Yet there had been no glitzy nightclub, no suffocating shirt and tie, no polished mannequin on his arm, laughing on cue at his jokes. Just him and Ellie having a late-night Room Service picnic on the carpet in front of the television. They’d talked about anything and everything, and sometimes nothing at all.
His celebrity-hungry girlfriends would have balked at such an evening. There was no point going out with Mark Wilder unless you were going to be seen out with him—and it had better be somewhere expensive! They would certainly have frowned upon scanning the film credits for the most interesting-sounding bit part. Ellie had won with ‘second tramp in explosion’. It had beaten his ‘teenager with nose-stud’ hands down.
Relaxing on the sofa with Ellie snuggled up under his arm, he’d realised that this was what normal felt like. He liked it. In fact, he could see himself doing it for a long time to come with her, and he hardly remembered why he had been so terrified of it for almost a decade. Now he had tasted it he wasn’t sure he could go back to living without it. It was kind of addictive.
What did that mean?
He tried not to think of the ‘m’ word, but no matter how he diverted his thoughts they kept swerving back to images of Ellie, dressed in white, a serene smile on her face as he slid a delicate gold band on her finger.
The wind ruffled his hair and his daydreams scattered like the bulbous clouds hurrying towards the skyline. Overnight something had happened. This morning she was withdrawn. No smiles. No bubbling laughter. Today, he hardly existed.
He kicked the railing of the veranda hard. Which was a big mistake—he had bare feet.
What was going on with her? Had she finally taken a good look at him and decided there was nothing more than schmooze and show? Hadn’t he criticised himself enough in recent months for the lack of substance in his life?
He raised his foot, ready to take another kick, but thought better of it. Instead he turned and walked through the cabin to his bedroom to get dressed. It was time to find out what was going on, whether the last few days had just been a mirage or not.
Five minutes later he felt the wet sand caving under the weight of his heels as he strode across the almost deserted beach. Ellie was now only a billowing speck in the distance. A remnant of last night’s wind lifted her loose skirt as she wandered along the shoreline.
He lengthened his stride.
She didn’t hear him come up behind her. She was busy drawing in the wet sand with a long stick. He didn’t want to startle her, so he stopped a few feet away and spoke her name so gently it was only just audible above the splash of the waves near their feet.
She stopped tracing a large letter ‘C’ in the damp sand. Mark’s heart pounded like the waves on the distant rocks as he waited for her response. Her head lifted first, but her eyes remained fixed on her sandy scrawlings a few seconds longer before she found the courage to meet his enquiring gaze. The rims of her eyes were pink and moist.
Any words he’d had ready dissolved in the back of his throat. Devoid of anything sensible to say, he held out the single pink rose he’d lifted from the vase in his room. Ellie started to reach for it, then her face crumpled and silent tears overflowed down her cheeks. He dropped the rose and stepped towards her, intent on gathering her up in his arms, but could only watch in horror as she buckled and sat weeping in the sand.
‘Ellie? Ellie, what is it?’
He sank down next to her and pulled her firmly into his arms. She tried to answer him, but her words were swallowed in another round of stomach-wrenching sobs. So he waited. He held her and he waited. Waited until the tide turned and the hot flood of tears became a damp trickle. She pushed away from his chest and stood up, shaking the sand from her skirt.
Her voice wobbled. ‘I’m sorry.’
Mark leapt to his feet and reached for her.
‘Don’t be.’ He pulled her close to his chest and stroked her wind-ruffled hair. ‘Is there something I can do?’
She swept her fingers over her damp eyes and straightened, seeming to have made a decision about something. ‘I need to tell you something…’ She took a deep breath and held it. ‘It’s the anniversary today. Four years since…since Sam and Chloe died.’
Her hand automatically reached for the silver locket she always wore. Mark didn’t need to be told what pictures it held. He’d had an inkling, but now he knew for sure.
He didn’t say anything. What could he say that wouldn’t sound patronising or trite? So he just continued to hold her, love her, and hoped that would be enough.
‘I didn’t mean to shut you out or push you away,’ she said. ‘I just needed some time to think. It’s different this year. So much has happened in the last few months…’
Slowly she unclipped the flat oval face of the locket and showed its contents to him. On one side was a little girl—blonde curls like her mother, as cute as a button. On the other side a sandy-haired man, with an infectious grin and a gleam of love in his eyes for whomever had been taking the photo. It was hard to look at the pictures, because it made him scared that she wasn’t ready to move on, but he appreciated what a big step it had been for her to show him.
Ellie stooped to pick up the discarded rose and peeled the crushed outer petals off to reveal undamaged ones underneath. Mark felt ill. What if she was still in love with her dead husband? And how horrible was he for being jealous of him? He was polluting the pure emotions Ellie had provoked in him by thinking this way.
‘It was the rose that set me off,’ she said, picking up the bud and bringing it to her nose. ‘Pink was Chloe’s favourite colour.’
He almost thought the conversation was going to end there, the gap was so long, but just when he’d decided she’d lapsed back into silence she continued.
‘I didn’t get to go to the funeral—I was only barely conscious, couldn’t walk, couldn’t talk—but my mother showed me the pictures. She thought it would help. Maybe it did.’
She broke off to look out to sea again.
‘Chloe had a tiny white coffin with silver handles, and Mum had chosen a wreath made only of pink roses that covered it completely. I planted a bush in the cemetery for her when I got out of hospital.’
Mark felt moisture threaten his own eyelids. She reached out and touched his cheek, stroking it with the fleshy pad of her thumb. ‘Thank you for coming to find me. Thank you for never telling me how lucky I was to survive. You have no idea how much that means to me.’
How did she do it? How did she think beyond herself so easily? She had every right to spend the day cut off from the world, wallowing as much as she wanted. Ellie had lost part of her life to a fog her brain had created. What must it be like to not have been able to go to the funerals? To never get closure? Part of her must yearn to remember something from those days.
In contrast, he was a coward. He’d chosen to forget Helena, forget about love and commitment. And that hadn’t helped him heal either. If anything it had just made him more shallow, less brave.
He gazed into her beautiful damp eyes. The pale green was even more vivid against their slightly pink tinge, and he caught her face in his palms.
‘You’re amazing, Ellie Bond.’
She lowered her lids. ‘I don’t feel very amazing. I’ve spent the last few years feeling terrified mostly, and recently—’ She looked back at him. The warmth in her weak smile quickened his pulse. ‘Recently I’ve just felt plain old crazy.’
‘How can you say that?’
Her