Best of Fiona Harper

‘The knot in my bikini top won’t come undone.’

‘Come here.’ She turned Kat to face the other way with the same kind of deft handling that she had used when making Chloe stand still to have her hair brushed. As Ellie set to work on the knot she couldn’t help noticing the angry pink on Kat’s shoulders.

‘You look like you’ve caught the sun, despite the lotion you slathered on.’

‘Great. And I’ve got to do it all over again tomorrow.’

Ellie released the tangle in the bikini top straps and stood back outside the car as Kat finished changing, leaving the door slightly ajar so she could catch her conversation.

‘The director will probably have me snorkelling with sharks or something,’ Kat said with a tired laugh.

‘I’m sure Mark would have something to say about that.’

‘He’s great, isn’t he?’

Ellie tried not to comment for fear of incriminating herself. She made what she hoped was an ambiguous noise to cover all eventualities, but knew she’d failed when Kat slid the door open for Ellie to climb in. Kat had obviously absorbed some of Mark’s mannerisms while she’d been working with him, because that smirk was pure Wilder. Ellie busied herself by doing up her seat belt.

Kat leaned across and whispered in a conspiratorial manner, ‘Don’t worry. Your secret is safe with me.’

Ellie’s eyes jumped from Kat to the back of Rufus’s head as he drove the car out of the car park.

‘Don’t worry about him, Ellie. Rufus knows all my secrets and his lips are sealed—aren’t they, Rufus?’

Rufus agreed by remaining silent, his thick neck motionless.

‘See?’

Ellie groaned. Was she really so transparent that every passing stranger could read the contents of her head?

‘I trust Mark one hundred percent,’ Kat said, giving her a meaningful look. ‘Some managers sign up young talent and work them like crazy until they drop. Then it’s on to the next fresh young thing. But Mark’s not like that. He always looks after me.’

Kat looked down at her lap. ‘I just split up from my boyfriend. I thought he was perfect. They do say love is blind, don’t they?’

Ellie squeezed her hand softly. Kat sniffed.

‘It’s hard to get over it when I see pictures of him in the papers almost every day. On a beach with some girl. In a nightclub with some other girl. At a premiere with—you get the picture, right? But Mark has been great. I can’t count the number of times he’s handed me tissues as I told him the latest sob story.’ A fat tear rolled down her cheek and she sighed and looked out of the window at the lush tropical scenery. ‘Sometimes I wish I could run away for a bit and have a little time to myself to get over it. But just when I think I’m on my own, bam! There’s a telephoto lens sticking out the bushes. I can see the headlines already: “Kat’s Secret Anguish Over Split.”’

Ellie felt her own eyes grow wet. Mark was right. Kat was a great girl, and she lived a difficult life for a seventeen-year-old. When she spoke, there was a croaky edge to her voice.

‘My husband used give me a piece of advice that I’m going to pass on to you—’

Kat jumped round to face her, eyes stretching wide open.

‘You’re married!’

‘I was married. I’m not now,’ Ellie said quickly. ‘Long story. Anyway, Sam used to tell me that life should never feel small. I’m a bit of a tortoise by nature, I’m afraid, much happier if I’m all tucked in inside my shell, where I’m safe and warm. But I’m starting to remember that safe and warm can be incredibly dull and lonely. Sometimes we’ve just got to have the courage to step out and live, no matter what happens.’ She turned to look Kat in the eye. ‘I can see that kind of strength in you. You will get through this.’

They hugged as far as the seat belts would allow, then Kat shifted in her seat and stared out the window.

‘What happened to…to your…? Did you get a divorce?’

Ellie tried to eliminate any trace of emotion in her voice. ‘No. He died.’

Kat’s head snapped round. An involuntary hand covered her mouth, trying to catch the words that had already escaped.

‘And here’s me snivelling about a man who doesn’t deserve my tears…’

Ellie’s smile was braver than she felt. ‘It’s okay.’

‘When did it…? I mean, how did he…?’

‘He and my daughter were killed in a car accident a few years ago.’ Ellie glanced down at the date function on her watch. ‘In fact, it will be exactly four years in a week’s time.’

