Never Leave Me (52 page)

‘I'm not going with you, Luke,' she said quietly, ‘I'm never going to see you again.'

He flung the towel away from him, saying remorselessly. ‘Of course you are. You're going to divorce Greg. I'm going to divorce Annabel. We're going to get married just as we should have done years ago.' He took her arm, walking her out of the bathroom and into the bedroom. ‘We can be packed and out of here in fifteen minutes. There'll be no need for us to ever return. We'll live in London …'

Gently she removed his hand from her arm. ‘I'm not going with you, Luke,' she repeated. ‘I'm going back to San Francisco.'

He stared at her incredulously. ‘But why, for Christ's sake? There's no future for you there! Your future is in London, with me!'

She scooped up an armful of her clothes. ‘No,' she said steadily. ‘My future has never been with you, Luke. All we have is a shared past. It's never been enough and it isn't enough now.' She stood for a moment, looking at him, remembering the first time she had seen him. Remembering Valmy. ‘Goodbye, Luke,' she said and turned and walked down the stairs, putting him out of her life forever.

She knew the instant she arrived home that something was terribly wrong. Simonette's station wagon was parked at an odd angle, the doors wide open as if she had hurtled herself from it and into the house. She slowed to a halt behind it and even as she was still stepping from the car, Simonette had flung the front door open and was running towards her, her face stricken.

‘Oh, thank God you're back, Madam! I've tried to get in touch with you everywhere, but no one knew where you were and …'

Lisette broke into a run. ‘
What is it
?' she demanded, seizing hold of her. ‘
Is it children
?
Where are Lucy and Dominic
?'

‘They're still at school. I thought it best they stay here. I…'

‘
What's happened
?'

‘Mr Dering … He's had a heart attack at the wheel of his car …'

‘
No
!' It was a howl of protest. She swayed on her feet, her face ashen. ‘
Where is he
?' she sobbed, turning and running towards the car.

‘San Francisco General,' Simonette gasped, sprinting after her. ‘But you can't drive yourself there, Madam! You're too shocked! Madam …'

The Lincoln's door slammed. Her hands were shaking as she switched on the ignition. A heart attack. He could be dead. Dying. Tyres screamed as she reversed out of the drive, as she slammed into first gear, then second. She had to reach him. Had to be with him. ‘Oh God!' she prayed as she careened out into the mainstream of traffic. ‘Don't let Greg die! Do anything, anything, but don't let him die!'

‘He's in theatre,' a nurse said, guiding her competently towards a chair. ‘He's likely to be there for several hours. Is there anyone you would like to contact to come and sit with you while you wait?'

She shook her head. She didn't want anyone. There was no one who would be able to understand her anguish. No one she could tell of the way they had parted. The savage recriminations. The crucifying hurt. And if he died? She had a duty towards his parents, towards Chrissie. ‘Yes, there is someone,' she said. ‘His mother and father. His sister.'

‘I'll contact them for you,' the nurse said compassionately. ‘A doctor will be with you the instant there is any news.'

It was the longest wait of her life. At six o'clock a gowned and masked surgeon walked wearily from the operating theatre and told her that Greg was on his way to intensive care. He had a broken arm and pelvis. Damage to the lower vertebrae. But he was alive and he was going to stay alive.

‘Can I see him?' she asked, as her mother-in-law lowered her head to her hands and wept with relief.

‘A nurse will take you up as soon as he's been settled. But you won't be able to stay. Intensive care is no place for visitors and he won't be conscious for six or seven hours yet.'

‘I understand.' She tried to smile her thanks and then she saw the deep frown puckering his brow and she said fearfully, ‘What is it? What is it that you haven't told me?'

He took off his surgical skull cap, running his fingers through thick, grizzled hair. ‘The nerve damage to the lower vertebrae was severe, Mrs Dering,' he said reluctantly. ‘You must be prepared for the fact that your husband may never walk again.'

She spent the night at the hospital, refusing to leave, drinking endless cups of black coffee. The doctor had told her that the heart attack could have happened at any time, but she remembered the fist slamming hard above his heart, the raw agony on his face when he had told her that their marriage was over, and she knew that she was responsible.

