Don't Want To Miss A Thing (41 page)

Seeing her looking at them, Hope waggled her hands. ‘And I had my nails done! They have a girl working at the hair place who does them!’

‘Great,’ said Frankie, because it wasn’t the nails that were the problem either. Oh Lord, how was she going to say this?

‘And then when I told them I was trying to make myself look better, less decrepit, they insisted on doing my face for me too! Such sweet girls, so enthusiastic and keen to help.’

They’d definitely been enthusiastic. Faintly horrified by the amount of make-up they’d managed to slather on Hope’s face, Frankie took in the details: heavy matte foundation, powder, blusher,
awful
shimmering highlighter, too-dark lipliner, too-bright lipstick, eyeshadows, eyebrow pencil, kohl, mascara . . .

Finally she said, ‘And . . . how do you think you look?’

‘Me? Oh well, I’m a walking disaster when it comes to make-up.
Completely
hopeless! I haven’t worn any since we made the last episode of the show! I always used to think it made me look weird, but everyone else kept telling me it was fine. So now, all these years later, it’s bound to feel strange.’ Hope nodded with determination. ‘It’s just a question of getting used to it. When the girls finished with me this afternoon they said I looked gorgeous, bless their hearts.’

Whereas in reality she looked like a small middle-aged drag queen channelling Katie Price. Hesitantly Frankie said, ‘I just wonder if maybe we should tone it down, perhaps wipe some of it off . . .’

‘Ooh no, I couldn’t do that, no
way
! Those poor girls worked so
hard
, it took them ages to get me looking like this. Anyway, the whole point of wearing make-up is to boost my confidence,’ Hope concluded brightly. ‘Without it, I’d be all the way back to square one!’

Yikes. The make-up hadn’t been badly applied, there was simply way too much of it. Frankie realised she was going to have to let her go out wearing it and just hope for the best.

‘OK. Well, are you ready?’

‘No.’ Hope took an audible breath. ‘But I’m going to do it anyway.’

‘Come on.’ Picking up her own RayBans and praying this wasn’t all about to go horribly wrong, Frankie said, ‘Let’s go.’

Evening sunlight dappled through the branches of the trees as they made their way down to the river. Hope was glad to have Frankie with her, providing emotional support and showing her the way.

But they were here now. The emotional support was about to run out. As they reached the water’s edge, Frankie pointed to the curve in the narrow path and said in a low voice, ‘Round the next bend, then you’ll see the caravan in the clearing ahead of you.’

‘I think I’m going to be sick.’ Hope’s mouth was bone-dry; if anyone wanted to experience something a million times worse than stage fright, all they had to do was try this.

‘You’ll be fine. Take those off.’

Hope dutifully removed the floppy-brimmed straw hat and huge dark glasses she’d worn as they’d made their way down here.

Frankie held out a hand. ‘Shall I take them home with me?’

‘No.’ Was she mad? If Stefan rejected her outright, she was going to need her disguise more than ever.

‘OK. Good luck.’

‘Thanks.’ Hope watched as Frankie turned and walked back the way they’d come. This was exactly how it had felt being dropped off at boarding school at the age of eleven.

OK, time to be brave. She took a few deep breaths and peered around the side of the bushes. There was the caravan –
God, the very same caravan
– facing the water.

Fifty metres further along the path, the angle altered enough for her to glimpse Stefan sitting on the top step. Her heart had never raced so fast in her life. Tightly clutching her hat like a security blanket, Hope forced herself to keep on putting one foot in front of the other. How she was still managing to walk, she had no idea. Oh Lord, and there he was, she could see him properly now. Wavy dark hair combed back from his face, the familiar angular profile . . . those perfect lines, carved into her memory and almost eerily unchanged.

Hope’s heart sank at the irony that in comparison she should have changed so very much.

He was wearing a red shirt and narrow black jeans. A knife blade glinted in one hand and he held a piece of wood in the other while he worked to carve it into some intricate shape; it was something Stefan had begun to do after giving up smoking all those years ago and the habit had evidently stuck.

As the distance between them decreased, Hope felt her courage shrivel and fade. He hadn’t glanced up yet, hadn’t lifted his head in her direction. She could still turn and leave.

Alternately her thundering heart could give out and she could drop dead on the spot. She was watching his tanned, skilful hands at work now. Or she could walk straight on past him without stopping and keep her own gaze averted, fixed on the river—

‘So you came back then.’

