Garden of Stars (7 page)

Love Sarah x

She read it through several times, carefully considering it, weighing up the meaning, obvious and subliminal, of every word. Thank goodness for the distance email provided; so much easier than picking up the phone. Her heart hammering against her chest, she pressed send. There was absolutely nothing odd or wrong about emailing an old friend, when you find yourself in the same hotel. Absolutely nothing at all, in fact the reverse; it would be strange not to. And it was the perfect opportunity to close a
door that had remained ajar for two decades, to get, as the Americans would say, ‘closure'. Justifications came thick and fast now the deed was done.

Her mobile bleeped to signify that she had received a text. She jumped out of her skin and her breathing quickened. Surely he couldn't have answered so soon? The phone was right beside her, cradled in the crisp white bed linen. Her hands shook as she picked it up, saw the message alert.

Hi, hope things are going well.

It was from Hugo. A hot wave of disappointment flooded through her.

The girls are fine but missing you. Can you call them in the morning? Xx

Guilt took over, and her head pulsated as she realised that she had been so preoccupied with the unexpected turn of events that she hadn't called to check up on her own family, make sure that everything was all right.

She texted back:

Will do. X

She undressed, pulled on her swimming costume, wrapped a towel around her and headed for the pool. What should she say to Hugo? she thought, as she front-crawled up and down, stroke after rhythmic stroke. She would definitely have to tell him that Scott was here and that she might see him. Then she let out an unexpected underwater laugh which made bubbles come out of her nose and caused her to come up for air mid-stroke, coughing and spluttering. It was all too ridiculous. He would probably have forgotten who she was.

She pulled up by the side, resting her arms on the stone edging of the pool. The slabs were warm from the sun, their slight roughness smoothed by a thin film of water. She observed how her forearms were covered in goose bumps that made each hair stand on end, petrified droplets of water shimmering in between. Lifting her face to the evening light, she closed her eyes, enjoying the strange contradiction of the cool water on her legs and stomach and the last of the sun's warm glow on her shoulders, and tried to empty her overcrowded mind, to let her thoughts drift away.

“Oh my God, I do not believe it!” A deep, resonant voice broke into her daydreams.

“I do not believe it! Sarah Lacey. How the hell are you?”

5

Portugal, 2010

Horror seared through Sarah's body, momentarily freezing the blood in her veins. Surely it wasn't Scott, surely the moment they met again after twenty years wasn't going to be when she was soaking wet, hair bedraggled, wearing a tatty old swimming costume and no make-up?

But she knew that it was him. She would recognise that voice anywhere. And he clearly had not forgotten her.

She opened her eyes, blinking the water out of them. She was so embarrassed at the circumstances that she could hardly bear to look up, but when she did there he was, right in front of her, impossible to avoid.

“Scott! How amazing,” she stuttered, her teeth suddenly beginning to chatter violently.

Just act normal, she admonished herself. Just behave as if it's an everyday occurrence to meet an ex-lover, the love of your life, when you're in a swimming pool in Lisbon.

She pulled herself out of the water.

“I got your email – I was on my way back to my room and I was going to reply to you there. I just cannot believe it!” Scott's incredulity was apparent in his voice and his delight-crinkled eyes.

Sarah was standing up now, acutely aware of her hair strewn everywhere, and of her faded, baggy swimsuit with the sagging elastic. If only she'd packed a decent one, she thought, before remembering that she didn't have any other costume, it was so long since it had seemed to matter what she wore to go swimming.

She studied Scott's face discreetly. There were the beginnings of slight bags under his eyes, and shallow lines across the brow that she remembered as flawless and smooth. He was fatter, but still looked fit, and his hair was the same honey brown and thick as it had ever been, his skin still the colour of a smooth hazelnut shell. His dull, charcoal grey business suit in no way masked the sex appeal he had always carried so easily. Above all, he was unmistakably Scott Calvin.

“Look at you. You look amazing.” His voice brimmed over with gladness and enthusiasm. “Absolutely amazing!”

The idea was so ridiculous that she couldn't help but smile. He moved towards her, made a half-gesture to hug her, then faltered, registering the fact that she was soaking wet.

