‘Can we get a better view of the back of the house from anywhere else?’
‘No,’ Adam replied. ‘That was one of the reasons father bought it. The privacy at the back was excellent.’
‘We could always break in. There doesn’t seem to be anybody about,’ Leila suggested jokingly.
She looked at Adam. Everything seemed so natural and normal. Normal? Yes. She felt everything she was doing was normal, but under very bizarre circumstances. How could she have been ordered to kill this man? He was exactly what he said he was: his heart was broken and he was looking for somewhere to have it repaired.
‘Would you mind walking down towards the beach?’
‘Of course I wouldn’t, but …’ Leila shielded her eyes from the setting sun. ‘… it looks as though the forecasters got it right. Those clouds are definitely the forerunners of a typhoon.’
Adam looked in the same direction. ‘A typhoon! I used to love typhoons when I was a child. The wind, the rain, but most of all we couldn’t go to school.’
‘All right for you in a place like that,’ Leila said, indicating the house. ‘But think about the poor souls up in the shacks on the mountainside. A storm like the one brewing could wash away their very existence.’
‘I remember my mother using almost exactly the same words. When did they say it would hit?’
‘Tomorrow morning, early,’ she said.
‘We’ve time to walk down to the beach, find a taxi and then back to the hotel where I’ll treat you to the best meal you’ve had in a very long time.’
‘Sounds good to me,’ she said, smiling and linking arms with Adam, while inwardly she was screaming, why? why? WHY?
* * *
‘Typhoons last a week at the most,’ Eric commented when he saw the huge number of bags Elizabeth and Gabrielle deposited in the kitchen.
‘You can never be too sure,’ Elizabeth said, stealing a look at Gabrielle. ‘Now, we’ll leave you to put everything away while Gabrielle and I take a glass of wine onto the balcony to enjoy the calm of the evening before the storm arrives.’
‘Yes, dear,’ Eric replied.
‘So,’ Elizabeth said as she and Gabrielle settled into the wicker chairs on the balcony. ‘Sorry to have put you through that but it really was a pleasure having you help me rather than Eric. He is the worst person to shop with.’
‘It was my pleasure and an experience. That was the first Far Eastern supermarket I’ve ever been in and I can’t get over how like home it was.’
‘With a few extra items,’ Elizabeth remarked. ‘So where is home? I’m normally good with accents but when you throw in a very educated voice it’s difficult to pinpoint the precise location.’
‘Well …’
‘No, let me guess? Edinburgh perhaps. Or somewhere very close.’
‘Edinburgh is close enough. I was born not far from Leith and lived there for most of my childhood until Daddy retired and we moved to Rutherglen, near Glasgow where Mummy was from originally. But I now work in the Loch Lomond area.’
‘And what is work? What do you do?’
‘Would you like to make another guess?’
Gabrielle had enjoyed her time shopping with Elizabeth. They had chatted about everything and nothing, but Elizabeth had not used the opportunity to ask any more questions about why Gabrielle was in Hong Kong.
‘All right, I will. You’re a very pretty young girl, you know, and not unlike Jane when she was your age.’ Gabrielle saw Elizabeth look wistfully out towards the sea and wondered if she should ask more but decided not to. ‘You’ve travelled a long way to find somebody, somebody who maybe doesn’t want to be found.’ Gabrielle wondered why the smile that had been on Elizabeth’s lips momentarily disappeared. ‘I think you are in love, or you think you are in love. Maybe you need to find this man to convince yourself one way or the other, but as I said you have come an awful long way so I hope you discover that you are indeed in love.’
Gabrielle felt embarrassed. In love? No, she did not think so. She was in Hong Kong because … oh, all right, so why was she in Hong Kong? Elizabeth was right. You don’t travel half way round the world chasing after a man simply for spiritual and Christian reasons. She had made a promise to a woman who could have been dying, who may already be dead. She had promised Christina to bring Adam home - that’s why she was in Hong Kong. Wasn’t it? But hadn’t she decided to come to Hong Kong before she met Christina Yong?
