on the beach.
‘I couldn’t possibly,’ she told them now.
‘Oh, come on!’ called a jocular fellow at the back.
‘Sorry. My dress is too tight.’
This was accepted with good-natured laughter.
At least she didn’t have to mention the flaring pain in her hip. She would prefer no one knew about that.
The desserts arrived. Eva was served by the girl with the purple-streaked hair who had chatted to her earlier. She gave Eva an especially bright smile and a sly wink, as if they were great mates.
Eva usually avoided desserts and she only ate half of her crème brulée. With the speeches over, people were rising from their seats and starting to mingle again. There was self-serve coffee at one end of the bar and Eva crossed the room to collect a cup.
‘We should talk,’ a deep voice said at her elbow.
Griff’s voice. Eva almost spilled her coffee.
His expression was serious. Determined. Eva supposed he was going to grill her, ply her with questions. She was rather afraid of that clever lawyer’s mind of his. Would he try to uncover her secret?
A flood of terror made her tremble. When she turned his way, she did so slowly, hoping to appear unruffled. ‘What would you like to talk about?’
Griff’s cool smile warned her not to play games. ‘I suspect we’d both benefit from laying a few ghosts.’
She couldn’t think how to respond to this. ‘I...guess.’
‘Let’s go outside. You can bring your coffee with you.’
Eva was struggling with her hip and the high heels and she didn’t trust herself to carry a cup of hot liquid. ‘I’d prefer to drink it here.’
His expression remained unruffled. ‘As you wish. There’s no rush.’
‘Well, no, I guess not.’ In an attempt to banish her nervousness, she tried for lightness. ‘Not after twenty years.’
But with Griff standing there, waiting for their ‘talk’, she was suddenly so tense the coffee curdled in her stomach. After three sips she set the cup down.
He frowned. ‘You’re finished?’
‘Yes, thanks. Where would you like to go?’
He nodded towards a pair of glass doors that led to another, smaller, balcony. ‘We should have more privacy out there.’
Privacy with this man. Great. Just what she didn’t need, but she knew she shouldn’t refuse him. From the moment she’d decided to come back to the Bay, she’d been aware that this encounter was a possibility.
Perhaps it was time.
If only she felt ready.
As Griff opened the door for her to precede him, the only light on the balcony came from an almost full moon. They were facing the sea now and a breeze brought a flurry of salty spray. The moon shone over the surf, highlighting the silvery curl of the waves and the white froth of foam as it crashed on the pale sand.
Eva gripped the balcony railing, grateful for its support. Now, in the moonlit darkness, Griff seemed to loom larger than ever.
‘So,’ she said, turning bravely to face him. ‘What would you like to discuss?’
‘I’m sure you must know, Eva. Perhaps you’re hoping that after twenty years I’d simply overlook the way we broke up, but I’m afraid I’d like to know why you took off like that.’
She nodded, drew a deep breath. Of course she’d guessed this would be Griff’s question and she knew she must tell him the truth. If only it wasn’t so difficult, after all this time. When they were young they’d been able to talk endlessly, with an easy, trusting intimacy that would be impossible now. They’d shared everything.
Well, almost everything.
Now, they were virtually strangers.
She was tempted to use her mother as her excuse, but that would be cowardly. Although it had been her mum’s idea to take off, leaving no word.
‘I know you, Eva,’ her mother had said on that fateful night before they’d left Emerald Bay under cover of darkness, as Eva had wept and begged to go to Griff. ‘Be sensible, darling. If you try to explain what we’re doing, you’ll end up telling him everything. He might make demands and it will become way too complicated.’
Eva had tried to protest, but her mother had insisted. ‘You need to make a clean break now. You have to think of your dancing career. You have so much promise, darling. Everybody says so—your teacher, the examiners, the Eisteddfod judges. You can’t throw that away. I won’t let you.’
There had been tears in her mother’s eyes. Eva’s potential career was incredibly important to her. She’d started dressing Eva in ballet tutus when she was three years old. By the time she was eighteen, Eva’s ballet career had probably been more important to Lizzie Hennessey than it had been to Eva.
It was only much later, with the benefit of distance and maturity, that Eva had understood that her struggling single mother had been desperate to ensure that her daughter wasn’t trapped and held back, as she had been.
Eva hadn’t allowed herself to question whether she’d been wrong to listen to her mother. Of necessity, she’d clung to the belief that she had done the right thing. And her career had repaid her a thousandfold.
The wind swept her hair over her face. With shaking fingers, she brushed it away. ‘I know it was bad of us to take off like that,’ she told Griff. ‘I’ve always felt guilty about it.’
‘You were my first girlfriend,’ he said. ‘But you were also the first girl to dump me.’ He sounded less aggressive, closer to the friendly Griff of old. ‘I admit my ego took a blow.’
He stepped up to the railing, standing beside her now, with his hands deep in his trouser pockets as he looked out to sea. Eva could see his profile: his broad, intelligent forehead, his strong nose, his lips that she’d once explored with such excitement and daring.
‘I thought I must have upset you,’ he said quietly. ‘We were both virgins. At the time, you seemed keen. I know you were keen, but I’ve often wondered if... I don’t know...if I’d scared you.’
Oh, Griff, never. Tears stung Eva’s eyes. ‘That wasn’t the problem, honestly. It was—’
‘Excuse me.’
A voice brought them both swinging round. It was a girl—the waitress with the purple streaks in her hair.
Had she been sent to summon them inside? Eva wasn’t sure if she was annoyed or relieved by the interruption.
‘What is it?’ Griff snapped, making his own reaction quite clear.
‘I was hoping to speak to you both,’ the girl said, but she seemed less confident
