Anything but Vanilla

chapter THIRTEEN



A little ice cream is like a love affair—an occasional sweet release that lightens the spirit.

—from Rosie’s ‘Little Book of Ice Cream’

Sorrel heard the words leaving her mouth and was aware that she was totally exposed. Emotionally naked. She’d told Alexander that she had her perfect man picked out, her life sorted, but, overwhelmed by some primitive rush, the kind of atavistic need that had driven women to destruction throughout the centuries, she’d thrown all that away because of him.

His hand was still on her cheek, his expression intense, searching. ‘I can’t be your perfect man, Sorrel.’

‘I know.’ She lay back on the grass, looking up at a clear sky that was more pink than blue. ‘You don’t tick a single box on the perfect-man chart, especially not the big one.’ She glanced across at him. ‘You’re a wanderer. You’ll leave in a few days but I always knew that. I put myself in a straightjacket when I was seventeen years old and thanks to you I’ve broken free.’

‘That’s a heck of a responsibility to lay on me.’

‘No!’ She put out her hand, reaching blindly for his. He mustn’t think that. He must never think that. ‘I’m not Ria, Alexander. You don’t ever have to feel responsible for me.’ She rolled onto her side to look at him, so that he could see her face as she drew a cross over her heart and said, ‘I promise I will never call you across the world to rescue me. You’ve already done that.’ She looked at him, golden and beautiful, propped on his elbow, a ripple of concern creasing his forehead, and she reached up to smooth it away. ‘It’s as if some great weight has been lifted from me and I feel light-headed, dizzy...’

He caught her hand.

‘I want you to know that I don’t do this. Get involved. I tried to walk away yesterday.’

‘I know. We’ve both been caught up in something beyond our control. Don’t analyse the life out of it. Just enjoy the moment.’

Then she laughed.

‘What’s so funny?’

‘Nothing... It’s just that my mother used to say that all the time. Enjoy the moment. This must have been how she felt.’

‘And how does that make you feel?’

‘Glad,’ she said. ‘I’m glad that she had moments like this.’ She leaned into him, kissed him lightly on the lips. ‘Thank you.’ Then, because it was suddenly much too intense, ‘I hope you’re not still hungry, because the dogs have taken the rest of the pizza.’

‘No problem.’ He returned her kiss and this time he took his time about it. ‘I’ll cook something later.’

‘Later’. Her new favourite word...

‘What are we going to do now?’ she asked.

‘I’m going to get changed,’ he said, standing up, pulling her with him, ‘and we’re going to take these unruly creatures for a walk.’

‘Changed?’

‘I didn’t leave home like this. My jeans are in the car.’

By the time she’d picked up the chewed remains of the pizza box, thrown a few things into an overnight bag, Alexander was waiting for her in the kitchen. He was wearing worn-soft denims that clung to a taut backside, thighs that she now owned, but his T-shirt was black and holding together at the seams. A matter for regret rather than congratulation.

He took her bag, tossed it in the back of the car and then they set off across the common.

‘Does it make you feel closer to him?’ she asked. ‘Your father’s car.’

‘Nothing would do that.’

‘So why did you keep it?’

‘You have got to be kidding. It’s a classic. It appreciates in value.’

Maybe... ‘It must have cost a fortune to insure for a seventeen-year-old to drive.’

‘I couldn’t get insurance until I was twenty-one,’ he said, ‘but let’s face it, my father expected to be taking it out for the occasional spin himself until I was fifty. He had to make a new will when he remarried and I imagine the legacy was simply a response to a prompt from his solicitor regarding the disposal of his property.’

‘What about the yacht? Did he leave that to you, as well?’ Then, realising that probably wasn’t the most tactful of questions, she added, ‘All his best toys?’

His laughter shattered the intensity of the moment. ‘No. It was too new to have been listed in his will so the widow got that, thank God.’

* * *

They walked the river bank until the bats were skimming the water, sharing confidences, talking about the things that mattered to them.

Sorrel shivered a little as he related some of his hairier adventures, and she came into the circle of his arm for comfort, afraid for him and the unknown dangers he faced. Animals, insects, poisonous plants and the guerrillas who’d held him hostage for nine months in the Darien Gap.

To distract her, he prompted her to tell him the ‘long story’ about Rosie and the Amery sisters’ first adventures in the ice-cream business. Her ambitions, her ideas for Knickerbocker Gloria. The plan she’d wanted Graeme to listen to.

