She met his eyes again. ‘Let’s not talk about that night. It upsets me . . .’ She could hardly bear the reminder of how stupid she had been. ‘Tell me something nice. What would our date have been like? Tell me that instead.’
He lay back on the sand. ‘I was going to take you to Lindisfarne Castle, to the private walled garden, for a picnic. You know, so you could pretend for a moment that you were the princess I saw you as being.’ He cast her a sideways glance. ‘My uncle was the caretaker, so I knew the owner was away. You’d have loved the view of the castle and the sea from the garden. It’s unique.’
‘You were going to break into private property, for me?’
‘It wasn’t really breaking in. It’s a garden.’ He smiled. ‘I wanted it to be something we’d remember. Because that’s how certain I felt that we’d have a future.’
She ignored that, feeling herself buckle at the beautiful idea of it. ‘Well, it’s the best first date I’ve never been on.’
They looked at one another. All the possibilities of what might have been hung there between their gazes, in glorious torment. Eventually, she forced herself to break it. ‘What’s Laura like?’
He shrugged, and seemed to think. ‘Laura’s a good person. She’s a good mother. We get along well, I suppose, as friends.’
‘So you’re happy?’ The beer had made her brave.
‘There was a time, yeah. I suppose we must have been to get married, mustn’t we? But we change, don’t we?’
She was lying on her side, propping up her head with a hand, and absorbing his face like an artist who would later paint him from memory. He kept glancing at her thigh, where her dress had ridden up slightly. ‘I knew her before I met you. I started seeing her again shortly after I lost you.’
‘You didn’t lose me. We didn’t even go on a date.’
‘Oh, I felt I did.’ He held her eyes for a moment, poignantly. ‘With everything in me, I felt I had lost you, Evelyn. I married her the year I saw you again at the Mayfair Ballroom – just a few months before, actually. She really wanted to be married, and I could tell my father was thinking I wasn’t going to get it together, because I always got the impression he was disappointed in me. I think this was my way of showing him my stripes.’ He snickered, sadly. ‘Plus, I thought a lot about her, obviously.’
He caught her expression, and pulled a resigned smile. ‘There was a time when I’d have done anything to make Laura happy. But then you realise that all your trying really doesn’t change anything between you. You’ve become a certain way. There’s no romance, no passion . . . The man, you know – he’s the hunter. He likes to hunt . . .’ He faltered, as though embarrassed by his rambling. ‘Even with his wife . . . Some of that needs to be kept alive. Sometimes, I think she doesn’t even register I’m a member of the opposite sex. I try to tell myself, well, we’re good friends. But it still doesn’t feel like it’s enough.’ He looked at her frankly, and she could see all the disappointment backed up in his eyes. ‘The mad thing is, I’ve had to reach my mid-forties before I’ve really known who I am, before I’ve had the guts to be my own person.’
She loved him saying all this, loved his candour, loved his priceless sapphires. She could gaze at them for ever.
‘Have you ever had an affair?’
He looked genuinely surprised. ‘An affair? No, of course not. It has never occurred to me.’
‘But you must get women after you.’
‘But I’m not after them.’ He dismissed the subject. ‘There were a few baby issues that put a strain on us. Miscarriages. The women in Laura’s family had difficulty carrying girls. We gave up trying for a while. Then out of the blue, Laura gave birth to a girl. I’m sure if we hadn’t had April, we’d not have stuck it. We make it work for her. And she’s all the more special because we thought we were never going to have her.’ He glanced at her quickly. ‘But we’re not really setting her a good example by staying in a loveless marriage, are we?’ He shrugged, as though life had burst one too many of his bubbles.
She could feel the frustration emanating off him. She sat up and stared at the sea as he was doing. It twinkled for them. Or so it felt. Everything about the day felt sparkling to her. They were revealing tiny chips of their innermost disappointments to each other. She loved it.
‘What about you, Evelyn? How happy are you? If it’s okay for me to ask.’ His eyes seemed to demand her honesty.
No one had asked her this before. It definitely wasn’t a question that would have crossed Mark’s lips, even if it had ever crossed his mind. ‘Mark’s a good man. I love him dearly. But I suppose, if I were to be honest, there’s something missing, even though I feel traitorous in saying that. Some days, you can forget about it and focus on all that’s good about your life. But it catches up with you once in a while.’ She shrugged, abashed by her confession. ‘But maybe that happens in every marriage.’
‘I don’t know. I’d like to think that some people are just right for each other and they stay that way, and it never occurs to them that they could be happier with anyone else.’
Would that have been us? she wondered.
‘I’m trying to remember the beginning. It’s so hard to recall how we thought and felt so far back. I’m not sure if I ever felt right with Mark, or if I just really wanted to. In some ways, I think your memory is a combination of your reality and your dreams.’ Sometimes, events ascribed to her past were like reflections on water; they might have existed, or she could have imagined them.
He seemed subdued, perhaps by her bringing Mark into the picture.
‘What’s your biggest fear in life, Evelyn?’
‘Oh!’ she blanched. ‘I don’t know. Perhaps never knowing the answers to all these questions I keep torturing myself with!’