by Liz Fielding
She stole a glance at him but his face was unreadable, his jaw set as they pulled up in front of the garage.
‘Will you be all right on your own for a while?’ he asked. ‘I could do with a run.’
‘Good plan. I might take a swim.’ He looked as if he was going to say something. ‘I’ll be careful,’ she assured him, before he started. ‘Swimming is great exercise for pregnant women,’ she said. ‘No stress—’
‘It’s not that. I was just wondering if you’d brought a costume with you. Just in case Matt decides to drop by with your handbag.’
‘I didn’t think you’d noticed.’
‘You went back for it but for some reason changed your mind.’
She pulled a face. ‘His mother was giving him a bit of an earwigging for talking too much so I chose discretion and made a strategic retreat. I’m pretty sure that he’ll wait for one of us to go and pick it up.’
‘I’ll collect it later,’ he said, taking the bag containing his suit and the rest of the clothes he’d bought and disappearing upstairs.
Miranda went through to Sofia’s room and opened up the wardrobe.
It had a faintly musty smell but the clothes had been placed in individual garment bags and had escaped the depredations of moths and mice.
She unzipped a couple but, although all designer with luminous names, they were day clothes, not the jewel-coloured gowns she and her sisters had had such fun dressing up in.
Not that she was looking for a jewel. She’d remembered a pretty silk kimono-style dress, cream with small green and yellow motifs, that hadn’t been nearly exotic enough for her teenage self. It was simple, dressy enough for a low-key wedding and would look stylish in a photograph.
She went upstairs, into the rooms she hadn’t begun to touch, hoping that the trunks hadn’t been put up in the attic.
She found two stored in a box room but caught sight of the sea glittering below, pale aqua, deepening to turquoise and then, in the gap between the cliffs, a glimpse of deep inky blue.
The afternoon was passing and while the trunk would keep, her swim would not.
She looked at the ring so recently placed on her finger by Cleve, blushing a little at the way she’d taken advantage of the moment and kissed him. Smiling a lot at the way he’d seized the moment and run with it. The fact that it appeared to have left him as shaken as she had been.
Just like the first time. Six years, eight months and seven days ago.
She shook her head, slipped off the ring, then realised that the box was in her handbag. There were china trinket dishes on the dressing table but, unwilling to leave it lying there with the house open, she opened the hinged box beneath the dressing table mirror. It was empty but for a large key.
She picked it up, turned it over, looked around, wondering what it would open. Nothing in this room.
It couldn’t be important or it would have been with the other keys and she dropped it back into the box, carefully placed her ring beside it and then changed into her costume.
She paused for a moment by a full-length mirror, smoothing her hand over her still-flat belly. Holding it there for a moment. Then she grabbed a towel and headed down to the beach.
*
Cleve took an overgrown path that led up the hill. He hadn’t run for a couple of days and he pushed himself hard, pausing at the top to look down on the castle and the city of San Rocco with its many spires, the houses painted in faded blues, pink, greens giving it a fairy-tale quality.
But this was no fairy tale. Miranda might have changed her mind about marrying him and she’d sworn her statement without a hitch, but he’d had to push her to accept his ring. He could have cheerfully throttled the manager for interrupting them when he was about to claim a kiss. But then, unexpectedly, sweetly, she’d kissed him and it had felt like a promise.
He could still feel the softness of her lips, her melting response as, weak with longing, lost to where they were, he’d taken it up a notch. It had been as if he were kissing Miranda for the very first time, with all the possibilities stretching out before them. With none of the mistakes or baggage that clung to him.
If they were to have that he would have to tell her everything. She had the right to know the truth, the right to change her mind. He owed her that.
Only then could it be a brand-new beginning.
*
Andie heard Cleve cross the beach, the splash as he plunged into the sea. She turned, raised her dark glasses to watch him carving a path through the water as he headed for the gap that led out into the sea. Held her breath.
They’d always been warned not to go beyond the entrance to the hidden cove because of the fierce currents and she stood up, about to call and warn him. But he’d stopped and was treading water and as he turned to head back she ducked down, not wanting him to see her fussing.
When he joined her in the hot pool a few minutes later she was lying back, letting the heat seep into her bones.
He was wearing swim shorts, his body beaded with sea water, the dark hair on his chest and legs clinging to his skin and she was glad she was wearing her sunglasses so that her eyes weren’t giving her away.
‘Good run?’ she asked.
‘Yes. I went up the hill. You get a good view of San Rocco and the castle from up there. I didn’t realise it was so close.’
‘The road winds around the island, but you can walk to San Rocco in about an hour from here. Less to the castle.’
‘A well-trodden path, no doubt.’
She smiled. ‘Once upon a time there was a king who loved a beautiful lady…’
‘A married king,’ he pointed out, lowering himself into the pool, taking the same ‘seat’ he’d used when he’d caught her skinny dipping.
‘It’s a somewhat tarnished fairy tale,’ she agreed.
‘It’s not any kind of a fairy tale.’
‘No.’
