The Christmas Invitation
Page 31
‘I managed to get you there, though it was a bit of a struggle, and we both got very wet. I hung your coat up to drip and you headed for the bathroom, while I went to put the kettle on.’
‘I don’t remember any of that,’ he said blankly. ‘The first thing I remember about your flat is … being in bed with you.’
‘You were not in bed with me,’ I said forcefully. ‘I’d got into bed because I was freezing – that was the coldest, dampest flat ever – but you were lying on top of it, under a duvet.’
‘But I remember—’
‘You’re supposed to be letting me tell you what happened,’ I interrupted. ‘When we’d got back to the flat and I’d put the kettle on, there was no sign of you – and I found you crashed out on my bed. It was next to the bathroom, so I expect you just stumbled in there and passed out.’
This time he said nothing, so I carried on. ‘I did try to wake you up, but I couldn’t, so after a while I thought I’d better let you sleep it off. I took your boots off and covered you with a spare duvet. Then, since I was damp and freezing, I got ready for bed and got in. I left the bedside light on in case you woke up and didn’t know where you were.’
‘Yes …’ he said slowly. ‘There was a light, because I remember seeing you in bed next to me – and kissing you.’
‘You did briefly surface and kiss me, just after I got in bed, but I don’t think you really knew what you were doing and you passed out again almost straight away.’
He was frowning heavily now, brows knitted. ‘You’re trying to tell me we weren’t actually in bed together? That we didn’t—’
‘I’m not trying to tell you – this is the truth! Apart from one brief kiss, we didn’t do anything other than sleep, so whatever else you remember, it only happened in your head.’
‘But how do I know that’s really what happened and you’re not just saying it to make me feel better?’
‘Because I’ve never had a one-night stand in my life. I’m not that kind of person,’ I snarled. ‘Look, that evening I was heartbroken because I’d just split with Rollo, so what makes you think I’d have jumped straight into bed with you?’
‘But … I knew you had a crush on me, because Al used to joke about how pink you went whenever we spoke.’
‘I’m glad I provided you both with some amusement,’ I said coldly. ‘And yes, I did have a crush on you – in my first term! Once I’d met Lisa, it just wore off, because she was so sweet and lovely, and you were perfect together.’
‘She was one in a million and I didn’t deserve her,’ he said, still frowning as if trying to put the pieces of the past together again. ‘When I told Al what I remembered, he said you’d always had a thing about me and had seized the opportunity when I was drunk to—’
‘Drag you to my lair and have my wicked way with you?’ I finished for him sarcastically. ‘Al is mad!’ I added with conviction.
I decided to tell him my clincher: ‘What you don’t know, Lex, is that I have a witness to back my story up. There was someone else in the flat that night.’
There was a silence. Then he said, ‘But I don’t remember anyone else.’
‘No, but then, you only seem to have a selection of small and distorted memories of what happened, don’t you? But Fliss was there.’
‘Fliss? You mean, Fliss from college?’
‘That’s the one. She was in the flat that night, because she had flu.’
‘You’re trying to tell me she was there the whole time?’ He sounded disbelieving. ‘But I suppose even if that’s true, she must have been in her room, if she was ill.’
‘She was over the worst by then, just wobbly. She came out to see what was happening when we arrived and then after I found you out cold on my bed, we discussed what to do. In the end, we thought you’d be OK and just sleep it off, so she fetched a spare duvet and we covered you up. Fliss and I had some cocoa, then I got into my bed and she went back to hers. But it was only a short time later that she came back in with your phone in her hand. It had been ringing on and off in your coat pocket for ages and she’d heard it because she slept next to the living room.’
He was still silent, so I carried on. ‘When she came into the bedroom, I was asleep in bed, and you were still out for the count under the duvet, just as she’d left you. She gave the phone to me and when I answered it, it was Al, looking for you.’
Lex stirred at last. ‘Lisa’s parents rang his mobile when they couldn’t get hold of me … and I do remember him turning up to fetch me. I was still wet—’
‘No, you were wet because we splashed your face with icy water to try to get you to wake up,’ I said. ‘The sound of your phone seemed to bring you round a bit, too, so after the icy water and a couple of mugs of black coffee, you were almost coherent by the time he arrived.’
‘But Al didn’t see anyone else in the flat, either, or he’d have mentioned it. He only saw you, in your dressing gown.’
‘Fliss had gone back into her room by then; she didn’t feel in a fit state to see anyone.’
There was another long silence and I had no idea what he was thinking, until eventually he said slowly, ‘I don’t know what’s true and what isn’t any more, but once you’d turned up at the Red House, it was hard to square what I’d been thinking of you with the reality. Now … I don’t know what to believe.’
I got out my phone and rang Fliss’s number, praying she’d answer. It was early still, despite the darkness.
‘Fliss! I’m sorry to bother you, but I need your help.’
‘Meg? Your voice sounds shaky – what’s up?’
‘I had a fall earlier, but I’m OK, and now I’m in a car with Lex and I’ve just told him the truth about what happened in the flat that night. Only I’m not sure he believes you were there, too.’
