Her tirade ended, and she could feel her heart pumping like a steam train. Her brain seemed to be whirring like a clock that had suddenly gone from dormant to overwound in ten seconds. She couldn’t cope with this—with Xander Anaketos suddenly coming into reality again. It was like some churning hallucinatory dream that she could not believe in.
She turned away, half stumbling. She wanted out. Out, out, out. Just at the range of her vision she saw a taxi turn into the concourse of the hotel, towards the main entrance. She ran towards it. If it was depositing someone at the hotel, she could grab it!
A minute later, heart still pounding, she collapsed in the back of the taxi she’d claimed as it pulled out into the busy road again.
She felt sick. Like a concrete mixer on full spin.
It had been Xander—Xander. There, real, alive. Suddenly, out of nowhere, after four years—four years—in which her life had changed beyond all recognition.
Her stomach was churning still, shock waves turning her into jelly, her mind a hurricane. The taxi ploughed along the busy arterial road, and headlights flashed into the car. She sat clutching her bag as if it were a lifebelt.
When the cab pulled up outside the house, she fumbled inside the bag for her purse, forcing herself to count out the right money. It was more than she wanted to pay, but she didn’t care. She was safe back here again. As she walked up the short path to the front door, getting her key out, she forced herself to be calm. She must not upset Vi.
Oh, God, I’ve just chucked in my job—I can’t tell her that! Not yet.
She opened the door quietly. Vi’s bedroom was the front room downstairs, as she found stairs hard to manage these days. The door was half open, and Clare peeped inside. There was Joey, as she’d expected, cosy in a ‘nest’ on the floor—cushions from the sofa and some extra pillows—snuggled into his child duvet. He was fast asleep and did not stir.
For one long, long moment, Clare stood gazing down at his shadowed form. Her heart turned over, almost stopping.
No! She must not let her thoughts go the way they were about to. She knew what she had been on the point of thinking, and she must not let herself do so. Again, a seismic wave of shock went through her as she fought the acknowledgement of what she had so nearly let come into her mind.
Instead, she backed out. She took off her coat, hung it up on one of the row of pegs beside the stairs, and headed towards the back of the house. There was a small sitting room just in front of the kitchen, and then the bathroom behind the kitchen. Vi was in the kitchen, putting the kettle on for her late-night cup of tea.
‘Hello, love,’ she said, her voice surprised, as Clare came in. ‘You’re earlier than you said you would be.’
Clare forced a smile to her face.
‘Yes, I thought I’d be later, too,’ she said. She left it at that. She could say nothing else. Not right now. Instead, she said, ‘How was Joey? He’s out like a light now, I see.’
Vi’s wrinkled face softened into a familiar smile.
‘Oh, he hasn’t stirred. Don’t you worry about him. Have a nice cup of tea and sit down before you take him upstairs.’
Clare went through into the sitting room and sank down onto the end of the sofa that still had its cushions on. Vi’s armchair was closer to the TV in the corner, with a little table beside it, handy for the standard lamp. The room was old-fashioned, like the whole house, but Vi had lived here for thirty years and more.
For Clare it had been a haven. Those first few months, when the life she had been hoping against hope for had simply dissolved in her hands, it had been hideous. But although homeless, at least she had not been destitute. After her father had died she had received an offer for their flat which she’d felt she should not refuse, and she’d put the proceeds into the bank. But she had known she was in no state of mind to sort out her life properly, other than drifting through casual jobs from the temping agency and living in anonymous bedsits, and the money in the bank was still her nest egg. But once she’d known she was going to have to face life as a single mother, she had had to face up to the grim fact that if she bought another flat, even if just a small one, for her to live in, then what would be left for her to live off—and her baby?
The answer had come from a charity supporting single mothers, which put them in touch with elderly people who needed someone to help them continue to live independently in their own homes. So Clare had been introduced to Vi, and Vi had taken to her, and she to the older woman. She had moved into Vi’s old-fashioned terraced house in its quiet street in an unexciting but shabbily respectable part of West London. The money in the bank yielded a frugal but sufficient income for everything but luxuries like holidays, and in place of rent she looked after Vi, kept her house for her and kept her company as well, and made her home with her. Now, four years later, Vi was family—an honorary grandmother to Joey, whom she openly adored, and a kind but bracingly realistic support for Clare.
