‘I asked my parents for years, but I never got them.’
‘I’d like pink shoes too, but my dad says these are more sensible.’ The little girl sighed.
‘Dads don’t understand about shoes,’ Alice told her. ‘Very few men do. But, when you grow up, you’ll be able to buy any shoes you want. I bought a pair of lovely pink shoes as soon as I was earning my own money. Now I’ve got lots of shoes in different colours. Some of them are lots of fun. I’ve got shoes with polka dots and zebra stripes,’ she said, illustrating the patterns by drawing in the air. ‘Some of them have got sequins, or bows, or fancy jewels or—’
‘Jewels?’ she interrupted, starry-eyed. ‘Real ones?’
‘Well, no, not exactly,’ Alice had to admit. ‘But they look fabulous!’
The child heaved an envious sigh. ‘I wish I could see them.’
Alice opened her mouth to offer a view of the collection she had brought with her, but before she could ask the little girl her name a voice behind them made them both jump.
‘Lily?’
Will stepped out of the kitchen onto the wooden verandah, letting the screen door bang into place behind him. He had been looking for his daughter everywhere.
Unable to bear the sight of Alice flirting any longer, he had been avoiding the front lawn, and had endured instead a tedious half-hour making small talk in the air-conditioned coolness of the living room. Only when he’d thought that he could reasonably make an excuse and leave had he realised that Lily was not among the children around the pool where he had left her.
Since then he had been searching with rising panic, flaying himself for ever taking his eyes off her in the first place, and now acute relief at finding her safe sharpened his voice.
‘What do you think you’re—’
He stopped abruptly as he reached the edge of the verandah and saw who was sitting at the bottom of the steps next to his daughter, both of them staring up at him with identically startled expressions.
‘Alice!’
Will glared accusingly at her. If Alice hadn’t annoyed him so much, he wouldn’t have left the poolside, and he would have kept a closer eye on Lily. This was all her fault.
‘What are you doing here?’ he asked rudely. It was bad enough when he had imagined her out front, making a spectacle of herself with all those fawning men, but it was somehow worse to find her here with Lily, a witness to his inadequacies as a father.
Why did it have to be her? He wouldn’t have minded finding anyone else with Lily, would even have been glad that his daughter had found a friend, but not Alice. She had been free enough with her opinion of him as a father earlier. There would be no stopping her now that she had met Lily. Alice would have taken one look at his quiet, withdrawn daughter and decided just how he was failing her, Will thought bleakly.
ALICE took her time getting to her feet. Slowly brushing down the back of her dress, she wondered how best to deal with him. She didn’t want to argue in front of Lily—how stupid of her not to have guessed who she was, but she didn’t look anything like Will—but it was obvious that Will was still angry with her.
Obvious too that he hadn’t liked finding her with his daughter. She just hoped he wouldn’t think that she had done it deliberately.
‘We were just talking about shoes,’ she said carefully at last. ‘We hadn’t got round to introducing ourselves, had we?’ she said to Lily, who had turned away from her father and was sitting hunched up, her fine hair swinging down to hide her face.
Lily shook her head mutely. With the appearance of her father, she had lost all her animation.
‘I’m Alice,’ said Alice, persevering. ‘And you’re…Lily? Is that right?’
Lily managed a nod, but she peeped a glance under her hair at Alice, who smiled encouragingly.
‘Nice to meet you, Lily. Shall we shake hands? That’s what people do when they meet each other for the first time.’
It felt like a huge victory when Lily held out her hand, and Alice shook it with determined cheerfulness. She wished she could tell Will to stop looming over his daughter. He looked so forbidding, no wonder Lily was subdued.
‘What are you doing out here, Lily?’ Will asked stiffly. ‘Don’t you want to play with the other children in the pool?’
Lily’s face was closed. ‘I like talking to Alice,’ she said, without turning to look at him.
There was an uncomfortable silence. Alice looked from Will to his daughter and back again. He had told her that he was practically a stranger to his own child, but she hadn’t appreciated until now just what that meant for the two of them. Will was awkward and uncertain, and Lily a solitary child still trying to come to terms with the loss of her mother. Neither knew how to make the connection they both needed so badly.
It wasn’t her business. Will wanted her to leave him alone with his daughter, that much was clear. She should just walk away and let them sort it out themselves.
But when Alice looked at Lily’s hunched shoulders, and remembered how she had laughed at the butterfly, she couldn’t do it. Will didn’t have to accept her help, but his little girl needed a friend.
‘I liked talking to you, too,’ she said to Lily. ‘Maybe we can meet again?’ She glanced at Will, trusting that he wouldn’t jump on the offer before Lily had a chance to say what she wanted. ‘Do you think your dad would let you come round to tea one day?’
‘Can I see your shoes?’ asked Lily, glancing up from under her hair.
‘You can see some of them,’ said Alice. ‘I’m only here on holiday, so I didn’t bring them all with me, but I’ve got some fun ones. The others are at home in London.’
Lily thought for a moment and then looked over her shoulder at her father. ‘Can I?’
Most other little girls would have been jumping up and down, swinging on their daddy’s hand and cajoling him with smiles and dimples, supremely confident of their power to wrap their fathers round their perfect little fingers, but not Lily. She would ask his permission, but she wouldn’t give him smiles and affection. Not yet, anyway.
A muscle worked in Will’s jaw. He wished that he knew how to reach her. He knew how sad she was, how lost and lonely she must feel. If only he could find some way to break down the barrier she had erected around herself.
Torn, he watched her stiff back helplessly. He wanted to give Lily whatever she wanted, but Alice and her shoes and her talk about London would only remind her of her mother and her life in England, and she would be unsettled all over again. Surely that was the last thing she needed right now?
He was still hesitating when Beth burst through the screen door with her customary exuberance. ‘Will?’ she called. ‘Are you out here? Did you—’ She stopped as she caught sight of the three of them. ‘Oh, good, you’ve found her—and Alice too!’
Belatedly sensing a certain tension in the air, she looked from one to the other. ‘I’m not interrupting anything, am I?’
‘Of course not.’ Alice forced a smile. ‘I was just inviting Lily round for tea one day.’
‘What a lovely idea!’ Beth clapped her hands together and beamed at Will. ‘Come tomorrow!’
Will could feel himself being swept along by the force of her enthusiasm and tried to dig in his heels before it all got out of hand. ‘I’m sure you’ll have had enough visitors by then,’ he temporised while he thought up a better excuse.
‘Nonsense,’