The Road to Forever
By
Jeneth Murrey
Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
THE ROAD TO FOREVER
For six years Lallie had been in disgrace with her family in general and her bossy stepbrother Owen in particular—and none of it had been her fault, though Owen refused to believe that! Now he had suddenly turned up again, demanding that she come home with him to Wales— and, to add insult to injury, that she should pretend to be engaged to him! Did he really imagine she was going to obey him, just like that?
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First published 1983
Australian copyright 1983
Philippine copyright 1984
This edition 1984
© Jeneth Murrey 1983
ISBN 0 263 74674 7
CHAPTER ONE
Alison Moncke closed the front door of the narrow, three-storied Victorian house behind her and started to climb the two flights of stairs to her small flat on the top floor. She went at it slowly; the stairs, like the house, were narrow and steep, and besides, she felt depressed. The weather was bad—a cold, sharp wind was blowing rain in gusts along the pavement and her boots, fashion boots with thin soles and high heels, didn't keep the wet out—her feet felt damp and cold. She raised a hand to pat her plaited coronet of black hair and sighed. That was wet as well, as were her mac and her umbrella.
Two steps down from the top of the second flight, where the naked light bulb overhead gave a little more light, she hunted through her shoulder bag for her key, knowing that as usual she hadn't put it in the pocket specially constructed to hold it and that it would be right at the bottom of the main compartment, mixed up with the hundred and one other things which had somehow found their way there.
After a scrabble among loose coppers, individually wrapped mints, some spilled Paracetamol tablets and a few ballpoint pens, her fingers closed on the key and she raised her head. The lamp bulb cast a lot of shadows, and she watched a deeper shadow detach itself from the corner by her door to come and stand at the head of the stairs. The overhead light shone on a tall, well built figure dressed in casual, country type clothes, it illuminated thick, russet brown hair and turned the features of the man's face into a grotesque devil's mask where the high cheekbones and masterful nose cast a black shadow which concealed his mouth and chin.
'Hello, Lallie— aren't you a bit late, or does it always take you an hour and a half to get here from your office?'
The nickname, one she had given herself when her little tongue couldn't manage 'Alison', made her face whiten and her long, gold-flecked grey eyes harden. Nobody in London knew about that nickname, not now—she hadn't used it in the last five years or so and she had hoped never to hear it again, but here was Owen using it as though nothing had ever happened, as though it was nearly six years ago and all the bitter, angry words had never been said.
Her fingers closed convulsively over the key and she drew a deep breath to steady herself before she climbed the remaining two stairs and raised her head to look up at him. She wasn't a big girl and it seemed a long way to look up, her head hardly came to his shoulder, even in high heels. She stood quite still and silent until she judged her voice would be normal.
'Hello, Owen. What are you doing here?'
'Waiting for you, what else?' He stretched out a hand for the key. 'Let me.'
'No, thank you.' Her voice was as colourless as her face and her fingers clutched more tightly about the piece of metal. 'Just say what you have to say and then go, please.'
'Lallie,' his sherry brown eyes, set under heavy arched eyebrows slid over her, missing nothing, 'I'm not discussing private business with you on an open landing. Open the door like a good girl and we'll go inside where you can get out of those wet things, make us a cup of tea and we'll have the talk I came here to have with you.'
'I've nothing to say to you.' She raised her small chin and attempted to step past him, but he reached out to grasp her hand, prising her clutching fingers apart and extracting the small key.
'That's better—in with you now,' and he slid the key into the lock, pushed the door open, put a hand on her shoulder and impelled her inside. The door closed behind them and she shrugged off his hand and walked before him, through the small lobby and into the living room which, with the divan stripped of its daytime cushions and gay crocheted wool rug, served as a bedroom.
'Comfortable if constricted,' Owen acknowledged, looking around him before crossing to the gas fire, lighting it and turning it on full.
'Quite comfortable,' she agreed dryly, 'and the bathroom's in there,' she nodded at one of the two facing doors, 'if you want to wash your hands.'
When he had vanished through the door, she took off her mac and boots, stuffed her feet into a pair of high-heeled pumps and then went back into the lobby where she hung up the mac and tossed the boots on the floor. When he returned from the bathroom, she was in the kitchenette, unpacking her canvas carrier and outwardly composed.
Owen put his head round the door and gave the cupboards, the counter, the sink and draining board and the small gas cooker a swift, assessing scrutiny. 'You actually cook in this cupboard?'
Lallie went to crouch by the little fridge, her back to him as she packed away her perishables, and her teeth closed on the soft flesh of her lower lip. 'We're not all as well blessed as you, Owen!' Try as she would, she couldn't stop a shrillness from colouring her voice. 'Tea, did you say?' And she rose from her crouch and reached for the kettle to fill it.
