Barefoot Bride Page 16

  None of them worked.

  When her dream job was advertised in the trade journal, Alice could hardly believe it. This, surely, was the sign that she had been waiting for. The job was everything she’d ever wanted. A prestigious company, a promotion, a challenging position that would launch her into a new stage of her career. If she got this job, she was meant to stay in London and get on with her life. What could be clearer?

  Carefully, Alice filled in the application form, and when she passed the first hurdle and was asked for interview she had her suit cleaned, and bought a spectacular pair of new shoes to go with it. She prepared for the interview as thoroughly as she could, but she was very nervous as she waited to go in. It felt as if her whole future would be decided by that hour’s interview.

  Her shoes pinched horribly, but otherwise it seemed to go quite well, and then all Alice had to do was wait.

  When her phone rang a few hours later, she practically jumped out of her skin. She had spent the afternoon prowling restlessly about the flat, unable to settle to anything. Too jittery to take off her suit, she was barefoot on the carpet, her poor toes enjoying a respite from being pushed into the shoes that might look fabulous but were in fact extremely uncomfortable.

  This was it. Alice stared at the ringing phone for a moment and then picked it up. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Ms Gunning?’ said a voice she recognized from the interview that morning. ‘Thank you so much for coming to see us this morning. We’re absolutely delighted to offer you the post.’

  The rest of the conversation was a blur of congratulations, but it finished with a suggestion that she go in and see them the next day to sort out the practicalities of salary and starting date. In the meantime, they would courier over her contract so that she could read it at her leisure.

  ‘Thank you so much.’ Alice put the phone down slowly.

  So the job was hers. Finally her decision had been made for her. She was to stay here, with a great job, a nice flat, and friends. She had a good life, and she was safe and settled again, just as she had always wanted.

  She was ecstatically happy and relieved, naturally.

  She burst into tears.

  Aghast at herself, Alice sank on to the sofa, brushing the tears angrily from her face. What on earth was the matter with her? She had wanted a sign, and this was it. She should be delighted, not sick to her stomach with disappointment.

  But, the more she tried to convince herself that she had got what she wanted, the more she cried, until her face was blotched and piggy, and her throat was clogged with sobs.

  As if that wasn’t enough, the doorbell pealed imperatively. ‘Oh, God, now what?’ mumbled Alice. She didn’t want to explain her wretched state to a neighbour, and she was in no mood for a survey, but it might be the contract. She would have to check.

  Cautiously, she put her eye to the peephole and peered through the door. If it was a courier, she would open the door, take the contract and close it again. If it was a friend or a neighbour, she would just have to pretend that she wasn’t there.

  But it wasn’t a friend or a neighbour, or a market researcher, or even a courier. Standing on the other side of the door were the very last people she had expected to see.

  Her parents.

  Alice was humming as she jumped off the bus and walked back to the flat past the little parade of shops. She waved at the owner of the Turkish greengrocer, and the young boy who helped at the Indian corner shop that sold everything she could ever want in the middle of the night. Stopping at the street market, she bought a bunch of hyacinths, and sniffed appreciatively as she passed an Italian restaurant where something very garlicky was cooking. Two elderly ladies swathed in black were coming towards her, deep in conversation, and Alice smiled as she stood aside for them.

  She loved this multi-cultural side to London. The city was looking at its best in the spring sunshine. In the centre of town, the great parks were green and bright with flowers nodding gaily in the breeze, and the very air seemed sharper and clearer, as if the world was conspiring to reassure her that she had made the right decision. Even the bus had come just when she wanted it, and she had enjoyed the ride on the top deck back to her suburb. It might not be as attractive as the centre of town, but it had its own vibrancy and charm. Yes, this was a great city to live in.

  Alice couldn’t believe how much better she felt for making up her mind. Filled with a sense of well-being, she was smiling as she turned into her street, and it wasn’t until she was halfway along that she saw that someone was standing on her doorstep. Someone whose shape and stance was achingly familiar.

