Falling in love didn’t always bring happiness and everlasting joy. Lawrence Strachan had discovered this to his cost following the day he’d met Aurora Beauvais on the beach. It had been a coup de foudre so powerful and overwhelming his subsequent actions felt as if they were beyond his control. The last thing he’d wanted to do was break up his own happy marriage and decimate the life of Dot, whom he also loved. But it had ended up happening anyway.
He wasn’t proud of himself for having done that. But having been the instigator of so much misery, he’d at least imagined that as time passed, Dot would find another man worthy of her, and he and Aurora would carry on being a happy couple. In his more optimistic moments, he’d even been able to envisage the four of them socializing together. Okay, maybe that was pushing it, but it wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility; some couples and their previous partners managed to get along together just fine.
Except it hadn’t worked out like that, had it? There’d been no time for any of them to—
The cup slipped from Lawrence’s hand, splashing its contents across the café table. Hot coffee soaked into the newspaper he’d just bought and dripped down onto his trousers. Lawrence barely noticed; he was too stunned by the sight of the man who’d just emerged from the shop opposite.
“Oh no, look at you. How did you manage to do that?” The middle-aged waitress came bustling over with a damp cloth and a roll of paper towels. As she cleaned the table and removed the sodden Telegraph, Lawrence gazed, transfixed, across the street.
What on earth was Antoine doing back in St. Carys?
“Shall I get you another coffee, love?” Lowering her voice, the cheery waitress said, “Don’t worry; on the house.”
“Um…” As Lawrence hesitated, barely able to concentrate, he saw Antoine turn and make his way toward the esplanade. Within thirty seconds he would be out of sight. “No, don’t bother. It’s okay. Thanks anyway.” Pushing back his chair and getting clumsily to his feet, he threw down a handful of change and left the café.
His previous train of thought had been prompted by the momentary glimpse of someone who’d reminded him of Antoine entering the newsagent across the road. It hadn’t occurred to Lawrence for a moment that it could actually be him.
But it was. Eleven years after leaving Cornwall and moving back to his native France, Antoine had returned.
With absolutely no idea why he was doing it, Lawrence began to follow him. Keeping close to the shop fronts, he prepared to duck inside one of them if Antoine happened to look around. His heart was thumping inside his chest at the subterfuge; he was like James Bond with dodgy knees and hypertension.
Antoine was undeniably looking well, though. He carried himself easily and had kept himself trim. How old was he now…in his early sixties? He’d always been a stylish dresser; not too many British men of that age could carry off a pale pink linen jacket worn with a dove-gray shirt and immaculately tailored dark trousers. He had also managed to hang on to his hair, which was combed back from his tanned face. Basically, he did look like Hollywood’s idea of a secret agent.
Lawrence, who was currently wearing an old checked shirt and faded navy corduroys, stopped in his tracks as Antoine, ahead of him, paused to take a phone from his jacket pocket and speak into it. Who was he talking to? What was he doing here, anyway? And had he remarried? Presumably, after this length of time, he had met someone else.
Lurking behind a revolving rack of postcards, Lawrence glimpsed his own reflection in the window of the shop currently sheltering him from view. He pulled his stomach in, as he always did when the sight of it caught him off guard. Then the phone call ended and Antoine was on his way again.
This time there were no more interruptions. Antoine walked the length of the esplanade. At the end, Lawrence expected him to turn to the right and take the path leading down to the beach. Either that or turn left and carry on up the road to the main parking lot.
But Antoine did neither. Instead he took the footpath beyond both those turnings—the one leading up to Mariscombe House.
What?
Why?
Bemused, Lawrence watched as he disappeared from view. When a minute had passed, he took out his own phone and speed-dialed the hotel.
“Hello, Mariscombe House, how can I help you?” It was the new girl, Tula; Dot liked her staff to know how to help out on reception.
“Tula, it’s Lawrence. Listen, has a man in a pink jacket just walked into the hotel?”
