One Thousand Stars and You Page 25

  The next thing Max was aware of was the treehouse door creaking open, and Jamal peering through into the gloom.

  ‘Sorry,’ he whispered, a huge smile on his face. ‘Didn’t mean to wake you.’

  Max stretched, then winced as the pain registered once again.

  ‘What time is it?’ he asked blearily. ‘It’s so hot in here.’

  Jamal walked into the bathroom and Max heard the sound of the toilet seat being propped up.

  ‘Almost seven,’ he called through the half-open door. ‘How long you been back?’

  ‘Not long,’ lied Max, heaving himself up. He had forgotten to pull the mosquito net down around the bed, and he could see three new bites on his stump. He had dreamed about Alice this time as he slept, though, and the thought made him smile despite his discomfort.

  ‘Where are the girls?’ he asked as Jamal re-emerged, flicking water at him with a laugh.

  ‘Stephie and Maur are in the bar, and I think Alice went for a walk on the beach,’ he said. ‘You coming down?’

  Max nodded, pushing back a strong urge to grit his teeth as he swung around so his thighs were facing over the side of the bed.

  ‘I’ll meet you down there in a bit – there’s something I need to do first.’

  43

  Alice walked along the beach until she had put a good distance between herself and the Cinnabar Resort, feeling troubled yet still enjoying the simple pleasure of fine sand slipping between her toes and sea air tickling at her senses. The sun sat low and heavy, the sky above it a stained-glass window of golds, lilacs, pinks and reds, while the shifting ocean below was transformed into a molten lake of whispering beauty.

  There were bars dotted at regular intervals along the beach, each with their own set of staff preparing tables for the evening. Alice watched as one boy raked the sand flat and another lit several lanterns made from large wooden stakes. She could smell the citronella coming from the candles, but there was another scent, too, and squinting down at the curling smoke, Alice realised there were incense sticks poking out of the sand around the chairs. The mood was ambient, but her own inner turmoil still raged as wildly as the storm had the previous night.

  She wandered a bit further before settling down on the rapidly cooling sand, staring at a fixed point on the horizon as she picked absent-mindedly at the scab of a shaving cut on her knee. She should feel unshackled here in sleepy Tangalle, with all this space and nothing in the distance but the blur of possibility, but on the contrary, it felt to Alice as if the world was snapping shut around her like a magician’s box.

  It had been nice to spend the day with Maur at Goyambokka, but Alice had found it almost impossible to relax. She was worried about Freddie, she was concerned about her parents, she felt confusion when it came to Richard, and an emotion she was too afraid to examine surrounding her feelings towards Max. What she wanted to do was run away from all of it, but she was trapped. It would not matter how far or how fast she fled; the jumble of anxious gnawing thoughts would follow.

  ‘Mind if I join you?’

  Alice twisted around to see Max walking slowly across the sand towards her, limping slightly on his prosthetic leg. She hadn’t heard him approaching, and told him as much as he covered the last few metres of beach that lay between them.

  ‘That’ll be all the years of stealth training in the army,’ he joked weakly, lowering himself down close enough to Alice that their bare knees touched.

  ‘How were the turtles?’ she asked, and Max looked at her, confused.

  ‘Turtles? Oh, yeah – um, they were fun. Did you have a nice day?’

  ‘It was great, thanks,’ Alice replied, hating how stilted and polite they were being with one another. She and Max had not had a moment alone together since Richard’s call about Freddie, and he wasn’t being his normal, energetic self. There was a dullness to his blue eyes, and he couldn’t seem to get comfortable, no matter how he positioned himself on the sand.

  ‘Listen, I—’ she began, just as Max said her name, and they both laughed in mild relief that the strange tension had been broken.

  ‘You go,’ she said, and he smiled at her.

  ‘I was just going to ask after your brother,’ he said. ‘I know how I would be feeling if it was Ant, so I thought I would come and check on you – see if you were coping all right with it all.’

