“What do you mean, it doesn’t matter?” I stare at him in disbelief. “Of course it matters! I ruined everyone’s summer! I ruined this business! It’s awful!”
I feel ill with guilt. And more than that—I feel as if I’ve been wrong, stupidly wrong, this whole time. All these years. I’ve been cherishing the wrong memory. Yes, I made a difference that night—but it was a disastrous difference. I could have killed someone. I could have killed lots of people. I’m not the woman I thought I was. I’m not the woman I thought I was.
I give a sudden little sob. It feels as though everything’s fallen apart.
“Should I tell them? Should I confess everything?”
“For God’s sake, Lottie,” says Ben impatiently. “Of course you shouldn’t. Get over it. It was fifteen years ago. No one was hurt. No one cares.”
“I care!” I say in shock.
“Well, you should stop. You go on and on about that bloody fire—”
“No, I don’t!”
“Yes, you do.”
Something inside me snaps.
“Well, you go on and on about sailing!” I shout, stung. “Where did all that come from?”
We glare at each other in a kind of shocked uncertainty. It’s as though we’re sizing each other up for a game but aren’t sure of the rules. At last, Ben launches in with a fresh salvo.
“Basically, how can I trust anything you say anymore?” he says.
“What?” I recoil in utter shock.
“You didn’t nurse me through the flu, but you let me think you did.” His gaze is unrelenting. “Why would anyone do that?”
“I was … confused.” I gulp. “I’m sorry, OK?”
Ben’s expression doesn’t alter. Sanctimonious bastard.
“Well, OK.” I launch a counterattack. “Since we’re doing home truths, can I ask how you’re planning to sail a season in the Caribbean when we’re moving to France?”
“We might move to France,” he retorts impatiently. “We might not. We were only knocking a few ideas around. Jesus!”
“We weren’t knocking ideas around!” I stare at him in horror. “We were making plans! I was basing my whole life on them!”
“Everything OK?” Sarah rejoins us on the veranda, and Ben instantly switches on his charming, lopsided smile.
“Great!” he says, as though nothing’s happened. “We’re just chilling out.”
“More coffee? Or Scotch?”
I can’t answer her. I’m realizing the awful truth: I’m basing my whole life on this guy sitting in front of me. This guy with his charming smile and easy manner who suddenly seems alien and unfamiliar and just wrong, like a guest bedroom in someone else’s house. Not only do I not know him, I don’t understand him, and I’m afraid I don’t much like him.
I don’t like my husband.
It’s like a clanging in my ears. A death knell. I have made a monumental, humongous, terrifying mistake.
I have an instinctive, desperate longing for Fliss, but at the same time I realize I can never, never admit this to her. I’ll have to stay married to Ben and pretend everything’s OK till the end of my days. It’s too embarrassing otherwise.
OK. So that’s my fate. I feel quite calm about it. I married the wrong man and must simply live with it in misery forever. There’s no other way.
“… great place for a honeymoon,” Sarah’s saying as she sits down. “Are you having a good time?”
“Oh yeah,” says Ben sarcastically. “Really great. Super.” He flicks an antagonistic look at me, and I bristle.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Well, we’ve hardly been enjoying the usual ‘honeymoon pleasures,’ have we?”
“That’s not my fault!”
“Who turned me down this morning?”
“I was waiting for the cove! We were supposed to be doing it at the cove!”
I can see that Sarah is uncomfortable, but I can’t stop myself. I feel as if I’m boiling over.
“There’s always some excuse,” Ben snarls.
“I’m not making excuses!” I exclaim, absolutely livid. “What, you think I don’t want to … you know?”
“I don’t know what to think!” Ben throws back furiously. “But we haven’t, and you don’t seem bothered about it! You do the math!”
“I am bothered about it!” I yell. “Of course I’m bothered!”
“Wait,” says Sarah, looking warily from Ben to me. “You guys haven’t …?”
“There hasn’t been the opportunity,” says Ben tightly.
“Wow.” Sarah breathes out, looking incredulous. “That’s … unusual for a honeymoon.”
“Our room was messed around,” I explain succinctly, “and Ben got drunk and we were stalked by butlers and I had an allergic reaction and basically—”
“It’s been a nightmare.”
“Nightmare.”
We’re both slumped in gloom, our energy gone.
“Well,” says Sarah with a twinkle. “We’ve got empty rooms upstairs. Beds. Condoms, even.”
“Seriously?” Ben lifts his head. “There’s a bed upstairs? A private double bed that we could use? You have no idea how we’ve wanted to hear that.”
“Loads of them. We’re half empty.”
“This is great! Great!” Ben’s spirits have zoomed up. “We can do it right here at the guest house! Where we first met! Come on, Mrs. Parr, let me ravish you.”
“I won’t listen,” jokes Sarah.
“You can join in if you like!” says Ben, then adds to me quickly, “Joke. Joke.”
He holds out his hands to me, his smile as endearing as it’s ever been. But the magic isn’t working. The sparkle has gone.
There’s silence for what seems like forever. My mind is a maelstrom. What do I want? What do I want?
“I don’t know,” I say after a long pause, and hear Ben inhale sharply.
“You don’t know?” He sounds as though he’s at the end of his tether. “You don’t fucking know?”
“I … I have to take a walk.” Abruptly, I push back my chair and stride away before he can say anything else.
I head round the back of the guest house and up the scrubby hill behind. I can see the new hostel—a concrete-and-glass building plonked in the space where the guys used to play football. I stride straight past it and keep walking down the hillside till I can’t see it anymore. I’m in a little dip in the land, surrounded by olive trees, with a derelict hut that I dimly remember from the old days. There’s rubbish here too—old cans and crisp packets and the remains of some pita bread. I stare at it, feeling a swell of hatred for whoever left it here. On impulse, I go round the small clearing, picking up all the trash, working with a burst of energy. There isn’t a rubbish bin, but I gather it together and put it next to a large rock. My life might be a mess, but I can clear a patch of land, at least.
When I’m done, I sit on the rock and stare ahead, not wanting to visit my thoughts. They’re too confusing and scary. The sun is beating on my head and I can hear the distant bleating of goats. It makes me smile reminiscently. Some things haven’t changed.
After a while, the sound of puffing makes me turn my head. A blond woman in a pink sundress is climbing up the hill. She sees me on the rock, smiles, and heads toward it gratefully.
“Hi,” she says. “Can I—”
“Go ahead.”
“Hot.” She wipes her forehead.
“Very.”
“Are you here to look at the ruins? The ancient ruins?”
“No,” I say apologetically. “I’m just hanging out. I’m on my honeymoon,” I add, as an excuse.
I vaguely remember people talking about the ruins in my gap year. We all intended to go and look at them, but in the end none of us ever bothered.