the two women had shared, as far as Will could see, was a determination to make a success of themselves.
Nikki, it had turned out too late, had had no intention of wasting her life in the kind of countries where Will felt most at home. ‘My career’s at home,’ she had told him. ‘There’s nothing for me to do here, nothing works, and, if you think I’m having the baby in that hospital, you’ve got another think coming!’
Lily was the result of a failed attempt to make the marriage work. She’d been born in London, just as Nikki had planned, but by then Nikki had already sued for divorce. ‘It’s never going to work, Will,’ she’d told him when he came to see his new daughter. ‘Let’s just accept it now rather than waste any more time.’
‘We were married less than two years,’ he told Alice.
‘So you’re divorced?’ she said, horrified at the instinctive lightening of her heart, and ashamed of herself for feeling even a smidgeon of relief that his life hadn’t turned out quite as perfectly as it had seemed at first.
And that she wouldn’t have to face his wife after all. Although she wished now that she hadn’t said that about ‘looking for Mr Right’. She didn’t want Will thinking that she would try and pick up where they had left off the moment she realised that he was single.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, when he nodded curtly. ‘I didn’t realise. Beth said that you had your family with you, so we just assumed that you were married.’
‘No, it’s just me and Lily,’ he said. ‘My daughter,’ he added in explanation. ‘She’s six.’
‘Is she spending the holiday with you?’ Alice didn’t have much to do with children, and was a bit vague about school terms, but she supposed mid-March might conceivably mean the Easter holidays. It seemed a bit early, though. Perhaps it didn’t matter so much for six-year-olds?
‘No, she lives with me,’ said Will, almost reluctantly.
‘Oh? That’s unusual, isn’t it?’ Alice looked surprised. ‘Doesn’t the mother usually have custody?’
‘Nikki did,’ he said. ‘She died recently, so now Lily only has me.’
‘God, how awful!’ Alice was shocked out of her cool pose, and Will was absurdly pleased to see the genuine compassion in her eyes. He had been wondering if there was anything left of the old Alice at all. ‘What happened? Or maybe you don’t want to talk about it?’ she added contritely.
‘No, it’s OK. People are going to have to know, and obviously it’s difficult to explain in front of Lily.’ Will sighed. ‘That’s why I couldn’t tell Beth when we met her in the supermarket. Lily is finding it hard enough to adjust without hearing the whole story talked over with perfect strangers.’
‘I can imagine.’
‘Lily used to go to the after-school club, and Nikki would pick her up after work. But that day there had apparently been some meeting that had run on, so she was going to be very late at the school. They’d warned her before about being late, so she was rushing to get there, and I suppose she wasn’t driving as carefully as she should…’
‘A car accident?’ said Alice when he trailed off with a sigh.
‘She was killed instantly, they said.’ Will nodded, and Alice wondered just how much his ex-wife still meant to him. You could say that the marriage had been a mistake, but they had had a child together. He must have had some feelings still for Lily’s mother.
‘Meanwhile, Lily is still waiting for her mother to come and pick her up?’ she said gently.
Will shot her a curious look, as if surprised by her understanding. ‘I think she must be. She hasn’t talked about it, and she’s such a quiet little girl anyway, it’s hard to know how much she understands.’
He looked so tired suddenly that Alice felt guilty for being so brittle and defensive earlier. ‘It must have been a shock for you, too,’ she said after a moment.
Will shrugged his own feelings aside. ‘I was in Honduras when I heard. It took them some time to track me down, so I missed the immediate aftermath. I wasn’t there for Lily,’ he added, and, from the undercurrent of bitterness in his voice, Alice guessed he flayed himself with that knowledge.
‘You weren’t to know,’ she said in a deliberately practical voice. ‘What happened to Lily?’
‘Nikki’s parents live nearby so the school called them when she didn’t turn up, and they looked after Lily until I got there. My work’s kept me overseas for the last few years, though, and I haven’t had the chance to see her very often, so I’m virtually a stranger to her.’ Will ran his fingers through his hair in a gesture of defeat. ‘To be honest, it’s all been a bit…difficult.’
Difficult? Alice thought about his small daughter. Lily was six, he had said. What would it be like to have the centre of your world disappear without warning, and to be handed over instead to a father you hardly knew? Alice’s heart was wrung. Her own parents had been dippy and unreliable in lots of ways, but at least they had always been there.
‘When did all this happen?’ she asked.
‘Seven weeks ago.’
‘Seven weeks? Is that all?’ Alice looked at Will incredulously, her sympathy evaporating. ‘What are you doing out here?’
Will narrowed his eyes at her tone. ‘My job,’ he said in a hard voice. ‘I’ve already delayed the project by over a month.’
‘You shouldn’t be thinking about your job,’ said Alice with a withering look. ‘You should be thinking about your daughter!’
‘I am thinking about her.’ Will set his teeth and told himself he wasn’t going to let Alice rile him. ‘I’m hoping that the change of scene will help her.’
He couldn’t have said anything more calculated to catch Alice on the raw. His casual assumption that a change of scene could only be good for a child reminded her all too painfully of the way her own parents had blithely uprooted her just when she had settled down in a new country and started to feel at home.
‘We’re off to Guyana,’ they had announced gaily. ‘You’ll love it!’
After Guyana, they had spent a year on a croft in the Hebrides. ‘It’ll be good for you,’ her father had decided. Then it had been Sri Lanka—‘Won’t it be exciting?’—followed by Morocco, Indonesia, Exmoor (a disaster) and Goa, although Alice had lost track of the order they had come in.
‘You’re so lucky,’ everyone had told her when she had been growing up. ‘You’ve seen so much of the world and had such wonderful experiences.’
But Alice hadn’t felt lucky. She hadn’t wanted any more new experiences. She had longed to settle down and feel at home, instead of being continually overwhelmed by strange new sights and sounds, smells and people.
And she hadn’t had the loss of a mother to deal with at the same time. Alice’s heart went out to Will’s daughter.
Poor Lily. Poor little girl.
‘YOU don’t think it would have helped her more to stay in familiar surroundings?’ Alice asked Will sharply, too irritated by his apparent disregard for his daughter to think about the fact that it was probably none of her business.
A muscle was twitching in Will’s jaw. ‘Her grandparents offered to look after her,’ he admitted. ‘But they’re getting on. Besides, we all thought that it would be easier for Lily to start a new life without continual painful reminders of her mother. She’s going to have to get used to living with me some time, so it’s better that she does that sooner rather than later.’