Barefoot Bride

by Jessica Hart

  ‘A break from routine is all I need.’ Alice got to her feet and walked over to the sliding doors, trying to work out why it felt so important to persuade him.

  ‘I thought I wanted to spend six weeks doing absolutely nothing,’ she told him. ‘When Beth told me about her life here, about the mornings by the pool, about the parties and the warmth and the sunshine, I was envious, jealous even.’

  She remembered sitting at her desk, staring out at the rain and remembering Beth’s bubbling enthusiasm. Tony hadn’t been long gone, then, and she had still been at the stage of dreading going home to an empty flat.

  ‘It was a bad time for me,’ she told Will. She wasn’t ready to tell him about Tony yet. ‘The idea of just turning my face up to the sun and not thinking about anything for a while seemed wonderful, and when I got the chance to come I took it…’

  ‘But?’ Will prompted when she paused.

  Alice turned back from the window to face him. ‘But I’m bored,’ she said honestly. ‘It’s different for Beth. She makes friends wherever she goes. She likes everybody, even if they’re really dull, and she always sees the good side of people, but I’m…’

  ‘…not like that?’ he suggested, a hint of amusement in his eyes, and he looked suddenly so much like the Will she remembered that Alice’s heart bumped into her ribs and she forgot to breathe for a moment.

  ‘No,’ she agreed, hugging her arms together and drawing a distinctly unsteady breath. ‘You know what I’m like. I’m intolerant, and I get impatient and restless if I’m bored.’

  ‘They don’t sound like ideal characteristics for a nanny,’ Will pointed out in a dry voice, and she made herself meet his eyes squarely and not notice that disconcertingly familiar glint.

  ‘Lily doesn’t bore me,’ she said. ‘I like her. She reminds me of me, and I’m never bored when I’m on my own. Besides, I’m not planning on being a nanny. If this week has taught me anything, it’s how important my career is. I need to work, and if I can’t work, I need to do something.

  ‘I enjoyed spending this afternoon with Lily,’ she told Will. ‘I’d much rather spend the next few weeks with her than twitter away at endless coffee mornings.’

  ‘If that’s how you feel, why don’t you just cut short your trip?’

  ‘Because I can’t change my ticket. It was one of those special deals which means you can’t get any refund if you change your flight. And Roger and Beth would be hurt if I said I was bored and wanted to go home. They’ve gone to so much trouble to make me welcome,’ Alice added guiltily.

  ‘They might be hurt if you choose to spend the rest of your time with Lily,’ Will commented.

  ‘I don’t think so. Not if we present it as me helping you out.’ Alice hoped she wasn’t sounding too desperate, but, the more she thought about it, the more she liked the idea.

  ‘I love Roger and Beth,’ she said carefully. ‘Of course I do. No one could be kinder or more hospitable, but I’m used to being independent and having my own space, making my own decisions.

  ‘When you’re a guest, you just fit in with everyone else,’ she tried to explain. ‘And I’m finding that harder than I thought. It’s as if I’m completely passive. I don’t decide what we’re going to do, or what we’re going to eat, or where we’re going to go. I just tag along. At least if I was looking after Lily I’d have some say in how we spent the day.’

  ‘I certainly wouldn’t try and dictate what you did,’ said Will. ‘You know what would keep Lily happy better than I do. I do have a cook but I expect she’d be happy to make whatever you felt like.’

  By the window, Alice brightened. ‘You mean you’re going to accept my offer?’

  Will studied her eager face, puzzled by her enthusiasm and disconcerted by the way her mask of careful composure kept slipping to reveal the old, vivid Alice beneath.

  ‘I don’t know…’ he said slowly. ‘It doesn’t seem right somehow.’

  ‘Is it because it’s me?’ she demanded. ‘You wouldn’t be hesitating if the agency had sent me out on a temporary assignment, would you?’

  ‘Of course not. That would be a professional arrangement and I’d be paying you for your time.’

  Alice shrugged. ‘You can pay me if it makes you feel better, but it’s not necessary. It’s not as if I’m doing it for you, you know. I’d be doing it for me-and for Lily,’ she added after a moment’s thought.

