Remember

by Barbara Taylor Bradford

  They lay on their sides, facing each other, gazing into each other’s eyes, saying nothing. But neither of them needed words. They could read each other’s faces, etched as they were with love and desire.

  ‘Ah Nicky, my lovely Nicky,’ he whispered, and reached out for her, brought her closer, his right hand settling on the nape of her neck. ‘I want to possess you completely, take all of you to me…’

  ‘I know… I want that too.’

  Their mouths came together again, and immediately he slipped on top of her, pushed his hands under her back and pulled her against him. His mouth became insistent, demanding; ardently she responded to him, her passion mounting as his did. He entered her unexpectedly, without any preamble, as he had several times in Provence, and she gasped in astonishment. And then as he eased deeper into her, her legs went around his back and she cleaved to him, became part of him. At once they found their own rhythm, as they always did, moving faster and faster.

  ‘Oh God, Nicky, oh God,’ Clee cried as he lifted his mouth from hers at one moment. His breathing was laboured; he gasped as she was gasping.

  She stiffened under him, began to quiver. ‘Clee! I love you!’ She opened her eyes and looked up into his face. ‘I love you,’ she moaned softly. Her quivering intensified and she gave herself up to him, came to him swiftly.

  As always her passion for him brought Clee to the height of excitement, and he began to lose control. Before he could stop himself, he was flowing into her, calling her name as she had his, telling her that he loved her as he had not loved any woman ever in his life.

  He fell against her, breathing heavily, then lifted his head, bent over her and kissed her face. Her cheeks were damp; he tasted the salt of her tears.

  ‘You’re crying,’ he said in surprise, wiping the tears away with one hand. ‘Why, Nicky? What is it? Why are you weeping?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she murmured, looking up at him. Half laughing, she added, ‘Because I’m so happy, I guess.’

  He merely smiled that lopsided smile of his, which she knew so well, and said nothing. He simply took her in his arms and held her close.

  ***

  ‘This is a much better picnic than the one we had that night at the farm,’ Clee said, between bites on a chicken leg.

  ‘I don’t agree!’ Nicky looked at him swiftly and shook her head. ‘That was the best picnic I’ve ever had in my entire life. You made some wonderful things, including the greatest peanut butter and jelly sandwiches I’ve ever eaten.’

  Clee threw back his head and guffawed. ‘If that’s all it takes to please you, I can see I’m going to have an easy time with you, honeybunch.’

  Nicky laughed with him, reached for her glass of white wine on the bedside table. ‘I can be very tough about some things, kiddo.’

  ‘Oh, I know that,’ he shot back.

  The two of them sat cross-legged in the middle of the large bed, wrapped in the hotel’s white towelling bathrobes. There was a plate of chicken and the bread basket between them; on the room-service table nearby, which Clee had wheeled in from the living room, there was a bowl of green salad, a basket of fresh fruit and a bottle of Montrachet in an ice bucket.

  ‘I bet all the girls mistake you for Kevin Costner,’ Nicky suddenly said, eyeing him appraisingly.

  ‘Fat chance of that!’

  ‘You know he’s your look-alike, Clee.’

  He grinned at her but made no comment and drank his wine.

  ‘I mistook you for him.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  Nicky told him about the mistake she had made in Athens, how she had bought a magazine because she thought it was he on the cover.

  ‘It must be wishful thinking on your part,’ Clee said dismissively, chuckling. ‘Is that what you really want? A movie star?’

  ‘No, I want you.’

  ‘You’ve got me, in case you hadn’t realized it.’

  Nicky offered him a smug little smile, and said, ‘I’m glad.’

  ‘What about you? Do I have you?’

  ‘You know you do, Clee.’

  He grinned and blew her a kiss.

  Reaching for her wine, Nicky took a sip, then sat nursing it in both hands, looking thoughtful. After a moment or two she said slowly, ‘Clee, when I was in London and called you in Berlin, just before I left for Rome, I told you I’d been to see Anne Devereaux at Pullenbrook—’

  ‘You went to make amends, right?’

  ‘Yes, that’s true, but I also had another reason to go and see her.’

  ‘Oh, what reason?’ he asked casually, picking up the chicken leg again.

