River Deep (39 page)

Pete swallowed hard and asked her the one thing he really needed to know.

‘Do you, Stella? Do you love me, or are you still feeling hurt and bruised from someone or something in Australia? Do you just want to be with me because I’m the safe and secure one? Just until I bore you again and you feel good about yourself? If you can say that it’s none of those things, that you want me because being with me makes you complete, then I’m willing to give it another try. If, after all these years, you’ve finally started to really feel like that then I won’t walk out on you, I’ll stay.’

Pete felt ashamed. He pretended to himself that the whole purpose of this talk had always been to try and work things out, but he knew that he didn’t want to work things out. He wanted to be with Maggie, or on his own. Stella’s light had suddenly blinked out of his vision. But he couldn’t just say that; he couldn’t tell it like it was. He had to walk all around the issue waiting for her to see it. Waiting for her to say it. Waiting for her to end it. He felt his body tense and a surge of sudden panic at losing something he had become accustomed to wanting for so long.

Pete was sure he knew what Stella would say.

Stella’s head was bowed as she thought for a moment, twisting her engagement ring around and round on her finger. She looked up at him.

‘But I do love you, Pete. You do mean the world to me. I do want to marry you.’

They stared at each other for a long moment, a moment filled with dark double meanings and implicit revelations.

‘So you’ll stay with me, won’t you? Like you said?’

Pete nodded his head and attempted a smile as he took her hand.

‘Of course I will,’ he said.

They both knew that Stella was lying. They both knew that one day she’d take off again and leave Pete behind. But Stella needed him now, and after everything they’d been through he was unable to let her down. She knew as well as he did that neither one of them would talk openly about the agreement; they’d both go on just as they had before. Except that this time, for the first time, Pete really understood what that meant.

‘But I thought he said next week!’ Maggie exclaimed as she watched a builder begin to white out The Fleur’s windows.

‘It
is
next week!’ Sarah told her impatiently.

‘But I thought he meant next
week, next
week – it’s Wednesday. You only spoke to him on Sunday! And the refurbishment team have arrived and the kitchen’s getting ripped out!’ Maggie returned anxiously, feeling as if someone had decided to start spinning the world twice as fast without telling her.

‘I know! But he didn’t, he meant this week, he meant today. He phoned me last night to tell us! Aidan is coming in on the eleven-thirty flight today, and I have to take Becca to meet him. What am I going to do, Maggie? What am I going to say, what am I going to wear?’

Maggie looked at the chaos that was gradually beginning to form all around her. It was OK, it was all right, she just had to get a grip and put her faith in gravity.

‘Hang on,’ she said before pressing her hand over the mouthpiece. ‘Jim! JIM!’ Maggie shouted to the pub at large. After a few seconds Jim lurched through the flat door and looked around him.

‘Fuck me, it’s Armageddon,’ he said helpfully.

‘Not yet, but it’s going to be. Look, Sheila’s going to be in at nine, you need to help her get all the stock into crates and into the pool room bar. You need to make sure the bar’s spotless and that all the pumps are washed through and hooked up. You need to move the pool table down to the cellar and set up some tables and chairs – I want it open for business tonight. You need a business as usual sign with an arrow pointing to the new entrance and you need to make sure that what’s staying in here stays and what’s going goes. OK?’

Jim blinked twice. ‘And what will you be doing?’ he said.

‘I’ll be going out. It’s an emergency.’ Maggie gave him a hopeful smile. ‘Come on, just pretend you’re slaying a few dragons and I promise you can have the whole of tomorrow off. And a sub on your wages.’

Jim half smiled. ‘A sub? Really?’ he asked.

‘Yeah, well, it’s a perk of the job,’ Maggie winked at him. ‘Assistant Manager’s job, that is. You’ve been promoted.’

Jim smiled broadly. ‘I’ve got the feeling that somehow you’re still the winner here, but thanks anyway, sis, it means a lot.’ He looked around him, his hands on his hips. ‘Go on, go off for your “emergency”. I’ll see you later.’

Maggie grinned at him and spoke to Sarah. ‘Are you still there?’ she asked.

‘Yes, but don’t worry, I’ve been waiting so long the boredom’s taken over the panic and stress.’

Maggie laughed. ‘I’ll be there in ten minutes then, OK?’ she said.

‘Oh, thank God,’ Sarah said and hung up.

