Never Forget You, page 4
A guy in an apron appeared beside her. He nodded at the menu propped up between the salt and pepper pots in the centre of the table. ‘What’ll you have?’ he asked in a soft Scottish accent, finishing his question off with a smile.
‘Tea,’ she said hoarsely, even though she had made no such decision in her conscious brain. ‘And bacon.’
The guy was still smiling at her. She was starting to find it unnerving. ‘Roll or buttie?’
‘Roll,’ she replied, marvelling at the sound of her own voice, familiar and strange all at once. And not Scottish, she noticed. Her accent was crisper, less rolling. Definitely English.
She pondered the significance of this as the guy in the apron vanished again and, what seemed like only seconds later, a lovely soft roll with thick bacon poking out the sides appeared in front of her. She ate every last scrap, punctuating bites with gulps of hot tea. When she finished, she sighed, letting the sights, sounds and smells of this quaint little town wash over her.
A short while later, she blinked. The plate from her bacon roll was gone. She took a sip from her half-finished mug of tea and shuddered. Stone cold. She placed it back on the table and stood up, heading for the open door onto the street.
‘Hey!’
She stopped in her tracks and turned to find the man in the apron with his hands on his hips. ‘That’ll be five pounds fifty, please.’ He wasn’t smiling any more.
‘Oh. Sorry.’ She patted the pockets of the thin jacket she was wearing. The only problem was that they seemed to be empty. Where was her handbag? Her purse? Her phone?
Her heart began to race uncomfortably under her ribcage, and her head, which had been blissfully empty of clutter up until that point, was suddenly jam-packed with thoughts and sensory information, all clamouring for her attention. She looked up again to find the man scowling at her. ‘I … I …’ she stammered. The grease from the bacon began to congeal in her stomach.
‘Who are you?’ he asked, stepping in front of her and blocking her exit. ‘Are you staying here? I can’t see any solo guests on the bed and breakfast list.’
She shivered, and the alarm in her head began to sound again, this time screaming its lungs out. Suddenly, this perfect little town, this lovely fairy-tale place, didn’t seem so welcoming.
She stared at him helplessly, her head pounding, a gale rushing in her ears. Her throat felt as if someone had threaded a drawstring around it and pulled it tight. The room began to swim around her and she shot out a hand and gripped onto the edge of a table to stop herself from falling.
She couldn’t answer his question, she realised, as she began to shake from head to toe. Because she didn’t know what her name was. She just didn’t know.
Chapter Six
Now.
BEN FINISHED THE last bite of his full Scottish breakfast and pushed his knife and fork together. He was stuffed but, with any luck, he wouldn’t need to eat again until early evening, which meant he’d be able to power through lunch. The burst pipe in one of the cottages last week meant renovations had fallen behind, and he needed to get a move on if he had any hope of finishing them on schedule. Come tourist season, he was aiming to not only have a new home but three shiny and updated lochside cottages as holiday rentals as well.
He pushed his chair back and stood up, picked up his plate and headed for the dishwasher.
‘You’ll not have another potato scone?’ his Aunt Norina asked, glancing over her shoulder from where she was cooking enough to feed an army. On the other side of the kitchen, the current guests of her bed and breakfast were sitting around the long pine table, hungry and expectant.
Ben shook his head.
‘Coffee, then? You like a good cup of coffee.’
He walked over to his aunt and kissed her on the top of her head as she flipped bacon over in the large frying pan. He had to bend a little to do it, seeing as he was six foot four and she was only four foot eleven, and then he headed out of the kitchen and across the hall.
He walked up the short, dead-end street where the B&B sat, past the Invergarrig Inn to the centre of the town, enjoying the comparative silence of the outdoors. He’d been back in his hometown for almost a year now. It seemed like an age. And while he was grateful to his Aunt Norina for giving up one of her rentable rooms so he could have a permanent residence, he’d been counting down the days until the renovations on his cottage would be finished and he could move in. Privacy … Breakfast without an audience. Sounded like bliss.
