‘Everything except you and Lily,’ said Alice, rolling onto her side to face him. ‘It didn’t take me long to realise that I might have the security of material things, but none of them were worth anything without you. I knew I loved you, and that you loved me, but I still couldn’t bring myself to trust that feeling.
‘I was afraid to let go of what I had,’ she confessed. ‘It was just what you said. I was afraid to give it all up for the chance of happiness.’ She linked her fingers with his. ‘Once you know what you want, it all seems obvious, and I can’t believe now that I hesitated for so long. But then I was going round and round in circles, not knowing what I wanted or what I really thought.
‘Strangely, it was being offered that job that convinced me,’ she remembered. ‘I’d told myself that I would take it as a sign that I should stay here if I got it, but of course, when it happened, I realised it wasn’t the sign I wanted. I felt a fool,’ she told him with a twisted smile. ‘I’d just been offered the job of my dreams, and all I could think was that I didn’t want it if it meant I couldn’t be with you and Lily. Then my parents turned up.’
‘Your parents?’ Will sat up in surprise. ‘I thought they were in India?’
‘They were. Now they’re on their way to keep bees in Normandy.’ Out of habit, Alice rolled her eyes, but her smile held a kind of wry affection as well. ‘They thought they would call in and see me on their way through London, and, being them, they didn’t think to give me any warning. They simply turned up on my doorstep, at the very moment I’d just realised that I wanted to be with you, and I was in a terrible muddle about everything.’
Will twisted a strand of her hair around his finger. ‘Did they help?’
‘Well, that’s the funny thing. They did.’ Alice pulled herself up to sit next to him, and adjusted a pillow behind her back. ‘They’ve never been what you’d call conventional parents. They’re two old hippies,’ she said with an affectionate smile, thinking of her mother with her anklets and long braid, her father with his tie-dyed T-shirt and his grey hair pulled back into a pony-tail. ‘But when they saw what a state I was in, they swung into their traditional roles straight away! They sat me down and made me tea, and got the whole story out of me.’
She ran her hand over Will’s shoulder, loving the sleekness of his skin. ‘I told them about you and Lily, and how much I loved you, and that I’d let you down three times now. I told them I was afraid of doing it again, that I was scared that it wouldn’t work unless I was sure that I could get it right this time and that it would be perfect.’
Her mother had simply shaken her head. ‘Alice, you can never be sure,’ she had said. ‘All you can do is trust each other and be true to each other and believe in each other. Love isn’t something that comes and goes. It’s something you have to make together, and if you both work at it, if you’re kind and patient and prepared to compromise, if you can stay friends through thick and thin, then you can make it last, but you can’t
Alice would never forget the way her mother had smiled at her father then, and suddenly they hadn’t seemed like faintly ridiculous hangovers from another era, but two people who had found their own way and loved each other a long time.
‘Loving someone completely isn’t easy,’ her father had added. ‘It’s hard work, and you can decide it’s easier never to try, but, if you never do, you’ll never be completely happy either.’ He’d reached out and took her mother’s hand. ‘Yes, it’s a risk committing yourself to loving someone for the rest of your life. It’s a leap in the dark, but it’s a leap out of the dark too, and if you don’t take it you’ll never know the joy and the wonder and the real security which is loving and being loved.’
Alice felt quite teary with emotion as she told Will what her parents had said. ‘As I listened to them talk, I realised that I’d spent my whole life running away from the unsettling effects of my childhood-the moving from place to place, never having any real friends, never feeling at home-when I could have been thinking about all the wonderful things my parents did for me.’
She shook her head at herself. ‘They gave me the best example I could have of a loving relationship. My father didn’t wear a suit, and my mother didn’t put on an apron and stay in the kitchen, but they were always friends and always lovers. They laughed and they talked and were true to each other. They took me to places most children never get to see, and showed me how wonderful the world is.
‘I had the most incredible experiences growing up,’ Alice remembered. ‘But, instead of realising how lucky I was, I turned it all into something negative. I became afraid of change, and I confused the security of place with the security of love.’ She curved her hand around his cheek and leaned over to kiss Will’s mouth softly. ‘I won’t do that again.’