'Mmm,' he still lounged against the door jamb, watching her movements, 'and a meal, if you can run to it. We haven't a lot of time and I'd like for us to leave as soon as possible. It'll take us the best part of seven hours to get home and I've got a surgery at half past ten tomorrow morning.'
Lallie looked at him consideringly before she lit the gas jet under the kettle. He hadn't changed much in nearly six years, maybe he looked a bit older and there were a few flecks of grey in his reddish hair, but that was all. Now that he stood in a good light, he no longer looked devilish, just hard and uncompromising. It was a severe face, but the se
verity was softened by the sensuous curve of his rather full bottom lip, although his chin looked as though it had been carved out of something stony and enduring.
She continued her inspection down over his tweed jacket, fawn cord trousers and bulky, well polished brogues; it gave her time to crowd down her emotions and present him with a calm front. It would never do to let him see she was afraid.
'A meal?' She shrugged. 'I've got a cooked chicken, frozen chips and a tin of peas, if that's any good to you and if it will save you wasting any more time— but what do you mean? We haven't time—It'll take us seven hours? I'm not going anywhere with you, in fact,' her eyes started to glow golden with temper, 'I wouldn't go to the end of the road with you!' Her voice had become saccharine sweet, but bitterness and a grim determination showed through.
'You're needed.' He ignored the sweetness, the bitterness and the grim determination as though they hadn't even registered with him. 'That's why I'm here—to fetch you, so hurry up, Lallie. Like I said…'
'… and like I said,' she interrupted fiercely, 'I'm not going with you. Why should I? The only place I'm going is to work tomorrow morning as usual!'
'No, you're not,' he shook his head at her reprovingly. 'I phoned your office. You'd gone, but they put me through to your boss. As a special favour, he's giving you some unpaid leave, as much as you want. You're coming home!'
'Owen,' she mocked his reproving tone, 'you're getting old! Your wits have gone wandering. This is my home, it has been for nearly six years, ever since I left that nice couple you boarded me with. I've got this and a decent job, and I'm not giving any of it up to go off into the wide blue yonder with you, no matter who needs me. I'll give you a meal, I'd do that for a stray dog, but when you've eaten it, you can get lost as far as I'm concerned!'
'Still smarting?' He raised a hand to push back a lock of the reddish hair which had fallen over his forehead.
'As you say,' she sounded weary. 'I'm still smarting, and who wouldn't be? The last time I saw you, the atmosphere wasn't what you'd call pleasant. If I remember rightly, you accused me of about everything your rotten mind could think of and you refused even to give me a hearing. You dragged me away from my friends and put me in the charge of a couple who were no better than gaolers to me!'
Her hand, holding the lighted match to the gas jets in the oven, shook so much they refused to light and she squeaked as the match burned down to her fingers. The little pain caused her control to slip away so that tears started into her eyes, but she still had enough sense not to let them fall—Owen pounced on any sign of weakness like a cat on a mouse. So she scrambled to her feet and turned her back on him, becoming very busy putting the chicken in a fireproof dish and finding the chip pan and a saucepan for the peas.
'Like I said, I'll give you a meal, but that's all you're getting from me. There's a tin of rice pudding for afters, if you want it.' She heard herself speaking normally and was pleased.
'Does everything you eat come out of a packet or a tin?' She might as well not have spoken for all the attention he paid to what she had said. 'No wonder you look half starved!'
Lallie now had her emotions under iron control so that she could turn to him with the ghost of a sweet smile plastered on her face. 'Do you want the rice pudding?'
'Any jam to put on it?'
She gave a snort of disgust and opened the cutlery drawer. 'Here, lay the table,' and she thrust a load of cutlery into his hands, crowning the pile with a tablecloth. 'I'll be as quick as I can,' she assured him, 'not only because I don't wish to delay you but also because I can't stand the sight of you,' and she turned away to struggle with the polythene wrapping of the packet of frozen chips.
'The only way you'll delay me,' the look he gave her was dark and menacing, 'is to be your usual, obstinate, pigheaded little self. I didn't want to say anything, not yet—there's no point in your worrying for any longer than is strictly necessary, but since you're being so damned uncooperative, it's Dwynwen!'
'Dwynny?' She choked back on surprise. Owen's ageing housekeeper had always seemed like the Rock of Gibraltar, ageless and enduring for ever. 'What's the matter with Dwynny?'
'Old age, high blood pressure, overweight and just recently, a bit of quite needless worry—oh, nothing to do with you, so don't blame yourself. She's had a heart attack.'
Lallie dropped the pan of oil so quickly that it splashed over, spotting her fingers and the floor by the gas cooker, and she looked up at him with wide, frightened eyes. 'Is it serious?'
