Playing by the Rules (18 page)

She woke up as Josh cut the engine. For a disorienting moment, she had no idea where she was. Then she smelled the salt and seaweed and turned to see Josh smiling at her.

‘Well, Sleeping Beauty, you asked for rugged and windswept and here we are. I can’t promise you that we will be completely alone, but the only other people here at this time of year will be the real die-hard surfers and they’re out there.’

He gestured over the windscreen at the surf. Kate looked. Sure enough, in the distance, wetsuit-clad enthusiasts were making the most of a quite decent swell. The beach, though, was empty, and looked just the place to walk off a bleak mood. Kate smiled up at Josh, who had come around to open the door for her.

‘Do you always fulfil your commissions so faithfully?’ she asked, as she allowed him to help her out of the car.

‘Oh, no ma’am,’ he replied seriously. ‘I save my best commission-fulfilling for commissioners who snore as I drive them.’

‘I do not —’ Kate began indignantly. Then she saw the twinkle in his eye. ‘Why, you . . .’

Josh ducked laughingly out of the way as she took a half-hearted swing at him, then set off at a run for the beach, calling over his shoulder, ‘If you want to punish me, you’ll have to catch me first!’

Kate ran after him, down onto the sand, pausing only to shed her shoes and socks as she went. She could feel the last threads of gloom flying out behind her and being blown away on the wind, which was already doing an excellent job of tangling her hair. She dug a hairband out of the pocket of her coat and pulled her hair off her face, finishing just before Josh came back to grab her hand and drag her further down the beach towards the waves.

What followed was an afternoon out of a dream.

Kate loved the beach in winter. She knew that many people thought it was a crazy predisposition, but unlike them, Josh seemed to understand its attractions without needing to have them explained. They walked along the edge of the sea, being chased by the waves and listening to the gulls cry overhead. They scrambled over the rocks to look for crabs in the rock pools and squeezed pods on the long strands of brown seaweed to watch them pop. They stood on the rocks and watched the mad surfers go out over and over again looking for the perfect wave. They even made a sandcastle, complete with moat.

And they lay on the sand and kissed the salt off each other’s skin until she wasn’t sure where she ended and he began.

Later, when even Kate had to admit that it was getting a bit cold and the sand was getting hard underneath them, they put the top up on the MG and sat in the car eating fish and chips out of the paper. The fresh air and exercise had brought Kate’s appetite back with interest. She tore into the crunchy battered fish with such enthusiasm that Josh teased that if he had known she was such a fan of unhealthy food, he wouldn’t have bothered with fruit for breakfast. She threw a chip at him for his trouble, which he promptly caught and ate.

Then, when they were both so stuffed they could barely move, they fed the rest of the chips to the seagulls, laughing at the various tactics the scavenging birds used to try to get more than their fair share.

It wasn’t until she had shoved the fish and chip paper into a bin and was walking back to where Josh was waiting by the car that Kate had any inkling that there was something on his mind. But now she saw that he was standing with his hands in his pockets, his shoulders hunched and his head down as if he was trying to ward off more than the cold. She touched him lightly on the shoulder and when he looked up she was disturbed to see that his eyes looked bleak and there were tiny lines around them that she’d never noticed before.

‘Josh, what is it? Is something wrong?’ He took his hands out of his pockets and pulled her around to stand in front of him, his hands lightly on her waist, and looked her in the eye as he replied.

‘I don’t know, Kate. You’ll have to tell me.’ Kate was mystified.

‘Josh, I —’ she began, but she was stopped by a sudden loss of air as he pulled her into his arms and held her as though he would never let her go. Then he released her enough for her to lean back and look questioningly up at him. He sighed, and looked at his feet.

‘Kate, I’m sorry if this question is painful, but I have to ask. What happened with Alain?’

Kate felt a surge of relief. Was that all this was about? That, she could answer. She put her hand under his chin and made him look at her.

‘Josh, nothing happened. That is, nothing has changed, except that I understand better now what happened and I don’t hate him any more. He is in love with someone else. We’re not together and we’re not going to be. I’m not sure we’re exactly friends, but I’ve forgiven him and given him my blessing. There’s a bit more to it than that, but I’m sure you don’t really want the details.’ She looked up at him, trying to read the reaction in his face. ‘Does that help?’

