Never Forget You, page 10
As Mum brought out the apple crumble, complete with ‘proper’ custard, Dad leaned back in his chair, folded his arms over his chest and looked at Justin. ‘So, how exactly did you two meet? Lil said she was up in London, but she’s been a bit cagey about the details.’
My stomach clenched. I still hadn’t told Mum and Dad about the busking, and I realised I probably should have broached the subject before now.
Justin shot me an encouraging look. ‘I was walking through Covent Garden, minding my own business, and there she was – playing her violin in the middle of the street, sounding like an angel.’
Mum dropped her spoon in her bowl, and the handle sank below the surface of the custard. ‘You were playing? In front of people?’
I tucked my bottom lip under my teeth and nodded.
‘It was the most exquisite sound I’ve ever heard. Your daughter has a unique talent, you know. She really needs to make the most of it.’
Dad straightened in his seat, his eyes ablaze. ‘That’s exactly what we’ve been telling her!’
‘Well, you’re right,’ Justin added. ‘I don’t think a gift like that should be wasted.’
My mum’s face fell. I knew what she was thinking – I’d already flushed that chance down the toilet.
Justin, who I’d discovered was very good at reading people, noticed her expression and turned to me. ‘You have told them about the job, haven’t you?’
‘She said some bloke has offered her some money to play for him,’ Dad said. ‘Is that what you’re talking about?’
I sighed inwardly. I’d explained about Felix and the dance show, but I didn’t think they’d really understood. For some reason, if I wasn’t sitting in the middle of an orchestra, they didn’t see it as real performing.
‘We’ve been searching high and low for the right musician – the right artist – to play this piece,’ Justin said smoothly, squeezing my knee under the table. ‘We needed somebody exceptional, and we think we’ve found her.’
He went on to explain just how big of a deal this was going to be, just how much it was going to put me in front of people who would appreciate me. Mum’s expression softened as he talked, and Dad’s went from bemused to completely enraptured. Justin had them eating out of his hand completely.
‘Why didn’t you tell us all this?’ Dad asked.
My shoulders sagged. I could have told them they just hadn’t listened when I’d said the same thing, but where would that get me? And, at that moment, my parents were looking at me like they believed I could be something again, and I wasn’t about to do anything to spoil that.
Dad got that look on his face he always got when he had something important to get off his chest. ‘Well, Justin, I have to say, I’m a man who doesn’t mince my words, and I was a bit narked when you were late today, and I wasn’t sure about you being a good bit older than our Lili, but I have to say I’m really happy she has you in her life. I want to thank you for everything you’ve done for her. We’re really grateful, aren’t we, Sandra?’
Justin beamed at them radiantly. ‘Thank you. I do believe I have a knack for searching out young talent and helping it develop.’
It was lovely knowing they liked Justin and hearing them talk about me this way, but I couldn’t help feeling that my parents were showering adoration on the wrong person, at least partially. Yes, I was also really grateful to Justin for everything he was doing for me and, of course, I thought he was amazing too, but what about me? I was the one who actually played the flipping violin.
Chapter Eighteen
Now.
THE FOLLOWING AFTERNOON, Ben headed through a tongue-and-groove door in the corner of the kitchen and up a short and narrow winding staircase that led up to Norina’s storage space.
The whole time he’d been grouting the bathroom in cottage number two, he’d been replaying the time he’d spent with Lili in London in his head, hoping to find some vital piece of information he could supply to PC Wilson, something that might make a positive ID possible. He’d come up blank.
It was so strange. He felt as if he’d known Lili inside and out, but it was only now he realised how little he’d known about her. At the time, things like surnames, addresses or what year they’d been born hadn’t seemed important. Those were mundane details they’d get to later. It was like those precious hours together had been a down payment on the time they’d both expected to have with each other – because he knew for a fact neither of them had intended for things to end there. Not for the first time, he lectured himself about how he’d messed things up between them, how he’d robbed the pair of them of the chance to find out what their relationship could become.
However, as he’d pressed grout in between the tiles, he’d realised he might have something that would help. He’d put a few things in the small attic above the kitchen when he’d first started travelling a lot and even more since he’d come back, waiting for his cottage to be ready.
Behind a couple of cardboard boxes filled with lampshades and other odds and ends, he spotted a large black frame. He pulled it from its hiding place, rested it on an old office chair with only one arm and stepped back to look at it.
This print was the twin to the one currently in his bedroom – well, Alice’s bedroom now. The arched Gothic windows were covered with climbing ivy, the sunlight dappling through the leaves of the trees beyond where stained-glass had once been, but down in the left-hand corner, staring into the sunlight, so it caught the edges of her hair and made it luminous, was a woman.
She was turned away from the camera, face mostly obscured. All that could be seen was the curve of her forehead and cheek, the jut of her chin. The similarity to the woman staying in his cottage was striking. It hadn’t just been his imagination working overtime. But it also wasn’t enough to know for sure.
He was just putting the framed print back in its resting place, when an alarm went off on his phone. Crap. Time to pick Willow up from school. He’d have to get back to that later.
