This time he managed to get through to her. ‘I’m all right,’ she insisted, but they both knew that she wasn’t. ‘I’m not going to fall into a hysterical fit.’
‘Ask me the same question,’ he mocked. Then he saw a sign up ahead warning of a service exit and threw up a silent thanks to whoever had put it there.
A few minutes later he was pulling them into a parking bay, shutting down the engine, then climbing out of the car and swinging around the long bonnet to open her door. She was still too pale, too still.
‘Come on,’ he said, firmly urging her out of the car and into his arms. The worst of it was that she went without a murmur, burying her face into his throat then just standing there, letting his warmth and his strength infuse a little bit of both back into her.
‘Sorry,’ she murmured eventually, straightening away from him a little. ‘It was shock, that’s all, to hear myself saying it and know I was speaking the truth.’
His hands came up to cup her face, lifting it so he could search her clouded eyes. ‘It was no big thing,’ he gently dismissed. ‘I suppose we should be worrying if you don’t have the occasional memory flash.’
‘Is that what the doctor said?’
‘Yes,’ he confirmed. ‘But I’m not supposed to push it, which I did just now by bringing up the past. So it’s me who should be apologising, not you.’
It was such a sweet thing to say she wanted to start crying. Maybe he saw the tears threatening, because his tone suddenly became very brisk. ‘Now we’ve stopped, let’s go and find a drink and a sandwich or something.’
Subject over—put away. Samantha had no wish to argue with that decision.
Half an hour later they were back on the road, and the day was beginning to draw in around them. After a coffee and a sandwich she was feeling a bit better, less tense about the whole London situation, and definitely more relaxed with him. ‘Tell me about Bressingham,’ she said.
He glanced at her, then away again, and for a while she thought he wasn’t going to answer. It was, after all, another part of that past he had made taboo between them. ‘You remember something else?’ he questioned eventually.
‘Just the name.’
He nodded, and took another few moments to take this reply in. ‘The Bressingham is a hotel,’ he then announced. That was all, no elaboration.
Samantha began to frown. ‘One of yours?’ she asked.
‘We occupy six major sites in London alone,’ he supplied.
‘Is that where I met you? Did I work at the Bressingham Hotel?’
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘Which is why Stefan Reece specifically connected the hotel with me,’ she therefore concluded.
‘Just look at that,’ he suddenly exclaimed, indicating the road directly ahead of them. ‘We are about to be engulfed in one hell of a cloudburst, looking at the spray coming off the road.’
He was right and they were. It hit almost at the same moment they noticed it. ‘No talking now, while I concentrate,’ André instructed as the windscreen wipers leapt into life.
Sublimely unaware that she had been smoothly put through several diversions in the last sixty seconds, Samantha didn’t even think of arguing when they were shrouded in a wet grey mist which cut visibility down to an absolute minimum.
To ease the silence, he reached out and switched on the radio, and two seconds later a preset pop station began singing out the latest rock ballad obsessing the pop charts at the moment.
He didn’t bother to change the station and she didn’t mind the music. So they drove on through the rain cocooned in their own small, dry world with the music and inane DJ chatter to keep them company, and the
steady swish of the car wiper-blades slowly luring Samantha into a light slumber.
From the corner of his eye André saw her body relax and was at last able to ease some of the tension out of his own. There was a very fine line between telling outright lies and merely bending the truth a little, he observed very grimly. Reflecting on their last conversation, he couldn’t quite clear it with his conscience that he had managed to tread that fine line all the way.
The problem was that the Bressingham was one of several major issues that had placed them in this situation in the first place. And, until he had decided which issue to tackle first, he had no wish to tackle any.
‘Ever heard the adage that real life is stranger than fiction?’ The DJ’s voice cut into his brooding. ‘Well, listen to this…’
Go to hell, André thought, and switched stations. He had his own stranger-than-real-life situation tying him in knots right here. He didn’t need to listen to anyone else’s!
The rain stopped as they were driving down the Kensington Road. As if sensing the difference when the wipers fell silent, Samantha stirred, stretched, opened her eyes, and found herself staring straight into a pair of warmly familiar dark brown eyes.