  Her steps slowed in disbelief, until she stopped altogether with her hand on the gate, her smile fading. He turned at her approach, and as they looked at each other the beat of the great metropolis, the jabber of languages, the constant throb of traffic, the rattle of trains, the blare of music, and the car alarm that everyone was ignoring, faded into a blur. And then silence, until there was just the two of them, looking at each other.

  Will.

  Alice drank in the sight of him. He looked tired, she thought, but it was unmistakably him. It was as if a high-definition lens had been slotted over her eyes so that she could see him in extraordinary detail: every line around his eyes, every crease in his cheek, the way his hair grew, the set of his mouth…

  Oh, that mouth…Her knees went suddenly weak, and she had to hang on to the gate.

  ‘Hello,’ she said.

  ‘Hello, Alice.’

  He didn’t smile, he didn’t rush to sweep her into his arms, he just stood there and looked directly back at her. But that was the moment nonetheless when the last piece clicked into place for Alice, and she realised that she wasn’t even surprised to see him. All that misery, all that indecision, all that dithering…all had led inevitably to this time and this place, to this certainty that everything would be all right.

  Discovering that she was able to move after all, Alice pushed open the gate and pulled out her keys as she walked towards him.

  ‘Have you been waiting long?’

  ‘About forty minutes.’

  About ten years, Will amended to himself.

  Alice looked wonderful. The mere sight of her was enough to lift his heart, but he was conscious of a sinking sense of consternation too. Part of him, admit it, had hoped that she would have been wretched and miserable without him, and that it would have showed, but there was no evidence of that. Instead, she looked glowing and confident in a short jacket with a long flowing skirt and boots, and flowers in her arms. Her hair fell to her shoulders, and when she stood at the gate it shone gold and copper and bronze in the spring light, and her eyes were full of sunshine.

  She looked happy, Will realised dully, and he was terribly afraid that he had left it too late.

  Alice went into the kitchen and put the hyacinths into some water, bending to breathe in their heady perfume. ‘Coffee?’ she asked.

  ‘Thanks.’ Will wasn’t sure how to begin. He stood to one side and watched her moving around the kitchen. She hadn’t asked what he was doing there, but presumably she could guess, and surely they had known each other long enough for him not to need to dance around with polite conversation before coming to the point?

  ‘I’ve been wondering if you’d thought at all about what I said before you left,’ he said abruptly. ‘Have you decided what you want yet?’

  Alice had sat on a chair and was pulling off her boots, but she stopped in the middle of unzipping the second one and smiled at him. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, I have.’

  ‘I see,’ said Will bleakly. She had decided to stay in London, that was obvious. You didn’t buy flowers for a home you were about to leave.

  ‘Shall we go into the sitting room?’ Alice suggested before he could say any more, and she carried the tray into a bright room. It was cool and uncluttered, and Will sat gingerly on the edge of a cream sofa. She looked perfectly at home here. If this was her life, he wasn’t surprised that she hadn�
��t wanted to give it up for a rickety verandah and creaking ceiling fans.

  Alice pushed the plunger into the cafetière and poured out the coffee, wriggling her toes on the carpet. Will was so used to seeing her in shoes that the sight of her bare feet was strangely arousing, and he looked away.

  ‘What are you doing here, Will?’ she asked as she handed him a mug of coffee. ‘I thought you were going to wait for me to decide what I wanted to do?’

  ‘I was going to-I meant to wait-but there came a point when I couldn’t wait any longer.’ Will put down his coffee without drinking it. ‘It’s terrible since you left, Alice,’ he told her honestly. ‘Lily has closed in on herself again.’

  Alice bit her lip. ‘Doesn’t she get on with Helen?’

  ‘Helen’s all right. She’s done her best. It’s not her fault that she’s not you,’ said Will. ‘The truth is that Lily and I are in a bad way. I can’t sleep, I can’t eat, I can’t work properly…We don’t seem to be able to do anything but miss you.’

  A wry smile touched his mouth. ‘I know this sounds like emotional blackmail, Alice, but it’s not meant to be that. It’s just that it suddenly seemed stupid to just sit out there and hope for the best. I couldn’t just watch my daughter getting quieter and quieter. I realised that if we wanted you back in our lives-and we do-I would have to do something to make it happen.