A tear ran down Kat’s face. ‘Oh, Ellie!’

‘Don’t you start!’ She pressed the heels of her hands into her own soggy eyes. ‘Now you’ve got me going.’

A small noise from the front seat made them both look up. Did she really see Rufus dab a finger under his eye?

‘Does Mark know?’

Ellie nodded. ‘About my family? Yes.’

‘No, I mean about next Friday.’

Ellie shook her head as the car pulled up under the canopied front awning of their hotel. Rufus got out of the car, leaving it to the valet, and headed round to open Kat’s door for her.

Kat continued, despite Ellie’s shaking head. ‘You should tell him—you ought to, Ellie. He’s really sweet and supportive. You know, he even postponed an important business trip to come to an awards thing a couple of months ago. I was petrified—more of winning than of sinking into the background—and Mark cancelled everything to be there for me. You could do with a friend like that right now.’

Ellie had no chance to respond as Rufus opened the door and bundled Kat through the hotel lobby before anyone could mob her. Ellie followed in their wake, taking advantage of the invisible path before it was filled by holidaymakers and bellboys with trolleys. They walked out into the hotel gardens and Kat headed for her cool white cabin with its low tiled roof and wraparound veranda. Ellie stood alone on the terrace steps and watched their progress. Just before the mismatched pair disappeared behind a clump of bushes lining the path, Ellie saw Kat mouth a message to her: Tell him!

Tell him? Tell him what, exactly? There was so much to choose from.

Tell him it was the first time the dreaded anniversary hadn’t filled her with panic? That something had made it different this year, and that he was the something? There was too much to say, and most of it needed to be left unsaid.

She weaved her way back through the bustling lobby, confident in the knowledge that no paparazzi were going to be somersaulting from the light fittings in order to snap her picture, thank goodness.

The yellow umbrellas by the pool were calling to her. Time to get intimately acquainted with an outlandish cocktail with pineapple bits and paper parasols. She marched up to the poolside bar and ordered one that came in a glass the size of a small goldfish bowl.

The thick icy liquid struggled its way up the straw and she aimlessly watched the tanned bodies diving into the pool.

Kat was right. Mark was sweet and loyal and dependable—absolutely nothing like her first impressions of him. She’d been so blinkered. But now…Now she could see it all.

It reminded her of the visual neglect she’d experienced for a couple of months following the accident. For a while she’d only been aware of half the things in her field of vision. The weird thing was she hadn’t even realised anything was wrong. But she’d found reading confusing, because when she’d read a magazine she’d only seen half of each sentence on the page. And she’d only washed one side of her face. When the nurses had realised they’d developed strategies to help, and gradually, as her brain had started to heal itself, she’d been able to process information from both sides of her visual field again.

Why and how had she chosen to see only half of Mark? And only negative things too? Ellie put her glass down on the bar. She’d made up her mind about him, set its trajectory, before she’d even met him. Her thought patterns had got stuck in one of their grooves yet again.

But now she saw all of him…

Oh.

And she saw all of herself too—all the things she felt for him.

A jumble of images, sensations and smells hit her all at once. As if every moment she’d spent with Mark flashed before her eyes. All her blinkers dropped away and she felt as if she was floating, with nothing left to anchor her to cold, hard reality.

It was quite possible she was desperately in love with him. How could she not have known?

And how had this happened in the first place? He was nothing like Sam, and she’d always expected that happiness only came in that size and shape. How would it work with someone totally different? Could it work? Their lives were so different. Could she find joy in his fast-moving, flashbulb-popping world?

Talking to Kat earlier had stretched her conceptions of what being rich, successful and famous was like, had given her a fresh look at life from her side of the lens. Kat was surprisingly human. In fact she was just like thousands of other seventeen-year-olds who cried into their pillows every night because they’d fallen for the wrong guy.

Maybe it wasn’t all as impossible as it seemed. Maybe she could have a future with Mark. Everybody needed love, whether they were rich or poor, somebody or nobody.

Her head swam. Too much pineapple-rum stuff on an empty stomach. This was no time to be thrashing this problem out.

What she needed was a clear head—and a shower.

