gone. She kept asking me where you were. Tom was having chemotherapy, and she was so terrified that he was going to die and leave us, like Mum had. Do you know that she still has panic attacks every time we pass the hospital where he was being treated? She couldn’t go to school. I couldn’t go to work. It was a nightmare!’
Simon sat back on the beach towel with a resigned thump. ‘And Gemma asked you to help her get through this? Is that right?’
Kate nodded. ‘She begged me to stay. She was so terrified that I was going to leave her that she had to sleep in my bed for the next six months, so that she could wake up and realise that I was still alive and not going to walk out on her or die. On the day our mum died I promised Gemma that I would always be there for her. And that came before anything. Even you, Simon. Which was why I needed you so very badly.’
Kate clutched at Simon’s arm, almost scrabbling at it with the intensity of making him understand what she was saying. ‘I was so lonely. Tom and Gemma were depending on me, but who was there for me? That’s why I needed you, Simon. I needed you more than I had ever needed anyone in my life before. And you weren’t there. Not a message, a phone call, a postcard. Nothing. You cut us off as though we didn’t exist any more. Have you any idea how painful that was? To be rejected—again! It doesn’t get any easier, you know. Being rejected and abandoned isn’t something you get used to.’
‘Oh, you don’t need to tell me about that. Don’t you remember what it was like when my father left for yet another trip to Africa? We’d spent two years together before I even started uni, putting together the technology the villagers could use with help from volunteers, but that was never enough. He kept going back, and back, then back again. It was an obsession, and every single time he left he gave me the same speech about how I was wasting my time at university when I should be out here with him to make the project work. He might have sacrificed his business, but in the end it was his family he truly left behind.’
Kate knelt in front of Simon on the towel, so that she was looking up into his strong and loving face which was cracked with grief and confusion.
‘I remember that you cared about him, and wanted him to be safe in Africa. That was why you were so angry at your mother and Tom for letting him down, when he was doing such amazing work here,’ she whispered, taking his hands in hers and hoping that he would listen. ‘I wasn’t too happy about it myself. But you blamed me for bringing them together, and that wasn’t fair, Simon. I was there when they tried to explain that neither of them expected to fall for each other. Do you remember? Tom certainly never saw it coming. I know that.’
Simon gave a brief nod and blinked before answering with a sigh, ‘I know. You told me that my father was a coward for taking the easy way out, and that if I left I would be doing the same thing. Running away from the hard decisions.’
Kate winced. ‘That was cruel of me. I am sorry for being so hard on you.’
Simon slipped a hand out of her grasp and reached up and stroked her face. Her eyelids fluttered half closed at the delicious sensation.
‘Don’t be sorry,’ he said, in a low, tender voice. ‘You were telling me the truth but I wasn’t ready to hear it. I idolised my father and he was never there for me. Never. Do you know the real reason I went into maths and computing? It was so that he would be proud of me and we would have something to talk about when he came home. I think you were the only person who knew just how hard I worked to get his seal of approval.’
Simon choked on his words and slipped back on the towel, found something fascinating to look at on the beach stretched out in front of him.
‘I think it was a case of facing up to the truth that my dad was not the perfect man I had built up in my mind over