Falling For You (36 page)

It should have alerted me, that. I see it now. My mind was too focused elsewhere to notice that the dogs were unhappy, sensed an intruder. They’d never have been making those sorts of noises for my father, but I didn’t notice that. Their throaty growling, their menace, those things only mirrored my own feelings.

There was precious little light in the barn that night. That should have alerted me, too.
Why didn’t it?
If Rob Macrae had been in there, doing whatever he was doing at this late hour, he’d have brought adequate light with him.  I didn’t stop to consider any of that, that evening. I didn’t stop to consider anything.

I didn’t want to know.

Seeing those dogs on the loose outside had brought my earlier loss back into sharp focus again. I wanted my Kahn back! Rob Macrae had killed him. Callously, and cruelly, he had killed him. He’d kill me next. He knew by now what my intention had been; he’d kill me too . Was he waiting out in the barn on purpose, I wondered now? So that when he bludgeoned me to death - or whatever else it was he’d got planned for me - I wouldn’t be in the house. He didn’t like mess in the house, my dad, and those bloodstains - they’d be hell to get out of the carpet.       

Then I spotted the tools he must have used to take Kahn down. The stun-gun and the darts. I saw them, the silhouette of them, up against the wall by the door. I thought of him loading up that gun, aiming it. I thought of my friend, my dear, devoted, big old friend, as his legs must have crumpled beneath him, not knowing what had hit him, not understanding what was going to happen next.

I picked up the shovel that was lying there, handy, near to the door and something snapped in me then. If there was any more blood to be shed tonight it wasn’t going to be my blood, that was for sure. It wasn’t going to be Mum’s or Pilgrim’s, either.

Not tonight.

What am I supposed to do, now?

He wants me to go away and leave him in peace, that’s obvious. Maybe he just doesn’t want me to see him throwing up? It’s messy; not a pretty sight, it’s distressing. But what is it that’s upset him so?

What on earth can it be?

I don’t like to leave him out there all alone in the cold but I have to respect his wishes. Reluctantly, I close the chapel door, giving him his space. The faint warmth from the brazier draws me in, my fingers outstretched above the top of the fire, warming my body, but I can feel my hands trembling.

 Was it because of what I told him? Perhaps I’ve triggered off the memory of a time when his father beat
him
, I’m thinking.  He’s gone into some sort of shock. Seeing him like it, has kind of shocked me, too. It’s scared me.

I bend to pick up the ice-filled bucket. I balance it over the fire to melt the snow for water. I need to make him a strong cup of tea, with plenty of sugar. I need to do something, but there is precious little I feel I can do, not until I know what the matter is. Why doesn’t he just tell me? I fret. Maybe I shouldn’t have told him anything about my dad. Everything was okay up until I mentioned that, I recall now. I was sitting cradled so comfortably in Lawrence’s arms. We were both so happy. The memory of what we did last night floods through me again and I recall that I now know what it means to feel
on top of the world
. I was feeling so complete. Everything was so perfect.  Lawrence had been happy, and seeing him like it had made my own happiness a hundred times greater.

I had wanted to stay there in his arms. I wanted
for him to know everything about me. All the things I don’t normally jump to tell people about. About my life. About Mum. About what happened to Dad. All those slightly shameful, out-of-kilter things in my life, I’d wanted Lawrence to know them all, to know
me
.  He’d begun to let me into his world too, hadn’t he? He’d told me about how hard his childhood had been, why he’d had to run away. Was it that, maybe, that brought on his sickness?

I feel a distinct queasiness in my own stomach now. Maybe it’s catching. Maybe it’s a bug and nothing I told him about, at all. Maybe it’s something in these decrepit old tea-bags? I put one of the tea-bags in the cup as the ice starts to melt over the fire. Little chunks of ice start to clink together, move apart. The heat moves up slowly, taking an absolute age. I heap a large amount of sugar into the cup. I know it’s not the tea-bags. The pain in my own stomach gets worse. It feels like something is gripping my guts from the inside and I know that what that something is, is fear.

I’m going to lose him, aren’t I?

He’ll come back in any moment. He’ll explain. A flood of comforting, reasoning thoughts rush  to fill the empty void of panic and fear that has opened up in me; any minute now he will come back in and he’ll look at me sheepishly and there will be a perfectly
acceptable
explanation for his sudden sickness. I look at my watch, for no other reason than that the ice is taking so long to melt, the minutes are trickling past too painfully slowly and he isn’t coming back. It is seven-forty five am.

I should be ringing home this morning, I think, reluctantly. I meant to go back home today, didn’t I? I’d planned - if the weather had not let up - that I would let them know of our situation up here. I thought maybe they’d be able to send a tractor to clear the route or something. We have no food left. We couldn’t have stayed up here indefinitely, I knew that. How I was feeling yesterday, I couldn’t have got out of here soon enough. I don’t feel like that anymore, though. Last night changed all that. Last night made me think I’d happily live on boiled water and air with him - as long as I could be with him - till the spring came.

Oh Lawrence, what’s gotten into you? What’s spooked you so?

