Someone Like You(58)

'Yeah, I am. I'm done waiting for you to need me, so I'm coming after  you. But I had to tell you what's been going on with me. I figured you  needed to know before I could ask you to share the future with me. I  want to be fair to you.'

'Oh, Dan.' She knew exactly who he was. He was, pure and simple, the best man she had ever met.

'I thought I was over it. I've been feeling pretty good lately, like the  old me. But today? What happened in there?' He gestured back at the  stone building behind them. 'I'm not so sure. Maybe I'll never be over  it. I don't have a fucking clue.'

He stopped, his voice hoarse with the emotion of being so honest. 'But I  can't let it trap me. I want to get on with my life and fill it with  things that make me happy. And I've worked out there are three things  that make me happy, in no particular order. One, working with Ry, that's  a no-brainer. Two, living in my crappy little beach shack in Middle  Point.'

'You really love it here?' Lizzie asked, her heart in her throat.

'I do. This place gets into your head. Under your skin. And the third thing … '

'Yes?'

'You, Elizabeth.'

His words went round and round in Lizzie's head. Did Dan really want a  life with her? Have that happy ever after that Joe had been talking  about? That she'd always been too scared to wish for? Maybe this was  going to be the first day of the rest of her life, after all.

Except for one thing.

It seemed it was the night for coming clean. It was time for her  confession. She took a deep breath, settled herself. She let the lapping  of the water and the breeze across her face calm her, the squawk of an  unseen gull overhead keep her in this place, this safe place  –  home  –   rather than take her back to that dark, cold night on a south London  street.

'Did you hear what I said?'

Lizzie wiggled herself out of his arms, moved away from him. She needed  to stop the physical contact if she was to tell her story.

'I heard every word, Dan. And before you say anything else, there's something I need to tell you.'

Dan moved towards her, moved to grab her arm. 'You're scaring me now. What is it?'

Lizzie took a deep breath, hoping it would give her the strength she  desperately needed to help her find her story after so long.

'I haven't been honest with you either,' Lizzie said, her voice thick  with the emotion that was still so raw after all these years.

'You're not secretly married, are you?'

'No.'

His face was stony. 'Tell me you're not sick.'

'No, nothing like that. You asked me, the day Harri broke her hip. You  asked me what happened to me. And I couldn't tell you. But I need to  now. If you want me, there's a part of me you need to know about.  Something big happened to me, a long time ago, and I've just started to  realise, in these past few months, that I've let it keep me locked away  here in Middle Point, in my small life. I've been too afraid to dream  big dreams for myself.'         

     



 

'Elizabeth,' he said fiercely, turning to wrap an arm around her. She brushed him off.

'I've only ever left Middle Point once. As soon as I'd finished high  school, I left Julia behind for her last summer here before she went off  to Melbourne, and I flew off to London for my grand adventure. I wanted  to escape this place and see the world.' She managed a sad smile. 'God,  I had way too much confidence for an eighteen-year-old girl from a  small town like this. I'd worked for years to save up for the airfare  from my part-time job as a cleaner at the caravan park and I left,  planning never to look back.'

'You? Who loves Middle Point like it's your firstborn?'

'I know, right? I found a job the second week I was in London and I was  off. It was brilliant. I moved into a share house south of the river  with five other people from all over the world.' Lizzie took a deep  breath. 'And then I met Billy at the pub I was working in.'

Dan shifted slightly and she could feel the tension in him but she  didn't stop. 'He was one of those ridgy-didge English boys, which was  the main attraction, I guess. The complete opposite of the surfer dudes  I'd grown up with. He was pale and funny and he tried to convert me to  soccer. And he hated it when I called it that. "It's football, Lizzie,  the real football, not your Aussie Rules shite."'

'What did he do to you, Lizzie?' Dan's voice was tight and sharp.

'We'd been going out about three months. Three months and one week.'

Lizzie stopped. Found the strength she needed. 'He only lasted one week after I was attacked.'





CHAPTER


33


Dan leapt to his feet. He took in a huge breath and linked his fingers  together on top of his head. Lizzie felt a shiver rise in her belly,  tried to breathe away the nausea she felt there. There was a reason she  didn't like talking about London. She still felt sick to the stomach and  it was fifteen years ago.