‘You give him the phone and I’ll put him straight!’ she declared belligerently, and I passed it across.
The ensuing conversation was mostly one-sided – Fliss’s.
His expression didn’t change as he listened, but when he did finally speak, he said, ‘Yes, OK, I believe you, and I agree I was a fool for not talking to Meg afterwards.’
Then he thanked her and handed back the phone.
‘The truth will out,’ Fliss said cheerfully. ‘It’s just taken a hell of a long time.’
‘Better out than in,’ I agreed. ‘Thanks, Fliss.’
‘That’s OK, and if Al and his wife don’t apologize, you can put them on to me and I’ll sort them out as well.’
She’d wanted to have it out with Al years ago, when I’d told her what he’d said to me. Maybe I should have let her?
‘I hope that won’t be necessary. In fact, I’m hoping I never have to see them again.’
‘Well, if you’re OK we can catch up again tomorrow?’ she suggested. ‘I’ll go back to my virtuously alcohol-free celebration.’
‘Why alcohol free?’ I asked, but I think I knew the answer before she announced it.
‘Because I’m pregnant!’
I made the right noises but suddenly I felt like the last barren woman in the world. She must have guessed that for she said, ‘I’m sorry, I forgot and I—’
‘No, don’t be sorry, I’m so happy for you,’ I assured her. ‘Just because I lost my baby, it doesn’t mean I don’t want to hear my friend’s good news. I’ll be Auntie Meg, instead.’
When I rang off, Lex said in a changed voice, ‘Meg, I seem to have been entirely wrong about you all along the line, and I couldn’t help hearing what you just said. You’ve lost a baby, haven’t you? I’m so sorry.’
‘I miscarried after an accident. I made the mistake of telling Rollo I was pregnant when he was driving and he went off the road. Since we were supposed to be defying his mother and getting married at last, I didn’t think he’d be as horrified as he was.’
I remembered the expression on his face just before he lost control of the car, and shivered …
‘Why didn’t his mother want him to marry you?’
‘Well, they’re not unknown any more,’ he pointed out.
‘No, but it’s too late now.’
‘With Rollo, perhaps, but not with someone else.’
‘No,’ I said with finality. ‘I’ll have fun being an auntie to my friends’ children. That’ll be enough.’
There was a long silence, broken eventually by Lex.
‘I don’t know how to start apologizing for all the things I thought about you and said to you, since you came here. I still feel guilty about the past and Lisa, but at least none of it was anything to do with you.’
I decided to clear my conscience once and for all. It took quite an effort. ‘I do have a touch of guilt about that night in the flat,’ I confessed. ‘Because when you kissed me, I went with it at first. But then I realized what I was doing and pulled away and you passed out again. I was surprised you remembered it.’
His lips twisted. ‘Oh, I remembered it all right, and that I knew it was you I was kissing. And I wanted to. That was part of the guilt.’
‘You did say my name before you passed out again,’ I admitted. ‘I never told Fliss that.’
‘If we’re being totally honest with each other, I kept something back that night in the wine bar that’s been gnawing at me ever since: I wasn’t in love with Lisa any more and I was trying to find a way of telling her, before she fell ill.’
I stared at him, stunned. ‘But you always seemed the perfect couple!’
‘We fell in love at sixth-form college and we’d been together ever since. But first love doesn’t always last, does it?’
‘No, that’s true,’ I said, remembering the few weeks I’d had my mad crush on him.
‘I might not have been still in love with Lisa, but I did love her: she was sweet and kind and beautiful.’
‘She was the most genuinely good person I’ve ever met. Everyone loved her,’ I agreed.
‘I finally felt I’d have to try to end the relationship just before she was diagnosed. I think seeing you with Rollo one day was the decider – I felt jealous.’
‘What, of me?’ I exclaimed incredulously. Even in the throes of my brief crush on him, I’d thought he was way out of my league.
I was still feeling stunned when he said, ‘Yes, of you.’ He gave that twisted smile again. ‘There was some connection between us from the moment I first saw you in that dark corridor.’
I’d thought that feeling was all on my side! But he had seemed to like my company … until that fateful night.
‘Of course, once Lisa was diagnosed I had to stay with her. I still adored her and I did my best.’
‘You certainly did,’ I assured him.
‘Near the end, she said she hoped I’d be able to move on and have a good life with someone else. She wanted me to remember only the happy times, if I thought of her.’
Tears filled my eyes: that was so typical of her.
‘But you haven’t done that, Lex, have you?’
‘No, because I’ve been too busy wallowing in self-pity and guilt ever since. And making you part of that, too.’
‘Don’t be too hard on yourself, Lex,’ I said, reaching out and placing my hand over his. ‘You can put it all in the past now, can’t you? River was right: getting everything out into the open has cleared the air. We might be shaped by the past, but we don’t have to constantly relive it.’
‘That sounds very like River! And it has freed me: I feel a weight has dropped off, though I think we both need a bit of time to get readjusted to the new status quo.’
His hand turned under mine and closed around it, strong and warm.
‘Can we be friends?’ he asked.
