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He rolled his eyes. ‘Don’t push your luck or you’ll end up with beans on toast,’ he warned, and rolled up his sleeves and started emptying the fridge onto the worktop.
‘Can I help?’
‘Yes. You can lay the table. I’ll let you.’
‘Big of you.’
‘It is. Do it properly. The cutlery’s in this drawer.’
She threw the tea towel back, catching him squarely in the middle of his chest, and he grabbed it and chuckled, and for a second the years seemed to melt away.
And then he turned, picking up a knife, and the moment was gone.
* * *
It was no hardship to watch him while he cooked.
She studied every nuance of his body, tracking the changes brought about in nine years. He’d only been twenty-one then, nearly twenty-two. Now, he was thirty-one, and a man in his prime.
Not that he’d been anything other than a man then, there’d been no doubt about that, but now his shoulders under the soft cotton shirt seemed broader, more solidly muscled, and he seemed a little taller. The skilfully cut trousers hugged the same neat hips, though, and hinted at the taut muscles of his legs. She’d always loved his legs, and every time he shifted, her body tightened in response.
And while she watched, greedily drinking in every movement of the frame she’d once known so well, he peeled and chopped and sliced, mashed and seasoned, deglazed the frying pan with a sizzle of the lovely red, stirred in a hefty dollop of port and redcurrant sauce and then arranged it all with mathematical precision on perfectly warmed plates.
‘Voilà!’
He set the plates down on the places she’d laid, and she smiled. ‘Very pretty.’
‘We aim to please. Dig in.’
She dug, her mouth watering, and it was every bit as good as it looked and smelled.
‘Oh, wow,’ she mumbled, and he gave a wry huff of laughter.
‘See? No faith in me. You never have had.’
Georgie shook her head. ‘I’ve always had faith in you. I always knew you’d be a success, and you are.’
Even if she hadn’t been able to live with him any more.
He shrugged. There was success, and then there was happiness. That still eluded him, chased out by a restless, fretful search for his identity, his fundamental self, and it had cost him Georgia and everything that went with her. Everything she’d then had with another man—and he really didn’t want to think about that. He changed the subject. Sort of.
‘Josh seems a nice little kid. I didn’t know you’d had a child.’
She met his eyes, her fork suspended in mid-air. ‘Why would you unless you were keeping tabs on me?’
A smile touched his eyes. ‘Touché,’ he murmured softly, and the smile faded. ‘I was sorry to hear about your husband. That must have been tough for you.’
Tough? He didn’t know the half of it. ‘It was,’ she said quietly.
‘What happened?’
She put her fork down. ‘He had a heart attack. He was at work and I had a call to say he’d collapsed and died at his desk.’
He winced. ‘Ouch. Wasn’t he a bit young for that?’
‘Thirty-nine. And we’d just moved and extended the mortgage, so things are a bit tight.’
‘What about the life insurance? Surely that covered the mortgage?’
Her mouth twisted slightly. ‘He’d cancelled it three months before.’
That shocked him. ‘Cancelled it? Why would he cancel it?’
‘Cash flow, I presume. Property wasn’t selling, and because he’d cancelled the insurance of course they won’t pay out, so I’m having to work full-time to pay the mortgage. And it’s still not selling, so I can’t shift the house, and I’m stuck.’
He rammed a hand through his hair. ‘Oh, George. That’s tough. I’m sorry.’
‘Yeah, me, too, but there’s nothing I can do. I just have to get on with it.’
He frowned, slowly turning his wine glass round and round by the stem with his thumb and forefinger. ‘So what do you do with Josh while you’re at work?’
‘I have him with me. I work at home—mostly at night. He goes to nursery three mornings a week to give me a straight stretch of time, and it just about works.’
He topped up her glass and leaned back against the chair, his eyes searching her face. ‘So what do you do?’
She smiled. ‘I’m a virtual PA. My boss is very understanding, and we get by, but I won’t pretend it’s easy.’
