Dangerous Minds

by Priscilla Masters

  Fond? It seemed a weak word to describe the fire that had existed between them.

  Like a bolt of lightning, she had a flash of his body next to hers early in the morning, hair sticking up, face towards her, arm thrown over her breasts. As they both surfaced, his arms had always seemed to find their way there, his chest hair prickling her nipples.

  Shit, she thought, and banished the image to outer space. Somewhere beyond Pluto.

  She covered the distance between them quickly and sat down, picked up the glass of red wine he’d already ordered. Even that pulled her up. He hadn’t needed to ask what she’d like to drink. He’d already known. Of course he bloody well would.

  He lifted his head heavily, finding it difficult to meet her eyes. His own edged away guiltily, as though he was ashamed of himself. It was a new attitude, one she hadn’t seen before. She waited curiously, said nothing. There were too many ways to play this: affronted, outraged, indignant, confused, aggrieved. All of them negative.

  So she simply waited.

  His smile was tentative, then in a rush he said, ‘God, Claire, it’s good to see you.’

  She merely gaped at him, mouth open.

  TWENTY-SIX

  He looked at her mournfully. ‘Claire,’ he said again, his voice husky. ‘You look lovely.’

  She couldn’t think of a response. She simply continued to gape at him. What was all this about?

  ‘I’ve made such a mistake.’

  Oh – so that was it, was it? He wanted to backtrack, turn back time?

  ‘No phone call,’ she queried, then warming to her subject. ‘No letter. No text. No email. No message at all? No explanation?’

  ‘I didn’t know how to play it.’

  ‘Play it?’ She couldn’t keep the fury out of her tone now.

  He tried to ameliorate the word. ‘Manage it, then.’

  He looked at her in that appealing, desperate way he had, brown cow-eyes begging, but there was something heavy behind them, as though he was carrying a terrible burden. Guilt, she remembered someone saying once, is as heavy and dense as lead.

  ‘I had to go,’ he said quietly. ‘The days just went by. And she needed me.’

  ‘She?’

  She already knew, of course. Well – she knew what she looked like. She knew how Grant responded to her.

  ‘I need to start at the beginning,’ he said. ‘Can I get you another drink?’ She looked at her inexplicably empty glass, nodded and he strolled over to the bar, returning a few minutes later. He put the glass of wine down in front of her and sat down. ‘I can’t tell you how sorry I am.’

  She wanted to tell him what she knew but she held back. She needed to listen to all he had to say first, to know whether he would lie.

  ‘I have a sister,’ he said.

  An odd quiver of hope rippled up through her like a finger of sunlight on dappled water, then it plunged right back down to the depths.

  He cleared his throat. ‘I’ve never mentioned her to you. There is a reason for this,’ he added quickly. ‘She’s ten years younger than me. She has cystic fibrosis. She’s ill nearly all the time. Sometimes we think she’ll die. But then she recovers. She has it badly.’ He frowned and looked down into his beer glass. ‘Shit, Claire,’ he said. ‘I’m making a pig’s ear out of this.’

  She tried to smile some encouragement rather than simply nod, but she was confused and puzzled.

  ‘I’d better start at the beginning,’ he said. ‘Mum and Maisie lived in Cornwall. I persuaded them to move up here, nearer to me, so I could help with her, but it didn’t work. Maisie went into a crisis and then Mum couldn’t cope.’ He gave an apologetic smile. ‘Dad never could. He buggered off years ago. But Mum was ill herself and I felt responsible. After all, I was the one who’d dragged them all the way up here. She wasn’t too bad in Cornwall.’

  ‘OK, Grant,’ she said tightly. ‘You had to go. Fine. But why not tell me? I wouldn’t have had a problem with it.’

  ‘You don’t understand,’ he said uneasily, looking away now. ‘When we started making plans for our future, I was worried.’ His eyes flickered. ‘Frightened.’ His eyes were holding nothing back from her now but held her gaze. ‘I’m a carrier, Claire. I knew what life was like for Maisie. I couldn’t have gone through with it with one of our own children. Don’t you see?’