Sofia had been glamorous, witty, full of life at the parties she’d thrown but, looking back with the eyes of an adult, Andie didn’t think she’d been entirely happy. And there had been another woman, one who’d probably had little choice in who she married, waiting at the castle for her husband to return. Two lonely women…
‘Marriage is not a fairy tale,’ she said. ‘It’s something that takes effort, commitment, heart enough to see you through the rough patches.’ She was going to need all of that, but she had a great example. ‘My parents had a tough start.’ They’d had to give up their dreams and buckle down to save Marlowe Aviation when her grandfather had died. ‘They are the real deal.’
‘How’s your father doing?’ he asked.
‘Good. They’re having a great time in India. I’ll miss the weekly video chat with them tomorrow.’
‘Where are they?’
‘There is no itinerary. They’ve left schedules, diaries, appointments behind and they’re pleasing themselves.’
He nodded, said nothing for a while but it wasn’t the quiet comfortable silence that they’d shared over lunch the day before. He was looking in the depths of the pool where the hot spring bubbled up and he should be relaxed after his run, his swim, but there was a tension about his jaw, his shoulders.
‘What is it, Cleve?’
He looked up. ‘I need to tell you about Rachel.’
Her stomach contracted. It was obvious that he’d had something on his mind, that this conversation had always been coming, but she still felt a momentary touch of nausea.
Breathe, breathe…
‘I was going to tell you yesterday, when we were having lunch in the harbour, but it was such a lovely day that I didn’t want to spoil it.’
‘That doesn’t sound good.’
‘It’s not.’
After their earlier closeness, he now seemed so distant. She knew something had spooked him at Matt’s cottage; he couldn’t wait to get away, to put some space between them, run, and she felt him slipping away from her.
‘Shall I come and sit beside you?’ From bei
ng the comforter, she was now the one who needed to feel him close, touch him. ‘I’ll hold your hand if it will help.’
He shook his head. ‘I need to see your face.’
Rachel had been the love of his life and all this ring stuff, talk of dresses had forced him to confront the reality of what he was about to do. He was going to tell her that he couldn’t go through with it. Or worse, that he would marry her but that their relationship would be platonic.
She shouldn’t have kissed him. He’d responded because he hadn’t wanted to embarrass her and because he was flesh and blood but now he felt guilty.
Breathe.
‘Cleve, you’re frightening me.’
‘I’m sorry, but we’re getting married in a few days and you have a right to know…’
And now he was the one taking a deep breath. How bad could it be?
‘Know what?’
‘You have a right to know, I want you to know, that the baby Rachel was carrying when she died was not mine.’
‘Not…’
She stared at him in disbelief. She’d had no idea what was coming but that was the very last thing she could have imagined.
They had been aviation’s golden couple. Andie’d been wretched when she’d discovered that Cleve was married but he and Rachel had been so perfect together that she’d accepted it with only a bucket or two of tears.
Her heart had ached but he’d kept his promise and given her a job when no one else would even look at a newly qualified pilot with no experience. And she’d got on with her life.
More or less.
‘Who…?’ She shook her head. It didn’t matter who.
‘No one I knew.’
‘I’m so sorry.’
‘We’d been struggling for a long time.’
‘That’s why you didn’t go to Phuket.’
‘Not exactly. When she booked the holiday I thought she wanted a break, a chance to restart our marriage and I was willing to give it a try.’
He looked so bleak that it was all she could do not to reach out and hold him but this was something he had to get off his chest and she held onto the rock to keep her anchored in place.
‘You didn’t go,’ she prompted after a while.
‘A couple of weeks before we were due to fly out, she told me that she wanted to go alone. That she needed space to think things through.’
‘So you invented a crisis?’ She shook her head, barely able to take in the fact that his marriage had been in trouble. ‘No one would ever have guessed.’
‘Rachel put on a good show but the fact is that she was well beyond thinking things through. After her death I found photographs on her phone. She wasn’t alone.’
She didn’t know what to say. The whole idea of Rachel being unfaithful to Cleve was so unbelievable…
‘I suspected there was someone else. I didn’t blame her for having a fling; she was unhappy and I was unable to do anything to make things better. I only discovered that she was pregnant when I picked up her phone by mistake and found myself looking at a message from the antenatal clinic.’
‘But…’
‘I’d been sleeping in the spare bedroom for six months.’
Without thinking she moved, crossed the pool, sat beside him because, like Cleve, she knew that Rachel, who’d always said that there was plenty of time for a family, was not the kind of woman to get pregnant by accident.
It had been a lot more than a fling.
She took his hand and he grasped hers so tightly that it was all she could do not to squeak but he must have felt her wince because he immediately eased his grip. ‘I’m sorry.’ He managed a smile. ‘I knew it would be a mistake to hold your hand.’
‘Hold on as tight as you want.’
He lifted it, kissed her knuckles then let go, leaving it, leaving her, feeling empty.
‘What did you do?’
He shrugged, the droplets of water from his shoulders coalescing and running down his chest. She dragged her eyes away as he said, ‘Pretty much what you’d expect. I told her that I wanted her out of the apartment, out of my life. She retaliated by saying that the way it worked was that I would be the one packing my bags and if I wanted a divorce she would take half of Goldfinch.’