‘But as far as what you do for a living is concerned, Gabrielle, I’m afraid I’m not going to be as forthcoming. I think you provide a service, because I don’t think you’re ruthless enough to be in the commercial sector. I think if you ever hurt anybody you would feel their pain. So, police? No. Doctor or nurse? Maybe. Social worker? That’s another maybe. Probation service?’ She shook her head. ‘That’s another no. So, where does that leave me? You help other people but in what capacity?’ Elizabeth fell silent.
Gabrielle smiled. ‘And you’ve learnt all that in the space of just a few hours?’
‘Put it down to my age, dear. You don’t get to your seventies without learning a thing or two about people. You’re a good person, Gabrielle, but maybe you still have a lot to learn.’
Eric appeared at the doorway. ‘I’m knocking together a curry,’ he informed the two women, ‘is there anything you don’t like, Gabrielle?’
Gabrielle smiled as she looked up at him. ‘No, there’s nothing I don’t like and I’m particularly partial to a curry.’
Eric nodded. ‘Good, good. It’ll be ready in about half an hour.’
‘He makes an excellent curry,’ Elizabeth said, once Eric disappeared back inside, ‘but I hope you like yours hot. He does tend to over egg the pudding.’
‘I love curry and the hotter the better.’
‘We’ll see,’ Elizabeth whispered with a smile so that Eric would not overhear them. ‘Now am I very far off the mark?’
‘No,’ she whispered back, smiling and coming to a decision. ‘I’m a minister in the Scottish Episcopal Church.’
Elizabeth’s eyes widened in disbelief. ‘A minister? But that’s incredible, quite incredible.’
‘Why?’
‘Because that’s what Jane …’ Elizabeth stopped, and as she turned her head towards the sea, Gabrielle saw tears forming in her eyes.
“What are you two whispering about?” asked Eric from the kitchen.
“Nothing, dear,” Elizabeth managed to say.
* * *
Leila looked up at Adam. His eyes were still closed. ‘I think I might just lock you away in a cage and only allow you out when I need you,’ she said. ‘That was fantastic.’
Opening his eyes Adam smiled. ‘I think maybe you had something to do with it.’
‘Whether I did or not, I just hope that ...’ The same feelings, the same thought processes, the same everything. She was jumping from one dream to another, but the nightmare always won.
‘What’s the matter, Leila? You’ve suddenly gone all serious on me.’ Adam lowered himself so that their bodies were touching wherever possible. ‘Are you the one who’s now having second thoughts?’ He kissed her gently.
‘About what?’ she asked, their lips still touching.
He lifted his head slightly. ‘I don’t know, I suppose that was rather a stupid thing to say.’
‘People say stupid things at a time like this.’
‘Do they?’
‘In my experience, yes, they do.’
‘And how often have you said something stupid at a time like this?’
‘That would be telling.’
‘So tell me.’
‘Not very often.’
‘Then you have defeated your own argument.’
Leila gazed into the eyes that were laughing at her. ‘Who are you, Adam?’
‘You know who I am.’
‘I’m no longer so sure. There must be more to you than you’ve told me.’
He smiled. ‘Why? Because in the space of just
a few hours I’ve gone from rejecting you to wanting you all the time? Is that why you’re confused? You’ve taken me from not knowing what I wanted to seeing there is future after all, not just a past, and then you thank me for thanking you. What am I supposed to do or say? I am what you see, Leila, and what you see is what you get. I arrived in Hong Kong looking for answers when I didn’t even know what the questions were, and you are there by my side before I can even set foot out of the airport. What am I supposed to think?’
Moving slightly so that she could put her hands on his shoulders, Leila cocked her head to one side. ‘I thought I was asking the questions.’
‘You asked me who I am and I suppose in my own way I’m trying to tell you. I thought I had lost everything. I thought my whole world had fallen apart and then out of the blue you come along and, and you do something to me that I didn’t know was possible. How am I supposed to feel? You ask me who I am. At this particular moment, Leila, I haven’t the faintest idea who I am but all I know is that whoever I am let me be that person forever.’
