Wish You Were Here (14 page)

This isn’t real, Alice kept telling herself – the looks, the declarations and the hand-holding – they weren’t
real
. But, as they walked through the centre of Norwich, passing Jarrold’s on their way back to the office, Alice couldn’t help but pretend that it was and it felt wonderful.

It was strange, Milo thought. One week had gone by since Alice had left Kethos and the whole island seemed empty without her. How could one person make such a difference to your day-to-day existence when you hadn’t even known they were alive two weeks before? It didn’t make any sense to Milo and yet here he was feeling as if the gods were punishing him for having fallen in love. Maybe it was Aphrodite’s fault. Maybe Alice had wished that he’d fall in love with her but then it would be unrequited. Perhaps Alice was some twisted soul who’d had her heart broken just before coming to Greece and had decided to wreak revenge on him.

He’d only seen Alice at the gardens twice but they weren’t the same without her. Every corner he turned, he expected to see her. He could imagine her standing there under the dappled shade of a tree or sitting by the edge of one of the pools, trailing her long fingers in the cool water, her sweet smile playing about her face.

Every time he passed the statue of Aphrodite, he would glare at it.

‘You’re torturing me, aren’t you? You are a cruel woman, Aphrodite,’ he told her. His torture wouldn’t end with him leaving the villa gardens either. It would follow him home and torment him there too.

What does she think about you?
a little voice would taunt.
You abandoned her without so much as a goodbye – that’s what you did in her eyes. She hates you. She despises the beautiful Greek ground you walk on.

‘She’s probably forgotten all about me,’ he’d say to console himself but he hadn’t forgotten about her, had he? He felt that he never would either.

If only I’d had a chance to explain
, he said to himself. That didn’t mean to say that Alice would have understood, though, did it? She might have slapped him in the face and told him he was a despicable liar and it would have served him right too but he couldn’t help thinking that she would have forgiven him. It wasn’t in her nature to hold grudges, was it? She was kind and understanding.

Or was she? How was he really to know? They’d had so little time together that it was totally possible that the sweet, kind girl had all been an act. She might have been playing some game with him and he might have just been a holiday fling. So why was he getting so worked up about her? He had to put her out of his mind because he’d probably never see her again. It was true that Kethos had its fair share of what Milo called ‘Repeat Offenders’ – holiday-makers who would come back year after year – but he doubted if Alice would return. If she’d been playing games with him then she wasn’t likely to come back and, if she hadn’t been – if she’d sincerely had feelings for him – she wouldn’t return because he’d screwed things up good and proper.

Put it behind you,
he told himself.
You have a life to lead – a good life – and you were perfectly happy before this girl from England arrived.
But he couldn’t help but acknowledge the fact that everything seemed so drab and colourless now that she’d gone.

It had been a strange week, Alice thought. Ever since she’d arrived home from Greece, she’d felt like a different person – as if she’d slipped into the skin of somebody else completely. It was the wish, wasn’t it? All the male attention she was receiving was having a strange effect on her. At first, it had been baffling and a little frightening but she had quickly learned to enjoy it and let it take her along for the ride. It had given her a strange kind of confidence that she had never known before. She was no longer Alice the Gooseberry, watching other people falling in love and enjoying the pleasures of life. She was a main player now and she was loving it.

What did it matter if it was all because of some wish and it wasn’t real? She really didn’t want to think about what would happen if the wish suddenly fizzled out and she went back to being plain old Alice whom men ignored, because she was having too much fun in the here and now.

Things with Ben were going so well. Since lunch at Wheeler’s, they’d been out twice: once to the cinema to see a rather dreadful art house film called
The Thirteenth Rejection
about a struggling writer who commits suicide, and whose book then goes on to become a huge bestseller.

‘I thought it was going to be inspiring,’ Ben had said as they’d left the cinema and they’d both had to laugh about it.

The second date had been to a private view at a posh gallery in Tombland where Alice had almost got crushed to death and had had two different kinds of wine spilt down her dress.

‘I’m so sorry!’ Ben had said, ushering her out into the street. ‘But you liked the paintings, right?’

