Looking at Ben’s face, she could tell he was full of good reasons why they should adopt this plan. It would only be moments before he started laying out his argument, explaining why she was wrong, and he was right, chipping away at what she thought was real until she didn’t know what to think any more …
She steeled herself, a familiar and inbuilt instinct telling her to dig deep and find a good reason, something he couldn’t swat away with a clever twist of words.
‘Alice …?’ Ben said.
She looked up.
‘I’ll be by your side no matter what. But it’s your journey.
It’s your choice.’
He was just letting her decide? Just like that?
But why had she doubted he would? This was Ben, after all. Whatever certainty she’d been clinging to about the train crumbled like the dusty snow they’d been flinging around not half an hour earlier. It wasn’t the train she believed in, she realised. It was him. And, even more astonishingly, he trusted her to make the right decision – or maybe even a wrong decision – about what they should do next. The thought was terrifying and exhilarating at the same time.
Heart thudding, she turned to the girl and said, ‘If there’s room in your brother’s car, that would be amazing.’
Alice’s fingers kept wandering to the bee pendant hanging just below the neckline of her jumper, but every time she discovered herself stroking it, she made herself release it. She was in the back of Aoife’s brother’s car, sandwiched between Ben and Rashida as they left the Lake District behind.
Ben’s thigh was pressed against the length of hers. It was making it very difficult to think properly, which was unfortunate because the monotony of the motorway offered a chance to process things she’d either been too busy or too blindsided to dissect up until that point.
Why had Ben given her the necklace? She must have been more than an acquaintance for him to have done that. It had to have been more than bumping into each other, maybe sharing a coffee or a quick bite before they went their separate ways.
And then there was this bizarre chemistry between them.
Had they felt it when they’d met before? And if they had, why had nothing happened between them? She hadn’t questioned it earlier because she’d just thought it was just her who felt the air shimmer every time they got close to each other, but thatalmostkiss in the castle ruins had changed everything.
Patrick dropped them at the bus station in Blackpool. They thanked him and the girls and said their goodbyes. The next bus to London – with a change at Manchester – wasn’t until two-fifteen. There was a fish and chip shop across the road from the bus station, so they grabbed some lunch but opted to take their food away, making the short walk to the nearby seafront, past brightly painted frontages of penny arcades and amusements, all shuttered up for the winter.
There was a thin dusting of snow on the deserted promenade, criss-crossed with footprints of different sizes and tracks from bikes and pushchairs. Ben and Alice walked to the railings overlooking the pale sand and stared out across the Irish Sea as they opened the paper parcels containing their lunches. The waves were the colour of steel, frothing gently at the edges, the sky so white it was almost painful to look at.
Alice picked a hot chip soaked in sharp malt vinegar and dusted with salt from her paper parcel but held off putting it in her mouth. ‘Ben?’
He turned his head to look at her. ‘Yeah?’
Alice bit the chip and swallowed. If she wanted answers to her questions, it was now or never. In a few hours, she’d be in London, and he’d be on his way back to Scotland. ‘When you said there was nothing between us …’ She paused,unsure how to phrase the next bit.
He looked at her carefully. It seemed he was weighing up whether to say something or not, but he eventually replied, ‘I said we weren’t in a relationship.’
She stopped leaning on the railing and faced him fully. She discovered she didn’t need to find the right words because she had her answer. It was there, written all over his face. ‘Oh! Then that’s why I … How you always …’ She looked at him, eyes pleading. ‘You know what I’m talking about, don’t you? You feel it too.’
He held her gaze for a few intense seconds. ‘Yes. I feel it too.’
She nodded. For some reason, it felt as if a weight had been lifted from her with his admission, even though it didn’t make anything less complicated, probably the reverse. ‘It all makes sense now,’ she said quietly. ‘Why you haveneverfelt like a stranger to me, not even from the first moment I met you, why there’s this pull inside … Why, maybe, I came to Invergarrig in the first place.’
‘Yes,’ he said again.
She sighed and wrapped up her remaining scampi and chips. She’d been ravenous twenty minutes ago, but now she couldn’t eat another bite. ‘Then why didn’t you tell me that?’
‘Because it’s five years later, and neither of us knows if you’re single any more. Because you were upset last night, and you said you needed a break before we carried on talking and I was waiting until you told me you were ready for more. But I want you to know that I told you the truth, Lil— Alice. We were never boyfriend and girlfriend. I didn’t lie to you about that, about anything …’
‘But it wassomething,’ she said as they began to walk towards the pier, the blustery wind from the sea blowing her hair over her forehead. ‘Something unusual. Something special.’
‘It was,’ he said, and his eyes held no more secrets. ‘For two days and one night, it was.’
She nodded. They walked in silence for a couple of minutes and when they passed a bin, Ben dumped both their rapidly cooling fish suppers inside.
‘Why such a short time?’ she asked. ‘Why never anything more? Was I having an affair? Were you?’
