Chapter Fifty Two

She hit Jake before she properly saw him. He had put out his arms to stop her crashing straight into him, and just about caught hold of her shoulders as she slid, but then he lost his footing too. He pulled her towards him, and they slipped the rest of the way down the side of the dune together, landing in a heap towards the bottom of it. Sorcha was laying on top of him, with his arms wrapped tightly around her. She could feel his heartbeat, beating against her, and wasn’t sure what to believe. Her body knew exactly how to react, though. She could feel his arms, skin on skin, across her shoulders; and she could feel her pulse thumping as if she was still trying to sprint.

Her mind was a lot less sure of what exactly was going on, although as delusions went, he was first rate. He smelled of grime and sweat and travel; and she felt him hug her closer to him before shifting the position of his leg. She pulled away slightly, his arms only reluctantly letting her move at all. He was watching her, and seemed to be about to say something, so she put her fingers on his lips to stop him. She had sand on her fingertips, and he had sand on his face: she brushed it away as best she could. His stubble was so long that it was almost a beard; soft to the touch until she pushed her fingers back up along his jaw line. His eyes were steady, but she felt him flex his knee again.

“Shit. Are you hurt?”

He was watching her, concentrating on her, and slowly shook his head.

“Not this time.”

She watched his lips as he said it: they started to curve up at the corners, in the beginning of a smile. Her thumb was still on his chin, and she brushed it back along his lower lip, before letting her lips meet his. She felt the tiniest fraction of hesitation before he opened up to her, absolutely, and she responded with an intensity close to fury, pushing herself hard up against him.

It was Sorcha who eventually pulled away. Jake stayed lying on the sand with his eyes shut, feeling his knee throb from the chase across the sand and wondering if it was all really going to be that easy. Then Sorcha disentangled herself from him, slowly and gently, and he was left lying on the sand on his own. He opened his eyes, blinking for a moment or two in the light, and saw her sitting a foot or two away from him hugging her knees to her chest.

“What?”

She seemed a long way away again.

“I was trying to figure out whether this was real or not. I wasn’t sure which one of us I needed to pinch.”

“You could kiss me again if you like.”

She was deathly serious as she leant down to him, and kissed him softly on the lips, before sitting back up. Jake tried to tune into the sea and the sunshine, and waited for her. She sat and watched him for a while. A gull circled briefly overhead, before diving down into a rock pool that was hidden behind the dunes.

“I didn’t expect to see you again.”

She said it slowly, but he did at least know what she meant.

“You said that to me once before.”

Sorcha was watching him intently: she wasn’t sure that she could carry on with the conversation, but it was likely to be the only chance she ever got.

“I’d spent half the night thinking you were dead.”

“And that mattered?”

“Of course it mattered.”

Even that felt like telling him too much; but once she had said it, she felt as if the statement somehow connected them whether she wanted it to or not. Jake sat up and held out his hand to her. She didn’t take it, and he realised that he was still going to have to work to get what he wanted.

“I should have said something, or done something, when you said that before. I knew you needed me to. I just had no idea what to say.” Sorcha was biting her lips together, and trying hard to keep it all together, “It’s like a joke in the band, that it always takes me ages to answer even the simplest question. But that wasn’t a joke. Isn’t a joke.”

She shook her head, and seemed to be staring at him, but it was a while before she spoke.

“Have you figured it out now, then?”

He felt himself wanting to pull away from the intensity of her gaze, but didn’t.

“No, I haven’t. But I kind of feel better knowing that you know that I’m thinking about it.”

She hugged her knees tighter to her chest.

“Is that what you came here to tell me?”

Jake looked across at her. Although she wasn’t suntanned, there were more freckles on her face than he remembered. One of the straps of her top had slid off her shoulder down to her elbow, and there were patches of sand on her arms and legs. She no longer felt the need to hide the scars. As he looked at her, he hoped, hard.

“I came here to take you home. If you want to.”

She exhaled and let her head drop onto her knees. It wasn’t the reaction he had hoped for. When she lifted her head, she looked straight ahead rather than looking at him.

“I’m sorry, Pet. There isn’t a home for me to go back to.” He looked confused, mostly because jetlag was making him feel as if he was fighting his way through treacle, “I sold the flat. I’m sorry.”