'At her age, it's bound to be,' and he walked off with his burden to lay the table, leaving her standing by the cooker with a worried frown on her face. She tipped the can of peas into a saucepan, lit the gas ring under them and hurried into the living room.
'You don't understand, do you?' she was bitter. 'After the way you treated me, practically shutting the door in my face, I started to make my own life here. I found this flat and I found a good job—I'm independent…'
'Little Miss Independence!' It was almost a sneer. 'How do you like working for old Tommy Griffiths?'
'You know him?' Humiliation swept over her at his nod. He wasn't leaving her anything of her much vaunted independence, not even the consolation of having found a good job on her own merits.
'My godfather,' Owen's smile wasn't nice, it was mean and triumphant. 'He's gone up in the world since he ran the Aber branch of the insurance company.' He was amused at her chagrin, and then he relented. 'Don't look so woebegone, you little idiot! He wrote saying he'd had an application from you, he recognised your name—he asked if I would give you a character reference—you only had one and he needed another. I simply wrote back saying that as far as I was concerned, you were of good character, dependable and trustworthy, and you were also a good typist.'
Chagrin was replaced by temper, her eyes flashed and her soft mouth hardened into a straight, thin line. 'You won't leave me anything, will you? Not even the least, littlest thing! I said you were a bastard…'
'Don't swear, Lallie,' he snapped. 'It doesn't become you. Tommy took you on as a typist and he's not one to play favourites. What you've achieved since is entirely on your own merits—nothing to do with me. And I didn't tell him about anything else, either. Your little secret is quite safe, he doesn't know a thing about it and he won't unless…'
'Unless I don't do as I'm told, is that it?'
'That's precisely it,' he nodded agreeably. 'Now, let's get this meal over, then you can throw a few things into a case and we'll go.'
Lallie flounced back into the kitchenette, skidded on a dribble of oil and squealed in mingled pain and temper as a hot pain shot through her ankle as her foot twisted beneath her and she sat down on the vinyl-tiled floor with a bump. 'Now look what you've made me do!' she yelled wrathfully.
'I've made you do nothing.' He came calmly to stoop beside her. 'Where does it hurt?'
'My foot, you idiot!' and as he stooped over her, feeling around her ankle with cool fingers and moving her foot from side to side, she squealed again. 'Don't do that, it hurts!'
'Stop yelling,' he commanded. 'It's only a bit of a wrench, hardly enough to be called a sprain.' He put his hand under her instep and pushed upwards gently, and she repressed her yell into a faint squeak.
'I know it's not a sprain,' she said through set teeth, losing most of her control. 'It's broken! How would you know what it is? You're not a doctor, you're only a vet. I want it X-rayed.'
'You want a cup of tea and an aspirin,' he corrected, and she envied him his calm so much, she felt like weeping as he picked her up and carried her into the living room to sit her on a chair. 'Sit there while I make the tea and rescue the dinner, then I'll bathe it for you, strap it up and we'll eat. Stop trying to delay things, Lallie, it's not half as bad as you make out. You'll come home with me, stay with Dwynwen till she's better, run the house for her and put her mind at rest about her little problem. Then you'll be free to come back here. I'm not taking you into unknown territory, you've live
d there before.'
Which was quite true; she'd gone to live at Bryn Celyn, a remote place near the Dyffy valley when she was four years old—when her mother had married Owen's father. She'd been too young to remember anything much about the flat in Pimlico where she had been born, all her memories were of Bryn Celyn—the farmhouse and its huddle of barns and outhouses in the secret little valley, the sheep on the hills, the stream bordered with birches and rowans and the holly trees from which the house took its name. It had been a wonderful place to grow up in and Owen, ten years older than herself, had been the kindest big brother in the world. There had been Jonty as well, only eight at the time, and Dorcas, their sister who was only a year older than herself.
But it wasn't her home, not her real home, and Dorcas wasn't her real sister, that was made plain to her on the first day she started school—when they had all sat in the classroom while their names were read out. 'Dorcas Tudor', and Dorcas had stood up in the desk she was sharing with Lallie, and then she'd hauled Lallie to her feet. The mistress had smiled at her and said, 'Oh, the new little English girl, Alison Moncke', which had made her feel different as though she didn't really belong. After that, she hadn't liked the school very much and she hadn't co-operated when they tried to teach her Welsh. If she was different, she would be different!
When she was fourteen, her mother and Daddy Tudor had been killed in a road accident and there had been only Dwynwen to comfort her. Dorcas and Jonty had each other and Owen was away at veterinary college, so she had clung to Dwynwen and they had helped each other… Lallie stopped reminiscing at this point to watch Owen bring in the tea.
'Nothing burned,' he assured her. 'It's all ready, but we'll see to that ankle first. Aspirin and a bandage?'
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