‘Yes, as well as relatives,’ I agreed. ‘Though as you keep pointing out, only by marriage and that doesn’t count. And the wrong side of the blanket.’
‘What an old-fashioned expression!’ he said, his seriousness suddenly softening into amusement. He pulled me towards him and kissed me on the lips so lightly and quickly that he’d started the engine before I’d taken in what he’d done.
‘I’d forgotten how off the wall and funny you are,’ he said, and while I was still pondering that one – and the kiss – he pulled out and headed up the dark track. The star had moved and was now hanging over the turn on to the road, as if waiting for us.
It was probably a sign, though I’d no idea of what. And now I came to think of it, I hadn’t thought about my near-Icarus over the precipice for at least half an hour.
Clara
Married life heralded a new phase in our relationship.
Henry’s mother had left him what money was secured to her, since George would inherit the Underhill estate, an arrangement that must have seemed eminently fair at the time.
Henry had entrusted his legacy to an old school friend to invest. His trust had not been misplaced and we were able to buy a tiny flat near the British Museum, where I now worked. We even had household help, in the form of our good friend Den, who had attached himself to Henry during one of his trips to Greece.
Having absorbed from the wider world all that he needed, Henry began to focus more on the past: he was continually drawn back to Starstone Edge – indeed, it always exerted a pull on both of us.
I consolidated my professional standing and wrote papers, articles and books, while frequently being called in for my opinion by museums, galleries, private collectors and archaeological digs.
I had another string to my bow, too. In the first year of our marriage I had written, purely for fun, a crime novel, my heroine being an epigrapher not entirely unlike myself. It had found a publisher and my subsequent yearly offerings built up a surprising following.
Henry, for the most part, divided his time between the flat and Underhill, while his father still lived, though he avoided Underhill when George was visiting, so far as possible.
Henry’s first poetry collection had been met with wonderful reviews and great acclaim and he was embarking on the second. His reputation as a poet grew, despite his refusing to do any kind of public event, other than radio broadcasts, reading his own works.
We had many friends in London and our years spent living there were extremely happy.
As our careers took off, we were aware from the media that so too did Nessa Cassidy’s, in the States. She espoused a militant form of feminism, lived openly with a female lover, Suzanne Dell (also a writer), and her book, The Butterfly Kiss: A History of the Suppression of Female Love, became a runaway bestseller.
It did bring back the past and made us think of that little girl out there in the world, whom we would never know. But we were pleased that Nessa appeared to have found love and forged a career for herself. The book was well written, though I felt she often relied on conjecture, rather than fact, when dealing with the past. However, the dead could not sue her, of course.
Henry’s father died suddenly and George inherited the Underhill estate, which made visiting difficult. It was not that we weren’t welcome to stay, but we were not keen on the company of George and his cronies, especially one, Piers Marten, who seemed to encourage George to drink and gamble to excess. Not that he needed much encouraging. There were also some unsavoury tales about what the pair of them got up to abroad …
Now a widower, George spent a lot of time on the Riviera or at Monte Carlo, where the money ran through his fingers like sand.
He fancied himself an expert on investments, and though Henry advised him to let his own broker handle them, it was to no avail.
30
Advent
With everything that had happened – more than enough not only to make my head spin, but entirely rotate like something from The Exorcist – I hadn’t expected to sleep well that night. But I must have been exhausted by all the emotional turmoil, because I went out as soon as my head touched the pillow and the next thing I k
new, it was early morning.
I lay there, mentally shuffling through the events of the previous day like a deck of cards and picking out a random selection.
Did I fall, or was I pushed?
The ceremony had been a strangely surreal experience, as if we’d all passed through a portal into a darker and more mysterious past, where anything might happen. But unless the villagers harboured a homicidal maniac among their number (probably something they would have noticed by now), my imagination must have gone into overdrive.
The unwelcome appearance of Rollo while I was still in a state of shock had only added to the element of unreality. Then there were Flora’s relationship issues with Mark and what seemed like his renewal of an uncousinly interest in me …
Sybil, too, had definitely been hinting that she hoped Mark and I had a future together … Perhaps she felt if we married it would neatly legitimize my place in the family?
But real life tends not to tie itself into pretty ribbon bows with swallow-tail ends and, unfortunately for her plans, I didn’t fancy Mark in the least.
I know who you do fancy – you always did, whispered a tiny demon in my head, and I told it to shut up and go away, because life was complicated enough already.
I hoped – but doubted – that Flora had had sense enough to return Rollo to the pub last night, because there was a certain still, heavy silence about the morning that told me, even before I hopped out of bed and looked, that the world was blanketed in thick, white snow.
I got back in bed again, snuggled under the duvet and this time let myself think about Lex and last night.
River had been right: forcing Lex to look back at the most painful time of his life and re-evaluate my part in it had been cathartic. But then, as River often said, wounds never healed until they’d been cleansed.
But what my mind had really been skittering round the edge of was Lex’s bombshell revelation that he’d once had feelings for me; had even been jealous of my relationship with Rollo! And that that night at the flat he’d wanted to kiss me, his inhibitions washed away by alcohol.