“Yes, I wouldn't come too close,” she laughed, a high-pitched, nervous laugh. “You look far too smart in that suit, and I'm sure it's dry clean only.”

His eyes danced in the old familiar way, and her stomach lurched. “So how come, Sarah? Why here? Why now?”

Bashfulness descended on her once again. “I…I'm… I'm writing an article for a newspaper,” she managed to stutter. She bit her lip, took a breath and started again. “It's about cork. And yourself? You're here for the conference, obviously.” She answered her own question without giving him a chance to.

“Yes that's right. It's an annual event, attendance compulsory…” His words tailed away as he looked at her again, his feigned grimace turning to a complicit grin that was so well known, so intimate that she was instantly nineteen again, utterly bewitched by a boyfriend more glamorous, attractive, desired and desirable than she had ever imagined possible.

“It didn't go down too well at home – with Celina – but work is work.”

A sudden small, fizzing twist of pain knotted in her belly as he said his wife's name.

There was an awkward pause, the conversation frozen mid-stream.

“I…”

“You…”

They both spoke, and stopped, simultaneously.

“It's such a coincidence.” Scott's voice was soft and low, almost as if he were talking to himself. “I could never have imagined it.”

Sarah felt droplets of pool water gathering on her forehead and wiped her hand across her face to dispel them.

“Well, you know what they say.” Her words were glib and meaningless, blurted out to cover her confusion. “It's a small world.”

A breeze had come up now that the sun had disappeared behind the rooflines; it ruffled the surface of the pool, causing ripples to spread in ever widening circles.

“Yes.”

The breeze grew stronger. Sarah shuddered.

“Hey, you're getting cold.” Scott hesitated, surveyed the loungers for a towel, saw one a few steps away and went to get it, clumsily tripping over the base of a table as he did so.

“Careful,” exclaimed Sarah, involuntarily, and then clamped her mouth shut, wishing she hadn't drawn attention to his mishap.

He was smiling widely as he returned to her side with the neatly rolled towel. “My feet always were too big. Always getting in the way.”

Another wisp of wind brought a change of atmosphere that lingered in its wake. Scott unfurled the towel and shook it out. “Nothing's changed.”

Oh, but it has, Scott,
Sarah wanted to cry out.
So much has changed, in ways we could never have imagined. Apart from anything else, we've both grown up – and not together, which is what I dreamt of, once.

Scott wrapped the towel around her shoulders, deftly and surely, and as he did so, his face passed close to hers and briefly, their eyes met. Sarah had a sudden, ridiculous urge to grab him, hug him, kiss him. To feel his lips on hers, to taste him. As if in some unconscious attempt to stop herself, she stepped backwards, nearly falling into the pool as she did so. His arm went out, instinctively, to save her. His touch on her wrist was firm, his support solid.

Just as it had been on the night they first met, at one of those African dance and music clubs where the uneven floors were sticky with spilt drinks and covert drug deals took place in darkened corners. Raw energy mingled with undercurrents of tension between the people of many cultures who gathered there, not just Portuguese but Angolan, Brazilian, Goanese. Some came from places that Sarah had never heard of before; Soviet sponsored students from Guinea-Bissau with tins of caviar in their plastic
holdalls, young men from São Tomé with glassy dark skin and smiles so wide it seemed their faces might split apart.

She had spotted Scott early on that Friday night. Their first glance was fleeting, rippling like electricity along the zinc bar, cutting through the crowd and going straight to its target. But in just that split second, she had known. They both had.

“Watch out!” His voice, so familiar, a voice from her past that was suddenly, unbelievably, also in her present. “You don't want to go for another dip.”

The memories faded away.

“No, no I don't,” she agreed, and giggled unnecessarily. There was a pause. “Still, you're a qualified lifeguard aren't you?” ventured Sarah, to break the silence. “I'd be in good hands if I needed rescuing.”

“You're right.” Scott shrugged dismissively. “But I haven't practised those particular skills for a long time.”

“Oh well. Concentrating on other talents, I suppose…” Sarah's attempts to deal with this bizarre situation seemed, horrifyingly, to have led her now to flirt, despite being aware that she must look ridiculous; dripping wet, shivering, shabby old swimsuit doing its best to follow gravity downwards, towel drooping around her.