Alice had stood there for a moment not quite knowing what to say. ‘I’m not sure,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t quite make out what they were paintings
of
.’

Ben nodded thoughtfully. ‘Good point,’ he said and the two of them had giggled all the way to the nearest pub.

He’d kissed her for the first time that night. He’d dropped her off at home and had walked her to her door and, under a sky packed full of stars, he’d bent forward and his lips had brushed hers.

‘You’re amazing,’ he’d said.

As she’d closed the door behind him and listened to his car pulling away, she felt as if she was floating somewhere above the earthbound Alice. Life was suddenly very rosy. She even looked forward to going in to work, knowing that Ben would find the least excuse to come down to the department to see her.

But it’s not real
, the voice kept telling her.
It won’t last.

Alice shook her head in denial and did her best to put the little voice out of her mind.

With all the excitement of dating Ben, Alice had overlooked the fact that spring had arrived in her little corner of Norfolk and, leaving her house one day, she took a moment to enjoy it. There were primroses and daffodils everywhere and bright celandines glowed like gold along the banks. The air was lighter and sweeter and, although there were still weeks of frosty nights ahead, there was a real feeling that the bad weather was a distant memory.

So, Alice wasn’t that surprised to see Wilfred the postman wearing shorts that morning but she made the mistake of acknowledging the fact.

‘You’re looking very spring-like, Wilfred,’ she said innocently enough.

‘Alice! I’m so pleased you noticed,’ he gushed.

It was hard
not
to notice his great white knobbly knees when they were heading right towards you, Alice thought, but she didn’t share that particular thought with him.

‘It’s a lovely day, isn’t it?’ she said, thinking it best to direct the conversation away from his knees.

‘Every day’s a lovely day when you’re close by,’ Wilfred said and his mailbag hit the ground with a thud. Alice gulped. ‘Alice!’ he said and, once again, his voice seemed to deepen so that it sounded as if it was coming up from somewhere south of his belly button. ‘I have to tell you something.’

‘Do you?’ Alice said with a little whimper. ‘Only I have to catch my bus.’

‘But that won’t be here for at least five minutes,’ he said, ‘and what I have to say can’t wait a moment longer. Not a single moment!’

‘Oh, dear,’ Alice said, almost involuntarily.

‘Although, I could fill all the hours of every day until I die telling you how much I adore you, but five minutes will have to do.’

For one dreadful moment, Alice thought he was going to go down on one knee right there in the middle of the lane but he merely grabbed her hand and started to kiss it.

‘Wilfred!’ she cried. ‘Please stop!’

‘I can’t,’ he said, slobbering on her hand some more. ‘I have to show you how I feel.’

‘Well, I wish you wouldn’t. Somebody will see!’

‘Let them see!’ Wilfred said. ‘I want the whole world to know how I feel about you!’

‘Even Mrs Myhill?’ Alice said as she saw a stern figure walking towards them with remarkable speed for a woman in her eighties.

‘What are you now doin’, Wilfred Cringle?’ she asked, her Norfolk accent strong and her glare penetrating.

‘I was just telling Alice how wonderful she is,’ he explained, letting Alice’s hand drop.

‘Well, I don’t know about that but I
do
know that you’re late with my post,’ she said, stabbing him in the shoulder with an angry finger.

‘Oh, I am sorry, Mrs Myhill,’ Wilfred said, seeming to recover himself. Alice seized the opportunity to escape round the corner out of sight and hurried along to the bus stop, silently praying that it was running on time and hadn’t got stuck behind a combine harvester like the day before.

She’d almost forgotten about Bruce because he had been away for a couple of days but her heart sank when she saw him there and, as soon as he saw her, he looked totally thunderstruck as if he’d never seen her before in his life. Alice took a deep breath and prepared for the onslaught.

‘How do you do it, Alice?’ he asked, his face soft with adoration.

‘I’m not doing anything, Bruce,’ she said, knowing that no amount of deflection was going to stop him.

He laughed. ‘And you’re so witty too!’

‘Really, I’m not,’ Alice said as stone-faced as she could.

This time, Bruce bent double with laughter. ‘Oh, Alice!’ he said, mopping his eyes with an old-fashioned handkerchief. ‘You are the limit! Nobody makes me laugh as much as you do!’