And now the day was almost here. There were a few more jobs to do, but some of those could be done after the move. If it were up to him, he’d have camped out while the work carried on – sleeping bag on the floor, propane stove for cooking until the electrics were done, but that wasn’t an option this time. He had Willow to think about.
First things first. Before he got started on fixing the new plug sockets to the wall in the second bedroom, he was going to have a proper coffee. The stuff his aunt ran through her filter machine was disgusting. His plan was to get a takeaway Americano and head down to the pier so he could drink it listening to the waves, watching the shifting reflections of the mountains on the loch.
He lifted his hand to brush his thick hair out of his eyes and realised that he still had pale-pink nail polish on one hand. If Rick, the local builder, saw this on his fingers when they met up for a quick pint at lunchtime to discuss a plastering quote, he’d never let him live it down. But Willow had wanted to give him a ‘glow up’ last night, and he found it hard to resist his five-year-old niece anything.
Just as he did every morning, he passed the newsagents, the whisky shop and three gift shops on his way down the High Street. He could recite the shop names in order, and who owned them, when he was lying in his bed at night, dreaming about sun-kissed beaches and lush rainforests. He supposed some people found comfort in this kind of monotony, and he was going to have to try, even if it nearly killed him.
He was a couple of doors down from The Thistle Café when he realised a commotion was taking place on the pavement outside. Rob, the owner’s son, was arguing with a woman. ‘You can’t leave,’ he was saying. ‘You’ve not paid!’
The woman, who wasn’t even wearing a decent coat, despite the chilly wind blowing off the loch, just stared back at Rob, her breath coming in short gasps. She looked like she was going to bolt down the street at any second.
Ben drew closer. He knew the tell-tale signs of a panic attack when he saw one. ‘What’s going on?’
Rob gestured towards the woman, pink in the face. ‘She’s trying to skip out on her breakfast!’
‘Is that right?’ Ben asked, and the woman turned to look at him, blinking, her mouth half-open, as if she wanted to say something but couldn’t find the words.
For a moment, the world stood still. ‘Lili …?’ Ben sputtered, his brain rapidly trying to process what his eyes were telling him.
Was it? Was it her?
And if it was, what was she doing here? In this place, in this town?
Rob’s eyes widened. ‘You know her?’ He turned to the woman. ‘You know him?’
She flicked a glance in his direction and shook her head, but she was still caught in the grip of the panic. Her own mother could have been standing there, and she’d probably have declared her a stranger. There was no way Rob was going to get any sense – or any money – out of her while she was in a state like this.
Ben pulled a ten-pound note from his pocket and handed it to Rob. ‘This should cover it.’
Rob didn’t look pleased, but he could hardly complain in front of a queue of waiting customers, so he disappeared back inside, shoving the money in the pocket of his apron. Ben put a gentle hand on the woman’s arm and steered her down the High Street towards the loch. When they reached the well-kept green just before the shore, he turned left towards the small stone pier.
When they were safely away from prying eyes, he talked to her in a low, calm voice, the same way he’d done for his sister more times than he could count. It was a struggle, but eventually, she began to regulate her breathing, seemed as if she was gaining a little control. ‘Th—thank you,’ she said hoarsely.
‘No problem,’ he replied, unable to stop himself staring at her.
It was her. It had to be.
He’d thought about her a million times since that hot summer’s day more than five years ago. Kicked himself about how it had ended a million times more.
‘Lili?’ he said, less of a question, more of a softly spoken wish. ‘It’s me … Ben.’
She continued to look at him blankly.
Right. Ouch.
Either he was completely wrong, and this wasn’t the woman he’d met in London, or he obviously hadn’t been as memorable to her as she had to him. He studied her face carefully. The bone structure was, well … she and Lili could have been sisters. But her hair was different – a short blonde bob, completely different in colour, cut and style from Lili’s tousled waves. And her voice wasn’t the London accent he’d expected; it was much more polished, like a newsreader on the television.
