by Lucy Gordon
The pressure of his fingers increased until it was almost painful.
‘But I don’t want to live a life without you in it, Mari. Because I need you and I want to know if you feel the same way …’ He could not speak any more.
His hand came up and cupped her chin, his thumb moving into her hair as his head tilted. Cold lips pressed into her cheek, the cold burning against the hot sweaty tears as she closed her eyes to revel in the sensation. Their fingers disengaged as Ethan’s hand wound around her waist and drew her closer to his body.
His lips moved across one eyelid, gently, gently, then down to her upper lip. The pressure increased only for a second as she swallowed down a shivering breath.
His kiss was everything she had imagined it would be.
Warm and loving, so very loving.
The smell of his skin.
The sensation of his stubble on her face.
The thumping of his heart. Racing now as he drew her closer and moved his hand further into her hair.
‘Come and live with me in Florida. I could help you rebuild your house here in Swanhaven and we could come back any time you like—but this has to be your choice. Your decision.’
His forehead pressed against hers, the hot breath steaming as they both panted open-mouthed in the freezing night air. Alive in the moment. ‘You can work there. Make a career for yourself. Your company even has an office in my city.’
He leant back just enough so that she could focus on his smile.
‘I believe in you. And I believe in your talent. You can do anything you want to in this world. You don’t need to wait to create your own business. You can start it in Florida and I will be right there, helping you every step of the way.’
His thumb was moving across her chin as he stared into her face.
‘I know you can find a way to make it happen. If you want it badly enough. So what do you say? Will you take the risk? Will you come back to Florida with me? We can do this if we work together.’
It was that final statement which broke the spell he had cast.
Mari inhaled the biting air and stepped back, desperate to regain some distance from this crazy intensity. She had not felt so scared for a long time.
‘Oh, Ethan, I’m so confused. I was actually starting to think about how it would work, but this is too much for me to take in … I never imagined that …’
She looked into his shocked face and knew that it was going to hurt, no matter how much she wanted to prevent his pain.
‘You know more than anyone how hard it was for me when my dad left, and then you left with your family. And it broke my heart. It’s taken me ten years to build up the barriers I need to protect myself from that kind of pain and loss. My life is finally coming together and I don’t know if I’m ready to take that kind of risk.’
‘What kind of life do you truly have, Mari? Because I know exactly how lonely my existence has become in sunny Florida. What does a great job and a sea view matter without the things that are important? It isn’t enough. Not nearly enough.’
He stroked her cheek and smiled gently, sensing that he had just exposed a nerve.
‘I want to make my home with the girl I’m still crazy about. Come on. You don’t need to live in your old home on your own. I could help you make it a home again. A real home with a future.’
She closed her eyes and steadied herself before looking into Ethan’s face. ‘I’m scared.’
Shaking her head in disbelief at her own words, Mari pushed away from Ethan and started pacing, her hands pushed deep into the coat pockets to thaw out.
‘Maybe the timing is all wrong, but suddenly I feel that my life is in total turmoil. I’m not sure about anything any more.’
Before she could speak another syllable, Ethan stepped forward, grabbed her around the waist with two strong hands and drew her towards him, chest to chest. So close she could smell the tang of his sweat on his shirt, the faint trace of his aftershave. The Ethan smell. The Ethan presence, which filled the moment to bursting.
‘Chandler and Chance,’ he whispered in a voice designed to send heat to the frozen tips of her ballet shoes. ‘If we could work together we would be unstoppable. But you’re right, this has been a long day. Will you think about what I’ve said? Please. Think about it.’
He held her face between his cupped hands as she nodded, then glanced down and smiled. ‘Your poor feet. Crazy girl. Goodnight, Mari. I’ll drop by to see you in the morning. Sleep well.’
He kissed her forehead once. Barely more than a brush of his lips across her skin. It felt like a branding iron, burning a mark that would never be erased. Then he turned around and walked slowly down the path to his four-wheel drive, one hand thrust into each pocket of his jeans, leaving her standing, stunned, shivering even inside the coat still around her shoulders, just watching him start up the car and drive away.
He didn’t look back.
And she just stood there.
She had to.
Her moist ballet shoes had frozen to the ice on the doorstep.
The wind had picked up during the night and it buffeted Mari as she made her way along the top of the cliff path heading away from the centre of Swanhaven and out towards the headland. And the house where she used to live. The house which was going to become her new home.
She’d been so confident that this time she had a real chance of reconnecting with her old life when she had been so happy, safe and warm in a family who loved her and valued her. A family she could trust to do the right thing for her and never once complain that she was distant or that she had let them down by being ‘emotionally unavailable,’ as her old boyfriend has described her. Inside the warm embrace of her family, she had never felt the need to close down her heart.