It was one of those perfect evenings that he’d take out and relive on the days when he was up to his neck in some muddy swamp.

It wasn’t about the sex, although that had been a revelation. She had given herself totally, held nothing back, and neither had he. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been that open, that trusting...

He had no illusions. When he came back in six months or a year, or whenever, she wouldn’t be sitting at home waiting for him. He wouldn’t ask her to. He wanted her to have the life she deserved with a man who would be there for her. But for a couple of weeks she was his.

When they arrived back at the house everyone was home. He’d met Basil and Lally and they didn’t seem surprised to see him with her, or that they were going to Wales to look for Ria.

Basil asked him how the Cranbrook Park event had gone. Her grandmother took his hand and smiled. Geli, her younger sister, gave him a very hard look, but since the dogs accepted him she was, apparently, prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt.

‘You seem to have achieved universal approval,’ Sorrel said as they drove across town.

‘They were easier to impress than you.’

‘I’m a tough businesswoman. You can’t twist me around your little finger with your charm.’

‘What did it take?’

‘That would be telling,’ she said, laughing. ‘Your way with chilli powder, perhaps.’

The phone was ringing as they reached the door of his flat and by the time he unlocked the door, the beep was sounding. ‘Alexander? I’ve been ringing...’

He snatched up the receiver. ‘Ria!’

‘Oh, there you are. I’ve been trying to get hold of you for days. Have you changed your mobile?’

‘I told you I’d lost my old one months ago,’ he said, ‘but I left you messages. Sorrel left you messages.’

‘Oh... Sorry. I’m in the States and I disconnected my phone when I realised how expensive it was and bought a cheap model here.’

‘In the States?’ He switched the phone onto speaker, held out his hand to draw Sorrel closer. ‘What on earth are you doing there?’

‘I told you when I called you.’

‘No, you didn’t...’ Or maybe she had. ‘There was a hurricane, all that came through was that you needed me home immediately.’

‘No, not home. I wanted you to meet me at San Francisco. When you didn’t arrive I called again but your assistant said you’d already left. I’ve been worried—’

‘What about the taxman?’ he interrupted. ‘The unpaid bills?’

‘It’s not important. I’ll sort that out when I get home—’

‘Not important? What about Sorrel?’ he demanded, suddenly furious with her. ‘Don’t you ever think? She had a big event today and you left her high and dry to go swanning off to the States.’

‘Today? No... That’s next week... Isn’t it?’

‘Ria! What are you doing in America?’

‘I... It’s Michael,’ she said. ‘Michael’s here. I’ve found my son, Alex. Your brother...’ And then she burst into tears.

She’d found Michael? For a moment he couldn’t speak and Sorrel took the phone from him, talked quietly to Ria, made some notes, took a number.

‘He’ll call you back with his flight number, Ria.’ There was a pause. ‘No... It’s fine, we managed. Really. But can you email me your recipe for the chocolate chilli ice cream...? That would be brilliant... No, take all the time you need. We’ll talk when you get back.’

He heard her replace the receiver. Then she put her arms around him and held him while the tears poured down his cheeks, soaking into her shoulder.

She was smiling when he raised his head.

‘I’m sorry...’

‘No.’ She put her fingers over his lips when he would have tried to explain. Kissed him. ‘Ria has found your brother.’

‘Look at me. I’m trembling. Suppose he doesn’t want to know me?’

‘He must have been looking for his family, Alexander.’

‘Yes...’

She handed him the phone. ‘Book your flight.’ He held it for a moment, not wanting to leave her. ‘Go on,’ she urged.

He dialled the airline, then looked across at her. ‘Seven forty-five tomorrow morning. You could come with me.’

‘No. This is for you and Ria. And I’ve got things I have to do here. Chocolate ice cream to make. A franchise to launch if I’m going to be a millionaire by the time I’m twenty-five.’ She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. ‘Let’s just make the most of tonight.’

* * *

Alexander eased himself out of bed just before five the following morning, dressed quickly and picked up his overnight bag pausing only for one last look at Sorrel.

It was a mistake. Her dark chestnut hair was spread across the pillow, her lips slightly parted in what looked like a smile and he wanted to crawl back in bed with her. Be there when she woke...

She stirred as the driver of the taxi tooted from below. Her eyelids fluttered up and she said, ‘Go or you’ll miss your plane.’

‘Sorrel...’ He was across the room in a stride and he held her for a long moment, imprinting the feel of her arms around him, the taste of her lips, the scent of her hair in his memory.