Alice frowned and Bruce laughed even more, pointing to her face whilst his own turned crimson with mirth. What was going on? Was this about being noticed by men, she wondered? Was it not all about looks, then? Perhaps she should have been more careful with her choice of words when she’d made the wish or maybe it was that wicked Aphrodite having a laugh again by making other people laugh at her.

The bus arrived just as Alice felt sure Bruce was about to rupture his spleen with so much hilarity and Alice sat next to a teenage girl and sighed with relief when Bruce had to move on down the aisle to the back.

What a way to start a morning,
she thought, although she was getting rather used to it. If it wasn’t for Ben, though, she really felt as if she would go mad but the thought of meeting him at lunchtime got her through the daily toil as well as coping with the deluge of unwanted male attention.

Larry Baxter was still skilfully avoiding all eye contact with Alice which had been most unnerving for the interviewees they’d been seeing over the last couple of days and she couldn’t help wondering what they must think about their strange behaviour. It had probably put them off working there and Alice couldn’t blame them. Larry was twitchy and kept fiddling with the cuffs of his jacket until one pinged off and rolled across the carpet. He’d then leapt up to retrieve it, caught Alice’s eyes and started jabbering away. Alice had tried to calm him down, reaching out and touching his arm but that had been a mistake and he’d pulled away and fled from the room before she could stop him. The interviewee who’d had the misfortune of witnessing this bizarre scene hadn’t got back to them when they’d later offered her the job.

Perhaps the most frustrating thing about the whole business was that Alice couldn’t even confide in Ben about it all. She so desperately wanted to tell him about Larry’s weird behaviour and the embarrassing moments with Wilfred and Bruce but she realised that Ben was a part of this charade too and she couldn’t even begin to explain things to him without jeopardising their relationship.

That lunchtime, with the sun shining and the sky as blue as forget-me-nots, they walked to the Castle Museum where they found a bench. They’d bought freshly-made sandwiches, sugary jammy doughnuts and fruit smoothies – which were an attempt to counteract the effect of the doughnuts.

‘This is nice,’ Alice said as they polished off the doughnuts. She couldn’t help thinking that, just a few weeks ago, she would have sat on a bench very like this one, watching all the happy couples parading by whilst she sat on her own.

‘Has Larry talked any more about the position opening up in New Business?’

Alice shook her head. Larry hadn’t talked about anything much at all to her. In fact, it was beginning to be a bit of a worry. They really couldn’t go on like that. Alice had even been thinking about a transfer but she realised that the problem would just duplicate itself somewhere else unless she went to an all-female department.

‘He’s a funny bloke,’ Ben said. ‘I don’t know how you put up with him.’

Alice looked surprised. She hadn’t expected Ben to come out with such a thing. ‘He’s all right,’ she said.

‘But are you really happy working with him? I mean, he’s so pompous and you’re so lovely. You could do anything, Alice.’ He looked at her and his eyes were deep and sincere.

‘Well, I do often wonder if there’s another life out there waiting to be led.’

‘Like I do’ Ben said excitedly.

Alice smiled. ‘I guess.’

‘We should do something about it,’ he said and fear flooded through Alice again. How long could she keep this up with Ben? She should tell him the truth. She should tell him now.

‘Ben, listen – there’s something I need to—’

‘I hope you’re free tonight,’ he interrupted, leaning in close to her.

‘Ben, I want to—’

‘
Are
you free? Or have you got a dozen other men queuing around the block for you? I bet you have.’

‘No, I don’t,’ Alice said and she couldn’t help but smile.

‘So you’re free?’

‘Well, I’ll have to check my diary,’ she teased and then wished she hadn’t because Ben’s face fell. That was the trouble with being attractive to men – you had a responsibility not to let people down. ‘I was joking!’ she added quickly.

He smiled with relief. ‘Then I’ll pick you up at seven thirty.’ He got up from the bench and extended a hand to help her up.

You should tell him. Get it over and done with
, the little voice said. But, as she placed her hand in his and received a smile for her pains, she thought she might just put the big confession off for a little longer.