Jake hesitated, unsure of how much to tell her. He knew why she had thought of the flat, but she was missing the point.

“I didn’t mean it like that. I meant will you come back with me?”

“And do what?”

“Whatever you want to.” She didn’t react, “I need you to be there, when I finally do figure out what I should have said, you know.”

Sorcha desperately wanted it to be the answer to all of the questions, but somehow it wasn’t. She also wanted to tell him about the 3am phone call, which among other things meant that she probably had the option of returning to the job she had walked out of, even though she was reasonably sure she still didn’t want to. But she had no idea whether it would even make sense to him. She carried on sitting, watching him, and trying to think of a way which didn’t mean that he had to go again. She was almost wishing he hadn’t come.

“How did you find me?”

Jake felt as if she was slipping away from him again. He moved next to her, and she seemed to shiver when he touched her, even though he was sure she didn’t mean to. He tried to focus his whole being on her; but pain, sand and jet lag kept getting in the way.

“With difficulty. I eventually tracked down your old secretary, who gave me Jane’s number and wished me luck. I suppose I kind of assumed that meant that you were in the States. By the time I managed to drum up the courage to call her, I’d kind of decided I was getting on a plane. I just hadn’t quite expected to have to come this far.”

Sorcha wasn’t sure what that told her.

“I bet Jane loved that.”

He could feel that she was trying to find a way to pull away again.

“I think she was just relieved that there was someone else out there worrying about you.” She flinched, “Look, I know that there’s stuff you’re still dealing with. There’s stuff that I’m still dealing with. To start with, I just figured I’d give you as much time as you needed, you know. I’d imagine what you were doing each day, and tell myself that you were OK, and that there would be plenty of time. Time for everything, once we’d got over it all. But then I started to be afraid that you weren’t OK.”

She was staring straight ahead of herself, and didn’t know how to respond.

“You’re not OK, are you?”

She shook her head, so slightly he almost missed it. A few tears started to trickle down her face, and he wrapped his arms back around her, thinking it was something else he should have done much, much sooner. He could feel her tears falling on his skin.

“If you won’t come back, let me stay here then.”

She shook her head some more, although she didn’t try to escape from him. When she spoke, her voice was unsteady.

“The last thing that someone like you needs at the moment is someone like me. Go off and be famous and be happy.”

He sat and looked down at her, and then looked over at the waves on the shore, and started wishing. He wished she would make some kind of allowances for the fact that he’d barely had any sleep at all in the previous seventy-two hours, but most of all wished that he had tried to find her sooner, and that there was still a way to make everything right. There was one last thing he had decided before he had set off.

“I’ll give it up if you want me to, you know. The band, I mean. The others’ll carry on without me.”

Sorcha felt herself freeze, but tried not to let him see her react.

“Wouldn’t that just be running away?”

He couldn’t tell whether it had been the right thing to say or not.

“Not in my book. I’d call it making a choice. I’d miss the guys, but there are other things I wouldn’t miss. You know, sometimes I find myself lying awake wondering if the world is really such a terrible place that people can kind of” he was looking for a word which his brain couldn’t find, “… behave the way they do about pop music. I wouldn’t miss that.”

She shook her head, wistfully.

“It’s not about that, Pet. I reckon all that would do is mean that we were both floating around trying to figure out what to do with ourselves, which really would be a general, all-purpose nightmare. It’s bad enough me doing it on my own. I’d like to think at least one of us was heading for a happy ending.”

Jake was starting to feel afraid for her again. The feeling reminded of her sitting, shaking, on the edge of her bed, close to him but out of reach, which didn’t help. He turned to face her, and took hold of her shoulders, trying to force her to look at him and feel what he felt. He spoke more roughly than he meant to.

“How’s that meant to work, if I know that I’ve left you here like this?”

But still she just kept shaking her head. He let go of her, and gave her the space she seemed to want. Sorcha took a couple of deep breaths. Jake tried to focus his attention outwards, back to the sea and sky, but he was too aware of Sorcha, sitting within touching distance and trying not to let him see how much she was hurting. Her breathing was still uneven, but he could sense it gradually getting calmer.