Okay … Now he was really taking her in, he was starting to second-guess the gut instinct that had forced a name from his lips.
It had happened frequently in the first couple of years after they’d first met. He’d catch a glimpse of someone – in Nepal, or Sydney or Ushuaia – and be sure it was her. It never had been. Just his imagination conjuring up what he wanted to be true. Weird how his brain had played the same trick on him after all this time, when he’d just about managed to forget her.
‘Where’re you staying?’ he asked as they reached the railing at the edge of the small car park right in front of the pier.
‘Staying?’ She looked genuinely surprised.
‘Well, you’re not a local.’
‘How do you know?’
‘It’s a small town,’ he explained. ‘I know most people by sight, if not by reputation, and I’m pretty sure I haven’t seen you here before.’ He was certain he’d have remembered someone who looked so much like Lili.
Anyway, that didn’t really matter at the moment. He just needed to work out how to get her back to her hotel or whatever, and then he could be on his way, back to building a life in this town, back to where his focus should be at the moment: on Willow. This was just a distraction, his brain’s way of pranking him – tormenting him – with images of the life he’d walked away from. ‘How did you get here?’
‘I think I caught the bus,’ she replied quietly.
‘You think you did?’
She nodded. ‘I remember sitting over there—’ she pointed to the bench just beside the bus stop ‘—before I walked up the street to the café.’
‘Where had you been heading – Glasgow or Campbelltown?’ There was only one bus service that ran through the town a handful of times each day, so it might help to work out which direction she’d been travelling.
‘I … I don’t know.’
Ben stopped leaning on the railing and stood up. ‘You don’t know?’
She stared back at him helplessly. ‘I’m sure I know … It’s just that I can’t quite seem to pull that information out of my brain at the moment.’
Ben frowned. It was likely the panic attack had left her feeling disoriented, but to forget how you arrived somewhere? That was odd. ‘I think we need to contact someone for you. Are you travelling with family? I don’t think you should be on your own just now.’
‘Yes … Yes, I’d like that.’
‘Where’s your phone?’ He was counting on the fact she might have listed someone as an emergency contact.
The woman shoved her hands in her coat pockets and rummaged around, then tried the back pockets of her jeans. Eventually, she looked back at Ben, confused. ‘I must have lost it.’
‘You don’t have a bag?’ he asked, then realised it was a stupid question. It was obvious she wasn’t carrying one. She must have put it down somewhere in the confusion. ‘Do you know where you left it?’
Her lips began to wobble, but she pressed them into a firm line as her head moved side to side.
‘Wait there for a moment …’ He quickly pulled his own phone out of his pocket and rang Rob back at The Thistle Café and asked whether anything had been handed in or if he’d found a bag left by her table, but no joy.
He looked out over the loch as his brain searched for the next logical course of action. ‘Listen … I think maybe the best thing to do at the moment is call the police, see if they can help you.’
The town police station was gone now, replaced by a bigger one in nearby Lochgilphead, covering the whole area. Depending on where the patrolling officers were, it could be up to an hour before they arrived here, but he couldn’t think of anything else to do. Maybe she’d hit her head, needed medication? Whatever it was, something wasn’t right. ‘Can you tell me what your name is?’ he asked as he woke his phone up and prepared to dial in the non-emergency number for the local police.
Her face went pale, and a look of horror passed over her features, as if she’d just received some devastating news. ‘I … I don’t know,’ she stammered. ‘I don’t know what my name is.’
Ben stared back at her. How was that possible? He was tempted to laugh, sure she was playing some kind of joke on him, but the desolation in her eyes caused him to swallow hard instead.
‘The first memory I have – not just today but ever – is sitting at that bus stop,’ she continued shakily. It was as if hearing herself say the words out loud caused her brain to finally catch up with the ramifications of what she was telling him.
