Lessons in Laughing Out Loud (47 page)

“When I have to,” Chloe told Jacobs, “I will tell this baby that I loved his daddy more than anything, but don’t worry,
I won’t tell him what a slimeball you were. I wouldn’t do that to him.”

Willow had held Chloe’s hand as she told her story again to a police officer and the principal. At least Ed Jacobs had the decency to admit what had happened straightaway, and he seemed to be ready to face up to what he had done.

“You know what?” Willow said softly in Chloe’s ear as she watched an officer guide him to the backseat of a police car. “There is something very important that I want you to know.”

Chloe looked up at her. “What’s that?”

“You are not the victim in all this mess, Chloe. You are the standout hero.”

For a moment, after they’d dropped Willow off at her place and Sam’s car had pulled away, Willow had felt a spasm of panic, suddenly afraid that she wouldn’t see either of them again. And then she remembered that she didn’t have to be afraid anymore. Of course they would come back. It was a novel sensation, the expectation of good things happening, rather than the certainty of the bad. Willow thought it might take a while to get used to.

Willow had her flat truly to herself for the first time in what felt like an age. Leaping up off the bed, she took a few steps in her stocking feet before feeling naked and slipping her shoes back on.

Going to the kitchen, she rooted about under the sink for a while until she found a little tub of jewelry cleaner she’d brought once, hoping to revive a pair of silver earrings that Chloe had bought her one Christmas but that she’d never been able to bring herself to wear. She turned the locket over in her hand, studying the king’s head with its inscription, GEORGIVS V DEI GRA BRITT OMN REX, on one side and
the lion on the other, just visible next to the date: a barely visible 1915 . . . the king’s shilling, she thought, wondering if at least one of these two coins had been handed over to whoever made this locket on the day that he signed up.

Willow took the edge of a much-neglected duster and began to clean the locket, careful not to rub too hard. Patiently, she cleaned until she got as much of the blackened tarnish off as she could. It gleamed faintly in her palm. Holding her breath, fearful of breaking the makeshift hinge and clasp, Willow slid one fingernail between the edges of the coins. She gasped as the locket gave way, opening slightly. Ever so gently she eased the sides apart.

Inside, she found something quite unexpected. She’d been hoping for a photo, or a lock of hair. But instead there was a tiny scrap of yellowish material. Tipping the fragment into one palm and placing the locket carefully on the table, Willow inspected it more closely. It was a tiny piece of silk, cut in about a half-inch square. Once white, now yellowed with age, it had been folded into an even smaller square. Carefully, Willow smoothed it flat in her palm. Still faintly visible, written in copperplate handwriting in what must be pencil, was one single word:
Courage
.

For whom the message had been intended Willow would never know. Perhaps it was for a young man going to meet his fate in the trenches, or for his sweetheart left to hold the fort alone. But at that moment it seemed as if it had found its way through space and time, and life after life, and hand after hand to come to her, because it was a message that meant everything to her. For so much of her life Willow had been afraid; fear had insinuated its way into every heartbeat and every breath. At the back of every thought, every decision made and action taken, it had been there, an insidious parasite feeding off her, eating away the person she should have been. Going
back to her mother’s house, facing head-on what she could never change, had finally banished that disease from Willow altogether. Courage was what she had needed at the exact moment, and if she could find the courage to greet whatever the future might hold with a hopeful heart, then the rest would surely be up to her.

Meticulously Willow refolded the silk and eased it back into the locket, gently pressing it shut until it clicked. She returned to her bedroom and pulled open the top drawer in her dressing table, rooting through a tangle of jewelry until she found a silver chain she hadn’t worn in years. Slipping the locket onto the chain, she fixed it around her neck, reassured by its cool weight at the base of her neck.

“Courage.” Willow had a new watchword, a flash of unfamiliar color catching her eye on the windowsill. She’d spent so little time in her bedroom recently that she’d forgotten the stacks of books and the little china dog that she had brought home from the shop too. Suddenly convinced that these objects also must have some significance, Willow rushed over to the pile, picking the dog up, turning it over in her hands, peering at it and getting rather excited when she shook it and heard a faint metallic sound grazing its insides. After much careful tapping and tipping, she eventually teased its hidden treasure out of a hole in its base. It turned out to be a paper clip. Smiling, Willow picked up the books one by one, with titles like
Her Heart’s Desire
and
A Lover’s Promise,
none of which seemed to be significant. She thumbed through the pages, looking for something, a lost photo, a love letter, notes written on the yellowing paper. But there was nothing but years of dust taking flight. Sitting down on her bed, Willow gathered the books into a pile and hugged them to her chest, her heart lightened by the knowledge that not everything meant something. Some things just were. After a moment,
she flopped back on her bed, opening one of the books at random, and began to read.

Her solitude was abruptly interrupted by the door buzzer. Sighing, Willow went to the door and picked up the intercom.

“Willow? At last! Where have you been, woman? It’s Daniel, I need to see you.”

Pressing the buzzer to let him in, Willow put the front door on the latch, took a couple of steps back, reached for the locket around her neck and waited.

She had absolutely no idea how she was going to feel about Daniel until she saw him in the flesh.

Courage.

“There you are.” Daniel beamed as he came in the door, carrying an oversize bunch of chrysanthemums. He stood looking at her. “There is my Willow. You haven’t returned my calls, my e-mails, my anything. Talk about hard to get, it’s been driving me mad!”

“I’ve been away,” Willow said, feeling suddenly rather reserved around the man she’d devoted every moment of daydreaming to for the last five years.

“Yeah, I know, with Sam.” Daniel looked disgruntled. “So is it back on with you two now?”

“No,” Willow said. “No, not that way. We care about each other a lot, but no. There isn’t any way back there for us.” Willow shifted from one foot to the other.

