‘How could you do that to me? And with Eve, of all people? How could you do that to her little boy?’
In the back seat, Alex hissed the words through gritted teeth while, beside her, Ben listened, now chastened after his heroic rescue.
Mr Thomas, navigating the winding single lane that led them away from Clove Lore turned up the music station on the car radio and discreetly pretended to hum along to ‘Walking in a Winter Wonderland’ while the tyres rolled slowly through spindly, gale-torn branches and the churning clusters of litter from wheelie bins blown over as far away as Appledore.
‘I wasn’t thinking,’ Ben whispered, pleadingly. ‘It lasted, like, a second and I felt awful the whole time, honestly. But that’s not important now, is it?’
Alex turned fierce eyes upon him, exasperated.
‘What I mean is, I regretted it straight away and I’ll say sorry to you for the rest of my life if I have to, if you just give me a chance to fix things.’
Fix things?Alex searched his face. How was it possible to fix this?
‘Look, let’s just get through Christmas and we can talk afterwards. Come on, it’s Christmas Eve tomorrow. You love Christmas at Mum and Dad’s…’
‘But…’ Alex tried to interject, but Ben stilled her with his hands spread defensively in front of him.
‘I promise you’ll feel better when you’re back in your own house.’
Alex didn’t think she would feel better, alone at night in a house that had been left to go cold for near on two weeks, the way only English houses can lose all their warmth when owners leave town. ‘I don’t want to go home. I’m lonely there.’
Ben’s eyes flashed with inspiration. ‘Well, that’s what I’ve been wanting to talk to you about. You always wanted us to move in together, remember?’
Alex barely hid the snort of derision. Of course she remembered.
Ben persisted. ‘It didn’t really make a lot of sense when I’d just found my own flat down the road from Mum and Dad’s, but now I think it’s time.’ He tried to reach for her hand but she recoiled, folding her arms tightly across her body. ‘I’m ready now,’ he said in a whisper, casting a surreptitious glance at his father’s eyes in the rear-view mirror.
‘Ready for what?’ Alex hissed.
‘To move in with you of course, silly.’
The car, trundling along at twenty miles an hour, suddenly seemed to leave the road in a loop-the-loop. Alex clutched her stomach to quell the queasiness. ‘What?’ she cried, incredulous. ‘Nowyou want to move in with me, at my mum and dad’s house?’
‘It’syourhouse, Alex. Think about it. You won’t be rattling around there all on your own any more, and we can finally commit, you know?’
This was all Alex had wanted to hear a year or two ago. Now, the thought of her and Ben sharing the house her parents had set up together physically pained her. It would make a mockery of them and their devotion to one another if she were to pretend everything was fine with Ben now.
‘Iwascommitted,’ she spat.
‘Well now we can be together twenty-four/seven, except when you’re out on the ferry of course. Maybe you could clear out your…umm, the spare room and I could have it as my home office? What do you say? Dad’ll help us redecorate. He’s already said he’ll help, haven’t you, Dad?’
Mr Thomas only nodded. Alex could tell even from the back of his head that he knew better than his son how badly this was going.
‘And,’ Ben lowered his voice again. ‘It’ll be different this time. The next step, yeah? And Eve’s gone now, thank God, so she won’t be hanging round, coming between us.’
The sadness circling her heart turned to a rising, burning fury once more. She glared piercingly at Ben who felt her ire right down to his boots but he was determined to plead his case.
‘You have to admit, she was always there, causing trouble,’ he said.
‘What?How?’ Alex had never thought of Eve as troublesome. She’d loved her, right up until the day they both betrayed her.
‘You know,’ Ben said, a vainglorious smile forming. ‘She was always calling in when you were at work, making a nuisance of herself, flirting. And you must know what everyone thought of her back home.’
‘No, whatdidthey think of her?’
Ben edged closer to the cliff face, utterly unaware how precarious his footing was. ‘You know? That she was a bit of a… well, a bit of a… slut.’ Ben shrugged his shoulders as he said the word, as though it explained everything and now he was off the hook.
‘Aslut?’ Alex echoed his tone, the word ringing louder than the storm building outside the vehicle. ‘How dare you call her that?’
