Authors: Sara Craven
Myra was looking around, her nose wrinkled. 'Hospitals all smell the same. How long do you have to stay here?'
'I don't.' Lisa shook her head. 'X think they'd be quite glad to see the back of me.' She hesitated. 'Can I come back to London with you?'
'Of course,' Jos and Myra spoke in unison, and Myra said, 'We were just going to suggest it, and you're coming to stay with us until you're really yourself again.'
Lisa tried to protest, but Myra was adamant. 'Yes, you must. I don't want you to be alone in the flat, and Dinah's tour has been extended, so she's off again. We'd love to have you.'
Lisa submitted. She would only brood if she went back to the empty flat, she knew, but no one could surrender to the doldrums in Jos and Myra's lively but haphazard environment.
'I'll have a word with Dr Simms,' she said.
'And we'll be back first thing in the morning to collect you,' Myra promised. She grinned down at Lisa. 'Anyway, you've got to come because we told Joseph we'd be bringing you back, and there'll be hell to pay if we turn up without Auntie Lisa after all.'
'Where is Joseph?' Lisa glanced around, as if there was the remotest chance of concealing a lively two-year-old in the room.
'Oh, I left him with his godmother,' Myra said comfortably. 'He had a bit of a cold, so I thought it best not to bring him.' She shivered. 'You know what they say about the frozen north!'
Lisa felt perceptibly happier after Jos and Myra had departed. She got out of bed, and sat by the window for a while. She had been up for a time each day, and had been amazed how shaky her legs felt when she tried to move about. The nurses had said it was reaction, and she didn't doubt they were right.
Presently she sounded a buzzer, and when one of the nurses appeared, she said that she would be leaving in the morning, and would like to have a bath.
The girl looked taken aback and began to say something about Dr Simms, but Lisa merely repeated that she would be leaving, and reiterated her request for a bath, and eventually the girl grudgingly agreed.
'But you're very pale,' she said. 'Would you like me to help you?'
'No, thank you,' Lisa said politely.
On her way to the bathroom, she heard two of the other staff discussing Jos's visit. There'd been a programme about him on television that they had seen, and they thought he was a glamorous figure, but they couldn't figure Myra out, or what part Lisa played in it all.
'Doesn't his wife mind?' one of them wondered, and Lisa suppressed a rueful smile.
'Not in the least,' she said as she passed the office door, and heard a muffled gasp of embarrassment.
The bath felt wonderful, and it was good to dress herself in her own things instead of the hospital gown with its tapes. She could have asked for them before, she supposed, but nothing had seemed to matter very much.
The nurse had been right, though, she thought studying herself critically. She did look pale. There was no sign now of that embryo Caribbean tan she had brought with her. The angles of her face were altogether too sharply defined, and her eyes looked enormous. I look like a hungry cat outside a closed door, she thought, her mouth twisting wryly.
But of course that was exactly what she had become, and all that she hungered for was closed away from her for ever.
On her way back from the bathroom, she paused outside Julie's door, with its neat card 'Miss Riderwood', but she made no attempt to go in or even to knock.
'Goodbye, Julie. Be happy, please be happy,' she said silently, and turned away.
After a week at Jos and Myra's, Lisa had begun to look as well as feel better. Myra was a lavish if unpredictable cook, generous with wine and herbs and second helpings. Her family thrived on it, and she was determined that Lisa was going to thrive too.
She would soon be ready to start work again, she thought, and she told Jos so, but all he said was, 'Take it easy, love,' so she guessed she hadn't totally regained her looks.
She had discarded the sticking plaster, and the faint mark on her forehead could be hidden by her hair, so that wasn't a problem, but she couldn't disguise the haunted look in her eyes. It was there, and Jos knew it because he was a photographer and an artist and he was trained to look out for such things. If he photographed her now, it wouldn't be as the Amber Girl, she knew.
In the meantime, it was pleasant to help Myra in her periodic bouts of tidying the tall Victorian house they lived in, and to play with little Joseph, and to talk to Myra's girl friends when they dropped in for coffee, or the more cosmopolitan crowd who came for dinner or drinks in the evenings. It was like being part of a family again, but without the aggro, the tensions of Stoniscliffe.
