‘Of course,’ Ross finished.
‘I made you some lunch.’ Mary’s eyes were as swollen as Alina’s had been that morning. ‘I know it must be hard for you too, Demyan. I remember when you first came here...’ She gave a soft laugh. ‘Look at you now.’
‘Times change.’
‘They do,’ Mary said. She offered him the basket of food. ‘I thought you might want to take a last look around.’
Demyan didn’t want one last look. He wanted to get into the car and drive off, to just drive away and never look back. To blow up the life he had built here because without Roman it meant nothing anyway.
Didn’t it?
‘Thank you.’
It would be rude to refuse, Demyan told himself.
Not that that had ever stopped him in his life.
They walked for ages, right up to the back orchards, and they walked in silence. Alina’s head felt as if it was exploding. There was so much about Demyan she loathed—the way he spoke to his ex-wife, that he wasn’t fighting for his son, that he was ripping up Ross and Mary’s lives when surely, surely they must mean something to him.
Clearly they didn’t.
She wanted to loathe him and yet...
Her world had never felt...
She had never felt as much as she felt now, walking through an orchard with Demyan beside her.
Alina felt like crying, like singing, like getting naked.
She just felt.
‘Do you want to take your lunch by that tree and I take the one here?’ Demyan said, teasing her about the agency rules. ‘Or you can eat in the car.’
‘Stop.’
‘I used to go there,’ he said, pointing to a huge willow, its branches bathing in the river. ‘It’s much cooler.’
He held the green curtain open for her and she entered his heaven.
‘I used to come here to think,’ Demyan said, though he didn’t tell her about what. ‘We will have dessert first.’ He took some scones and butter and cream and then smeared thick cherry jam on as Alina’s mouth watered. ‘I don’t believe in saving the best to last.’
He handed the scone to her and watched as she took a bite.
‘Good?’ he checked.
‘Amazing!’
‘Why were you hungry at high school?’ Demyan asked. ‘Was the food bad?’
‘The food was fantastic,’ Alina said. ‘But when you’re a big girl you really wear it if you go up for seconds.’
‘So you didn’t go up?’
‘No. It wasn’t worth the bitching from the other girls.’
‘I’d have told them—’ Demyan started, and Alina interrupted him