‘Dad always gets a coffee first,’ Erin interrupted. ‘I bet you’d rather do that, wouldn’t you? Adults always need a coffee as soon as they get somewhere.’
She didn’t know what to say.
‘Well, I’m not desperate,’ she said, but the girls had scampered ahead across the car park towards the entrance.
Lance looked at the sky.
‘Don’t think you’ll be needing your umbrella just yet. Anything else you want to bring with you?’
She shook her head and he locked the car.
‘Erin’s right, I do like to get a coffee when we first arrive,’ he said, as they walked beneath the gateway. ‘But you’re not stuck with me.’
For the first time he looked at her directly.
‘Sorry if you feel as if you’ve been press-ganged into this. Erin and Tasha can be a pretty determined double act. You look as if you could do with a drink of something.’
She nodded and made a mental note to never let anyone talk her into anything like this again.
They sat at an outside table in the little courtyard, which was a real sun trap, and Jules began to wish she’d brought her hat, but daren’t suggest going back to the car to get it.
‘This was the first place I came to with my wife when we arrived on the island,’ Lance said, gazing around.
OMG, Jules thought, as if it hadn’t felt bad enough, now it seemed that she was getting in the way of some pilgrimage to his wife’s memory.
She spooned some of the froth from her coffee into her mouth.
‘She found it so easy to settle on the island. There were plenty of times when I wondered if we’d done the right thing, but Sarah was always sure. I trusted her judgement. She was rarely wrong. She could turn her hand to anything creative, but really, she was an artist, always sketching, always stopping to examine a seed head or watch how the light changed from one moment to the next. I’ve got hundreds of her notebooks, all full to bursting with ideas. She was drawing right to the end. It was a part of her. Always looking to the future. She was a very positive person.’
He closed his eyes and turned his face upwards towards the sun while Jules let the statement hang between them.
‘It’s a wonderful quality to have,’ he said softly. ‘I think she was born with it.’
How lucky, Jules thought. He opened his eyes and concentrated on the sparrows pecking away at crumbs beneath their table.
‘Sometimes I think we should stop coming here, but Sarah made us promise to come back at least once a year. I think it helps Erin to feel closer to her mum.’
‘I’m sorry. It must have been really hard.’
‘It would have been even harder without Erin and Fitz. They were the reasons I kept going. Otherwise, I’d probably have packed it all in and headed back to London. Sarah knewthat. Made me commit to staying for at least a year after she’d gone. My friends and family thought I was mad. Sarah’s mother was desperate for us to go back to the mainland, and I felt really guilty about that. She’d lost her daughter and wanted her grandchildren back. To be honest I couldn’t see how I would make it work on my own, but I was determined not to break my word.’
He almost sounded out of breath as if he hadn’t spoken so many sentences all together with such emotion for a very long time.
‘And you didn’t.’
‘No, I didn’t and that was largely due to the way people rallied around in a way I couldn’t ever have imagined. Friends that Sarah had made helped out in so many ways. She made friends easily. Even when she was really ill, she could still sit at a table in the pottery café and strike up a conversation with a complete stranger and create a bond. A couple of them came back a few months later and gave me commissions.’
He paused as if to collect himself.
‘That was incredibly kind. It was a lifeline and gradually I realised that it might be easier to stay than I’d thought. Then there was Rita. She was amazing, checking in, bringing food, taking Erin under her wing and Fitz for walks in his buggy. I’ll never be able to thank her enough.’
Jules smiled.
‘Ritaisamazing. I knew that from the first time I met her. In fact, no, from before that. I sensed it from the first time I heard her voice over the phone when we were booking the cottage for Carrie. Although she’d hate me to say it, she’s the epitome of goodness.’
‘She was the one person who didn’t put any pressure on me,’ Lance said. ‘She was just there when I needed her without expectation of anything in return. There was no suggestion of‘moving on’ which is what some of my old friends started talking about after an indecently short amount of time. They were urging me to get out there, meet someone else, find a ‘mother’ for the children. If I’d gone back, they’d have been setting me up and I didn’t want that. I also didn’t want to have to summon the energy to fight their well-meaning intentions. All of that was taken up with getting through each day. The memories could, can, be difficult though. A new start might have helped with those.’
‘In my experience memories do travel,’ Jules said softly.
