Daring To Date Her Ex

‘Dining room …’ Ava was on to the next room before Thea had a chance to even cross the threshold of the first.

‘Equally nice.’ Thea grinned at her.

‘Kitchen …’ Another door, which revealed a gleaming kitchen. ‘We won’t go in there.’

‘Very wise. Leave the cooking to Lucas.’

‘Do you remember when we roasted chestnuts in the fire on Bonfire Night?’ Ava didn’t stop for an answer. ‘Would you like to see my room?’

‘I’d love to. If you’d like to show it to me.’ Thea draped her coat over the banisters and put her heavy bag down in the corner. She felt suddenly lighter as she followed Ava up the stairs and into a large, stylishly decorated room.

‘I went on holiday with Gran and Grandpa, and when I got back Lucas had decorated it as a surprise. What do you think?’

‘It’s beautiful. He did all this?’

Ava nodded. ‘Yes. He said that I needed something a bit different now that I’m older. I think it’s turned out pretty well.’

‘It’s very sophisticated. I like the curtains.’ A bold, confident pattern of yellow, purple and green, the shades somehow blending perfectly together.

‘It’s an old fifties print. We went up to town to look at some fabrics. Lucas said it was for the conservatory.’

‘And you fell for it.’ Thea grinned.

‘He’s good with surprises, he never lets on.’

‘No, he doesn’t, does he?’ The time that Lucas had started driving, saying that they were going out for a pub lunch, and hadn’t stopped until they’d reached the ferry for France. When they’d reached dry land again they’d driven all night and watched the sun come up over the bright, glittering waters of the Mediterranean.

That was the old Lucas. The one who would have taken such delight in planning a surprise like this. The one that Thea had told herself was lost for ever.

Ava was gazing down, out of the window, and opened it in response to something below. Lucas’s voice floated upwards, along with a puff of charcoal smoke.

‘Are you listening for the door, Ava?’

‘Yes.’ Ava shut the window again abruptly and Thea suppressed a smile. What was it Lucas used to say? If you want the right answers, you have to ask the right questions.

Maybe she should take that advice too. But if she wanted to know why Ava was living here and not with her parents, she should either wait for Ava to volunteer the information or ask Lucas.

‘That’s a great place to work.’ She pointed to the desk, which sat in deep bay window on the far side of the room.

‘Yeah. I think that was a hint.’ Ava grinned wryly.

‘Exams next year?’ Thea couldn’t remember whether Ava was fourteen or fifteen now.

‘No, two years. I’m choosing my GCSE subjects now.’

She must be fourteen, then. ‘What do you want to do?’

‘History. I’m not sure about the rest, yet. I want to be an archaeologist.’

‘That sounds great.’

‘I’ve already been on a dig—last summer. They didn’t let us do much on our own, but it was pretty cool.’ Ava’s eyes lit up with enthusiasm. ‘Look.’

She grabbed Thea’s hand and led her over to the desk. Inside the alcove, a pinboard was fixed to the wall, covered in photographs. ‘That’s Lucas and me, with my find.’

Lucas had his arm around Ava’s shoulders and they were both pulling faces for the camera. Suddenly, seven years seemed like nothing. His hair looked as if it had been styled by the wind, and he was wearing a rock-band T-shirt that had seen better days. Longing reached into her stomach, gripped hard and then twisted.

‘That’s fabulous.’

‘Isn’t it? It’s Samian ware. That’s high-quality pottery from Italy or France that the Romans used to use.’

Thea dragged her eyes from Lucas’s face and focussed on the piece of broken pottery that Ava was holding up. ‘How interesting.’

‘Yeah. That piece of pottery came from something like that.’ Ava indicated a museum postcard of a glossy red bowl, with moulding around the base, pinned next to the photograph. ‘I saw it in one of the side trenches, where the settlement put all their rubbish, and they let me pick it up after it was photographed. I was the first person to touch it since it got thrown there. Can you imagine that?’

