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It was where she had always felt safe since the accident. Where she had always been comfortable. Where she had eventually learned to be happy again. And now she knew that she had shared that place with him.
Was that why he had bought it? Because it had been special to them?
It would have been sweet, she thought, if he hadn’t been bent on trying to destroy it. Despite her best efforts to limit the impact of the development, despite the relatively sensitive plans that Guy had submitted, her tranquil island retreat would never be the same once building began.
Was he trying to erase what had gone on there? What they had shared?
‘Was that why you bought the island?’ she asked, unsure of whether she would get an answer, never mind one that she would like.
‘Yes.’ Another monosyllable. Marvellous. Piecing together her history one syllable at a time wasn’t remotely frustrating...
‘Fine,’ she said, her patience finally snapping. ‘You don’t have to tell me, Guy. You hoard those memories to yourself, and I’ll pick up the crumbs and try and piece those few months together from the scraps that you throw me. It’s not like I mean anything to you. I wouldn’t expect you to try and understand.’
‘It’s not like that,’ Guy protested.
‘Four syllables this time. Lucky me.’
‘I’m serious. You’re better off not knowing. Trust me.’
‘Trust you?’ She raised her eyebrows in disbelief. ‘And what possible reason have you given me to do that? What I know about you can be summed up in a handful of paragraphs, and the fact is that we had sex and you no longer care. That’s fine. But this isn’t just about that for me. Can’t you see? I can’t pretend that I don’t care. I can’t not care. Because to me that summer isn’t about what happened between us. It’s about me. It’s about who I was. And the only clues that I have are the ones that you throw me, and I’m fed up of turning up here hoping for scraps and having to deal with your attitude to get them. Either start sharing our history with me or stop calling, Guy. It’s not fair to trap me between the two.’
Guy let out a long breath, then came over and sat opposite her.
‘We spent a lot of time on Le Bijou,’ he confirmed, letting out another long breath. ‘It was special to both of us.’
‘And that’s why you bought the island?’ she asked. He nodded. ‘And that’s why you are intent on destroying it?’
His head snapped round to look at her. ‘I’m not destroying it.’
‘You’re building a hotel on it. It’ll never be the same again. It’s hardly preserving it.’
‘Fine, yes. I wanted to destroy it.’
She sat and looked at him for a long moment, the impact of that statement hitting.
‘You hate it that much?’
Guy sighed, shaking his head. ‘I don’t hate it,’ he said.
‘Then why?’
‘Because while it’s sitting there, just as I—we—left it, I couldn’t stop thinking about it.’
Meena felt the silence settle uncomfortably between them before she spoke again.
‘It was that bad?’ she asked, her voice soft.
‘Bad. Good. I don’t know.’
Meena was seriously starting to regret pulling on this thread. Answers were meant to be reassuring, but she wasn’t liking the sound of where this was going. She thought again about what Guy had said—how he had kept the truth from her in order to protect her—and wondered if she had made a mistake in pushing for it.
‘Did you really leave because your holiday was over?’ she asked, not sure that she wanted the answer. But, now they had started, she wanted everything out in the open. She wanted to know how bad it could get. And then once it was done, flushed out of her system, she could move on. She would move on.
He nodded, but she could see there was more, so she waited. ‘It wasn’t really a holiday. It was an apprenticeship. I was here to see how the resort worked, before I went back to head office in Sydney to work with my parents. We didn’t have much of a choice about me leaving.’
‘Did I want you to go?’ she pressed. He fixed her with a stare, as if he was challenging her. He didn’t want to tell her this, but she wasn’t going to let him off the hook. This was her history too. She was entitled to know it.