‘Your parents sound like great people,’ said Will when he had kissed her back. Alice had never talked much about her parents when they’d been students. He had the feeling they had been in South America then, so he had never been introduced. ‘I’d like to meet them.’
‘That’s good, because they’re coming out to St Bonaventure.’
‘They are? When?’
‘For our wedding,’ said Alice calmly, and a smile twitched the corner of Will’s mouth.
‘Oh, we’re getting married, are we?’
‘Yes, we are.’ She leant over to Will until he slid beneath her, and her face was suddenly serious. ‘You’ve asked me to marry you four times now, and each time I’ve been the fool that said no, so this time it’s up to me. Will you marry me, Will?’
‘Alice.’ He cupped her face with infinite tenderness. ‘My heart, I’ve wanted to marry you since I first laid eyes on you fourteen years ago, but we don’t have to get married if you don’t want to.’
‘I do want to,’ she said, dropping soft kisses over his face. ‘You know what a thing I’ve got about security, and, now I’ve decided that you’re my security, I want to tie you up as close as I can!’
‘The tying up bit sounds fun,’ mumbled Will between kisses. ‘You can tie me up as tight as you like!’
‘Good, I hoped you’d agree,’ said Alice with satisfaction, and then her blizzard of kisses had reached his mouth and neither of them said anything more for a long time.
‘We don’t have to get married in St Bonaventure,’ Will pointed out some time later, when they had both discovered that they were starving and were in the kitchen making cheese on toast, which was the best Alice could do. ‘If I get this job, we’ll be moving back to the UK and we could have the wedding here if you like.’
Alice picked a piece of cheese from the grater and studied him. ‘When’s the interview?’
‘The day after tomorrow.’
‘I think you should ring up and cancel,’ she said. ‘Let’s go back to St Bonaventure and finish the project. If I’m married to you, I’ll be able to find a job doing something, and as long as I’ve got something to do I’ll be fine. I could sort out your fund-raising for a start! Then, when the project’s finished, we can think again. Maybe that’ll be the time to come back to the UK, and Lily can settle in a school here.’
Will slid his arms about her from behind and kissed the side of her neck, making her arch with pleasure. ‘You’re a dream come true,’ he said, and she smiled.
‘That’s the plan.’
The sun was just starting to sink towards the horizon as Alice took Lily’s hand and walked down the garden and across the track. Ducking under the trunk of a coconut palm that leant down at an extraordinary angle, they kicked off their shoes and walked barefoot across the beach to where Will was waiting for them.
Lily was in a pale pink dress, which she had been allowed to choose herself, and her dark curls were held in place by a satin headband decorated with rosebuds. Her tongue was sticking out slightly as she concentrated on remembering her bridesmaid’s duties. Next to her, Alice was wearing a very simple cream-coloured dress with fine straps that left her arms and shoulders bare, and the chiffon stirred against her legs as cat’s paw of wind ruffled across the lagoon. There were frangipani flowers in her hair, and she carried a spray of vivid bougainvillaea.
The sky was flushed with a pink that was deepening rapidly to a brief blaze of red and orange as Will turned to watch them walk across the sand towards him, and he smiled. Their plans for a small ceremony had been overtaken by the insistence of the entire project staff on being invited, together with Roger and Beth, Alice’s parents, his mother, Sara and a whole lot of other people who’d seemed so genuinely happy for them that it had seemed churlish not to include them in the wedding party too. They all gathered round as Will stood with Alice and Lily before the celebrant.
Alice bent and handed her flowers to Lily, who took them as if they were made of glass and stepped carefully back to join her grandmother. Will took Alice’s hand and, as they turned to face each other, his grey gaze travelled lovingly over her, from the tawny hair to those golden eyes and the warm, generous mouth, and then down over the enticing curves of her body to stop at her bare feet.
‘What, no shoes?’ he murmured as the celebrant cleared his throat. ‘How are you going to run away?’
