Life's a Beach and Then... (The Liberty Sands Trilogy Book 1) (8 page)

BOOK: Life's a Beach and Then... (The Liberty Sands Trilogy Book 1)
9.21Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

 

Chapter 20

 

 

It was Robert who had suggested dining in their room that
evening. His wife looked exhausted after they had spent the day in Port Louis,
the capital of Mauritius. Every trip they made to this island paradise they
always went to Port Louis at least once and had lunch or dinner in the small
restaurant where they had first met almost twenty years ago.

Meeting Rosemary had been the most amazing piece of good
fortune. He had only returned to Mauritius to check on the progress of the
building work at the Plantation House hotel the day before they met. After the
initial construction period, he didn’t usually return to the site of a build
until the project was finished and required his final seal of approval, but
there had been a problem on site which the foreman feared could prevent them
from making the contracted completion date. It could have cost the company he
worked for several hundreds of thousands of pounds in fines so he was
immediately dispatched to sort it out.

Fortunately it transpired that someone had missed off a zero
when writing down the calculations of a load-bearing wall, so there was no
problem to sort out after all. As a thank you for dropping everything on his
latest project in Hong Kong to fly to Mauritius, his company had told him to
take a few days’ holiday, all expenses paid. Not usually known for their
generosity, this was too good an opportunity to miss.

He had walked into the Chez André restaurant intending only
to have a glass of fruity new season Beaujolais with the owner, a friend he had
made during the six months he had lived there. He was sitting at the bar
looking at his own image in the mirror behind the spirit optics when a
beautiful tall blonde woman appeared behind him in the reflection. She glanced
around as though she was looking for someone and, on finding the place almost
empty, seemed about to leave, when Robert did something completely out of
character.

He swung round on his bar stool and said, ‘No one here but
me I’m afraid. Would you care to join me in a glass of red while you’re waiting
for your friends, or maybe it’s just a friend, to arrive?’ For a moment Robert
thought he’d blown it as the slender blonde hesitated, so he quickly added, ‘On
the house of course, the owner’s a friend of mine.’

Even to Robert’s ears it had sounded crass so he was amazed
when a slow smile spread across her face and she said, ‘Just one then and if my
friends are still a no show I’m heading back to the ship.’

That had been at 7 p.m. and it was midnight when Robert
finally said goodbye to Rosemary at the gangplank of the SS
Venus
,
having shared two bottles of wine, an exceptionally tasty coq au vin and an
abridged version of each other’s life story.

Robert knew he had met the woman he wanted to be with for
the rest of his life and he had the feeling that she felt the same way.

During the course of the evening it emerged that their paths
had crossed some fifteen years earlier at an engagement party in Clapham, south
London. Robert had asked Rosemary what she did for a living and when she had
said she was a dancer he had commented that he only knew one other dancer, his
best friend’s sister, Melody.

Rosemary had paused mid sip.

‘What’s her last name?’ she asked.

‘Well she’s been married for fourteen years so she’s Melody
Brown now, but she was Melody Martin,’ he replied.

‘You’re joking,’ Rosemary exclaimed. ‘We did our first
dancing job together in Paris and kept in touch for years. What an amazing
coincidence that you know her too.’

It turned out that they had both been at Melody’s engagement
party but hadn’t been introduced to each other.

‘Were you at the wedding?’ Robert asked, surprised that he
had missed noticing this stunning woman not once but twice.

‘No, I was away working,’ she replied. ‘I had just signed my
first six-month contract for the cruise line I’m still working for so I
couldn’t get the time off. The wedding couldn’t be delayed because Mel was
already pregnant with Sam. She was really upset because she wanted me to be her
Maid of Honour.’

‘I was Pete’s Best Man,’ Robert revealed. ‘So we would
definitely have met that day.’

They had looked deep into each other’s eyes. Maybe they were
meant to meet at the wedding and now fate was giving them a second chance?

Six months later they were married, with Pete as Best Man,
Melody as Matron of Honour and their four children as pages and bridesmaids.

 

 

Robert looked at his beautiful, brave wife delicately picking
her way through a plate of steamed vegetables and wished, as he had so many
times since their meeting in Mauritius, that she had been able to go to the
wedding. All those wasted years and now so little time left.

Not for the first time Robert had to swallow hard to hold
back tears as he wondered what on earth he was going to do when the love of his
life had gone.

 

Chapter 21

 

 

There was a message waiting for Holly at the hotel reception
when she went to collect the picnic lunch she had ordered for her day out. She
opened the envelope with dread, thinking that Philippe had decided to cancel,
and feeling ridiculously disappointed.

