Single Dads Collection. Lynne Marshall
Читать онлайн книгу.
understood it. It had been a wonderful week, but slowly the sensible side of her was regaining its natural ascendancy. Ah-ha! it cried. Told you you’d regret it! Look what a mess you’ve got yourself into now!
The three-week deadline changed her whole sense of time. Sometimes it seemed to rush forward with dizzying speed, making her panic, and at others it slowed to a lethargic trickle that made it impossible to imagine the future. Alice tried to focus on going home, but her life in England seemed increasingly unreal.
She had expected to start feeling bored by now, to start yearning for shops, cinemas, bars and the gossip and pressure of a proper job, but it hadn’t happened yet. She tried to make herself miss them, but how could she think about London when Lily chattered as she swung on her hand, and the lagoon glittered behind the coconut palms, and Will closed the bedroom door every night with a smile?
The arrival of Lily’s trunk only underlined how far she was from home. Having made such a fuss about Will not bringing his daughter’s things with him, Alice had to admit that none of the clothes were suitable for a tropical island. There were surprisingly few books, and a lot of very expensive and hardly-used toys, none of which seemed to interest Lily very much.
She had to find some way of detaching herself from life here, Alice thought with increasing desperation. It was too comfortable, too intimate, with just the three of them. She needed to get out and meet more people, make her life bigger again so that when she left there wouldn’t be an aching gap where Will and Lily had been. Deep down, Alice was afraid that she might have left it too late for that, but at least it was a plan.
When Will told her that he and his team were preparing for an open day at the project headquarters that Friday, Alice leapt at the opportunity.
‘Can we come?’
‘To the open day?’ Will looked taken aback at the idea.
‘Why not? It would be a chance for Lily to see what you do all day.’
‘I’m not sure it’ll be of any interest to a child. We’ve got a government minister coming, but it’s really about trying to involve the local community in the project, especially the fishermen, and getting them to understand what we’re trying to do.’
‘Why don’t you lay something on for all the children?’ said Alice. ‘They’re part of the community too, and if you get them on board now it’ll make things much easier in the future. You could lay on little trips for them,’ she went on, warming to her theme. ‘Or have a competition with little prizes…you know, they have to find out information as they go round and answer questions, or find something, like a treasure hunt.’
‘I suppose we could do something for the children,’ said Will slowly.
‘It’ll be good for Lily to start meeting other children before she goes to school, too,’ Alice pointed out.
Impressed by her enthusiasm, Will considered. ‘Could you run some activities for the children?’
‘Me?’
‘It was your idea.’
‘But I don’t know anything about marine ecology!’
‘We can give you the information you need. It’s putting it into an appealing format we’d find more difficult, even if we had the time to think about it, which we don’t. We’ve got enough to do setting up displays for the open day as it is, and we’re running short of time.’
So Alice and Lily found themselves at the project headquarters. The building was simply, even spartanly, furnished, but everything was very well organised. It was clear that all the money was spent on expertise and research equipment—no surprise with Will in charge. The whole project had his stamp on it; high quality, integrity, and absolutely no frills.
Will showed them round and introduced them to various members of the team, all of whom welcomed Lily kindly and eyed Alice with unmistakable curiosity. He had introduced her simply as ‘a friend’, and it was obvious that they were all wondering just how close a friend she was. Alice found herself unaccountably miffed that he wouldn’t acknowledge a closer relationship, because clearly they were more than friends. They were lovers.
Desire shivered through her at the thought of the nights they spent together. She would never guess it to look at Will now. He was dressed casually but with characteristic neatness in shorts and a short-sleeved shirt, and his face was absorbed as he discussed some obscure issue to do with phytoplankton, whatever that was, with a bearded marine biologist. Looking at the back of those long, straight legs, Alice felt quite weak with the knowledge of how they felt against hers, of what it was like to kiss the nape of his neck and slide her arms around that lean, hard body.
‘Shall we go and look at the lab?’ Will turned to find Alice staring at him, and she gulped and jerked her gaze away.
‘Fine,’ she said brightly. ‘Lead on!’
In spite of herself, Alice was impressed by what she saw. She hadn’t realised quite what a major project it was, and she remembered how glibly she had suggested to Will that he give up his career and find another job in London. It seemed an absurd idea now. For it was clear that he was key to the project’s success. The staff made no secret of how much they admired him, and Alice could see why. He didn’t raise his voice, or show off or patronise anyone, but somehow he was at the centre of everything. She saw a young diver glow at Will’s quiet word of congratulation, and a secretary nod with enthusiasm at one of his suggestions. This was Will in his element, intelligent, focused, completely assured about who he was, what he was doing and why he was doing it.
It was very different from her own world of work where status symbols were so important, and how you looked and talked sometimes mattered more than what you actually did. Alice couldn’t help comparing Will with Tony, who was always so careful of his appearance and so competitive. Tony would talk himself up in meetings, never missing an opportunity to tell everyone how dynamic and successful he was, and even at home he hadn’t been able to wait to tell Alice how well he had performed in a meeting or how much better his results had been than any of his colleagues.
Alice’s own drive was less for success in itself than for the security it brought, but she sensed that the team had some reservations about her, and she supposed she did look a bit out of place in her narrow skirt, sleeveless top and high peep-toe shoes with their pretty candy stripes. Alice told herself that she didn’t care what they thought of her, and threw herself into the challenge of taking what she had learnt and making it fun and accessible for children.
Will found her a desk, and she and Lily spent the rest of the day happily playing around with ideas and thinking up simple questions that a child like Lily could answer by looking at the various display boards that were being prepared. Will disappeared out to the reef, and Alice found it easier to settle once he had gone. She chatted to the two locally employed secretaries, who adored Will, and were obviously longing to know more about his relationship with Alice but were too polite to ask outright.
‘I’m just helping out with Lily until the new nanny arrives,’ she told them, since there didn’t seem any reason to keep it a big secret. ‘I’m going home soon.’
Perhaps, if she said it enough, it would start to seem real.
She liked the atmosphere in the office. It made her realise how much she missed having to think and be part of a team, a train of thought Alice was keen to encourage in herself. Because missing that meant that she was missing work, which meant, obviously, that she was looking forward to going back to London and applying for what she was determined would be the job of her dreams.
Together with Lily, she came up with a competition and a treasure hunt, and begged the use of a computer to draft fun forms for the children to fill in. Then she rang Roger and cajoled him into sponsoring prizes for everyone who took part, as she was pretty sure Will wouldn’t approve of using his precious budget to finance frivolities.
‘It’ll be good PR for your company,’ she told him.
‘A bunch of children in fishing villages aren’t exactly