Josh looked like a man who’d had a death sentence repealed, only to have it replaced with lifetime imprisonment. Improved, but not reprieved.

‘So you and he are officially over then, Kate?’

‘Yes, Josh, absolutely, officially over. Kaput. Finished. No more. I think it’s been over for a while, but I was too selfish to see it.’ She had to gulp down a swell of self-loathing to admit that, but the time for lying – and kidding herself – about her love life was over. ‘Alain is my boss. No more and no less. We might make it back to being friends eventually. I hope so. But what —’

Kate was stopped once again by Josh’s arms squashing her to him with more energy than care for her ribs. With an effort, she pushed herself off him and looked up at him again to finish her question.

‘What is this about, Josh? I know I probably should have said something before but surely, you didn’t think I’d be here with you if there was anything going on with him? Why this sudden need for details?’

Josh released her fully from his arms, took her hand and led her over to sit on one of the low railings separating the car park from the beach. He ran his hand through his hair.

‘Kate, there’s something I have to tell you. You know that phone call I made this morning? The one I was on when you knocked me over?’ Kate nodded, wondering where this was going.

‘It was my boss. My new boss, that is, in LA. I was supposed to be starting there in August, but something’s come up and they need me to start earlier.’ He turned towards her and took both her hands in his.

‘Kate, I have to leave tomorrow.’

Kate felt as though she had been kicked.

Oh God, oh God, oh God. She had been kidding herself. She hadn’t needed to sleep with Josh to lose her heart to him. She already had.

How had she let this happen? When had it happened? Was it on the night of the reunion? Was it when he had nursed her through meeting her mother’s new love? Or had she never got it back after losing it all those years ago?

The phantom kicker came back for another go as Kate realised that it didn’t matter when she’d lost her heart to him. He was leaving, and he would be taking it with him, and there was nothing she could do about it.

She pulled away from him and stood up, wrapping her arms around herself to try to hold herself together for the second time that day. How could she have been so blind? So stupid? Alain had never been ‘the one’. When he left her, she had been angry and hurt and humiliated, but it hadn’t felt like this. Never like this.

Then she felt Josh’s arms reach around her from behind. He pulled her in to him, his arms enveloping her and his face against her hair and, for a time, he just held her.

‘Kate . . . come with me.’

Kate froze, trying to take it in. For a giddy moment, she considered it. For one glorious moment, she thought about dropping everything and just going, flying off into the sunset with him. Then reality slapped her in the head, and she pulled away and turned to face him, torn between howling loss and fury.

‘How, Josh? How am I supposed to come with you? What for? I’m due back in Paris in just over a week. If I come with you to LA, I’ll be there for, what? Two days, before I have to leave? Two days when you’ll be up to your neck settling into your new job? I’m sorry, Josh, but you were right when you said it before: a dirty weekend is completely out of the question.’

Josh reached for her but she twisted back out of his reach. She couldn’t afford to let him touch her or her defences would crumble, and who knew what she might do? Somebody had to retain some sense, and it seemed it would not be him.

But he was not so easily put off. He approached her again, and forced her hands out from behind her and held them.

‘Kate, you don’t understand. I don’t want you just for now. I don’t want you for two days, or two weeks or even two months. I want you forever. I love you. I didn’t know it until last night, but I think I have always loved you. I fell for you the first time I saw you and I don’t think I ever got up. It’s taken me thirteen stupid years to realise it, but now I have, I can’t walk away from you again.’

Then he knelt down.

Kate had been trying to pull her hands away, but when his knee touched the ground, she stopped, partly because she was paralysed with shock and partly because she was afraid that if she let go, she would fall over. Suddenly the screeching of the gulls, the thudding of the waves onto the beach and even the sigh of the wind in the bushes behind her, receded, as all her awareness centred on the man kneeling in front of her.

‘Kate, will you marry me?’

Kate looked down at him. It was as if she were seeing him through a haze, or the mists of a dream. The only thing that was clear was that at least one of them was insane. She didn’t know if it was him for asking or her for considering it, but this conversation was definitely crazy.