The words, quietly spoken, stopped Hope in her tracks. She hadn’t had time to avert her gaze, had been too fixated on Stefan to implement the plan. Which was how she knew, for a fact,
knew without doubt
, that he hadn’t looked at her.

Not even for a nanosecond.

In which case, how could he possibly know?

Her own voice barely audible, she croaked, ‘Sorry?’

And then he did turn his head to look at her and the world stood still, frozen in time. Their eyes met and Stefan said, ‘Oh Hope, do you think I haven’t been waiting for this moment?’

Those gentle dark gypsy eyes were utterly hypnotic.

‘But . . . but . . . how did you know it was me? Did Frankie tell you?’

‘Frankie? No.’ He shook his head. ‘I just knew.’

‘How could you? You didn’t look up, not even once.’

Stefan put down the knife and the piece of wood he’d been carving. He rose to his feet and moved towards her, as lithe and beautiful as a panther. ‘Peripheral vision. I saw you coming down the path, recognised your walk. The way a person moves doesn’t change.’

‘Oh.’

‘It’s good to see you again.’

Hope’s heart was clattering away in her chest. ‘You too.’

Stefan shook his head. ‘Oh, my love. You don’t know how much I’ve missed you.’

‘Same.’ The word came out as a croak; it was all she could manage.

‘Hope.’ He raised his left hand, gently touched the side of her face with the backs of his fingers.

She trembled in response. What a feeling. ‘You sent me away, said we couldn’t be together. But you were wrong. We could have been.’

‘I know, I know that now.’ He exhaled sadly. ‘With hindsight. But at the time I thought I was doing the right thing. You had your glittering career . . . how could I get in the way of that? I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself.’

Hope gazed up at him. ‘And it never once occurred to you that you were fifty thousand times more important to me than my so-called career? The one I gave up anyway, because without you in my life I didn’t want to do it any more?’

‘I know. But at the time I didn’t believe it. I thought I was setting you free to conquer Hollywood. Because it would never have happened if we’d stayed together, that’s for sure. We’d have been mocked, laughed at. And I couldn’t bear the thought of that happening. To either of us.’

Her throat aching, her eyes shimmering with sorrow for all those lost years, Hope whispered, ‘How about now?’

Stefan placed his hands on her shoulders, fixing her with the full intensity of his gaze. ‘I never stopped loving you. Not for a single second. And now you’ve come back. We’ve wasted too much time, Hope. You’re my whole world, you always have been . . .’

In response, she threw her arms round him and found his mouth with her own, quickly covering it with butterfly kisses. Each renewed contact filled her with joy; it was what she’d dreamed of doing for so long.
Oh Stefan, Stefan, I’m never letting go of you again
. . .

When the kissing finally ended and they clung to each other, still trembling with emotion, he stroked her hair and whispered, ‘Why do you have all that stuff on your face?’

Ah. So he’d noticed, then.

‘My desperate attempt to impress you. From now on I’m going to wear it every day. Believe me, you wouldn’t want to see me without it.’ Fizzing with joy, as exhilarated as if she’d drunk three glasses of champagne, Hope heard the words spill out of her mouth. No more hiding the truth; from now on, honesty was the only way. ‘I haven’t aged well, you see. All this make-up is to give me confidence.’ She grimaced. ‘And to stop you running away in terror. Without it, I’m a complete fright.’

Stefan shook his head. ‘That’s crazy.’

‘But true. If I’d come down here to see you with my face bare, I’m telling you now, you’d have pretended you hadn’t recognized me. You would have sat there and let me walk on by.’

‘Never.’

‘You would have done.’

‘If you really think that, you don’t know me at all. Think back,’ Stefan instructed, ‘to when we used to meet up after you’d spent the day filming. What was always the first thing you’d do?’

Hope remembered, of course she did. She’d used pale pink, rose-scented cleansing cream to remove the make-up from her face. And Stefan had watched her do it, had lovingly told her she was becoming herself once more.

With a helpless gesture, she said, ‘But that’s when I was young. My face . . . it’s different now.’

Without speaking, Stefan led her by the hand up the steps into the caravan. Opening a cupboard, he took out a glass jar filled with palest pink cream.

Hope’s eyes widened at the sight of it.

