Chapter Twenty-Three

The Beach Hut, Present Day

The beach hut was pale against the dark cliffs and the moon reflected in the high tide, turning the cove into molten silver. They had enjoyed a leisurely dinner in a truly romantic restaurant on the outskirts of Staithes and, perhaps mellowed by the wine she had consumed, Lissy had been happy to carry through Stef’s suggestion of a walk on the beach before he headed back to Whitby. They were both barefoot – part of her dreams had now been realised and she thought it ironic to think it had happened here, and not in Cornwall.

‘I didn’t know how beautiful it was here of an evening.’ Stef drew Lissy towards him and she didn’t resist. ‘You have a wonderful view from the house. And the beach hut. I think it looks very special tonight. There is just something about it. Shall we visit it and see if there is magic there?’

‘Magic. That sounds lovely.’ She moved closer to him. ‘I hope I left our ghost at Sea Scarr. He wasn’t scary, exactly, but I don’t think he needs to bother us down here again, do you?’

Stef looked at her curiously. ‘So you think he was a ghost then. I wasn’t far behind you, and I too felt a presence.’

‘Well, I don’t want to dwell on it. Whatever it was up there, I’m glad we ran away.’ Lissy shivered. ‘I felt we were intruding. Come on, take my mind off it. Let’s go and look for magic in the beach hut. Although I don’t know what I’d expect to find in there that’s magical. It’s such a tiny little place.’ They had arrived at the small white building, and Stef held her hand now, presumably so she didn’t dash off ahead.

‘I’ll show you it all,’ said Stef smiling. ‘But you have to close your eyes.’

‘Really?’ She looked up at him. ‘What for?’

‘Because if you don’t, it will simply spoil the magic.’

Lissy did as he’d asked and was aware of his rough hand on hers as the door clicked open. He guided her inside the little building, and she breathed in the faint salty smell of the beach mingled with the woody tones of the painted furniture. She was aware, also, of a fizzing that she hadn’t felt for so long; the electricity that was sparking back into life through her body, through her skin, as she sensed how close he was to her.

There was a tiny click from somewhere to her left, then he spoke: ‘There, mia cara. You may look.’ His voice was a whisper in her ear, and she felt a tingling down the side of her cheek as his breath touched her. ‘Your magic. All yours.’

She opened her eyes and was unable to move.

All around the place were twinkling lights – ropes and ropes of them, shining like little stars, draped over the picture rails and strung from the ceiling; running across the back of the couch and wound up between the banisters of the staircase, all the way up to the mezzanine floor and continuing along it.

‘Pretty, yes?’ asked Stef. Lissy turned towards him, astonished to see that he looked embarrassed and unsure. He was, almost, like a little boy shuffling from side to side, waiting for approval.

The idea was so incongruous that Lissy found herself half-laughing, half-crying. ‘You did this for me?’

‘I did,’ replied Stef. ‘But that isn’t all. Come with me.’ He took her hand and drew her into the tiny lounge. On the couch, the couch that Grace had been playing on, was a wicker hamper. ‘Open it. Go on, It’s for you also.’

‘What is it?’ asked Lissy.

‘Only the very best. Fortnum and Mason’s best. And it includes your favourite champagne and your floral hot chocolate – I asked them to make it up specially.’

‘Stef!’ Lissy was stunned. ‘I can’t believe you did this!’

Stef shrugged. ‘I needed to do something.’ He guided her gently to the seat, and produced two crystal glasses out of the hamper. The twinkly lights hit off the engravings on the glasses, and bounced sparkles around the room. ‘I can’t just follow you around and annoy you and hope you take the time to notice me.’

There was a satisfying pop as the cork came out of the champagne and Stef poured two drinks. He handed one to Lissy and she hesitated for a second before burying her nose in the glass, as she always did, enjoying the fizzy sound and the sensation of the bubbles bursting against her nose.

‘Can I interest you in a chocolate truffle?’ he asked, ever so politely, ‘or a biscuit?’

Lissy giggled, shakily. ‘Either would be perfect. I think I’ve walked off my dinner by now. But really. What have you done all of this for? What are you trying to prove?’

‘I’m trying to prove that I still love you.’ His eyes burned into hers, and she found she couldn’t look away. The twinkly lights were reflected in his irises and she blinked, mesmerised. ‘I never stopped loving you,’ he continued, ‘so I’m also trying to say that I’m sorry and I was very stupid and I have suffered from that stupidity for seven years. Kerensa and I are no longer together, as I told you. It was never meant to last, I could see that, and I realised very soon after she came to live with me that it was not right. But I was stubborn and I couldn’t admit that to anybody properly; not even to myself. And in my heart, I was punishing you for ending it with me, for refusing to listen to me, but you had every right – every right on earth to do what you did. I behaved disgracefully and I’ve paid for it ever since.’