Sarah watched Becca swirl around in front of her in her tenth outfit so far that morning, which had been a long one, hot on the heels of a very short night. Becca had been up since six. First she’d spent half an hour laboriously straightening her hair and then, after Sarah had finally rooted out an ancient photo of Aidan and casually remarked that Becca got her curls from her father, she’d run back into the bathroom and washed again, madly scrunch-drying it with half a can of mousse.

‘I want him to think I look like him,’ she’d said when she emerged a second time. ‘I want him to see I’m really his. I don’t look too much like you, do I, Mum?’

Sarah had swallowed the pain and shook her head. ‘No, you look a lot like him, but darling, it won’t matter what you look like. He’s not going to worry about that.’

Becca had shaken her head. ‘It does matter. It matters to me,’ she’d said, and gone off to find the first of many outfits. This one, Sarah calculated, admittedly with a sleep-deprived brain, was the tenth.

‘Lovely,’ she told her daughter, wishing to God that Maggie would get here fast.

‘You always say that,’ Becca sighed, smoothing down her top as she looked in the mirror.

‘That’s because they are all lovely. You look lovely in whatever you wear,’ Sarah told her. She winced as Becca whirled to face her.

‘No I don’t. You don’t even care. If you did you wouldn’t lie like that! You don’t care what I look like. You want me to look terrible so that he won’t want me, don’t you, don’t you? You don’t want this to work at all, do you? You must really hate me!’

Sarah took a deep breath and gave a small prayer of thanks that Marcus had the day off and had been able to pick Sam up this morning before he’d even been properly awake. The last thing she wanted was for him to hear all of this.

‘Darling, I thought we’d talked about this. That’s not true, and you know it,’ she said, holding out her arms to her daughter, who stayed resolutely on the other side of the room. After a few seconds Sarah let her arms return to her side, feeling the most excruciating sense of rejection she had ever felt since Aidan had gone almost without warning all those years ago. She dropped her chin in defeat.

‘I’m sorry, Becca. I never seem to say the right thing. This is hard for me too. I’m nervous about seeing him. I’m worried that it won’t work out the way you want it to …’

‘See!’ Becca started.

‘No, wait.’ Sarah raised her hand. ‘Just wait. I hope that it will, I think that it will. More than anything I want you to be happy. But Becca, you are so precious to me, I’d do anything to protect you. I know you’re all grown up now, but you’re still my little rose bud. I just want to keep you close and safe, even when … even when I know I can’t.’ Sarah didn’t know which part of what she’d said got through but before she knew it Becca had crossed the room and put her arms around her neck. Sarah held her there, held her slim body against her own for a long moment, closing her eyes as she remembered the first time she’d ever held her daughter, feeling just the same – so in love, and so terrified of getting it wrong.

‘I’m not a kid any more,’ Becca said after a while, leaning back to look at Sarah. ‘Well, I’m not a
little
kid, anyway, not like Sam. I know what might happen. Look at Leanne’s dad – she hasn’t seen him in two years. I know that it’s not automatic for dads and kids to like each other or love each other. I just want the chance, and I want the best possible chance, and you might think I’m silly but––’

‘I don’t, I don’t think that,’ Sarah said.

‘But Mum, I still need you. I will for ages and ages. I won’t leave you or anything if that’s what you’re worried about.’

Sarah looked at her daughter and bit her lip hard.

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘For saying that. And you do look lovely in that outfit, you do look lovely in all of them. Any father would be proud to call you his daughter.’

Maggie opened the flat door and called out hello.

‘Luce told me just to come up. Hi, Becs, you look lovely!’ she said, and stood waiting patiently for her friend and her god-daughter to explain to her what it was they were laughing about.

‘Are you OK?’ Maggie asked Sarah as they waited for Becca to emerge from her third trip to the ladies since they’d arrived.

Sarah stood looking at the arrivals gate and chewing her lip.

‘I’m OK. I’m just worried that when I see him again, all those emotions I spent so long getting rid of will just flood right back and I’ll go to pieces. I’m worried I won’t be able to be the person Becca wants me to be. And that I’ll forget that this whole thing isn’t about me, it’s about her and what she wants – what I think and feel doesn’t matter.’

Maggie hooked her arm through Sarah’s.

‘It does matter, it matters to me. But anyway it’s a long time, fourteen years. He probably won’t be sexy any more. Actually, to be honest with you, I never thought he was sexy – too tall and gangly and, let’s face it, too spotty for me.’

