Page 139 of The Little Teashop of Lost and Found
‘But – did my mother never mention me again?’
‘Not really. When it turned out that you were alive, we were glad you’d been found, but we never spoke of it after that.’
Seeing this might be my only opportunity, and she was preparing to leave, I asked quickly: ‘What was she like?’
‘Like? Oh, a very stupid, neurotic woman,’ she said dispassionately, ‘though crafty enough to get Father to marry her. You have her green eyes and red hair, though she always bleached hers, because she hated it.’
That seemed to be it.
‘Thank you for telling me the truth – and I understand now why you don’t want anything further to do with me. I’ll respect that and it won’t get out, I’m sure of it.’
‘If we meet again, it will be as strangers: this conversation never happened,’ she warned me.
I nodded numbly and she turned and strode off down the hill towards her car.
I waited until she was a good distance away, then went back to the edge of the overhanging rock and called down: ‘You can come up now, Mr Sheep!’ Then I sat down on the stone again and waited, staring out across the beautiful, cruel moors.
A few moments later I heard the scrunch of Nile’s feet on the stony path and then his arms closed around me. I turned thankfully into his warm embrace, my emotions chilled to the bone.
‘Where did you hide the car?’ I asked.
‘In Henry’s car park. Then I hiked over before you got here. I was sitting down there so long I’d become part of the landscape.’
‘You heard everything?’
‘Every word.’ He pulled me to my feet and held me close.
‘Now you’ve got to the end of that particular rocky road, can you be happy with the family whodowant you?’ he asked.
I nodded mutely.
‘And can you concentrate on something else for a while? Because I really want you to be Alice Giddings and I’ve been trying to find a way of telling you.’
‘But I already am … sort of,’ I said, staring up at him.
‘But you’d be one by name, if you married me. And I’ve wanted to ask you for ages, only I thought I should give you more time … and I wasn’t sure how you felt about me.’
‘Are you serious? I thought you were just asking me to have an affair with you the other night, a sort of trial run.’
He held me away slightly and looked down at me. ‘I don’t know why you always seem to think the worst of me. I was trying to propose!’
‘It didn’t sound like that,’ I said defensively.
‘I haven’t had any practice,’ he said drily. ‘All my life I’ve been waiting for you: the one woman I know will never let me down, just as I will never fail you. I really do love you, Alice, and everyone can see it except you!’
‘You’d better mean that, because I’m not settling for anything else,’ I warned him, though my heart was doing that thump and flutter thing again.
‘I’ve something here that might help persuade you,’ he said, reaching into his pocket and then sliding a familiar big yellow diamond on to my finger.
I stared down at it: even in the half-light of dawn it sparkled with a fire of its own. ‘Iwas the special client you thought would like it?’ I said. ‘All that time ago, you knew you wanted to marry me?’
‘You’re a veryspecial client, but a bit of a tricky customer – and yes, as soon as Violet said it would make a perfect engagement ring, bells,whistles and sirens went off in my head and I realized you were the one I’d been waiting for all my life,’ he said.
I sighed happily. ‘It was such a perfect afternoon I wanted it to go on for ever – and I realized how easy it would be to fall in love with you.’
‘And did you?’
For answer, I wound my arms around his neck and kissed him, and by the time our lips reluctantly parted, the sky had gone a Technicolor pink, as if a rosy lightbulb had been switched on by a romantic lighting technician.
