The Wedding Proposal Page 3

  When Lucas had stormed off to America, Elle had left Northampton, and she sure as hell hadn’t headed for her hometown of Bettsbrough. No, Elle had moved to a fresh job in a fresh place where she knew nobody. She’d kept in contact with neither Bettsbrough nor Northampton friends and colleagues. In her self-imposed isolation, Simon’s long-distance friendship and funny, crazy, happy e-mails had kept her sane.

  She tried to joke. ‘I’ll be such a bitch that he’ll be glad to leave the boat.’

  Simon laughed. ‘I don’t think you could be a bitch if you tried.’ Then he sobered. ‘Elle. I suppose I felt justified because you always ask if Lucas is OK. And he—’

  Elle wasn’t certain whether to be glad or sorry that Simon didn’t finish the sentence. ‘You didn’t tell me that he’d left the States,’ she said, softly.

  ‘No. I’d promised not to. He said that if you ever asked, he’d rather I didn’t discuss his life. But you never said more than the occasional “Is he OK?”.’

  She had to swallow. ‘Did you know he has a girlfriend?’

  ‘No,’ he said, slowly. ‘I am so, so sorry. Wow. Major, major fuck-up.’ He groaned. ‘Elle, I could not be more sorry.’

  She tried to say, ‘It’s all right,’ but her voice broke on the words.

  After Simon had rung off, still uttering apologies and self-recriminations, she took out her phrase book and distracted herself by committing a few new Maltese words to memory. Skola, school; pulizija, police; ċentru, centre; triq, street. Then the waiter brought her meal and a kind couple on the next table began suggesting places she should visit in Malta, to add to the long list of places she had never been. Till now, a school trip to France and three glorious holidays in California with Lucas had made up her travel history.

  The couple left and twilight passed through in about fifteen minutes. The arrival of darkness turned the sea black and it reflected the lights of the waterfront in crazy golden squiggles.

  Elle ordered another beer. Was she going to be able to live on the same boat as Lucas for the many blue days and black nights of the summer?

  The thought of him loving someone else coiled around her heart like a snake.

  Eventually, she paid her bill and crossed the road to walk back beside the sea, gazing across the water to Manoel Island.

  She knew from her map that Manoel was vaguely fish-shaped, joined to the mainland at its tail. It lay between two arms of land, Sliema, and Malta’s capital, Valletta. They gazed at each another across Marsamxett Harbour, past Fort Manoel. Sliema Creek ran from the bridge towards Sliema, and Lazaretto Creek from the other side of the bridge and around the island.

  Some really expensive craft moored on the Manoel Island side, past the finger pontoons. Footballers kept their yachts there. Floating money. Some of those boats were worth more than Elle expected to earn in her entire life.

  She followed the broad promenade, enjoying the faint soft sweetness of oleander as she passed bandstand-like gazebos and back-to-back benches, and men fishing in the moonlight. Hotels and apartments lined the road like stacked hutches, one light on each balcony. Joggers and power-walkers weaved between couples arm-in-arm or sauntering with their families.

  Past the bridge and onto the quayside, she reached the kiosk’s open-air dining area, where a game of bingo was going on in English. Beyond the kiosk children lifted their voices against the ever-present traffic as they played between gnarled pines that looked fluffy-headed in the orange lights, date palms rising spikily between. Neat hedges boxed the gardens in.

  Barely moving in the slack water, the Shady Lady waited as Elle picked her way over mooring lines. On board, a light shone through the blinds, which probably meant that Lucas was there and she’d have to face his unwelcoming expression.

  Elle’s steps stopped. Her shiny summer was tarnished by having to share just forty-two feet of boat with Lucas.

  But she couldn’t afford to stay in Malta if she didn’t live on the boat. Not unless she managed to get a proper job, and at least half the point of her new life was volunteering at the Nicholas Centre. If she let the centre down, Joseph Zammit and his wife, Maria, would have to begin all over again with another volunteer and the children she’d committed to helping would remain unhelped for several weeks during the process of interviews, questionnaires and checks.

  In a world where she’d begun to feel of no real importance to anybody, the decision to volunteer had given her at least the illusion of significance. She didn’t want to give it up before she’d begun. It was a commitment.

