Sitting here, Abe remembered with a pang how easy their relationship had been. He was surprised to learn about her father, but he could empathise because there were always some things a person found difficult to share. When he thought back to the girl she had been then, it made a curious kind of sense because he’d never thought she had the personality of someone who enjoyed the brash party life of that particular strip of beach where she’d worked. He’d first met her when she had blushed her way through an explanation of the paella she had cooked. He had insisted on the head waiter fetching her from the kitchen because the food had been so good and had been amused and tickled pink at her embarrassment.
It didn’t sit well with him knowing that he had hurt her, even though, at the time, he had seen leaving as the most efficient way of ending something that had only ever been an exceptionally enjoyable fling. Whenever he’d thought of elevating it beyond that, he’d mentally put the brakes on, preferring to stick to what he knew, to adhere to his usual limitations. He’d known that going off-piste on that front could never be an option for him.
‘I never expected my own father to have a heart attack,’ Abe confessed. ‘He had always been a strong man. The only time I remember him laid low was when my mother died. At any rate, it was a shock to be recalled to the palace out of the blue.’ He hesitated. ‘I did what I thought was best, Georgie.’
‘Best for you, you mean,’ she shot back.
‘Best for the both of us. I never meant to hurt you. I never made you any promises, Georgie.’
‘I’m not saying you did,’ she said stiffly.
‘My life has always been prescribed,’ Abe said flatly. ‘As an only child, I was relentlessly groomed to be ready to take over the duties of my father at any point.’ He hesitated. ‘My father had a very successful arranged marriage. He learnt vital lessons from his own father who had cast his net wide, had mistresses and eventually married two of them. My grandfather had no control over his behaviour and the country suffered as a result. Vital investments in infrastructure were sidelined, business of any sort was put on hold, money was squandered and we lost standing in the international community. It took a long time for things to be steadied and was in no small part due to the efforts of my father, who had the sense to rein in his private life. He married for convenience to a woman who knew the role she would have to play. Love may have come later for them, but suitability was the key factor to his choice of wife and there was never any question that I would have to follow in his footsteps. If I led you to believe that things were more serious between us than they were, then I sincerely apologise to you now.’
‘You didn’t lead me to believe anything,’ Georgie denied. ‘I over-invested.’
‘You’re a romantic. That is a road I have never travelled down and never will.’
‘So you’ve said.’
‘Which doesn’t mean that I’m lacking in emotion...’
Georgie didn’t know what was worse, the message or the messenger. In a minute, he would be reaching for a handkerchief so that she could dab her tear-filled eyes while laying it on thick with the sympathy.
‘Like I said, I enjoyed what we had and after what you’ve told me... I understand it would have been a tough call choosing between a house and a career.’
‘I’m not asking for your pity, Abe,’ she said tightly.
‘That’s not what I am giving you,’ he said, slowly rising to his feet before heading towards the well-appointed kitchen and returning with the bottle of wine. ‘Pity and sympathy are two different creatures and they stem from two different standpoints.’ He sat back. ‘Perhaps this is the conversation we should have had four years ago,’ he mused. ‘Do you think the parting of ways would have been made easier? If you had told me about your father? If I had explained to you who I really was? That there could be no future between us? I am not a believer in retrospective wisdom, so it is good that the air has finally been cleared.’ He reached across to top up her glass.
Georgie remained silent. ‘No more wine, thank you.’ He had ordered food and she’d completely forgotten about it until there was a knock on the door and a trolley was wheeled in and silver cloches whipped up by a fully uniformed waiter. A Chinese feast. Her mouth watered but she reminded herself that this wasn’t a social visit. She would eat but she wasn’t going to consider it sharing a meal with him.
She helped herself to the food and didn’t look at him as she ate. Despite the delicious smells it was emitting, it tasted like cardboard. How could she enjoy any of it when her stomach was churning and her mind was spinning cartwheels?
‘The truth is always better than lies and subterfuge.’ Georgie knew this to be a fact, but if she had known his true identity she would have run a mile. She might have been innocent, but she wasn’t completely lacking in grey matter.
Yet, when she thought aboutneverhaving had him in her life, her mind drew a blank.
Without this stranger sitting opposite her, there would have been no Tilly and Tilly was her unexpected heavenly gift that gave her life meaning.
Was it possible to sift through the strands of your past and pick out the bits you didn’t like, or did cause and effect make that impossible?
‘You never expected to ever run into me again, but you did, Abe. Maybe you feel guilty at the way things ended. Do you? Is that why you asked me out for dinner before you disappear to the other side of the world?’
Again.
Georgie knew that that was something she should not forget. He had disappeared with no warning. That was the kind of man he was. Programmed to end up with a certain type of woman and she was not that type of woman and never would be.
‘Why should I feel guilty? Haven’t I explained?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’ She waved one hand impatiently. ‘You’re right, we can continue going round and round in circles but we won’t get anywhere, because there’s a reason I’m here and it’s not because I feel any need for you to apologise. I don’t. What happened, happened.’
Despite the disinterest she was displaying, Georgie had never hated anyone the way she hated him now. For disappearing, for stealing her heart, for showing up and glibly writing off what they had shared as nothing important, for asking her out for a stupid expensive dinnerbecause he wanted tosalve his conscience. She hated him for knowing what she had failed to see at the time: that he was completely out of her league. She hadn’t been playing with a full deck of cards because she hadn’t known who he was, how rich and important he was. She felt foolish now for not instinctively clocking what should have been obvious to anyone with half a brain.Even masquerading as Mr Ordinary, he’d still been so sophisticated, so self-assured, so good-looking. There, in Ibiza, she’d actually believed that she was a different person and not the girl next door she’d always been, but if she’d taken a few seconds to stand back, she would have known that there was no way he was going to hang around for ever.
Mostly, though, she hated him for showing her what she wanted to forget, for showing her that he still got to her, that her body could still react to him. She hated him for the dreams he had put in her head that would never have materialised.
‘You asked me how it was that I ended up where I did, working at the hotel.’
‘Your father died. If I had known that then, perhaps I would have told you who I was, would have—’
