Page 40 of Never Tear Us Apart
‘Can I be honest with you, Maia?’
‘You can,’ I tell him, somehow knowing it’s true.
‘I saw them on their first day, green and fresh out of training, and I didn’t try to get to know them. There wasn’t any point. Those kids weren’t gonna last, and I knew it.’
Neither of us speaks. We hold each other’s gaze for one long heartbeat before turning back to look at the island, her golden skirts spread out around us in all directions. Slowly, slowly, she is falling into darkness. There are no twinkling lights in the villages and towns that I know stretch below us. Instead, thousands of fragile lives go on behind tightly closed shutters. Families hold one another close and hope to see the dawn.
‘You are doing your best to protect yourself,’ I say into the soft night. ‘Maybe it’s the only way you really can.’
‘And don’t that make me the coward?’ Danny’s voice is laced with quiet anger. ‘So damn keen on keeping my head on straight that I don’t even take the trouble to ask a kid about his ma or if he has a sweetheart back home? Make him feel like he’s not alone in this whole show?’
‘Not a coward,’ I say. ‘Careful.’
‘That’s me, Stitches. Captain Careful.’ He laughs, short and wry. ‘Begging your pardon, I didn’t risk my neck to comeover just to make it all about me. I can’t be all that careful. If I was, I would have stayed over there, safe and sound.’
I smile. ‘I told you it was dangerous.’
‘Oh, it’s not the fall that’s dangerous,’ he says.
I feel his gaze on my cheek. I keep looking at the moon. ‘Christina told me that you had sworn off women for the duration of the war,’ I say, ‘which is weird, because if I didn’t know better, I would swear you were flirting with me.’
Danny laughs, perhaps taken aback by my boldness. ‘Maybe I am,’ he admits. ‘Best to ignore me. You listen to this silver tongue of mine, and before you know it, you’ll be all moon-eyed and in love with me, and I’ll be forced to break your heart.’
‘Oh, you are in no danger of me falling in love with you,’ I tell him, allowing myself to look at him at last. It makes me smile to see his mouth fall open.
‘Not even after I just Errol-Flynned it up here to impress you?’
‘I think you did that to take your mind off the four colleagues you lost today,’ I say softly. ‘I think that you try hard not to care and that you think you don’t. But a man who doesn’t care doesn’t beat himself up the way you have. And I think that taking a stupid risk to see a virtual stranger was a way of inviting fate to even the score.’
‘I never met another woman like you, Stitches,’ Danny tells the moon. ‘I mean that – you are fresh out the box, one-of-a-kind – an original.’
‘That’s because I come from eighty years in the future,’ I tell him. He’s been so honest with me, I feel compelled to be the same, even though I know he will laugh it off. ‘I’m not meant to be here. I just fell through time and landed right now.’
Danny thinks I’m joking. ‘Funny,’ he says, ‘cos, I get the feeling you were never meant to be anywhere else but right here, right now.’
‘Maia?’
I look around, and Nicco is standing at the stop of the staircase.
‘Signor Conte,’ I say, repeating what I heard Sal say earlier. ‘I’m so sorry. I came up here to get some air and happened on an acquaintance. Do you know . . . ?’
‘Flight Lieutenant Beauchamp? Of course,’ Nicco says coolly. ‘The whole island knows him. I do not know how he landed on my roof terrace, though.’
‘Forgive me, sir.’ Danny offers him a hand. ‘Just letting off a little steam.’
‘I see.’ Nicco is smiling, his voice warm, but even so, his irritation is clear. He does not accept Danny’s hand.
‘Well, I guess I’ll be going then.’ Danny hops up onto the railing.
‘I would prefer you go out the front door,’ Nicco tells him. ‘If you don’t mind. One has certain standards.’
‘Of course.’ Danny comes off the wall. ‘Goodnight, Stitches,’ he says as he jogs down the staircase, calling as he goes, ‘I’ll see you around.’
For a moment, Nicco and I listen to the sound of Danny’s steps receding. I expect to be admonished or asked to leave, but neither happens.
‘You are close to the flight officer?’ Nicco asks, with a kind of curiosity I can’t exactly place.
‘Not really,’ I say.