  Also, Simon had got her a part-time job with some of his friends, David and Loz St John, as ‘the help’ on their big motor yacht. She’d hate to let them down.

  She stared at the back of the Shady Lady, absently registering a warm velvet breeze on her skin.

  She forced her mind to dwell on Lucas’s girlfriend. If ever Elle had lain awake and fantasised that somehow, some day, Lucas would tell her that he was sorry he’d judged her, sorry he’d been so black-and-white about everything, or even that he wasn’t one bit sorry but he’d accept her as she was. Well, now she could stop all that bloody nonsense. It couldn’t be more over.

  For a few moments she allowed herself to indulge in regret. In memories of how Lucas had once made her feel. Then, squaring her shoulders, she started towards the Shady Lady, balancing along the plank and onto the bathing platform, stepping up into the cockpit, sliding open the doors and slipping into the saloon.

  Lucas was holding an e-reader, lounging in the corner of the seating. When he looked up, his eyes were no longer glittering with anger. ‘I’ve talked to Simon. I’m sorry I was a bit of an arse when you arrived. It was a shock. It seems we both want to stay on the boat so we’d better act like grown-ups.’ He even smiled. ‘You’ve got the prior claim but at the beginning of the tourist season it really would be a mission for me to find a hotel or an apartment I could afford. And it’s not as if we haven’t shared before. So unless you intend to tip me overboard while I’m asleep, I plan to stay.’

  A tiny amount of tension unhunched itself from Elle’s shoulders. ‘I can’t leave either. I simply don’t have the money.’

  ‘Fine, then,’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’ She made for her own cabin, suddenly overwhelmed with weariness, almost stumbling at the head of the galley steps.

  ‘I’ve just been wondering, though,’ he called after her, as if musing about something inconsequential, ‘whether Simon’s in love with you.’

  Clutching the handrail, slowly, slowly, Elle turned back, fury boiling black and tarry in her heart. ‘If you try and make something strange and scuzzy about my friendship with Simon – the one worthwhile relationship in my life – I’ll not only tip you overboard, I’ll beat you to a bloody pulp and arrange for sharks to be out for their evening swim at the time.’

  He blinked. ‘I’m joking.’

  She turned away, down the stairs to the lower deck, and sought the sanctuary of her bed. ‘I’m not.’

  Chapter Three

  The next morning, Elle presented herself at the St John motor yacht. Loz had e-mailed her photos of Seadancer and she knew she was looking for a vessel about three times the size of the Shady Lady. Even so, she blinked at the height of the white-and-chrome decks rising majestically above her hull.

  Not being practised at boat etiquette and there not being a door to knock on, Elle stood at the bottom of the gangplank and shouted. ‘Hello, Loz? Davie?’ She shaded her eyes. She’d walked only a few hundred yards to Seadancer’s berth but already she was dazzled by the morning sun and felt it like a weight on her shoulders.

  A big pair of sunglasses and a curving fringe appeared on the side deck, then Loz’s smile, as big as a slice of watermelon in her shiny round face as she rattled out a stream of exclamations. ‘Elle! You’re early! Come aboard, come aboard, come aboard!’
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br />   Cheered by the warmth of her welcome, Elle made her way up the sloping gangplank, its guardrail already burning to the touch. ‘I’ve just come to say hello. I know I don’t start work until tomorrow afternoon.’

  Loz treated her to a hot and enthusiastic hug. Her floaty top and cotton shorts were dazzling white in the sun, her flip-flops glittering with silver sequins. ‘Lovely! Davie’s forward, in the shade. Let’s go find him.’

  Feeling much higher above the water than when aboard the Shady Lady, Elle filed behind Loz towards the foredeck, where they found Davie slouched in a director’s chair under a blue umbrella, his baseball cap pulled low and his feet propped on a red cool box.

  Loz gurgled with laughter. ‘Wake up and say hello to Elle, Davie.’

  Davie pushed his cap back on sleek silver hair and blinked. ‘I wasn’t asleep: I was thinking creative thoughts.’ His blue eyes smiled at Elle from a tanned face. In his sixties, now, but still a dude, Davie St John was a name that had graced sleeve notes since 1975 as a producer and session musician. Bands everyone had heard of had recorded at his production studio, Saintly John. He was even mentioned on a Pete Frame Rock Family Tree. How cool was that? Nowadays, he spent long periods on board Seadancer while someone else ran things back at the studio.