She attempted to pull herself together. “I need to… I mean, I ought to…get dressed. You know. Have a shower and sort myself out.”

The wind died down and everything lay still. Their eyes met again. Instantaneously, Sarah flicked hers away.

“So um, er, bye then…” she stuttered. To bring the encounter to an end suddenly seemed imperative, urgent.

“I'll probably…”

“I wondered if you wanted to…”

They were talking over each other again, their words flying out in all directions…. Sarah stopped. And Scott began again, and was asking her to meet in the bar for a drink a bit later, if she had the time, which of course she might not…but just on the off-chance.

“That would be lovely,” she replied, cutting across him, speaking too quickly and too loudly. “I…”

“Great,” he said, interrupting her in turn. “A quick one in about half an hour or so?”

Sarah laughed, slightly hysterically. “Oh yes, and the drink.” Then immediately stopped, once again cursing herself for her propensity to speak before thinking. She tweaked the ends of the towel closer around her body as a distraction.

Then looked up and saw that he was grinning, a broad, delighted, encouraging grin which turned into an enveloping bellow of laughter.

“The old ones are always the best.” Sarah gurned at him wickedly, before turning away, trying to look nonchalant. The whole situation was too absurd to be taken seriously.

“Eight o'clock, then,” Scott called after her. “Don't be late!”

“I won't,” she called back over her shoulder, sensing his eyes still upon her. And then rounded a corner and ran, as fast as the too-large hotel slippers would let her, tearing through the immaculate gardens on winding paths, racing along the corridors to her room, flinging the door open and finally falling onto her bed and burying her face in the pillow, not sure whether to laugh or cry or both.

Scott Calvin was here. They had not met for twenty years and now they were meeting for a casual drink in less than an hour. What on earth was going on?

She ran the hottest bath she could get into, took more wine from the mini bar and lay back to soak. He had been thinking of her. What did that mean?

Don't be ridiculous. It's just what people say. He's just being polite. It doesn't mean anything.

She let herself slowly sink under the water until she was fully immersed, only her knees breaking the surface. But she couldn't wash away the thoughts of him, the vision of him standing by the poolside, offering her the towel with his large, capable hands. Couldn't stop herself remembering how strong those hands were, how deft and dextrous. How good it felt to be held by them, touched by them.

She stayed in the bath until long after the steam had ceased to rise and the bubbles had settled to a thin film on the water's surface. When she got out, she realised that she had left her bath sheet outside and come back with the much smaller pool towel. The one that he had got for her, had wrapped her in, so gently. She held it up to her nostrils and inhaled, wondering if on it she would find the distinctive smell of him that had lived for so long in her memory.

But the towel released only the faintly clinical aroma of the industrial laundry, mingled with a hint of chlorine.

The hotel's really nice! she typed in a text to Hugo. I'm fine but tired. Amazing coincidence – I've met someone here I know! Scott Calvin! I'm sure I've mentioned him before. I'm going to have a quick drink with him, for old time's sake. I'll give you an update later! xxx

She sent the message. Then she read it again and cringed at the amount of exclamation marks. Just one brief encounter and she had lost the ability to write coherently. But surely, errant punctuation or no, it was better to be open and upfront about this chance reunion from the off, otherwise it might look as if she had something to hide.

Which she didn't. Obviously.

Approaching the lounge where the elegant and understated bar was located, Sarah found her terror had somewhat abated, and been replaced by a mild dose of butterflies.

You're just having a drink with an acquaintance. Someone you used to know. Relax. Enjoy it.

She spotted him straightaway. He wasn't reading a magazine or playing with his phone, trying to look cool, as if their meeting were nothing out of the ordinary. He was staring at the door, watching, waiting, whilst a pianist tinkled away at a grand piano in the corner and waitresses passed silkily by bearing trays of drinks and welcoming smiles. She stopped, momentarily concealed from view by a marble statuette of a flute-playing cherub. A wave of emotion assaulted her. She pretended to be looking in her bag, checking she had not forgotten her purse, just in case he saw her and wondered what on earth she was doing. It took a few moments for her to compose herself, to fight back the urge to cut and run.