Page 14 of The Wedding Proposal

He stared. ‘Your dad didn’t strike me as the kind who’d leave. How did your mum cope?’

A shadow crossed her face. ‘It was hard for her.’ She changed the subject. ‘So, you’re diving? What made you decide on such a completely new career?’

He accepted the change with grace. It probably wasn’t nice when your parents parted, no matter how good or bad your relationship with them. Elle’s parents had always seemed as unchanging as the rock the island was made of. ‘I started recreationally and just loved it. I worked my way through the courses to divemaster and diving was taking up more and more of my time, so I decided to make it my main job for a while. Simon’s got some graduate covering my job at Rose Wines for a year and then we’ll reassess.’

She listened in silence as he told her about his job at Dive Meddi in StJulian’s Bay, about Vern, the owner, and the other instructors, Lars and Polly, and the fellow divemasters, Brett and Harriet. He kept the conversation light and entertaining.

He didn’t say he’d had to get away from the vineyard because it turned out that there wasn’t much pleasure in living a dream alone.

* * *

Elle lay in bed and let herself explore how the middle of the night felt when you were on a boat in Malta. The water lapped and few vehicles still rumbled on the main road. The darkness was warm and complete. The sea was calm and the motion slight.

Just one sheet lay between her naked skin and the soft night air.

She’d had a long day and hadn’t slept well last night. Yet, here she was, staring into the darkness and thinking about Lucas asleep in the other cabin.

Why on earth had she told him about dating a drummer in a band? She hoped Lucas never found out that it had been a marching band, because she’d made Jamie sound like a rock star. It was sad that she’d actually wanted to spark Lucas’s jealousy, see that possessive expression in his eyes, the one she’d once known so well.

Sighing, she wondered about the unknown Kayleigh and Lucas’s smile when he spoke of her.

She brushed a tear from the corner of her eye.

Falling out of love was a lot harder than falling in it.

Chapter Five

Elle made use of the surprisingly efficient, if compact, shower, then dried herself and slid into a flowered summer dress of unexceptional length. The welcome pack from Joseph Zammit at the Nicolas Centre had requested that volunteers dress in ‘everyday clothes, not too brief and not too expensive’.

There were no signs of life from Lucas’s cabin. She breakfasted on cereal, yoghurt and chopped banana, sitting in the gardens, her hair spread over her shoulders to dry in the morning sun, watching people parking their cars along the marina access road and disappearing in the direction of the shops and other businesses. The occasional yachtie moved around on a boat. The gardens smelled of pine needles and, a little way off, a gardener was watering shrubs with a hose.

Despite another unsatisfactory night’s sleep, Elle had woken with a feeling of serenity.

Someone had once told her that the key to dealing with grief was acceptance. Well, during the wakeful hours she’d done some accepting.

It was cruel that fate — or, rather, bloody nutcase Simon — had to bring her and Lucas back together in order for her to finally understand that there was to be no fairy-tale ending. She hadn’t quite got as far as being glad that Lucas had found someone he could be happy with. Maybe that would come later. But she had accepted it.

Lucas had moved on.

Having to share the boat with him was definitely making her fantastic new life a little less fantastic. She’d anticipated looking forward, living in a foreign land, transforming herself from wage slave to free spirit.

Not looking backwards and wondering and reliving.

‘Get over it,’ she told herself aloud, scraping up the last of her yoghurt. ‘History’s not for changing.’ She’d throw herself into working at the Nicholas Centre and aboard Seadancer, and she’d spend her free time exploring the island, learning about its history and its treasures, or swimming in the beautiful Mediterranean. Later in the summer she’d decide what came next and hers and Lucas’s lifelines would uncross for the last time.

She went back on board the Shady Lady to leave her dish and pick up her tiny, lightweight backpack, popping into it her purse, hat, sun cream and a bottle of water. And, because she’d been in IT rooms before, she added a pack of cable ties and a roll of sticky labels she’d brought with her from England.

It was only eight-twenty when she went ashore, after flipping off the isolator switches, locking up the Shady Lady and dragging the gangplank back onto the shore with an effort.

Joseph had said it would take her fifteen minutes to stroll to the Nicholas Centre. She fished out her street map, crossed the gardens and the road, then began up Triq San Gorg, her bag over one shoulder, the bottle of water cool against her through the fabric.

Once she’d left the shops behind, houses lined the road, all with flat roofs, many built of the pale honey-coloured local stone. She’d read that some thought the name Malta came from the Greek and Latin name for honey, Melita. Red geraniums and other plants nodded through balcony railings. Painted shutters stood open to the morning light either side of windows, some of which were protected by curving wrought ironwork.

Around her, people went about their morning routines: beautiful brown-eyed children in school uniform, golden-skinned women with babies or wearing smart lightweight business suits, dark-haired men in short sleeved shirts, carrying their jackets and briefcases.

She tried to catch the rhythms of the language she could hear over the traffic. It sounded almost like Arabic, full of rising notes and glottal stops.

As she followed her map away from the sea, the houses became smaller and the pavement more uneven. The occasional doorstep protruded into her path, an ankle-rapping trap for the unwary. Lines of parked cars narrowed the way.

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