‘Damn you! Damn you!’
His hands were moving feverishly, finding the buttons of her pyjamas, wrenching them open, tossing the puritanical jacket aside. He touched her breasts with his fingers, then his lips, groaning softly so that his warm breath whispered over her skin, sending a frisson of delight through her.
She was aware of him moving towards the bedroom, taking her with him, but then all sensations merged until she felt the bed beneath her. He raised his head to gaze down at her and she instinctively began to work on his buttons, ripping them open even faster than he had ripped hers.
It was dark in this room and all they could see of each other was their eyes, fierce and gleaming with mutual desire. And then the moment came. After so many years they were one again, moving in a perfect physical harmony that defied their antagonism. The old memories were still alive, how to please each other, inflame each other, challenge, defy, infuriate each other. And then how to lie quietly in each other’s arms, feeling the roar die away, leaving only fulfilment behind.
She could barely make out his features, but she sensed his confusion. For once in his life, Marcel was lost for words. She gave him a reassuring smile.
‘Would you really have stopped if I’d asked you?’ she murmured.
A long silence.
‘Let’s just say … I’m glad you didn’t ask me,’ he said at last, slowly.
She waited for him to say more. Whatever the past, they had suddenly discovered a new road that could lead back to each other. Surely now he would have words of tenderness for her?
Full of hope, she reached out, brushing her fingertips against his face.
But he drew back sharply, stared at her for a moment, then rose from the bed like a man fleeing the devil.
‘No,’ he said softly, then violently, ‘no!’
‘Marcel—’
‘No!’ he repeated, then gave a sudden bitter laugh. ‘Oh, mon dieu!’ He laughed again, but there was no humour in it, only a grating edge.
‘Look at me. How easily I … well done, Cassie. You won the first battle. I’ll win the others but it’s the first one that counts, isn’t it? Did you hear me on the dance floor tonight, saying I waited for no woman? That has to be the biggest and stupidest piece of self deception of all time. All those years ago I waited for you—waited and waited, certain that you would come in the end because my Cassie loved me. Waited … waited …’ He broke off with a shudder.
So the past couldn’t be dealt with so easily, she thought. She must tell him everything, help him to understand that she’d had no choice but to save him from harm. But surely it would be easier now?
‘Marcel, listen to me. I must tell you—’
But he couldn’t hear her. He’d leapt up and was pacing about, talking frantically, lost in another world. Or perhaps trapped in a cage.
‘Once I wouldn’t have believed it possible to despise anyone as I’ve despised you. In those days I loved you more than my life, more than—’ He stopped and a violent tremor went through him. ‘Never mind that,’ he said harshly.
‘I guess you don’t want to remember that we loved each other.’
‘I said never mind,’ he shouted. ‘And don’t talk about “each other”. There was no love on your side, or you could never have done what you did.’
‘You don’t know what I did,’ she cried.
‘I know that I lay for days in the hospital, longing to see you. I was delirious, dreaming of you, certain that the next time I opened my eyes you’d be there. But you never were.
‘I called your mobile phone but it was always switched off. The phone in your apartment was never answered. Tell me, Cassie, didn’t you ever wonder why I vanished so suddenly? You never wanted to ask a single question?’
She stared. ‘But I knew what had happened, that you’d had an accident and were in hospital. I told you that in my letter.’
‘What letter?’
‘I wrote, telling you everything, begging you to understand that it wasn’t my fault. I put it through your door—I was sure you’d find it when you came home. Oh heavens! Do you mean—?’
‘I never read any letter from you,’ he said, and she was too distracted to notice how carefully he chose his words.
‘Then you never knew that I was forced to leave you—I had no choice.’
He made a sound of impatience. ‘Don’t tell me things that a child couldn’t believe. Of course there was a choice.’
‘Not if I wanted you to live,’ she cried. ‘He said he’d kill you.’
‘He? Who?’
‘Jake Simpson.’
‘Who the hell—?’
‘I’d never heard of him either. He was a crook who knew how to keep his head down. People did what he wanted because they were scared of him. I wasn’t scared at first. When he said he wanted me I told him to clear off. You were away at the time. I was going to tell you when you got home, but you had the accident. Only it wasn’t an accident. Jake arranged it to warn me. He showed me a picture of you in hospital and said you’d die if I didn’t drop you and turn to him. I couldn’t even tell you what had happened because if I tried to visit you he’d know, and you’d have another “accident”.
‘I went with him because I had to. I didn’t dare approach you, but I couldn’t endure thinking of you believing that I’d played you false. In the end I wrote a letter and slipped it through your letter box. Obviously you never got it. Perhaps you’d already left by then. Oh, if only you could have read it. We’d still have been apart, but you’d have known that I didn’t betray you, that I was forced to do what I did, and perhaps you wouldn’t have hated me.’
She looked at him, standing quite still in the shadows.
‘Or maybe you’d have hated me anyway. All these years—’
‘Stop,’ he said harshly. ‘Don’t say any more.’
‘No, well, I guess there’s no more to say. If I could turn back the clock I’d put that letter into your hands and make you read it and then perhaps I wouldn’t have been such a monster in your heart—’
‘I said stop!’ he shouted.
She came to a sudden resolution. Reaching up from where she was sitting on the bed, she took his hand and urged him down until he was sitting beside her.
‘You don’t know whether to believe me or not, do you? Everything about us is different—except for one thing. Very well. If that’s the only way I can make you listen to me, then that’s the way I’ll take.’
‘Meaning?’
‘You’ve implied that I’m a bad woman who’ll use her physical charms to get her way with you. Well, maybe you’re right. After all, I know now that I can do it, don’t I?’
‘What are you saying?’
‘That I’ll do what I have to. Maybe you know me better than I know myself. Perhaps I really am that unscrupulous. Maybe I’ll enjoy it. Maybe we both will.’
As she spoke she was touching his face. She knew she was taking a huge risk, but there was no other way. At all costs she would soften him, drive the hostility from his eyes.
To her relief she could feel him softening, feel the hostile tension drain from him, replaced by a different kind of tension.
‘Hold me,’ she whispered.
He did so, reaching for her, drawing