It was daylight now but still too early in the morning for anyone else to be on the path. She could see a few dog-walkers playing with their dogs on the beach below and she envied them their carefree moments of fun and laughter. But right now she was grateful for the solitude and the familiar soundtrack of the sea crashing onto the rocks at the point, the call of seabirds and the sound of the wind in the trees on the other side of the fields and the crunch of her own footsteps on the cold stone chippings and frosty grass as she walked.
It had been a long night which she had got through in snatches of broken sleep and much tossing and turning before finally giving up and heading downstairs to the empty, cold kitchen and a hot drink before facing all that her first day as a homeowner in Swanhaven could bring.
Starting with seeing Ethan again.
His face and his soft voice had echoed through her dreams, filling her with a sense of belonging and warmth and familiar contentment which was so at odds with the turmoil seething though her that she had seized on to it like a life raft in those dark and lonely moments when everything that had happened over the week threatened to overwhelm her.
And that was so wrong. And unfair. To both of them.
Last night he had offered her his heart and she had been too terrified to accept it.
When had she lost the ability to trust and show her emotions? Was it when Kit died and their father left them? Or when she lashed out at Ethan on her sixteenth birthday? She had only dared to kiss him when the strength of her pent-up frustrations and anguish and grief had overcome the barriers she had created to protect herself.
Reliving their tender moments together when they kissed in the hospital, it had been her overwhelming sense of relief that he and Peter were safe and well that had broken down the flimsy barricades and allowed her the luxury of being able to show Ethan how she truly felt about him.
More than that, the power of those feelings had given her the freedom to believe that she could be attractive and worthy of being loved by a man like Ethan. If only for a few moments, she had enjoyed that remarkable sensation that she was ready to trust in another person and fall in love with him. And she was worthy of that love.
Spending these past few days with Ethan had m
ade her feel things that she had never felt before. Oh, she had glimpsed what love could be like, but her ex-boyfriend was right that she had never been able to trust him enough to open her heart to love him. It was not an excuse for cheating on her! Far from it. But, the more she thought about it, the more she realised that perhaps she had chosen someone who she knew she would walk away from, in one way or another, before he got too serious.
Why not? When her self-esteem as a woman was so low.
Well, these past few days had opened her eyes about a lot of things.
Ethan had made her realise that she had to find her own way forward. Or face a lifetime of running away. Or, worse, running backwards.
A pair of herring gulls soared up from the edge of the chalk cliff on the wind, calling and squawking as they climbed higher and higher into the sky in front of Mari as she paused to watch them. They seemed to be mocking her and her weakness and lack of self-confidence.
Well, they were right about that, but she had made a start and there was a long way to go.
Head back, she closed her eyes and felt the wind blasting against the left side of her body, bringing with it the salty tang of sea and seaweed and all that she had grown up with and never once forgotten. She had walked this path at least once a day for the first sixteen years of her life and very little had changed.
Everything about this place and this moment was as different from her normal office life as anywhere in the world. But, as she stood there and listened to the sea and the bird calls and felt the wind and smelt the sea, she realised that in truth she had never left.
She had always carried this special place with her in her heart over these last ten years. It was the core of her sense of who she was and who she probably always would be. The self-confident girl who’d loved school and had a world of opportunity in front of her.
A smile crept onto Mari’s face like a welcome friend. Strange. That idea had never even occurred to her until that moment. But it would explain why she felt so at peace here and why she felt compelled to go out on such a cold morning wearing the extra-long sheepskin coat that Ethan had given her when she could have stayed warm and snug in bed.
And of course there was one other reason why she had pulled on all of her winter clothing and borrowed Rosa’s warm boots. She longed to see the house again so that she could start planning what improvements needed to be made.
Inhaling deeply, allowing the cold salty air to purge her lungs of the city smog, Mari finally opened her eyes and looked straight ahead of her.
She could just see the roof of the house, which was set back a few hundred feet away from the cliff path and, with renewed vigour and purpose, she set off walking towards it, covering the short distance in fast long strides, her eyes fixed on the red tiles.
She turned her back on the sea, swung open the garden gate and stood and stared at her old home. And her breath froze in her lungs. Transfixed by shock and amazement at what she was looking at.
The pretty flower beds and neat lawn where she had once played and held tea parties was a brown, barren wasteland of waist-high weeds and wild bushes that choked the evergreen shrubs which had been chosen with such loving care to flourish in the harsh sea breezes. Broken pieces of furniture, glass and plastic bottles and rubbish of all kinds spewed out from an open dustbin, which was jammed against what was left of the broken wooden fence which had once been white and fresh and welcoming.
But it was the house itself which was the greatest shock. The front picture windows were gone—covered over by pieces of timber which stared out like grey eyes, cold and lifeless. The window frames and the front door were rotten and splintered, uncared for and useless and the guttering was waving loose in the wind from a broken wooden fascia.