  Still, Will hesitated. Getting to his feet, he took a turn around the room, hands thrust into his pockets and shoulders hunched in thought. Finally he stopped in front of Alice.

  ‘You don’t think it would be a bit…difficult?’ he asked. ‘Living together again after all these years?’

  ‘I’m not suggesting we sleep together,’ said Alice, a distinct edge to her voice. ‘Presumably Dee had her own room?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Well, then.’ She glanced at him and then away. ‘It’s different now, Will. What we had before is in the past. We agreed at the time that we would go our separate ways, and we have. There’s no going back now.’

  She was presenting it as something they had both decided together, but it hadn’t been quite like that, not the way Will remembered it, anyway. It had been Alice who had wanted to end their relationship. ‘Our lives are going in different directions,’ she had said. ‘Let’s call it a day while we’re still friends.’

  ‘I think we both know that there’s no point in trying to recreate what we had,’ she was saying. ‘I don’t want that and neither do you, do you?’

  ‘No,’ said Will, after a moment. Well, what was he supposed to say-yes, I do? I do want that? I’ve never stopped wanting that?

  That would have been a very foolish thing to say. He had tried to say it at Roger’s wedding, and he wasn’t putting himself through that again. He had enough problems at the moment without getting involved with Alice again. She was right; it was over.

  ‘So what’s the problem?’ she asked him. ‘It makes much more sense for you to have me living with you than some other woman who might fall in love with you and make things really awkward.’

  It was her turn to pause while she tried to find the right words. ‘We’ve both changed,’ she said eventually. ‘We’re different people and we don’t feel the same way about each other as we did then. We’re never going to be lovers any more, but there’s no reason why we couldn’t learn to be friends, is there?’

  Except that it was hard to be friends with someone whose taste you could remember exactly, thought Will. Someone whose body you had once known as well as your own, someone who’d been the very beat of your heart for so long.

  With someone who’d made you happier than you had ever been before. Someone who’d left your life empty and desolate when she had gone.

  ‘It would only be for a few weeks,’ Alice went on. ‘And then I’d be gone. That wouldn’t be too difficult, would it?’

  ‘No,’ said Will. ‘We could do that for Lily.’

  He had a feeling that it was going to be a lot harder than Alice made out, but it would be worth it for Lily. She liked Alice, that was clear, and Alice’s presence would help her to settle down much more effectively than introducing yet another stranger into her life. He would just have to find his own way of dealing with living with Alice again.

  And living without her once more when she had gone.

  ‘All right,’ he said, abruptly making up his mind. ‘If you’re sure, I expect Lily would love you to look after her until I can find a new nanny.’

  He was glad that he had agreed when he saw Lily’s face as the news was broken to her that Alice was going to stay with them for a while. She was never a demonstrative child, but there was no mistaking the way her dark eyes lit up with surprise and delight.

  ‘You’re going to live with us?’

  ‘Just for a little while,’ cautioned Alice. ‘Until your dad can find you a new nanny.’

  ‘Why can’t you stay always?’

  Will waited to see how
Alice would handle that. It was a question he had wanted to ask her himself in the past. He had never understood why she had been so determined to end their relationship when they had been so good together. It was as if she had been convinced that everything would go wrong, but she hadn’t been prepared to give it a chance to go right.

  ‘Because I have to go home, Lily,’ Alice told her. ‘My life is in London, not here. But until I do go back we’ll have a lovely time together, shall we?’

  Lily seemed to accept that. ‘OK,’ she said.

  Alice was more nervous than she wanted to admit about how Beth would react to the news that she was moving out that night to live with Will and Lily. The last thing she wanted to do was to hurt Beth’s feelings. But, once the situation about the missing nanny had been explained, Beth was very understanding, and even surprisingly enthusiastic about the idea.

  ‘It sounds like the perfect solution,’ she said, smiling, her gaze flickering with interest between Will and Alice. ‘I’m sure you’re doing the right thing.’

