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‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I thought…’ He rubbed a hand across his face.
‘You thought what? That we’d have a kiss and then you’d fly off to Australia and I’d never hear from you again?’
Clara pushed herself to her feet, slipped her wet feet into her sandals and wiped grass from the backs of her thighs. Her heart was hammering as she started walking away. How had she let this happen again?
‘Hey, Clara!’ River moved past and stood in front of her. ‘Stop.’
‘No.’
Clara went around him but he walked past her and blocked the path again.
‘Please stop and talk to me. This isn’t about what happened here sixteen years ago. We can both move on from that.’
So he did remember their first kiss. Clara took a shuddering breath. ‘Can we move on? You kissed me and left for Australia the next day, and that was that. All I got was a postcard that said: Probably best not to keep in touch now I’ve moved on. I really hope you have a good life. R.’
‘Oh God.’ River closed his eyes briefly. ‘Did I really send you such an idiotic, thoughtless goodbye?’
‘Yes, you did.’
‘It was so bad, you memorised it.’
‘It’s not the kind of message you’re likely to forget,’ said Clara, wanting to cry.
She still remembered her excitement when the Sydney postcard plopped onto the doormat of their cottage. He’d written, at last! Followed by a searing sense of loss, disappointment and grief as she’d read his words.
River ran a hand across his jaw. ‘I really was an arse back then, wasn’t I?’
Clara nodded, staring at her feet rather than look him in the eye.
‘You kissed me and then left for the other side of the world, and you cut off all contact. How do you think that made me feel?’
‘Horrible?’
‘Yes, really horrible.’ She lifted her head and glared at him. ‘For ages I thought the kiss was so bad, so wrong, you didn’t want anything more to do with me. I didn’t kiss anyone else for ages. I had a total complex about it.’
River ran a hand through his hair in exasperation. ‘But you didn’t come to say goodbye the next morning when Mum was dragging me off to Australia. I thought you were furious with me for kissing you.’
‘I didn’t know you were leaving.’
‘I sent you a text when my mum told me what she’d planned and said we’d be going at eight o’clock, but you weren’t there.’
‘I didn’t receive any text. This place was like a black hole back then for a phone signal. The first I knew about you leaving was when my mum told me that you and your mum had gone for good.’
River’s shoulders slumped. ‘The truth is, our first kiss was amazing, Clo. It was everything I’d dreamed of. But when you didn’t bother coming to say goodbye, I thought you didn’t really want me. You’d never really wanted me because it was Bartie you were keen on.’
‘I thought Bartie was cool but I wouldn’t have kissed you if it was him I really wanted,’ said Clara crossly, although she wasn’t cross with River.
She was cross with stupid patchy phone signals and hasty assumptions that had pushed the two of them apart. She was filled with sadness about the time they’d lost.
River shook his head. ‘I assumed you only went along with the kiss because you felt sorry for me, because you knew what life was like for me at home. The parental arguments. My dad being distant. I told you almost everything, except how I really felt about you.’
‘You assumed a lot,’ said Clara as River’s final words hit home: how I really felt about you.
‘I was so far away,’ River continued, ‘and I wanted you to be happy, so I was clearing a path for you to be with Bartie, as I saw it.’ He shrugged. ‘Though it wasn’t all about me being self-sacrificing. The truth was I was heartbroken to be thousands of miles from you and I thought a clean break was the only way to stay sane. Why torture myself by staying in contact and hearing all about your boyfriends, when I felt I was never going to see you again?’
‘Boyfriends, now, is it? Not just Bartie?’
‘Of course, boyfriends plural. You were amazing, Clo. You are amazing, and I knew that any man would be honoured to be your boyfriend.’