And with that thought she plopped the straw back into the half-full cocktail glass and walked through the gardens to her cabin, thinking that even if she never qualified for the former she could definitely manage the latter.

A knock on the half-open slatted door of the cabin caused Ellie to jump off the sofa she’d been dozing on. For a second her mind was blank and she was totally in the present, hardly aware of where she was and what she’d been doing to make her so sleepy.

There was another knock, and she swivelled to face the veranda. She knew it was Mark standing out there, knew it in a way that had nothing to do with the height and shape of his silhouette and everything to do with the way her skin prickled in anticipation.

‘Come in,’ she called out, and then realised too late that she’d been fresh out of the shower when she’d collapsed on the sofa and was still dressed in her old pink robe. Too late to do anything about it now; he was already pushing the door fully open. She tried to smooth her damp hair down, and pulled at the edges of her robe to get rid of the gap.

‘I…er…’ He stopped and swallowed. Where was the carefree, free and easy Mark Wilder banter? Probably evaporated in the heat. He tried again. ‘I wondered if…if you’d like to grab some dinner?’

‘Oh. Okay. That would be lovely.’

Although they’d finished early, the third and final day of shooting had left her absolutely ravenous. On the previous couple of evenings they’d joined Kat and some of her entourage in the rather trendy hotel restaurant. Ellie had enjoyed the gourmet food, but had felt a bit superfluous to requirements.

‘I’ll just go and get dressed,’ she said, pulling herself to her feet.

She wasn’t really in the mood for sitting on the sidelines of another round of industry chat and gossip, but the only alternative was sitting alone in her room, and at least this way she got to be with Mark.

As she emerged from her bedroom, wearing a simple long skirt and spaghetti-strap top, she glanced at the clock. ‘It’s only four-thirty. Aren’t we a bit early for dinner?’

‘I’ve been up since six this morning and I’m starving,’ Mark said. ‘I don’t know about you?’

Ellie nodded enthusiastically.

‘Anyway, there’s something I want you to see first.’

Instead of heading for the hotel restaurant, Mark set off in a different direction, his long legs helping him to stride ahead. She was too busy just keeping up with him to ask questions. He led them into the hotel car park, hopped into a Jeep with a driver at the wheel and sat there, grinning at her, as if he’d done the cleverest thing in the world.

Ellie put her hands on her hips. ‘Where are we going?’

She didn’t add alone together.

‘I’m taking you to the best place on the island.’

Ellie looked down at her floral-print skirt and flip-flops. She wasn’t really dressed for fine dining. And she was too tired to be on her best behaviour. When she felt all fuzzyheaded like this she knew she was apt to forget words and bump into things more easily.

He patted the seat beside him and gave her a meaningful look. Ellie climbed in, too tired to be bothered to walk back down to her cabin, flop onto her sofa and dial Room Service. At least doing it Mark’s way she wasn’t going to have to use her legs.

The driver put the Jeep into gear and they rattled their way through the neatly manicured resort, but it wasn’t long before they’d left it behind them, heading uphill. The road was lined with palms and aloes and breadfruit trees. Occasionally she saw pretty little clusters of yellow orchids dancing in the light evening wind.

Ellie breathed out and relaxed back into her seat. This was lovely, actually. Although they’d been to three different locations over the island in the last three days, she’d always been too caught up with her clipboard and ‘to do’ lists, terrified of missing something, to sit back and admire the scenery. This island truly was stunning, everything a tropical paradise should be. The beaches were soft white sand, the sea shades of cobalt and turquoise. If it wasn’t all so pretty it would be a giant cliché. But there was something comforting about having her expectations met rather than defied for once.

It was almost a shame that everything was over and they’d be flying back tomorrow. At least she assumed it was tomorrow. If Mark had told her the time of the flight, she’d already lost that bit of information in the maze of her brain.

Looking down the steep hill and out to sea, she asked, ‘What time do we need to get to the airport tomorrow?’

Mark didn’t answer right away, and eventually she stopped looking at the stupendous view and turned to face him.

‘Mark?’

He looked away, studying the scenery through the windscreen. ‘Actually, I’d planned to take a break—stay on for a few more days.’