There was a second, impatient, toot and she leaned back. ‘Your brother is waiting for you.’

‘Yes...’ There was nothing else he could say. They both knew that he wouldn’t ‘see her soon’. He was going to fly west from San Francisco to Pantabalik, not because it made sense, but because if he returned he would have to say goodbye again.

* * *

Sorrel waited until the door closed, then she reached across to the empty side of the bed and pulled Alexander’s pillow towards her, hugging it, breathing in his scent, reliving in her head the night they’d spent together.

They’d hardly slept. They’d talked, made love, got up to scramble eggs in the middle of the night before going back to bed just to hold one another. Be close.

She finally drifted off, waking with the sun streaming in at the window.

Alexander would be in the air by now, on his way to San Francisco to meet a brother he had never known before returning to the life he’d chosen. The life he loved.

She wanted to linger, stay in Alexander’s apartment for a while, but that would be self-indulgent, foolish. She had seized the moment and now it was time to get on with her life, too.

She took clean underwear from the overnight bag she’d packed, had a quick shower and wrapped her hair in a towel while she got dressed. She found her jeans under the bed. Her T-shirt had vanished without trace and instead of wearing the spare she’d packed, she picked up the one that Alexander had been wearing. Then she called a taxi and, torn between a smile and a tear, went home to get on with her life.

A new life. One without a prop.

She stopped the taxi outside the rectory and paid off the driver. Graeme saw her coming and was waiting at the door.

‘Late night?’ he asked, sarcastically.

‘No,’ she said. ‘An early one.’ And he was the one who blushed.

‘Do you want to come in? I’ve just made coffee.’

‘No...I have things to do. I just wanted you to know...’ She swallowed. She didn’t have to tell him. It was written all over her. She was wearing a man’s T-shirt, for heaven’s sake, coming home in a taxi in the middle of the morning. ‘I hate opera.’

‘You could just have said no,’ he said.

‘Yes, I could. I should have done that a long time ago. You’ve been a good friend, Graeme, and I’m grateful for everything you’ve done for me, but I need to move on with my life. And so do you.’

He sighed. ‘You would have made the perfect wife. You’re elegant, charming, intelligent...’

She put her hand on his arm to stop him. ‘Perfect isn’t the answer, Graeme.’

‘No? What is?’

‘If I knew the formula for love, Graeme, I would rule the world. All I can tell you is that it’s kind of magic.’ She kissed his cheek. ‘Thanks for everything.’ She was on the bottom step when she turned and looked back up at him. ‘Did you know that Ria loves opera?’

‘Ria? I’d have thought she was into happy-clappy folk music.’

‘People never fail to surprise you. She’s in San Francisco right now, with her son, but she’ll be home next week. It would be a shame to waste the ticket.’

* * *

There was a long queue in the arrivals hall to get through immigration and Alexander used the time to send Sorrel a text. ‘Flight endless, queue at Immigration endless. I’d rather be making ice cream.’

* * *

Sorrel read his message and hugged the phone to her for a moment. She’d spoken to Ria that afternoon, explained her plans and said hello to a very emotional Michael.

He’d be waiting at the gate to meet his brother. Would they be alike? she wondered. Would they recognise one another on sight?

She took a deep breath then texted back, ‘No, you wouldn’t.’

He came right back with, ‘I’m nervous.’

‘He’ll love you.’ Who wouldn’t? ‘Now stop bothering me while I’m busy building an empire. I have ice cream to make. You have family to meet.’ She resisted adding an x.

‘Are you okay?’ Basil asked, turning from the fridge where he was putting away the ices.

She sniffed. ‘Fine. Bit of hay fever, that’s all. How was business today?’ she asked, before he could argue.

‘Very good. Young Jane is a great find.’

‘I know. I was thinking of asking her if she’d like to manage this place when her course is finished.’

‘What about Nancy?’

‘She doesn’t have the business qualifications.’

‘Maybe she should go back to school and get them. Knickerbocker Gloria could sponsor her.’

‘You are unbelievable, do you know that?’ She gave him a hug. ‘The loveliest man in the world.’

‘On the subject of lovely men,’ he said, ‘when will Alexander be back from the States?’

‘He won’t be.’ She turned away, so that he wouldn’t see how hard it was to say that. ‘He needs to get back to work and he’s travelling straight on to Pantabalik from San Francisco.’

‘Well, I suppose that makes sense. But Graeme is history?’ She nodded. ‘Well, that’s something, I suppose. I’ve nothing against him,’ he added quickly. ‘I’ll miss his advice. But he was never right for you.’