‘Cleve…’ What on earth was he going to tell her?
‘She said a lot more. Some of it true.’ He was avoiding her gaze now and she knew that she had been included in the vitriol. ‘She was angry. She said I’d never loved her, that I should never have married her and that our marriage was an empty sham, and she was right.’
‘Why did you?’ The challenge was out before she could recall it. ‘Sorry, sorry…’ She held up her hands. ‘That’s totally none of my business.’
‘We are getting married, having a child together. Everything about me is your business, Miranda.’
He closed his eyes for a moment as if trying to summon up the words that would explain how it had happened.
‘Rach flew for me as a temp when I needed an extra pilot. The business grew, she was a good fit and she joined the team. I had no time for a social life and when she invited me to a New Year’s party we both knew where it was going. Midnight struck and we were kissing, by one o’clock we were in bed. Within months she’d pretty much moved in with me and by the end of the year everyone was asking when we were going to get married.’
Of course they were.
Cleve and Rachel, handsome, beautiful, clever, both flyers with their lives invested in Goldfinch Air Services. You couldn’t make it up.
‘Then Rachel’s parents announced they’d sold their house and were moving to France in June, at which point the “When are you two getting married?” question had an answer.
‘There was no big scene where I went down on one knee,’ he said. ‘The truth is I let it happen because there was no reason not to.’
And he was about to do it all over again, she realised, her heart sinking like a stone.
‘What happened, Cleve?’
‘I told her that I’d see her in hell before she got as much as a breath of Goldfinch’s tailwind. She couldn’t stay to argue the point because she had a flight booked but told me to start packing and left with a suitably dramatic door slam. It was my rest day and I went for a run. Despite what I’d said I knew she would be entitled to half of everything and I needed a clear head to work out how I was going to survive.’
Her hand tightened in his, knowing what was coming.
‘I spent the rest of the day working through the figures and I was about to ring my accountant to make an appointment when there was a knock on the door. It was Lucy and a policeman.’
CHAPTER NINE
‘YOU NEVER TOLD ANYONE.’ Andie was struggling with what she’d just heard. Trying to imagine the shock, the horror of that moment. How everything would have been made a hundred times worse by what had just happened. ‘About the baby.’
‘Rachel died horribly. I felt guilty enough without dragging her name through the mud.’
‘Guilty?’ Was that what tormented him? Not grief, but guilt? ‘Why on earth would you feel guilty?’
‘I should have grounded her. I should have called Lucy and asked her to bring in someone else to take the flight but it was like with the kettle,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t thinking.’
‘The only similarity to the kettle,’ she said, ‘is that they were both accidents. You must have been pretty shaken yourself.’
‘Shaken by the scene, by how much pain she’d bottled up, but mostly I was relieved.’ He’d been looking over her head, staring somewhere out to sea, but now he was looking directly at her. ‘I was going to have to surrender everything I owned, mortgage my soul to hold onto Goldfinch but it was over. I didn’t have to pretend any more. While I was running, even with the struggle ahead, it was as if my feet had wings.’
He turned away but she reached up, took his face between her hands and forced him to look at her.
‘It was a bird strike, Cleve. She was flying low,
coming in beneath heavy cloud cover and had the misfortune to run into a flock of geese set up by dogs or a fox, or maybe a bird-scarer installed by a farmer desperate to protect his winter wheat. She didn’t stand a chance.’
‘I told her that I’d see her in hell.’
She ached for him, understanding how, psychologically, those words must have eaten at him.
‘It’s the kind of thing we all say in the heat of the moment. Rachel was an experienced, responsible pilot, Cleve. If she’d had the slightest concern about her fitness to fly she would have grounded herself just as I did.’
‘If she’d been thinking straight. I would have given her everything, the flat, Goldfinch, whatever she wanted, not to have those deaths on my conscience.’
The faint stubble on his cheeks was tickling her palms and she wanted to slide her fingers into his hair and kiss him quiet, make him stop thinking about this, but he’d been bottling up all this guilt, blaming himself and right now there were some things he needed to hear.
‘Tell me, Cleve, in what way wasn’t she thinking straight?’
‘She was angry—’
‘Of course she was angry. She’d been found out, caught cheating, forced to confront the issue before she was ready and, like you, saying things in the heat of the moment. A little door-banging strop—’
He shook his head but she didn’t let go. If she let go he’d walk away and she wasn’t done.
‘A little door-banging strop is to be expected under the circumstances but by the time she reached her car she’d have been feeling relieved that it was out in the open.’
‘You can’t know that.’
‘I have three sisters,’ she said. ‘We’ve all been there at some time or another. Keeping secrets, getting caught out. Anger is always the first response and then almost instantly there’s relief.’
He didn’t look convinced.
‘When Rachel arrived at the airfield no one noticed anything out of the ordinary. She checked the weather, filed a flight plan at the airfield office. The guys there said she’d teased them about having thrashed them in the pub quiz at the weekend.’
He must have heard all this at the Air Accident Inquiry, the inquest, but maybe it hadn’t made it through the fog of guilt.