All that Thea could imagine at the moment was Lucas. ‘It must have been an amazing feeling.’ The board was like a memory board. Ava as she remembered her, a six-year-old with her parents. Then, growing up, with Lucas. Something must have happened and Thea dreaded to ask what that might have been.

‘There’s one of you here somewhere.’ Ava scanned the board and pointed to one at the top. Some older photos of Lucas, and in one of them he was sitting outside a tent, his arm around Thea.

‘Ah! I remember that. We were at Glastonbury.’ She’d looked so different then. It wasn’t just the hair or the clothes, she’d looked carefree. Thea wondered if Lucas found her as changed as she did him.

‘What did you do there? Lucas says you danced all night.’

Not all night. Thea and Lucas had loved to dance, but there had been another pastime that they’d loved even more. Alone in their tent, however many people were passing by outside and despite the lumps in the ground under her back. Or his.

‘Yes, we danced all night. Got pretty muddy and didn’t have any pieces of Samian pottery to show for it.’

Ava’s laugh was cut short by footsteps on the stairs. When Lucas appeared in the doorway it was as if time had rolled back, catapulting her into the place where she loved him. Maybe it was the photographs on Ava’s board. Maybe because of the way he was dressed. Jeans that fitted him like a glove and a rugby shirt that emphasised his broad shoulders so much better than a jacket and tie.

He threw Ava a reproachful look, which melted into the warmth that had been missing from his face over the last two weeks. ‘Do you ladies want to eat tonight?’

‘You want me to lay the table?’ That was obviously Ava’s job.

‘I’ve already done it. Perhaps you’d like to get Thea a drink?’

‘Oh. Yes. We were just talking about Glastonbury. She’s told me all your secrets …’ Ava continued provocatively.

‘All of them?’ A flicker at the side of one eye as his gaze met Thea’s.

‘Every one of them. How we danced all night.’ That was all Ava needed to know, and anyway it wasn’t her place to give away Lucas’s secrets. Suddenly it mattered a great deal that there were things that only she and Lucas shared, that only they remembered.

He gave her an almost imperceptible nod and then an exaggerated shrug for Ava’s benefit. ‘Guess I’ve been rumbled, then. What do you want me to agree to this time?’

‘Nothing yet. I’m storing it up for use later.’ Ava shot him a grin and Lucas laughed, putting his arm around her shoulder.

‘Okay. I’ll consider myself warned. Now, hurry up, or dinner’s going to be burned to a crisp.’

‘She seems like a handful.’ They’d eaten and Ava had disappeared into the house. Lucas tilted the half-empty bottle of wine towards Thea and she shook her head. ‘No more, thanks. I’m driving.’

‘She keeps me on my toes. Most difficult thing I’ve ever done. Most rewarding thing I’ve ever done.’ He propped his feet up on the empty chair opposite him, leaning back to catch the evening sun.

‘You’ve done a great job. How long has she lived with you?’

‘Since she was seven. Her parents were killed in a car crash.’

Thea had steeled herself to hear something like that, but it was still a shock. ‘I’m sorry, Lucas. I liked your brother and his wife very much.’

‘Yeah.’ He ran his finger thoughtfully around the rim of his glass. ‘They were good people.’

‘When did it happen?’

‘They were killed four days before I was due to leave for Bangladesh. We were all at my parents’ house, for some family time before I went away, and they’d gone out to run some errands. Left Ava behind with me.’ His voice was flat, matter-of-fact. ‘I had to tell Ava that her mother and father weren’t coming back, my mother couldn’t do it.’

‘That must have been terribly hard for you.’

‘All I could think about was her. I promised her then that I’d look after her, and I have. My mother and father talked about adopting her, but then my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. So I adopted Ava and Mum concentrated on getting well.’

‘She’s okay now?’

‘Yeah, she’s been clear for four years now. Ava’s home is with me, but she spends a lot of time with my parents. It seems to work.’

He still hadn’t answered the most important question. ‘And what about you?’

‘Me?’ He put his hand on his chest, as if to check that he was really the object of her concern. ‘What about me?’