  ‘So I’ve applied for a job here in the UK,’ he told Alice. ‘It’s as a consultant with an engineering company, doing environmental impact assessments for their marine projects. I’d be based in the North, not London, but it’s a permanent job, and a good one. I’d still have to do research overseas, but it would be in short stints, so we could buy a house and settle down somewhere. Lily could go to school, and you could carry on with your career…’

  Will stopped, realising that he was in danger of babbling. He looked at Alice, who was clasping her mug with a very strange expression on her face, as if she couldn’t quite believe what she was hearing.

  ‘I suppose what I really came to ask you, Alice, was whether it would make any difference to your decision if I did get that job.’

  Very slowly, Alice shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘No, it wouldn’t make any difference.’

  ‘I see.’ The belief that deep down Alice still loved him had been keeping Will going through the last ghastly weeks. He knew that she was scarred by her restless childhood and he knew how important the idea of home was to her. Once he had made the decision to change his own career, he had thought that would solve the problem, but he could see now that it had been arrogant of him. Alice had never promised anything beyond the short term.

  Somehow he managed a smile. ‘I understand,’ he said. ‘Now that I’ve seen you here, I can appreciate what this place means to you.’ He looked around the room, approving its simple, tasteful décor. ‘It’s nice here. You’ve obviously got a good life, and I know how important your career is to you. I hope you’ll find just the job you want,’ he added heroically.

  ‘It’s funny you should say that,’ said Alice, a smile hovering around her mouth. ‘I was offered the job of my dreams just a couple of days ago.’

  ‘Well…great,’ said Will heartily. Abandoning his coffee, he got to his feet. He wasn’t sure how he was going to tell Lily, but he would have to find a way. She had been happy to see her grandparents again. Perhaps he should think about moving to the UK anyway, just as Alice had once suggested. ‘Good luck then, Alice.’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘I should go and pick Lily up. It was good to see you again,’ he said, looking into Alice’s golden eyes for the last time. ‘And…Well, there doesn’t seem much more to say.’

  He was turning for the door when her soft voice stopped him in his tracks. ‘Even if I tell you that I didn’t take the job?’ Very, very slowly, Will turned back. ‘You didn’t take it?’

  Alice shook her head, her smile a little wavery. ‘You haven’t asked me what decision I made yet,’ she reminded him.

  ‘I thought…I assumed…’ he stammered as a tiny spark of hope lit in his heart. ‘You look so happy, so at home here.’

  She tutted. ‘That’s not very scientific of you, Will. I’d have expected you to look at the evidence, not make assumptions on how you think I look.’

  ‘Evidence?’

  Getting to her feet, Alice went over to the table and rummaged among some papers, pulling out a rectangular card. ‘Evidence like this,’ she said, putting it into a flabbergasted Will’s hand. ‘It’s a plane ticket,’ she told him unnecessarily. ‘Open it.’

  ‘It’s to St Bonaventure.’ Will lifted his head from the ticket to stare at her, a smile starting at the back of his eyes.

  ‘And it’s in my name.’ She took the ticket from him and tossed it back onto the table before turning back to him and taking his hand, smiling as his fingers closed convulsively around hers. ‘What does that evidence tell you, Will?’

  ‘Alice…’ Unable to find the words for how he felt, Will pulled her into his arms. He didn’t kiss her, he just held her very tightly, his eyes squeezed shut, his face pressed into her hair as he breathed in the scent of her, and felt the iron bands that had been gripped around his heart ever since she had driven off with Roger start to loosen.

  ‘I made my decision, Will.’ Alice turned her face into his throat and clung to him. ‘I chose happiness. I chose you.’

  Will’s arms tightened around her even further, but she didn’t mind. ‘You were right about me looking happy,’ she went on, rather muffled. ‘I was happy because I’d just finished making all the arrangements to let this flat and could go back to you and Lily.’ ‘But Alice, this is your home,’ Will protested.

