Page 47 of All Summer Long

In Nashville, things went from bad to worse for Robinson.

Going through the motions wasn’t turning out to be as easy as he’d hoped; every time his cell phone buzzed he hoped against hope to see Alice’s name pop up on the screen, and then the ensuing disappointment each time it wasn’t her was like a hangover that kept on coming back.

It blindsided him; he just hadn’t expected to feel so damn bereft without her.

His eyes were drawn to every blonde head, and his unreasonable heart sank every time it wasn’t Alice, even though he knew full well that it wasn’t going to be.

It shouldn’t have surprised him that she was harder to get over than he’d bargained on; their summer of temporary love had been so incredibly sweet that he missed it terribly now he was back on the bitter diet of Lena and sheer hard work.

Even the sunshine here felt different; harsher, more relentless, unleisurely.

‘Robinson?’

Lena’s voice rang out down the hallway like fingernails down a blackboard, making him bang his head on his pillow and vow to take her front door key back.

This wasn’t her house any more. She’d forgone the right to let herself in unannounced when she’d allowed another man to bend her over the breakfast bar.

God, he wished he’d stuck with his plan to rise early and hit the gym.

He was no great fan of pumping iron, but he’d take it over an unexpected audience with his ex any day.

Maybe if he’d spent less time last night drinking bourbon with the band he’d have stood a better chance of honouring his good intentions.

Sitting up, he scrubbed his hands through his hair and wished he was anywhere else but there.

Actually, he wished he was somewhere very specific; back in England, wrapped up in bed with Alice in the Airstream.

He threw the quilt back to get up at the precise same moment that Lena flung his bedroom door wide, and for a moment they both froze.

She recovered first, placing her hand on her hip and raising her eyebrows as her eyes travelled slowly down to his naked crotch.

‘Not pleased to see me, honey?’ she drawled.

Robinson yanked the quilt back across and glowered at her.

‘Why are you here?’

She smiled. ‘I thought I’d make you pancakes.’

Wow. The woman was unbelievable.

‘Dressed like that?’

She glanced down at her skin-tight black mini dress and killer high heels.

She shrugged. ‘You always liked me in this dress.’

‘I still like the dress,’ he said, matter-of-fact. ‘It’s you I have the problem with.’

Funnily enough, he found he didn’t even like the dress much any more. It was so Lena’s style, and not at all Alice’s. He tried to picture her in it and found that even in his imagination she’d teamed it with her red rain boots.

Lena’s expression flickered, registering his comment.

‘I’ll be in the kitchen when you’re ready,’ she said, then turned on her spiked heel and closed the door on the room they used to share.

‘You’re still here,’ he observed, deadpan, as he walked into the huge kitchen half an hour later.

He’d taken his time in the shower in the vain hope that she’d get the message and leave, but even as he’d let the water course over his body he’d known it was futile.

Lena would still be waiting out there if he’d stayed under the jets all day.

She didn’t reply, just slid a plate of pancakes out of the oven and onto the breakfast bar.

‘I’m not hungry,’ he said, pulling out a chair at the dining table and dropping down a safe distance away from her.

Lena looked at the pancakes for a long second, and then picked the plate up with a cloth and carried it over to the dining table.

‘I made them for you, so you could be polite enough to eat them. I’m trying, okay?’

Robinson looked at the plate.

‘You’re trying to what, exactly?’

Lena stood behind the breakfast bar and gazed at him.

‘Concert’s in a couple days, honey. I know how you get before a show.’ She softened her voice. ‘I only want to help.’

He almost laughed at her sheer audacity.

‘Did you take a recent blow to the skull, Lena?’ He shook his head, incredulous. ‘Because amnesia is the only reasonable explanation I can come up with for why you’d think it acceptable to turn up here this morning and attempt to play the good fucking wife.’

Lena leaned her elbows on the breakfast bar, her face a study of distress, her brown eyes brimming with tears. In all the years they’d been together, this was one in the handful of times he’d ever raised his voice at her.

‘I was a good wife to you, Robinson,’ she said, her voice trembling. ‘I made a mistake. People do that. We can’t all be Pollyanna.’

Robinson silently absorbed the way her acerbic reference to Alice almost choked her.

‘What do you want me to say?’ she said when he didn’t respond, throwing her hands up in the air. ‘I’m sorry? Is that it? You want me to grovel and beg you to take me back?’

He shook his head.

