Page 28 of The Wedding Proposal
It would have been useful to link her iPad to the Wi-Fi at the centre and have translation software permanently open as she worked, every computer being in use. But she’d ended her tablet contract with her UK provider and had stowed it safely in her case in the lazarette, not anticipating having a use for something that had previously been only a business tool. It wasn’t as if she intended to spread her new life all over Facebook and Twitter.
That was how Ricky had found her last time.
Via enthusiastic demonstration, she got the kids to designate headings so that they appeared in the easy-to-navigate document map, changing the font and style of each type of heading to suit their own choices. Then they set about adding sub-headings, lists and tables, which kept her busy whizzing from machine to machine until the workshop ended, at one.
It was only when she started back down through the streets that she let herself think about what was likely to greet her at the boat — the evening before had ended in silence and Elle leaving Lucas to clear up the spilled food on the deck. Maybe the intimacy of eating together had been too much to ask of the fragile truce between them. They should have kept their respective distances rather than trying to pretend that ex-lovers make good friends.
This morning, she’d found that the dishes had been put away, neat and clean. There had been no sign of Lucas. His cabin door had been closed and the boat silent. The gangplank wasn’t in place but as he often just jumped between boat and shore, that didn’t mean he hadn’t left for work. Rather than lean out to grab the cord on the gangplank and heave it into place, she’d taken a deep breath, gathered her legs beneath her and tried the jump herself. Landing safely on the quayside had brought her a sense of achievement and a stubbed toe.
By the time she returned to the Shady Lady she was worn down by the heat. She gazed at the cool sea longingly. It was bad marina etiquette to swim near the boats, and dangerous, but she couldn’t believe that she hadn’t yet swum in the Mediterranean in the five days she’d been in Malta.
It would be remedied on Sunday, she determined, braving the jump from quayside to bathing platform to prove to herself that the first time hadn’t been a fluke, and stepping up into the cockpit to unlock the boat.
She made a fast change of clothes, diving into a lukewarm shower, welcoming the chance to cool her blood. She’d be overheated again by the time she reached Seadancer but even a brief respite was welcome.
Loz was waiting for her when she arrived at the larger motor yacht, eyes hidden behind massive sunglasses. ‘Don’t bother coming on board,’ she called. ‘You and I are going straight off to do lots of lovely shopping and then Davie’s going to come along with a taxi and haul everything home. You’re still OK to hand round nibbles at the party, aren’t you?’
‘Of course,’ Elle agreed, brightly. The party meant that she’d be away from Lucas for the evening.
A big turquoise bus picked them up from the far side of the road behind the gardens and deposited them fifteen minutes later in Sliema, leaving only a few yards to walk to a supermarket that was set back from the main road, a ground floor with a further two floors beneath.
The novelty of shopping in a foreign country still high, Elle enjoyed buying salad stuff and nibbles, two cooked chickens, various cooked meats, cheeses, and an armful of fruit.
‘Get the blood oranges,’ Loz urged, wandering along behind the plastic shopping trolley as Elle pushed. ‘It’s such fun that they’re red instead of orange. And figs, but don’t waste them in a fruit salad. They’re gorgeous with ice cream and a drizzle of honey.’
After a hot taxi journey back to the marina, Elle was thankful for the galley air conditioning as she helped Loz chop and wash, unwrap and arrange. It was nearly seven when Elle arrived back at the Shady Lady.
Lucas was sitting on the cockpit seat at the back of the boat, reading. He looked up with a polite ‘Hello’ and returned to his e-reader.
Elle responded with an equally neutral greeting and went through to her cabin to take another shower. She dried her hair with the hairdryer set on cold, sitting on her cabin floor, then changed into a green sundress, which was only slightly crumpled from being squashed into the wardrobe. Loz had said her evening’s duties were to hand round the nibbles, get drinks and clear glasses and Elle thought the neat but pretty dress suitable for what the help would wear at a party on a yacht. Not that she’d ever been to a party on a yacht, much less been ‘the help’. Nobody who’d known her from her old life of suits and briefcases, office politics and sweated-for performance bonuses would have pictured her in such a role. They knew the Elle for whom a redundancy notice had felt like the end of the world, plunging her into icy fear that she’d never be able to get another job like that.
Then she’d realised that she didn’t actually want another job like that.
Status and salary had come with a hefty price tag in terms of commitment, stress and lifestyle. When had she last passed a weekend without looking at her e-mails? Or rung her line manager on Monday morning and said carelessly that she was taking a couple of days’ holiday? The line manager had barked in outrage but Elle hadn’t cared. Her concern was what she’d like her future to look like. A new life.
In this new life she had to be careful with money for the first time in years but it was worth it. Even with Lucas inconveniently turning up in it.
After applying make-up and putting up her hair it was nearly eight and time to leave. She tucked her key in a small pocket in her dress and skipped back up the steps to the saloon and out into the cockpit, where Lucas still sat, one ankle across the other knee, his e-reader balanced against his calf.
‘Bye.’ She brushed past his seat and balanced her way neatly across the gangplank, which was back in place.
He stood up. ‘Hang on.’
She paused as he stowed the e-reader inside the saloon, locked up, crossed the ever-shifting gap between boat and shore and hauled back the gangplank. ‘What?’ She felt too aware of him and she so didn’t want to talk over what had happened last night. That can of worms was a wriggling mess best left securely shut.
‘We might as well go together.’
‘Go?’
‘To Loz’s party.’ He held up a bottle of red wine.
Elle’s surge of dismay, as she realised that cool black cargo shorts had replaced his usual denim cut-offs and his bare feet had been pushed into deck shoes, was like standing on one boat when the wake of another passed beneath. ‘Loz invited you, but then—’
‘—you outed me as your ex, Loz went all quiet and Davie began to send me suspicious looks,’ he finished, calmly. ‘But they didn’t uninvite me.’ He stuck his hand in his pocket. ‘So we might as well walk along together.’
‘Shit,’ she said, succinctly, as she turned and headed for Seadancer.
* * *