Her head began to throb, then it started to spin. With a lurch, she wrenched her hands out of his and sprang for the bushes, just in time to see her one and only meal of the day come up, even faster than it had gone down.

When she finally stood up and turned around, Josh had disappeared, but he soon returned, with a towel and water bottle from the car. She took them gratefully, rinsed and wiped her mouth, then, without thinking, handed them back and walked past him, to the little wooden barrier. She needed to sit down. He followed and sat down beside her.

‘Well, I think that would have to be about the worst response you could expect to a proposal. I wasn’t necessarily expecting a yes, but I wasn’t aware that I literally made you sick.’

Josh had tried to make a joke of it, but the pain in his voice was real. Kate turned to face him, contrite and miserable.

‘Josh, I’m so sorry. You don’t make me sick. Far from it. It was just the shock. I wasn’t expecting any of this.’

Josh’s expression instantly lightened and he took her hand with a renewed air of hope. ‘So is that a yes?’

‘No.’

‘Is that “No, it’s not a yes”? Or No?’

There wasn’t even an attempt at a joke this time and Kate felt her heart constrict at the idea of hurting him. She had to try to make him understand.

‘Josh, it’s not because I don’t want you. I do. I want you more than I have ever wanted anything or anyone. But it’s too soon! Two weeks ago, I was expecting Alain to ask me that question. Alain – remember him? The one who is now off with someone else, who is apparently the love of his life?’

Josh made a slashing motion with his hand. ‘Don’t bring him into this!’

‘But I have to, Josh! Don’t you see? If Alain hadn’t met Sophie, he probably would have asked me, eventually. Or he might have, anyway. And if he had, I would have said yes!
I would have said yes
, Josh! Which, in case you haven’t been paying attention, would have been the wrong thing to do. Because the love of his life isn’t me.’

‘And he’s not the love of yours! He’s —’

Kate shouted him down. ‘I should have seen it, Josh! Women are supposed to be perceptive. We’re the ones who are supposed to understand love and all that stuff. Especially me. I thought I was so clever, with my plan to get married. I thought I had it all worked out. But I didn’t see it. And I have been racking my brains trying to understand why. For two weeks, I couldn’t come up with an answer, but talking to him today made me realise what the problem was.
I
was the problem.’

In her agitation, Kate had got up and had been waving her hands around as though the movement would help to make her point. But now she stopped and reached out to Josh. She stopped short of touching him – she felt she had forfeited the right to touch him – but she reached out to him still, in a mute plea that he understand what she was trying to say.

‘I can see it now. It was my fault. Our relationship was always going to break up because it was a mistake from the beginning. It never would have existed if I hadn’t created it. He was just part of the plan!’

‘Kate —’

‘No, Josh, you have to listen! I have always been driven. That’s just the way I am. I’m one of those tedious, goal-oriented people, who know what they want and who make lists and visualise and chant affirmations, or whatever they need to do, until they get it. I wanted that life. I wanted to live in Paris, not as a tourist, but as a local. I wanted to have café au lait and pastries at a café where they knew my name. I wanted to work at the Sorbonne. And I guess I wanted a handsome French boyfriend to fill out the picture.

‘I
used
Alain, Josh. I used him like a jigsaw piece to complete my perfect life. I had a gap to fill and he slotted in quite nicely. I never thought about whether we had anything in common apart from the other parts of the jigsaw. He lived in Paris, he worked at the Sorbonne, he liked eating at cafés and he was tall – because they all have to be tall.’ She could hear the disdain in her own voice, but it didn’t come near to expressing what she really felt.

‘He could have been anyone, Josh. I see that now. I
used
him.’ Kate turned away, forcing herself to go on, although it was the last thing in the world she wanted to do.

‘And I’ll use you, too. If I come with you now, it won’t be for the right reasons; it won’t be for the reasons you want. It will be because my pride was hurt and you soothed it; because you picked me up when I was down, and I’m grateful; because you’re a sweet man who cares about my mum and yours; because you’re the sexiest man I have ever seen and I am demented with lust for you; because . . .’ Kate paused as an even larger wave of self-disgust threatened to take her breath away ‘. . . because you’re
tall
.’ She turned back to him, her mouth tasting of bile.