  ‘Thinking creative thoughts looks relaxing,’ Elle observed with a grin.

  He hauled himself up to kiss her cheek, opened a small locker and pulled out two more chairs to unfold on the shady part of the deck. ‘Sit down and tell Loz your plans.’ He opened the cool box and produced a bottle of mineral water and three tumblers. ‘She’ll get it out of you so you might as well get it over with.’

  Loz passed Elle a glass. ‘I’m not that bad. It’s going to be so great to have you here, Elle. I don’t know what to call your role, though. “Steward” sounds very formal.’

  Elle widened her eyes. ‘It sounds like someone who has training and experience, too. I’m just domestic help.’

  ‘You’re an answer to a prayer,’ Loz corrected her kindly. ‘Davie and I are lazy and like being looked after. Why don’t you stay for lunch? We can prepare it together; then you’ll find out where everything in the galley is.’

  Elle felt warmed by the spontaneous invitation. ‘Love to. Then I’ll go off this afternoon and find a shop to buy supplies. I have my induction at the Nicholas Centre tomorrow morning.’

  ‘We’ll show you. Davie can help you carry your bags back to the Shady Lady.’ Loz looked pleased with this disposition of everybody’s time. Davie didn’t object and so Elle didn’t, either. It sounded more fun than finding her own way around.

  Kicking off her flip-flops, Loz settled herself comfortably. ‘Tell us about the place where you’re going to volunteer.’

  Elle relaxed into her seat. From Seadancer she was treated to the sight of hundreds of boats across the creek glistening under the sun, and her joy in spending the summer in Malta began cautiously to re-emerge. ‘It’s in Triq Bonnard in Gżira. Joseph, who runs the centre, says it’ll take me ten or fifteen minutes to walk from the marina. Schools don’t finish until nearly the end of June so my opening sessions will largely involve sixteen- to eighteen-year-olds who are out of school already. My work with younger children will mainly be supervisory or helping them with the technology, although I’ll run some fun sessions in the holidays. Timewise, my sessions will be dotted around – mornings or afternoons.’

  ‘I’ve always enjoyed earning money, myself,’ Davie observed. ‘But I admire you for what you’re doing.’

  ‘I earned money in IT. I was appalled when I received my redundancy notice because, like every other wage slave, I judged my worth by my salary slip.’ Elle sank deeper into her chair. She hadn’t slept well, over-aware of the gentle swimming motion of the boat. And of Lucas sleeping in a cabin only a few feet away. ‘But when I began to job hunt, what excited me were the openings abroad. Dubai, Canada, Germany. The idea of applying for overseas jobs opened my mind to possibilities. I noticed on online forums that the people who were most enthusiastic about their travelling were those who were volunteering. I’m not quite adventurous enough to volunteer in Africa or India but I asked Simon what he thought about me finding a voluntary post here. He’s been mad about Malta since he bought the boat.’

  She paused to smile. ‘He offered me the use of the Shady Lady and asked around for someone who might want to give me a part-time job. Which was you.’

  Davie toasted her with his water glass. ‘The world’s your oyster if you’ve got no ties.’

  Elle laughed. ‘Then I hope my oyster is more about pearls than grit.’

  Presently, Loz took Elle on a tour of the boat, keeping up a stream of chatter. Four big cabins had their own bathrooms, a smaller cabin was more modest, and the stateroom boggled Elle’s mind with its run of lacquered wardrobes and drawers, two squashy sofas and a king-sized bed. The main saloon was equally as impressive, with glass doors that opened onto the foredeck just behind where they’d been sitting. Above that was a sky lounge, a gorgeous room with only glass walls between it and the breathtaking glories of the marina.

  They ended the tour in the galley, so that they could wash the salad. By the time they’d eaten lunch with a civilised couple of glasses of red wine, sipped coffee and renewed their sun cream, any shops that might have shut for siesta would have opened again. They left Seadancer sunbathing at her mooring and wandered through the gardens to the road.