  Nicky cleared her throat, plunged in. ‘I thought that Charles might be alive, that he might very well have faked his own death, then vanished for his own reasons.’

  Clee was dumbfounded for a split second, and put the chicken leg back on the plate, then exclaimed, ‘You’ve got to be kidding! You can’t be serious!’ He shook his head, began to laugh, incredulity echoing. ‘Come on, Nick, it’s me you’re talking to… stop kidding around.’

  ‘But I’m not. I’m serious, deadly serious, Clee.’

  Her sober tone registered with him, and he stared at her alertly, carefully weighing what she had said. Finally, he asked, ‘What happened to make you think that after all these years?’

  Nicky told him the story, reciting most of the pertinent details, but stopping short once she had filled him in about the events in Rome and Athens. She said nothing at all about Madrid.

  When she had finished, Clee said in an oddly subdued voice, ‘Why the hell would you want to traipse all over Europe looking for a dead man? Well, a supposedly dead man. Hadn’t he caused you enough pain? Or do you still have feelings for him, Nick? Is that it?’

  ‘No, I don’t! Absolutely not! I don’t, Clee!’ she protested fiercely. ‘I’m emotionally free of Charles Devereaux, and I have been for a long time. Long before I fell in love with you, in fact. Please believe that, darling. You do, don’t you?’

  He simply nodded and looked at her more closely, his eyes pinning hers. Then he said quietly, ‘If you say so… Yes, I believe you, Nick. Just tell me why you went looking for him.’

  ‘I wanted to get to the truth. Wouldn’t you?’

  ‘I guess so…’

  ‘Listen, Clee, I was stunned, shocked, disbelieving, when I saw that face on our newscast from Rome. But the guy did look so much like Charles I felt I had to go and talk to Anne. I just couldn’t get that face out of my mind. And I’d always been a bit dismayed, sort of troubled because Charles’s body was never found.’ Nicky paused, bit her lip. ‘I suppose it’s human nature to want to have a funeral, bury the dead… I think I wanted to get to the truth so that I could close that chapter of my life.’

  ‘Is it closed? Really and truly closed? Or is he going to haunt you?’

  ‘No, I’ve just told you, it’s closed.’

  ‘So tell me something else, Nick. Why are you now so sure he committed suicide, that he’s really dead? What made you change your mind?’

  ‘Because I kept coming up against brick walls wherever I went. There was no trace of him in Rome or in Athens.’

  ‘Why did you go to Madrid?’ Clee frowned slightly before reaching for his drink and taking a long swallow. ‘What did you hope to find there?’

  ‘I wasn’t sure what I’d find, actually. I wanted to show the pictures to his former Spanish partner. I guess I was seeking a confirmation or a denial from Don Pedro.’

  ‘And what did the Spanish guy say?’

  ‘I didn’t see Don Pedro. He was away until today, and I decided not to wait around. As I told you on the phone this morning, I took a flight out of Madrid late on Saturday afternoon and checked in here.’

  ‘Why the sudden change of heart?’

  ‘It hit me that if I could so easily mistake Kevin Costner for you on the cover of a magazine, then I could also mistake another man for Charles Devereaux… with a slightly altered appearance, of course.’
/>
  ‘Photographs can be very deceptive and misleading. Let me see them, Nicky, I’d like to take a look at them.’

  ‘I got rid of them… what was the point of keeping them?’

  ‘There wasn’t one, I guess.’

  ‘You’re angry with me, aren’t you, Clee?’

  ‘No, I’m not, just startled, troubled.’

  ‘Because I lied to you, because I said I was in those different cities doing research for a special, when I wasn’t?’

  He shook his head. ‘No, they were only white lies.’

  ‘Why then?’ she pressed anxiously, wanting to make things right with him.

  ‘Because you didn’t tell me immediately, the day after you’d seen the newscast. I’d have understood, Nick, once I’d got used to the idea that the guy might be alive—and giving me competition.’

  ‘You have no competition. I love you.’

  ‘I’d also like you to trust me… I’m a pretty intelligent guy, and I respect you and your mind, your professionalism. And your independence. I would never interfere with anything you wanted to do, unless I thought you might get hurt in some way. For God’s sake, you’re a mature woman, a tough, seasoned broadcast journalist, a war correspondent that I’ve worked side-by-side with for two years. Do you think I don’t know you and trust you? Anyway, I’d never treat you like a little girl.’