  ‘I’m doing it for Lily,’ said Alice pointedly. She didn’t want Beth getting the wrong idea.

  Beth opened her eyes wide. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Why else?’

  Roger was less convinced that it was a good idea. ‘Are you sure about this, Alice?’ he asked under his breath as they came to say goodbye.

  ‘I’m sure,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry about me.’

  Roger glanced at Will. ‘Maybe it’s not you I’m worrying about.’

  ‘We’ve talked about it,’ said Alice firmly. ‘It’s going to be fine.’

  ‘Well, you’re a big girl now, so I guess you know what you’re doing.’ Roger swept her up into a hug. ‘Look after yourself, though.’

  ‘I’m only going up the road!’

  ‘I’ll still miss you. I’ve got used to coming home to find you drinking my gin.’

  ‘I’ll miss you, too. I always do.’ Alice hugged her dearest friend, holding tightly onto his big bear strength, and her eyes were watery when he finally let her go.

  ‘Oh, good God, she’s going to cry!’ exclaimed Roger in mock horror. ‘Take her away, man!’

  Will, who had observed that tight hug, thought it would not be a bad idea to get Alice away from Roger for a while. He was worried about Beth. At first glance, she seemed as bright and cheerful as ever, but on closer inspection Will thought there was a rather drawn look about her. It might be best all round if Alice came with him.

  ‘Come on, then,’ he said to Alice and Lily. ‘Let’s go home.’

  They had decided that Alice might as well start her new role straight away, so she had already packed a bag by the time Beth and Roger got home. Now Will slung it in the back of his four-wheel drive and hoped to God he was doing the right thing.

  Will’s house had no pool, no air-conditioning, and was some way away from the exclusive part of St Bonaventure up on the hill where Roger and Beth lived in manicured splendour, but Alice felt instantly much more at home there. An unassuming wooden house set up on stilts, it had a wide verandah shaded by a corrugated-iron roof, and ceiling fans that slapped at the air in a desultory fashion.

  It was set on a dusty, pot-holed road and an area of coarse tropical grass at the rear led down to a line of leaning coconut palms. ‘The sea’s just there,’ said Will, pointing into the darkness. ‘Go through the coconuts, cross a track and you’re on the beach.’

  He carried Alice’s cases inside and put them in what had been Dee’s bedroom. ‘I need to make some calls, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘I want to ring the hospital and see how the boys are, and then I’ll have to talk to our head office in London. Lily, perhaps you could show Alice the house?’ he suggested.

  ‘That was a good idea, getting Lily to show me round,’ Alice said to him later when they had eaten the light supper left by his cook and Lily had gone to bed. They were sitting out on the back verandah, listening to the raucous whirr of the insects in the dark and, in the distance, the faint, ceaseless suck of the sea upon the sand. Alice could just make out the gleam of water through the trunks of the palms. ‘Knowing more about the house and where everything was made her realise that she was more at home than she thought. It was good for her to be able to explain everything to me,’ Alice told Will. ‘She might not have been talking much, but she’s certainly been taking it all in.’

  ‘I’m glad about that.’ Will handed her a mug of coffee that he had made, unthinkingly adding exactly the right amount of milk. He hadn’t forgotten how she took hers any more than she had forgotten how he liked his tea, Alice thought with an odd pang. She took the mug gingerly, taking care that her fingers didn’t brush against his.

  ‘This is going to be her home for a couple of years at least,’ he went on, picking up his own mug and sipping at it reflectively. ‘So she needs to feel that it’s where she belongs.’

  He paused to look sideways at Alice, who was curled up in a wicker chair, cradling her coffee between her hands. The light on the verandah was deliberately dim so as not to attract too many insects, but he could make out the high cheekbones that gave her face that faintly exotic look and the achingly familiar curve of her mouth. It was too hard to read her expression, though, and he wondered what she was thinking.

  ‘I want to thank you, Alice,’ he said abruptly. ‘I know I didn’t seem keen when you first suggested it, but I think it will be a very good thing for Lily to have you here.’

  ‘I hope so,’ she said.

