Garden of Stars: A gripping novel of hope, family and love across the ages. Rose Alexander

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       5

       Portugal, 2010

      Horror seared through Sarah’s body, momentarily freezing the blood in her veins. Surely it wasn’t Scott, surely the moment they met again after twenty years wasn’t going to be when she was soaking wet, hair bedraggled, wearing a tatty old swimming costume and no make-up?

      But she knew that it was him. She would recognise that voice anywhere. And he clearly had not forgotten her.

      She opened her eyes, blinking the water out of them. She was so embarrassed at the circumstances that she could hardly bear to look up, but when she did there he was, right in front of her, impossible to avoid.

      “Scott! How amazing,” she stuttered, her teeth suddenly beginning to chatter violently.

      Just act normal, she admonished herself. Just behave as if it’s an everyday occurrence to meet an ex-lover, the love of your life, when you’re in a swimming pool in Lisbon.

      She pulled herself out of the water.

      “I got your email – I was on my way back to my room and I was going to reply to you there. I just cannot believe it!” Scott’s incredulity was apparent in his voice and his delight-crinkled eyes.

      Sarah was standing up now, acutely aware of her hair strewn everywhere, and of her faded, baggy swimsuit with the sagging elastic. If only she’d packed a decent one, she thought, before remembering that she didn’t have any other costume, it was so long since it had seemed to matter what she wore to go swimming.

      She studied Scott’s face discreetly. There were the beginnings of slight bags under his eyes, and shallow lines across the brow that she remembered as flawless and smooth. He was fatter, but still looked fit, and his hair was the same honey brown and thick as it had ever been, his skin still the colour of a smooth hazelnut shell. His dull, charcoal grey business suit in no way masked the sex appeal he had always carried so easily. Above all, he was unmistakably Scott Calvin.

      “Look at you. You look amazing.” His voice brimmed over with gladness and enthusiasm. “Absolutely amazing!”

      The idea was so ridiculous that she couldn’t help but smile. He moved towards her, made a half-gesture to hug her, then faltered, registering the fact that she was soaking wet.

      “Yes, I wouldn’t come too close,” she laughed, a high-pitched, nervous laugh. “You look far too smart in that suit, and I’m sure it’s dry clean only.”

      His eyes danced in the old familiar way, and her stomach lurched. “So how come, Sarah? Why here? Why now?”

      Bashfulness descended on her once again. “I…I’m… I’m writing an article for a newspaper,” she managed to stutter. She bit her lip, took a breath and started again. “It’s about cork. And yourself? You’re here for the conference, obviously.” She answered her own question without giving him a chance to.

      “Yes that’s right. It’s an annual event, attendance compulsory…” His words tailed away as he looked at her again, his feigned grimace turning to a complicit grin that was so well known, so intimate that she was instantly nineteen again, utterly bewitched by a boyfriend more glamorous, attractive, desired and desirable than she had ever imagined possible.

      “It didn’t go down too well at home – with Celina – but work is work.”

      A sudden small, fizzing twist of pain knotted in her belly as he said his wife’s name.

      There was an awkward pause, the conversation frozen mid-stream.

      “I…”

      “You…”

      They both spoke, and stopped, simultaneously.

      “It’s such a coincidence.” Scott’s voice was soft and low, almost as if he were talking to himself. “I could never have imagined it.”

      Sarah felt droplets of pool water gathering on her forehead and wiped her hand across her face to dispel them.

      “Well, you know what they say.” Her words were glib and meaningless, blurted out to cover her confusion. “It’s a small world.”

      A breeze had come up now that the sun had disappeared behind the rooflines; it ruffled the surface of the pool, causing ripples to spread in ever widening circles.

      “Yes.”

      The breeze grew stronger. Sarah shuddered.

      “Hey, you’re getting cold.” Scott hesitated, surveyed the loungers for a towel, saw one a few steps away and went to get it, clumsily tripping over the base of a table as he did so.

      “Careful,” exclaimed Sarah, involuntarily, and then clamped her mouth shut, wishing she hadn’t drawn attention to his mishap.

      He was smiling widely as he returned to her side with the neatly rolled towel. “My feet always were too big. Always getting in the way.”

      Another wisp of wind brought a change of atmosphere that lingered in its wake. Scott unfurled the towel and shook it out. “Nothing’s changed.”

      Oh, but it has, Scott, Sarah wanted to cry out. So much has changed, in ways we could never have imagined. Apart from anything else, we’ve both grown up – and not together, which is what I dreamt of, once.

      Scott wrapped the towel around her shoulders, deftly and surely, and as he did so, his face passed close to hers and briefly, their eyes met. Sarah had a sudden, ridiculous urge to grab him, hug him, kiss him. To feel his lips on hers, to taste him. As if in some unconscious attempt to stop herself, she stepped backwards, nearly falling into the pool as she did so. His arm went out, instinctively, to save her. His touch on her wrist was firm, his support solid.

      Just as it had been on the night they first met, at one of those African dance and music clubs where the uneven floors were sticky with spilt drinks and covert drug deals took place in darkened corners. Raw energy mingled with undercurrents of tension between the people of many cultures who gathered there, not just Portuguese but Angolan, Brazilian, Goanese. Some came from places that Sarah had never heard of before; Soviet sponsored students from Guinea-Bissau with tins of caviar in their plastic holdalls, young men from São Tomé with glassy dark skin and smiles so wide it seemed their faces might split apart.

      She had spotted Scott early on that Friday night. Their first glance was fleeting, rippling like electricity along the zinc bar, cutting through the crowd and going straight to its target. But in just that split second, she had known. They both had.

      “Watch out!” His voice, so familiar, a voice from her past that was suddenly, unbelievably, also in her present. “You don’t want to go for another dip.”

      The memories faded away.

      “No, no I don’t,” she agreed, and giggled unnecessarily. СКАЧАТЬ