‘Can you go and give the sound guys a hand?’
‘Sure.’ She flashed Carrie a quick grin. ‘Gotta go, nice chatting with you. Might see you down at the harbour. We’re filming on one of the floating gin palaces down there. Be interesting getting the power generators on board.’
‘Lorraine,’ the man gave an impatient nod of his head.
‘Bye.’ She turned to her colleague and handed him one of the coils.
With a casual wave hiding her excitement, Carrie turned and walked away, trying not to skip. Result. She wouldn’t even have to see Richard, she could simply go to the hotel and leave him a letter there.
While she’d been talking her phone had buzzed several times. There were three impatient texts from Jade.
Where are you?
Have you got lost?’
Your coffee’s going cold.
Jade and Angela were sitting outside the café, Jade scrolling through her phone and Angela leaning back in her chair, her eyes closed, soaking up the sun.
‘Where’ve you been?’ Jade scowled up at her before looking back at her phone. ‘We’ve been here ages.’
Angela sprang to attention, her eyes asking a million questions as she mouthed, ‘Did you see him?’
With an imperceptible shake of her head, answered, grateful that Jade was more interested in her phone.
‘Sorry I got distracted by how amazing the market was. Even made me want to cook.’
Angela raised an eyebrow.
‘Almost,’ she ducked her head. ‘Okay, chop things up and have them with bread.’
‘I’m too lazy to move at the moment and we’ve got plenty of food in the fridge, I’d better not go and take a look. I know I’ll be tempted.’ Angela shunted her seat up, so that Carrie could squeeze in.
‘They have a market on Sunday as well. We can come back then. Urgh.’ The coffee was stone-cold.
‘I’m too hot,’ said Jade.
‘You do look very pink, did you put any sunscreen on?’ asked Angela.
‘No.’
‘And I didn’t bring any with me.’
They decided that as the temperature had hit the 90s already, they’d head back to the villa for a swim to cool off and then have lunch.
Halfway back to the car, as they emerged from the shady streets, Jade suddenly realised she’d left her brand-new sunglasses behind. Seeing that Angela was wilting in the heat, Carrie offered to go back and get them, giving the car keys to the others so that they could at least put the air conditioning on.
The sun was at its highest now and most people had sensibly stopped in some of the pavement cafés, leaving the streets mostly deserted.
She’d got used to having the street to herself when a man in dark sunglasses came abruptly around a corner and she almost cannoned into him. For a minute they did that very English side-stepping dance.
‘Sorry,’ said Carrie, lifting her sunglasses as she spoke, immediately realising she should have said ‘pardon’ and regretting taking them off as she squinted into the sun at him.
‘Carrie?’ He took off his sunglasses.
The butterflies were back with a vengeance, rising with a great fluttering kerfuffle and then en masse sank back with a great thunk. It was him.
She swallowed, completely struck dumb. It was as if her jaws had gone into spasm and absolutely refused to move.
‘Carrie? My God, it is you.’
She stared and stared and stared. The face, once as familiar as her own, looked exactly the same. Those so bright, they couldn’t be real, blue eyes, that she’d seen filled with first- thing sleepiness in them, alight with laughter at a stupid joke and sharp with thought at a serious question. Now they registered surprise. Her heart almost stopped as she drank in the sight of him. Still utterly gorgeous, with that perfectly chiselled jawline, which she used to tease he’d borrowed from Action Man.
The years vanished and, as if it were yesterday, she remembered walking hand in hand across Westminster Bridge in the dense drizzle of autumn. Yesterday, when they’d sat at the top of Primrose Hill, surrounded by the green shoots and early daffodils of Spring, unable to stop kissing each other. Yesterday, when he’d received the call. Yesterday, that painful stiff-upper-lip parting at Heathrow.
He stepped forward, reaching out a hand, as if to touch her, and then paused.
‘What … are you doing here?’ he asked, looking equally discomfited and confused.
‘I …’
‘You look … well.’ His mouth curved into the sudden easy grin she knew, his eyes dancing with mischief. ‘I like the dress.’ And then he frowned, the dark brows drawing together in a sudden slash, as if trying to work something out that wasn’t right. ‘But not the hair.’
With a sudden movement he pulled out the chopstick anchoring her hair. With the slight touch of his forearm against her face, her world turned upside down as her curls cascaded free, dropping down her back.
He stood there, holding the chopstick, looking like a young wizard who’d performed his first spell and now wasn’t sure what to do. Carrie let out a breathless, musical laugh. It was typical of Richard: act first, think later.
With a triumphant smile, he gave an approving nod, ‘That’s better. Much better. Now you look like you.’
Carrie wanted to come back with something witty and snappy, half of her desperate to put him in his place for his sheer cheek and the other half wanting to impress him with her sang froid. Instead she smiled stupidly back at him, her heartbeat bursting into breakneck speed and a flush racing through her.
‘How are you? You look well.’
‘You said that already.’
‘I did, didn’t I? It’s amazing to see you. You look …’
‘You said that already.’
‘It’s not every day you run into y …’ Panic flashed in his eyes as if he realised he was about to step into dangerous territory. The W word would make it personal.
‘Your wife,’ said Carrie tartly, a punch of pain ricocheting around her chest. A wife he’d conveniently forgotten all too quickly once he’d got to Hollywood. By his second feature film, the phone calls and texts started to dry up, the conversations became more stilted and the pictures of him and his leading lady started to get regular billing in the gossip columns. As far as she was concerned, it had been a case of out of sight and very much out of mind.
His face crumpled with something that might have been regret or at least she liked to think so. How the hell did she know? she hadn’t seen him for eight years. Now she studied him more closely, she saw the signs of self-possession. The clothes sharper and more chic, the blue of his shirt no doubt picked out specially to enhance his eyes and the trousers, linen and tailored, fitting him like a glove. Despite his urbane elegance, she couldn’t help remembering a time when he’d lived in baggy jeans and laughed at men who used personal-grooming products. The man in front of her looked as if he used them by the articulated lorry-load.
He wasn’t the man she’d fallen in love with, the same as she wasn’t the person he’d fallen in love with.
She glared hard, to make him back off, and snatched the chopstick back, bundling her hair up and spiking it through viciously.
‘I didn’t mean …’ He took a step towards her.
‘Look, it’s him. I told you I’d seen him.’ From around the corner a