He’d lost his brother and sister-in-law. His mother had been seriously ill, and he’d given up his own dreams to take on the challenge of caring for a grieving six-year-old. ‘It was a lot for you to deal with as well.’

Lucas shook his head. ‘Not as much as Ava or my mother. They were the ones …’ His words tailed off into a remembrance of grief.

‘You always seemed to want to go to Bangladesh so much.’

‘I did, once upon a time.’ Did he class his time with her like that too? A distant fairy story, which had no bearing on reality?

‘But not now?’

He turned to look at her, his gaze searching her face. ‘No, not now. We all have dreams, and then we grow out of them.’

They were almost the hardest words she’d heard tonight. ‘Is that why you asked me here? To meet Ava?’

‘You rang me.’ He seemed to relax the tight grip he had on his emotions a little. ‘I’m glad you came. Ava remembers you and she’s been wanting to see you again.’

No mention of his own feelings. It was as if the tragedy of losing his brother and the sudden responsibility of a child had quenched the passion that had so defined Lucas. Seeing him so changed … It would almost have been better never to have seen him at all.

‘It’s been good to be here.’

* * *

There was something he needed to get out of the way. Lucas told himself that it was all about their professional relationship and nothing about the personal. ‘I wouldn’t have blamed you if you’d refused to work with me. After the way that I left.’

‘I always knew what you wanted to do. I supported you in that.’ She shrugged, as if it really didn’t matter.

He’d had time to reflect on the mistake he’d made in breaking up with her, and he knew now that it did matter. ‘I called you. Before the funeral. I couldn’t get through on your mobile and I didn’t want to leave a message. So I tried the house you used to share.’

‘What did they say?’

‘That you’d gone abroad. That you wouldn’t want to speak to me.’

She took a deep breath and a gulp of her wine.

‘I didn’t blame you, Thea. I’d half expected you to refuse to speak to me.’

She shook her head. ‘That was … I got drunk one night and said it to the girls I lived with. I didn’t mean it. Of course I would have spoken to you.’

‘Where did you go?’ Suddenly it was important that he knew.

Her gaze was on his face now and her cheeks were starting to burn red. ‘I went to Bangladesh. It was my last summer before I started work and I thought it would be nice to drop in and see where you were staying. For a bit of a holiday …’

It was all falling into place. An exquisitely timed tragedy. He had left Thea, planning to spend a fortnight with his family before going to Bangladesh. And in that fortnight everything had changed. Sam and Claire had died. And however casual she made it sound, there was no doubt in his mind that Thea had decided to go to Bangladesh to find him.

‘I’m sorry I missed you.’

‘It wasn’t your fault. I’m just sorry that I never knew about Sam and Claire.’

He didn’t deserve her forgiveness, but he couldn’t find a way to tell her that. It was almost a relief when she reached briskly for the pile of papers that she’d propped on the windowsill behind her.

‘Thanks for tonight, but I’m really tired. Could I call you tomorrow morning to discuss our reply to the newspaper article?’

That would be good. There were far too many questions swimming in his head at the moment to concentrate on anything. ‘Yes, of course. I’ll be around all morning.’

Thea felt sick. She stopped the car, wondering whether it would be better to reach for the empty shopping bag under the seat, stick her fingers down her throat and get it over with.

Probably not. The feeling was in her chest and nothing to do with her stomach.

He’d had good reasons for not being on that plane. He’d called her. If she’d known either of those things, what had happened next might have been very different. Instead, she’d been too proud to contact Lucas and had continued on a path that would lead to disgrace.

She switched on the car radio and then thought better of it, punching the ‘off’ button. The radio had turned into something like a game of Russian roulette, never knowing whether the next track would be the one which reminded her of Lucas.

Just drive. Go home. Get some sleep. She had put her life back together again, piece by piece, but Thea knew that it was still a shaky structure. And Lucas had already broken her heart once. Long and slow, bit by bit, from the moment he’d left her to the time she’d realised he wasn’t in Bangladesh. If she was going to keep it all together now, she had to somehow stop caring about him.

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