  ‘No,’ she said bluntly. ‘Not really.’ And she didn’t. She didn’t see at all why he couldn’t have come clean or why his sister had commanded such complete devoted loyalty, loyalty that appeared to exclude her.

  It made no sense to her. She was quiet for a moment, trying to work it all out. She suspected the sub-story was something quite different. Not a sick, needy younger sister, but someone greedy for his sole attention, someone manipulative, who didn’t want her brother to have a partner who distracted him from his sibling duties, who might have a family of her own.

  But even in her feeling of disorientation, she felt a tiny spark of triumph. ‘So I take it the petite blonde girl I saw you having coffee with at the Potteries Shopping Centre a few weeks ago was her?’

  Grant looked up, gaped. ‘You saw us?’

  She nodded, and for the first time she read into his eyes. Desperate. Desperate?

  ‘That sounds like Maisie,’ he said, crushed.

  It was tempting to focus on Maisie – how old was she, why was she like this, but it would be a distraction, one she resisted.

  The real question was: ‘Why didn’t you at least let me know what was happening?’

  He dropped his face into his hands. ‘She’s dying,’ he said.

  She snatched back the Aren’t we all? It would sound callous, petty and mean and … everything else she felt.

  And her own selfish, private thought was: there is enough mess in my life as it is. My work is clearing up messes. I don’t want my home life to be the same. I want my home to be a refuge.

  ‘Look, Grant,’ she said finally, when she’d finished her second glass of wine, ‘I understand you have a very sick sister. I understand that you felt you should go to her. That’s good. And I understand that at some point you and I would have had to face up to the fact that we should have genetic tests before even considering starting a family. But these problems aren’t insurmountable, so why no word for eight months? That I don’t understand.’

  ‘Maisie was—’

  And then it had come out from her like a burst boil. Hot, angry and painful. ‘I don’t give a fuck what Maisie wanted. We were an item, Grant. We’d been together for over five years. You never even mentioned her. You kept her a secret. You didn’t confide in me. I don’t understand why not. I’m a doctor, for goodness’ sake. You think I can’t deal with sickness?’ Now she’d started she could not stop. It all poured out of her, poisonous as pus. ‘There was the small fact that we’d bought a house together. That’s a huge financial commitment. We’d signed the fucking mortgage over twenty-five years. We’d been through thick and thin together. I don’t know what was in your mind but I do know what was in mine. Yes, I thought we might be married one day. I thought we might have children.’

  ‘Don’t you see?’ he said, lifting his eyes, and now she saw an answering spark in them too. ‘I carry the gene, Claire. How could I bring that curse to a marriage? I’d watched Maisie suffer from day one of her life. It was shit. Physio twice a day, intravenous antibiotics, surgery. Tablets, antibiotic resistance.’

  ‘Both parents have to carry the gene, Grant. Both parents. They must have told you that.’

  ‘And I’d ask you to have the test?’

  Again she could hit back. ‘Even if I too carried the gene, who knows what life will be like in the future, Grant? Already these patients are living longer. There may be gene therapy. There may be new treatments. The future will be different. I do know that.’ She met his eyes. ‘I thought we’d be together. And then one day you were …’ She angled her eyes up towards the ceiling. ‘Poof,’ she said, throwing her hands out. ‘Gone.’

&n
bsp; He said nothing. His eyes flickered over her. He was looking pained, hurt.

  He was hurt?

  ‘Maisie said you’d understand,’ he grumbled.

  Claire had no answer to this but a big jaw-drop. ‘Maisie doesn’t know me,’ she said quietly. ‘We’ve never met. I don’t see how she could possibly imagine that I’d understand you going AWOL for eight months, not even replying to my texts and then popping up again like a jack-in-the-box.’

  He gave it one more try. ‘Ever since she was born, Maisie has had to come first. I’d drop everything if she was crying or poorly.’

  ‘So how come you’ve kept this from me for five whole years?’

  He smiled. ‘With difficulty, but they were a long way away. Mum coped really well and sometimes I’d go down and see them for a couple of days if you were away or on a course or something.’