Of course, there wasn't a moment of the day or night when she didn't think of him. She could not get that last image out of her mind—the bitter accusation in his eyes as he watched James half-weeping across her bed, and then the door closing shutting her off from him.
What a fool she had been ever to imagine, to dream that things could ever be any different between them, she thought wearily, wondering what his reaction would have been to the news that she had gone off to London with yet another married man, because as luck would have it Jos had arrived alone to pick her up from the hospital, and they had collected Myra from the hotel afterwards.
She was sitting in the big untidy kitchen one afternoon watching Myra prepare goulash while Joseph made an indescribable mess with his finger paints when Myra said, 'Simon's coming to dinner tonight. I hope you don't mind. He's been hinting for an invitation ever since he heard you were here.'
Lisa shrugged. Simon was the least of her problems. 'Of course I don't mind.'
Myra sent her a quizzical glance. 'That's what I thought. Poor Simon! Or should I say poor Lisa?'
Lisa summoned a smile. 'Stupid Lisa, maybe. I must be a fool to let Simon slip through my fingers. After all, my looks won't last for ever, and modelling is a young girl's game.'
'Oh, to hell with Simon.' Myra dismissed him with an airy wave of her cooking spoon. 'It's this other man I'm interested in—the one who makes you look like death when you think no one's noticing. You may not know it, love, but every so often you drift into a little private reverie, and I can't believe it's pleasant.'
Lisa chewed her bottom lip. 'It isn't. I—I can't talk about it, Myra. I'd like to, and one day perhaps I'll be able to, but not now.'
Myra smiled at her warmly. 'Any time, love. Oh God, Joseph, you're supposed to put the paint on the paper, not your face! Look at him, Lisa. He looks like Sitting Bull!'
Simon wasn't intended to be the only guest, but the couple who had also been invited rang up to say they had baby-sitting problems, so that was how it turned out.
He arrived smiling, with a bottle of wine, but underneath was a man with a grievance.
He said, 'Hello, lovely stranger,' to Lisa and kissed her, but there was an edge to his words, and his mouth barely grazed the cheek she offered him.
She said levelly, 'Hello, Simon.'
The food was delicious, and it should have been a pleasant occasion, yet it wasn't. When dinner was over, Jos and Myra excused themselves on the grounds of washing up, and Simon and Lisa were left alone in the sitting room on the first floor.
Simon said tautly, 'Enjoying your stay here?'
'Very much.' He couldn't make any capital out of that, surely, Lisa thought.
'Jos and Myra went to the hospital to bring you home, I understand.' Simon picked up his brandy glass and drank. 'It didn't occur to you to ask me to do so.'
'To be frank, no, it didn't.'
'No,' he said bitterly. 'It's been weeks, Lisa, and not a word, not a sign from you. That shows me very plainly how little I figure in your life.'
'I wasn't aware that you wanted anything else.' That wasn't altogether true, she thought guiltily, but it gave him an opportunity to escape from this situation with dignity.
'Oh, God!' he burst out. 'You know—you must know how I feel about you. If you'd only asked me I'd have come from the ends of the earth to bring you back to London. Even if those dreadful stories in the papers had been true, I'd still have wanted you.'
Lisa supposed he must be sincere, but the drama in his voice, the high-flown words were just an embarrassment.
She heard herself say weakly, 'I didn't know. I thought we were friends. Can't we be friends?'
'I want more from you than that, Lisa,' he said thickly. 'Much, much more.' He got up as he spoke, knocking the remains of his brandy over Myra's rug.
Lisa leapt up too. 'Oh heavens, I'd better get a cloth…'
The sitting room, alone with Simon, suddenly no longer seemed a good place to be. She wished Jos and Myra would come with the coffee.
'Leave the bloody rug,' Simon said violently. 'Myra will never notice.'
So much for his kind hostess, Lisa thought, taking a step backwards. Simon came after her, wrapping his arms around her and pulling her close to him. His breath was hot on her averted face.
He said hoarsely, 'Don't treat me like a stranger, Lisa. I've played it cool because I thought that was what you wanted, but we can't go on like this. You're so beautiful. I want you—I've got to have you!'
His mouth fastened on hers with a greed that made her recoil, and his hands fumbled at her breasts.
