Never Leave Me (56 page)

‘
Dominic
!'

The door rocketed shut and by the time Greg had wrenched it open, Dominic was at the far end of the hospital corridor, running, weaving out of the way of astonished visitors and medical staff, diving down the nearest flight of stairs.

‘
DOMINIC
!' he roared again, but it was too late. His son was gone.

He stumbled out into the street and knew that he was going to be ill again. He vomited into the gutter, staggered forward a couple of paces, and vomited again. People looked at him with contempt, walking around him, giving him a wide berth. He was uncaring. Blind and deaf and dumb with pain. He had never envisioned there could be such agony. It ripped through him, tearing him apart until he felt he was bleeding to death from the wounds his father's words had inflicted. No. Not his father. Luke Brandon was his father. A slick, smooth-talking Englishman that he had never liked, even as a child. He gasped for breath. It wasn't possible to live with such pain. It wasn't possible to bear it. And Melanie. Dear God in heaven!
Melanie
!'

He lurched out into the traffic, buses and taxi cabs swerving violently to miss him. Horns blared. People shouted. Melanie. How could he tell Melanie? How could he possibly go through life without Melanie?

He had been supposed to meet her outside the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square at one o'clock. He couldn't have found his way there if he had tried. He didn't know where he was, or where he was going. A policeman stopped him and asked him politely if he needed any assistance. He had said that he didn't, tears streaming down his face, staggering through a maze of smart streets that brought him eventually to the hurtling thoroughfare of Oxford Street. There was a small, tree-lined square beyond it. He collapsed onto one of the benches, burying his head in his hands, sobbing like a child.

She was still waiting for him, five hours later, when a taxi cab unloaded him outside the National's front entrance.

She ran towards him, dark curls bouncing. ‘Dominic! What's happened? What's wrong?' Her pretty face, usually so rosy and merry, was pinched with anxiety. ‘Is it your father? Is he …?'

‘Dad's fine.' He wondered how he could possibly say the word. Greg wasn't his father. Luke Brandon was his father. Luke Brandon. Melanie's father. Their father. He felt as if he were in a Bosch painting. As if hell were all around him. Pressing in on him. Burying him alive.

‘But you're so late …' She tucked her hand into his. ‘You look ghastly, Dom. What is it? What's happened?'

He tried to remove her hand from his arm but couldn't. His limbs were leaden, weighed down with grief. ‘I've been walking … thinking …' His voice was unrecognisable, even to himself. He knew what it was he had to do. He couldn't tell her the truth. He couldn't fill her life with the horror his own would always be filled with. He thought of their nights together in Italy. Of their closeness as they had lain together in the shelter of their small tent. Of her softness, her warmth. His mouth on the unblemished beauty of her skin. His hands on her small, round breasts. He said, ‘We've been too rash, Mel. It was a good holiday. A super trip. But it's over now. We're idiots to try and make more of it than there is.'

‘
Dom
!' Her hand fell away from his, her eyes widening, incredulous. ‘I don't understand …'

‘You're sixteen, Mel. It's crazy to think of becoming engaged.'

‘We don't have to be engaged if you don't want to be. All we have to do is be together.'

‘No.' He couldn't look at her. There was a statue of a British king standing a yard or so away from them and he stared at it fixedly. ‘It was a good trip, Mel. I shan't forget it. But I'm not going with you to Kent. I'm flying back home tonight.'

‘
Dom
!' Her cry was anguished. ‘Dom, you can't mean it! Please tell me you don't mean it!' Her pretty face, always so happy, so vital, was white and devastated. ‘Dom …'

She reached out again for him and he knew he couldn't endure another second. ‘I love you, Mel,' he spun away from her, charging a way through the tourists thronging the pavement, running out into the square his arm high, flinging himself into the first taxi cab to swerve to a halt for him.

‘
Dom
!' He could hear her frantic cry above the roar of the surrounding traffic. ‘DOM!'

He didn't look round. It was over. He no longer had a family. He no longer had Mel.

‘Where to?' the cab driver asked.

‘Heathrow Airport.'