Leila closed her eyes. ‘And I share those feelings with you and I promise they will last for as long as we both want them to.’
‘Forever will do,’ Adam said.
As he spoke he wondered whether his words would come back to haunt him.
* * *
‘That was delicious,’ Gabrielle said as she put her knife and fork down on an empty plate.
‘Thank you,’ Eric said. ‘I enjoy cooking but I enjoy watching people eat what I’ve cooked even more. Does that make me selfish?’
‘Not at all. It means that you care.’
He shrugged. ‘I’ve never heard it put like that before.’
Elizabeth had said very little during the meal, in fact she had said very little since Gabrielle told her she was a minister. She ate in silence and just watched as Gabrielle and Eric talked about typhoons, expatriates in Hong Kong and some of the indiscernible changes which had occurred since 1997.
Elizabeth was aware that both Eric and Gabrielle had looked at her on any number of occasions for some sort of comment, but she was so wrapped up in her own thoughts she felt unable to enter into the inconsequence of social chit-chat. She wondered if Eric would have been as ebullient if he’d known it was a minister’s blouse he’d been trying so desperately hard to look down the front of. Elizabeth couldn’t get over the twist of fate of them going to the UK to bury their only daughter after her long battle with breast cancer, to meeting up with a young woman who looked hardly old enough to be out of university let alone be a minister of the Church
‘I’m sorry,’ she suddenly said, and the other two looked at her. ‘I’m sorry if I’ve been a little anti-social during the meal. I’m afraid my thoughts were back in England and rather rudely I have to say that only Eric knows what I’m referring to.’
‘I think I also know,’ Gabrielle said. ‘And I’m so sorry for your loss.’
Eric and Elizabeth stared at Gabrielle. ‘You are a very astute young woman,’ Elizabeth said, ‘and I hope you don’t feel used.’
‘Used? Elizabeth, you have both been absolutely delightful and I definitely do not feel used. May I ask how old Jane was?’
‘Just a few months away from her forty-eighth birthday,’ Eric said quietly, ‘with everything to live for. She had two delightful sons and a husband who doted on her. It was so sudden and so unfair.’ He looked vacantly at his wine glass. ‘So unfair,’ he repeated.
‘The boys - Marcus is twenty-two and Paul eighteen - just wanted time to show their mother that she had done everything the right way. Those are not my words but theirs. Those are the words they spoke at their mother’s funeral just last week.’ Elizabeth’s head was also bowed. ‘You will understand, Gabrielle. You will have witnessed the grief of others.’
‘I have, but no matter how often I witness the sorrow of others it doesn’t make it any easier.’
‘Of course not.’ Elizabeth looked up at Eric. ‘The irony, Eric, is that our house guest is a minister also.’ She then turned back to Gabrielle. ‘The irony I speak of, my dear, is that Jane was training to be a vicar. It was a vocation she always wanted to follow once the boys were old enough.’
Eric lifted his head slowly, his eyes displaying his disbelief. ‘You are a minister, you are a priest?’
‘I’m afraid so, Eric.’
Eric’s eyes were wide with incredulity. ‘But I -’
‘You are a silly old man, Eric, and you have been so for many a long year,’ Elizabeth said, switching her gaze to Gabrielle and allowing the hint of a smile to cross her lips. ‘Just because she is a minister doesn’t mean to say she is not a woman first. Is that not right, Gabrielle?’
‘I’m in Hong Kong because I’m a woman first.’
* * *
‘What do you think?’ Adam said, looking up at the sky as they promenaded along the harbour wall. The sun had set but the increase in wind strength was evidence of what was coming their way. The clouds were scudding across the sky only allowing the moon to show through every now and again. Leila’s hair was almost horizontal as she clung to Adam’s arm and screwed up her eyes against the force of the wind.