The message wasn’t from Philippe, it was from Rosemary.

 

Dear Holly (and Philippe)

 

Have a wonderful day out together. We would love you to join
us for dinner in Roberto’s this evening at 8 p.m... or for Philippe’s benefit
7.45 p.m.

 

Love

Rosemary x

 

Holly didn’t understand the last comment. Why would they
want Philippe to get to the restaurant before her? Were they going to discuss
the events of the day with him? she wondered. How very odd.

The receptionist indicated a row of cool boxes, each with a
guest’s name taped to it, and said the driver would lift it into the car for
her when he arrived. Holly glanced at her watch. As usual she was a few minutes
early so she relaxed onto a rattan sofa opposite the reception desk, waiting
for the two men to arrive. She knew which one she was most looking forward to
see.

The sofa was comfy and well worn and her imagination ran
riot as she imagined all the various posteriors that had rested there over the
years. The Plantation House was a very luxurious resort and it was rumoured
that celebrities and even minor royals had stayed there since the rebuild. It
had featured in the pages of glossy magazines as the backdrop for swimwear
shoots and in the occasional music video, and Holly had read that it was one of
the locations used in a recent Bond movie.

Who knows, she thought, maybe Daniel Craig had sat in this
very spot.

‘What’s so funny?’

She looked up to see Philippe looking down at her with a
quizzical expression on his face.

‘Funny?’ she repeated, jumping to her feet blushing.

‘You had a big grin on your face, I thought maybe you didn’t
appreciate my dress sense?’

‘No, no,’ she said. ‘I didn’t even see you come in,’ she
continued in a fluster. ‘I was daydreaming. You’re early,’ she stammered.

‘I know,’ acknowledged Philippe. ‘You should feel very
honoured, I am usually at least five minutes late.’

The penny dropped.

‘Ah, that would explain Rosemary’s note,’ she said. ‘They’ve
invited us to have dinner with them tonight at Roberto’s, but they gave two
different times and I thought... well I’m not sure what I thought actually.
Anyway you’ll probably be tired of my company by then so don’t feel you have to
come,’ she blundered on.

She felt like a schoolgirl on a first date, except that she
didn’t have that particular experience to draw on as she had never dated when
she was in school.

It was Philippe’s turn to grin. ‘You’re not nervous to spend
the day alone with me are you?’ he teased.

‘Of course not,’ she lied. ‘Anyway we won’t be alone,’ she
said, indicating the driver who had picked her up from the airport, who she had
spotted over Philippe’s shoulder.

‘More is the pity,’ Philippe said under his breath as he
watched her move towards the driver, Sachin, hand outstretched.

Holly was explaining to him that Philippe would be joining
her for the sightseeing trip, and asking if she needed to pay any extra.

‘No, madam,’ Sachin said. ‘The price is for the car and the
driver, not per person. But do you have enough picnic for two people?’

Holly unclipped the lid of the cool box and looked inside.
There was fruit and salads, sandwiches and cakes, and cans of soft drink.

‘There’s plenty,’ Holly said out loud, adding in her head,
particularly as I have totally lost my appetite since setting eyes on Philippe
again.

 

 

Usually when Holly was working, going on the sightseeing tour
was a necessary chore so that she could write about the experience on her blog.
Not so today. She couldn’t remember the last time she had enjoyed herself when
it didn’t revolve around her son. From the moment she had climbed into the back
seat of the limo that morning, with Philippe at her side, she had felt like
Holly the woman, rather than Holly the mother. Her initial nervousness at being
in his company had disappeared by the time they had reached the other side of
Flic en Flac. She was enjoying his proximity.

To start with Sachin had been the one answering all of
Holly’s many and varied questions: What was that mountain called? Who were the
first inhabitants? What is the name of that tree? Is it safe to buy the fruit
and coconut milk from the roadside shacks? Philippe just sat back listening and
observing. His first input was when Holly asked Sachin about the colours of the
Mauritian national flag.

Sachin had answered, ‘The red is for the flame-flower tree.
The blue is the ocean. The yellow represents the sun and the green is the
wealth of vegetation on the island.’

Holly would have been quite satisfied with this explanation
but Philippe interjected, ‘That’s the first time I have heard the red stripe
described that way. I thought it represented the bloodshed during the years of
slavery and more recently the fight for independence?’

Sachin regarded Philippe in his rear-view mirror. ‘That is
true, sir,’ he confirmed, ‘but peaceful Mauritians prefer to forget the past
and nurture the future.’