  ‘What about you? Do you think you’ll be comfortable at least?’ He glanced around him as if registering his conditions for the first time. ‘I know it’s not as luxurious as Roger’s house.’

  ‘No, but I like it better,’ she said. Tipping back her head, she breathed in the heady fragrance of the frangipani that blossomed by the verandah steps. The wooden boards were littered with its creamy yellow flowers. ‘This reminds me of the kind of places I lived in as a child.’

  Will grimaced into his coffee. ‘I’m not sure that’s a good thing. You hated your childhood.’

  ‘I hated the way my parents kept moving,’ she corrected him. ‘It wasn’t the places or the houses-although we never lived anywhere as nice as this. It was the fact that I never had a chance to feel at home anywhere. My parents never stuck at anything. They had wild enthusiasms, but then they’d get bored, or things would go wrong, and they’d be off with another idea.’

  She sighed. She loved her parents, but sometimes they exasperated her.

  ‘I was shy to begin with. It was hard enough for me to make friends without knowing that in a year or so I’d be dragged somewhere new, where I’d have to learn a new language and make completely new friends. After a while, it didn’t seem worth the effort of making them in the first place. It was easier if I was just on my own.’

  It was her unconventional upbringing that had made Alice stand out from the other students. Will had noticed her straight away. It wasn’t that she’d been eccentric or trying to be different. She’d dressed the same as everyone else, and she’d done what everyone else did, but there had been just something about the way she’d carried herself that drew the eye, something about those extraordinary golden eyes that had seen places that most of the other students barely knew existed.

  Alice might complain about being endlessly uprooted by her parents, but continually having to adapt to new conditions had given her a self-sufficiency that could at times be quite intimidating.

  It was a kind of glamour, Will had always thought, although Alice had hooted with laughter when he’d suggested it. ‘There’s nothing glamorous about living in a hut in the middle of the Amazon, I can tell you!’ she had said.

  ‘That’s why I identify with Lily, I think,’ she said now, sipping reflectively at her coffee. ‘She’s a solitary child too.’

  ‘I know,’ said Will, anxious as always when he thought about his daughter. ‘But I hope she’ll have a chance to settle down now. I should be here for two or three years.’

&nb
sp; ‘And then?’

  ‘Who knows?’ he asked, a faint undercurrent of irritation in his voice. He wasn’t her parents, moving his child around the world on a whim. ‘It depends on my job. I’m not like you. I don’t plan my life down to the last minute.’

  ‘I’ve learnt not to do that either, now,’ said Alice, thinking about Tony and the plans they had made together. ‘There are some things you just can’t plan for.’

  Will arched a sceptical brow. ‘I can’t imagine you not planning,’ he said. ‘You were always so certain about what you wanted.’

  ‘Oh, I still know what I want,’ she said, an undercurrent of bitterness in her voice. ‘The only thing that’s changed is that now I’m not sure that I’ll get it.’

  CHAPTER SIX

  ‘I GUESS that’s something we all learn as we get older,’ said Will. ‘You can’t always have what you want.’

  His voice was quite neutral, but Alice found her head turning to look at him, and as their eyes met in the dim light she was suddenly very sure that he was thinking about Roger’s wedding when he had told her what he wanted and she had said no.

  She kept her own voice as light as possible. ‘That’s true, but perhaps we get what we need instead.’

  ‘Do you think you’ve got what you need?’

  Alice looked out into the darkness to where the Indian Ocean boomed beyond the reef.

  ‘I’ve got a career,’ she said, ignoring the little voice that said it wasn’t much of one at the moment. ‘I’ve got a flat and the means to pay my mortgage and earn my own living. I’ve got security. Yes, I’d say I’ve got everything I need.’

  ‘Everything?’ She didn’t need to be looking at Will to know that his brows had lifted sardonically.

  ‘What else would I need?’

  ‘Let’s say love, just for the sake of argument,’ he said dryly. ‘Someone you love and who loves you. Someone to hold you and help you and make you laugh when you’re down. Someone who can light up your world, and close it out when you’re too tired to cope.’