Her legs buckled, and she clutched onto his sweater to steady herself, then pulled herself closer so her forehead was almost touching his chest. On reflex, Ben’s arms closed around her. He wasn’t sure she had a steady grip, and it looked as if she might crumple in a heap at any second.
And as she clung onto him, taking great juddering breaths, Ben looked over the top of her head at the empty bus stop. It occurred to him that if this was Lili, there might be a really good reason why she had no idea who he was.
Chapter Seven
One year before the wedding.
I SAT ON the Tube, my violin case clutched to my chest, desperately trying to stop myself from shaking. The scruffy man sitting opposite me gave me a weird look. I dipped my head, so I didn’t have to meet his eyes.
This was a bad idea. I should get off at Westminster and head straight back to Victoria, where I could get a train home. I’d be drinking tea in my parents’ kitchen within the hour.
But when the doors huffed open, I closed my eyes, clenched my jaw, and willed myself to stay sitting. They eventually slid closed again, and the Underground train rumbled along to its next stop. My stop. The hammering inside my ribcage intensified.
I avoided going into central London these days if at all possible, preferring to stick to my sad little life in the suburbs. There were too many reminders of what could have been in the city centre. The whole place was ruined for me now, thanks to him – Ben the bloody Photographer.
Like a complete mug, I’d waited for a phone call or a message, even a pathetic lone emoji to arrive, after we’d parted at the airport. And I’d waited, and I’d waited.
At first, I made excuses: he’d got delayed. He hadn’t reached his hotel, so he hadn’t been able to charge his phone. And then I’d got scared. What if something had happened to him? What if he’d had an accident travelling alone? Or maybe he’d been kidnapped? As the days went on, the scenarios I’d invented had become more and more outlandish. At one point, I’d even convinced myself that he’d had something planted in his luggage and was now languishing in a Dutch prison, falsely accused of being a drugs mule. But as the hours had turned into days and the days had turned into weeks, I’d had to get real.
It had been pure fantasy, hadn’t it? The whole thing. He’d never intended on calling me at all. I’d just been a diversion, an amusement, like the other sights and sounds of the city, a way to pass the time until the next flight. Yet I’d fallen for his patter hook, line, and sinker. Like I said … a complete mug.
But at least I hadn’t turned up the next summer to meet him in the garden, all hopeful and dewy-eyed, thinking I’d met ‘The One’ and that he’d be there waiting for me. I wasn’t that stupid.
I’d gone back to the London Conservatory demoralised, my self-esteem nastily dented, and that had been a mistake too. I’d dropped out two months later. Not the quiet non-appearance at the start of term I’d planned, but a shameful fall from grace that had made it impossible to return.
That had been some time ago, and now I worked in the fried chicken shop down the end of Penge High Street. Some glorious new career that was. Eventually, I’d become so sick of myself moping around and whining I’d decided I had to do something about it. Which was why I was making myself head into the city centre now with my violin clutched to my chest.
I hadn’t told anyone what I was doing. Because what if I failed? What if I messed up and embarrassed myself again? It would just be more proof that I was empty of all the potential everyone had seen in me.
It was my parents I felt the worst about. I’d seen the disappointment on their faces when I’d told them I was dropping music school. I’d sensed the emotional landslide inside of them as they’d kept their faces neutral, all their hopes and expectations for me slithering to the ground.
I darted off the Tube at Embankment and headed up Villiers Street towards The Strand. The day had been crisp and bright when I’d left the house, the sky cloudless behind the winter sun, and I hadn’t bothered with a coat. The tightness of the sleeves around my armpits always seemed to impede the movement of my bow arm, so I’d chosen a thick, baggy jumper. Not very attractive, but it was warm and allowed for freedom of movement.
However, while I’d been underground, the clouds had gathered, and the wind was icy, finding its way between the looping, open knit of my sweater. I shivered as I crossed the road and hurried up one of the many narrow streets that lead to Covent Garden.
