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‘Okay. First off, thankyou for even agreeing to listen to me.’ He held his hands up, palms forward, Rolo’s lead dangling from his wrist. ‘I know I behaved appallingly. I realise it must have felt as though I’d just turned my feelings off towards you, but I can promise you I hadn’t. You don’t know how hard it was to just walk away from you. I really felt something between us. We had something good, right?’
She shrugged. All she wanted was for him to get on with it, to tell her his excuse so she could leave.
‘That evening. After our date, I got home to find a letter.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Do you remember that we’d been out all day? We’d gone to the beach, hadn’t we? You probably don’t remember, but we had. We’d left before six in the morning, and we hadn’t got back until late. We’d stopped off at that comedy club on the way back, do you remember? Anyway, I’d got back to my place at about ten, I think it had been.’
‘What has the time got to do with it?’ What was he trying to say? That after spending a whole day with her he’d realised he didn’t actually like her at all?
‘It meant that I didn’t get the post until I got back.’ He shifted on his feet. ‘Anyway, there was this letter. A letter from a previous girlfriend. Someone I’d been seeing a couple of years before I met you. We’d been living together before she’d broken it off. Do you remember me telling you about her?’
‘Probably.’ They’d spoken about each over’s past, so he probably had. Not that she’d given it much thought at the time. ‘You got back with her, then?’
‘What? No, not at all.’ He shook his head.
‘But the letter was from her?’
‘It was, yes, it was from Naomi, but it’s not what you think. I didn’t drop things with you to get back with her.’
‘Please, just tell me if you’re going to.’ Why wouldn’t he just tell her?
‘Yes, of course.’ He cleared his throat. ‘The letter was from her telling me that I had a child. That after we’d broken up, me and Naomi, she’d found out she was pregnant.’
‘Oh.’ But he’d said the relationship with his ex had ended two years before he’d even met Carmen. ‘And she hadn’t told you she’d been pregnant?’
‘Nope. Nothing. Reading the letter was the first time I knew.’
‘Wow, that must have been difficult.’ Looking down, she traced the toe of her trainer through the sand. ‘I don’t understand why you didn’t just tell me, though? We’d been dating for, what, a year and yet you just didn’t bother to contact me again apart from a call to tell me you were going through something and couldn’t commit to a relationship at the moment? You could have told me. We could have worked through it. I could have supported you.’
‘There’s more.’
‘More?’
‘Naomi’s partner at the time was emigrating to Spain, and she’d decided to go with him.’
Looking back up, she widened her eyes. ‘She told you that you had a child, and that she was taking them to live in another country all in the same letter?’
‘No, she told me I had a daughter, and that she was moving to Spain and leaving our daughter here for me to bring up.’
‘She left her with you?’
‘Yes, well, no. Naomi left her at her mum’s, down here in Penworth Bay. Her mum, Tricia, was expecting me to pick her up.’
‘Oh. And you came down here and decided to stay?’
‘Pretty much. Tricia offered to let me stay with her so that Ava, my daughter, could get to know me and so she could help me with childcare whilst I got myself back on my feet. Naomi pops back maybe once a year to see Ava, but that’s all the contact she has. By choice.’
‘Right. Ava is a lovely name.’
He nodded. ‘A lovely name for a lovely girl.’ He grinned. ‘She’s six now and such a character.’
Carmen nodded.
‘I really am sorry for the way I treated you back then. I should have told you what was going on in my life. I just couldn’t think straight at the time. I went from not being a father to suddenly having a daughter and having to pack up my home. Quit my job, everything, to come and meet her. I suddenly had someone else to look after. Someone who needed me. I had to put everything in my life aside.’
She dug in the sand with her trainers again. Making the hole she’d begun deeper.
‘I thought about you a lot, though. At the time and over the years. I thought about reaching out, but I told myself it was better not to, that you didn’t need me trying to wade into your life again.’
‘I understand.’