  ‘You know what,’ she said, ‘I can’t believe how you’ve kept this secret so well. In fact,’ she said, ‘I find it rather worrying.’

  He looked ashamed. ‘Mum and Maisie thought it best. They didn’t know how you’d deal with it. And I … I didn’t know what to do.’

  She was silent for a moment, her thoughts and emotions tangled in an impossible knot. He was so weak was her initial thought, but then she realized – that had been part of his charm. Grant was lazy, easy-going. Someone who could be manipulated. And now look where that passivity had landed him – and her – because she could not separate herself from this mess that was, in reality, no more than a family problem, a hill they had to climb. Then she gathered herself up and continued in a voice she hardly recognized as her own: prim, tight-mouthed, unemotional, business-like. ‘I’m thinking of selling up. You’re on the deeds so I’ll need your signature.’ She managed a friendly smile. ‘You’ve done virtually all the work. I’ll get a tradesman to complete it, so if we make any profit I suggest we split it fifty-fifty?’

  He looked stunned. His lovely dark eyes bruised as though she’d slapped him. His mouth was slack, uncertain. He’d run out of words. ‘Claire,’ he appealed. ‘Please.’

  Heart tumbling over head, head tumbling over heart. She was dizzy, then that voice came out again.

  ‘I don’t want to go through all this ever again,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry about Maisie. I’m sorry she’s having a shit life, but I also think she and your mother between them were wrong. And so were you.’

  He reached his hand out but she snatched hers away.

  ‘Claire,’ he appealed, ‘I’d try to ring but she got worse. She was in Intensive Care and got upset if I said I should speak to you.’

  ‘You should have confided in me, Grant, had more confidence in my humanity.’ She paused. His face was frozen but he was also shamefaced.

  ‘I don’t want you just coming back,’ she said. ‘Let me have some time to think, to adjust. I don’t know my own feelings and I don’t know what’s fair any more.’

  He opened his mouth to speak then shut it again.

  She finished her wine. ‘If you can just give me a current address,’ she said, standing up ready to leave, ‘I’ll be in touch.’

  Then, stupidly and against her better judgement, she bent down and kissed his cheek. He put his face up to hers and then it was their lips that were touching. What was worse was that she was responding with a warmth that came from deep inside. The very core of her soul. And perhaps he recognized this.

  ‘Claire,’ he appealed again, a raw edge in his voice that she’d never heard before.

  She moved away as quickly as though she’d touched a hot plate and was gone without looking back.

  As she drove home she recalled her friend Julia’s words, saying that men dance to their own tune while women accommodate and adapt to their partner’s steps without even hearing the music. Her current instinct was to split the money down the middle and part. She had seen another side to Grant and she didn’t want to be in a relationship with a man who felt he could pop in and out of her life like a rabbit in a conjuring trick. Neither did she want to be with a man who was at the command of his mother and sister. Then she realized something. If his father had abandoned the family soon after Maisie was born, Grant had had to act up. He would only have been ten years old, already the man of the family. And all at the command of a sister who had enough of a hold over him to convince him of her completely barking suggestion that he simply vanish from her life, and that she, Claire, would understand. Unless Maisie was completely out of sync with the rest of humankind, she must have known that Claire would not. She must have known that Claire was doing exactly what she would have predicted – dumping her brother. It stopped her up short. Was that what she wanted to do? Act out Maisie’s selfish little play for her?

  And then, as she neared Burslem, inexplicably her focus changed and she began to make plans for her future. It was as though waiting to find out why Grant had simply gone had caused a hiatus in her life. And now she knew she could move on if she wanted to. She could get decorators in to complete the renovation work and then she could put the house on the market. Fingers crossed she came out of it with a few thousand in her pocket. She would divide that with him. Then she would buy somewhere else …

  Or else …

  She drew the car up the drive, picked her bag from the passenger seat, climbed out with difficulty (she’d parked too near the wall again), and walked towards the front door with its sensor switch to illuminate her progress.

  Someone was leaning up against the gatepost. For a second – no more – she thought Grant must have followed her home. Similar height, similar build.