  Elle was pleasantly surprised by what she found. ‘I didn’t realise there would be so many shops close to the marina.’

  ‘It’s a residential neighbourhood, which works out well for the yachties.’ Loz paused at a rack outside a shop to pick up a straw hat with daisies dancing around the brim. She popped it on Elle’s head and stood back to admire. ‘You’re such a pretty girl you’d probably look good with a paper bag on your head, but that really suits you.’

  Elle made to put it back on the rack. ‘I don’t like hats.’

  ‘Better have one,’ advised Davie.

  Loz nodded. ‘It’s not even hot, yet. Only about twenty-seven Celsius today. It could be forty in July and August and if you don’t protect yourself you’ll be scarlet, in agony and probably heaving over a bowl.’

  ‘OK,’ Elle sighed. The hat was cute enough, with a brim that turned up at the back, and she bought a pair of sunglasses with green mirror lenses to go with it.

  When they arrived at a grocery store with a Wall’s ice cream sign outside, Elle enjoyed the mix of familiar and unfamiliar products and filled her basket with salad stuff, ham, cheese, bread, eggs, butter, milk, cereals and a few tins and packets.

  ‘Drinking water,’ said Davie, puffing as he hefted a pack of six big bottles. ‘Don’t drink from the boat’s tanks.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Elle, gratefully. ‘I’ll have to remember to keep my supplies up.’

  Slowed by the stultifying heat, they wandered back to the marina, Elle and Loz each toting two shopping bags and Davie staggering in exaggerated exhaustion under his load of water.

  Loz put in a sudden stop as they neared the Shady Lady. ‘Oh my,’ she breathed. ‘I think Keanu Reeves is on Simon’s boat.’

  Lucas was lounging on the cockpit seat, facing the shore. He wore only a pair of black board shorts, his skin golden in the sunlight, feet bare, the ends of his glossy black hair blowing around his jawline as he concentrated on something he held in his hands.

  ‘Oh yes.’ Elle prickled with annoyance but swung her shopping bags with studied unconcern. ‘Simon’s nephew’s living on the boat, too.’ She said it loud enough for Lucas to hear.

  Slowly, he looked up, and his inscrutable gaze locked on the trio as they approached.

  Elle made formal introductions. ‘Loz and Davie St John, meet Lucas Rose. Lucas, these are Simon’s friends, Loz and Davie. Simon lined me up a job with them.’
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  Lucas smiled his easy, charming smile, which Elle hadn’t seen much since her arrival. ‘Simon’s mentioned you.’ He put down what looked like three gauges on a thick stick of liquorice, and with a stride and a jump arrived on the quay without having troubled the gangplank. He took the water from Davie, swinging it easily across to the platform. ‘Coming aboard?’

  ‘That would be lovely.’ Loz beamed, flushing coquettishly, thrusting her shopping bags at Davie while she shuffled towards the edge of the dock as if she didn’t know quite how to broach the gangplank. Obligingly, Lucas offered his hand, which made Loz’s cheeks even pinker as he steadied her over the eighteen inches of dead calm water that lay between boat and shore.

  When four people and the shopping had been transferred successfully to the saloon, Lucas got hospitable with fruit juice and water from the fridge as Loz sought his views on the Shady Lady, the marina, the island, the Malta heat and how great it would be if Loz and Davie were still on the Seadancer when Simon came over from the States in the autumn. ‘Your uncle’s as mad as a box of frogs, but such fun. Do you know many people here? We’re having a little party on Friday – why don’t you come? Any nephew of Simon’s is a friend of ours.’

  As they chatted, Elle carried the shopping bags down the galley steps. She’d been too busy and unsettled to do more than glance into the compact galley till now. It didn’t take her long to locate the fridge but she found it was jam-packed with bottles of beer and water.

  She glanced over at Lucas. ‘Where does the food go?’ She gazed around in case another fridge might be tucked away. There was a cocktail cabinet in the saloon, but she knew it wasn’t chilled.

  ‘I eat ashore.’ He returned to answering Loz’s stream of questions.

  Elle began removing bottles from the fridge and standing them in the little sink. The boat was rolling gently and she didn’t want bottles doing the same.

  Lucas cut into his own discourse. ‘What are you doing?’