Never forget you, p.9
Never Forget You, page 9
‘So what’s first? The mountains? The castle?’
She looked around. It was a perfect winter’s afternoon. Wispy clouds smeared the bright-blue sky and clung to the hills. ‘The mountain. But I’d like to take a picture of the front of the castle later.’ It was partly hidden from view by a tall hedge that surrounded the formal garden, and only the upper floors and turrets were visible.
She turned to the low mountain in the other direction, lifted the phone and pressed the red button just as Willow ran back towards them. ‘Are you taking pictures? Take one of me! Cheeeese!’ Alice laughed and did as she was told, catching the fearless glint in Willow’s eyes and the missing tooth in the middle of her bottom gum. ‘What do you think we’ll see today, Uncle Ben? Pixies?’
‘Possibly … We could take the bridge over the river to see if we can find fuathan …’ He winked at Alice. ‘Water sprites.’ And then he and Willow spent a full five minutes discussing the best place to hunt mythical beings that day.
After half an hour, during which there had been a possible sighting of benevolent fairies called seelie in the woods, Willow grew bored and found a grassy clearing to spin around in. ‘Come on, Uncle Ben!’ she yelled. ‘Let’s see who can go fastest!’ She threw her arms wide and her head back, giggling harder the faster she turned. ‘Film me, Alice! Film me!’
Alice held her camera up and started her phone’s video camera rolling. She’d expected Ben to fob his niece off, but he ran into the phone’s viewfinder and started spinning right along with her. It wasn’t long before the pair of them were laughing uncontrollably.
‘Alice!’ Willow called breathlessly as she stumbled out of a spin, tried to walk in a straight line, then tumbled onto the tufty grass. ‘Take over from me! We can’t let a boy win!’
Alice hesitated, unsure of what to do, but Ben was still spinning, a look of fierce concentration on his face. ‘Um … I don’t know …’
‘It’s easy,’ Willow said, looking across at her. ‘Just try. You can do it.’
Her words were so simple, yet so full of faith, that Alice tucked her camera back in her pocket, ran over to where Willow had been standing and began turning on the spot in her stead.
‘Cheater!’ Ben called, laughing as he lurched and then saved himself from going down. But it wasn’t long before both she and Ben collapsed onto the grass a short distance away from Willow. Alice had no idea who’d lasted the longest. ‘Are the trees supposed to spin like that?’ she asked, the grass soft against her back.
‘If they don’t, you’ve been doing it wrong,’ Ben replied, which made her laugh again, a welcome relief from the heaviness that had been weighing her down.
‘Where did you learn all that stuff about fairies?’ she asked, aware that if she tried to stand up, she was probably going to hurl, which wasn’t an attractive option.
‘My primary school teacher was very big on Scottish folklore,’ Ben said, then lowered his voice, so Willow, a short distance away, couldn’t hear. ‘The rest I just make up.’ He let out a groan, rolled over to place his palms on the grass, pushed himself onto all fours and stood up, swaying slightly. He held out a hand to her. ‘Ready?’
Alice wasn’t sure if she was, but she took the help he offered. Once upright, she held onto his muscular forearm with her other hand, using him for balance. His touch was familiar and oddly thrilling at the same time.
For a few seconds, they stayed like that, but then Willow came and tugged his other hand. ‘Can we go and look at the garden near the castle now? I want to pretend I’m a princess.’
‘Of course,’ Ben said. ‘And then we need to get home to do your spellings for tomorrow morning.’
They walked slowly back through the woods until they crossed a stone bridge with a grand balustrade, then joined the drive again, following the sweep that led round to the castle’s front entrance and the formal gardens.
As they drew close, Alice heard voices. She expected to see a group of tourists but when she turned the corner of the hedge, she was confronted with a wedding party. There were bridesmaids in ivory taffeta with tartan sashes, men in morning suits, and a bride with a furry cape on top of her gown.
