It was a beautiful September evening, summer determined to outstay its welcome. They sat in the garden, which was a glorious riot of colour and scent, though the roses, which they added to every year, had blossomed in June and were now long gone.
Still there were flowers enough that bees fat with pollen could lazily dance among the petals. Birds circled overhead and if Rose listened carefully, she could hear the faint lap of the sea.
On other days, they’d dragged deckchairs through the garden and across the dunes to the beach, but it was all Edward could do to manage the short walk from the house to the little shaded spot in the garden where they liked to sit.
He only had a couple of weeks left, though neither of them knew that. He was scheduled for surgery mid-October – they’d already started planning Christmas in Palm Springs.
But no matter where they were – and by now Rose thought they must have gone round the world at least twice – at six o’clock it was time for a drink.
On birthdays and special occasions they had Bellinis, but this evening it was a gin and tonic. Rose swirled the ice in her glass, glanced around the garden, then at Edward, his face in profile, and felt entirely at peace. She was where she was happiest and with the one person who made her happier still.
‘I do love you, Edward.’ It was the simplest of truths, but she’d never said it before. Hadn’t even realised. Her love for him had crept up on her slowly, permeated right down to her marrow, and she was so used to it living there that she’d never thought to give it a name. ‘I’ve loved you for such a long time and I’ve never once told you.’
He turned his head and smiled at her. She often reminded him that he was a cradle snatcher – ‘you’re much, much older than I am’ – but now it was as if the years and the disease in him had vanished and she could see him as he’d been on the night Rainbow Corner closed. When he’d danced with her at The Savoy and kept apologising for treading on her feet. He still was a dreadful toe-stepper.
‘I love you too, my darling girl,’ he said, as naturally and as easily as if he said it all the time, though he hadn’t, not since that night when she’d thrown his ‘I love you’ back in his face.
Maybe it was also why he’d never asked her to marry him, not that Rose minded. It was a measure of just how much her parents had adored Edward that they’d never held it against him either. Then again, marriage wasn’t something they discussed. Neither were children. Or the exact nature of his war work.
There were so many things unsaid between the two of them, but in the end that didn’t matter. Just that you said what was really important at least once.
‘I’m going to tell you that I love you every day now,’ she decided. ‘Sometimes even twice, or three times.’
‘We are a pair of silly old fools, aren’t we?’ Edward sighed and then Rose got up out of her chair and draped herself very gently across his lap so she could kiss him.
His skin was warm underneath her lips and hands and she sat there with his arms around her, listening to the sound of the sea. She could have happily stayed like that for ever.