A Heartbeat Away (13 page)

“I'm going out,” I cried, grabbing my car keys from the table, and before he could make me change my mind, I ran out into the street, forgetting my car in my haste to distance myself from my sordid little life.

I walked for what seemed hours, wandering along the bank of the river and mooching through the park before returning at last to find Alex's car gone and the house cold and silent. It suited me, cold and silent.

The next time I saw Alex, our little “interlude” seemed never to have happened. He arrived in the hallway, much as in those early days and all my old longings came back, the longings that were grounded in a kind of crazy, fear-born adrenaline. As his fingers stroked my skin, my whole body quivered, and I lost myself in the erotic sensations that could make me forget everything but the moment. And yet I knew—we both knew—that our “relationship” had moved to a new and different place, a dangerous place, where fear and distrust lurked alongside passion, a place convenient for us both now.

U
nbelievably, over the next weeks my life slipped into a kind of routine. Or was it merely an existence?

Alex and I moved in totally separate worlds that touched momentarily and then veered apart again. Sometimes he would get home early and insist that we go out to dinner, just like that first time, but mostly he got home late or not at all. I tried not to think about Lara Kirkland.

The rest of my social life consisted of an occasional drink with Nicola after work. The only person to visit me at the house on Fletcher Park Lane was dear Aunt V.

The first time she visited, one Saturday afternoon, she marched around each spotless room, frowning at the tasteful modern furnishings and shaking her gray head gently.

“You look like one of those nodding dogs from the back window of a car,” I told her, attempting to make light of her obvious disapproval. She put her hand on my arm and turned me to face her, and my heart sank when I saw the troubled sadness in her pale blue eyes.

“It's not you, Lucy,” she said quietly.

I squirmed uneasily. “It's not my house,” I quickly reminded her. “I just rent it from a friend.”

If she knew more about the “friend” than she was letting on, she said nothing, but I noticed a new sadness in her eyes as I kissed her goodbye, a sadness that knotted my heart and made my stomach churn.

I felt guilty about Aunt V, even though I told myself over and over that I shouldn't feel responsible for her. She had plenty going on in her life now, and I
would
go back to see how her new venture was progressing. One day, when the winds of time had swept away all my painful stored-up memories.

And so, as the autumn leaves fell and the nights drew in so fast that it was dark already before I even left work, I existed, going through the motions, content for now just to drift along from day to day.

But always, it seems to me, just when you least expect it, just when you feel that you have finally achieved some stability in your life, suddenly everything changes. One minute you think you know where you are, and the next your whole world can turn completely upside down.

Before long, Alex rarely stayed at the house in Fletcher Park at all. I didn't care, for I would rather sleep alone. Despite my efforts to keep them at bay, the memories were slowly returning to haunt me and there was nothing I could do.

One night I dreamed of Daniel. He was calling to me through a mist, a heavy clinging mist that sucked at my legs, holding me back, and then he drew closer and closer, reaching out his hand, but I couldn't quite touch his fingers, however hard I tried.

I awoke with a glow inside me, a warm feeling that I hadn't felt in a long time, and all of a sudden I realized that it was hope. Hope had come back into my heart. But why? Why now? My epic love was gone for good, his promise broken, so what was there to hope
for?

The next week passed in a daze, and all the time I had this feeling inside me, a kind of fluttering. Maybe I was right. Maybe it
was
hope. I didn't know. I just had a strong gut feeling that something major was about to happen in my life, something that would change everything, and I clung to it, nurturing it like a precious gift.

The opening of the tearoom at Homewood loomed, the culmination of everything Edna Brown and Aunt V had worked for. I acknowledged that I should be there, and now and then I would imagine the expression on Aunt V's dear familiar face every time a fresh person walked through the door and it wasn't me. Could I really do that to her? Could I really be that selfish?

She phoned me on Wednesday evening just as Alex walked in for the first time in days. Consequently our conversation was brief and stilted. Guilt flooded me, but there was nothing I could do.

