Dan.
He was shocked at himself. Why had he said that? It wasn't that he didn't think that she was but the fact that he had said it. You only said things like that to someone when you had known them a long time or else were on a night out when you were trying to flatter and flirt with a stranger. Neither applied here. It was just, well, inappropriate. And just so jarringly out of character again. He gave Tess an anxious glance. Luckily she seemed not to have minded.
She just shook her head, ‘I’m not. You must be crazy.’
He was about to argue when she turned her head away.
‘Why do you say you are not that social, Dan the valuer?’ she said.
He thought this over for a while.
‘Well, I just prefer being quiet. I don’t like noisy places. I always preferred being at home, staying in to going out, being with one person rather than mixing with lots.’
‘She’s lucky then.’
‘Who is?’
‘Your wife. You have a wedding ring on.’ she nodded in the direction of his left hand.
Dan found himself turning the ring round and around on his finger.
‘She didn’t think so,’ he said, ‘She found someone else. Asked me to leave. We’re getting divorced. She thinks I’m boring, unambitious and anti-social.’
‘Oh. Sorry.’
They were silent again for another few minutes. The water lapped gently beneath their feet.
‘I didn’t mean to rake up any bad memories,’ Tess said.
‘It’s OK. I’m getting over it. I really should stop wearing the ring. I just…’ He stopped. He couldn’t for the life of him explain to himself just why he did wear it so it was going to be hard to explain it to anyone else. Maybe it was the finality of what the act of removing it actually meant. It meant he accepted that part of his life was over. Yet he himself didn’t want to go back. The love wasn’t there, perhaps it never had been. He sometimes asked himself whether love really was real at all, or whether it was just something people deluded themselves with. He knew that he really did not want to delve too deeply into this, that he wasn't ready to, so decided to ask his own question, the one that he had been burning to ask from the moment he had met her.
‘What about you? Is there anyone in your life?’
She did not answer immediately. Again this made Dan wonder if she was hiding something. Surely the answer was simple; yes or no? Instead she seemed to be trying to puzzle it out. Was she thinking up some pat answer?
When she did reply, however, it was quite simply to say:
‘No. Not for a long time.’
‘Since you’ve been ill?’
Again Tess did not answer straight away. Dan wondered whether she hadn’t heard or whether she did not want to answer. He was trying to think of a topic that would get them both to safer ground when she replied.
‘No. Before that. Quite a long time before that.’
‘Sorry. I’m not meaning to pry.’
She had been looking away from him still but now she turned to face him.
‘It’s OK, really,’ she said, ‘I was engaged for a while. I got close to being married. Luckily I escaped.’
‘Luckily?’
‘Sometimes people aren’t who you first think they are,’ she said.
Dan looked quizzically at her. Did she mean him? Did she think he was not who he portrayed himself as?
‘Forget it,' she said. 'I felt trapped but I got out. I was in London at the time but I got away. I moved back here.’
Dan smiled and looked down at his wedding ring again. ‘It’s funny how you want to come back to places where you’d once been happy, isn’t it? I used to live in London too’
She turned to look out over the water again.
‘Yes. And I was happy when I moved here. Happy for the first time in a long time. My family worried about me though, being alone and everything, but really I was fine.’
Suddenly a cloud seemed to pass over her face. Dan knew that she had had a thought, some memory that was painful or disturbing.
‘I was fine,’ she whispered, still staring at the water.
‘What happened?’
Her brow was deeply furrowed. It looked like she was trying to remember something, to drag something up from the depths. Suddenly she stood up, her face pale, her mouth open in shock. She looked terrified, looked on the point of running.
‘Tess, what is it? What’s wrong?’ said Dan also getting up. He reached