Jessica Hart - Barefoot Bride

Alice sat very still. Funny, she had known this was going to happen-it was what she had insisted should happen-but, now that the moment was here, she was completely unprepared. Everything had worked out perfectly. A nanny was available. Lily was going to school soon, and there would be someone to look after her when Will wasn’t there. She could go home.

It was just what she wanted.

So why did her heart feel as if it had turned to a stone in her chest?

‘I see,’ she said, and from somewhere produced a smile. ‘Well, that’s good news. What’s her name?’

‘Helen.’

Helen would soon be sitting here with him. Helen would meet Lily from school and kiss her knees when she fell down. Helen would be waiting for him when he got home in the evening.

Is she pretty? Alice wanted to ask. Is she young? Will you fall in love with her?

‘When’s she coming?’ she asked instead.

‘I haven’t replied yet,’ said Will. ‘I wanted to talk to you first.’ He hesitated. ‘I wanted to ask if you would stay.’

‘STAY?’ Alice echoed blankly.

‘Yes, stay. Lily loves you, she’ll miss you. And I’ll miss you too,’ Will admitted honestly. ‘I’m not asking you to stay for ever, Alice. I know how you feel about commitment, but the last couple of weeks have been good, haven’t they?’

‘Yes,’ she said, unable to deny it.

‘Then why not carry on as we are?’ he said, uncomfortably aware of the undercurrent of urgency, even desperation, in his voice. He cleared his throat and tried to sound more normal. ‘You told me yourself that your engagement had fallen through and that you didn’t have a job at the moment. What have you got to go home to?’

‘My home,’ said Alice a little defensively. ‘My life.’

‘You could have a home and a life here.’

‘For how long?’ she asked. ‘I can’t pretend I haven’t enjoyed the last few weeks, Will. It’s been a special time, but special times don’t last.’

‘They don’t if you don’t give them a chance,’ said Will.

She bit her lip. The thought of saying goodbye to him and Lily tore at her, but he was asking her to give up her whole life, and for what?

‘How can they last?’ she said. ‘Lily will be going to school soon, and what would I do then? You’ve got an absorbing job, Sara looks after the house. There’s no place for me here, Will. How long would it be before I get bored, and everything that’s made this such a wonderful time disappears?’

‘You could find something to do,’ said Will. ‘Look at how you’ve taken over with the open day. Someone with your organisational skills will always find a job.’

‘I might find some temporary or voluntary work, but that’s not what I want. I’ve got a career, and the longer I stay away from it the more difficult it will be to go back to it. I’ve worked hard to get to this stage,’ she told him. ‘I can’t just chuck it all in now on the basis of a few happy weeks.’

‘At least you admit you have been happy,’ said Will with an unmistakable thread of bitterness. ‘Are you going to be happy in London? No, don’t answer that,’ he said as Alice hesitated. ‘You’ve always put your career before your happiness, haven’t you?’

‘At least I can rely on my career to give me satisfaction and security,’ she retorted. ‘You can’t rely on being happy.’

‘But if you don’t take the risk you’ll never know how happy you could be.’

Alice sighed and pushed a stray strand of hair behind her ear. ‘We’ve been through all this before, Will,’ she reminded him. ‘You’ve got your career, I’ve got mine, and they don’t fit together. We still want different things from life.’

‘So you won’t stay?’ he asked heavily. ‘Not even for a while?’

She swallowed. ‘No.’ And then, when he said nothing, ‘Surely you can see that the longer I stay, the harder it’s going to be to say goodbye? It’s going to come to goodbye sometime, and I think it would be easier for both of us to do it sooner rather than later.’

‘All right,’ said Will after a moment, his voice empty of expression now. ‘I’ll email the agency tomorrow and get them to send Helen out as soon as possible.’

Alice didn’t reply. She sat unmoving in her chair, paralysed by the weight of the decision she had made. It was the right one, she knew, but that didn’t stop her feeling leaden inside, and her throat was so tight she couldn’t have spoken if she’d tried.

Beside her, Will looked out at the darkness, his jaw clenched with disappointment and a kind of rage for allowing himself to even hope that she would say yes when he must have known that she would say no.

The insects shrilled into the silence, and for a while there was nothing else but the sound of the ocean beyond the reef and the sadness of knowing that the love and the joy they had shared wasn’t going to be enough.

At last, Will drew a long breath and got to his feet. ‘Come on,’ he said, holding a hand down to her. ‘Let’s go to bed.’

He stopped as he saw her expression rinsed with surprise, and the hand which he had reached out so instinctively fell to his side. ‘Would you rather not?’

‘No, it’s not that,’ said Alice, faltering. ‘It’s just…I didn’t think you would want to.’

‘We’ve still got a week left,’ he said. ‘You were the one who said that we should make the most of the time we had.’

‘Yes.’ Alice got up almost stiffly, overwhelmed by the relief that had rushed through her when she’d realised that Will wasn’t going to reject her. She wouldn’t have blamed him if he had, but the thought that she would never again lie in his arms had been a bitter one. Reaching out, she took his hand deliberately. ‘Yes, I did.’

They didn’t say a word to each other, but there was a desperation and a poignancy to their love-making that wrenched Alice’s heart. There was no need to speak when every kiss, every touch, said more than words ever could how much they were going to miss each other.

By tacit agreement, they both threw themselves into the preparations for the open day. Anything was better than thinking about how they were going to say goodbye.

On Friday morning, Will sat impatiently in the car, waiting for Alice and Lily to appear. He had done his best to talk himself into believing that Alice’s departure was for the best. She had worked really hard on the open day, but she didn’t really fit in here, he reminded himself constantly. She had been right. There would be nothing for her to do on St Bonaventure, and she would soon get bored and restless. Look how little time it had taken for her to get fed up with staying with Beth. Far better for her to go now than to hang around until her frustration soured everything.

He should never have asked her to stay, Will told himself, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel and glancing at his watch for the umpteenth time. Alice had a pattern of running away at the first suggestion of commitment. She had always done it, and she always would. For someone with such forceful opinions, she was pathetic when it came to taking risks.

Will was conscious of the growing resentment inside him, which he fed deliberately because it was easier to be angry with Alice than to contemplate life when she was gone. Why had she had to come and upset everything? She could have stayed with Roger and Beth. They could have met a couple of times for some polite conversation and everything would have been fine. But no! She’d had to come and live with them. She had turned his world upside down all over again. She had made him fall in love with her all over again, and, now that she had made sure that she was right at the centre of his life and Lily’s, she was going to leave them both feeling desolate.