He had his credit cards. He had the clothes in his rucksack. And before he faced a life in which his mother, and Greg and Lucy, and Mel had no part, there was one thing he had to do. He had to speak to the man who had fathered him. He had to go to Normandy and tell Luke Brandon that he knew he was his son.

‘There's a telephone call for you from America, Mr Dering,' a nurse said, popping her head round the door, pushing the telephone trolley into the room.

Greg was still panting, his fingers locked on the arms of his wheelchair, his face ashen. Her smile vanished. ‘Are you all right, Mr Dering?'

‘Yes, perfectly.' The last thing he wanted was questions and well-meaning interference.

The nurse frowned, certain that he was lying.

‘Thank you, nurse.' His voice was abrupt. Her brows rose slightly. In the three months he had been in her care she had never met with anything but civility from him. She left the room, vaguely perturbed, wondering if she would mention Mr Dering's change of temper to the ward sister.

Greg closed his eyes for a moment, struggling for composure. A call from America. It would be from Nick. Agency business. He looked at his watch. Twelve-thirty. Four-thirty a.m. in California. It was obviously something important. His fingers closed around the telephone receiver.

‘Hi, Nick. What's the trouble?'

‘It isn't Nick,' Lisette said, her voice faint, her accent thick as it always was when she was distressed. ‘Papa is dead …' she broke off and he knew that she was crying. ‘I'm flying to Paris tonight. The funeral is Thursday …'

Christ! That was all he needed. A family funeral. Dominic uncontactable. Brandon at Valmy. Lisette unaware that her son knew the truth of his parentage and the way she had deceived him.

‘I'll be there,' he rasped.

‘But your treatment,
chéri
…'

A spasm of pain crossed his face. He couldn't hear her use the careless endearment without remembering when it had been used in passion, ‘
Je t'adore, chéri. Je t'aime, chéri
.'

‘I'm recovered from the surgery,' he said abruptly. ‘The physiotherapy won't suffer from a few days' interruption.' He wondered how he would be able to bear seeing her again. She had destroyed not only his life but Dominic's as well. They would never be a family again. Dominic was lost to both of them.

Her voice was warm with gratitude. ‘
Merci, chéri. Au revoir.
'

His hand was trembling as he replaced the receiver. He would have to tell her. It seemed curiously fitting that when he did so they would be at Valmy. He rang for the nurse. He needed a bag packed, a flight booked.

Lisette landed at Orly Airport next morning and hired a chauffeur-driven car to take herself and Lucy to Valmy. It had been a long, tiring flight and she was emotionally drained. This was not how she had wanted to return home. Her eyes were dark with grief as they sped through the French countryside.

‘You loved
Grandpére
very much, didn't you?' Lucy said, slipping her hand comfortingly into hers.

‘Yes,
chérie.
He was always patient. Always kind.' Her eyes were full of shadow as she looked back down the years, remembering. ‘He understood me and knew more about me than anyone knew.'

‘More than Dad?' Lucy asked in surprise.

‘Yes,' Lisette replied, looking out through the car window at the passing countryside, her voice so sad that Lucy fell silent.

They sped through Evreux and Bernay, on into the heart of Normandy. The September sun was hot, the fields of ripened wheat golden, white wisteria and even whiter roses thick on the walls of the framed houses with their carved facades and high, slate roofs.

‘I couldn't live here,' Lucy said suddenly, as they plunged down a high-hedged lane flanked by lush pastureland. ‘It's so quiet and tidy and … unAmerican.'

Lisette said nothing. She was wondering from where she would ever find the strength to leave.

‘Isn't Uncle Luke's farm near here?' Lucy asked as Bayeux was left behind them and they sped on towards the coast.

‘Yes,' Lisette said, her voice suddenly strangled in her throat. ‘Somewhere near here.'

Luke. He would be at the funeral. He would probably even be at Valmy. There would be his new wife to meet. There would be the strain of all being together under the same roof. Luke. Greg. Herself. The car window was open and she could smell the salt tang of the sea. They were nearly there. The beech woods closed around them, the sunlight amber as it streamed through the leaves, the bracken already turning to autumn gold. They surged up the last incline; the trees fell away; and Valmy stood before them in all its ancient splendour. Nothing had changed. It was still beautiful; still perfect; its windows catching the sunlight; its turret piercing the skyline like a castle in a children's fairytale.

