‘Yes.’ Liz shook her head. ‘God, relationships don’t get any easier the older you get, do they? Something came up apparently, so he cancelled our date at the last minute – and is spending the time with Joan Mitchell instead.’
‘Ah, so you are finally admitting to having a date with Guy? How do you know he’s with Joan?’ Isobel asked.
‘I saw them going upstairs to his apartment – and I’ve had several dates with him actually,’ Liz admitted.
‘Guy will have a good reason for cancelling,’ Isobel said. ‘Don’t fret and don’t go jumping to any wrong conclusions. So, about these dates – tell me more.’
Liz shrugged. ‘Only one tea together here truly counts as a date – this afternoon would have been the second date. But we’ve had a nightcap every evening up on his roof terrace. Just talking, getting to know each other and it’s been lovely.’
‘That definitely counts as dates,’ Isobel said. ‘Romantic too.’
The waiter arrived at that moment with their tea and a cake stand with several cream cakes and meringues on it. Liz decided to drop the conversation and simply enjoy Isobel’s company and the cakes. Guy would tell her the truth about what was going on later, she was sure.
34
‘You were right. I do feel the need for a stiff drink,’ Guy said. ‘Would you like one?’
‘A small one, please,’ Joan said.
Guy poured them both a measure of cognac and handed her a glass, noticing as he did so that she was trembling. ‘Are you okay?’
Joan nodded. ‘Yes, I’m fine. Just slightly shocked at meeting you.’
‘You and me both,’ Guy said, resisting the urge to throw the drink back, merely swallowing a mouthful whilst Joan sipped hers.
‘I’m not sure where to begin,’ Joan said.
‘The beginning is usually the best place,’ Guy said. ‘I’ll make it a little easier – how did you and Jake meet?’
‘I was twenty-four and through a friend of a friend got a summer job on one of the yachts based in Antibes.’ And Joan began to talk about a summer she’d never forgotten.
‘I’d been in Antibes for two days when I met Jake. We literally bumped into each on the pontoon where both the yachts we worked on were moored. I say bumped – I tripped over a cable or something and went flying into him. He was lucky he didn’t end up in the water. He was very gracious to the babbling wreck I was, making sure I was all right and insisting we met later for coffee so that he could check on me. He couldn’t stop then because he was fetching something for his boss.’
Joan smiled. ‘We went for a walk around the town that evening, stopped for a pizza and talked ourselves hoarse. And as unbelievable as it may sound, I knew that I’d met the man I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. Of course I didn’t say that to Jake then but…’ Joan shrugged. ‘I just knew.
‘Anyway, the next couple of weeks were busy. The yacht I was working on was a family-owned one and whilst we did short trips to Monaco or St. Tropez, the owners didn’t like being at sea for too long or being away from Antibes, so we port-hopped mostly. Jake’s yacht, on the other hand, was bigger and available for charter. It would disappear for days at a time. Down the coast to the islands around Marseille, Corsica once I remember, and Portofino along the coast in Italy.
‘Not everyone had a mobile phone in those days, I certainly didn’t, so Jake used to ring me on the public phone box near the harbour at a certain time if he could when he was away on a trip. Or if I was away and he was in Antibes I’d ring him.’ Joan laughed. ‘I spent a lot of time hanging around that phone box when we were in port. Of course whenever we were both in the marina at the same time, we spent as much time as we could together. But our time was very sparse. An hour or two maybe three times a week.’
She paused. ‘It took about four weeks of interspersed meetings for Jake to realise how I felt about him and for him to admit he was in love with me. We started to talk about and plan a future together. Jake said he was going to buy me a ring the next time we were together in town.’
Joan took a sip of her drink. ‘I’d been in Antibes for about seven weeks when the owners of his yacht arrived. An unexpected charter cancellation meant they had decided to use the yacht themselves with some friends and go to Sicily for ten days. Jake and I spent an hour together before he had to be back on board ready to leave. It was then he gave me his ring.’ Joan’s fingers gently played with the ring on its gold chain as she spoke. ‘He told me to keep it safe while he was away and he’d buy me a proper engagement ring when he got back from Sicily.’ Joan looked at the signet ring on Guy’s left hand. ‘Your parents gave you and he identical rings on your twenty-first birthdays, didn’t they?’
Guy nodded.
‘The trip over to Sicily was likely to take around fifteen to twenty hours, depending on sea conditions. Jake promised to ring me at the phone box in the marina at seven o’clock two days after they had set off. A promise he kept. He was his usual upbeat self, the voyage across hadn’t been the best, but they were now in a marina. He did say the owners had friends on board who were, to quote the phrase he used, “a load of tossers”, and not to worry if he didn’t ring for a few nights. So it was a couple of days before I started to worry.’ Joan bit her lip. ‘I never saw or spoke to him again.
‘The yacht I was on sailed to St. Tropez for a short visit. Whilst there I started to hear rumours about an accident in a Sicilian marina. A crew member on one of the yachts moored there had been killed, but I didn’t dream it would turn out to be Jake.’ She took a deep breath. ‘That was one of the worst things. Nobody mentioned the name of the man and nobody told me it was Jake because nobody truly knew we were together.
‘I was busy with the family onboard, keeping occupied, so I didn’t have time to miss him too much in the first few days. When, a day later as we returned to Port Vauban, I heard his name given out on Radio Monte-Carlo as the name of the yacht crew member killed in a freak accident in Sicily, I went completely to pieces.’
Joan was silent, remembering that dreadful time. Even now, all these years later, the memory of the awful realisation that Jake was dead made her cry. Impossible to stop the tears falling, she searched for a tissue in her bag.
‘I was in Dubai working as a sous-chef, when I got the phone call to say my brother had died,’ Guy said quietly. ‘I too went to pieces, but I had to go to Sicily to support my dad, identify the body and arrange for it to be taken back to the UK. The worst experience of my life,’ he added quietly.
The two of them were silent for a moment, both lost in their own thoughts of Jake. It was Guy who broke the silence.
‘I have just one question now – when can I meet Leon?’
