‘Aren’t you going to introduce us, darling? Though I guess there’s no need. You must be Violet...’ The pale blue eyes were glacially cold as she stretched out one thin arm in greeting. ‘I’m Annalise...’
IT WAS RAINING by the time Violet made it back to her house. A fine, needle-sharp drizzle that she barely noticed. She took the Tube and bus back to her house on autopilot. She couldn’t think straight and her heart was thumping like a steam engine inside her chest, making it uncomfortable to breathe.
She wanted to block out images of Damien with Annalise. She tried hard to tell herself that it didn’t matter, that he was a free man who could do whatever he liked with whomever he liked. Unfortunately, no amount of cool logic could paper over the devastation she felt nor could it stop the flood of painful speculation that assailed her, wave upon wave, upon wave until she wanted to pass out.
He was back with his ex, back with the only woman he had never been able to forget, the only woman to whom he had wanted to commit, fully and without reservation or a list of sensible reasons why the match could work out. It certainly hadn’t taken him long to reconnect. Was it because her rejection of his proposal had put things into perspective for him? Made him wake up and realise that marriage was more than a list of dos and don’ts? Had that propelled him to seek out Annalise? Had it reminded him that, in his carefully controlled world, there was still one woman who had broken through the boundaries and that he needed to find her and tell her? They certainly had looked very cosy with one another.
And Annalise was much more his style than she, Violet, could ever hope to be. Tall, skinny, beautiful. Nor did she look like a typical bimbo. No, she looked like one of those rare, annoying breeds—a true beauty who also had brains.
She couldn’t look at herself in the mirror as she banged about in the bathroom, getting ready for bed. She didn’t want to see the comparisons between her and his ex. Thinking about comparisons drained her of all her self-confidence. Had he only really seen her as a novelty? The broad bean versus the runner bean? Had he fallen into bed with her because she had been there? Available and eager? Was he any different from any other man in a situation where opportunity was handed to him on a plate? No one could accuse him of being the sort of guy who took relationships seriously, who held out for the right woman. He was a red-blooded male with a rampant libido who took what he wanted. And she had been there for the taking. And then he had proposed because it was convenient. He was never going to fall in love; he had done that with Annalise, so why not hitch up with the woman who had won his family’s approval? Noticeably, he had only proposed when he had woken up to the reality that she might walk out on him.
She climbed into bed and tried to read and only realised that she had actually fallen asleep when she was awakened by two things.
The first was the sound of the rain. It had progressed from a persistent drizzle to the wild rapping of rain against her windows. She had left one window slightly ajar and the voile curtain was blowing furiously under the force of the wind. When she went to close it, she realised that the chest of drawers just underneath was splattered in rainwater but she had no intention of doing anything about that just at the moment.
Because, competing with the howling of the wind and the rain, was the thunderous sound of someone banging on her front door.
Outside, dripping water, Damien was cursing the English weather. Between eight, when he had opened his front door to Violet, and midnight, when he had finally managed to get rid of Annalise, the rain had picked up. Now, at a little after three-thirty, the only thing that could be said in favour of his jumping in his car and coming here was the fact that the roads had been traffic-free.
He noticed that one of the lights in the house had now been turned on and breathed a sigh of relief. He really didn’t want to remain outside her house for the remainder of the night, although he would have, had she not answered the door.
Violet had stuck on her bathrobe to see who was at the door. Her immediate thought when she had heard the banging was to imagine that it was someone trying to break in but, almost as soon as she thought that, she realised that it was a ridiculous supposition because since when did intruders give advance notice of their intention by banging on doors?
So was it someone who needed help? She knew her neighbours. The old lady living next door was quite frail. Was there something wrong? She tried and failed to imagine small Mrs Wilson, in her late eighties, having the strength to venture out of her house in the early hours of the morning to bang on a door.
As she hurried downstairs, switching on lights in her wake, she could feel her heart pounding because, of course, there was someone else it might be, but, like her scenario involving the polite burglar knocking to warn her of his imminent break-in, the thought that it might be Damien was too far-fetched to be worth consideration.
The safety chain was on and as she opened the door a crack she knew instantly that the one man she had least expected was standing outside. There was a storm raging outside her house, or so it seemed. The wind was sending his trench coat in all directions and the rain was whipping down at a slant. His feet were planted squarely on the ground but, as she pulled the door open a little wider, he placed his hand against the doorframe to look down at her.
He was drenched. Soaked through.
‘What do you want?’ Violet wrapped the robe tightly around her. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Violet, let me in.’
‘Where’s your girlfriend, Damien? Is she waiting in the car for you?’ She could have kicked herself for mentioning Annalise but, at this point, she really didn’t care.
‘Let me in.’
‘I don’t know why you’ve come but I don’t want you here.’
‘Please.’
That single word stopped Violet in her tracks. She could feel the rain beating down towards her and she stepped back into the house to avoid being soaked.
‘I have nothing to say to you.’
‘Maybe there are things that I need to say to you.’
But, tellingly, he hadn’t followed her into the hall. He remained standing on the doorstep, getting drenched. Was he hesitant? Violet thought in some confusion. Surely not! Hesitancy was one of those emotions he didn’t do. Along with love. And yet he was still standing there, getting wet and looking at her.
‘What could you possibly want to say to me, Damien? I just came to see your mother. I didn’t come to try and start back what we had! You’re out of my life and if I was a little...a little...disconcerted, it was because I hadn’t expected to be confronted with your girlfriend! Quick work, Damien!’
‘Ex. Ex-girlfriend. Please let me in, Violet. I’m not going to barge my way into your house and if you tell me that you don’t want to see me again, then I’ll go.’
Tell him to go and she would never see him again. Of course, that would be for the best. They really had nothing to say to one another. Less than nothing. Maybe he had braved the foul weather because he felt badly, because he wanted to explain to her, face to face, how it was that Annalise was back in his life. Perhaps he thought that he might be doing her a favour by playing the good guy and filling her in. And still, painful though that thought was, her mind seized up when she thought of him disappearing back into the driving rain and vanishing out of her life for good, without saying what he had to say.
‘It’s late.’ She stood aside and folded her arms as he dripped his way into her hall and removed the trench coat. His hair was plastered down and he raked his fingers through it, which just scattered the drops of water.
‘Perhaps I could have a towel...’
‘I suppose so,’ Violet muttered a little ungraciously.
She returned