  ‘My mum wants me home,’ Alice admitted. ‘She won’t say as much, but I can tell that she’s angry with me for being here. I did look at booking an earlier flight, but something stopped me. I’m all over the place, to be honest. I’ve got all this nervous energy rattling around inside me – so much that I feel like I could dig my way through this beach and all the way back to Suffolk if somebody handed me a big enough shovel.’

  ‘You would probably make it there, too,’ he allowed.

  He looked tired, Alice realised. The lines around his eyes were more pronounced and there was an extra sweep of stubble across his jaw.

  ‘Are you OK?’ she asked, putting a tentative hand on his arm.

  ‘I’ll live,’ he said evenly, and Alice was reminded of what Jamal had told her about possible infections, and – what was it? – ulcerations. She was just about to move her hand instinctively to his forehead to check his temperature, when Max continued to speak.

  ‘You know, before this,’ he said, tapping the upper part of Mister Tee, ‘I was a lot like you are now.’

  Alice frowned. ‘In what way?’

  ‘Well,’ he said. ‘You know I told you before how I used to pretend to be a tough guy, just like my brother?’

  She nodded. ‘I remember.’

  ‘I think you do the same thing, except with you, it’s not so much tough as mousy.’

  ‘I am not mousy!’ she exclaimed, and he gave her a half-smile.

  ‘I know that. You are probably the least mousy person that I’ve met in ages – you’re the opposite.’

  Alice felt like she had been caught out in a lie, but wasn’t sure how.

  ‘What are you trying to say?’ she asked, taking her hand off his arm.

  ‘We have both had things happen to us,’ he said. ‘Things that changed us.’

  Alice’s hand went automatically to her scar, then she let it fall.

  ‘But whereas my accident,’ he continued, emphasising the last word to make it clear that it had been anything but, ‘encouraged me to drop the act, yours convinced you that you must put one on.’

  ‘You think I’m full of shit,’ she muttered, but Max shook his head.

  ‘No, I don’t – not with me, anyway. With me you’re that brave little girl who climbed up on the roof and said to hell with the consequences. You’re the girl who jumped out of a plane without a moment’s hesitation – the girl who scaled a mountain just so she could watch the sun rise.’

  Tears filled Alice’s eyes and she blinked them away, stung suddenly by his words.

  ‘That girl is trouble,’ she said coldly. ‘She will only end up hurting people.’

  ‘Oh, Alice,’ he said, staring at her with such dismay that she had to look away. ‘I think you’re wrong, you know. I think the only person you’re really hurting by pretending to be someone else is yourself.’

  ‘That’s not true.’ Alice was shaking her head so vigorously that her view of the sea became distorted. The crashing of the waves now seemed to match the pattern of her beating heart inside her chest. ‘I put my mum through hell before my accident, then even more after it happened, and …’ She ran out of steam and dug her bare feet through the sand in frustration.

  ‘I get it,’ Max said, his tone light. ‘I put my parents through the mill, too. I still do, and I feel crap about the fact most of the time. I do know how you feel, I really do. But I also can’t pretend to be the man I used to be. Truth is the foundation that I have been trying to rebuild my life on ever since I left the army. I accept who I am, and every day I get closer to being free because of it. Part of the reason I came here is to prove to my family tha
t I am content, and that I don’t need to be fixed.’

  ‘You don’t always tell the truth,’ Alice said quietly. ‘What about the pain in your leg?’

  Max took a sharp intake of irritated breath.

  ‘Forget my fucking leg for a second.’

  She stared at him, wide-eyed with surprise at his sudden change in tone.

  ‘I do forget it,’ she argued. ‘I don’t even think about it – but I worry about you being in pain, of course I do.’

  He softened immediately, his expression now one of regret that he had snapped at her.

  ‘Sorry,’ he mumbled. ‘I just get sick of everything coming back to my blasted leg – my literal blasted leg.’

  ‘That’s not funny,’ she sniffed, and he braved a short laugh.

  ‘Alice,’ he sighed. ‘I almost died.’

  He said it simply, yet with feeling, and Alice felt the hair on her arms prickle despite the heat.

