Handing her the steaming mug, Alex leaned against the galley counter. ‘Careful, it’s hot.’
Eve thanked her with a watery smile and Alex stared back, saying nothing.
‘I haven’t come to talk about Ben.’
‘Good.’ Alex heard the spite in her voice and immediately recoiled. She wasn’t like this. She loved a quiet life without drama. She’d had so much drama as a kid she only ever wanted to avoid it. Yet these last two weeks, drama had followed her everywhere she went.
‘I came to talk about us.’
At this, Alex’s eyes snapped to Eve’s and the pain she saw there set off an ache in her chest.
‘I betrayed you after everything you did for me. If I could go back I’d never have—’
Alex couldn’t keep quiet at this. She interrupted, bitterness in her voice. ‘If you could go back towhen? What point would you go back to? Ben said you were always around him, flirting and causing trouble, visiting him when I wasn’t there.’
‘Ah!’ Eve nodded. ‘I guess he would say that.’
‘It’s not true?’
‘You’ll have to decide what you believe. It won’t matter much what I say, but Ineverchased him. I never wanted him. That day… it was a moment of madness and I regret it.’ Eve gripped the mug, her shoulders dropping. ‘I shouldn’t have come. We’re not going to retrieve this, are we?’
‘Retrieve what?’
‘Us. You and me. We were good friends.’
Alex froze. If this was a movie she’d have thrown her head back and laughed, but the ache in her chest was growing, choking her up. Eve was right. They had been good friends.
‘I told you all about Mum and Dad,’ Alex heard herself saying, her voice shaking. ‘I never tell anyone about that stuff.’
‘You did,’ Eve replied, staring guiltily at the cup in her hands.
‘You knew me, and I knew you,’ Alex continued. ‘And I know for a fact you didn’t want Ben. So why did you do it?’
It took Eve a long time to answer. When she did, her voice wavered uncontrollably. ‘Because I was sad, and lonely. And Maxwell didn’t want me.’
Alex tipped her head to one side, waiting for Eve to say more. It was going to take more than this to move her.
‘You know Maxwell never came out to the pub with us, never did anything with us, in fact. Turns out, he had some other woman in Port Kernou. I always told you I was suspicious, didn’t I?’
Alex had to agree. They’d talked about it often, but Eve had never had any proof and when she would confront him he’d laugh it off, saying she was crazy.
‘I overheard customers whispering about it in the post office on the morning of the day you left. One of them was a mum at Stevie’s pre-school. Been going on for a few months, according to her.’
‘What?’ Alex slumped onto the swivel stool fixed into the floor beside Eve’s. It felt like they were right back at the quayside and Eve had come aboard between sailings to tell her the latest instalment in her crumbling marriage story.
‘I confronted him. He loves her, apparently.’
‘Oh.’ Alex absorbed the news. How could she be feeling pity for the woman who’d capsized her life?
‘Healwaysloves them.’ Eve arched a brow, before her face fell again. ‘He’s done it before. Loads of times.’
‘You never said.’
‘The marriage counsellor bloke we were going to in Truro said that if we wanted to stay together I had to stop punishing him and try to move on. Part of that was never criticising him in public. Not holding anything against him. That included telling people about the affairs.’
‘That’s crazy. He made you so unhappy.’
Alex thought of all the times Eve had wandered over to the riverside to find her, and of how reluctant she was to head home on Fridays after the pub quiz; how she’d try to keep Alex talking till past midnight standing in the street outside her house. She never wanted to go home.