‘The gardens are this way,’ Ben said, skirting around the edge of the driveway so as not to intrude and pointing to a wrought-iron gate. Alice was vaguely aware of him and Willow disappearing through it. She knew she ought to just take a picture of the castle and follow them, but her feet seemed to have stopped working. One by one, the wedding party cast curious frowns in her direction, but Alice was unable to back away or even shrug an apology.
Some distance away from the group, she noticed a photographer, tripod set up, thumb poised on the shutter cable. The bride gave Alice one last quizzical look before turning and giving a dazzling smile as she clung onto her tall and handsome groom.
I can’t be here, Alice thought. I really can’t be here.
And she turned, the heels of her boots grinding into the gravel, and ran back down the drive as fast as she could go.
Chapter Sixteen
Now.
WILLOW RAN DOWN her favourite path in the castle’s formal garden. In the spring, the arches of wisteria created a tunnel of dripping lilac flowers, but, in February, only the gnarled branches remained, twisting through the metal struts. Ben had an urge to capture the winter beauty of the plant, and even though he could have taken a snap on his phone, he pushed the thought away.
He looked over his shoulder to see where Alice had got to, but there was no sign of her. ‘Willow!’ he called out, keeping his eye on the gate. When, after another minute or so, Alice didn’t appear, he grabbed his niece’s hand and headed back out of the garden.
While she’d seemed far less confused today than she had yesterday, the idea of Alice wandering off spooked him. She could get on a bus, take a trail up into the hills, walk into the loch …
‘But I haven’t finished being a princess yet,’ Willow complained as they marched out onto the gravel drive and headed back towards town.
‘I know.’ Ben scanned the area, trying not to communicate his growing sense of panic to his niece. ‘But I can’t find Alice. Can you see her anywhere?’
‘There!’ Willow said a couple of seconds later. She pointed further down the drive, and Ben could see a sky-blue coat bobbing along before it disappeared around a curve in the drive, the exact same shade as the warm coat Norina had found for Alice. Frowning, he scooped Willow up and gave her a piggyback. Why had Alice run off? She’d seemed so relaxed and happy only moments before.
Once back in town, he headed for the B&B, checking with Norina if she’d seen their guest – which she hadn’t – and asked her to mind Willow while he carried on searching. He was just coming out of the front door, taking the front steps two at a time, when he ran into Tamesha Wilson, one of the local police officers.
‘I was just looking for you,’ she said. ‘Social services gave me a call.’
He nodded. ‘They said they would. Otherwise, I’d have contacted you myself.’
‘So … where is the young woman?’
Ben frowned and started in the direction of his cottage. ‘I was just about to go to where she’s staying. Care to join me?’ He could only hope that Alice had run back there. Where else would she go?
‘Sure,’ she replied, her thin braids bobbing as she nodded her head.
As they walked down the narrow road that ran behind the Invergarrig Inn, he filled her in on what he knew of the story and his suspicion that he and Alice had met before. When they got to the cottage, he knocked on the door then, when he got no answer, tried the handle. It wasn’t locked. ‘Alice? Are you there?’
‘Did she remember her name?’ PC Wilson asked as they crossed the small living room.
Ben shook his head. ‘Willow picked one out for her. It made sense at the time.’
The police officer shrugged and followed him through to the kitchen, where, much to his relief, he found Alice. She was standing completely still, staring at the kettle, as if she’d been meaning to put it on but had just zoned out. She jumped when he said her name softly.
‘This is PC Wilson,’ he said. ‘One of our local officers based in Lochgilphead.’
‘Oh, yes … Of course,’ Alice said. ‘Thank you for coming.’
‘Why don’t I make us a hot drink,’ Ben said, ‘while you go and talk in the living room?’
He joined them a few minutes later with three steaming mugs of tea.
‘And you really don’t remember anything?’ PC Wilson was saying. ‘Not even patchy details, before you found yourself at the bus stop?’
Alice shook her head. ‘I don’t even remember being on a bus, although I must have been.’
‘Hmm,’ Wilson said. ‘I’ll see what I can do. I can certainly look into missing persons in the Argyll area and I’ll check hospital admissions to see if there are reports of anyone with a head injury skipping off without being discharged – although you said you’ve been to the hospital, and that’s unlikely?’
