‘I am right now.’ He sealed his words with a kiss to her temple. ‘The boat, prepping the fish, being outdoors, that’s still in my make-up. So what if I’m stuck in a kitchen plating up Caesar salads most of the time? I still get so much of what I love. The sea’s right there, and theBounty. Besides, I told Mum I’d look after Tom, so I am.’
‘OK, but you should get to be happy too.’
‘And you shouldn’t?’ He tipped his head so he could see her face.
‘It’s not me that matters.’ Joy didn’t need to say the rest. Radia was what counted. ‘Since coming here though, it’s been getting clearer to me. I’m not just made up of all the sad stuff that happened, all the things that Sean did to my life. I’m all the good things too, like Radia being born. I did that. And every time she ever said she loves me, and the way she laughs. I don’t know why I only just figured this out, but I’ve realised I’m not just twenty-nine-year-old Joyce. I’m myself at Radia’s age too, back when I was much, much happier than her.’ The thought pained her and brought a tremble to her voice. ‘And I’m still myself when I was fifteen and mad about Paul Kushner in the sixth form, and I’m me when I graduated with honours, and when I smashed the interview and got the job at Tech Stars. I’d forgotten all about those earlier versions of me. Sean made me forget. But she’s coming back to me.I’mthe person who changed the locks that day, even when I was scanning the road and shaking like a leaf, thinking he was about to storm up the path and ask what the hell I was doing. Even when he was destroying me, there was a part of me that could still defy him. I still knew I belonged to myself, even when Sean believed I was his.’ The thought brought her strength now. ‘I’ve always belonged to myself.’
‘That’s right, you’re Joyce Foley, no matter what. Your own person, made of all the good things you ever did.’
Joy let herself lean closer into Monty’s body, knowing she’d never let anyone make her forget it again.
‘You must really want to go home,’ Monty said, dragging his lips over her hairline and kissing the soft baby hairs there. Joy felt the effort it took for him to say the words, but in that moment she was decided.
‘Radia needs to go home. But you’ll come to see us?’
‘I will, as soon as I can. I can just see myself in Laandun!’ He said it in a terrible Mockney accent, just to make her smile.
Laughing sleepily she told him wryly that yes, that’s exactly how they spoke in the capital. He’d fit right in.
As the summer dawn turned from pink to the soft blue of daylight once more, Joy wriggled down onto the pillows and Monty drifted off to sleep with her head on his chest, holding her hand flat against his heart.
As sleep claimed her too she tried very hard to picture Monty Bickleigh – the man with the sea-salt curls and the sun and stars in his skin – walking down her street, past the primary school and the taxi rank by the all-night chemist, encountering the endless traffic and sirens, the pigeons and the dirty rain. The place she had loved so dearly. Her home.
She tried to imagine him walking up the path, standing on her doorstep, picking out her name on the buzzer, coming for her. But before her brain had managed to place beautiful, wholesome Monty – the twin who loved his brother and his family business, the fresh air and the whole Clove Lore community more than anything – at her door, the picture in her mind faded. Monty’s fine features greyed and blurred, morphing horribly, and the man she threw open her door to in her half-dream wasn’t Monty at all. It was Sean, standing over her with mocking eyes, fists clenched by his sides. And in the fuzzy darkness of the dream flat behind Joy, a little voice cried out excitedly, ‘Daddy!’
Chapter Twenty-two
Joy didn’t register what it was at first. The sound of the shower had covered it, the ringing.
As she emerged from the steamy bathroom towel-drying her hair, wondering what she should wear for breakfast at the Siren, she heard it more clearly: Monty’s lovely voice. Only he was putting on a posher tone for the benefit of someone. A customer in the shop? Not likely at eight-fifteen.
‘That’s right,’ he was saying. ‘The Borrow-A-Bookshop, Down-along, Clove Lore.’ A pause, and then, ‘No door number. All the locals know where we are. Hard to miss us really.’
Joy pulled her robe closed and made her way down the stairs as Monty told whoever was on the phone that it was nice talking to them too, then hung up.
‘There you are. I told them you’d ring them back, thought you’d be longer,’ he said, coming to meet her where she’d stopped on the bottom step.
He reached his arms around her, tipping his head up to kiss her, and they both smiled at how for once she was taller. Radia’s bedroom door was still closed so Joy took her time with her good morning kiss.
‘You’re late for work,’ she told him.
‘Meh, Finan can fry bacon,’ he said dismissively, leaning in for another kiss.
‘Was that a customer?’ she asked, after pulling reluctantly away. ‘Seems a bit early for book hunting.’
‘Hmm?’ Monty was hazy-eyed and dreamy from the kiss. He kept her close. ‘No, it was your mum.’ He said it so casually, like it was nothing.
Joy stiffened in his arms. ‘My mum?Mymum?’ she repeated.
‘Yep. We had a nice chat about her holiday in Portugal. You can catch massive tunas off the Portuguese coast. Mind you, you’d need a licence. It’s not—’
‘My mum called me?’ she interrupted him. ‘Here? On the shop phone?’
‘Uh, yes?’ Monty stepped back, not understanding at all what was happening. ‘I didn’t want the ringing to wake Radia so I grabbed it. Shouldn’t I have?’
‘How did she know we were here? How did she get the number? I…’ Joy’s brain had jolted straight into panic mode.
She turned and ran for her mobile upstairs, Monty watching her go, open-mouthed.
