Barefoot Bride

her close. ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked in a different tone.

‘Nothing,’ said Alice, muffled against his chest.

‘Come on, it’s just me. Was it seeing Will again?’

Alice drew a shuddering breath. ‘He’s changed,’ she muttered.

‘We’ve all changed,’ said Roger gently.

‘You haven’t.’ She lifted her head and looked up into his dear, familiar face. She had met Roger on her first day at university, and they had been best friends ever since. For Alice, he was the brother she had never had, and not Beth, not even Will, had come between them. ‘That’s why I love you,’ she said with a wobbly smile.

Roger pretended to look alarmed. ‘An open declaration of affection! This isn’t like you, Alice. You are upset!’

‘Only because Will was rude about my shoes,’ said Alice, tilting her chin. ‘They’re not silly, are they, Roger?’

Straight-faced, Roger studied the delicate sandals, decorated with sequins and blue butterflies. ‘They’re fabulous,’ he told her. ‘Just like you. Now, come and have another drink before we both get maudlin and I tell you I love you too!’

‘All right.’ Alice took a deep breath and steadied her smile. ‘But only if you introduce me to all these single men Beth promised me,’ she said, determined to put Will Paxman right out of her mind. ‘And not that guy in the awful shirt with the perspiration problem,’ she added, following Roger into the kitchen.

‘Colin,’ said Roger, nodding knowledgeably as he handed her another glass of punch. ‘No, we’ll see if we can do better for you than that!’

He was as good as his word, and Alice soon found herself the centre of a circle of admiring men, all much more attractive and entertaining than the hapless Colin. Alice was under no illusions about her own looks, but she appreciated that, living in a small expatriate community with a limited social life, these men would be interested in any single, available female, and she did her best to sparkle and live up to the reputation Beth had evidently created for her. But it was hard when all the time she was aware of Will’s dark, glowering presence over by the pool.

Alice turned her back pointedly, but it didn’t make much difference. She could practically feel his cold grey eyes boring into her spine, and the thought made her shiver slightly and take a gulp of her punch.

Why was he bothering to watch her, anyway? There were no shortage of women simpering up at him by the pool, all of them wearing shoes and lipstick and apparently indulging in small talk. Alice was prepared to concede that she might be wrong, but none of them gave the impression of being intellectual giants. How come Will didn’t find them prickly and false?

Defiantly, Alice emptied her glass and let someone whose name she had already forgotten rush off to get her a refill. If Will thought her brittle and superficial, superficial and brittle she would be!

Flirting was not something that came naturally to her but it was amazing what she could do when glacial grey eyes were watching her with open disapproval. What right had Will Paxman to disapprove of her, anyway? She was just being sociable, which was more than he was doing, and she was damned if she was going to skulk away to the kitchen just because he didn’t like her.

So she smiled and laughed and made great play with her eyelashes while she shifted her weight surreptitiously from foot to foot to try and relieve the pressure from her shoes, which might look fabulous but which were, in truth, becoming increasingly uncomfortable. Not that Alice would ever have admitted as much to Will.

The tropical sun combined with Roger’s punch was giving her a thumping headache, and Alice’s bright smile grew more and more fixed as she concentrated on being fun and ignoring Will. Still, she was doing all right until someone mentioned honeymoons and suddenly she remembered that today was Tony’s wedding day.

All at once Alice’s bottled-up misery burst through its dam and hit her with such force that she only just managed to stop herself doubling over as if from a blow. The pain and anger and humiliation she had felt when Tony had left her for Sandi was mixed up now with a nauseating concoction of shock, regret, guilt and hurt at Will’s reaction to meeting her again after all this time.

Not to mention an excess of Roger’s punch.

Unable to keep up the facade any longer, Alice murmured an excuse about finding a hat and headed blindly for the house. At least there it would be cool.

And full of people. She hesitated at the bottom of the steps leading up to the decking. The large, airy living area would be packed with people enjoying the air conditioning and someone would be bound to see her sneak off to her room. The next thing Beth would be there, knocking on the door, wanting to know what was wrong.

Changing her mind, Alice glanced over her shoulder to make sure that Will wasn’t watching her, and realised that she couldn’t see him. All that time she had spent simultaneously ignoring him and trying to convince him that she was having the best time of her life, and he hadn’t even been there!

Humiliation closed around her throat like a fist. She had been so sure that he was watching her-he had been at first!-and now the idea that he had got bored and gone off while she’d been still desperately performing for his benefit made her feel an idiot. No, worse than an idiot. Pathetic.

Close to tears, Alice slipped unnoticed along the side of the house and ducked beneath an arch laden with a magnificent display of bougainvillaea that divided the perfectly manicured front garden from a shady and scrubby patch of ground at the back behind the kitchen and servants’ quarters.

Beth had a maid to help with the housework, a smiling woman called Chantelle, and this was her domain. There were wooden steps leading down from the kitchen verandah where she would sit sometimes, her fingers busy with some mindless task while she sang quietly to herself. Alice wouldn’t normally have intruded, but Chantelle, she knew, was busy clearing up after the barbecue lunch, and Alice didn’t think she would mind if she sat there for a little while on her own.

The garden here was blissfully shady and overgrown, so dark that Alice was almost at the steps before she realised that she was not the only person needing some time alone. A little girl was sitting on the bottom step, half-hidden in the shadow of a banana tree. Her knees were drawn up to her chin, and she hugged them to her, keeping very still as she watched a butterfly with improbably large iridescent blue wings come to rest on her shoe.

Alice stopped as soon as she saw them, but the butterfly had already taken off and was flapping languidly in and out of the patches of sunlight. The child spotted her at the same time, and she seemed to freeze. Alice was reminded of a small, wary animal trying to make up its mind whether to bolt for cover or not.

She was sorry that she had interrupted, but it seemed rude to turn on her heel and walk off without saying anything. Besides, there was something very familiar about the scene. Alice couldn’t work out what it was at first, but then she realised that the little girl reminded her of herself as a lonely, uncertain child.

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to disturb you, or the butterfly. I was just looking for somewhere quiet to sit for a while.’ She paused, but the little girl just looked guardedly at her, still poised for flight.

She wasn’t a particularly pretty child. She had straight, shapeless hair and a pinched little face dominated by a pair of huge, solemn dark eyes. Her expression was distrustful, but Alice was conscious of a pang of fellow feeling.

How many times had she slipped off to find a place to hide while she’d waited for her parents to take her back to wherever they were calling home at the time? This child’s parents were probably having a great time by the pool, totally oblivious to the fact that their daughter had slipped away, intimidated by the other children who were noisy and boisterous and seemed to be able to make friends without even trying.

‘I wanted to escape from the party for a bit,’ Alice explained. ‘It’s too noisy and I didn’t know anyone to talk to properly. Is that what you did?’ she asked as the girl glanced sharply at her.

The child nodded.

‘The thing is, I don’t want to go back yet,’ said Alice. ‘And I can’t think of anywhere else to hide. Do you mind if I sit next to you, just for a little while? I won’t talk if you don’t want to. I hate it when people talk to me when I’m trying to be quiet.’

There was a flash of recognition in the girl’s watchful eyes, and, while she didn’t exactly agree, she didn’t say no either, and as Alice went over she shifted along the step to make room for her. Encouraged, Alice settled next to her, drawing her knees up to mirror the child’s posture.

A strangely companionable silence settled round them. In the distance, Alice could hear the buzz of party conversation, punctuated by the occasional burst of laughter, and the squeals and shrieks and splashes from the