The moment Jack gave him the nod, André strode for the door and the two men left quietly. He felt like hell, and by the expression on Jack’s face he felt that André deserved it.
‘I don’t know what game you think you’re playing here, André…’ Jack Miles went on the attack as soon as the door closed behind him ‘…but I’m going to tell you that it’s a dangerous one.’
‘It isn’t a game,’ he threw back grimly.
‘I’m glad you realise that,’ the doct
or said. ‘But if you brought me here for my honest opinion, then I think you’re in over your head. Amnesia is a tricky condition. We know very little about it. But I would say that she is beginning to remember. And, personally, I think she needs a controlled environment in which to do so.’
‘No,’ André refused instantly, and turned to walk towards the stairwell. ‘You’re talking hospitals, and though I might see the sense in her having a quick X-ray, I will not put her back into hospital. She’s had enough of those to last her a lifetime,’ he added with a tense shift of his shoulders.
‘Which doesn’t necessarily make you her best alternative.’
‘I’m her only alternative!’ he barked, swinging round to glare at the other man. ‘She relates to me! She responds to me! She needs me to be here for her and I won’t let her down again!’
It was possessive and it was passionate. Jack studied his tight, determined features, and grimaced. ‘Your own personal crusade, André?’ he suggested.
‘Yes,’ André hissed, and turned away again to stride down the stairs, wanting Jack to go now, since he wasn’t telling him anything he didn’t know already. In over his head? Hell, he knew it. Stick her in a controlled environment? Not while he still had breath left in his body to stop it from happening.
‘Here…’ At the front door, Jack fished the two packs of tablets out of his pocket and handed them to him. ‘You keep these away from her,’ he advised. ‘Administer only when you believe they are necessary.’
‘You mean—’ His mouth went dry. ‘You think she’s…’
‘I think she’s in shock, damn it!’ The other man suddenly exploded. ‘When did you find her? Two days ago? How many times did you say she’d blacked out or almost blacked out since then? Who knows what’s happening inside her head? I certainly don’t. You obviously don’t. And I don’t think that she knows either! Tonight, for instance,’ he continued furiously, ‘she goes to sleep, wakes up—and starts using that bedroom as if she’d never spent a year away from it! Then all of a sudden, wham, she somersaults back from the past into the present—it’s no wonder she blacks out!’
‘I get the picture,’ André said roughly, grimly pocketing the tablets and wanting to shut him up so that he would just go. ‘Thanks for coming out at such short notice, Jack. It was appreciated.’
‘But not the opinion, hmm?’ Jack Miles noted dryly. ‘Well, just one last piece of advice before I leave,’ he went on. ‘If you feel you must deal with this problem yourself, then take it easy. Give her comfort, support and just be there for her. But no probing,’ he warned with deadly seriousness. ‘And maybe, just maybe, you’ll get lucky and the memories will simply float gently to the surface and emerge without causing her further trauma.’
‘But you don’t think it will be that easy.’ André grimaced, reading the doubtful tone in his voice.
Jack shook his head. ‘As she’s proved already, things are coming back in disjointed flashes. And you are the trigger, André. Don’t, for goodness’ sake, squeeze that trigger, or the gun might backfire in your face.’
It backfired twelve months ago, André thought heavily as he closed the door on Jack Miles’s departure. Sighing, he turned and walked into the sitting room, then aimed directly for the whisky decanter. As he poured the drink, his eyes caught sight of a framed photograph sitting on the top of the antique bureau which was the only piece of furniture Samantha had brought with her into the house when they’d married.
Stepping over to it, he picked up the photo frame and stood staring down at the faces of two laughing young men. Then, with a violence that erupted out of nowhere, he threw the frame to the floor, smashing it to smithereens.
The next morning Samantha came down the stairs and turned towards the back of the house, following the aroma of toast and freshly ground coffee. In truth, her stomach was beginning to think her throat had been cut, it was so long since she’d swallowed anything more substantial that a pre-packed sandwich at a motorway café.
But it still took courage to open the door she presumed led into the kitchen, not at all sure who she was going see on the other side of it. Stranger or half-stranger?
Half-stranger, she discovered. A very dark, very attractive one, wearing a v-necked sweatshirt and a pair of stone-washed trousers. He was standing in front of a very impressive stainless steel cooking range, feeding slices of bread into a rotating grill. Glancing round, he saw her standing in the doorway, and a short tense stillness followed in which she gazed warily at him and he stared warily back.
Stalemate. Neither knew what to say to the other. Neither knew how the other was going to react. He broke the deadlock first by dipping his eyes over the simple corn-yellow blouse she had teamed with a pair of pale olive trousers and a matching gilet. And if he recognised them as items from the wardrobe upstairs, this time he had the caution to say nothing, and with a smooth-spoken, ‘Hi,’ he turned his attention back to what he was doing. ‘Did the smell of the coffee get as far as your room?’
‘The toast, actually,’ she replied, striving to sound as relaxed as he did. ‘I’m starving,’ she admitted.
‘I know the feeling. I didn’t eat much myself yesterday. Sit down,’ he invited. ‘Sustenance will arrive in about ten seconds.’
Well, that was the most awkward part over, she mused as she did as she was told and went to sit down at the large, scrubbed kitchen table that dominated the room. Then, to stop herself from looking at him, she made herself take an interest in her surroundings.
The kitchen was gorgeous, packed full of individually standing, old, scrubbed pine furniture you would only expect to find in a traditional farmhouse. ‘Who did the interior decorating for you?’ she questioned curiously.
‘My mother,’ he replied, deftly stacking hot slices of toast onto a hot plate. ‘Hence the French influence in just about everything you see.
His mother. Her heart sank. ‘Does she live here as well?’ she asked, silently pleading for him to say no.
He went many steps further than her plea with a quiet, ‘She died several years ago.’