‘Don’t worry.’ Stefan smiled slightly. ‘It hasn’t been sitting in that cupboard for the last twenty years. I was showing my granddaughter how to make it the other week.’

She took the jar from him, unscrewed the lid and breathed in the smell. That was it, exactly the same old Romany recipe Stefan had used before.

‘Marshmallow root, wild roses and angelica.’ She remembered him telling her the ingredients.

‘That’s right.’ He nodded and passed her a box of tissues.

Hope watched his expression as she applied the delicious-smelling cream to her face, massaged it into her skin and carefully wiped it off with the tissues. When the last scraps of make-up had been removed, she felt the knot of fear in her chest unfurl and relax.

Stefan was smiling at her. Properly smiling. Everything was going to be OK.

‘Better.’ He nodded approvingly. ‘
So
much better. You look like yourself again.’

‘Old and wrinkly.’

‘Beautiful. The most beautiful girl in the world.’

‘Girl . . .’ Hope pulled a face, echoing the word in disbelief.

‘You’ll always be a girl to me.’ He paused, touching her upper lip with the tips of his fingers, tracing the outline of her mouth. Then he took her in his arms once more and Hope wondered if it was possible to die of joy. He felt just the same; the smell of his skin miraculously unaltered.

Her life felt as if it had just changed irrevocably; she never wanted to be apart from him again. Thanks goodness she’d plucked up the courage to return to Briarwood.

At long last she was back where she belonged.

Chapter 52

‘Well, this is going to get the tongues wagging,’ Lois said cheerfully as she climbed into the passenger seat.

Yesterday Dex had overheard her on the phone, booking her car into the garage in Marlbury. When he’d asked her how she was planning to make the eight-mile journey home afterwards and Lois had said she’d get a taxi, he’d offered to pick her up instead. Now, having been aware of the frequent curious glances of the woman at the garage’s reception desk, he said, ‘Does she know you?’

‘Her son’s in the same class as Addy. Nothing she likes better than a bit of gossip. She just said, “Doesn’t Dr Carr mind you two being so . . . friendly?”’

Amused, Dex took another look at the woman still covertly watching them. ‘But I don’t even recognise her. How does she know who I am?’

‘Because everyone knows you.’ Lois rolled her eyes at his ignorance. ‘You’re a hot topic at the school gates, didn’t you realise that? When you first moved down here, all the mothers got completely overexcited because you were single, eligible and pretty damn gorgeous to boot. Nowadays they pretend they don’t fancy
you any more, they’re just delighted to see you settling down with Dr Carr.’

Settling down? Dex wouldn’t have called it that. Taken aback, he said, ‘We’re just seeing each other, that’s all. It’s very casual.’ And mainly at Amanda’s instigation. The thought that so much more was being read into the relationship was alarming.

‘Oh, but you know what I mean. It’s going really well, isn’t it? And she’s such a great doctor. They all want you to stay together.’ Lois gestured expansively with her braceleted left arm. ‘The whole fairy-tale happy ending.’

‘Fairy tale?’ echoed Dex. ‘Why would it be a fairy tale?’

But Lois was no longer looking at him; she was staring directly ahead, her one visible cheek uncharacteristically flushed. The silence stretched between them. Dex, who had spent the last week or two idly wondering if the time was coming when he should make the inevitable break, sensed that something significant was up. Finally he repeated, ‘Why fairy tale?’

‘Look, I wasn’t thinking. I shouldn’t have said it. That’s me,’ Lois shrugged. ‘Queen of the foot-in-mouth situation.’

‘Tell me.’ He couldn’t begin to imagine what was going on.

‘You should ask Dr Carr.’

‘Ask her what? Come on, Lois. Just say it.’ Switching off the ignition, he said, ‘We’re not moving until you do.’

Another hesitation, then she reached her decision. ‘Fine then. Maybe you do have a right to know.’

‘I think so too,’ said Dex. ‘Fire away.’

‘It’s just that you’ve got gorgeous Delphi, and you’re single. And so’s Dr Carr, and she can’t have children.’ Evidently still embarrassed by her faux pas, Lois said, ‘Which is why you two getting together and becoming a proper family would be so perfect.’

‘She can’t have children?’ Dex felt as if he’d been winded. Not because he wouldn’t want to be with someone unless she was capable of giving birth, but by the burden of the responsibility this revelation created.