Epilogue
DAYNA
Fourteen Months Later
I step outside to the chalet porch, thick wool coat over my loungewear, mug of steaming coffee between my hands, and breathe in the fresh, crisp mountain air.
Banff at first light might be my new favourite place.
It’s snowing lightly now and expected to pick up as the day goes on, so our group won’t be skiing today.
Clark, Rachel, Spencer, Jay, Teddy, Yvette, Amy, Tim, Matty and me will be playing games and making snow angels today. And I have no problem with that.
It’s a new me. Relaxed. Calm. At peace here in the Rockies.
I hear the door to the chalet open and close and know before he presses his body to my back and slips his arms around my waist that it’s Clark. He brings his chin to rest on my shoulder and when I lean my temple to his, he presses his warm lips to my cheek.
‘Couldn’t sleep?’ he asks.
I shake my head.
Yesterday, the final judgment in the criminal case against Caspar Kahn, Clark’s dad and Arthur was passed.
Arthur was granted a suspended sentence – leniency for cooperating with the Crown Prosecution Service.
Harold Layton was found guilty of conspiracy.
And Caspar Kahn was finally held to account for the manslaughter of those who died the night Little Princess was sabotaged.
I made peace before the trial began with not finding justice for my dad’s death through the judicial system.
Amongst themselves, I’ve come to believe the sentiment that all’s fair in love and war for those men.
For that generation of shale moguls. But those innocent lives lost and families forever changed deserve the judgment.
‘Has it brought it all back?’ Clark asks.
I turn in his arms and set my coffee down on the porch table.
‘Are you sad?’
I sigh and bring my hands to his cheeks. ‘No.’ Then I kiss him. Long and slow.
‘What was that for?’ he asks when we break.
‘For bringing us here. To somewhere new, with our friends.’
A rogue lock of hair falls across his brow. It’s the version of him I love most, before he’s styled and put together for the day. The sleepy, homey version of him I have the privilege of seeing. Just Clark. My Clark.
‘I’m standing out here looking at the Rocky Mountains, thinking I know what I want to do next.’
On New Year’s Eve, of all days, the money from the sale of my shares in SP hit my bank account and I haven’t touched it in the two months I’ve had it because I haven’t known what to do with money that was made from an industry I despise.
Clark resigned from his position as CEO of Layton Oil just over a year ago and has worked consultancy roles since.
Neither one of us wants to be in oil any more, or connected to our family names.
Now, since finding some sort of refuge in these mountains, away from London, I feel like we’ve finally been able to breathe.
I shuffle again, my back to his chest, his hold on me firm, our fingers entwined on my stomach, so we’re both looking out at the glistening white landscape and empty slopes.
‘I want to protect all of this,’ I say. ‘I want to use my knowledge of engineering to start something new, sustainable and progressive. With you. For us and our children years from now. I want us to be a new generation of energy, Clark.’
I can feel him nodding and sense his smile as he teases my earlobe with his lips. ‘Somewhere new,’ he says. ‘Away from the noise of London.’
‘Yes, please.’
‘I’m in, Dayna. All in. But I’m also not in a rush. I’d like to take some time to travel the world with you and enjoy the youth that you and I never got in our twenties.’
My smile is so wide my cheeks ache. ‘I’d like that.’
We stand in each other’s hold in the silence, the serenity, so far removed from the loss and turmoil we left in London.
Until Clark whispers, ‘Marry me.’
It feels as if time stands still. Slowly, I turn to him and as I do, he sinks to one knee.
‘I know I’m far from perfect, Dayna, that our lives together have been unconventional, to say the least. But you are everything I want.
The only thing in my life that I am 100 per cent certain of.
I’ve loved you since the first night Ted introduced us in a rooftop bar.
I loved you even when I was fucking up at every turn.
And whether you like it or not, whether you say yes or not, I’m going to love you until my very last breath.
Though I’d really prefer if you say yes and make those babies you just promised with me. ’
I laugh, short and sniffly. ‘I didn’t promise babies.’
‘Yes, you did. You said you want to make something new, that we can be proud of, for our babies.’ His own eyes fill, making me swallow deeply, sending everything in my torso into a spin in the most magical way.
‘You’re paraphrasing,’ I tell him, watching his lips turn up with mine.
‘Marry me, Dayna, because I love you and I know you love me and despite everything, or in spite of it, nothing in this world makes more sense than you and me together.’
I nod. ‘Yes, Clark. I can’t think of anything I want more than to be yours, ours, us.’
He stands and hooks me under my arms, twirling me around as I hold his face and kiss him with every part of me.
‘I love you, Clark Layton.’
Then he sets me down. ‘About that… I was thinking we could decide our own family name. Leave the past in the past. Start afresh?’
I feel my eyes go wide. ‘That is a remarkably fantastic idea. It’s so good, it’s as if it was mine.’
He pulls me to him and laughs, our bodies rocking together with happiness. This is how it’s been recently. Since we’ve been free.
For Clark, it started when he left his father’s wing and his mother’s scrutiny.
When Connie recently married an extremely wealthy entrepreneur and their special day was splashed all over social media and the trashy rags, wiping out the memory of Clark and her not getting married.
She had the good grace to invite us to the wedding.
Though we declined, the olive branch was the final healing of Clark and Jay’s friendship.
For me, things have improved as I’ve started to have a relationship with my mum, when the truth about Little Princess came out, and when I stood at my dad’s graveside and aired to him everything I never got a chance to say in person.
Yesterday, for me, was the final piece of the past. Now I’ve completed the puzzle and put it to bed.
Today, now, this, slipping my hand into Clark’s, knowing the future is ours to discover and decide, I feel whole, maybe for the first time in my life.
‘How about something French and sexy, like Fontaine or DuPont or Auclair?’ I tease.
He raises one brow as we head through the chalet hand in hand to wake the others and share our news. ‘We aren’t French. I was thinking something butch, that our boys could be called on the sports field, you know? Like Armstrong, Steele or Rockwell?’
‘What if we have girls?’
We stop in our tracks as we walk upstairs to the sight of Rachel, slipping out of Spencer’s bedroom and stealthily closing the door behind her. I knew about this hook-up that’s never really stopped since Verbier but Clark’s dropped jaw is a reminder that he doesn’t.
‘What the—?’ he calls out.
Rachel’s eyes bulge.
‘We’re getting married!’ I yell to save my best friend’s blushes.
‘Oh my gosh! Show me the ring!’
Clark and I look at each other, then my ringless finger. A proposal unplanned. I guess we still don’t do things quite by the book.