‘Maybe she felt sorry because I was the idiot she had to look in the eye that night and make up a story for. Or maybe she was used to covering for you when it came to boys. Maybe there were loads of teenagers whose hearts Evelyn had broken running all over Holy Island.’
Evelyn remembered being in such a nervous tangle that day. Why had she agreed to go out with him so close to her leaving? Then, once she’d decided it had been the maddest idea in the world, there was no means of contacting him to tell him not to come. She had instructed her mother to say she’d had to work late. Her mother had tussled with her: she wasn’t Evelyn’s lackey, and it was no way to behave. But in the end, Evelyn had won by going into hiding in her bedroom, leaving her mother with no choice. She had heard the knock on the door, and stood there, in the middle of her room, bone-still and barely breathing, while she listened to his voice. The brevity of the conversation. The clicking of a door closed. With the idea of him leaving, and her never seeing him again, all her misgivings rushed at her; they beat in her, madly, along with her heart. But still she just stood there, paralysed by something she couldn’t even explain to herself. When she was certain he wouldn’t be looking back, she crossed to the window and peeked from behind the curtains. Seeing him from behind as he walked to his car – his noble head, and confident, manly walk – brought a fresh reminder of all she was letting go. But he was gone now: she felt a tiny note of relief in that. She let the curtain fall away from her finger.
‘It wasn’t like that,’ she said, drawn back to the present, feeling desperately sad. ‘There really weren’t other boys. The young men, they were always such fast movers. They didn’t really have any way about them, any style . . .’ She curled up her nose, recognising it was something she’d thought back then, but she wasn’t so sure it had been true. ‘The ones that liked you just seemed to want to marry you and get you pregnant so you would live a life just like their mother’s.’ It had been an unkind assumption, and yet here she was still parroting it. She wondered why her mind had been so made up that way, why she’d needed to put down everything about where she’d come from, especially since she’d spent half her life pining to have it all back. ‘I wanted something more romantic than that. I just wanted more from my life than I felt they were offering.’
‘I remember standing at the altar, in my tuxedo, and feeling completely out of my comfort zone.’
It took her a moment to realise he was reminiscing about how they had met.
‘Billy was fidgeting. I remember the tiny church and the white lilies. I remember looking around at all these girls, all these ordinary faces, and then I saw yours.’ He was looking into the distance, lost in the memory. She was fascinated by his expression. ‘You were wearing a black dress and a leopard-print pillbox hat, and your shoulder-length hair was flipped up, a bit like Jackie Kennedy, only prettier.’ He smiled a little. His voice had taken on a tender quality. ‘You had this fabulous dancer’s posture, and an incredible little heart-shaped face. I thought I’d never seen anybody more beautiful, and I couldn’t take my eyes off you, no matter how hard I tried. I almost forgot what I was doing there.’ He laughed, clearly amused by his younger self. ‘All I could think was how much I wanted it to be over so I could find a way to talk to you.’
‘I remember thinking, How can the bride be standing there knowing she was about to marry Billy and not be wishing it was you!’
‘Really? You were thinking that?’ He looked at her, sceptically.
‘Really. I was. What made you such a romantic, Eddy? The coal miner’s son from Newcastle?’
He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I was just twenty-five and smitten. You became my reason for why I was even at that wedding. The minute I saw you, I had my purpose.’
‘Better not tell your poor old groom that!’
‘He’d probably not care, anyway, given he’s on to his second wife.’
‘I remember you serenading me with The Ronettes’ “Be My Baby”, when you were supposed to be singing it to the newlyweds!’ She hid her face in her hands. ‘Oh dear! I wanted the ground to swallow me up!’
He threw back his head, and she recognised his hearty laugh from twenty years ago. Recognised it at the core of her, as though the then and now were one.
‘You were completely drunk. It was terrible.’
‘Not true! I mean, I was terrible, but I wasn’t drunk. I was driving, remember? And I was enjoying watching you squirm.’
‘Okay, I stand corrected. But you did really embarrass me. I just thought, Oh my God, he’s way too extrovert for me! If he were my husband, I’d be so in the shadow of his humongous personality that I’d never get air!’ His bravery and his charisma and the way he’d belted the song out to her, with his surprisingly good voice, had made him massively fanciable, and she would never, ever, forget what it was like to be under the spell of attraction like that.
‘You were picturing me as your husband?’
‘Well, no. I was just assessing you from all potential angles.’
‘I think me singing that song to you instead of to them – about adoring each other until eternity – probably explains why they were divorced three years later.’
She chortled.
In her mind’s eye, she could see them dancing. The memory had been crisp for so long, then had distilled into these few fine-spun details that she would come back to in her quiet, questioning moments: the press of his fingers on her lower back; his grip on her right hand as his thumb gently stroked her clammy palm; his breath in intermittent draughts on the crown of her head.
He propped himself on his elbows. ‘Do you ever think, If only . . . ?’
‘I try not to.’
‘I thought If only . . . for a long time, and then I saw you with your husband at the Mayfair.’