by her enthusiasm and disconcerted by the way her mask of careful composure kept slipping to reveal the old, vivid Alice beneath.
‘I don’t know…’ he said slowly. ‘It doesn’t seem right somehow.’
‘Is it because it’s me?’ she demanded. ‘You wouldn’t be hesitating if the agency had sent me out on a temporary assignment, would you?’
‘Of course not. That would be a professional arrangement and I’d be paying you for your time.’
Alice shrugged. ‘You can pay me if it makes you feel better, but it’s not necessary. It’s not as if I’m doing it for you, you know. I’d be doing it for me—and for Lily,’ she added after a moment’s thought.
Still, Will hesitated. Getting to his feet, he took a turn around the room, hands thrust into his pockets and shoulders hunched in thought. Finally he stopped in front of Alice.
‘You don’t think it would be a bit…difficult?’ he asked. ‘Living together again after all these years?’
‘I’m not suggesting we sleep together,’ said Alice, a distinct edge to her voice. ‘Presumably Dee had her own room?’
‘Of course.’
‘Well, then.’ She glanced at him and then away. ‘It’s different now, Will. What we had before is in the past. We agreed at the time that we would go our separate ways, and we have. There’s no going back now.’
She was presenting it as something they had both decided together, but it hadn’t been quite like that, not the way Will remembered it, anyway. It had been Alice who had wanted to end their relationship. ‘Our lives are going in different directions,’ she had said. ‘Let’s call it a day while we’re still friends.’
‘I think we both know that there’s no point in trying to recreate what we had,’ she was saying. ‘I don’t want that and neither do you, do you?’
‘No,’ said Will, after a moment. Well, what was he supposed to say—yes, I do? I do want that? I’ve never stopped wanting that?
That would have been a very foolish thing to say. He had tried to say it at Roger’s wedding, and he wasn’t putting himself through that again. He had enough problems at the moment without getting involved with Alice again. She was right; it was over.
‘So what’s the problem?’ she asked him. ‘It makes much more sense for you to have me living with you than some other woman who might fall in love with you and make things really awkward.’
It was her turn to pause while she tried to find the right words. ‘We’ve both changed,’ she said eventually. ‘We’re different people and we don’t feel the same way about each other as we did then. We’re never going to be lovers any more, but there’s no reason why we couldn’t learn to be friends, is there?’
Except that it was hard to be friends with someone whose taste you could remember exactly, thought Will. Someone whose body you had once known as well as your own, someone who’d been the very beat of your heart for so long.
With someone who’d made you happier than you had ever been before. Someone who’d left your life empty and desolate when she had gone.
‘It would only be for a few weeks,’ Alice went on. ‘And then I’d be gone. That wouldn’t be too difficult, would it?’
‘No,’ said Will. ‘We could do that for Lily.’
He had a feeling that it was going to be a lot harder than Alice made out, but it would be worth it for Lily. She liked Alice, that was clear, and Alice’s presence would help her to settle down much more effectively than introducing yet another stranger into her life. He would just have to find his own way of dealing with living with Alice again.
And living without her once more when she had gone.
‘All right,’ he said, abruptly making up his mind. ‘If you’re sure, I expect Lily would love you to look after her until I can find a new nanny.’
He was glad that he had agreed when he saw Lily’s face as the news was broken to her that Alice was going to stay with them for a while. She was never a demonstrative child, but there was no mistaking the way her dark eyes lit up with surprise and delight.
‘You’re going to live with us?’
‘Just for a little while,’ cautioned Alice. ‘Until your dad can find you a new nanny.’
‘Why can’t you stay always?’
Will waited to see how Alice would handle that. It was a question he had wanted to ask her himself in the past. He had never understood why she had been so determined to end their relationship when they had been so good together. It was as if she had been convinced that everything would go wrong, but she hadn’t been prepared to give it a chance to go right.
‘Because I have to go home, Lily,’ Alice told her. ‘My life is in London, not here. But until I do go back we’ll have a lovely time together, shall we?’
Lily seemed to accept that. ‘OK,’ she said.
Alice was more nervous than she wanted to admit about how Beth would react to the news that she was moving out that night to live with Will and Lily. The last thing she wanted to do was to hurt Beth’s feelings. But, once the situation about the missing nanny had been explained, Beth was very understanding, and even surprisingly enthusiastic about the idea.
‘It sounds like the perfect solution,’ she said, smiling, her gaze flickering with interest between Will and Alice. ‘I’m sure you’re doing the right thing.’
‘I’m doing it for Lily,’ said Alice pointedly. She didn’t want Beth getting the wrong idea.
Beth opened her eyes wide. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Why else?’
Roger was less convinced that it was a good idea. ‘Are you sure about this, Alice?’ he asked under his breath as they came to say goodbye.
‘I’m sure,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry about me.’
Roger glanced at Will. ‘Maybe it’s not you I’m worrying about.’
‘We’ve talked about it,’ said Alice firmly. ‘It’s going to be fine.’
‘Well, you’re a big girl now, so I guess you know what you’re doing.’ Roger swept her up into a hug. ‘Look after yourself, though.’
‘I’m only going up the road!’
‘I’ll still miss you. I’ve got used to coming home to find you drinking my gin.’
‘I’ll miss you, too. I always do.’ Alice hugged her dearest friend, holding tightly onto his big bear strength, and her eyes were watery when he finally let her go.
‘Oh, good God, she’s going to cry!’ exclaimed Roger in mock horror. ‘Take her away, man!’
Will, who had observed that tight hug, thought it would not be a bad idea to get Alice away from Roger for a while. He was worried about Beth. At first glance, she seemed as bright and cheerful as ever, but on closer inspection Will thought there was a rather drawn look about her. It might be best all round if Alice came with him.
‘Come on, then,’ he said to Alice and Lily. ‘Let’s go home.’
They had decided that Alice might as well start her new role straight away, so she had already packed a bag by the time Beth and Roger got home. Now Will slung it in the back of his four-wheel drive and hoped to God he was doing the right thing.
Will’s house had no pool, no air-conditioning, and was some way away from the exclusive part of St Bonaventure up on the hill where Roger and Beth lived in manicured splendour, but Alice felt instantly much more at home there. An unassuming wooden house set up on stilts, it had a wide verandah shaded by a corrugated-iron roof, and ceiling fans that slapped at