Chapter 15 #2
So they’d had a conversation before? Mateo had never told her, and neither had Aunt Gayle.
‘Well, you are indirectly hurting her because she’s started skipping school,’ said Aunt Gayle.
‘That’s news to me,’ Mateo replied. He was being so polite. If it was her, she’d tell Gayle to mind her own bloody business.
‘She’s also not doing her homework – she’s rushing it all, she’s distracted.’ Silence until Gayle spoke again. ‘You know she wants to go to university, don’t you?’
‘She hasn’t mentioned it for a while.’
‘That’s because you’re all she’s thinking about these days. She has a plan, or at least had one. She wants to leave the island, and if she is after a decent future she needs some qualifications.’
Susanna’s heart thumped as she froze on the spot, waiting to hear what her boyfriend replied. It was true, she did want to go to university – at least, she thought she did. But she would still want Mateo. Why couldn’t Aunt Gayle work that out?
‘Gayle, I’m not out to hurt Susanna. I love her.’
Susanna let a smile form. He loved her and she loved him. Aunt Gayle could never take that away from her.
‘Has she been down here this morning?’ Gayle demanded.
‘She’s at school,’ Mateo answered.
‘She isn’t. They called me.’ Her remark was met with silence. ‘You’re in your twenties, you’re too old for her. You don’t want the same things.’
Mateo didn’t say anything and Gayle added, ‘If you see her, send her home. Please.’
Susanna made to leave at the sound of their voices drawing slightly closer, but not before she heard Gayle add, ‘Think about what I’ve said. Don’t stand in her way of having a decent future.’
Susanna had managed to run between a couple of boats on dry land at the marina and weave her way out without her aunt seeing her.
She wasn’t going home. Instead, she headed past the fish and chip shop and up the steps, because she knew Aunt Gayle would go the other way to Bay Street and her precious workplace.
She hid out for half an hour and then returned to the marina, but there was no sign of Mateo.
She asked after him and one of his colleagues said he’d taken a boat over to Guernsey.
She hung around for almost two hours, but by then she was getting cold, and with no sign of her boyfriend she went back to the cottage.
She called Aunt Gayle at the Sweet Life Café and told her that she had been sick on the boat on the way to school, that she’d missed a connection back but was on Anchor Island now.
When Aunt Gayle came home to check on her, she dived beneath her duvet, pinched her cheeks so she looked a bit red and – hoping it could pass for sickness – pretended to be asleep.
She felt better by dinner time and her aunt agreed that it was okay for her to go out for some fresh air.
She left the cottage, went down to the marina and saw Mateo bringing a boat in.
He must’ve delivered one to Guernsey and brought another back.
She hoped someday she’d have a job she loved so much.
Perhaps he could sail and she could do the business side of whatever venture they tackled together.
She beamed a smile his way as he spotted her, but he didn’t return it – he simply jumped off the vessel and then secured the thick rope around its mooring.
‘Where were you today?’ he asked her as he stood up from his kneeling position.
‘Well, I was planning to come and see you until I saw Aunt Gayle got here first.’ Instead of him sharing a conspiratorial smile his expression was hard to read. ‘I’m sorry she said those things to you.’ She reached for his hand, but he pulled it away.
‘Don’t tell me you’re listening to her,’ she said jokingly, until she realised that was exactly what he was doing.
‘She’s right, Susanna.’ He carried on securing a rope at the other end.
‘No, she isn’t.’
‘You’ve not been working so hard at school since you met me.’
‘Well, maybe I want different things now. We talked about it, remember?’
‘You’ve wanted to leave the island ever since I’ve known you.’
‘And we can do that. Together.’
He said nothing. He got his bag from the boat he’d brought in, and they walked side-by-side out towards the street.
‘I don’t want to be responsible for ruining your future,’ he said.
‘You’re not. Why are you listening to Aunt Gayle?’
‘Because she is looking out for you. And she’s right. I’m a lot older.’
She wanted to cry, and perhaps she might have done if she didn’t think it would illustrate his point perfectly.
‘I’m not academic,’ he went on. ‘Give me a boat and the open water and that’s all I need. You deserve a whole lot more.’ He put a hand on her shoulder.
She shrugged him off, crossed her arms. ‘How can you seriously be listening to her? Don’t you want me any more?’
He said nothing until he delivered a blow that shocked her beyond belief. ‘I’ve got a new job. It’s taking me away from Anchor Island, so ending things is probably for the best.’
‘You’re lying.’
‘It’s been on the cards for a while, and a couple of hours ago I accepted it. It’s a contract for a few years. I’ll be sailing boats to different places around the world. I need to do it for me, Susanna. Like you need to go to school, do university, find your career. It’s what you always planned.’
‘So that’s it?’ she cried after his retreating back as he walked away.
He said nothing. She slumped down onto a picnic bench and sobbed her heart out.
She could remember that day so clearly and she’d never forgotten the hurt and the feeling of betrayal.