Lissy stiffened. ‘Did you marry her? Because if you married her—’

‘No!’ Stef held his hands up in his defence, shaking his head vehemently. ‘No. I didn’t marry her. We talked about marriage, and I kept making excuses not to get married. But it was when she began to mention children that I realised I couldn’t go on with it. Elisabetta, it is embarrassing and I will forever hate myself, but it is done. It is finished.’

‘So – when did you split up exactly?’ asked Lissy, almost dreading his response.

‘Last year.’

The answer surprised her and she checked herself. ‘Last year? So you’ve had time to think about it? You haven’t just done this on the rebound?’

‘I almost did,’ admitted Stef. He looked away. ‘But I talked myself out of it. I told myself it would not be fair on you to jump out of her bed and into yours and I made myself stay in Italy. But I couldn’t stop thinking about you. Then eventually, I swallowed my stupid pride and asked your brother for advice.’ Suddenly, he grinned and looked back at her. His gaze was like a jolt of adrenalin as he continued to speak. ‘Jon told me he was going to do this project with his friend Simon, and I invited myself to Whitby. Between us, we concocted this story of my helping him out. But really, he helped me out.’

‘How?’ Lissy was staring at him, hypnotised by his voice as he tried to explain what had happened. She’d barely noticed that he had slipped into his native tongue and she was answering, just as fluently, in Italian.

‘Who do you think prepared all of this for me?’ he whispered, indicating the lights. ‘And the hamper had to be delivered somewhere, didn’t it?’ There was a smile hovering around his lips, and Lissy thought back to the day they’d just passed.

‘When?’ she asked. ‘When did Jon do it?’

‘When we were out today. That was why I received that call in Staithes. I wanted to know it had all happened, and he rang to tell me it was almost done, and could I just tell him where the champagne glasses should go. No wonder I looked guilty!’

‘But Becky didn’t say!’

‘Becky didn’t know,’ said Stef. ‘I knew she’d tell you and I wanted it to be a surprise. She thinks he’s been doing a location shoot today. She’ll know by now it was an untruth but I’m sure, under the circumstances, she will forgive him. Lissy, you have killed me these last few years. Not a day has gone by when I haven’t thought about you or wondered how I could contact you. I had to do it somehow, I had to try and win you back. I had to let your heart speak to you in the moment and tell you what it wanted.’

‘I can’t believe Jon did all this and said nothing. I can’t believe you planned all this! Sometimes, I could hate you, Stef, I really could. I hated you that day in Cornwall.’

‘I know. Looking back, I hate myself. But if you’d only let me explain that day, it wouldn’t have been too late. Nothing had really happened then. Still, no point thinking about it now. But what about tonight?’ Stef lowered his voice and moved closer to her. ‘Do you hate me tonight, Elisabetta?’ He bent his head down to her upturned face and brushed her lips with his.

‘No,’ replied Lissy quietly. ‘I don’t hate you tonight. I think I love you – I absolutely do. I don’t think I’ve ever stopped loving you. I wasn’t admitting what we had to myself at all. I told people you were a summer fling, I kept saying it meant nothing and I danced off with other men, just to prove a point. But nobody could hold me – not one person.

‘I know people think I’m vain and shallow and brittle, but none of those men meant anything. I’m an awful person, I really am. I kept saying I didn’t care and Becky despaired of me, and even Simon, when he got to know me. He told me I had to accept that you and I were meant for one another. God knows what Cori would have made of it all if I’d taken the time to keep in touch with her after Uni. Only I didn’t and that’s another awful thing about me. But I’m sure Simon has told her about you anyway.’ She laughed, unamused at her failings. ‘It was always you. But you see, before I met you, I thought I was in love with someone. Then it turned out he was married and seeing you with her just brought it all back.’ She shivered.

That had been another terrible summer – the summer before she met Stef. In her mind, she had cheapened herself by sleeping with a married man. She had accepted his lies and his stories and been taken in by his tales – about how he had left his wife and how they hadn’t slept with each other for years and about how she kept the children away from him …

Then she mentioned it to Becky, who asked, quite innocently, why he kept coming to her house and why she’d never been to his home. Why he could only see her at certain times of the week and why she could never contact him by phone.

Looking back, she felt stupid; she felt absolutely ridiculous. How had she not seen it? How had she, Lissy de Luca, been taken in by that? She’d been well and truly fooled by him.

And of course he was married. She’d followed him one evening, and seen him go home to a big, detached house with two cars on the drive and a play-house in the garden. She’d seen a pregnant woman come to the door flanked by a toddler and a school-age child. She’d seen him kiss the woman, and kiss the children, and walk inside laughing.