'Fuck,' Dan exclaimed into the dark night. Then his voice dropped to a hoarse whisper. 'You were attacked?'

Lizzie squeezed her eyes shut. She didn't want to see his face. 'I was  on the way home from a shift at the pub and I'd just jumped off the  Vauxhall bus at the end of my street to walk home.' Her voice was a  whisper, fighting with the sea breeze to be heard.

The exact details were still cloudy in Lizzie's mind, like a television  signal breaking up in bad weather. She had to really concentrate to get  everything in the right sequence so it made sense. She didn't remember  every detail anymore. Perhaps because it was so long ago; maybe because  her subconscious mind had tried to save her from the worst of it.  Sometimes it felt like a lifetime in the past, other times, not.

'There were two of them. One smelled of garlic and he was the one who  grabbed me from behind and pulled me backwards. I cracked my head on the  ground when he dropped me. Then another guy had his hand on my throat.'

Lizzie's hand flew to the neckline of her bridesmaid's dress, as if she was still protecting herself.

'They'd pulled me into a side street. The bricks were grey and it was  dark. I was kicking and scratching at his hands. I couldn't breathe. One  guy started ripping at my clothes.'

Lizzie stopped to breathe away those scarring memories. She slowly  opened her eyes and looked for Dan. He was watching her, listening. Even  in the moonlight, she could see the muscles in his jaw flicker.

She had to finish this.

'The coppers told me later that they'd probably set out to steal my  handbag. That I was an easy target. A woman, out late on her own. I was  so close to the worst thing imaginable. But I screamed and screamed  until I was hoarse. Three blokes coming out of the Indian takeaway  across the road heard me and ran over. They dropped their food and  chased the bastards away … just in time.'

Time. The trick of time meant that she'd been walking along that London  street at the exact time that two men with vicious intent were there,  too. One minute earlier or later, and it wouldn't have happened. Or it  might have happened to someone else. Ever since, she'd felt hostage to  that twist of fate.

Dan's fists were jammed into the pockets of his trousers, his wide  stance making him look like he was on the hunt. And that he was prepared  to kill.

He drew in a deep breath. 'Did the cops ever get them?'

Lizzie shook her head, wrapped her arms around her waist, shivering now  without Dan's warmth surrounding her. 'I didn't see their faces, it was  too dark. And neither did the three blokes with the food.'         

     



 

'And this Billy guy. What happened with him? You said he lasted a week after this happened to you?'

Lizzie could barely force the words out, but pushed herself to keep going.

'Billy said I should just get over it, to stop moping about. He was a London party boy, not someone who did tea and sympathy.'

'What?' Dan said, his voice a bark.

'He just wanted to have a good time, to fuck me, not hold my hand when I cried. Apparently, I wasn't "fun" anymore.'

'You're fucking kidding me.'

'After that, I couldn't stay there. I couldn't get on a bus; I couldn't  walk a street in the dark. I was jumping at shadows and there were too  many in London. As soon as I could, I packed my suitcase and jumped on  the next flying kangaroo out of there.'

'And you came straight home, back here.'

'Right back to Middle Point. Right into Mum's diagnosis of breast  cancer. You see, she hadn't told me she was sick. Since she'd been stuck  here her whole life, she wanted me to have the adventure I'd always  dreamed about. She didn't want to burst that bubble for me. So I spent  the next six months nursing her until she died.'

'No wonder you want a regular day,' Dan said gruffly.

She steeled herself for the rest of her secret, so long hidden. 'It was  only after Mum died that I finally fell apart.' Tears threatened and she  let them fall. 'I had my first panic attack two months after she was  gone, when I'd packed up all her things from the house, donated them to  charity. I went home, walked into the kitchen and it really hit me,  everything. I thought I was having a heart attack.'

Dan stopped. Met her eyes, a huge sigh escaping his lips, his chest  rising and falling so hard she could see it in the dark. His arms now  hung loosely by his side but the flicker in his jaw gave him away. 'So  that's how you knew.'