Willow skipped across the school playground towards him, a book bag in one hand and a large piece of paper in the other. ‘Look, Daddy! I did a drawing!’ A couple of the other parents looked puzzled. Most paid no attention at all.
Ben scooped her up into his arms, and she planted a large wet kiss on his cheek as he strode across the playground, putting some distance between them and plentiful sets of listening ears. The grapevine in Invergarrig was always thriving, and its most fertile seedbed was right here at the school gates.
Willow jabbed a finger at her masterpiece. ‘That’s me and you and Auntie Nee-nee,’ she said proudly, pointing to differently coloured crayon scribbles.
‘So it is,’ he replied, although he wasn’t quite sure which scribble was him and which was his niece or aunt. Once they were out on the road, he set her down and let her walk beside him. Her warm little hand found his, making his heart clench.
‘Willow?’
‘Uh-huh?’
‘Do you remember what we said about you calling me “Daddy”?’
She looked away. ‘Not really …’
Hmm. He wasn’t so sure he believed that. ‘Willow?’ He stopped walking and turned to face her, waiting until she looked at him, which she did by keeping her head turned but swivelling her eyes in his direction. That one small act of defiance couched in obedience reminded him so much of her mother, that it pulled him up short.
He’d been letting himself get distracted, hadn’t he? He’d been so caught up with the appearance of Alice … Lili … whoever she was … that he’d forgotten the very reason he’d come back to Invergarrig in the first place.
Even if the woman staying in his cottage did turn out to be ‘the one that got away’, it would no more be possible to disappear into the sunset and claim a happily ever after with her than it had been five years ago. He was too busy trying to build that here in Invergarrig. For Willow, not himself.
‘Remember how we said I’m not your daddy, that I’m your Uncle Ben. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t love you?’
She sighed heavily, making her seem at least a decade older than she actually was, poor kid. ‘But you’re kind of like my daddy now Mummy isn’t here. You look after me, and we’re going to live in our cottage together …’ She looked back at him hopefully, and his heart developed a new crack to go with all the others she’d created in it. ‘I know. And I’m very proud and happy that I get to look after you, but you already have a daddy.’
She frowned, and her bottom lip protruded, then tugged his hand to signal they should start walking again. ‘But I don’t remember him.’
‘I know you don’t, sweetie, but Auntie Nee-nee and I are trying to find him because we think he should know that you’re living here.’ That was only half the story. Ben knew the name of Willow’s father, but there was no telling if the guy was alive or dead, or even if he knew of Willow’s existence.
All the books he’d read on parenting, being a foster parent or guardian to a child, maintained the importance of allowing the child access to her biological parents, if safe. He didn’t want to take that away from the guy – he had to give him a chance to step up when … if … they found him. Willow deserved that.
Willow chewed her lip. ‘Okay,’ she said, but Ben couldn’t help but notice there was no skip in her step all the rest of the way home.
Chapter Nineteen
Ten months before the wedding.
AFTER OUR FAMILY dinner, Mum batted away any offers of help in the clearing up from me, saying I should go and ‘entertain’ Justin in the living room while the rest of them did the washing-up and made a pot of tea. It felt strange, standing in my childhood home with him, a place he clearly didn’t fit into, but then I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror over the gas fireplace and I realised that, in my new dress, I looked more in keeping with him than I did my surroundings. I had a weird out-of-body sensation, as if I were straddling two worlds, fully part of neither, but ready to step from one into the other.
This is what finding yourself feels like, I told myself. Embrace it.
Justin walked over to the mantelpiece and inspected the photographs on top, and then a series of me and Lo in our school uniforms displayed on the wall. One photo on a side table seemed to catch his attention in particular. ‘Where was this taken?’ he asked, picking it up.
‘Oh, that’s Fran and Nigel and their family with ours – they used to live next door. Mum and Fran were so close they were practically like auntie and uncle to us. That was taken on a caravan holiday we all went on in Devon when I was … oh, about fifteen.’
‘Those are their sons?’
‘Yes. The one at the end is Wayne, their eldest, and the one next to me is Sam. They were a bit like the big brothers I never had.’
Justin put the frame back in its place, his expression unreadable.
The rest of the family returned, Mum carrying a tray with a teapot and mugs, and Dad a plate of biscuits. I was afraid we’d run out of things to say, but Justin continued to carry the conversation, telling stories and answering my parents’ polite questions about his work. I saw Lo roll her eyes a few times and shot her a look that was part question, part cut it out! What was her problem anyway? Justin was being perfectly charming.
‘Why don’t you take me for a walk around the neighbourhood,’ Justin said when there was a lull in the conversation and Mum had gone to make yet another pot of tea, ‘and show me where you grew up?’
‘Okay,’ I said, eager to be on my own with him, even though I wasn’t convinced Penge had enough sights to keep us out of the house for more than half an hour.
Once we were out of sight of the house, I thought Justin would take the opportunity to pull me into his arms and kiss me but he kept walking, unusually quiet after all his chattiness back at the house. I reached out to touch his coat sleeve, but he couldn’t have felt it because he didn’t respond.
‘Justin? Is something wrong?’
