‘I’ll tell you about it while we go.’ Recalling that he was supposed to be on duty, he added, ‘I’d just better send Fi a text letting her know that I’ll be gone for about an hour if she needs me for anything.’
Daisy took a pair of sunglasses from her red-and-blue striped basket and put them on while he sent his text.
He led her to the gap in the hedge and held back a couple of small branches as she stepped through to the field on the other side.
‘Is this private property?’ she asked.
‘Yes, but I know the owners. They’ve always been happy for me to come through here.’
They walked along the edge of the ploughed field as it sloped downwards. Reaching the end of the field, they climbed over the five-bar gate and onto the road.
‘The Railway Walk is this way,’ he said, pointing to their right.
‘You were going to tell me about the railway,’ she said, stopping to take off one of her espadrilles to shake the dust out of it.
He waited for her to put her shoe back on. ‘I don’t know too much about it,’ he said honestly, ‘but I believe a railway linking St Helier to St Aubin first ran in the nineteenth century. It was added to by the owner of a quarry in La Moye, just along there,’ he said, indicating infront of them. ‘Other sections were added until it reached Corbière, which is where we’re heading now.’
‘I should imagine it was a beautiful journey.’
‘I don’t think carriages were added for passengers until the mid-twenties. I think it was mainly for business use before then.’ He was enjoying her interest and the distraction from his own story. ‘It did build up to about a million passengers a year, I think.’ He tried to recall what his father told the guests when they ever asked about the railway. ‘I suppose people began owning their own cars and travelling by buses after that, so it declined in popularity. I think it was scrapped in the mid-thirties.’
‘That’s such a shame,’ she said, as they walked along the hardstanding making up the pathway.
Gabriel enjoyed the shade the overhanging branches were giving them in the extra-warm August afternoon. ‘I think this stretch was used by the Nazis during the occupation to help them carry guns and equipment for battery placements they were building as part of their Atlantic Wall.’ She looked a little confused, so he added, ‘To build the bunkers you’ve probably seen along the coastline that I was telling you about. It was scrapped again soon after the end of the war. It’s sad really.’
‘It is,’ she said. Pulling a camera from her basket, she stopped to take a picture of the curved pathway in front of them, edged on both sides by trees, shrubs, and colourful flowers. She pointed through the opening in the trees to their right. ‘What’s that over there? Is it a playing field?’
He nodded. ‘Yes, there are pitches for things like football and hockey. There’s also a gym and an indoor pool if ever you want to join. I could show you around if you like?’
‘No, it’s fine, thanks.’
Not to be deterred, he added. ‘Over there is the airport and if you go in that direction,’ he said, pointingsomewhere in between the two, ‘you’ll go over the sand dunes and down to St Ouen’s Bay.’
‘Where I’ll find the Five Mile Road and quite a few of the bunkers you were talking about?’
He smiled at her. ‘That’s right. Great surfing too.’
They continued walking in silence. It was almost deafening and as hard as he tried, Gabriel couldn’t ignore what he had to do next. He waited until they’d crossed over the road to the final strip of the walk taking them closer towards the Corbière lighthouse.
‘We were childhood sweethearts,’ he said finally.
She stopped walking and stared at him for a few seconds. ‘I presume you weren’t a couple when we hooked up in Vietnam?’ It was part accusation, part question.
He took hold of her hand. ‘No, we weren’t,’ he said. ‘Bella and I split up soon after we left university. She wanted us to move into a flat together but I wasn’t ready.’ He recalled the tearful threats she’d given him, shocked when she’d gone through with them and left him to move to France to work for a few years. He gave a precis version to Daisy.
She frowned, snatching away her hand from his grasp. ‘If you weren’t together when you came to Vietnam,’ she asked, raising her sunglasses up on top of her head so he could see her piercing blue eyes staring at him, ‘then how come you got together and married such a short time after I’d left?’
‘It wasn’t that short a time,’ he said, trying not to become angry at the memory of her promising to contact him and then not doing so. ‘If you recall, you were going to let me know when we could see each other again.’
She looked a little sheepish and shrugged. ‘I had a lot going on.’
He took hold of her gently by the shoulders. ‘Daisy,you’re acting as if I jilted you.’ He studied her face, unable to miss the hurt but not wishing to take all the blame for what had happened since they’d last been together as a couple. ‘I emailed you for months, your number wasn’t recognised and I had no other way of contacting you. You weren’t on any social media sites that I looked at, so how do you expect me to know that you’re still waiting for me?’ He could hear his voice getting colder and quieter the more he tried to reason with her. ‘I loved you. I was hurt to think you’d forgotten me so easily, after all we’d shared together.’
‘I understand that, but it hurts that you not only got back together with your ex but that you rushed off and married her.’ Daisy marched away from him, head down.
Stung by her outburst, Gabriel followed, soon catching up with her. ‘Hey, that’s really unfair,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t like that.’
Daisy stopped. ‘Then why did you get back with her?’
