‘But Dom, the Cold War ended over twenty years ago. We could have had all that time together.’
He paused before he continued, and Ros opened her eyes to look at him.
‘I wanted to come back to you. Jonny discussed feigning my death in a more obvious way, leaving some sort of evidence in the jungle, but I always wanted to show up on your doorstep. I thought we could run away together, live in Cape Town, Bogotá, even here. But then Jonny told me that you’d got a job at the Observer, that you’d found a boyfriend and were happy . . .’
He looked away for a moment, lost in the memory.
‘I came to see you in Dublin. A literary event. I wanted to let you know that I was alive, hoped I could convince you to come and live with me. But then I saw you . . . I was on
the street, you were getting out of a taxi, and you kissed someone, and you just looked so happy, so alive, so absolutely where you should have been, a successful writer on top of the world, that I turned around and left.’
Ros felt her breath shudder. She remembered that night well, remembered the excitement she’d felt about attending an important literary evening, but she hadn’t realised for a second that she was being watched by the man she had loved so much.
‘You came for me?’ she whispered.
‘Came and left,’ he said, his mouth a firm, unhappy line. ‘I spoke to Jonathon a few weeks later. He said you were engaged and I knew that I had to leave you to live the life you’d created for yourself, a life you deserved.’
‘I called it off, Dom. I got engaged a few days after Dublin, but I called it off.’
His face fell with a strange, sad regret.
‘I’ve lived for over forty-five years in this spot,’ he said slowly. ‘It’s not been the life I ever imagined for myself, but I had friends, a job. I tried to forget all about you, but that was an impossible task. I should have come and spoken to you . . .’
‘And I shouldn’t have stopped looking for you,’ she said. She knew they were both picturing themselves in Dublin, at that one moment that changed the course of their lives for ever.
‘Did you ever marry?’ she dared to ask.
‘No. Did you?’
Feeling her heartbeat slow with relief, she dipped her hand in her pocket and pulled out the ruby ring. It looked very old-fashioned after all this time, but in the palm of her hand, it glinted pink in the sun.
‘This is the only ring I ever wanted.’
She thought she heard him sigh with happiness.
‘I’m sorry for all those missing years. I’m so, so sorry for leaving you.’
She clenched her fist and held it towards her heart.
‘You never left me, Dom.’
He opened his arms and folded them around her. He felt thinner than he used to, softer and less strong. But he still felt like the man she loved.
‘I’d get down on one knee,’ he whispered into her hair, ‘but I fear I might never get up again.’
Laughing, they drew apart, holding hands and watching the horizon.
‘I bet you have wonderful sunsets over here,’ she said, squeezing his fingers.
He looked up at the sky, where the clouds were parting to reveal a clear expanse of cornflower blue.
‘We can watch one later,’ he said, settling his arm across her shoulders.
Ros nodded, her golden years suddenly feeling full of hope, love and promise.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
‘The one up-side of my recent divorce is being able to sit next to this lovely lady at my son’s wedding,’ said Larry Donovan, reaching for the red wine as soon as he had got to the table.