‘No, you need to think of your own symbolic gesture, you can’t have mine.’ His words make me laugh, pressing snotty tears into his shoulder. Then he says in a more serious voice, ‘These things might not have the meaning you thought, but it doesn’t mean they don’t have meaning. From what you’ve told me about your mother, she invested in objects. Perhaps it was hard for her that she had nothing of his to give you.’ Ted strokes my hair, ‘Maybe she was trying to give you the father she would have liked you to have.’
Ted’s arms feel so warm and safe. I feel so known by him; the words he says, the way he touches me like fingers on braille, reading who I am.
‘I just hate not being able to ask her about it,’ I say, my voice calmer now. ‘I’ll never be able to ask her.’
‘I think when you’re young, your parents feel infallible,’ says Ted, ‘people who have all the answers. Then gradually you notice a few chinks, it crosses your mind that occasionally they might be wrong. Then one day, you look at them, and you realise they’re just the same as you – cobbling it together, with no real clue.’
‘Gerry must have more of a clue than most, though.’
‘I don’t know.’ Ted releases me from his arms and weaves his hands together, looking at the place where his ring used to be. ‘I think he’s just trying to make sense of it all like the rest of us.’
Reaching forward beyond his feet, Ted picks something up from the sand, a blue tear-shaped piece of sea glass.
‘The blue pieces are rare,’ he says, examining it and then pressing it into my hand. ‘This is a good piece. Some people call them mermaid’s tears. Do you want to hear the story?’ I nod as I inspect the smooth glass in my palm – it looks like a gem, a tear of frosted sapphire. ‘The story goes that a mermaid watched as a storm threatened to wreck the ship of the man she loved,’ Ted says. His voice is hypnotic, I love listening to him. I sink my head back onto his shoulder as he speaks and he runs a hand across my hair, my whole body alert to his touch. ‘She was forbidden by Neptune from intervening in the weather, but she calmed the sea and tamed the waves, to save her love from certain death. For her disobedience, she was banished to the ocean floor, never to surface again. Her tears wash up on the shore as glass, a reminder of true love.’
I don’t know if it’s the hair stroking or his perfectly chosen words, but I pull away and look into Ted’s face, and then we are kissing. It feels out of my control, the force with which I want to kiss him; I give in to it entirely, planting my lips firmly against his. There’s a moment of surprise in his eyes, a flash of startled bemusement, but then it turns into the golden flicker of fire I saw last night on the beach, and in an instant he’s kissing me back. His kiss is so passionate, it feels as though the fire in Ted, the years of loss and sadness, have suddenly been given an outlet. The energy of it is electrifying.
I climb onto his lap – my thinking mind muted by an animal instinct. Clasping my hands around his face, his beautiful, clean-shaven skin, I run my hands up into his hair, pushing my mouth down onto his. His lips push back with equal force and his tongue delves to explore mine, unlocking some new urgency inside me. The kiss sends a wave of energy down between my legs, and I pull back, startled by the effect his lips are having on the rest of my body. When I pull away, his eyes lock onto mine and I know I should pause, let my thinking brain back in for a moment, but I can’t. Perhaps he sees the want in my eyes, because he holds my waist and rolls me over on the sand. Then, lying on top of me – his fingers entwine in mine above our heads. I push my hips up against his, and he lets out a low moan.
Some animal switch has been flicked inside me; I feel feral and wild and completely alive.
This – this is kablammo.
Then it ends as quickly as it began. Cold splashes over my feet, and Ted flinches, pulling away. We look down to see the tide has come in, the waves breaking over our legs – we laugh, untwine our limbs, and scramble further up the beach, away from the water.
We sit next to each other on the sand again, but now the moment has shifted. Where did that even come from?
‘I’m sorry,’ I say, realising it was me who initiated the kiss out of nowhere. My heart is pounding with exhilaration, mixed with embarrassment at the wildness that just came over me.
‘I’m sorry. You were upset,’ Ted says, rubbing his chin with a hand, his eyes closed. ‘I shouldn’t have done that.’ His words sting – was it a sympathy kiss, then? He clasps a hand over mine, and I realise he’s holding my pendant in his palm. ‘Don’t throw your precious things in the sea, Laura. You might regret it.’
Immediately, I think of his wedding ring. Does he already regret throwing that away? What am I doing? Only an hour ago, I was kissing Jasper. I don’t think it’s very ladylike to kiss two different men on the same day. Ted is technically still married, looking for his wife, a wife I now know how to find. He lets go of my hand, and I feel goose bumps prickle up the length of my arm. I want to reach out for him again, but I don’t.
‘Do you want me to see if I can find your watch?’ he asks, standing up and making to take off his T-shirt.
‘No, Ted,’ I reach up my hand to stop him, ‘I have to tell you something.’ My voice sinks.
‘If it’s that you’re seeing someone else at the moment, well, I kind of know that,’ he says with an uneven laugh that catches in his throat.
‘It’s not that, though – well, yes, there is that …’ I trail off, digging in my handbag for the page of Belinda’s letter, my hand shaking. ‘This was in amongst your dad’s letters, I found it last night. Gerry says he lost it, then forgot about it. He didn’t mean to keep it from you.’
I pass it to him quickly. He takes it from me, his brow furrowed with two deep lines. I look away as he reads, not wanting to see the look on his face as he processes what it is.
When I turn back, he is pacing in the sand.
‘Why didn’t you give this to me last night, when you found it?’ he asks, his voice hard.
‘I’m not sure,’ I say, closing my eyes, hearing the hurt in his voice. ‘You had so much else you were dealing with, I thought it might be better seen in the light of day …’ I trail off, hearing how pathetic my excuse sounds.
‘I have to go,’ Ted says gruffly, folding the letter into his pocket, ‘I’m sorry, Laura, none of this is a good idea. I can’t—’
He lays a hand gently on my shoulder. I raise my hand to touch his, giving him permission to go, and it feels what’s between us is over before it even began.
And then his hand is gone and so is he, and I’m left alone on the beach, perhaps more alone than I’ve ever been, my head and my heart full of more swirling confusion than they were before.