‘No, I’m sure it’s not.’ For either of them. He thought of how he’d manage if he and Tash weren’t in the same office, and then realised that they weren’t for a lot of the time, but that was because he was the one out of the office, not her, and she was there in the thick of it and able to get him answers at the touch of a button.
The other way round—well, the mind boggled.
‘How old was Josh when it happened?’
‘Two months.’
Sebastian felt sick. ‘He won’t remember him at all,’ he said, his voice sounding hollow to his ears. ‘That’s such a shame.’
‘It is, it’s a real shame. David was so proud of him. He would have adored him.’
‘You will tell Josh all about him, won’t you?’
‘Of course I will. And he’s got grandparents, too. David’s parents live in Cambridge. Don’t worry. He’ll know all about his father, Sebastian. I won’t let him grow up in a vacuum.’
He felt the tension leave him, but a wave of grief followed it. He hadn’t grown up in a vacuum, but he’d been living a lie and he hadn’t known it until he was eighteen. And then this void had opened up, a yawning hole where once had been certainty, and nothing had been the same since. Especially not since he’d been privy to the finer details. Not that there was anything fine about them, by any stretch of the imagination.
Had his father been proud of him? Had his mother? Had her voice softened when she talked about her little son, the way Georgie’s did?
Who was he?
Endless questions, but no proper answers, even after all this time, and realistically he knew now that there never would be. He sucked in a breath and turned his attention back to the food, but it tasted like sawdust.
‘Hey—it’s OK,’ she said, frowning at him, her face concerned. ‘We’re doing all right. Life goes on.’
‘Were you happy together, you and David?’ he asked, wondering why he was beating himself up like this, but she didn’t answer, and after a moment he looked up and met her eyes.
‘He was a good man,’ she said eventually. ‘We lived in a nice house with good neighbours, we had some lovely friends—it was good.’
Good? What did that mean? Such an ineffectual word—or maybe not. Good was more than he had. ‘And did you love him?’
Her eyes went blank. ‘I don’t think that’s any of your business,’ she said softly, and put her cutlery down, the food unfinished.
‘I’ll take that as a no, then,’ he said, pushing it because he was angry about Josh, angry that she’d been playing happy families with someone else while he’d been alone—
‘Take it as whatever you like, Sebastian. As I said, it’s none of your business. If you don’t mind, I think I’ll go to bed now.’
‘And if I mind?’
She stood up and looked at him expressionlessly. ‘Then I’m still going to bed. Thank you for my meal and your hospitality,’ she said politely. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’
He watched her go, and he swore softly and dropped his head into his hands. Why? Why hadn’t he kept his mouth shut? Getting angry with her wouldn’t change anything, any more than it had nine years ago.
He was reaching for the wine bottle when the lights on the baby monitor flashed, and he heard a sound that could have been a sigh or a sob or both.
‘Why does he care, Josh? It’s none of his business if I was happy with another man. He didn’t make me happy in the long term, did he? He could have done, but he just didn’t damn well care.’
Sebastian closed his eyes briefly, then picked up the baby monitor and took it upstairs, tapping lightly on her door and handing it to her silently when she opened it.
‘Oh. Thanks.’
‘You’re welcome. And, for the record, I did care. I never stopped caring.’
She swallowed, and he could see the realisation that he’d heard everything she’d said register on her face. She coloured, but she didn’t look away, just challenged him again, her voice soft so she didn’t disturb the sleeping child.
‘You didn’t care enough to change for me, though, did you? You wouldn’t even talk about it. You didn’t even try to understand or explain why you never had time for me any more.’
No. He hadn’t explained. He still couldn’t. He wasn’t sure he really knew himself, in some ways.
‘I couldn’t change,’ he said, feeling exasperated and cornered. ‘It wasn’t possible. I had to do what I had to do to succeed, and I couldn’t have changed that, not even for you.’
