‘So that’s it?’ she cried after his retreating back as he walked away.
He said nothing. She slumped down onto a picnic bench and sobbed her heart out.
She could remember that day so clearly and she’d never forgotten the hurt and the feeling of betrayal.
And since that day, she hadn’t seen him again. Until now.
She caught her breath, watched him reach down to pick up her phone off the ground.
‘Coffee’s gone, I’m afraid.’ His voice fell over her the same way as it had all those years ago.
Mateo was almost fifty now. He still wore shorts and a T-shirt very well and his hair, slightly dishevelled and longer than it had once been, suited him. Tanned forearms and muscled biceps evoked memories of lying next to him on the deck of a boat he was fixing, pretending it was theirs and nobody else’s. They’d been besotted with each other until Gayle ruined things. But somewhere amidst her anger at her aunt, perhaps Susanna had always known that Mateo would inevitably want to settle on Anchor Island. He belonged here, and she didn’t.
His smile still made her feel slightly weak at the knees when he said, ‘It’s been a long time.’
She gulped. ‘Yes, it has. You’re back.’
‘As are you.’
‘I’m here for the living funeral.’
‘I’ve been invited too. Bit morbid, if you ask me.’ He leaned slightly closer when he said the last bit, as if he didn’t want anyone to overhear.
‘It doesn’t feel as morbid as her letting us think she was dead.’ She recapped the mistake on the invites. ‘It seemed word got around the island that she’d made an error, but the truth didn’t reach me or Addie.’
He paused. ‘I know things were always a bit rocky with you and Gayle.’
‘A bit rocky? That’s an understatement.’ Immediately she was right back there, just yards from here, listening to her aunt warn her boyfriend off, and she felt the hurt all over again.
‘I’m sorry, you know.’
‘For what?’
‘The way things ended.’ He didn’t take his eyes away from her. He rarely had until that day Gayle had come down here and put doubts in his mind.
‘You took the job to get away from me, didn’t you?’ she said. Even a metre or so apart it felt as if there was a magnetic pull between them. Or maybe she was just remembering when all he’d had to do was take her hand and she’d felt her insides ignite.
‘I had to. I knew it would be the only way I wouldn’t be tempted to keep things going between us. I knew my job would be here when I got back.’
‘And that I wouldn’t be.’
‘It wasn’t as callous as it sounds. I didn’t want to get away from you because I didn’t want you – it was the opposite. I loved you and wanted you to have the future your aunt talked about, the future you once talked about. I hadn’t realised until Gayle pointed it out that you and I were so into each other that you’d forgotten what you even wanted.’
‘Maybe I’d changed my mind.’ And hearing his feelings spilling out after all this time had a strange effect on her. It made her question leaving here, forging a different life. Or maybe with Alex and her having problems she was just looking for answers, a way to rewrite everything so that it was perfect and she couldn’t be hurt.
‘You were so young. So was I.’
‘None of that mattered. It wasn’t her place to say those things to you.’
‘It was. You were under her care and she did what she thought was best.’ He looked at the ground momentarily, scuffed a stone beneath the toe of his shoe. ‘Can you honestly tell me you regret doing well at school, going to university, becoming a hotshot solicitor?’
‘Wait, how did you?—?’
He smiled. ‘Gayle talks about you. She has regrets, but she never stopped caring.’
It took Susanna by surprise. It shouldn’t have, but it did.
‘Do you regret leaving the island when you did?’ Her question turned the tables on him.