Alice nodded. ‘They couldn’t see any signs of injury – I had a CT scan.’
Wilson sighed. ‘Since you’re unfortunately unable to provide any further information, the only thing we can do is work out if someone is looking for you, but I have to be honest, I’m not sure we’re going to turn up anything locally.’
Alice’s face fell. ‘You don’t?’
‘You don’t talk like you’re from around here,’ she said, shooting a knowing look Ben’s way, and he was grateful she’d found a way to present this information to Alice without giving him away. ‘Although, like me, you might have moved to Scotland. However, if I went with my gut, I’d say home is much further south … You actually sound like you’re from my neck of the woods.’
‘England?’ Alice asked.
‘I might even go as far as saying London, so I’m going to ask the Met and surrounding police forces for missing persons information as well.’
Alice nodded, looking a little lost.
‘I’ll be in touch,’ Wilson said, smiling sympathetically and rising from her seat.
Once Ben had shown her out, he returned to the living room to find Alice sitting there, most forlorn. ‘What now?’ she said.
He shrugged. ‘I suppose there is nothing we can do except wait.’
Chapter Seventeen
Ten months before the wedding.
WHEN I’D FIRST started seeing Justin, I’d imagined him living in one of those big, white Georgian houses in Chelsea, surrounded by family heirlooms and antiques. The reality had been quite a surprise. His third-floor ultra-modern apartment overlooked Kensington Gardens. The whole building was elegant but stark, full of hard edges and diagonal lines, and Justin’s flat was probably the most immaculate dwelling I’d ever been in.
I’d quickly become aware that most choreographers did not live in the kind of luxury he did. Even those who had critical acclaim did not earn pots of money. However, Justin had ‘family money’, as he called it, although he never talked much about his family or where that money had come from. I got the impression he hadn’t had a happy childhood and that he was fairly distant from most of his relatives, including his parents, who lived in Singapore. It only made me more determined to give him the love he was so clearly lacking.
The furnishings were elegant but sparse, suiting the Art Deco influences in the twenty-first-century design. Since every piece of furniture, rug or lamp seemed in perfect harmony with the other objects around it, I’d assumed he’d hired an interior designer, but it turned out he’d chosen everything himself. I was in awe. He had such taste. Sometimes, I just wandered around the apartment, taking in the textures and colours – the pale, plush velvet of the sofas, the polished mahogany and brass accents, the blond wood herringbone floor, the thick, deep rugs with their geometric patterns.
The bedroom was my favourite room in the flat, all soft greys and lavenders. I lay on the bed, the sheets pulled up over half my naked body, allowing the Sunday morning light to slant across me and illuminate Justin, who was dozing beside me. I’d stayed over the night before after an outing to the opera. I checked my phone and realised it was already noon. I rolled over and slid a leg out of the bed, but a muscular hand reached out and grabbed my wrist.
‘Where do you think you’re going,’ he said, his voice gravelly. I stared back down at him, at the golden hair flopping back over his forehead, the glint in his blue eyes as he looked at me.
‘I’m getting up,’ I explained, a playful smile on my lips. ‘We’ve got plans today, remember?’
Justin grunted and tugged my arm. I’d been using it to prop myself in a sitting position, so I fell back on top of him and he threw his warm arms around me and kissed the top of my head. ‘Let’s just stay here all day.’
I chuckled. ‘We’ve already spent all morning in bed. Besides, you promised me lunch at that brasserie on the other side of the park.’ And before he could argue, I slid from his grasp and stood up. ‘There’s always later.’
His eyebrows puckered together in a high arch, making him look like a particularly sad basset hound. ‘You’re staying at your parents’ tonight.’
‘I do still live there! Although, I think my parents might dispute that, seeing as I’m here more nights than I’m not.’
He rolled his eyes in lieu of a coherent objection.
‘We’ve got time before we go to dinner this evening.’