  Her second thought was that it was a punter waiting for his pleasure of the night. Was even forming the phrase, Wrong place, mate. Then she realized.

  ‘Hello, Claire.’ The voice was cold and gloating. He knew he’d rattled her.

  It was Barclay.

  All her instincts were to run to the door, insert the key and hide inside, but instead she turned and faced him with a coolness that impressed even her. ‘Oh, hello,’ she said, injecting her tone with boredom. ‘I thought you’d gone sailing.’

  ‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘Soon. Very soon.’

  She wanted to tell him not to try any funny tricks, that she was on to him, but before she could get the words out, Barclay put his face next to hers. She could smell aftershave, soap and that ever-present cinnamon. ‘You know too much about me, Claire.’

  She felt a frisson of fear. This, then, was what he was like when … She backed away; her eyes shot over her shoulder. Where was the door? Could she make it before …? Before what? Why was he here?

  He put his face close to hers, spoke in a hoarse whisper. ‘I don’t want you …’ He stopped and she wondered what he was about to say. Getting in the way? Spoiling my plans?

  Instead he put a hand on her shoulder and pressed it down, hard enough to hurt; then slowly he moved away.

  She called after him. ‘I suppose it was Astrid who gave you those little titbits about some of my patients?’

  He looked cross. Then puzzled.

  She had the upper hand? ‘I’ll be having words with her,’ she said, carrying on as though she hadn’t seen the flicker of fury that danced across his face. Rather than respond, he moved back, again put his face even closer. ‘I wouldn’t bother speaking to this Astrid person,’ he said. ‘I told you – I don’t know anyone with that name. Wrong guess. Again.’

  From the confident, swaggering way he said this, she had the awful feeling it just might be the truth. She was silent.

  He spoke. ‘You know why I like you, Claire?’ It was his usual tone again, almost a cold caress, the threat milked away.

  She didn’t deign to answer but met his eyes now without even a flicker of fear.

  He answered his own question. ‘Because you are a worthy sparring partner.’ He smiled at her. ‘Watch this space,’ he said. ‘Things are about to get interesting. Or should I say, rough seas on the horizon?’

  Then he turned and left.

 
; TWENTY-SEVEN

  The evening had been a splash of emotion, Barclay putting the final touch on the weird and macabre. His intention had been to unnerve her. She gave a wry smile. At least he’d distracted her from Grant’s confession. Inside the house and feeling safe, Claire poured herself a glass of warm red wine, (kept right by the radiator for emergency use), sat on the sofa, took some deep breaths in and wondered. What had Grant really expected her to do tonight? Welcome him home with open arms?

  Tempting thought. She took a sip of the wine and held it in her mouth, feeling the warmth and richness staining her tongue. Now she thought about it, he hadn’t actually asked to come home. Only for understanding and forgiveness. Well, she could give him that. Grant, charming but weak, controlled by his mother and sister. So, if they did get back together, where exactly would she fit in to this pecking order?

  And Barclay? What had he wanted, apart from to rattle her? Why had he waited for her tonight? What had been the point? She knew the answer. He wanted her to know about his sinister plans for his new family. He wanted her to worry and at the same time know she was powerless to prevent it, or even to bring him to justice. He wanted to assert his position. Either that or he wanted her mind to focus, to suffer, to worry and wonder. She groaned. She would do anything to have him right out of the picture, someone else’s responsibility. She resented the place he occupied in her mind.

  Why did these people spin around her, plucking at her skin, pricking her like picadors, goading her? Weakening her?

  She finished her glass of wine. No answers there. Time to go to bed and try to sleep. She locked and bolted the doors both back and front, checked her mobile phone had enough juice in it. She would take it upstairs with her. It would be a comfort just to know it was there, that she could summon help – if she needed to. The house seemed ominously quiet tonight, haunted, ghostly, echoing – the empty rooms laughing at her, mocking her as she checked them through one by one. She felt her loneliness acutely, wrapping itself around her, distancing her from the human race. So this was what true loneliness felt like. A solitary monolith in a bleak and empty landscape.