  ‘It was, but when I came back from St Bonaventure it wasn’t home any more,’ she said. ‘It was just a flat. For a while it seemed as if I didn’t have a home at all, and then I realised that I do. It’s just not bricks and mortar. Home is wherever you are.’

  ‘Alice…Oh, Alice…’ Will pulled back slightly so that she could turn her face up to his, and their lips met at last in a long, sweet kiss. He felt almost drunk with relief and happiness. He wasn’t sure quite how it happened, but his dream had just come true, and the proof of it was Alice’s lips beneath his, her arms around him, the softness and scent of her hair. ‘Tell me that again,’ he said raggedly when they broke for air.

  ‘I love you, Will. I think I’ve always loved you, but I was too stupid and afraid to realise how lucky I was to have found you.’ Lovingly, she traced the line of his cheek with her fingers. ‘I’ve walked away from your love three times now, and I don’t deserve to be given another chance, but, if you will, I promise I’ll never walk away again. I just want to be with you, and I don’t care where we are, or what we do, as long as we’re together.’

  ‘And you’re sure?’ asked Will as he bent to kiss her again, and she smiled against his lips.

  ‘Yes, this time I’m sure.’

  ‘What made you change your mind?’ Will asked much later when they were lying, lazily entangled, in Alice’s bed. He smoothed the hair tenderly from her face. ‘You were so insistent that you had everything you needed here.’

  ‘Everything except you and Lily,’ said Alice, rolling onto her side to face him. ‘It didn’t take me long to realise that I might have the security of material things, but none of them were worth anything without you. I knew I loved you, and that you loved me, but I still couldn’t bring myself to trust that feeling.

  ‘I was afraid to let go of what I had,’ she confessed. ‘It was just what you said. I was afraid to give it all up for the chance of happiness.’ She linked her fingers with his. ‘Once you know what you want, it all seems obvious, and I can’t believe now that I hesitated for so long. But then I was going round and round in circles, not knowing what I wanted or what I really thought.

  ‘Strangely, it was being offered that job that convinced me,’ she remembered. ‘I’d told myself that I would take it as a sign that I
should stay here if I got it, but of course, when it happened, I realised it wasn’t the sign I wanted. I felt a fool,’ she told him with a twisted smile. ‘I’d just been offered the job of my dreams, and all I could think was that I didn’t want it if it meant I couldn’t be with you and Lily. Then my parents turned up.’

  ‘Your parents?’ Will sat up in surprise. ‘I thought they were in India?’

  ‘They were. Now they’re on their way to keep bees in Normandy.’ Out of habit, Alice rolled her eyes, but her smile held a kind of wry affection as well. ‘They thought they would call in and see me on their way through London, and, being them, they didn’t think to give me any warning. They simply turned up on my doorstep, at the very moment I’d just realised that I wanted to be with you, and I was in a terrible muddle about everything.’

  Will twisted a strand of her hair around his finger. ‘Did they help?’

  ‘Well, that’s the funny thing. They did.’ Alice pulled herself up to sit next to him, and adjusted a pillow behind her back. ‘They’ve never been what you’d call conventional parents. They’re two old hippies,’ she said with an affectionate smile, thinking of her mother with her anklets and long braid, her father with his tie-dyed T-shirt and his grey hair pulled back into a pony-tail. ‘But when they saw what a state I was in, they swung into their traditional roles straight away! They sat me down and made me tea, and got the whole story out of me.’

  She ran her hand over Will’s shoulder, loving the sleekness of his skin. ‘I told them about you and Lily, and how much I loved you, and that I’d let you down three times now. I told them I was afraid of doing it again, that I was scared that it wouldn’t work unless I was sure that I could get it right this time and that it would be perfect.’

  Her mother had simply shaken her head. ‘Alice, you can never be sure,’ she had said. ‘All you can do is trust each other and be true to each other and believe in each other. Love isn’t something that comes and goes. It’s something you have to make together, and if you both work at it, if you’re kind and patient and prepared to compromise, if you can stay friends through thick and thin, then you can make it last, but you can’t ever be sure of it.’