“Has this got anything to do with your Dad’s trial?” She looked up at him: the question seemed to be both meant as a challenge and begging for reassurance, “I don’t think they want me to give evidence about the Stephen Warren bit, but they still haven’t confirmed it. I’ll come back for that if you want me to.”

Jake stretched his right leg out in front of him. Sorcha realised that he was in pain, and tried not to respond to it: she would only make more of a mess of things.

“It’s not that. I think I’ve more or less got used to the idea of that, although we don’t know everything that’s going to come out. I’m only going to be able to be there when I’m giving evidence anyway, as otherwise it’ll just turn into a freak show. It’s just that I want to be with you, wherever you are and whatever you’re doing. That’s all.”

She wasn’t sure that she could trust him, but knew she didn’t trust herself, which meant that there really wasn’t any way that she could respond. The odd thing was that it didn’t seem to matter. Even saying nothing at all was answer enough.

They both sat, listening to the waves, for a while, until Sorcha checked her watch. By the time they got back to the rendezvous point the driver was likely to be there. When she said as much to Jake he laughed at her and told her that the driver had been sitting there for well over an hour already, since he had dropped him off as well. Suddenly the phone calls earlier in the day made more sense, and felt less like a general conspiracy against her.

Sorcha had to pull Jake up from the sand. He was wearing a white T shirt, khaki combats and his old tennis shoes; as he helped him dust himself off she had to stifle the urge to undress him. They kissed again, and the urgency which the discussion had lost came flooding back to confuse both of them, before they set off back across the beach. Sorcha was intrigued by an odd kind of seriousness in Jake’s expression.

“What are you thinking about?”

He seemed embarrassed, and ran his hand down the side of her back, letting it rest on her waistband, under her top, his index finger on her skin.

“Mostly about what I’m going to do to you once we’ve both had a shower to get rid of all this sand. That’s something else we should have done ages ago, too.”

To start with they went slowly. They were walking in the soft powdery sand which slid away under their feet, and Sorcha was more or less walking sideways so that she didn’t have to lose sight of Jake. She briefly caught hold of his right hand, and traced the scars on both sides of it, bringing them both to a halt before letting it drop back down by his side. It was a distraction she wasn’t yet ready for. Jake felt stiff and tired, but almost weightless too. His instinct was to limp heavily, but he gradually forced himself into a normal walking rhythm, knowing that they had a reasonable distance to walk back to the van and it would be less tiring if he could just block the pain.

“You are the reason that I couldn’t just head back, you know.”

Sorcha was mostly looking ahead of her, as that way she was less likely to fall over her own feet. Jake had no idea what she was talking about, but it sounded like a peace offering.

“Really?”

“Mmmm. I think I was waiting until I’d proved you wrong, and sorted out the answers to absolutely everything before I could even contemplate going back to the UK.” She looked across at him, and stopped in her tracks again before remembering that they needed to get on, “I wasn’t intending to tell you, or anything like that. It was something for just me to know.”

“Good thing I didn’t decide to wait for you to call, then. Duncan’s been asking me whether you have called on a daily basis for over four months.”

She laughed. She knew that she had been missing Jake, but hadn’t realised that she was missing Duncan as well.

“Maybe,” She could feel herself beginning to relax for the first time in a long time, although she wasn’t quite sure why. It wasn’t a huge shift, just a feeling that she could breathe again without having to remind herself to do it, “Aren’t you meant to be doing a heap of interviews this week, somewhere over the other side of the world?”

If she knew that much, she had cared enough to find it out. Jake felt a sense of calm beginning to radiate through him: she was giving him permission to hope.

“Maybe.” It was a crap answer, but it was the first thing that came into his head, “The others are doing them without me. I doubt anyone will miss me much.”

Once they reached the edge of the sand dunes, and went back on to the firmer sand, Jake seemed to hit his stride. Sorcha struggled to keep pace with him, even when she was facing in the right direction and thinking about her feet, and found herself having to break into a jog so as not to be left behind. It made him slow down, albeit with the inevitable string of apologies.

The tide was coming back in, and the sun was beginning to sink down towards the top of the arches. Once the apologies were done they lapsed into silence. For once, Sorcha was happy for the silence just to be a silence. It didn’t need to mean anything, because she could almost believe that the conversation would go on.

As they walked on along the beach, each wrapped in thoughts of the other, they fell into step.