Oh.

That meant she’d be going home alone. Suddenly all the hours of flying she’d be doing seemed a lot emptier. She nodded, following Mark’s lead and looking straight ahead.

Mark cleared his throat. ‘And I wondered if maybe you wanted to stay on too? Have a holiday?’

Ellie found her voice was hoarse when it finally obliged and came out of her mouth. ‘With you? On our own?’

‘Yes.’

There was a long pause, and all the air that had been whipping past their faces, ruffling their hair, went still.

‘I’m not ready to go home yet,’ he added.

She glanced across at him, and her heart began to thud so hard she felt a little breathless. He didn’t look like the normal, cocky Mark Wilder she knew at all. He looked serious and honest and just a little lost.

She had to look away. Scared that she might be imagining all the things she could see in his eyes. Scared this was just another impulse or trick her brain was playing on her.

‘Neither am I,’ she said softly.

And then the air began to move around them again. They both breathed out at the same time. After a few moments something tickled Ellie’s hand. She didn’t look, not wanting to spoil anything. And as Mark’s fingers wound themselves round hers she felt something hard inside her melt.

The Jeep climbed higher and higher, the road twisting and turning, and the lush banana trees and palms gave way to scrub and cacti. Now she could see down into the harbour, dotted with the white triangles of hundreds of yachts, and somewhere in the distance she could hear the unmistakable sound of a steel band.

Moments later the Jeep swung round a corner and was parked not far from a few old military buildings, obviously left over from the days of British rule. Reluctantly she let Mark’s hand slide from hers as he jumped out of the Jeep and then came round to her side to help her out. They left the Jeep behind and walked towards a huddled group of buildings on the edge of a steep hill.

Unlike the other ruins they’d seen on this part of the island, these had been restored. A crowd was milling around in an open-air courtyard, bouncing along to the calypso music played by a band under a roofed shelter. Mark handed Ellie a plastic cup of bright red liquid. One sniff told her it was rather toxic rum punch, and she sipped it slowly as she swayed to the rounded notes of the steel drums.

Oh, this was better than fancy-pants cooking and business talk. This was just what she’d needed. She looked at Mark, who was sipping his own punch and smiling at her. How had he known?

‘Come on,’ he said, putting his cup down on a low wall and holding out his hand.

Ellie shook her head. ‘I’m a terrible dancer—really clumsy.’ Especially these days, when remembering her left from her right was a monumental effort.

‘Nobody cares,’ Mark said, nodding towards the more exuberant members of the crowd, who’d obviously been enjoying the punch and were flinging their arms and legs around with abandon. ‘You can’t look any worse than they do.’

She put her cup down too, laughing. ‘I can’t argue with that,’ she said, and he led her to the uneven dusty ground that served as a dance floor.

Ellie discovered that she loved dancing like this. There were no rules, no steps to remember; she just moved her body any way that felt right. And, unsurprisingly, that involved being in close contact with Mark. He hadn’t let go of her hand since he’d led her to the dance floor, and she gripped it firmly, determined not to let it slip from between her fingers again.

As they danced, Mark manoeuvred them further away from the main buildings and towards a low wall. After a rather nifty spin Ellie stopped in her tracks, causing Mark to bump softly into her.

‘Wow!’

‘Told you it was the best place on the island,’ Mark said, as Ellie just stared at the scene in front of her.

The view was stupendous. The sun was low on the horizon, and the undulating hills and coastline were drenched in soft, warm colours. Ellie recognised this view as the one they always stuck on the tourist brochures for Antigua. It had to be the most beautiful place in the whole world. She moved forward to rest her hands on the wall, unaware for a moment that Mark hadn’t moved away and that her back was being heated by his chest.

‘Will you take a photo of us?’

Ellie looked round to see a sweet young redhead with an English accent holding a camera hopefully towards her. She was standing with a lanky guy in long shorts and rather loud, touristy shirt.

She shrugged and smiled back. ‘Okay. Sure.’

The girl beamed at her, handed the camera over, then snuggled up to the violent shirt. ‘It’s our honeymoon,’ she explained, glancing adoringly at him.

