His face turned serious. ‘No, I never did that.’
Hearing the change of tone in his voice, she said, ‘You never speak of your parents, do you?’
‘What’s to say? I told you before that my dad died when I was sixteen and my mother two years later.’
‘How did they die?’ she asked.
‘Why do you want to know?’
‘Because I want to know more about them. And because they made you, and now you’ve made what would have been their grandchild.’
‘Ah yes, the circle of life,’ he said with what sounded like heavy irony. ‘There’s not much to say, other than they met, married and had me, then things went awry. My father lost his job, began drinking to drown his sorrow and shame and ended up dead in the gutter one day. I mean that literally. He stepped into the path of an oncoming car. Dead on impact. My mother never really recovered from the shock. She went to pieces and it was down to me to hold things together. You could say it forced me to grow up fast.’
‘And your mother? How did she die?’
‘She killed herself. I came home from university one weekend and found her dead in the bath. She’d slashed her wrists. According to the post-mortem, she must have done it the day before she knew I was coming home. That way the body wouldn’t have been left to decompose for too long. It was considerate of her, don’t you think? Less of a mess to deal with.’
Willow was shocked, not just at what Rick had shared with her, but by the flatness of his voice.
‘I can’t imagine how dreadful that must have been for you,’ she said.
‘No, you wouldn’t be able to. Which is why I don’t like talking about my parents. There’s nothing to be gained from it, so please don’t raise the matter again. And please don’t tell your mother and sister about this, it’s private. I don’t want anyone else to know about it. Do you promise?’
‘I promise,’ she said.
As though to make it clear the conversation was over, he switched off the light.
Willow lay awake long after she’d heard his breathing slow to a steady rise and fall. How strange it was that within a few seconds she could now see Rick through completely different eyes. He was someone who had been badly hurt when young, whose family had been smashed to pieces and all he wanted, as an adult, was to recreate what he’d lost. It made sense of his obsession with keeping everything in order. Of his loving her and his happiness at being a father. She could see also why he worried about her, just as he had this evening, and why that worry had made him angry.
It reminded Willow of what Mum had explained to her once, that Dad had lost his temper the way he did at times because he too had lost his parents at a young age. Grief could do that, Mum said; it could have a lasting effect on a person, especially if they bottled it up and refused to talk about it.
Perhaps when Rick was more receptive to opening up to her about his family, Willow could help him to put it behind him. But for now, she would try harder to please him, to make him truly happy.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
‘Ican’t believe it,’ he said.
‘What can’t you believe?’ she asked.
‘That you said yes. I was convinced you’d say no.’
‘Why did you ask me, then?’
Turning away from the silvery moonlight that was dancing towards them across the oscillating surface of the incoming tide, Ellis looked at Naomi. At the woman who had just agreed to marry him. One minute they had been sitting here on the sand quietly drinking Champagne to toast his sixty-fifth birthday the second the church bell had struck midnight, and the next they were on their feet and whooping like a couple of crazy teenagers. He hadn’t actually meant to propose, but in a sudden moment of now-or-never madness, the words had just slipped out –‘Naomi, will you marry me?’
‘Because my heart had the better of me,’ he said in answer to her question. ‘Because since we started seeing each other again it’s made me realise I’ve never been happier. And,’ he added, ‘it just feels right.’
‘I feel the same way,’ she said. ‘Which was why it was so easy for me to say yes to you. But you know, another glass of Champagne and I might have been brave enough to propose to you.Or at least suggested we made things more permanent and official.’ She smiled. ‘Which wouldn’t have been half so romantic as the way you did it.’
‘All I did was blurt out the truth of my feelings. Would it have required bravery on your part to do the same?’ he asked.
‘I believe so,’ she said with a small nod. ‘Especially after the way I treated you, pushing you away because I was scared.’ She shook her head. ‘I turned into such a cliché and made myself thoroughly miserable into the bargain.’
His arm around her, he said, ‘It was the sensible thing to do at the time, for you to ask me to step back, much as it pained me. Giving you space gave you the chance to think what you really wanted.’
‘And that’s to be with you,’ she said quietly, her words washing over him as the tide crept ever nearer to where they were sitting.
Seated on her left, Ellis withdrew his arm from around her shoulder and reached for her hand. Since that day ten days ago at the end of May, when he had gone for a walk on the beach and spotted Naomi the other side of her garden gate on her wooden bench, she had, after sharing with him the decision she had reached, stopped wearing her wedding and engagement rings. It was a symbolic gesture that he didn’t underestimate.
