‘You just sort of threw us together, Kate. I wanted to be polite, and she really is great. I wish it could have worked out.’
Hugh was very definitely single when I introduced them. At least, I thought he was. ‘Who else was there? Ruby?’
He looks suddenly disconcerted. ‘Kate—’ he says firmly.
‘I was convinced you were single when you met Grace!’
‘I was.’
‘Then who, Hugh?’
The one who broke him?
Ah. It dawns on me now. He couldn’t be with Grace because, as lovely as she is, he was still in love with Mystery Heartbreaker. Still is in love with her, by the agonised look on his face. Wow. She must have been something else to have led him to swear so definitely off everyone else, forevermore.
‘I’m going to bed,’ he announces, draining his cup and getting out of the chair. ‘You should too. Writers festival tomorrow. I’m meeting my uni mate in Byron late morning for brunch. Want to join us before I drop you off?’
I stand up too, and take his empty mug. ‘I’m sorry for prying,’ I say. ‘It’s none of my business.’
He smiles ruefully. ‘It sort of is.’
29
He means because it’s my best friend who he dumped. Surely.
I can’t afford another fitful night, trying to unlock the Hugh Code. If he wasn’t ready for a relationship, he shouldn’t have done what I instructed him to do and dated Grace. He is emotionally unavailable. Hung up on someone he can’t have. Always will be.
Just like I’ll always be hung up on Cam.
I manage to get a few hours’ sleep until the crash of waves on the beach wakes me before dawn. Semi-conscious, I wonder if Cam is there, waiting for me on the sand. It makes no rational sense, I know, but I crave the fleeting whisper of his soul. Those passing moments of strong awareness that he is with me, the way I’d once feel his presence when he was out of sight across a crowded room.
I creep to the bathroom, then scoop up a crocheted blanket from the foot of the bed and tiptoe onto the balcony and down the steps outside. The sandy path through the garden is cool underfoot, and I should have worn shoes, but don’t care enough to go back.
It’s just me on the beach. I can see the far-off flicker of the lighthouse, shrouded in sea mist, and from here it feels like I’ll be the first in the country to see the sun. My footsteps carve a path in the sand as I walk a little way along and choose a spot. If I was the type to meditate, that’s what I’d do, but it always makes me anxious when I try. So many thoughts. So much noise in my head. So many traps. It’s like a game of snakes and ladders.
There’s one spot on the horizon slightly lighter than the rest, where the sun will appear. I’ve seen more sunrises since Cam died than I’d seen in my life up until then. They’re a promise; no matter how bad everything is, the world keeps turning. What was Rachel Lynde’s advice to Anne of Green Gables? ‘The sun will go on rising and setting whether you fail in geometry or not.’
That used to bring me comfort, during maths-inspired freakouts in high school. My current self shakes her head at the naivety of my Teen Self. Life was going to get so much bigger and more anxiety-inducing than how badly you do in algebra, girl . . .
‘Couldn’t sleep either?’ Hugh says a few minutes later, giving me a fright as he arrives on the beach beside me. With the roar of the waves, I hadn’t heard him approach.
‘This is the free sunrise, right?’ I reply, wanting to clear the tension of last night. ‘I’m not going to be slapped with hidden extras?’
He smiles. ‘There’s no catch, don’t worry.’
We sit in silence for a long time as the tide washes in and waves crash on the sand in front of us. So much power. Unstoppable. The longer our silence goes on, the less inclined either of us seems to break its spell. I wanted to find Cam here, but I’m surprised to learn it’s different, but just as nice, to sit here with Hugh. The thought confronts me, the way thoughts like this always do. I feel uneasy about any development that seems to push me further away from where I was when I last saw Cam, and I wrap the blanket more tightly around me – a barrier to change.
Hugh has made himself at home, leaning back in the sand on his elbows beside me, long legs stretched out and crossed lazily at the ankles. I glance at the lines of his calves, covered in a smattering of dark hair. Then I shiver and look back at the horizon.
‘Cold?’ he says.
‘No, it’s more that I’m . . .’ I don’t really know what I am.
‘Happy?’ he suggests.
It’s like he’s a chapter ahead all the time. I’d never in a million years have categorised myself as ‘happy’ yet, but when I think about it, that’s exactly how this feels. Being here, mesmerised by the ocean, anticipating the sunrise, I do feel . . . something. And for so long, I’ve been so flat. This is like a hopeful blip on the heart monitor after a long period of flatlining. A sign of life.
‘Hugh, how do you always know—’
‘Psychometric testing when you were recruited, Whittaker,’ he says. ‘It’s my job to know how you tick.’
I tap him on the arm. ‘Seriously, though. Are you psychic?’
‘Just watch the sunrise,’ he says, nodding in the direction of the horizon, just as the first light breaks over his face. ‘I’m trying to have an experience with you here.’
I stare at his face, attempting to decode what he just said. He refuses to meet my gaze, but the corners of his mouth twitch and it’s gorgeous. Bloody hell.
‘Concentrate, Kate. The sun is over there. Next you’ll be asking for a refund.’
‘You said it was free. You’d better not be swindling me here, Lancaster.’
He drags his eyes away from the spectacular horizon and looks at me like I’m a major pest. Which I am. But then his expression softens and even though I’ve had insufficient sleep for five years and my face is smeared with the remains of yesterday’s make-up, and I’m wrapped in what I now realise is a pink crochet blanket, fighting against my auburn hair, in orange half-light, I feel kind of – well, beautiful, to be honest . . .
‘I’m not swindling you,’ he assures me.
And, in that moment, right there, I feel myself put literally all my trust into one basket and hand it over to him, tentatively, absolutely terrified he’ll drop it. I wonder if he knows how enormous this is for me. How frightening. Is he even aware that this moment is passing between us? Is it passing between us? Maybe it’s some romance-starved figment of my bruised imagination. It wouldn’t take much for me to invent a scenario here and run with it.
‘What are you thinking now?’ he asks.
‘Psychometric testing let you down?’
He smiles.
I’m thinking I want to kiss you.
And I’m waiting for Cam to appear and interrupt me.
Or give me his blessing.
Or announce it was all a terrible mistake and he’s sorry for his absence but he’s back now, so there’s really no need for me to sit here on the beach at sunrise, wondering if it would be emotionally reasonable for a grief-stricken, forty-year-old widow to start to fall for someone else.