Tiles were missing from the roof. There was a crack in the main chimney and a wild thistle was growing in the drainpipe.
Tears of grief and the biting wind pricked Mari’s eyes and she heaved in a breath.
This was where she had wanted her lovely sister to make a home! This was the house she had longed to come back to! This was the house she had just bought with all of her savings, a loan from Ethan and a lot more than she could afford.
What had she been expecting? The same house she’d last seen when her mother was alive and they had walked along the cliff path on a hot summer day arm in arm and made light of the fact that the elderly couple who lived there were lovely people but gardening was not their strength? How could the house have deteriorated so fast? She had seen it only a few years ago and it had been nothing like this. But of course she had only seen it at a distance from the beach. Any closer was too painful.
Rosa had tried to warn her, but nothing could have prepared her for this amount of neglect. It was going to take months of work and more money than she had to make the house fit to live in.
Oh, Ethan. You were so right. Where was her secure and loving home? This certainly was not it.
Taking a couple of deep breaths, Mari pushed her way through the garden, being careful where she placed her feet, until she came to the kitchen door.
Once glance confirmed it. The door still had the original lock.
She glanced from side to side and immediately felt foolish because she had not seen anyone for the last ten minutes and she was the new owner on paper, then reached into her trouser pocket and pulled out a long brass key with an engraved handle.
Her father had made the keys and the lock by hand and given each of his family their own key. She had used this key once before, when she had sneaked in here with Ethan on the night of her sixteenth birthday, and she had kept it safe all of these years, waiting, just waiting, for this moment to use it again. Time to see if it still fitted.
Cautiously, she stretched out her hand, and then pulled it back again.
This was not her property yet! She couldn’t simply go inside without asking permission. Could she?
The wind howled around her ankles and blew old leaves up in the air. She had come a long way to stand on this very special piece of earth. It was now or never.
Head up, Mari slowly and gently turned the key in the lock and felt the mechanism engage. The door itself had swollen in the winter rain and it took a little persuasion to open but, a few moments later, Mari Chance stepped inside the lobby and closed the door behind her.
She was back inside her home again.
This was the moment that had sustained her in the endless airport lounges and interminable meetings in boardrooms without windows. This should have been her great achievement.
She had come home. She was back.
And she felt sick at what she was looking at.
Her home was a shell of a building, dark, dank and gloomy and, in a moment of horror and barely suppressed claustrophobia, Mari stepped across the broken and filthy floor tiles they used to polish every Sunday evening to the window above the sink, and tugged hard at the plastic sheeting and cardboard which covered the window.
The flimsy sheets came away easily in her hands and pale February sunshine flooded into the dark kitchen, creating a spotlight around where she stood in the otherwise dark place. This window was north-facing and her mother had created stained glass panels in the top half of the window to add colour to the otherwise dull, flat light.
Mari blinked hard as the light flooded into the room through the large window that dominated the wall above the old ceramic sink.
Elsewhere in the stripped-out shell of a kitchen, there were dim shadows and corners of dark purple and grey above exposed electric wires and gas pipes, but Mari’s attention was totally focused on the stained glass which, amazingly, wondrously, had survived intact and as bright and colourful as ever.
As she stepped closer, mesmerised, it was obvious that the glass in the window was not made from one continuous sheet of glass, but composed of separate smaller panels of varying thicknesses and slight colour differences which her mother had collected from old glass windows and painted by hand.
It was a garden w
ith flowers and leaves of every colour in the spectrum.
Each piece was unique to itself but an essential component of the piece as they fitted together seamlessly to create the whole. Light hitting the thicker bevelled edges was deflected through multiple prisms to create rainbow spectra of colour which danced on the tiled floor at Mari’s feet in a chaos of reds and pinks, pale violets and blues through to greens.
It was as though the light itself had taken on the colour of the glass, creating layers of different luminosity as it was diffracted and refracted and deflected through the uneven panels to produce a barrier between this space and the world outside.
Each panel was unique, creating a different illusion of the world beyond the glass.
On the other side of the glass, bare skeletons of trees bent towards the town in the howling wind from the sea, above the browns and russets of autumn colours. But here and there she could just make out the first signs of yellow daffodils and white snowdrops. Spring was on the way and in a few short weeks there would be new life and energy on the other side of the glass.
Mari sucked in a breath of cold, damp and dusty air, coughed and exhaled slowly as she glanced around this empty, echoing and frigid room.
Her life was in that window.
The past was captured in her reflection on the glass for a few fleeting seconds until she moved away and the moment was lost. On this side of the glass was the present, and a girl whose reflection was looking back at her. And on the other side of the glass? That was where the future lay. Still hazy but with the promise of sunny days ahead.
But not here. Not in this room and not in this building. There was nothing for her here any more.
Mari closed her eyes and let the tears finally fall down her cheeks unchecked as she mourned the loss of everything she’d thought that she wanted.