“Ooh, yes, he has. Would you like to speak to him? I can pass—”
“No,” Lawrence blurted out. “No, don’t say anything. I just wondered what he was doing there. Is he meeting someone, do you know?”
“Um, no idea. He’s on his own, as far as I can tell. He’s just going up to his room,” said Tula.
“Up to his room? You mean he’s booked in?” Lawrence hadn’t been expecting this. “Who with?”
“Hang on. Let me just check. He arrived last night.” He heard the sound of the computer mouse clicking as she searched for the information. “Ah yes, here we are. Mr. Beauvais, room seventeen. No one else with him,” said Tula. “On his own.”
“And how long’s he taken the room for?”
“A week.”
“Right. Okay.” Lawrence exhaled. “Thanks.”
Clearly keen to impress with her dazzling reception skills, Tula said cheerfully, “You’re very welcome! Anytime.”
Lawrence ended the call, then turned and headed back along the esplanade.
He wondered whether Dot knew Antoine was there.
Either way, he knew he definitely needed a drink.
***
They never really went away, but Antoine’s return brought the memories flooding back in Technicolor detail. When Aurora had broken the news to her husband that she’d fallen helplessly in love with someone else, he had—understandably, perhaps—not taken it well. As Aurora herself had freely admitted, anyone looking at the pair of them would assume that if one of them was going to leave the marriage, it would be Antoine. He was a composer, intelligent, handsome, and stylish, with a faint French accent that just made him that bit more irresistible to women. Lookswise, Aurora had been more ordinary, her way with clothes more haphazard. Their marriage had been happy, but she’d known the outside world considered her to be the lucky half of the partnership.
Antoine had been both devastated and furious. He’d come to Lawrence’s home and confronted him, stating quite plainly what he thought of him. He’d said, “I would like to kill you. The only reason I won’t do it is because I don’t want to go to prison. But trust me, I wish you would die.” He’d paused, then continued, “I think that’s the only thing that would make me happy. If you were dead.”
It hadn’t been a threat, simply the honest truth. And Lawrence couldn’t blame him. He’d tried to apologize, but Antoine wasn’t interested. He’d left the house, left St. Carys, left the UK, and returned to France.
Lawrence and Aurora had moved into a seafront flat in nearby Bude and prepared to spend the rest of their lives together; now that the hard part was out of the way, they were looking forward to some happiness.
And they were happy, even though the guilt at what they’d done was overwhelming, and they were aware that after causing so much pain and grief to Antoine and Dot, they didn’t deserve to be.
The happiness, however, lasted only seven weeks. Feeling tired and indescribably unwell, Aurora took herself off to the doctor’s office for an examination and blood tests. Within days, she’d been referred to the hospital for scans and X-rays. The diagnosis hit them like a meteor crashing out of the sky. Aurora was suffering from a form of cancer that had been busy metastasizing inside her body, silently spreading from its primary site in her left lung and invading her liver. Moreover, it was advancing at speed; this wasn’t the leisurely kind of cancer that gave you time to come to terms with it.
Exploratory surgery was carried out, but there was no possibility of a cure. Aurora had lost the battle even before the first symptoms had made themselves known. Weakened and unwell, she longed to live but knew it wasn’t going to happen. The happily ever after they’d looked forward to had been wrenched away, and not just for a while, either—for good.
The ensuing weeks had been the worst kind of nightmare. Lawrence felt as if he’d forgotten how to breathe. It was like being plunged underwater and never being allowed up for air. He genuinely couldn’t begin to imagine how the rest of the world was managing to carry on as if everything was still normal. He spent every possible minute at the hospital, at Aurora’s bedside, willing her to astound the doctors and get better. Aurora accepted her fate as the punishment she deserved for being the cause of so much misery.
“You didn’t make this happen,” Lawrence told her over and over again. “If we’d never met, you would still have become ill.”