  ‘Thanks for those words, Clee, and yes, you do know me, perhaps better than anyone else. I’m pleased you trust me, and I do trust you, you know. I really do. Please say you’re not angry with me.’

  ‘I’m not, honestly, Nicky.’ He gave her a small, reassuring smile.

  There was a sudden silence.

  After a couple of minutes, Clee said, ‘So his mother didn’t think the photographs resembled him?’

  ‘No, she didn’t. She was adamant, in fact. And so was Philip Rawlings, her boyfriend. You know, the man she was with in Les Baux.’

  He nodded. ‘I remember. What’s the legal situation in England? I mean about Charles Devereaux.’

  ‘He was listed as a missing person, because there was no body. A suicide note doesn’t make any difference when there’s no body. I’m not sure whether the police have closed their files on him yet. I never thought to ask Anne.’

  ‘You’ve never ever discussed Charles Devereaux with me. You’ve always balked. What little I know came from Arch Leverson. But he was pretty closed-mouthed about the whole thing, Nick, didn’t say very much, out of loyalty to you. I didn’t even know Devereaux had left a suicide note. Was it addressed to you?’

  ‘No, to his mother.’

  ‘What did it say… do you know?’

  ‘Yes, she showed it to me when I flew to England a few days after the suicide. It was only a couple of lines, very brief, almost cold. He said in the note that he didn’t want to live any longer, that he was doing the only thing he possibly could—taking his own life, and that he hoped she would forgive him.’

  ‘Has she?’

  ‘I don’t really know… she still grieves for him, I’m certain of that, although she keeps up a good front.’

  ‘Was there a letter for you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Didn’t you find that strange?’

  ‘Yes, I did. But maybe he didn’t have any last words for me.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Because in the months before he killed himself he did everything very deliberately. He sold his shares in the wine importing company to his British and Spanish partners, he also sold his flat, made a will, and put all of his affairs in order. It was all done very, very methodically, Clee, so if he had had anything he wanted to say to me, he would have written me a letter, don’t you think?’

  ‘I suppose he would,’ Clee murmured. ‘Who got his money?’

  ‘Anne is the beneficiary under his will, but of course she hasn’t inherited it yet, because Charles is not considered to be legally dead. Under British law, Anne can only go to court for a legal declaration of death after seven years, not before. She’s got four more years to wait.’

  ‘I see.’ Clee leaned forward slightly, a frown furrowing his brow, his eyes thoughtful. He said slowly, ‘When a man melts into thin air to start a new life with a new identity, he usually does so for a hell of a good reason. When you thought Devereaux might be alive, why did you think he’d faked his own death? For what reason, Nick?’

  ‘I wasn’t sure. I told Arch when I saw him in Rome that it might be a reason so bizarre no one could even imagine it. But actually I thought Charles was involved in something illegal.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Arms smuggling or drug trafficking.’

  ‘Yeah, I guess I’d have come to the same conclusion,’ Clee agreed. ‘Especially in view of the world we live in today.’

  ‘I brought all this up tonight because I wanted you to know what I’d been doing, Clee,’ Nicky said, gazing at him earnestly. ‘I didn’t want there to be anything between us.’

  ‘I’m glad you told me, and I’m not angry, babe.’ Clee’s boyish, lopsided smile flashed, and he went on, ‘I just feel a bit protective of you, that’s all… I love you.’

  ‘And I love you.’

  ‘Let’s not discuss this guy Devereaux any more. Let’s bury him once and for all, shall we?’

  ‘He’s already buried,’ Nicky said, and slipped off the bed. She went around to Clee’s side and hugged him hard. ‘Thanks for being such a good guy, and for understanding,’ she murmured. ‘I’ll be back in a minute. Don’t go away.’

  ‘I’m never leaving,’ Clee said, laughing.

  Nicky went into the bathroom, locked the door and leaned against it, exhaling with relief. She had genuinely wanted to tell Clee as much of the truth as she possibly could, but she had known all along that she must edit her story. Thankfully she had done so adroitly, had managed to tell it without a hitch. No one must ever know that Charles Devereaux was alive. She had given her promise and she would not betray him; his life was in her hands. And her secret did no harm to Clee. Besides, she would never see Charles Devereaux again. That chapter was finally closed.

