Page 44 of The Lucky Escape

‘I know. I was being stupid. I don’t know why. I don’t need a Mona Lisa day. Can you forgive me?’

I took his gift and inspected it in the palm of my hand. Alexander had never apologised to me. He’d never snapped and made it right immediately, or opened the door to reconciliation after a fight. It was always me, my fault, and if I brought it up he told me never to make a fuss. And then here was Patrick, apology gift and all, accepting full responsibility for acting like a weirdo.

‘Only because this is an exceptional magnet,’ I settled on, softening. ‘Yes.’

‘Good,’ he replied, and he exhaled loudly. I hadn’t noticed he’d been holding his breath, bless him. ‘I got all caught up in my head, but that’s not for now. I want to spend time with you, not in my thoughts. So, wherever you were going – can I come with you?’

I grinned. ‘Yes. Of course you can. Come on. Let’s explore.’

He held out his arm for me to loop my own through, and together we headed off.

20

We spent the last few days in Margaret River wandering around the grounds of the lodge, which went way further than I’d realized, lying by the pool and playing board games in one of the cabanas. We borrowed hotel bikes to cycle in the local area, and on our last afternoon played tennis with an old married couple we’d gotten talking to, before crashing a water fight for the children of the guests, each commandeering a team and lobbing balloons of water across at each other until we both doubled over laughing so hysterically that we were asked to consider leaving the kids to it. We read at the lake, ate from the barbecue for dinner, and sat out on the back porch with a bottle of Margaret River wine and a lit candle, playing Bananagrams and talking about Carol. I was starting to worry about her more and more, and had emailed the vet about what to do next, but Patrick was hopeful.Maktub,he reminded me. It was a wholesome, beautiful time, despite its rocky interlude.

‘No!’ I squealed, frustrated by how quick Patrick was atassembling words from the random tiles we’d been assigned. ‘You’re too good at this! Too fast!’

The aim of the game was to use the twenty-one tiles we’d each been given to make words that all interlinked, sort of like playing Scrabble but without a Scrabble board.

‘Bananas!’ he cried, letting me know he’d used up all his tiles and was declaring himself the winner.

I still had two more tiles to place, but had ended up with a ‘q’ that was impossible to do anything with. I looked over at what he’d done.

‘FITTIE is not a word.’ I giggled. ‘You’re cheating!’

‘It so too is a word. It’s a way to describe somebody who is hot.’

I shook my head. ‘You call somebody fit, and fit is a word in the dictionary, but no way isfittiein there. It’s slang.’

‘I know for a fact it is, because there’s a photo of my face beside it,’ he retorted.

I made a gag sound. ‘Cheeseball,’ I said.

‘Who says “cheeseball”?’

‘I do. I also sometimes say cornball.’

‘You didn’t try and play that as a word, did you?’

I squealed. ‘So you admit it! You are “trying” to play a word that doesn’t count!’

He burst out laughing. ‘Urgh. Fine. Whatever.’

‘No, not whatever,’ I said. ‘Not when this is my Bananagrams reputation on the line. I always win. Alexander didn’t beat me once, not in all the time we were together!’

Patrick stopped laughing, and suddenly we shifted from larking around to being serious and sombre. I had a feeling I shouldn’t have said Alexander’s name.

‘Shall we go again …?’ I started, but he shook his head.

‘Nah. I’m good. In fact, I’m almost ready for bed.’

I looked at my watch: 10 p.m. It was earlier than I’d go to bed at home, but being in the sun all day, and running around like we had done, meant I was pretty sleepy too.

‘Sorry,’ I pressed. ‘I shouldn’t have brought up Alexander. He emailed me the other day. I’ve been trying not to think of him ever since.’

Patrick nibbled on his bottom lip. ‘What did he say?’

‘The truth,’ I admitted. ‘That he called it off in the worst possible way, but that we should never have got engaged.’

---