‘You didn’t say anything.’

‘Some things you have to find out for yourself.’

‘I must be a slow learner.’

‘No, my dear. There was no one else to show you how it should be.’

‘No...’ She swallowed, rather afraid that there would be no one else now she knew... ‘I suggested he take Ria to the opera,’ she said.

‘Did you now?’ He laughed. ‘Well, she’ll certainly shake the creases out of his pants. How’s the ice cream coming along?’

‘It’s just about perfect,’ she replied, offering him a taste.

‘That’ll put some heat into their tango.’

‘You think? Great.’ She swallowed. ‘And I’ve created an ice of my own to go with it.’ She took a fresh spoon and offered it to him. ‘What do you think?’ she asked, watching nervously as he tasted it.

‘Oh, well, that’s fun. What did you put in it?’

‘Popping candy,’ she said.

* * *

Alexander would have loved to find and name an orchid for Sorrel. But he wasn’t in South America so he was searching the Internet for Cattleya walkeriana ‘Blue Moon’, a rare, delicate pale blue orchid.

At the checkout he was asked if he wanted to add a message and typed, ‘I saw this and thought of you.’

A few days later he received a text from her. ‘Thanks, it’s beautiful. Did you know that the next blue moon is only a year away? Or three, depending on how you define it.’

‘Let’s go with the first definition,’ he suggested. ‘How’s the new project?’

‘Keeping me busy, but I thought of you and made this. I think it needs something else—any ideas?’

It was an ice-cream recipe. Milk, cream, sugar, popping candy...

He pulled out the T-shirt she’d been wearing that last night and held it to his face. Grass, fresh air, vanilla, strawberries swamped him with an overload of ideas, none of which he was prepared to commit to the Internet.

‘Passion fruit.’ He added a photograph of a huge blue butterfly sipping nectar from a tropical bloom and tapped, ‘Just so you know that it’s not all mosquitoes.’

* * *

Sorrel spread out Geli’s designs for the new retro-look Knickerbocker Gloria.

‘I’ve gone for classic nineteen-fifties Americana styling,’ she said. ‘Apparently they are the new “cool” in the States. I’ve sent you some URLs to check out.’

She’d put her phone on the table and when it pinged to alert her to an incoming message she stared at it.

‘Do you want to get that?’ Geli asked.

Yes, yes, yes... ‘It will keep,’ she said, turning to her laptop and clicking on the URL to a restored soda bar in New York.

‘They do alcoholic ones?’ she asked, a whole new level of opportunities opening up before her.

‘When I was in Italy last year I was taken to an ice-cream parlour that served up seriously adults-only ices.’

‘If we could get a licence, it would make a great venue for hen nights,’ Elle chipped in.

‘I’ll check it out.’

Once they’d gone, Sorrel read Alexander’s message, touched a silky blue petal on her orchid, held his T-shirt to her face.

She made herself wait two days before she replied. ‘The passion fruit was perfect. How do you do that, Postcard Man? Great butterfly, by the way. If the moths are that big, I’m amazed you have any clothes left.’

‘Let’s just say you wouldn’t want to grow cabbages around here. How is the franchise plan coming along?’

‘That’s for the long term. We have to prove the idea first.’ She attached Geli’s design. ‘This is the image we’re going for.’

‘Pure Norman Rockwell. Does Ria approve?’

‘We’re working on her.’

Alexander eased off his backpack, stretched his muscles, turned on his phone hoping for a message from Sorrel. After a long hard trek, it was like coming home to a kiss...

We’re working on her?

‘Who is we?’ he dashed off and then wished he hadn’t. He sounded jealous. Hell, he was jealous of anyone who was with her. Could Graeme be back on the scene?

He had to wait a day for her reply— ‘Michael came back with her. He wants to see where he came from. Where you come from. He looks a lot like you, only less battered.’

‘The knocks are collisions with experience. Michael is still a baby.’

‘Keep away from experience, Alexander, it’s bad for your health and rots your clothes. Any closer to finding the elusive plant?’

‘Not yet, but there are plenty of others with potential. I sent a package of specimens back to the lab last week.’

‘That’s the way it goes. You’re saving lives, I’m making ice cream.’

‘Every life needs ice cream, Sorrel.’

And so it continued. Every day there was some small thing to make him think, make him smile, make him wish he could reach out and gather her in. Feel her in his arms, smell her hair, her skin, taste her strawberry lips.