‘What level of stress can my husband cope with?' she asked the young intern who came to her in the early hours of the morning to tell her that Greg was on the verge of recovering consciousness and that she could return to his side.

He stared at her. ‘I'm sorry, Mrs Dering. I don't understand. Your husband has just suffered a heart attack and undergone major surgery. He's not able to cope with stress of any kind. Why do you ask?'

She pushed a dark fall of hair away from her face and he was shocked by the suffering in her eyes. ‘My husband and I quarrelled very badly shortly before his accident,' she said unsteadily. ‘He may not want to see me.'

He regarded her compassionately, understanding now the reason for the raw depth of her distress. ‘I think he will want to see you,' he said gently. ‘But if he doesn't then the nursing staff will know and you will be asked to leave.'

‘Thank you.'

Her voice had a husky quality and the faint trace of an accent. He remembered from his case notes that she was French and wondered how he could have forgotten. Even though she had slept in the white silk blouse and scarlet cotton skirt that she had been wearing when he had first rushed into casualty, she still looked chic, with that curious edge of elegance that was so peculiarly European. As she began to walk away from him he said hesitatingly, ‘Mrs Dering … Excuse me … Are you perhaps worrying that it was your quarrel that triggered off your husband's heart attack? That you, in fact, are responsible for it?'

She turned towards him and he read his answer in her anguished eyes. ‘Yes,' she said simply. ‘I know I am.'

Her hair skimmed her cheekbones, falling softly to her shoulders, making her look ridiculously young. He wished suddenly that she were not married. That her husband were not lying only minutes away in intensive care. He said, his voice thickening, ‘I doubt that very much, Mrs Dering. Heart attacks are organic in origin. A marital quarrel would not be enough to induce one in an otherwise healthy man. However, there must be no more quarrels; no more emotional disturbances. Not for a long time.'

Her eyes held his, wide and dark. ‘How long is a long time, doctor?' she asked, suddenly very still.

He frowned, his voice grave. ‘Not until your husband has recuperated fully and even then, there must be no violent shocks. It would be too foolish a risk.'

She sat by the bed, wanting to hold his hand and not daring to. An intravenous drip was inserted just above the wrist, and she was terrified that when he opened his eyes, when he saw her, he would try and free himself of her touch and dislodge it.

He looked curiously relaxed, his handsome face almost boyish. The lines of rage and pain that had ravaged his face when he had slammed out of the cottage were now smoothed away. Only the laugh lines remained, creasing the corners of his eyes, etching his mouth. She stretched out her fingers, touching his with butterfly lightness, loving him with all her heart and knowing that she could never again expect that love to be returned.

‘He could recover consciousness at any moment, Mrs Dering,' a nurse said to her quietly, pausing to look at his chart and then walking back to the bank of monitors that reported the vital signs of the patients in her care.

Lisette felt fear squeezing at her heart. What would she see in his eyes when he looked at her? Would he remember? Would she have to leave him almost immediately and perhaps be asked not to return? Slowly, surely, his fingertips moved against hers.

‘Oh
chéri
,' she whispered beneath her breath. ‘Please let me stay with you. Please don't send me away!'

His eyelashes fluttered once and were still, and then moved again and opened.

‘
Bonjour, chéri
,' she said softly.

His fingers tightened on hers. ‘Hello sweetheart,' he whispered, and she knew that he had not remembered. That he would not remember for hours. That once again she had been given a reprieve.

‘I love you,
mon amour
,' she said huskily. ‘I love you more than you will ever know.'

He tried to smile. ‘I love you too,' he said hoarsely, and then the nurse was bending over him saying, ‘Everything is all right, Mr Dering. Please don't try and talk any more. Not for a little while.'

‘Okay,' he said, his voice befuddled, his eyes closing as he drifted back into drugged sleep. ‘Anything you say …'

She knew, as she left the ward, that those few precious moments had given her the courage she needed to face the future. She had been told that it would be seven or eight hours before she would be able to see him again, long enough for her to return home, to shower and change and to catch a little sleep.

