Page 216 of Kiss Heaven Goodbye

He was glancing at his watch as the sun started sloping down the sky. ‘We’d better head back.’

‘Just a bit further,’ she said, not wanting it to end. A line of dark rocks blocked their way and Alex put out his hand to help her across, but she slipped on some seaweed and he caught her as she stumbled, their faces just inches apart.

‘What’s so funny?’ she said, catching his smile. ‘You never seen a lady slip before?’

‘It’s not that,’ he said. ‘I was just remembering this spot.’

They were on North Point Beach. The very place they’d been skinny-dipping the night they’d found the body.

‘That night, right here,’ he said, ‘I was about to kiss you.’

And immediately Grace could remember it as if it had just happened. He had! He had held her hand to cross the rocks and she remembered feeling as if she never wanted him to let go.

‘The whim of a drunk, horny eighteen-year-old,’ she said, trying to make light of it.

‘Not really,’ he said, kicking some seaweed. ‘I just had a bit of a crush on you.’

Grace stopped and gaped at him. ‘You?’ she said with amazement. ‘You had a crush? On me?’

‘Don’t sound so surprised.’ He looked more like an awkward teenager than a thirty-something rock star.

‘But I am,’ said Grace. ‘I mean, that letter you sent me in Bristol, boasting about your sexual conquests at Danehurst, then copping off with Freya that night. I thought . . .’

Alex looked affronted. ‘I never copped off with Freya.’

She grinned. ‘I forgot. She was gagging for it but you beat her off with a stick. You were such a shy, retiring youth.’

‘I didn’t kiss her, because I wanted to kiss you,’ he said seriously, like it was the most important thing in the world.

Oh God, oh God, she thought. Her heart was hammering so loud she felt sure that he could hear it. The thought of what she wanted to do next, could do next, made her light-headed. We never really grow up, do we? The thought of two decades of wrong turns and missed opportunities ignited something inside her.

Just do it, Grace, she told herself as she stepped towards him, taking his face in her hands. And as their lips touched, his hand slipped behind her neck, pulling her in for a deep, warm, sweet kiss that seemed to stop time. Opening her eyes, she saw him look at her wide-eyed, his cheeks flushed with surprise and pleasure.

‘Why didn’t you do that twenty years ago?’

She breathed deeply, opening her heart, sharing his air. ‘If I’d have known it was going to be that good, I would have done.’

He wrapped her in his arms and spun her around, laughing.

‘I love you, Grace,’ he said. ‘I really do. And you know what? I think I always have.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘The timing was never quite right, was it? Here on the island. In Ibiza. You know I really wanted to kiss you in the nut-house but I thought better of it. You’d have called the nurses and told them to top up my meds.’

‘Better late than never.’ She smiled, kissing him again.

They began to walk back down the beach, hand in hand. He reached up to help her back across the rocks, but she paused, bending down to touch their warm surface.

‘What are you thinking?’ said Alex.

‘Oh, just about those little decisions that we don’t think are important at the time but which actually change our lives.’

‘You mean how different things might have turned out if I had kissed you right here? If we’d turned around and gone back to the house for a long last night in bed together?’

She nodded, her mind distracted for one split second away from the delicious thought of them in bed.

‘Well, we wouldn’t have found the body.’