When she could speak, she gasped, 'Simon—for God's sake!' but he seemed oblivious. Somewhere dimly she thought she heard the sound of the doorbell, and she could only pray it was the Jeffersons, who had said they might come round later if they could find another baby-sitter. Someone had to come, to rescue her from this nightmare. She had never dreamed she would have to fight Simon off, but he seemed totally out of control, bent mindlessly on the gratification of his own desires and fantasies.
There were footsteps approaching, and Myra's voice saying, 'In there,' and half delirious with relief, Lisa thought, The cavalry to the rescue!' and blessed the unknown Jeffersons.
As the door opened Simon let her go so abruptly that she almost stumbled, and stood glaring at the doorway.
He demanded belligerently, 'Who the hell are you?'
'My name's Riderwood,' Dane said quietly. 'I'm clearly interrupting something, and I'm sorry. I'll go.'
'No.' Lisa thought she screamed the word, but it came out as a strangled croak. 'No—don't go, please!'
She could imagine what she looked like. Half the buttons on her silk shirt were open, and her hair which had been pinned up on top of her head at the start of the evening was now festooned around her neck. She understood now why Julie took refuge in hysterics. It would have been nice to lie down on the carpet and drum her heels and scream.
Simon said thickly, 'What the hell is this? Riderwood? That's the name of the people Lisa was staying with in Yorkshire. Are you one of them?'
'Yes.' Dane had come further into the room, and was watching Simon levelly, his hands on his hips.
'Oh, I see,' Simon sneered. 'God, do I see! No wonder there was never a message, never a phone call. No wonder I suddenly didn't exist!' He laughed harshly, observing the sudden flare of colour in Lisa's face, and the way she pressed her hands to her burning cheeks. 'God, what a fool I've been! Well, here she is, friend. The beautiful Lisa Grayson —all yours. And I hope you get more mileage out of her than I have, the frigid little bitch,' he added with total vindictiveness.
Dane hit him, and he stumbled backwards falling into one of the chairs, nursing his jaw and staring up almost incredulously.
Dane said brusquely, 'Don't be here when I come back.' He took Lisa's arm and hauled her unceremoniously out of the room. He said, 'Where can we talk?'
It was a big house. It was full of rooms. They could have been alone in almost all of them, but she could only stare at him mutely.
He muttered, 'Oh God,' and opened the nearest door, pushing her inside. It was the family bathroom, and Myra had filled it with plants and cane furniture. Dane pulled forward a high-backed chair and Lisa sank down on to it.
He said, 'That, dare I presume, was Simon?'
She nodded.
'When I came in you were fighting him off, or trying to,' he remarked. 'What with that, and his final unpleasant remark, can I infer that you're not living with him?'
'Does it matter?' She was beginning to recover the powers of speech.
'Oh yes, it matters very much. Look at me, Lisa.'
She had been staring down at her hands which were clenched together in her lap, but now she raised her eyes warily to his face.
She said slowly, 'How did you know where I was?'
'I didn't, but the hospital was agog over the fact that you'd left for London with Jos Temple, so when you weren't at the flat, I decided to come and ask him.' His face was suddenly taut and rather grim, and she flinched instinctively. For a moment he stared at her as if he didn't believe it, then he said with immense weariness, 'Have I really frightened you so much, Lisa? I've come here to try and make my peace with you, if that's possible.' His mouth twisted ruefully. 'Can I admit that Mrs Temple was a surprise to me, and leave it at that.'
'As I said before, does it matter? You've always thought the worst of me, Dane. You can believe what you like about Jos and me.'
He said, 'Believing the worst of you was a habit I got into. It was easy at first. I was an arrogant young fool, and I resented anyone taking my mother's place. But no one could resent Jennifer for long. Knowing her turned out to be a privilege. But you were a different matter because you resented me too, and that was a challenge in a way. And then one day I came back and you weren't a sullen child any more. You were almost a woman, and you were going to be beautiful. You were at the dawn of that beauty, and that's why I bought you that record for your birthday. I tried to tell myself I was pleased because I was going to have two good-looking sisters, but it didn't work. As time went on, I had to come to terms with the truth—that I wasn't your brother, and I certainly didn't want you as any kind of sister.'
'But you wanted me,' she said coolly and clearly. 'I think you established that beyond reasonable doubt. And you had me.'