Sarah attempted a smile, but the muscles of her face seemed to be frozen.

‘Well, I fancied him,’ she said instead. ‘And anyway, he might be even sexier now he’s aged a bit. Look at us – I’m a bombshell and frankly, for you aged eighteen, the only way was up.’

Maggie bit back her retort and let Sarah’s comment slide, seeing as it was more or less true.

‘We’re still sexy, aren’t we?’ Sarah said, and then, ‘Oh God, I think I have to pee now.’

Becca bounded up between them, throwing an arm round each of them as she arrived. Besides the rather obvious symptom of repetitive trips to the loo, she seemed more excited than worried.

‘It’s in, the flight is in! I heard it over the speaker thingy in the loo. Didn’t you hear it? Come on!’ She leaned forward, attempting to drag both of the women with her.

Maggie ducked out from under her arm lock and exchanged glances with Sarah over her head. Sarah disengaged herself from Becca’s grip and took her gently by the shoulders, looking her in the eye.

‘Are
you
ready?’ she asked Becca. ‘Are
you
OK?’

Becca jiggled on her toes as if she needed another trip to the ladies.

‘I’m fine, Mum,
come on
! He’s going to be waiting for us.’ Becca started walking ahead of them to the arrivals area.

‘It’ll be ages yet, Becs,’ Maggie called out. ‘There’s luggage to pick up and passport control, it’ll be ages!’ But Becca was weaving off ahead of them, forcing the two women to break into a trot to catch up with her.

Eventually the first few passengers began to file through the arrivals gates, there were a few quiet whoops of joy and several hugs, followed by more than one business traveller catching sight of his or her name scrawled on to a piece of dirty cardboard.

Sarah watched the crowd, feeling the racing of her heart pulsing in every nerve. As she scanned the sea of bobbing faces, she tried to picture Aidan as she had last seen him under the half light of a streetlamp as they’d said goodbye for what she had thought was the last time. His green eyes were cast in shadow, the curl of his hair resisting whatever gel or style products he tried to tame it with. He
had
been tall and gangly and spotty and all of the things Maggie had said, but Sarah had
loved
him. And the sight of him then, and the memory of him ever since, had filled her with such a longing that for years her chest would still tighten and her skin would still tingle. Just as it was now.

Gradually the crowd began to thin out, until all that remained were the last few stragglers: a woman trying to manoeuvre two huge wheelie suitcases at once, a large man in jeans and baseball cap lumbering in their direction and finally a nun, hurrying past them all with some secret purpose.

‘Where is he?’ Becca asked, looking down at the photo she’d brought with her. ‘Is he still coming?’

Sarah glanced at Maggie, feeling her heart plummeting into the pit of her stomach. What did she say to Becca now? How did she explain this?

‘I expect he’s been delayed, or––’ Sarah stopped mid-sentence, aware that the large man in the baseball cap had stopped directly in front of her and Becca and was staring at them both.

‘Sarah? My God, you haven’t changed a bit,’ he said with a Boston accent. Sarah blinked at him, and for a split second wondered who it was that Aidan had sent in his place to greet his first-born daughter. And then she realised this man
was
Aidan, still tall, yes, but now carrying a huge bulk that seemed to gather mainly around his middle, tapering down to a neat pair of feet and up towards a perfectly bald head. Every last one of the wayward curls he’d hated so much had gone, revealing a smooth pink surface that reflected the fluorescent lighting in its slight shimmer of sweat. The only thing left of the eighteen-year-old Aidan was in his eyes, still warm and green and sparkling behind the folds of flesh that had grown around them. Sarah looked into those, and for a moment she was back lying on the grass under the moon with Aidan in her arms. But it was only for a moment, and she laughed with relief.

‘Aidan! It’s so great to see you!’

She felt able to smile at him, safe in the knowledge that she wasn’t going to fall in love with him all over again. It wasn’t his weight or his hair loss or his appalling taste in T-shirts that had done it. Although they had helped. The instant Sarah saw him she remembered something she’d forgotten for all those years in the shock of his abrupt departure. That even on the grass under the moon, she’d known that although he was her first love he wouldn’t be her last, and she wouldn’t love him for ever. It took seeing him again to remind her of that, and to wipe away the mythological status his absence had given him. If only he’d managed to write to her, if only they’d had a chance to drift apart naturally, perhaps then she wouldn’t have spent all these years trying to avoid getting hurt by another man again.