Page 7 of The Wedding Proposal

She hadn’t finished her first, but she nodded. ‘That would be great.’ It wasn’t as if she was in a hurry to get back to the boat.

And Lucas.

Whose fathomless dark eyes had almost sprung from his head at Elle arriving just when he was expecting his girlfriend. The girlfriend was a heavy, cloying fact that she’d need to get used to.

Her phone began to buzz. Simon the screen told her. For an instant, she considered dismissing the call. She couldn’t believe that Simon, Simon, would drop her into this horrible situation, wrecking her new beginning with the reminders of a terrible end. She let it ring several times before she answered.

‘I’ll pay your hotel bill,’ he offered, without preamble.

Her heart softened to hear the guilt and remorse in his voice. ‘I couldn’t let you do that.’

‘I got you into this situation. I had a stupid fantasy that you and Lucas were still in love. I’ve just talked to him and it’s obvious I didn’t understand at all. I feel like a shit-heel.’

Elle closed her eyes. Lucas must have made reconciliation sound about as attractive to him as dead dog soup. ‘Anyway, I’d never get into a hotel for months on end in high season, and if we could find an apartment it would be astronomical.’

‘But you should be making me suffer. I’ve been a two-faced conniving asshole.’

Despite herself, she laughed. Over the last few years it had sometimes felt as if Simon were her only friend, one who cared what happened to her and whether she was sad or lonely. Co-workers came and went. Her father was taken up with Tania, his new, young, second wife. And her mother was . . . as she was. Incapable of caring about anything other than her own little world.

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; centru, 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.

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