Self-pity is such a wretched trait to be lumbered with. But I’m so fed up with feeling sad, you know?’
‘I think I do,’ said Kate. ‘And for what it’s worth, I hope that by the end of this evening, you might have discovered a reason to feel cautiously optimistic again.’
‘I hope so too,’ said Angela.
Kate knew where Podrum cellar bar was located, because she walked past it on the way to Lovro’s coffee shop every day. Glancing up at a sky that was heavy with black clouds she could see why Alex had chosen an underground establishment as their meeting point. It was empty inside save for an elderly couple who were sharing a bottle of red wine. Feeling the need for a touch of liquid courage, Kate ordered a glass of the same for herself while Angela opted for a large gin and tonic. Under any other circumstances, Kate’s eyes would have been hungrily roaming around the bar’s interior, but such were her jitters that she barely registered the neat stone alcoves haloed with amber light, the wicker vases of dried flowers or the mosaic tiles in harmonious shades of moccasin and butterscotch.
The hour was up. Alex should be here any moment.
Kate took a sip of wine, followed by another.
The air conditioning in the bar was turned up too high and she wished she’d brought a jacket with her. But it didn’t matter, because Alex would soon be here to keep her warm. He would put his arm around her and squeeze her tight, not angry that she’d tricked him but relieved to be able to help. Kate was fretting unnecessarily. Everything was going to be fine.
She was swilling the last of her wine around in her glass when the door into the bar opened and a man appeared. Not much taller than her, he was dressed in a red hooded top and frayed denim shorts, a pair of beaten-up Converse on his feet.
Kate froze.
It was Alex’s hooded top; Alex’s denim shorts; Alex’s beaten-up trainers.
But this man couldn’t be him, for he was clean-shaven with very dark, closely cropped hair. As she continued to stare, the man glanced across the room and saw her, the smile that was playing around his lips promptly dropping into an expression of pure horror.
At last, Kate came to her senses.
‘Alex,’ she called, seeing the eyes she’d recognised as his widen in shock.
Angela’s glass of gin and tonic hit the floor with a loud crash.
‘Josh!’
Hurtling forwards with a sob, she threw herself at Alex, clasping his face in her both hands and gazing at him in wonder.
‘Oh my god, Josh. It is you, it’s really you.’
Kate opened her mouth to speak, but a rasping sound was all that emerged. She had been right the f
irst time: this man was not Alex after all.
He was Josh.
Chapter 53
This could not be happening. This was not happening.
Kate stood, rigid with shock, her wine glass in her hand and her heart pounding against her chest.
Alex was Josh. Josh was Alex.
She shook her head, hoping to dislodge herself from this nightmare. Because how could it be true? How could the missing man she’d read about in Me Time magazine all those weeks ago, an article that had been the catalyst for her coming to Croatia in the first place, be the same man she’d fallen for this summer?
Because she had. There was no point denying it anymore. She had fallen in love with him.
Angela didn’t seem able to stop crying, her sobbing overwrought enough to summon the owner of the bar, who hurried over to see if he could do anything to help. Another staff member was discreetly sweeping up the pieces of broken glass around Kate’s feet, the young woman’s gaze straying from the floor across the room, towards the woman who was wailing and the man who had said nothing at all.
‘I can’t believe it,’ Angela kept saying, her breath coming in ragged gasps as she clung to her brother, his body stiff and unyielding. ‘I can’t believe it’s really you.’
It felt like an eternity before Angela managed to get herself back under control, as if the orbit of the Earth had stalled. Taking Alex’s hands, she pulled him gently back towards the table. He looked ashen, utterly devoid of colour or emotion, not a man, but a statue.
Kate tried to speak but found she couldn’t. Like the man now sitting opposite her, she felt as if she’d been turned to stone, and although she could see him, it was as if neither of them were there at all. Was this what it felt like to have an out-of-body experience? Had the world ended without her noticing and thrown them into an alternative reality? A place of purgatory, where black became white, good became bad, everything you believed to be true was untrue and all that was right became wrong?
Angela pulled some of the napkins from the container on the table and dabbed at her eyes. She was still clinging fast to her brother with her other hand and Kate could see the white of her knuckles through the pale skin.
‘Everyone told me you must be dead,’ she said, more to herself than either Kate or Alex. ‘But I never believed them. I knew you wouldn’t have done that. I knew you were still alive.’
Kate’s mouth had gone dry. When she swallowed, it felt as if her throat was full of gravel.
At last, Alex spoke. ‘How did you . . . What are you doing here?’
‘She’s here because of me.’
Kate was shocked by how stoic she sounded. She’d expected her words to emerge as a cry, splintered into shards by the earthquake of emotion smashing through her.
‘Angela, she did an interview about you – about Josh. I read it weeks ago, but I didn’t recognise you when we met,’ she said, faltering as he looked away. ‘But I did bring the magazine with me from England and left it out at the hostel for guests to read. Someone saw it and made the connection. But I . . . I thought that your friend Joe might be Josh. Angela had a photo of someone with long hair. He looked different,’ she said to Angela. ‘Until tonight, Al – He had dreadlocks and a beard.’
Staring across at him now, Kate studied all the parts of him she’d never seen: the sharp, neat cheekbones and soft, shapely mouth. It had all been hidden before because he’d been in hiding: a missing person doing his best not to be found. Jolted by this thought, Kate dropped her gaze to the table, to where her hands rested, each one shaking, alive with the same tremors that were rattling her arms and causing her feet to tap. She had gone from paralysed to skittish and it was agony to sit, to do nothing, to feel trapped by circumstance and indecision.