He sent her photographs of the plants he’d found, the shy people who lived in the forest, a shack by the river where he’d made camp, the perfect white postcard curve of beach he’d found when they’d been near the coast.

‘Swam, baked a fish I caught over a fire and slept beneath the stars.’ And, instead of simply enjoying the moment as he would have done before he met her, he longel for Sorrel to be there to share it with him.

‘It looks blissful. I’m glad you had a few days out to rest. Michael has taken Ria back to the States for a couple of weeks, lucky thing. It’s raining cats and dogs, here. Very bad for business.’

Julia had only ever asked when he was coming home. Ria only sent him messages when she needed something. Sorrel was different.

She asked what he was doing, what he’d found, how he’d managed to dry out his socks after heavy rain. He’d begun to rely on that moment at the end of a gruelling day when he could put his feet up and be with her for a moment.

‘Make the most of it,’ he suggested. ‘Have a puddle-jumping moment.’ He grinned as he hit send, hoping that she’d send a picture. He’d bet the farm that she wore pink wellington boots.

There was no picture. For the first time in weeks there was no message from Sorrel waiting for him at the end of the day.

It was some hang-up in cyberspace, he knew, and yet the absence of that moment of warmth, of connection when he returned to camp, left him feeling strangely empty. Cold despite the steamy heat...

As if a goose had walked over his grave.

He shook off the feeling. She was busy. KG was being refitted. She had a business to run, a million more important things to do than keep him amused, but sleep, normally not a problem, eluded him.

When there was no message the following day the cold intensified to a small freezing spot deep inside him and he began to imagine every kind of disaster.

He knew it was stupid.

She lived in a quiet village in the softest of English countryside. She wasn’t going to find herself face-to-face with a poisonous snake in Longbourne. The only plant life that could cause her pain would be a brush with a stinging nettle and the mosquitoes weren’t carrying malaria.

She could have had an accident, his subconscious prodded, refusing to be quieted. A multi-car pile-up in bad weather on the ring road—she’d said it had been raining hard.

She could be in a coma in Intensive Care and why would anyone bother to call him?

He tapped in, ‘Missing your messages. Everything okay?’ Then hesitated. He was overreacting. If anything was wrong, Ria would let him know.

Maybe.

But no one knew how he felt about her. He hadn’t known himself until the possibility that she might not be waiting for him when he eventually turned up hit him like a hurricane.

No...

He deleted the message unsent; she was probably taking his advice and making the most of the moment. He hadn’t asked her to wait for him. He hadn’t wanted her to. He couldn’t handle the burden of expectation that involved.

He hit the sack, but didn’t sleep and after an hour he checked his inbox, again. Around one in the morning—lunchtime in Longbourne—he gave up and rang her mobile, telling himself that he just wanted to be sure that she was okay.

His call went straight to voicemail and the moment he heard her voice telling him she couldn’t answer right now but if he left a message she’d get back to him, he knew he was kidding himself.

He wanted to hold her, wanted to be with her, wanted to talk to her but he was cut off, disconnected, out on a limb. It was the place he’d chosen to be. Right now, though, it felt as if someone were sawing through the branch and he were falling...

Sorrel had become part of his life and, without noticing, he’d begun to take it for granted that she always would be. The truth, hitting him up the side of the head, was that he couldn’t imagine a day passing without her being a part of it. Couldn’t imagine his life without her...

‘Alex...’ his research assistant, an Aussie PhD student taking a year out to do field work, stuck his head around the hut door ‘...one of the runners has brought in something you’ll want to see.’

It was a leaf from the plant he’d been hunting for three years.

‘It’s not a myth,’ he said, touching it briefly. Then he looked up. ‘Go with him, Peter. You know what to do.’

‘Me? This is your big moment, man!’

‘It doesn’t matter who brings it in,’ he said, throwing his things into a bag. ‘I’m going home.’

‘You’ve got a family emergency?’

‘Something like that.’

* * *

‘I can’t believe you’ve been working here on your own all weekend, Sorrel. What happened to the Jackson brothers?’

Sorrel eased her aching shoulder.

‘Their mother was rushed into hospital on Thursday and I didn’t have anything to do.’ Well, apart from puddle-jumping and that was no fun on your own. ‘It was just the finishing touches.’

She stood back, rubbing the inside of her arm against her cheek. It came away smeared with paint and she used the hem of Alexander’s T-shirt to wipe it off her face. She’d worn it on purpose, wanting the paint to obliterate his scent.