‘I think we’re in for one hell of a storm,’ Leila suggested.
The typhoon struck at just after two the following morning.
It swept in over Hong Kong Island and the whole area came to a virtual standstill. Businesses and property owners were well used to preparing for such an onslaught and where possible everybody had battened down and chosen their own way to sit out the ferocity of nature. Those who could do little to protect their flimsy shacks and their meagre possessions, prayed that on this occasion they would be spared.
Adam and Leila spent the two stormy days in the hotel. They made use of all the hotel facilities: they swam, went to the multi-gym, alternated between restaurants and bars, but most of the time they were in the room and in bed.
As Adam lay in bed listening to the wind buffeting the windows, he realised that although Leila was only yards away in the bathroom, he was missing her. Believing that fate had brought them together, he marvelled at how inextricably he was being drawn towards this woman, who had been a complete stranger only a few days earlier.
He gave up noticing people looking at them as they ate, drank, swam or exercised together. In Hong Kong, seeing a gweilo with a local woman was not unusual. But Adam detected that some of the staff in the hotel were talking about them, especially one of the under-managers in reception. At one point Adam almost went up to him to ask why he was showing so much interest in them, then sensibly decided he didn’t care what other people might think. He had long ago grown used to others stopping, staring and even pointing when he and Lucinda walked together. At first they had talked it through and there were times when a particular incident had even brought Lucinda to tears. But eventually such occurrences either diminished or they just didn’t notice them any more. After they had lived in Ashbourne for a while, Adam could always tell the visitors from the locals; the visitors were the ones who stared.
In the bathroom Leila was once again gazing at herself in the mirror.
She too could not believe what had happened. She was as hard as nails, wasn’t she? She no longer had any emotions to complicate such matters, did she? Because she could switch from pretence to reality in the blink of an eyelid … couldn’t she?
Two days ago the answer would have been a definite yes.
Now she wasn’t sure.
She reached her decision, as dangerous as it might be, over breakfast that morning: she was not going to carry out the Master’s order. She shook her head as she tried to come to terms with the absurdity of holding a glass of fruit juice to her lips and making the decision not to kill the man who was sitting opposite her, the man who was smiling at her and the man who always wanted to please her as much as she wanted to please him. It wasn’t just absurd it was totally unbelievable. But as a result of making what she believed to be the right decision she r
ealised that she was signing her own death warrant. Even if she left Hong Kong there would be nowhere she could hide; they would find her and the Master would have his revenge. Somebody else would be assigned to Adam and they would both finish up dead. But she could never be the one to kill him. She had found the person she did not believe existed and even if it meant that they had a few weeks, months or even, if God permitted, years together then it would be better than not having any time at all.
She had never been in love before, if that’s what it was, and it was the strangest of feelings. But having found something she had never believed existed she was not going to destroy it herself.
She had seen him fighting his feelings and she’d seen him asking the same question - what was happening? When he called her after he’d been mugged Leila believed he really could be hers, regardless of what she’d been ordered to do. She was the first person he had thought of and she had gone to him. She had seen the expression on his face as she drew up in the taxi and felt him cling to her when she’d asked whether he was all right.
It had all happened so quickly.
Perhaps when two people are attracted in that way there is little doubt in either of their minds about what they have found. It was as though they had been together forever but were never given the opportunity to meet. There had been a barrier which had at last been lifted to give them both the freedom they so longed for. She could be free from the shackles that had controlled her life for over twenty years, and he would be free from the grief he had suffered. Their freedom would not last for long but at least they would have what they needed for however long.
Leila’s eyes began to water as she let her mind take her down so many unbelievable avenues. He was out there waiting for her. She would get back into bed and they would hold each other as though their very lives depended on it. Ironically, in their case that is exactly how it was. By holding each other and feeling the way they did they had signed their own death warrants.
Dabbing her eyes with a tissue, Leila took one last look in the mirror before lifting the towelling robe from the back of the door. She slipped the robe on and fastened it at the waist.
In Denial Page 29
