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sight.
    His hair had grown a bit, thankfully, the parting was crooked, and there was just a hint of the old tousled tangle she’d so adored.
    She continued to stare at him.
    ‘This isn’t what I expected  . . . ’ She struggled to find the words. ‘To tell the truth, Charlie, I thought you’d gone off me.’
    ‘Never.’ He kissed her again on the lips, but lightly this time. ‘I love you more than ever. Surely you realize that.’
    She shook her head. ‘Oh, Charlie,’ she said. ‘I love you so much. But you’ve changed lately. I mean, if you get married, does it mean you can’t do daft things any more like bugger off in a boat and let the winds take you? ’Cos if it does, well, I don’t know  . . . ’
    He interrupted, raising one finger gently to her mouth and placing it there.
    ‘Sweetheart, you didn’t seriously think we could sail around the world on this old crate, did you?’
    She thought for a second. The answer to that was yes. Yes, she had thought they could. He had made her believe that. And she told him so.
    ‘I never had any doubts, Charlie,’ she said. ‘I thought we’d work on her until she was right, then take off. You and me and the ocean waves.’
    ‘Joyce, I doubt we’d have got
Shirley Anne
out of the estuary, let alone on to the ocean waves. She’s riddled with woodworm and rot!’
    ‘But, Charlie,’ she protested, ‘I believed you. Absolutely. I thought we were going to do it – fulfil our dreams, find our Shangri-La.’
    ‘We can still fulfil our dreams, my darling,’ he said. ‘But they’ll be different ones, that’s all. My dream is to marry you, for you to have my children, and to keep you and them safe and happy and well for the rest of our lives. Isn’t that even more romantic?’
    He stroked her face, his touch warm and suddenly every bit as exciting as it had been in the beginning. He kissed her cheek. His lips were soft, deliciously soft.
    ‘Marry me, my darling,’ he pleaded. ‘Please, please, marry me. I cannot imagine that life could go on unless you say yes. Please, please, say yes. Say you’ll marry me. Go on. Say it. Say it.’
    He kissed her forehead, the tip of her nose, raised her hand and kissed her fingers, pressed his lips to her ears, the top of her head, her eyes, and oh so lightly, her mouth, again and again.
    She found herself laughing uncontrollably through the kisses.
    ‘Yes,’ she cried out eventually, her words half smothered by his kisses. ‘Yes, yes, yes, Charlie. Yes, I will marry you, my darling. Yes! Yes!’
    He grabbed her by one arm and pulled her towards the bunk in the aft cabin. She noticed, and it made her laugh, that he was trying to get out of his trousers as they hurried to get there. He nearly tripped them both up. He tore at the buttons on her shirt, ripping one off, and tugged at her jeans whilst trying to get out of his own shirt at the same time.
    The undressing was clumsy, terribly clumsy, but the love-making was fluent and seamless, as good as it had ever been, possibly better. Bold yet tender. Urgent yet without haste. Charlie was there. Right there. With her. On her. In her. No longer detached in any way. Instead, after so long, he was part of her again. At last.
    And when it was over, for one crazy, wonderful, ecstatic moment, Joyce even thought they might be JC again.
    She phoned her parents to tell them that she’d accepted Charlie’s proposal, and to her amazement they both expressed delight. In spite of Henry’s recent efforts to bond with Charlie, she’d expected him to urge caution, to point out that she was only twenty-two and Charlie twenty-one, too young to be taking such a step. Even though Henry and Felicity had been even younger when they’d married, Joyce had anticipated a long drawn-out argument before her father gave his blessing. His enthusiastic approval took her completely by surprise.
    A date was set for the coming June, straight after Joyce’s finals. The wedding reception would be