She had to stop sleeping with it tucked under her pillow so that she could catch his scent. Had to stop sending him little texts to keep him close and had to stop checking her inbox every five minutes, stop living for his replies.

She had to stop kidding herself that he would expect her to be waiting for him when he came back. He’d never even hinted that he wanted her to wait. On the contrary, he’d made it plain that he wasn’t interested in that kind of commitment and his last message had been a wake up call.

He’d been honest with her. The least she could do was be honest with herself.

She had to live now, not for some fleeting blue moon moment that might never happen.

‘Are you okay, Sorrel? You look...’ Elle hesitated. ‘Is there anything I can do?’

‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘I’ll clean up here and then I’m going to walk home.’

‘Walk?’

‘It’s stopped raining. The fresh air will blow away the cobwebs.’

‘And the smell of paint.’

‘That, too.’

* * *

It was late afternoon when the taxi pulled up in front of Gable End. Alexander paid the driver and walked around to the rear of the house. Midge greeted him with enthusiasm. The new puppy attacked his boots. He picked him up, tucked him under his arm and walked into the kitchen.

Basil looked round from the stove and beamed with pleasure. ‘Alexander! Sorrel didn’t say you were coming.’

‘It was a spur-of-the-moment decision. Is she here?’

‘She’s been working at KG’s all weekend. Putting the finishing touches.’

‘On her own?’

‘That’s what she wanted. Elle just dropped in to see how she was doing. Apparently she’s decided to walk home. Needs the fresh air.’

‘I’ll go and meet her.’

* * *

The river was running fast, the ducks had taken to the bank and there was no one out on the water. She had the towpath puddles to herself.

She hadn’t replied to Alexander’s suggestion she jump in one and he hadn’t sent another. Clearly he’d felt obliged to respond to hers and she had been making more of it than it was.

It was time to send him one that would let him off the hook, one that conveyed the message that she’d enjoyed chatting with him long distance but she had to get on with the life she had, not the one that shimmered in the distance like a mirage.

It was time to seize the fish.

* * *

Alexander rounded the bend of the towpath and saw Sorrel standing fifty or so yards ahead, looking down at the phone in her hand.

She was wearing an old pair of paint-splattered jeans and one of his T-shirts, her hair was tied up in a scarf, there was a streak of blue paint on her cheek and he had never seen anything so beautiful in his life.

He’d covered half the ground between them before she looked up and in that second, before she could hide behind the killer smile, he knew that nothing could ever beat this. This coming home to the woman he loved, who loved him...

‘Alexander...’ Now the smile was back. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘I hated to think of you puddle-jumping on your own.’

‘You flew halfway round the world to jump in a puddle?’

‘No, I flew halfway round the world to jump in a puddle with you—’

And there it was again, a fleeting moment when she was emotionally naked and this time he didn’t wait for her to fix the smile back in place but reached out for her, sliding his fingers through her hair, drawing her close to him.

‘Don’t you have puddles in Pantabalik?’ There was a tremble in her voice that transmitted itself to his body. This was too important to get wrong.

‘Not ones you’d want to jump in,’ he said, ‘at least not on your own because that’s the other reason I flew home. To tell you that I love you, Sorrel. I’m home. If you’ll have me.’

He kissed her then, before she could say anything. Telling her in the only way he knew that one day without hearing from her was too long. That he could not live without her.

When he raised his head, he saw that she was smiling, but it was a different kind of smile. Soft, tender, the smile of a woman fulfilled, the smile that had lived in his dreams.

‘I won’t leave,’ he said.

She shook her head. ‘I don’t want to tie you to my side, Alexander. It’s not the leaving that matters. All that matters is that you come back.’

* * *

Six months later Michael was Alexander’s best man as he waited in a packed parish church for his bride.

Sorrel had been right. He’d had to leave, go back to Pantabalik, negotiate a settlement with the headman of the tribe for the harvesting of their precious plant. The texts had flown back and forth, full of warmth, fun, love, but he couldn’t wait to get home.

Home.

He’d never had one before, but now there was Gable End, and the flat in the gothic mansion that Sorrel had filled with warmth and the house, perched high above the river bank, that they were building together.

He turned as the organist struck up, warning the congregation that the bride had arrived, and for a moment he could see nothing as his eyes misted over. Then she was there, her hand in his and looking up at him with the smile that no one but him ever saw as they seized the moment, the day, the life they had been given.

* * * * *