Romantic Association - Loves Me, Loves Me Not

She marched away through the teeming bus station, threading through queues at the kiosks for fig rolls with their fragrance of oil and honey, following the foot of another level of fortifications.

He came up behind her. ‘This is madness in this heat, Alicia. Let’s go somewhere cool. We must talk. I need to make you understand what I went through.’

But she did! Her heart had broken for him and once she’d thought she would wait forever. Funny how forever had changed.

She led him down a zigzag path with a battered signpost to the Lascaris War Rooms. ‘It will be cool in here. This little tunnel is cut right from the rock, look, and it goes down and down.’ Their footfalls echoed down the hewn steps as they descended through the tunnels, emerging here and there into the fresh air, only to turn and enter another level. At the entrance to the war rooms she paid for them both in euros and they were given small cassette players to provide a commentary. ‘It’s a complex of rocky cells that housed the military operations command for naval movement in the Mediterranean during the Second World War.’

Every time Grant tried to speak, Alicia jumped in with a fascinating fact. ‘This was actually Montgomery’s office.’ She showed him a tiny chamber with a tin desk and filing cabinet. ‘And the next was Eisenhower’s. They could look over into the operations room below and see where their ships were on that enormous map.’ Mannequins garbed in dated woollen uniforms representing the service personnel of more than sixty years before stared glassily at the chart.

‘I see.’ He remained one pace behind, his cassette player clutched, unused, in his hands as she drifted from room to room, up and down stairs.

They reached the end of the tour and handed back the hardware. ‘So, wasn’t that an extraordinary place?’ she demanded.

He shrugged.

They climbed back up through the network of tunnels and, finally, the zigzag path. Alicia rushed them along like tourists from a cruise ship, trying to devour the city in an afternoon. ‘We’re really close to the Upper Barracca Gardens, here—you’ll never have seen a view like it.’

He’d stopped trying to talk and she was glad. His hurt was so much easier to deal with when he wasn’t wringing her heart with his words. They sweated their way up to the gardens and he strode beside her, surly as a bear, fidgeting while she bought bottles of ice-cold water. She took him to the viewing rail at which other tourists hung, oohing and aahing at the beauty and magnificence of Grand Harbour below them with its five creeks of clear blue sea dancing blindingly in the sunshine, the wakes of every vessel, from tiny motorboats to cruise liners, crisscrossing the waves. ‘There,’ she breathed. ‘How about that? The extraordinary only takes a little looking for.’

Even Grant in a black mood couldn’t quite ignore the majesty of Grand Harbour. He watched the boats and gazed at the cities on the other shore and let the breeze ruffle his hair, sipping from the bottle of cold water. She settled beside him at the railings.

Without warning, he dipped his head and kissed her with cold, watery lips.

‘No!’ She jumped back. And then, seeing his hurt, ‘Grant, I’m sorry—’

‘It’s OK. I get it. I shouldn’t have just turned up here.’ He was already walking away, defeat in the slope of his shoulders.

She turned back to the view, the sea and the boats and the buildings melting together as her eyes filled. Better to let him go. Better in the long run. Fishing tissues from her bag with shaking hands, she blew her nose, hard.

And, because her heart was breaking, she murmured, ‘Grant, darling, it’s only because I’m ill!’ But she was careful to say it only under her breath.

Then, suddenly, his hand was on her arm. ‘What?’ He spun her to face him. ‘What do you mean, ill?’

Heart pounding, she shook her head, unable to speak through a throat rigid with sobs. She hadn’t meant him to hear. Had she?

‘How ill?’ He uncapped her bottle of water and lifted it to her mouth.

‘Pretty ill,’ she managed. She brushed his hair out of his eyes tenderly. ‘Too ill.’

Despite the heat of the day, he was white, not red like so many of the laughing, smiling tourists clicking away at the panorama and each other. ‘I can’t play guessing games. Not about illness. Please tell me.’

She sighed. ‘It started with a lump.’ She indicated her breast, the time bomb she carried under her T-shirt, the nightmare in her bra, the enemy. ‘Breast cancer. Like Mum. Like Ginny.’

They took the ferry back to Sliema and trailed up the hill in silence. Dust gathered itchily between her bare toes. Once, he put his arm around her to prevent her from being bustled from the narrow pavement, but mainly they walked through the streets without touching.

Her apartment was small but comfortable with a shower room, a lounge with a kitchen at one end and a bedroom. She didn’t have much with her: summer clothes, some books, her laptop and MP3 player. She didn’t need much. She spent a lot of her time reading books about the history or rattling off on a bus to visit catacombs, the hypogeum, the cliffs, the churches, to drink Marsovin wine or eat pastizzi. She hadn’t told any of her Maltese relatives that she was here. She needed time alone.

She brought iced water to him on the blue leather sofa.

He put it down untouched. ‘You’ve seen doctors?’

‘Doctors. Consultants. I’ve had the scans and the biopsy.’

With a groan he pulled her down against his body. ‘God, Alicia! Why you? Why now? I can’t believe it.’

Despite her intentions, she allowed herself to remain in his arms. A few precious minutes! To sag against him, take comfort from his sweet familiarity. ‘You know that so much is hereditary. My mother died of breast cancer and my sister—’ She swallowed. ‘Ginny is dying.’

His arms tightened and she enjoyed the sensation of captivity, the weight, the heat, even though it burned to have her breast flattened against his ribcage. He curled himself around her and kissed her hair, her temples. His hands smoothed her back. She closed her eyes and breathed him in, even his faint smell of fresh sweat. Grant. Her lover. Her love.

‘You’ve had so much to go through alone. But after Robbie—’

She pressed still closer. ‘I knew I couldn’t drop anything else on you after Robbie. I saw the way you shied away from any detail about Ginny’s cancer. But I’d gone through every scan and therapy and operation with her so there was a certain comfort in there being no nasty surprises. I coped. I’ll continue to cope.’

‘My poor darling.’ He made a little space so that he could study her chest. ‘Which…?’

‘The right.’

Tentatively, he touched it through her white T-shirt. Then slid his fingers gently through the scoop neck to run his fingertips across her flesh, making her shiver.

Relief took ten years from his face. ‘No mastectomy?’

She smiled, although her heart wrenched. ‘No, darling.’

‘Did radiotherapy do the trick? I guess you haven’t had chemo.’ He stroked her hair, plaited back from her face and little curls frizzing around her face from the heat.

She took his hand and kissed it. She could lie to him. He wouldn’t realise straight away.

They could have time together. A little oasis of pleasure and love. A week. Two weeks. She might even return with him to England for a while and keep up the pretence for precious months.

But she loved him too much for that. ‘I’ve had no treatment.’

His movements stilled. Panic flashed into his eyes. ‘I thought it was the sooner the better? Isn’t that what they said to Ginny? She had radiotherapy to shrink the tumour and—’