“Would I?” Her face greenish-white against the pillows, Aurora shook her head. “You think that, but you don’t know for sure.”
Lawrence was no longer sure of anything. Aurora had irrevocably changed his life for the better, and now she was changing it for the very much worse. When she held his hand and said, “God, I bet you wish you’d never met me,” he was torn in half. Because this was the woman he loved more than anything, but just seven weeks of being together before the cancer had taken her captive… Well, it was a pretty rough deal. Seven weeks simply wasn’t long enough. He’d been happy with Dot. If he hadn’t met Aurora, it wasn’t as if he’d be miserable…
Shit, maybe she was right and it was all a matter of karma, nature’s way of ensuring the sinners got their just deserts.
It was a salutary lesson for Lawrence. He’d always been a popular man, liked by all. But since abandoning equally popular Dot, he’d experienced the cold chill of disapproval from acquaintances and friends. And he’d completely understood that, accepted it as his due.
Now, though, it was almost unbearable knowing that although no one had said as much to his face, a lot of these same people would be feeling he’d gotten what he deserved, that maybe he understood how it felt to have your world ruthlessly torn apart.
As the weeks went by and Aurora’s condition worsened, the unthinkable ending drew nearer. In the end, the unthinkable became almost desirable, she was in so much pain. Antoine flew back from France and Lawrence waited outside the hospital while he visited his wife. Whatever passed between them remained private; Lawrence didn’t ask what had been said and Aurora didn’t tell him.
Was a Frenchman familiar with the expression schadenfreude? Either way, Lawrence recalled the look in Antoine’s eyes when his rival had wished him dead. Did Antoine remember that moment too?
And was the curse set to be all the more painful, with Aurora being the one to die and Lawrence himself left behind, forced to carry on without her?
She succumbed, finally, just two months after the initial diagnosis. Aurora was at peace, but for Lawrence the grief had only just begun. He hadn’t seen or been in contact with Dot, although she obviously knew what had happened; everyone in Bude and St. Carys did. And while there was sympathy for his situation, there were also still plenty of people who felt he’d been a foolish man who’d made a foolish decision and ended up—deservedly—managing to lose both the women in his life.
But time had passed and gradually he’d gotten over the worst of the grieving process. Eighteen months after Aurora’s death, Lawrence moved back to St. Carys. The week before Christmas, he bumped into Dot on the high street.
She looked thinner but was otherwise as elegantly dressed as ever, in a scarlet coat and gleaming navy boots. They were still officially married, but the third finger of her left hand was bare. Which was understandable.
The sight of her made Lawrence’s throat tighten. He had missed her so much.
“How are you doing?” said Dot.
He’d shrugged. “Well, you know, pretty dreadful really. But…can’t complain.” Because it’s no more than I deserve.
“No.” Dot hesitated, then said, “And what are you doing for Christmas?”
Lawrence shook his head and watched as a family made their way past, laughing and struggling to carry a twelve-foot Norwegian spruce. It felt like a hundred years since he’d laughed. “Same as last year. Nothing.”
It wasn’t even as if he and Aurora had happy memories of Christmas; they’d talked about sharing it, but cancer had intervened. It had never happened.
Dot looked at him. Finally she said, “I don’t have any plans either. Okay, just an idea, but do you want to come over for the day?”
“What?” He couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
“Doesn’t matter if you don’t want to. If you’d rather be on your own, that’s fine, not a—”
“No,” Lawrence blurted out before she could withdraw the offer. “I’d like to. Really, that’d be great. Thank you.”
“Right. Turn up whenever you want after midday. I’ll cook the food; you can bring the wine.” Intercepting the question on his mind, Dot said, “No presents. No funny business. I’m not trying to win you back, if that’s what you’re wondering. I just think life would probably be easier in the long run if we could get back to being friends.”
Slowly Lawrence nodded; after forty years of happy marriage, of course it would be easier. Grateful for the olive branch—and the generosity of the woman proffering it—he said, “Me too.”