Epilogue
Dirk insists I meet him in the garden.
I love the big cushions I made for the concrete garden benches, in tropical fabric.
I haul them out from under the stairs. Professor Raynor turns a blind eye to them.
He sat and talked to me for ages last time I was down here, as I hacked away at the weeds – about Brighton Court, about his father’s ship-building business during the war, about the changing city.
Tiny red leaves unfurl from the clipped roses as the spring sunshine warms my face and shoulders. Behind them, thanks to all the pruning, the two orange trees are responding to more sunlight, new leaves emerging. Another couple of months and there’ll be fragrant blossoms.
I’m still in my old apartment, paying rent to Jamison while I plan renovations of my own. There’s talk of elevators for the entire building.
Dirk appears, bearing a tray.
“It’s a special low-cholesterol crust,” he says, “but I can’t get that same crispy crunch effect for the apples.”
I laugh.
“You liked my special pie? You have to create that version in no time flat. Usually you pre-cook the apples. Not when you’re rushing to hide your identity.”
He smiles, but his mind’s on something else. He places the tray on the old table, reaches into his pocket with determination and clears his throat. Oh.
“A while ago, you proposed to me, Lucy,” he says. “I accept. But just to make extra certain ...”
Right there, on the rough ground, on the bright green tendrils of new grass, he goes down on one knee, focussed, deliberate.
“Yes,” I say. “Yes, I’ll marry you, Dirk O’Connell. Yes.”
“I’m an old-fashioned man, Lucy. Let me do this right. Just as well you have ten fingers.”
He takes a ring out of a green velvet box and holds it up. It soaks in all the pale green garden light of the spring afternoon and shoots it out again in every direction. Better still is his smile, so determined, so sincere, so pleased with his surprise for me.
Dirk’s hands are warm and firm as he reaches for my own left hand.
“Yes,” I say again and I laugh and cry and press my lips against his clever fingers. I drag him up and he pulls me in, enfolds me in an embrace so strong that I am held there, caught, safe against him, warm and cherished and treasured, as if Dirk and I belonged together always, and always will.
A curtain twitches. For an instant, I glimpse Professor Raynor. He actually smiles at us before the curtain drops.