The rest of my family had guessed there was a man on the scene. They’d started asking questions: who was he? Did he have a good job? Was he nice to me? Once those basic questions were dealt with, Mum told me to ask him to Sunday dinner, and today was the day. She was going to do her famous roast chicken, so I knew she was pulling out all the stops. Being late or failing to turn up because we were too loved up to leave the bedroom was not an option.
Half an hour later we were strolling through Kensington. I was wearing jeans and boots, things that had always been staples in my wardrobe, but I’d also added a seriously gorgeous silk blouse and leather jacket Justin had bought me, guarding my eyes from the bright April sun with a pair of sunglasses I’d stolen from him.
It was warm enough to sit outside at the brasserie, at a tiny round table with chairs that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a chic Paris café. I dug into my smoked salmon and scrambled eggs and let the fantasy continue to play inside my head, and when I caught my reflection in the restaurant window, I realised I saw a woman who looked as if she was ready to get herself up, dust herself off, and start to take charge of her life. I had Justin to thank for that. For his support and unwavering belief in me. For seeing the ‘me’ I’d lost sight of.
I reached for his hand and tugged him to meet me over the top of the table so I could kiss him.
He smiled when I released him. ‘What was that for?’
‘For being too good to be true,’ I replied.
We were supposed to be at Mum and Dad’s at half five, but at quarter to six, we were still sitting in traffic the other side of Crystal Palace. I peered at the queue of cars ahead, straining to see if the temporary traffic light was any closer to turning green. I could imagine Mum flapping around the kitchen and making ‘it’ll be fine’ noises that would eventually segue into a monologue about what she could do to prevent the chicken drying out and the roast potatoes from turning to ash.
She looked flustered and hot when we finally arrived, and she opened the door, wiping her hands on a tea towel. Justin presented her with a large bouquet as he declared how dreadfully sorry he was that we were late and how utterly delighted he was to meet her. Mum blinked back at him as if she’d just opened the door to Prince William and accepted the flowers with a flush in her cheeks. I was surprised she didn’t curtsey.
I hugged Mum as Justin presented his gift to my father – a wooden box with a very nice bottle of Chablis inside. Dad slid up the lid to inspect the contents, then replaced it. ‘Don’t know much about wine,’ he said gruffly, ‘but that looks like an all right drop.’
Lo appeared at the top of the stairs, then skipped down them before elbowing me in the ribs and grinning. ‘Not bad,’ she muttered, so only I could hear. ‘And look at you … Nobody told me we were dressing up fancy.’ She took in the expertly tailored charcoal dress I’d worn at Justin’s suggestion, another prize from our shopping trip the day before.
Mum had gone all out with the roast dinner. The stuffing had sausage meat as well as the mix out of the packet, and she’d made the Yorkshires herself. (Aunt Bessie is not a woman who is allowed to darken our door.) Justin raised his eyebrows. ‘Yorkshire puddings with chicken?’ he said. ‘What a wonderful idea!’ I could tell he thought it a little odd, and I suppose it was, but I’d never really thought about it. Mum’s yorkies are just so good, we always have them with every roast, even if it’s not beef.
Justin went about making a good impression as we began to eat. He told them a little about his family, then moved swiftly on to his work, starting with a few funny, self-deprecating anecdotes about his early days as a choreographer that left Mum looking wide-eyed and Dad chuckling so hard he almost spat out his gravy.
Lo didn’t say much, which was unusual for her. I could feel her beady eyes on me more often than I saw them on Justin. Eventually, she leaned into me and asked, ‘What are you doing with your knife and fork?’
‘Eating,’ I replied, not looking up from my plate.
Lo snorted softly. ‘I think you’ve been spending far too much time in fancypants restaurants.’
I kept cutting my meat, fork balanced perfectly in my left hand, and my knife held properly in my right. Lo wasn’t wrong. I had been spending more time in ‘fancypants’ restaurants in the two months since I’d met Justin. On one occasion, he’d noticed my discomfort when I wasn’t sure which fork to use or what to do when I needed to spit out a bone, so he’d been teaching me proper table manners and etiquette. If I aspired to be part of his world, these were skills I needed to learn.