‘Congratulations,’ Mark said from behind her, and Ellie became aware of a slow heat building where their bodies were still in contact.

‘You’ve had the same idea as us, I see,’ the girl babbled. ‘Get here early to get a good view of the sunset. It’s our last night and we’ve watched every one. We’re hoping we’ll get to see the green flash before we go home.’

Ellie held the camera up and snapped a picture of them grinning toothily at her.

‘Green flash?’ she said as she handed the camera back to the redhead.

‘It’s a rare sight,’ the woman said as she checked the photo on the screen and smiled. ‘Sometimes, when the last part of the sun dips into the sea, you can see a flash of green light as it disappears.’

Loud Shirt Guy nodded. ‘Atmospheric conditions have to be just right. It’s all to do with astronomical refraction and—’

His wife laid a hand on his arm and he stopped talking. ‘Don’t bore them with all that, darling,’ she said, laughing. Then she whispered behind her hand at Ellie, ‘Honestly, he’s a scientist, and sometimes he just doesn’t know when to stop.’

Ellie could feel Mark smiling behind her. Although how you could tell someone was smiling only by being in contact with their chest she wasn’t sure.

‘Anyway, we’re not watching it for the physics, are we, Anton?’

Anton shook his head, and got a misty look in his eyes. ‘Island folklore has it that couples who see it together are guaranteed true love.’

A pang of incredible sadness hit Ellie right from out of nowhere. This couple were so sweet. She remembered being that besotted with someone, sure she was going to have a long and happy future with him. She almost wanted to go and give them both a great big hug, to whisper in their ears never to take the time they had together for granted, never to waste even a second. Instead she smiled at them, feeling her eyes fill a little.

‘Well, I hope you see it—and congratulations again.’

They nodded their thanks and turned to watch the sun, now dipping dangerously close to the clean line of the ocean. More people were wandering over to watch the sunset and Mark tugged Ellie’s arm, leading her down a path, away from the crowd. The view wasn’t quite so breathtaking here, but it was framed by trees and she relished not being hemmed in by lots of people, free to feel all the emotions washing over her without being watched. Her fingers crept up to the locket round her neck and she stroked it as she watched the sun go down.

Somehow Mark had hold of her hand again, and he stood beside her, warming her with his mere presence.

Slowly the air grew thick and silence fell as everyone further up the path concentrated on the wavering orange disc that was now dipping itself into the horizon. Ellie didn’t move. She hardly dared breathe as she watched the sun inch its way down.

She hadn’t thought it possible, just a few short months ago, that she could love again. But here she was, watching the most mesmerising sunset she’d ever seen, with a man who had turned all her rigid expectations on their heads. But did he feel the same way? Was it even possible this was more than a passing attraction for him? She wanted to believe that the look she’d seen on his face in the car was the truth, but she just didn’t trust her instincts any more.

A wayward curl blew across her face and she brushed it away so she could stare harder at the setting sun. He was here with her now, and that was what mattered. Who said love lasted for ever, anyway? She knew better than most that you had to grab the moment while you could. Maybe it was time just to ‘go with the flow’, as Sam had always encouraged her—as she had been doing when she’d danced to the hypnotic calypso music. Maybe it was time to let life feel something other than small again, no matter what that meant. No matter if for ever wasn’t part of the package.

Mark leaned forward and whispered in her ear. ‘Look.’

The sun was almost gone now, the very last traces only just visible, and she’d been so busy daydreaming she’d almost missed it. Why was it so difficult to live in the moment and not get distracted by wounds of the past or fears for the future? She concentrated hard on the sun, knowing that capturing this moment for her memory banks was important somehow.

And then it happened.

Just as the orange lip of the sun disappeared there was a sizzle of emerald on the horizon. Ellie froze. It lasted only a second or two and then faded away. Mark was standing slightly to the side and behind her. She could hear his breathing, soft and shallow, in her right ear.

Then he began to move, and she moved too, turning to face him.

He looked at her for a long time, a solemn, almost sad expression on his face, and then, just as her mind started to go wild with questions, he leaned in close and kissed her, silencing them all.