  ‘People always use that saying, don’t they?’ he went on. ‘ “You could get hit by a bus tomorrow.” I really did get hit by that bus, so to speak, only I got the chance to get back up again. Me. When so many others did not. It was just a single moment, that IED going off, but it changed everything in my life – everything except who I really was underneath that soldier persona. I’m the same person I always was, only now I embrace it.’

  ‘So, you changed for the better?’ Alice said, and he nodded, just once.

  ‘I did.’

  ‘Perhaps I did, too,’ she insisted. ‘Maybe I needed to have my accident to stop me being so reckless, to learn there was a better way to live.’

  ‘That’s all well and good.’ He shifted on the sand until his body was angled towards her own. ‘As long as you’re happy. Are you?’

  Alice nodded. She could feel him looking at her, but she didn’t say anything.

  ‘You told me that before, when we were on the train,’ he said. ‘But I still don’t believe you. I still think you could be so much happier than you are – or claim to be,’ he added, and she pressed her heels further through the sand.

  ‘It makes me happy to know that my family are happy,’ she explained, stumbling a bit at the half-truth. Because he was right, wasn’t he? She was not as happy as she could be. ‘They’re only happy when they can trust me not to do anything stupid, or take risks,’ she went on, now trying to convince herself as much as him.

  ‘OK.’ Max paused, his fingers on his chin. ‘If that’s really the case, answer me this one question: is your brother happy?’

  Alice felt as if she had been slapped.

  ‘No,’ she mumbled.

  ‘My guess is that your brother has been putting on a very good act, too,’ Max continued. ‘And he is now having his own moment – the one that will change everything for him.’

  Alice did not even bother to catch her tears this time, simply letting them slide down her cheeks and drip on to her T-shirt. For a moment she thought that Max was going to carry on talking, that he would continue to push her in a direction she did not feel ready to go, but something stopped him. Seeing her so upset had bruised him into silence, and for a few minutes he simply sat and let her cry, staring ahead at where the sun was still sinking. And then, with a movement so small that Alice did not even sense it, he came towards her and pulled her tightly against his chest.

  44

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Alice sniffed and rubbed at her eyes. She had wept a large wet circle on to the front of Max’s navy blue polo shirt. ‘I’m not usually this pathetic – it’s just because it’s Freddie. I feel like I should be there.’

  ‘It’s OK.’ Max squeezed harder. ‘It’s best to let it all out.’

  ‘Spoken like a true tough guy,’ she joked half-heartedly, and felt him chuckle. ‘You know me so well.’

  They sat for a while not speaking, and Alice listened to the sound of Max’s heart beating against her ear. It was fast and urgent, almost as if he was running up a mountain as opposed to sitting here on the beach. She was aware that if she lifted her face up towards his, then their lips would be level, and the thought was enough to make goosebumps appear on her arms and across the back of her neck. Being this close to Max felt miraculous, like the final piece of a jigsaw puzzle slotting into place, and again the need to flee tore through her. It wasn’t him she wanted to escape from, though, it was everything else.

  ‘Can I ask you another question?’ he said eventually, and Alice pulled gently away until she could sit back up and look at him properly.

  ‘As long as it’s an easy one.’

  He glanced down at his hands. ‘It’s not, I’m afraid. But it is a yes or no one.’

  Alice scrunched her fingers through the sand.

  ‘Go on, then.’

  He took a breath, opened his mouth, then shook his head.

  ‘No, I shouldn’t. I mean, I don’t know if I …’

  She waited, not speaking, wanting him to tell her but also terrified of what he might say.

  Max brought his eyes up once again.

  ‘Do you want to marry Richard?’

  Each word hit Alice like a punch.

  ‘I …’ she stuttered.

  Max put a steady hand on the crook of her elbow.

  ‘Yes or no?’

  ‘It’s not that simple,’ she mumbled. ‘With everything that’s happened with my brother, I haven’t had time to think about it. I mean, it’s just not important – not at the moment.’