“Oh. Well, these are for you,” Daniel said as if he’d just remembered the flowers. He thrust them at Willow, who took them, burying her face in their sweetness, grateful for an excuse to step away from the door and the uncertain greeting and look for a vase.

“So how do you feel about not getting back together with Sam?” Daniel asked her as she filled a vase with water.

“I feel good about it,” Willow said. “I mean, I feel good that
Sam and I are friends now. There were a lot of unsaid words festering between us, a lot of things that we’ve finally had a chance to resolve. In the end, it turned out that it wasn’t so much how we felt about each other as how we felt about ourselves that came between us. It’s funny, if it hadn’t been for Chloe running away I don’t think we would ever have spoken again, and yet here we are in the middle of all this and somehow it feels like a family.”

“A family.” Daniel nodded. “I guess that’s modern life for you. Whatever works, right?”

“Right.” Willow nodded, taking extra care in placing the mums in the vase, positioning them on the table, hopeful that the flowers might ward off what she knew was coming.

“I hear you saw Serious James just before you went,” Daniel said. How much did he hear, Willow wondered. Did he hear about her trying to sleep with Serious James? She didn’t think so. James didn’t strike her as the kiss and tell type.

“He said that he’d told you.” Daniel was edgy, nervous. He looked so handsome it made Willow’s stomach ache, and yet she still, still didn’t know how she was going to react when the moment came.

“Told me?” Willow hedged uncomfortably.

“About me and Kayla. We’re through!” Daniel waited, as if for a reaction, and when none was apparent, went on. “For the first time in about twenty years I am totally single. Not a woman in sight.” He spread his hands, palms raised as if to make the point. “I am completely free.”

“Oh? And how do you like it?” Willow asked him, finding the courage to look him in the eye.

“I hate it, Willow, I hate it.” Daniel’s eyes met hers. “I want to be with you. I need to be with you, Willow. It’s you, it’s you, it’s always been you.”

In one stride he closed the space between them and took her in his arms.

Willow luxuriated in his kiss, in feeling the soft billows of her body clash with the hard contours of his, one strong arm securing her to him, around her waist, the other in her hair. She closed her eyes and let the moment wash over her, as if each second was a day, a month, a year. A single kiss to satisfy years of yearning, because as soon as Daniel had taken her in his arms, Willow had known what she previously could never have guessed. This wonderful, passionate, beautiful kiss was to be their last.

Daniel Fayre was not the man for her.

“Oh, Willow, darling,” Daniel muttered, his fingers pulling at her shirt, easing it out of the waistband of her skirt.

“Daniel, wait,” Willow said, trying to block his hand.

“I can’t wait, I’ve been waiting all my life for this,” Daniel said, kissing her neck as he fumbled for her skirt. “Since I saw you that day you posed for my Venus, you looked so delicious. I can’t get the thought of you out of my head. You just don’t know what the sight of a woman like you does to a man. It’s like finding a glass of cool water after forty days and nights in the desert—”

“Daniel!” Willow stopped him by gripping his wrist firmly enough to make him look up at her. As soon as he caught her expression his face fell.

“No way,” he said, allowing her to remove his hand from her entirely. “You’re not telling me that you don’t feel the same way, not now, Willow. You’ve been in love with me for years. Did you think I didn’t notice?”

Willow bit her lip. “I did.”

“See?” Daniel grinned. “You know what, I was thinking about it and thinking about it while you weren’t answering the phone and you know what I realized? I’ve been afraid of the strength of it, and the massive importance of it. I was too scared to admit my feeling. That’s why I didn’t do anything about it, Willow, that’s why I kept going out with all those models.”

“Oh, that’s why.” Willow found herself smiling.

“What’s so funny?” Daniel asked. “I’m declaring love here, sweetheart. Try and take it a little more seriously, okay? I’m giving you all my best lines.”

“I know,” Willow said. Reaching out, she touched Daniel’s beautiful cheek, tracing his perfect jawline. “I heard you say the stuff about the glass of water in the desert to Kayla.”

“I didn’t . . .” Daniel faltered as Willow dropped her hand from his face. “Well, even if I did, that’s got nothing to do with this. Willow, you are real, you are the only real person in my life and the way I feel about you won’t go away. Because it’s real, it’s really, really . . . you know . . . real.”

“The thing is, I think that real is actually the last thing that it is,” Willow said. “I think suddenly things got a bit heated between us because there was nakedness, and Sam back on the scene, and you must have known that James was preparing to woo me in the worst possible way in history, because he would have told you. Things were over between you and Kayla already and I’m . . . well, I was a banker, wasn’t I? Good old reliable Willow, you could always rely on me to be there, to be in love with you. Unless of course I suddenly went back with Sam or fell for Serious James.”

“Serious James.” Daniel chuckled. “Not my idea of competition.”

“And all of that coincided with my getting a very sexy pair of shoes. Which basically added up to making me, Willow Briars, impossible for you, Daniel Fayre, to resist. You don’t love me, Daniel—actually that’s not fair. I think you kind of do, but not in the way you think you do.”

“But I do.” Daniel looked confused, as if his brain could not compute what was happening. “I do feel that way about you, Willow. I do.”

Willow hesitated, crossing her arms as she chose her words
very carefully. The truth was that after all this time she could not believe what she was about to say.

“Daniel, even if you do feel that way about me, the problem is, I don’t feel that way about you. I don’t love you, Daniel.”

“But you do, you do, you always have,” Daniel said, bemused.

“I don’t think so. I think I pined for you and wanted you. I think I thought it was love but . . . it was more of a needing, wanting, hunger kind of thing. I loved you because I knew you would never love me, and . . . well, this is hard for me to say, but for a very long time now I haven’t really felt like I am very worthy of being loved.”