As they swept round the circle of grass fronting the entrance the heavy, brass-studded door opened and her mother stepped out to greet them.

‘Welcome home,
ma chére
,' she said, her voice thick with tears as Lisette flung herself from the car, running towards her, her arms outstretched.

The tears that Lisette had fought back during the long journey could be checked no longer. As her arms closed around the fragile figure of her mother they flowed down her cheeks unrestrainedly. Until that moment she had not truly been able to believe in the fact of her father's death. Not until her mother had stepped forward to greet her, alone.

‘There is tea waiting for you in the salon,' Heloise said at last, the skin like parchment across her still superb cheekbones, her eyes blue-shadowed with grief. ‘Dominic arrived here two hours ago. Greg landed some thirty minutes ago. He telephoned from the airport and should be with us any minute.'

‘Dominic?' Lisette asked incredulously. ‘But how did he know? Who told him?'

‘No one had told him,
ma chére
,' Heloise said as they entered the salon. ‘He was very deeply shocked and distressed.'

‘But where is he? I thought he was in London …'

‘He paid his respects to his grandfather's body and then said he wanted to visit Luke. He wasn't sure just where the farm was and so I told him. He borrowed the gardener's bicycle and left about an hour ago.'

Lisette stared at her. ‘
Dominic
has gone to visit Luke? But he doesn't know Luke! They haven't met since Dominic was nine years old!' She remembered Melanie and sat down weakly. ‘Oh no!' she whispered. ‘Not now … Of all times …'

Heloise began to pour tea from an elegant silver teapot. ‘There is no reason why Dominic should not visit Luke,
chérie.
Without Luke, I don't know how your father would have managed these last years. He called in on him every day. If he had been his son, he couldn't have been kinder to him.'

Kind. It was not a quality Lisette had associated with Luke for years. And now Dominic was, in all probability, going to tell him that he was in love with Melanie. That they had spent the summer together.

‘I don't think I want any tea, Maman,' she said, rising unsteadily to her feet. ‘I think I'd like some fresh air. A walk …'

‘Do you want me to come with you?' Lucy asked, concerned.

‘No thank you,
chérie.
' She didn't want anyone. She wanted to be alone. To think. She wanted to know what she was going to say to Greg when he arrived and she had to tell him about Dominic's and Melanie's love affair. What she would say to Dominic if Luke had been callous enough to tell him the reason for their two families becoming estranged.

With her head aching she stepped out of the salon and into the stone-flagged hall where Dieter had died, walking past the now rarely opened doors of the restored grand dining-room, through into the kitchens and the courtyard beyond. She could hardly breathe for memories. Dieter. Elise. Her father. Rommel, sweeping down on Valmy, flanked by outriders. Greg in his jeep, a helmet crammed on his curly brown hair, his eyes crinkling at the corners, his teeth flashing in a broad, irresistible smile.

She walked past the stables and down towards the rose gardens. There was still a mass of bloom. The milk-white Gloire de Dijon that her father had so loved. Pink flushed Ophelias. She wondered where the years had gone to, and knew, if they had been filled with love given and love received, that she would not be regretting them. But only a few short months had been spent in loving. The rest had been arid years of guilt and deceit. Lonely, wasted years, gone beyond recall.

Dominic skimmed down the high-hedged Norman lanes, his handsome young face hard, his jaw clenched. In the past twenty-four hours he had lost everything that was dear to him. His respect for his mother; his belief that Greg was his father; the prospect of a future with Mel as his wife. And now his grandfather was dead.

He was dazed by grief, numb with it. How could Greg and his mother have continued a friendship with Luke after their marriage? It made no sense at all. How could Luke, being his father, have shown no sign of the fact? As hard as Dominic tried, he could remember no act of partiality shown to him by Luke. He had always been indifferent to him. A nerve throbbed at the corner of his jaw. But then Luke had always been indifferent towards Melanie as well. Children bored him and he had never made any pretence of liking them.