A bit more research confirmed that it was indeed his wife, and Lissy knew that she, Lissy, was a fool and an idiot and clearly not worthy of a decent relationship.

‘You had good cause to be stubborn and hate me,’ replied Stef. ‘I wasted your time, my time and Kerensa’s. I am so sorry.’ He laid his forehead against hers and she closed her eyes, feeling his long eyelashes brush her skin as he nuzzled in. She breathed deeply and inhaled the warm, spicy scent of his aftershave.

‘I’m very pleased you don’t hate me tonight,’ he murmured, ‘but don’t make a decision just yet. Don’t forgive me until you see one more thing to prove I love you and I never stopped thinking of you. Shall I show you a picture of a girl in a red dress?’

‘A girl in a red dress?’ Lissy pulled away and stared at him, images of their perfect summer scrolling through her mind. ‘I had a red dress.’

‘You did,’ replied Stef. ‘So would you like to see the picture? Unfortunately, it isn’t downstairs. I had to hide it away on Saturday, thank the Lord for my portfolio.’

Lissy felt her lips curl into a smile. ‘Is it upstairs?’ she asked. ‘Upstairs in the bedroom, maybe?’

‘I believe it is,’ replied Stef, quite seriously. ‘I do think that is where I last saw it.’

‘Then I think I would like to see it.’

‘I think I would too.’ He moved away, just far enough so he could stand up, put his glass down and gently remove hers from her grasp. Then he took her by the hand and led the way up the steep little staircase, lit with stars.

In the bedroom, Lissy saw the photograph laid exactly in the middle of the double bed. The red of the model’s dress was startling against the crisp, white drifts of sheets and pillows, and she picked the photograph up, holding the frame almost reverently.

It was exactly as he had said; a girl standing on a rocky plateau, staring out to sea. Her hair blew around her face, and the set of her chin was stubborn as she raised her head to the horizon. Far beyond her, the sea stretched out in a sparkling azure carpet, a suggestion of ships bobbing about on the water, and a flock of gulls soaring up into the heavens.

‘Do you like it?’ Stef asked.

‘It’s me,’ she replied, quietly. ‘It’s like Harold Knight’s Bathing Pool. Just like it.’ She lifted her hand and traced the figure with her fingertip. ‘I look happy,’ she said eventually. ‘It looks as if nothing can spoil the future.’

‘The photograph is indeed full of hope.’ Stef took the frame from her and looked at it. He frowned a little as if he was inwardly criticising his work. ‘Still, it is one of my best, I think. That and your new Miranda picture.’

‘That’s because of the model.’ Lissy looked up at Stef and felt that yearning grow that she had fought against for seven years. Nobody had ever come close to him. Nobody ever would. She’d spent her time meddling in her friends’ relationships and matchmaking like there was no tomorrow – just to stop thinking about what she had failed to achieve for herself. She had built walls, moats and barriers – you name it. Nobody, now, knew the real Lissy; the happy, generous, less-than-perfect girl she was inside. They just knew the apparently spoiled, selfish girl who seemingly craved perfection and order. But she wasn’t like that – not really. She was just trying to protect herself. And Stef was the only one who’d ever come close to finding the real Lissy she’d buried so deeply, so many years ago.

She was damned if she went ahead with this, and cursed if she didn’t. Stef had once told her he had Gypsy blood somewhere along the line. She didn’t know if she had – her father had never told her that was the case – and she couldn’t predict the future. She didn’t know which way the dice would fall and God knew she didn’t have a crystal ball; but was it worth the risk? Was Stef worth the risk?

She made a decision. ‘Put the picture down, Stef,’ she commanded quietly.

Startled, he obeyed, placing the photograph on the bedside table as Lissy looked up at the skylights and saw the stars framed perfectly in the glass rectangles. ‘Starlight,’ she said. ‘Rossetti’s old Sea Spell planisphere is all above us. His star chart. It makes me feel very insignificant.’

‘Insignificant?’ Stef moved towards her, and lifted a length of hair from her forehead. He brushed it to one side, letting his hand linger for a moment. ‘You could never be insignificant.’

‘We are all insignificant compared to that place up there,’ said Lissy, her attention not at all on the stars anymore. ‘We can see constellations and galaxies and other worlds from here. It makes whatever we do down here seem like it matters very little.’

‘It matters to me’ Stef traced the curve of her shoulder and ran his finger down her arm. The sensations shot fireworks around her body. ‘It matters so much. It matters that I lost you for seven years.’

His hand had found her waist and was drawing her closer to him, her hands reaching out for him, her body answering his. Lissy found that it mattered very much to her too, although there was no longer any time or space for words.