Simonette was waiting for her and as she sank gratefully into the Lincoln's passenger seat and allowed Simonette to drive, she felt almost calm. He would not want to see her when his memory returned. He would demand a divorce. There would not be one. She was going to remain at his side no matter what he said or did. She knew now that he had continued to love her all through the years when she had believed he was regretting their marriage. That he had loved her right until the moment he had walked into the small bedroom at Carmel and had had all his illusions about her smashed to smithereens. Her hands clenched in her lap. There could be no explanations now. The doctor's words had been explicit. No confessions, no emotional trauma. The truth about Dominic had been a secret for nine years; it would have to remain a secret. She could give Greg no reason for the way she had withdrawn from him and turned, in misery and guilt, to Luke. But she would stay with him. If he refused to accept her as his wife, then she would be his nurse. She would be anything at all, just as long as she remained in his life.

Her hopes that it would be days before his memory returned were dashed the instant she returned to his bedside.

‘You'll want a divorce in order to marry Luke,' he rasped, his eyes burning, his face ashen beneath the bronzing of wind and sun, far paler than it had been when he had returned from theatre.

‘No.' Her voice was calm. She wondered if he remembered the words of love he had spoken to her in his drugged haze only hours earlier. ‘My affair with Luke is over.'

‘Why?' he demanded savagely. ‘Because of this?' His hand moved violently on the counterpane, indicating the tubes and drips, the swathes of bandages.

‘I'm sorry, Mrs Dering,' a nurse said, walking quickly over to them. ‘But if Mr Dering is going to become distressed, I must ask you to leave.'

‘Mrs Dering is leaving,' Greg said, his voice hard, his eyes merciless.

She had left, because she had no alternative. Over the next few days she had sat on a hard, straight-backed chair outside his room as his mother and father, as Chrissie and Nick, had visited him. She had suffered their puzzlement with dignity and without offering any explanation.

‘Will my husband see me now?' she had asked the nursing staff time and time again, and always the answer had been no.

The surgeon who had operated on him talked to her for over an hour, showing her X-rays, explaining the damage that had been done to Greg's vertebrae. The nerves were injured but were not dead. There was no reason why he shouldn't walk again, but at the moment the nerves and muscles were not responding to treatment. When he was discharged from the hospital it would be in a wheelchair. There would have to be months of physiotherapy, perhaps years.

She knew that the surgeon had also spoken to Greg. That he was facing the news alone.

Nick visited regularly, carrying in the armfuls of files and correspondence that Greg insisted on seeing.

‘Has he told you what he intends to do about the agency?' Lisette asked him one evening as he came away from Greg's private room with a sheaf of memos.

Nick flushed. He found the sight of Lisette, sitting with exquisite dignity and patience as she waited for Greg to agree to see her, acutely embarrassing. God alone knew what had happened between them. No one seemed to know. Not his family. Not the hospital staff. But whatever it was, he was sure that it was distress over it that was delaying Greg's recovery.

‘He says there are going to be no changes, Mrs Dering. He's going to recuperate and then he's going to continue running it.'

‘I see, Nick, thank you.' There were blue shadows beneath her eyes and her skin was so pale it was almost translucent. He wondered how long it had been since she had slept properly, or since she had eaten.

‘Mrs Dering,' he said awkwardly, ‘I know it's none of my affair … but whatever has gone wrong between you and Mr Dering … I'm sorry.'

A small smile touched the curve of her mouth. ‘Thank you,' she said again, her eyes so sad that his heart ached.

Unhappily he turned away, wondering if there was any truth in the rumours about the girl in New York. If Greg really was contemplating a divorce. He shook his head uncomprehendingly. He would have staked his life on the fact that the Derings had been meant for each other. That they were crazy about each other. He stepped out on to the sidewalk and hailed a cab, baffled by their obvious estrangement.

When Nick had gone, Lisette walked the few yards to the door of Greg's room and paused uncertainly. She didn't blame him for not wanting to see her. In his eyes, she had gone straight from his arms to Luke's. He would not believe her if she told him it was rape. Not when he had seen the evidence of the long-standing nature of their affair. She closed her eyes, wondering how she could have brought so much misery to the lives of those that she loved, so much misery to herself, then, resolutely, she took hold of the door knob and entered the room.