  ‘Surely there isn’t anything more important,’ Max pressed, his voice still low but the meaning behind his words unequivocal. ‘If you really loved Richard and you were happy, then the answer would be as clear as the sky above our heads.’

  Alice looked up.

  ‘There are clouds,’ she told him sullenly, and he followed her gaze without smiling.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘So it would appear.

  ‘When I heard about that message,’ he went on, ‘about the ring, I felt … Well, it felt horrible, if I’m honest. It made me realise something – and that something is the reason why I just asked you that question. I know it’s wrong of me, Alice, but I would never be able to forgive myself if I didn’t ask, if I didn’t make absolutely sure.’

  Alice felt something shift deep inside her chest. She suddenly felt unsteady, as if the possible repercussions of what he was telling her were strong enough to cause the very ground to tremble. She was afraid to look at him, but unable not to meet his eyes, which were wide and open and sincere.

  Max reached across and took her hand in both of his.

  ‘I’m not usually this guy,’ he said. ‘I hate people who cheat. Those idiots who allow themselves to fall for a person that they shouldn’t – I always believed that they were weak. But this doesn’t feel like cheating, Alice – it would feel like cheating not to.’

  ‘Not to what?’ she murmured, and he smiled a little sadly.

  ‘To hold your hand, Alice. To sit beside you, not just here on this beach tonight, but on every beach, on every day and night, for always.’

  Blood rushed into Alice’s cheeks. She thought she might stop breathing. Or cry. Or both.

  ‘I didn’t come to Sri Lanka to meet someone,’ he continued, almost with a laugh, as if he could not believe, just as Alice could not, what he was confessing to her. He had become so convinced that the kind of connection he wanted to find was lost to him, and that he would never again allow himself to fall in love – not after what had happened.

  ‘But then, there you were, so bright and shining with all your goodness and rightness. You became one of my best friends before I even realised what was happening, and now I don’t want to ever spend a single day without you in it. I want us to climb more mountains, jump out of more planes. I want to teach you to surf, and for you to take me diving. We could take on anything, I know we could – the two of us together would be invincible. And I know it’s crazy and I know I have no right to even be saying these things to you, but Alice,’ he said, squeezing her hand, ‘I think
that you …’

  He stopped, his eyes searching her face.

  ‘What I mean is, I hope … I hope that you feel the same way as I do.’

  Alice found that she couldn’t speak, opening her mouth only to emit a gasping sound. All his words, all these emotions and promises – it was all too much, it was overwhelming.

  She dropped her eyes from Max’s and stared down at the sand between her feet, forcing herself to picture Richard’s smile, the way his face was always half-crumpled when he woke, the way his fishing tackle piled up by their back door, and his clumsy and unromantic but totally sincere proposal. What would happen to Richard if she tore apart everything that they had built together? And what would her parents say if she betrayed him like this, in the same week that their son’s so-called perfect life had fallen apart? There would be so much hurt and pain and for what – for a man she had known less than a fortnight?

  Alice thought about what Steph would say – she would be kind and understanding, but also sensible enough to point out that perhaps a person’s feelings cannot always be trusted. That Alice was away from home in an amazing place, having an adventure that she now knew she had been craving for so long. She and Max had shared experiences together that felt special, and it had happened at the same time as Richard started pushing her to set a date for the wedding. Her mum would say that Max was simply Alice’s escape route, that her feelings felt real but that they weren’t. Because how could they be? How could she love a man she barely knew, and how could he really love her?

  Her largest stumbling block, however, was her fear. When Alice was with Max, she could not repress that childish nature she possessed, which made her push boundaries. He had booked a skydive – something that carried a risk far greater than the climb which had resulted in a short stay in hospital and a nasty scar – and she had run willingly to that plane without letting herself think about the consequences. She had, in short, put herself and Max before everyone else. The fact was, Alice could not trust herself with Max – and with Richard she knew that she would be safe. Who she was with Max frightened her just as much as it thrilled her, and Alice had learned a long time ago that chasing a risk often ended with a big fall.