‘A good attitude,’ Philippe said. ‘However people usually
like to know the truth.’

Holly said nothing.

‘Have you also heard the interpretation regarding the four
cultures who live harmoniously on the island,’ Sachin asked.

Philippe nodded, but Holly, anxious to steer the
conversation away from truth-telling, said, ‘I haven’t.’

‘The red represents Hindus, the blue Creoles, yellow is the
Chinese and green is Muslims,’ Sachin said. ‘Each has its own community but
they exist happily side by side.’

The first stop on their island tour was to see the famed
coloured earth at Chamarel. It could only be reached by driving along bumpy
roads that were more suited to a four-wheel drive than a limo. It had rained
overnight and the still-wet ground had steam rising from it as the hot sun beat
down, so it was very difficult to determine the various shades of colour with
the naked eye. Satisfaction rating, considering the journey and the entrance
fee, was only really a five, but in Philippe’s company it rose to a six.

They stopped to take some pictures of the Black River Falls.
Holly had presumed the river had taken its name from the volcanic nature of the
island but was corrected by Sachin who told her it was named after the African
slaves who escaped and would hide out in the heavily forested area in the south
of the island. Following Philippe’s admonishment he had clearly decided that
truth was the best policy with this tourist couple.

They drove past the huge reservoir that provided drinking
water, although tourists were always advised to drink the bottled variety, to
the dormant volcano called Trou au Cerfs.

Knowing Philippe’s French heritage Holly turned to him and
asked, ‘What does Trou au Cerfs mean?’

‘It’s the hole of the deer,’ he answered. ‘There is a story
that English noblemen would chase the deer for their meat, and the deer would
jump into the volcano never to be seen again.’

‘But it’s been dormant since the island formed, hasn’t it?’
Holly asked.

‘Someone has been doing their research,’ Philippe conceded.

Funny choice of word, thought Holly, maybe he is on to me?
She needn’t have worried though as his next sentence confirmed.

‘Or maybe you remember it from when you came here on your
honeymoon?’ Philippe added, his voice softening. ‘Rosemary told me about your
husband. It’s all right Holly,’ he whispered. ‘You’re allowed to have a life.’

She could feel the solitary tear form and then roll down the
side of her nose. What precisely am I crying for? she thought. That someone has
given me permission to live after all these years of self-inflicted solitude,
or that I’m forced to lie to that same someone and I don’t want to?

For a brief moment she toyed with the idea of telling
Philippe the truth but she had only just met him and she had no idea how he
would react. No doubt he would tell Robert and Rosemary and they might reveal
who she was to the hotel management. She could lose her job.

Instead she simply said, ‘Thank you.’

The day just got better and better. They drove through the
capital Port Louis up to the north of the island where Sachin found a quiet
beach backed by filaos trees so that they could enjoy their lunch out of the
glare of the sun. Holly had thought she wasn’t hungry, but after a bit of
coaxing from Philippe she started eating and realised she was ravenous.

‘I like a woman who has a healthy relationship with food,’
he teased.

Is he calling me fat? she wondered for a moment, but one
look at his admiring glance told her otherwise.

After lunch they walked along the beach hand in hand, like a
couple in love, while Sachin packed up the lunch box and retired to his car for
a nap. Holly wanted to pinch herself to make sure this was really happening and
not just some cruel dream.

‘This is my favourite thing to do,’ she confided. ‘Walking
along a beach at the water’s edge with the sun smiling on me.’

‘Mine too,’ agreed Philippe. ‘But I would add in the company
of someone special.’

He stepped across in front of her and took her face in both
his hands. He leaned forward slightly and for a moment Holly thought he was
going to kiss her.

‘Don’t lock yourself away from the world, Holly,’ he said.
‘He’s gone and he’s not coming back.’

Holly leant in to Philippe’s chest and stayed there for
several moments.

This is all happening too quickly, her sensible head told
her. He knows I’m vulnerable, maybe he is just after one thing. But her heart
was telling her something else. He is the first man you have felt this way
about in twenty years, perhaps it’s time to move on.

BOOK: Life's a Beach and Then... (The Liberty Sands Trilogy Book 1)
9.21Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Chaos Descending by Toby Neighbors
Danger Point by Wentworth, Patricia
the Third Secret (2005) by Berry, Steve
LEGACY BETRAYED by Rachel Eastwood
TheFallenStarBookSeries1 by Sorensen, Jessica
People of the Wolf by Gear, Kathleen O'Neal, Gear, W. Michael
Circle of Three by Patricia Gaffney
Roger's Version by John Updike