‘I don’t want your apologies, Lena. I don’t want your apologies, and I don’t want your pancakes. The only thing I want from you is the key to my house, because you’re no longer welcome here.’

Lena straightened her shoulders and wiped her eyes. He watched her draw herself up to her full height and set her jaw high in the air, like a cobra preparing to strike.

‘I’m a strong, proud, southern woman, Robinson Duff. Since when did it become okay for you to be rude to me?’

He shoved his chair back and crossed the room, suddenly more angry with her than he’d ever been before.

‘You come in here, and you dare to preach at me to be polite, whilst you lean over the exact same breakfast bar I found you having sex with my best friend over?’ He slammed his hands down hard on the counter, making her jump.

‘I’ll tell you something, shall I? This,’ he banged his hands down flat against the surface to make his point,‘this, is the first time I’ve laid so much as a hand on this fucking breakfast bar since that day. I couldn’t even stand to look at it.’

His face was inches away from hers now and he could see the shock in her wide eyes.

‘Now, let me make myself real clear here, Lena, because I don’t want to have to say this again. I don’t want your food, I don’t want your apologies, and I don’t want your cold, hard body in my bed ever again. I don’t want you.’

The words ground out of him, released after too long trapped inside, cathartic for him, catastrophic for her.

Lena’s mouth opened and then closed again, and the look in her eye hardened from hurt to furious.

‘This is about her, isn’t it? Polly-fuckin’-anna.’

He knew what she was trying to do and he wasn’t prepared to play her games.

‘Much as it must be convenient for you to blame someone else, Lena, no, it’s not about Alice. It’s about me realising I don’t love you any more.’

She shook her head, bitter fury turning her face unattractive.

‘She’ll never make you happier than I can.’

Robinson looked at her levelly.

‘She already did.’

They stared at each other in angry silence, and then Lena banged her fist down on the breakfast bar and stormed for the door. He said her name as she put her fingers on the handle and she turned back, triumph in her dark eyes because he hadn’t been able to let her walk away after all.

‘Your key,’ he said, picking up the pancakes and dumping them in the bin. ‘Leave your key on the hall table on your way out.’

Two mornings later in Borne, Alice pulled her suitcase out of the front door of the manor and locked it behind her, still unable to believe what she was about to do.

Or what they were about to do, to be more precise.

Her eyes settled for a long moment on the ‘For Sale’ sign that had been unceremoniously banged against the driveway wall by the eager estate agent yesterday afternoon.

The bank manager from Bibbs & Downey had wasted no time in sending her a brief and to the point ‘no way on God’s green earth am I loaning you any money’ letter in the mail that morning, he must have written it as soon she left his office and raced to the post office to make sure he made the evening collection.

She wasn’t at all surprised, and it had been the final push she’d needed to make contact with the estate agents.

It had taken them precisely ninety-two minutes from taking her instructions over the phone to put the house on the market to arriving at the manor in a screech of Porsche tyres on gravel to get the ball rolling.

Seeing the sign there broke another piece of Alice’s already battered heart, but she was doggedly determined. There was no other way.

Dragging her case awkwardly over the uneven drive, Alice glanced back once at the manor slumbering quietly under the steel grey skies and then resolutely headed along the lane.

She paused at Niamh’s gate, and a couple of seconds later her friend emerged pulling an equally cumbersome case behind her and slamming her front door with a grin.

‘I am so bloody excited!’ she laughed, yanking her case down the path to Alice. ‘Isn’t this mad?’

‘That’s one way to put it,’ Alice said mildly. ‘I’m still not sure we’re doing the right thing.’

Niamh opened her gate. ‘Do you think this is all right?’ She gestured down at her bright red skinnies and Converse boots. ‘I’ve tried to go for the “American girl about town” look.’

‘Niamh, you’re neither American nor a girl about town. You’re an English village rose through and through.’

‘So what, I should be wearing a vintage tea dress and have my hair in a neat bun?’ Niamh’s hair was never tidy. Messily pulled back with paint splatters was the usual order of the day, although today it was glossy and hung in loose curls around her pretty face.

‘Niamh. You look gorgeous, okay? God, will you calm down? You’re making me more nervous than I already am.’

‘Why are you nervous? You don’t need to be,’ Niamh said quickly. ‘I think it’s brilliant that Marsh invited us all to go over. Maybe he’s not as cuckoo as he seemed.’