Alex stared at his sister. ‘You did an interview about me?’
‘Only because I was desperate,’ Angela said beseechingly. ‘I told myself at the start of this year that I would do whatever it took to find you. I never wanted to tell people what happened, I never wanted to share my innermost thoughts with some journalist. I didn’t have a choice – I had to make sure people were still looking for you.’
Alex nodded, his eyes glassy and still. ‘When was this?’
‘In May – just after the ten-year anniversary of the day you went missing. I don’t know, Josh. I guess I hoped that someone, somewhere, would read it and recognise you – and I was right,’ she said triumphantly. ‘When I was contacted last week, I had a feeling. Something inside me, some sort of strong sisterly instinct – call it whatever you want – told me that I had to fly out here. I didn’t question it, I just came, straight to the place where I knew the article had been seen, which was where I met Kate, who then led me to you. Oh Josh, I still can’t believe it. I honestly thought I’d lost you forever.’
Kate waited for him to speak, to say he was sorry for running away, for putting her through so many years of torment, that he was happy to see her again. Instead, he turned to Kate.
‘How much do you know?’ he asked, in a tone he’d never used for her before; a low growl that could have been sorrow or anger.
‘Hardly anything,’ Kate said honestly. ‘Only that you lost your parents and—’ Her voice caught. It was pointless trying to stem the tears now. The owner of the bar placed a jug of water and three glasses on the table without a word, the elderly couple continued their muted conversation in the corner, and candlelight danced across the ceiling.
Kate thought she could hear rain.
‘I did what I thought was best,’ he said, the hand that was not being grasped by Angela rubbing at his eyes. He looked younger without a beard, while his shaved head lent him a vulnerability that had not been there before. Kate wasn’t angry with him. She was compelled by an urge to protect, to wrap her arms around him and tell him that everything was going to be all right. As hard as this was for her, it could be nowhere close to the shock and confusion he must be experiencing.
He looked up then, his expression haunted.
‘I was toxic, Ange – no good for anyone. You were right, what you said to me that day. Everything had always been about me and it wasn’t fair on you. It wasn’t up to you to fix me, just like it wasn’t up to Mum and Dad.’
Pulling his hand away from Angela, he covered his face, his shoulders heaving, his body slumped over in the chair.
‘I believed that you were better off without me,’ he said, his anguish so palpable that Kate started to cry. ‘I couldn’t stand by and hurt you over and over again, not after everything I’d put you through – all that Mum and Dad had endured because of me. All my outbursts of rage, all the weeks where I refused to leave my bedroom, all that money and time and love wasted. I was so cruel to you all, so ungrateful, when all you ever did was try to help.’
‘I didn’t mean what I said that day,’ Angela said, reaching for him. ‘Do you know how many times I’ve been over it? So many times, hating myself for every foul word I uttered.’
Alex was shaking his head, unable to speak, and Angela turned to Kate.
‘We argued,’ she said. ‘It was awful. It was the evening of Mum’s funeral and Josh came to me, wanting to talk and needing my support. Your mood used to go in cycles,’ she reminded him, and Kate recalled what Alex had told her just days ago; how he’d learnt to take himself away from the world when he was struggling. ‘And this was a bad one. All you needed was reassurance, and I told you to get out, to leave me alone, to sort yourself out and be a man instead of a stupid little boy. I didn’t mean any of it, Josh. I was just tired – so tired and so scared that it was just us. I never thought you would go; I never wanted you to go.’
Alex was sobbing properly now, pitifully, as he must once have done as a child. How hard it must have been for him to hold this in, for all this time. Kate should have pushed harder, could have tried harder to get through to him.
She put her hands flat on the table. ‘I should go.’
Angela responded with a watery smile.
‘You two need some time alone to talk properly,’ she said. ‘I’m sure there’s a lot to say and I don’t want to intrude more than I already have.’
Picking up her bag, she pushed out her chair. ‘Alex?’ He was still Alex to her. ‘I’m going to go back to the hostel, so I’ll wait for you there.’
He nodded but didn’t look at her.
‘He has my number,’ she said to Angela. ‘Just call me if you need anything – anything at all.’
‘I will – and Kate.’
‘Yes?’
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Thank you for giving me back my brother.’
Chapter 54
Outside, the rain lashed.
Torrents of it hammered down onto Kate as she ran, drenching her clothes, her hair, her skin. She could no longer see through her glasses and took them off, the deluge stripping through the trails her tears had left behind.
Thunder crashed, loud as falling timber, across a sky cut open by jagged shards of white light. It was as if her nightmare had become reality, only worse – more volatile, unrelenting and visceral. She streaked past the harbour with its juddering boats, the roar of the churning water a hoarse echo that followed her through backstreets turned glassy underfoot.
Twice she slipped, not once did she stop.
Kate had thought that Alex was her guide; the shining light showing her which direction she must take. But she’d forgotten about that other side of the moon; that which was destined to be forever shrouded in darkness. She heard again the words he’d whispered to her that afternoon, his promise to tell her everything. He’d been preparing to confess the truth about who he really was, only Kate had somehow beaten him to it.
The fact that Alex was Josh, that he’d run away and abandoned his own sister, that he’d lived within the constraints of a false identity for over a decade, rolled over Kate as she ran, the brute force of each repetitive blow threatening to bring her to her knees. He had lied to her, to the world, and to himself for so many years and in so many circumstances that the mere notion of telling the truth, of revealing how deep the well of dishonesty had run, must have been terrifying. Yet he’d been willing to do it. For her.
The Getaway: A holiday romance for 2021 - perfect summer escapism! Page 31