It is a good twenty minutes later before I hear the chapel door being pulled open, again. I jump up, my heart suddenly thudding. I have his tea ready, with the sugar in it. If he wants it.  I’m ready to hear him, if he wants to tell me anything, if he needs to say ...

He will
say
, won’t he?

I look at him anxiously as he steps in through the door at last. His face looks grey and drawn. He looks - almost like a different person than the one I woke up beside this morning. It’s shocking.

‘Please,’ I indicate the canvas sacking beside the fire. ‘Sit down.’ He comes in, but he does not come and sit beside the fire. As soon as he’s pulled the door closed, he slides his back down the wall, till he’s slumped with his knees up against his chest. I watch as he wipes the faint sheen of sweat away from his brow with his sleeve.

‘Are you going to tell me?’ Tentatively, I ask the question seeing that he’s not going to volunteer it. ‘What brought all that on?’ I hang my head, aware that it may still be partly my fault, something that my words brought up for him. I hear him swallow, hard. I can hear the grief that he’s holding
;
I can hear it in his breath, in the heaviness in his chest.

‘Something scared you?’ I whisper at last.

He turns his face away, shakes his head at me, as much to say -
not for your ears
but I feel a surge of desperation coursing through me at that. He has to tell me! He can’t leave me like this, not after all we've shared, not after what we’ve become to one another...

‘Was it something I said?’ His hand is over his face now.
Oh God, Lawrence, what did I say?
What did my words bring up? ‘You have to tell me,’ I say hoarsely. I put my hands on his shoulders and I can feel the juddering of every muscle, every bone, every fibre in his body at my touch. ‘Whatever it is, you can tell me. You
must
tell me,’ I plead.

‘I nearly killed a man, once.’ His voice is so soft I can barely make out the stark words he’s just uttered. Did he really say what I thought I just heard?

‘Sorry, what did you …?’

‘I said. I nearly killed a man.’ Louder, this time. He looks up at me and his deep brown eyes are pools of remorse.

But I think I am beginning to see what did it. I told him about the person who beat up my dad. He’s telling me that he once nearly did the same thing to someone else.

‘If you
did
nearly kill someone,’ I point out, ‘
i
t’ll have been in self-defence, right?’

It has to have been; he’s no thug. He said it before; he only went into the medical profession because he wanted to spend his life helping people, not hurting them. And, not through his own fault, but he hasn’t always kept the best of company. Maybe it was one of those louts up in Bradford he hurt, while trying to protect his Indian family?

‘It would have been justifiable,’ I say stoutly, ready to defend him. He looks so different at this minute, he looks younger, more vulnerable, more cut up and I know, whatever he once did, whatever else he was once involved in - right now he needs me to believe in him.

‘It was not
justifiable
, Rose. What I did to that guy was not justifiable. I told you, I warned you …’ he rubs at his eyes fiercely now, ‘That I wasn’t what you took me to be. The gentle, lovely guy you thought you saw ... that’s not me.’

‘You’re
everything
I took you to be.’ I touch his hand gently. ‘You are caring and honourable and … and good. You’re good, Lawrence. And I …’ I swallow, ‘well, I think you already know how I feel about you.’

‘You don’t know me,’ he says in a broken voice. ‘If you did, you wouldn’t feel the way you do. You feel too deeply, Rose, that’s the problem. Your feelings won’t always steer you true.’

‘Try me.’ I sit down on the floor beside him and the flagstones by the wall are hard and cold against my legs but I don’t care as long as I can be near him.

‘They won’t. It’s better to temper those feelings with a good dose of self-protection, learn to keep your distance a little more
.
’
H
e looks at me painfully now.

‘Like you?’  

‘I try, Rose. I too once let my blind emotions get the better of me.’ He looks at me, his face grey with unease and I wish I could just hug him close. I wish I could make everything all right for him again but I sense, in my deepest heart of hearts, that I cannot.

‘You’re not going to understand this,’ he says slowly. ‘You will not understand this nor will you ever ...’ his voice catches, ‘be able to forgive me.’

‘What do I have to forgive?’ I whisper. I lean in close to touch his face but shockingly, he flinches back. He does not want me to touch him. He does not want me near. All the intimacy we had gained, my heart sinks, all the closeness we felt towards each other last night, where has it gone, why is he pushing me away like this?

‘I don’t want to tell you, but I owe you this much, and I’ll tell you. You need to understand ... when I did what I did that day...  I started off telling myself I was doing something that needed to be done, but I ending up acting out of blind fear, loathing and rage.’

 ‘We’ve all done wrong at one time or another. Hurt people that we never meant to do …’
H
e blanches, and I pause. ‘There will have been a reason, though,’ I press gently. ‘Feelings like that don’t just brew up out of nowhere. He will have been … in the wrong place at the wrong time, that poor guy. But that doesn’t make you a monster. You’ve felt remorse for what you did, I can see that. It’s been haunting you ever since …?’

‘Oh, Rose.’ He slips his own clenched white hand into mine, pulls it up to his face. ‘You have no idea. You have no idea …’

‘Tell me,’ I say gently. He says I don’t know him, but I need to know him. I need to know everything. ‘Tell me what happened.’