“I'll phone you tomorrow,” I promised. “And I will try to be there. Honestly, I really will try.”

All the time I was speaking, I could feel his presence right behind me.

“Have you missed me,
country girl?
” he whispered, his lips close against my ear. I trembled and moved away, averting my eyes from his hypnotic gaze. I was so afraid that he might mesmerize me again, just as before. Maybe that was it; maybe I really had been hypnotized…. Maybe I wanted to be.

His black eyes narrowed as they sought and found mine.

“Don't worry, little prudish Lucy,” he went on. “You're safe enough for now…until
I
decide otherwise. Then all I have to do is snap my fingers and you'll be begging for more.”

“I don't think so,” I told him with a confidence that stretched no further than my lips.

He laughed, leaning swiftly forward to run the backs of his fingers down my cheek. “Don't stay up,” he said softly against my ear.

My whole body quivered as the front door slammed behind him.

That night I dreamed again of Daniel Brown, and in that moment between sleeping and waking, as the first light of morning filtered into my subconscious, I felt that his presence surrounded me.

“Daniel,” I cried, reaching out my arms into the empty air. My eyes snapped open and I waited for the pain. It was there. I could feel it, filtering from its hiding place. But its space in my heart was already full with the same warm glow as earlier, the glow of an impossible hope.

I clung to that feeling as I went downstairs into the kitchen. But then again the question: how
could
I have hope in my heart when there was nothing to hope for? Daniel was dead. I had seen him with my own eyes.

The carefully hidden image of his waxen face burst into consciousness, bringing a shaft of agony so piercing that it stopped me in my tracks. I breathed deeply, trying to think of anything but that image. Concentrating on ordinary everyday things. The swish of the water around Alex's navy-blue cup as I rinsed it in the sink. The bright yellow of the coffee jar as I took it down from the shelf. The aroma of coffee as I carefully measured a spoonful into my favorite mug. And as I watched the rich dark granules settle on the bottom and then poured the steaming bubbling water over them, I tried to come to terms with my feelings, knowing that I had to pull myself together before this new awareness destroyed me. For to feel was to hurt, and there was no remedy for the cause of my pain.

The hands on the white clock above the kitchen window clicked onto eight, and I hurriedly rinsed my mug out under the tap and headed toward the stairs. Just to top my morning off, I was going to be late for work.

As I passed through the hallway, I could see a dark figure behind the glass of the front door, and I hesitated for a moment. It was the postman, just the postman. I was about to hurry past, when the mail slot rattled and a long cream envelope fluttered onto the mat in front of the door. I bent to pick it up, but my surge of relief was short-lived when I turned it over to read the name on the front.

The writing was bold and clear, with sloping strokes, the same writing that had graced each of our wedding invitations. Edna Brown's writing. She had done all the invitations with a fine gold pen because her handwriting was so much better than my ugly scrawl, and I had simply sat beside her, placing each one into its long cream envelope and sealing it with care.

I stood in the hallway with her letter in my hand. Was this one of those selfsame envelopes? A tide of memories rose to the surface.

Where had they gone, all those invitations, and who had dealt with the aftermath of weeks of planning—planning for a perfect life that was never to be? I ripped the envelope open with shaking hands, remembering all her other letters, which had remained unread.

I stood in the hallway, staring at the letter, struggling to cap the torrent of emotions it had released. How could I possibly go on Saturday? How could I face everyone at once? And what did she want me to know, anyway? My whole body quivered. Perhaps it had something to do with Daniel.

Steeling my heart, I found the box where I kept her other, unopened, letters and placed the long cream envelope gently on the top. Then I closed the lid with deliberation, imagining that I was sealing away not just Edna's letters, but all the raw and painful memories that were trying to drag me down.