‘That man in the photograph, the one who had his arm around you …?’
‘Sam?’
He dipped his chin just once in acknowledgement.
I laughed nervously. ‘We were just shuffling together for the photograph so the person taking it could get us all in. Like I said, he was like my big brother …’
‘That’s all?’
I swallowed. I had nothing to be ashamed of, and I didn’t want to lie to him. ‘Well … we did have a “thing” when we were a bit older. But his parents moved away once he and his brother left school. We hardly see them any more.’
‘A thing?’
‘Nothing serious. A summer fling after we’d both left school …’
Justin frowned and shoved his hands in his coat pockets. ‘I know it’s stupid, but when I think of you with anyone else, I can’t stand it.’
I reached out and touched his arm. I knew exactly how he felt because I felt sick imagining all the beautiful, wonderful women Justin must have been involved with before me. ‘He didn’t get me the way you do,’ I said softly. That’s what I liked most about Justin, that he saw me. I didn’t have to explain anything to him or try to be something I wasn’t.
He pulled me towards him, fiercely circling his arm around my back, and pressed his face into the hollow of my neck, kissing me there. ‘I know I’m acting like a jealous idiot, but that’s what you do to me, my angel. You turn me upside down and inside out. I’ve never felt this way about anyone before.’ He took a deep breath and looked into my eyes. ‘I’m behaving this way because I’m falling in love with you, do you get that?’
I reached up and touched his face with my fingers and kissed him back. ‘I think I might be too.’
He kissed me again, deeper, harder, even though we were standing in the middle of a residential street and the net curtains of the house we were in front of were twitching. ‘This is crazy,’ I said. ‘It’s all happening so fast.’
‘When it’s right, it’s right,’ he said, and I felt the certainty of it too, deep inside my chest.
‘Come back to the flat with me tonight. I can’t stand the thought of your side of the bed being empty.’ He let his fingers slide down my arm and intertwined them with my own. I felt as if we’d knotted together, fused somehow.
‘I said I’d stay here …’
‘I know, but I want to be with you all the time. I don’t want to have to come here and share you with your family. I don’t want to share you with anyone.’ He paused for a moment and looked into my eyes. ‘Come for tonight, and then … stay.’
‘What did you just say?’
‘I said that I want you to come and live with me. It makes sense, practically speaking. Rehearsals are going to ramp up as you prepare to record your track with Felix, and there are more people I want to introduce you to. This is only the start.’
‘Isn’t it too soon? We’ve known each other for two months, have only been dating for one …’
‘It makes sense, Angel … We belong together. You can feel that too, can’t you?’
I nodded. I could.
‘So, what do you say?’
For a moment, he looked so much like a lost little boy that I felt our ages were reversed, and I was engulfed by an overwhelming urge to make sure that nothing ever hurt him, that I would always take care of him. I kissed him on his forehead, and then his eyelids, and then his mouth. ‘Okay … I’ll come and live with you.’
Chapter Twenty
Now.
ALICE APPROACHED THE sitting room at the B&B, her heart jumping as if it were on a trampoline. She’d been invited to have dinner with Ben’s family each night, and she’d been laying the table when Norina had appeared and told her PC Wilson had returned, wanting to talk to her. When she stepped inside the room, Ben and Norina were already waiting.
‘I think I should probably talk with Miss, er … Alice … alone,’ PC Wilson said.
‘It’s okay. I don’t mind them being here. And I’m a bit worried I might forget anything you tell me.’ She still fretted about that constantly, even though she was far less foggy than she had been a couple of days ago.
‘Okay,’ PC Wilson said. ‘It’s up to you.’
‘Have you found something?’ Alice asked, unable to wait any longer. This woman might hold the answers to who she was, how she could get her life back.
PC Wilson nodded and launched into an explanation of how she’d checked local missing persons to no avail, and they’d also had no hits on a nationwide level in Scotland. She was still waiting for information from the Metropolitan Police in London.
‘But I also contacted the bus company and asked them to check their CCTV on any routes heading in and out of Invergarrig two days ago. Someone matching your description was seen boarding the bus to Campbelltown at Glasgow coach station early on Saturday morning and getting off here in Invergarrig. I saw the footage myself, and it certainly looks like you. The clothing you said you were wearing is identical. And there’s something else …’
Alice’s eyes widened, and her pulse began to skip. PC Wilson reached down beside the chair she was sitting in and held up a tan-coloured leather bag with a cross-body strap. ‘You are clearly seen carrying this bag in the video, and it was found under a seat when the bus was cleaned. Do you recognise it?’
Alice stared at the bag. She willed her brain to do something – jolt awake, click into place, whatever it needed to do – but all she could hear inside her head was silence. It was horrible. She shook her head.
‘Is there anything helpful inside?’ Ben asked.
‘No phone or purse or any kind of ID – not even a bus ticket. My guess is that if you weren’t robbed before you got on the bus, someone found the bag after you got off and helped themselves. Sorry.’
Alice nodded sadly.
‘But there are a few personal items inside. Why don’t you take a look to see if anything jogs your memory?’