  THIRTY-THREE

  ‘After Mai die in Xiehe Hospital I take her body to parents,’ Yoyo said, looking from Clee to Nicky. ‘Friends help me. We find two pedicabs. They take us. We go to Mai’s house. Her parents weep. Weep a lot. They very sad. I very sad.’ Yoyo shook his head, and his tone was mournful when he added, ‘Mai such young girl—’ His voice quavered, and he stopped speaking.

  Nicky reached out and touched his arm sympathetically, with great affection. It was hard to believe that he was with them in Paris at last, and looking so well, almost prosperous, she thought. He wore a neat, dark suit, a white shirt and a red tie, seemed totally in command of himself and the situation.

  Clearing her throat, she said, ‘Clee and I know how terrible it was for you, how grief-stricken you must have been, and still are. It is so tragic. We were all upset and so very sorry when Mai died of her wounds in Beijing.’

  Yoyo tried to smile without much success. ‘I know, Nicky.’ He turned to Clee. ‘Thank you, Clee, for carrying Mai so far. Trying to save Mai. Taking her to Xiehe. You a good man, Clee. You a good friend. And you a good friend, Nicky.’

  ‘I just wish we could have saved her,’ Clee said, his heart going out to the young Chinese student who sat with them in his apartment on the rue Jacob. It was early on Friday evening, on the first day of September. Yoyo had come over to the sixth arrondissement on the Left Bank to visit them, tell them how he had escaped from Beijing, and share his news. Later they were going out to have the long-awaited celebration dinner with Yoyo, as the guests of his benefactor, a Mr Loong.

  Yoyo suddenly said, ‘Mai’s death bad joss.’

  ‘Yes, it was bad luck,’ Clee agreed. He and Nicky glanced at each other, and in an attempt to change the subject, Clee went on, ‘Nicky and I have been terribly worried about you all these weeks, Yoyo. So have Arch and the guys. We didn’t know
what had happened to you after we left Beijing. We waited in Hong Kong for you, as we promised we would, and for several days, you know.’

  ‘Sorry I did not come. It was hard for me, Clee.’

  Nicky said, ‘Don’t apologize, Yoyo, we understand. It’s just that we were so concerned for your safety. We hoped nothing bad had happened, that you weren’t locked up in a Beijing jail.’ She squeezed his arm again, gave him a warm smile. ‘Thank God you’re all right.’

  ‘Many things happened to me. But I lucky. Really.’

  ‘Tell us everything. How you got out of Beijing, how you came to Paris,’ Clee said.

  ‘I begin at beginning. Yes?’

  ‘Okay, Yoyo, shoot,’ Clee replied, smiling at him.

  Yoyo nodded, took a deep breath. ‘After you leave police everywhere in Beijing. I go Mai’s house. Mai’s parents hide me. Police asking many questions about students. Many arrests. Many students go to jail. At Qinghua University very bad things happen. It dangerous. I stay Mai’s house one week. Mai’s parents worry police find me. Arrest me. Mai’s father take me house of friends. They hide me for ten days. It difficult. Dangerous. Necessary I leave Beijing.’

  ‘Is that when you left the city? In the middle of June?’ Nicky asked.

  ‘No. No. I stayed in Beijing. I move many times. I go to friends of Mai’s parents. They hide me. Mai’s mother say she help me escape. She have guanxi—’

  ‘That means connections,’ Nicky interrupted, looking across at Clee. ‘Philip Rawlings told me when I was at Pullenbrook.’

  ‘How would he know a thing like that?’ Clee asked, frowning.

  ‘I told you before, he’s got an important job at the British Foreign Office. Hong Kong is a British Crown Colony and under British protection and government until 30 June 1997.’ Nicky shrugged. ‘Who knows, maybe he’s on the China Desk or the Hong Kong Desk at the Foreign Office. He’s always been very cagey about what he actually does there.’

  ‘I understand,’ Clee said, then addressed Yoyo. ‘Sorry for the interruption. Keep going, Yoyo.’

  ‘Mai’s mother have many connections. She sent me to southern China. Mai’s father give me money. I have your money. I keep it safe. Mai’s mother say I need much money. For bribes. They very important.’