‘No, Sebastian, you could have done. You just wouldn’t.’
And she stepped back and closed the door quietly in his face.
* * *
He stared at the closed door, his thoughts reeling.
Was she right? Could he have changed the way he’d done things, made it easier for her to live the life he’d had to live?
Not really. Not without giving up all he’d worked for, all he’d done to try and find out who he really was, deep down under all the layers that had been superimposed by his upbringing.
He was still no closer to knowing the answer, and maybe he never would be, but until then he couldn’t stop striving to find out, to explore every avenue, every facet of himself, to push himself to the limit until he found out where those limits were.
And on the way, he’d discovered he could make money. Serious money. Enough to make a difference to the people who mattered? Maybe. He hoped so. The charities he supported seemed to think he was making a difference to the kids.
But Georgie mattered, too, and she was right, there hadn’t been time for her in all of this.
OK, it had been tough—tough for both of them. He’d had a hectic life—working all day, networking every evening in one way or another. Dinner out with someone influential. Private views. Trade fairs, cocktails, fundraising dinners—a never-ending succession of opportunities to meet people and forge potentially beneficial links.
To do that had meant working eighteen-hour days, seven days a week. There’d been hardly any down time, and of course it had meant living in London, And that hadn’t been compatible with her view of their relationship, or her need to follow her career—although there was no sign of that now.
She’d wanted to stay at university in Norwich, get her Biological Sciences degree and work in research, maybe do a PhD, but now it seemed she was a virtual PA with a ‘very understanding’ boss.
So much for her career plans, he thought bitterly.
Hell, she could have been his PA. She would have been amazing, and with him, by his side every minute of the day and night, and Josh would have been his child. That would have been a relationship worth having. Instead she’d chosen her career over him, and then gone on to live her dream with some other man who hadn’t had the sense to keep his life insurance going to protect his family.
Great stuff. Good choice, Georgia.
Shaking his head in disgust, he turned away from the door and went downstairs to the kitchen. It was in uproar, the worktops covered with the wreckage of their meal and its preparation, but that was fine. He needed something to do, and it certainly needed doing, so he rolled up his sleeves and got stuck in.
* * *
The bath was wasted on her.
It should have been relaxing and wonderful, but instead she lay in the warm, scented water, utterly unable to relax, unable to shift the weight of guilt that was crushing her.
She got out, dried herself on what had to be the softest towel in the world and pulled on clean clothes. Not her night clothes—she wasn’t that crazy—but jeans and a jumper and nice thick slipper socks, and picking up the baby monitor she padded softly downstairs to find him.
The kitchen door was ajar and she could hear him moving around in there—clearing up, probably, she thought with another stab of guilt. She shouldn’t have stalked off like that, not without offering to help first, but he’d been so pushy, so—angry?
About David?
She opened the door and walked in, and he turned and met her eyes expressionlessly. ‘I thought you’d gone to bed?’
She shook her head.
‘I wasn’t fair to you just now. I know you cared,’ she said quietly, her voice suddenly choked.
He went very still, then turned away and picked up a cloth, wiping down the worktops even though they looked immaculate. ‘So why say I didn’t?’
‘Because that was what it felt like. All you seemed to worry about was your career, your life, your plans for the future. There was never any time for us, just you, you, you. You and your brand new shiny friends and your meteoric rise to the top. You knew I wanted to finish my degree, but you just didn’t seem to think that was important.’
He turned back, cloth in hand. ‘Well, it doesn’t seem important to you any longer, does it? You’re doing a job you could easily have done in London, that’s nothing to do with your degree or your PhD or anything else.’
‘That’s not by choice, though, and actually it’s not true, I am still using my degree. I’m working for my old boss in Cambridge. I’d started my PhD and I was working there in research when I met David.’
‘And then you had it all,’ he said, his voice curiously bitter. ‘Everything you’d always wanted. The career, the marriage, the baby—’