I got dressed for work as if on automatic, refusing to allow myself to think about anything at all. My face in the mirror peered back vacantly at me as I twisted my long hair up into a neat, tight knot and precisely applied my makeup. Then I took a slim-fitting black suit from the closet, slipped it on and selected a pair of smart black shoes from the neat row on the shelf. When had I changed my image so? I wondered, as I eyed my reflection in the glass. It was Alex's influence, I suppose.

Despite my determination to keep my independence, his constant veiled comments about my appearance had eventually turned me from a lazy-day-sweater person into the smart, sophisticated young woman who stared back at me.

There were days when I rebelled, of course, and pulled on my baggy sweatshirt and faded jeans, but to please was far easier, and much more rewarding. In fact, it had become quite a habit now to be a generally tidier person. Alex liked everything in its place, perfectly arranged—a bit like him, I guess. He was always meticulous in every way.

Trying to think of anything other than Edna Brown's letter, I locked the front door and walked hastily down the path, out into the street. My shoes made a staccato sound on the freshly tarmaced pavement of Fletcher Park Lane, and as I gazed up into the clear autumn sky, breathing in the crisp wintry air as if it were a drug, suddenly I had the strangest feeling that I had just woken up from a long sleep. Images of another sky flashed into my mind, a bigger sky. A sky so wide that it stretched into eternity. But it wasn't another sky at all, was it? It was the same sky. The sky that Daniel and I had gazed at so many times from way up on the fells.

I quickened my pace, running for the bus stop. Why was my mind doing this to me now? Why wouldn't all my jumbled thoughts fit back into their hiding place?

I scrambled aboard the bus with my heart thumping, and held the loop above my head, swaying with the lurching vehicle, happy to be squashed among all those busy, faceless bodies and eager to slip into their anonymity. By the time the bus pulled up near the offices of Fawcett and Medley, I had almost managed to push my emotions far enough down, all except for that tiny warm glow of hope.

Alex stopped by that night just as I was about to go to bed. He seemed unusually quiet, distanced and preoccupied. I made him a coffee and took it into his office, where he was already switching on the computer.

“Thank you,” he said without looking up.

I murmured a response, and as I closed the door behind me, I heard his telephone beginning to ring, its unmistakable tones jarring on the stillness of the night.

“Tough,” I heard him say in a fierce tone. “It has to be next week.”

I shuddered at the menace in his voice. Someone was obviously getting the wrath of Alex Lyall, but whom and for what? The man whose house and bed I shared might just as well have been a stranger, for all I knew about him.

I awoke next morning with a strange new sense of awareness, absorbing my surroundings with fresh eyes. To my relief, there was no sign of Alex, but he appeared fleetingly as I cleaned my teeth in the bathroom. My bare feet curled up in the soft deep rug as he stood in the doorway, immaculately dressed as always. And then he was gone, his shoes tip tapping on the wooden floor and down the stairs. When the bang of the front door reverberated through the house, I exhaled with a sigh.

The sun streamed through the window, right into my eyes, and I blinked, smiling to myself. What was it? What was it about today? I felt like an eight-year-old child on Christmas morning, but I didn't know why.

Everything seemed louder, brighter, more intense. I stared at my surroundings, embedding them in my memory, as though seeing them for the very last time. Then I raced into the bedroom, when I flung open the closet door. Today I needed something bright and fresh to wear, something that would reflect my strange mood.

I rummaged through the neat row of elegant black clothes, discarding outfit after outfit and throwing each onto the bedroom floor in childish rebellion. All those black clothes drove me crazy, for it wasn't a black kind of day. The red suit I found in the farthest corner evoked so many memories that I withdrew it with a kind of awe, already searching for the strappy high-heeled red sandals that I had bought a lifetime ago. A perfect outfit for what? What was it about today?

I stepped out into the autumn sunshine with a smile on my face, breathing the sweet sharp air deep into my lungs, feeling more alive than I had since Daniel Brown. And as my silly shoes tip tapped along the faceless street, I turned my face to the sky once again, allowing his memory to flood my soul.