look after Lily. You told me yourself that you were here for a complete break.’
‘A break from routine is all I need.’ Alice got to her feet and walked over to the sliding doors, trying to work out why it felt so important to persuade him.
‘I thought I wanted to spend six weeks doing absolutely nothing,’ she told him. ‘When Beth told me about her life here, about the mornings by the pool, about the parties and the warmth and the sunshine, I was envious, jealous even.’
She remembered sitting at her desk, staring out at the rain and remembering Beth’s bubbling enthusiasm. Tony hadn’t been long gone, then, and she had still been at the stage of dreading going home to an empty flat.
‘It was a bad time for me,’ she told Will. She wasn’t ready to tell him about Tony yet. ‘The idea of just turning my face up to the sun and not thinking about anything for a while seemed wonderful, and when I got the chance to come I took it…’
‘But?’ Will prompted when she paused.
Alice turned back from the window to face him. ‘But I’m bored,’ she said honestly. ‘It’s different for Beth. She makes friends wherever she goes. She likes everybody, even if they’re really dull, and she always sees the good side of people, but I’m…’
‘…not like that?’ he suggested, a hint of amusement in his eyes, and he looked suddenly so much like the Will she remembered that Alice’s heart bumped into her ribs and she forgot to breathe for a moment.
‘No,’ she agreed, hugging her arms together and drawing a distinctly unsteady breath. ‘You know what I’m like. I’m intolerant, and I get impatient and restless if I’m bored.’
‘They don’t sound like ideal characteristics for a nanny,’ Will pointed out in a dry voice, and she made herself meet his eyes squarely and not notice that disconcertingly familiar glint.
‘Lily doesn’t bore me,’ she said. ‘I like her. She reminds me of me, and I’m never bored when I’m on my own. Besides, I’m not planning on being a nanny. If this week has taught me anything, it’s how important my career is. I need to work, and if I can’t work, I need to do
‘I enjoyed spending this afternoon with Lily,’ she told Will. ‘I’d much rather spend the next few weeks with her than twitter away at endless coffee mornings.’
‘If that’s how you feel, why don’t you just cut short your trip?’
‘Because I can’t change my ticket. It was one of those special deals which means you can’t get any refund if you change your flight. And Roger and Beth would be hurt if I said I was bored and wanted to go home. They’ve gone to so much trouble to make me welcome,’ Alice added guiltily.
‘They might be hurt if you choose to spend the rest of your time with Lily,’ Will commented.
‘I don’t think so. Not if we present it as me helping you out.’ Alice hoped she wasn’t sounding
‘I love Roger and Beth,’ she said carefully. ‘Of course I do. No one could be kinder or more hospitable, but I’m used to being independent and having my own space, making my own decisions.
‘When you’re a guest, you just fit in with everyone else,’ she tried to explain. ‘And I’m finding that harder than I thought. It’s as if I’m completely passive. I don’t decide what we’re going to do, or what we’re going to eat, or where we’re going to go. I just tag along. At least if I was looking after Lily I’d have some say in how we spent the day.’
‘I certainly wouldn’t try and dictate what you did,’ said Will. ‘You know what would keep Lily happy better than I do. I do have a cook but I expect she’d be happy to make whatever you felt like.’
By the window, Alice brightened. ‘You mean you’re going to accept my offer?’
Will studied her eager face, puzzled by her enthusiasm and disconcerted by the way her mask of careful composure kept slipping to reveal the old, vivid Alice beneath.
‘I don’t know…’ he said slowly. ‘It doesn’t seem right somehow.’
‘Is it because it’s me?’ she demanded. ‘You wouldn’t be hesitating if the agency had sent me out on a temporary assignment, would you?’
‘Of course not. That would be a professional arrangement and I’d be paying you for your time.’
Alice shrugged. ‘You can pay me if it makes you feel better, but it’s not necessary. It’s not as if I’m doing it for you, you know. I’d be doing it for me-and for Lily,’ she added after a moment’s thought.
Still, Will hesitated. Getting to his feet, he took a turn around the room, hands thrust into his pockets and shoulders hunched in thought. Finally he stopped in front of Alice.
‘You don’t think it would be a bit…difficult?’ he asked. ‘Living together again after all these years?’
‘I’m not suggesting we sleep together,’ said Alice, a distinct edge to her voice. ‘Presumably Dee had her own room?’
‘Of course.’
‘Well, then.’ She glanced at him and then away. ‘It’s different now, Will. What we had before is in the past. We agreed at the time that we would go our separate ways, and we have. There’s no going back now.’
She was presenting it as something they had both decided together, but it hadn’t been quite like that, not the way Will remembered it, anyway. It had been Alice who had wanted to end their relationship. ‘Our lives are going in different directions,’ she had said. ‘Let’s call it a day while we’re still friends.’
‘I think we both know that there’s no point in trying to recreate what we had,’ she was saying. ‘I don’t want that and neither do you, do you?’
‘No,’ said Will, after a moment. Well, what was he supposed to say-yes, I do? I do want that? I’ve never stopped wanting that?
That would have been a very foolish thing to say. He had tried to say it at Roger’s wedding, and he wasn’t putting himself through that again. He had enough problems at the moment without getting involved with Alice again. She was right; it was over.
‘So what’s the problem?’ she asked him. ‘It makes much more sense for you to have me living with you than some other woman who might fall in love with you and make things
It was her turn to pause while she tried to find the right words. ‘We’ve both changed,’ she said eventually. ‘We’re different people and we don’t feel the same way about each other as we did then. We’re never going to be lovers any more, but there’s no reason why we couldn’t learn to be friends, is there?’
Except that it was hard to be friends with someone whose taste you could remember exactly, thought Will. Someone whose body you had once known as well as your own, someone who’d been the very beat of your heart for so long.
With someone who’d made you happier than you had ever been before. Someone who’d left your life empty and desolate when she had gone.
‘It would only be for a few weeks,’ Alice went on. ‘And then I’d be gone. That wouldn’t be too difficult, would it?’
‘No,’ said Will. ‘We could do that for Lily.’
He had a feeling that it was going to be a lot harder than Alice made out, but it would be worth it for Lily. She liked Alice, that was clear, and Alice’s presence would help her to settle down much more effectively than introducing yet another stranger into her life. He would just have to find his own way of dealing with living with Alice again.
And living without her once more when she had gone.
‘All right,’ he said, abruptly making up his mind. ‘If you’re sure, I expect Lily would love you to look after her until I can find a new nanny.’
He was glad that he had agreed when he saw Lily’s face as the news was broken to her that Alice was going to stay with them for a while. She was never a demonstrative child, but there was no mistaking the way her dark eyes lit up with surprise and delight.
‘You’re going to live with us?’
‘Just for a little while,’ cautioned Alice. ‘Until your dad can find you a new nanny.’
‘Why can’t you stay always?’
Will waited to see how Alice would handle that. It was a question he had wanted to ask her himself in the past. He had never understood why she had been so determined to end their relationship when they had been so good together. It was as if she had been convinced that everything would go wrong, but she hadn’t been prepared to give it a chance to go right.