‘Here you go, love,’ said Vi, making her way slowly into the room, carrying two mugs of tea. Clare took them from her, setting down hers, and putting Vi’s on her little table as the old lady sat herself down in her armchair.
‘You look peaky,’ observed Vi. ‘Was it very busy?’
‘Yes,’ said Clare. She was trying hard to sound normal, look normal. She didn’t want Vi upset—not by the fact she’d walked out of her job, nor by something so very much worse.
No—that was forbidden. She was not to think about that. Control. That was the word. The way it had been those first awful months, and then again, when her baby had been put into her arms, and the physical reality of him had brought it piercingly home to her just what she had done.
But it was the right thing to do.
‘What you’ll need to do, Clare, love,’ Vi was saying, ‘is give your feet a good soak. Always look after your feet, I say. My gran used to tell me that. She had very bad feet…’
Clare smiled absently, sipping her hot, reviving tea. She let Vi chat on. Vi’s mind was as sharp as ever, but she liked to gossip, reminisce, just have someone to talk to. Tonight, though, Clare could hardly focus on what the older woman was telling her. All her energy was being spent on trying to block from her mind what had happened.
I can’t think about it now. I’ll think about it later. Tomorrow. Next week.
Never…
She had trained herself well not to think of Xander Anaketos. She’d had four long years of doing so.
But conscious thoughts were one thing to control. It was the unconscious ones she dreaded. And that night, as she lay in her bed upstairs, Joey in the little room beside her, asleep in his own bed now, it was, as it had always been, her dreams that betrayed her.
Dreams of Xander, his strong body arching over hers, his mouth on hers, his hands on her breasts, her flanks, stroking and smoothing, gliding and arousing, so arousing, taking her onwards, ever onwards, to that wonderful, ecstatic place where he had always taken her…always.
She awoke in the early hours, sick and heart pounding. The dreams had been so real, so vivid, with the horrible, super-realistic feelings that only dreams could have. Her stomach writhed, her pulse racing like a panic attack.
And her breasts, she realised with a sick horror, were swollen, her nipples distended.
She jerked out of bed, padding with bare feet down the stairs to the bathroom, feeling sick and ashamed.
The day passed with agonising slowness. She seemed to be two people. The person she always was these days—Joey’s doting mother, attentive to him, responsive to him, adoring of him, and Vi’s companion, bringing breakfast to her before she made her slow morning toilette, and then, after lunch, making their familiar daily expedition to the nearby park, Vi walking slowly with her stick and Clare pushing Joey in his buggy. In the park, Vi sat on her usual seat, and Joey got stuck in with Clare. First to the sandpit and then the playground, and the expedition ended with the usual ritual of taking Joey to feed the ducks on the pond. All blessedly familiar.
But she was someone else as well, she knew. Someone who was still jarring with shock, with disbelief that she had actually seen Xander Anaketos again, spoken to him, run from him…
He’s gone. It’s over.
She kept telling herself that repeatedly, as the other person she was went through the familiar rituals in the park.
I’ve got to calm down. I’ve got to get back to normal. I’ve got to forget it happened.
But it seemed so cruel. It had been such agony four years ago, to do what she had known she must—get over it, move on—but she had done it. She’d had to put her son first. And they were safe now. Secure. Familiar.
The past was gone.
Last night had been nothing but an aberration. And she had run from it, just as she had run from that hideous night when her stupid, stupid hopes and illusions had been ripped from her.
‘Let’s go, Mummy!’ Joey’s little voice was a welcome interruption from her tormenting thoughts. He lifted up the empty plastic bag that had contained the bread crusts. ‘All gone,’ he announced.
‘Time for tea,’ said Vi, and got slowly to her feet from the bench she’d been sitting on.
Then they headed homewards in a slow procession.
She had no premonition. No warning. Just as she had had none last night.