And since that day, she hadn’t seen him again. Until now.
She caught her breath, watched him reach down to pick up her phone off the ground.
‘Coffee’s gone, I’m afraid.’ His voice fell over her the same way as it had all those years ago.
Mateo was almost fifty now. He still wore shorts and a T-shirt very well and his hair, slightly dishevelled and longer than it had once been, suited him.
Tanned forearms and muscled biceps evoked memories of lying next to him on the deck of a boat he was fixing, pretending it was theirs and nobody else’s.
They’d been besotted with each other until Gayle ruined things.
But somewhere amidst her anger at her aunt, perhaps Susanna had always known that Mateo would inevitably want to settle on Anchor Island. He belonged here, and she didn’t.
His smile still made her feel slightly weak at the knees when he said, ‘It’s been a long time.’
She gulped. ‘Yes, it has. You’re back.’
‘As are you.’
‘I’m here for the living funeral.’
‘I’ve been invited too. Bit morbid, if you ask me.’ He leaned slightly closer when he said the last bit, as if he didn’t want anyone to overhear.
‘It doesn’t feel as morbid as her letting us think she was dead.’ She recapped the mistake on the invites. ‘It seemed word got around the island that she’d made an error, but the truth didn’t reach me or Addie.’
He paused. ‘I know things were always a bit rocky with you and Gayle.’
‘A bit rocky? That’s an understatement.’ Immediately she was right back there, just yards from here, listening to her aunt warn her boyfriend off, and she felt the hurt all over again.
‘I’m sorry, you know.’
‘For what?’
‘The way things ended.’ He didn’t take his eyes away from her. He rarely had until that day Gayle had come down here and put doubts in his mind.
‘You took the job to get away from me, didn’t you?’ she said. Even a metre or so apart it felt as if there was a magnetic pull between them. Or maybe she was just remembering when all he’d had to do was take her hand and she’d felt her insides ignite.
‘I had to. I knew it would be the only way I wouldn’t be tempted to keep things going between us. I knew my job would be here when I got back.’
‘And that I wouldn’t be.’
‘It wasn’t as callous as it sounds. I didn’t want to get away from you because I didn’t want you – it was the opposite.
I loved you and wanted you to have the future your aunt talked about, the future you once talked about.
I hadn’t realised until Gayle pointed it out that you and I were so into each other that you’d forgotten what you even wanted. ’
‘Maybe I’d changed my mind.’ And hearing his feelings spilling out after all this time had a strange effect on her.
It made her question leaving here, forging a different life.
Or maybe with Alex and her having problems she was just looking for answers, a way to rewrite everything so that it was perfect and she couldn’t be hurt.
‘You were so young. So was I.’
‘None of that mattered. It wasn’t her place to say those things to you.’
‘It was. You were under her care and she did what she thought was best.’ He looked at the ground momentarily, scuffed a stone beneath the toe of his shoe. ‘Can you honestly tell me you regret doing well at school, going to university, becoming a hotshot solicitor?’
‘Wait, how did you—?’
He smiled. ‘Gayle talks about you. She has regrets, but she never stopped caring.’
It took Susanna by surprise. It shouldn’t have, but it did.
‘Do you regret leaving the island when you did?’ Her question turned the tables on him.
‘I did for a while, but the job was great, I won’t lie. I was sailing much more than I would’ve been here and got to see parts of the world I hadn’t known existed. It was a lonely life in many ways, and in others…’
She wanted the conversation to stop, it had to, she needed to walk away, get her head straight. ‘I need to go. I have an attic to deal with.’
‘I’ll see you around.’ His words drifted over her as she turned and left.
She took a faster pace up the hill to Bay Street than she otherwise might have done when she didn’t have something hefty on her mind.
She was still thinking about Mateo when she reached the Sweet Life Café for the first time since they’d arrived on the island, when she noticed Gayle’s visitor – or tourist, or whatever – Louisa, disappearing inside.
Maybe Gayle included puddings in her tourist’s holiday package, who knew.
Or perhaps as Addie said, Gayle was lonely and she liked the company.
If she had been lonely, then why hadn’t she fought harder for them to stay?
Aunt Gayle could’ve asked her and Mateo to slow things down for a while rather than warning him off. She could’ve let things unfold with him, see what Susanna wanted to do long-term.
Then again, if she hadn’t left would she have regretted it?
She turned into Evergreen Close. Mateo’s voice was in her psyche still, deeper, more matured over the years, but with the same notes as before. Seeing him felt like a pick-me-up in the gloom of her marriage troubles, but she also felt guilty for the way it made her feel.
She needed to speak to Alex.
Alex. The man she’d married. The man she thought she would be with forever.
The man who was keeping something from her.
As his mobile rang out, followed by the home phone, she wondered, if she found out that Alex was cheating, would she seek revenge and do the same?
She was here on the island and the man who had been the first one to show her what real passion, tenderness and understanding was, had looked at her in the same way he always had.
Did they have unfinished business?