if she hadn’t been so bone-weary. Maybe in an ordinary airline seat, by holding onto the back of the seat in front of her to pull herself up, she could have managed it. Then again, she realised, maybe if she’d thought to undo her seat belt she could have done it. Damn.
‘What is it?’ he said, when she didn’t follow him.
‘Can you take Sam for a moment? My seat belt’s still done up.’
Leo turned into a statue right before her eyes, rigid and unblinking as he stared down at her restless child. And if she wasn’t mistaken, that look she saw in his eyes was fear.
‘Take him?’
‘Yes,’ she said, her hands under his arms, ready to hand him over. ‘Just for a second. I just need to undo my seat belt.’
‘I…’
‘I’ll give you a hand,’ said one of the cabin attendants, slipping past the stunned Leo. ‘I’ve been secretly hoping for a cuddle of this gorgeous boy.’
She took Sam from her and swung him around, jogging him on her hip so that he stopped grizzling, instead blinking up at her with his big dark eyes, plump lips parted. ‘You are gorgeous, aren’t you? You’re going to be a real heartbreaker, I can tell.’ And then to Eve, ‘How about I carry him for you? I’m probably more used to the motion of the plane.’ Eve smiled her thanks, retrieving Sam’s bear from the seat as Leo remembered how to move and led the way.
‘There you go,’ the attendant said a few moments later, as she peeled back the covers and laid the drowsy child down. ‘Press this button,’ she said, pointing to a console on the side table, ‘if there’s anything else I can help you with.’ And with a brisk smile to them both and one last lingering look at Sam, she was gone.
‘Thank you for thinking of this,’ Evelyn said, sitting down alongside her son and tucking his bear under his arm. And then, because she felt bad about the things she’d said to him earlier and without taking her eyes from Sam, she said, ‘I’m sorry for what I said earlier. I had no right.’
‘Forget it,’ he said, his velvet voice thick with gravel. ‘For the record, you were probably right. Now, there’s an en suite through that door,’ he continued, and she looked over her shoulder, surprised to see a door set so cleverly into the panelling that she’d missed it as she’d looked around.
‘Oh, I thought that was the bathroom we passed on the way. Next to the galley.’
‘That serves the other suite.’
‘Wow,’ Eve said, taking it all in—the wide bed, the dark polished timber panelling and gilt-edged mirror and adding it to what she’d already seen, the dining table and spacious lounge. ‘Incredible. A person could just about live in one of these things, couldn’t they?’
‘I do.’
Her head swung back. ‘When you’re travelling, you mean?’
‘You know my diary, Evelyn. I’m always travelling. I live either in the plane or in some hotel somewhere.’
‘So where’s home?’
He held out his arms. ‘This is home. Wherever I am is home.’
‘But you can’t live on a plane. Everyone has a home. You must have family somewhere.’ She frowned, thinking about his voice and the lack of any discernable accent. Clearly he had Mediterranean roots but his voice gave nothing away. ‘Where do you come from?’
Something bleak skated across his eyes as he looked at his watch. ‘You’re obviously tired and I’m keeping you both. Have a good sleep.’
He turned to leave then, turned back, reaching into his pocket. ‘Oh, you’d better have this back.’ He set the tiny box on the bedside table. Eve blinked at it, already knowing what it held.
‘They extended the loan?’
He gave a wry smile. ‘Not exactly. But it’s yours to keep afterwards.’
‘You bought it?’
‘It looks good on you. It matches your eyes.’
She looked from the box to the man, still stroking her son’s back, aware of his soft breathing as he settled into a more comfortable sleep. Thank heavens for the reality of Sam or she could easily think she was dreaming. ‘What is this?’ she said, mistrustful, the smouldering sparks of their earlier confrontation glowing brightly, fanned by this latest development. ‘Some kind of bribe so I behave properly all weekend?’
‘Do I need it to be?’
‘No. I’m here, aren’t I? And so I’m hardly likely to make a scene and reveal myself as some kind of fraud. But I’m certainly not doing it for your benefit, just like I’m not doing it for any financial gain. I just don’t want to let Maureen down. She’s had enough people do that recently, without me adding to their number.’
‘Suit yourself,’ he said, his voice sounding desolate and empty. ‘But if you change your mind, feel free to consider it your parting trinket. And just like you said, you won’t even need to post it to yourself. So efficient.’
And then he was gone, leaving only the sting of his parting words in his wake. She kicked off her shoes and crawled into the welcoming bed, sliding her arm under Sam’s head and pulling him in close. She kissed his head, drinking deeply of his scent and his warm breath in an attempt to blot out the woody spice of another’s signature tones.
She was so confused, so tired. Sleep, she told herself, knowing that after a late night of sexual excesses followed by today’s tension, what she really needed was to sleep. But something tugged at her consciousness and refused to let go as his words whirled and eddied in her mind, keeping her from the sleep she craved so much as she tried to make sense of what Leo had said.
A heart of stone she’d accused him of, and when she’d apologised, he’d told her she was probably right. She shivered just thinking how forlorn he’d looked. How lost.
A man with a stone for a heart. A man with no home.
A man with everything and yet with nothing.
And a picture flashed in her mind—the photographic print she’d seen in Leo’s suite before dinner last night.
She’d been looking for a distraction at the time, looking for something to pretend interest in if only so she didn’t have to look at him, so her eyes would not betray how strongly she was drawn to him. Only she hadn’t had to feign interest when she’d seen it, a picture from the 1950s, a picture of a riverbank and a curving row of trees and a park bench set between.
Something about the arrangement or the atmosphere of that black and white photograph had jagged in her memory at the time, just as it struck a chord now. It was the old man sitting all alone on that park bench, hunched and self-contained, and sitting all alone, staring out over the river.
A lonely man.
A man with no family and nowhere to call home.
A man with nothing.
And
