The civic hall was packed, the sea of faces confronting her as people turned their heads to register her entrance, panicking her for a moment, even though she had thought she was prepared.
She had never liked crowds, preferring solitude, anonymity—a legacy from her childhood at the children’s home where she had grown up after the death of her parents—and she suspected that without Jessica standing behind her and blocking her exit she might almost have been tempted to turn, run and disappear.
Thank goodness for Jess. How humiliating it would have been if she were to give way to that silly juvenile impulse…and now Ian Hanson was coming towards her, smiling at her…
As Jessica had so sapiently remarked, had Lacey indicated that she would welcome it he would probably have been keen to take their relationship to a more personal level.
As it was she liked him, just as she liked her boss, Tony Aimes, but for neither of them did she feel the emotional, or sexual, desire that might have encouraged her to respond to their overtures. Both of them were divorced, both of them had children, both of them were kind, attractive men, but, much as she liked them as people, as men they left her completely cold, completely untouched…unaroused.
Because she deliberately chose to stay that way? Because she was afraid? Angry with her train of thought, she tried to remind herself why she was here. Tonight was most certainly not the night for that kind of immature and self-centred soul-searching.
Tonight was Michael’s night; Michael’s and the night of all those who had given so generously to their cause.
She had been very apprehensive at first when she had been nominated by the other members of their fund-raising committee to be the one to publicly hand over the cheque to the hospital, but rather than cause a fuss she had unwillingly agreed to do so.
Tony Aimes had suggested that after the presentation they might go out together somewhere for a celebratory meal, but she had gently refused, just as she had refused a similar invitation from Ian Hanson, explaining truthfully that, since she saw so little of Jessica now that her daughter was at Oxford, she intended to spend the evening with her.
The trouble was that, while she liked both men as friends, and while the last thing she wanted to do was to hurt anyone’s feelings, she knew enough of the anguish of loving someone and then finding out that the love they professed to feel in return was only a cruel sham to ever wish to inflict that kind of pain on anyone else, so she had no wish to have a more intimate relationship with either of them.
She had known Tony Aimes for many years. She had originally moved to this part of the world following the break-up of her marriage.
Housing here had been relatively cheap then, and as Lacey had been a divorcee with a baby on the way—and very little money—that had been an important consideration.
When Jessica’s father had announced that he didn’t love her any more and that he wanted a divorce, he had told her that she could keep the marital home, that all he wanted was his freedom; but her pride would not allow her to do that, and so after the divorce had become final she had sold the house and scrupulously forwarded to his solicitor half the proceeds of its sale.
She had never received any acknowledgement of his receipt of the money but then she had not expected to do so. From the day he had walked into their kitchen and announced that he no longer loved her he had also walked out of her life, and her only contact with him had been via their solicitors.
People started to clap as she walked towards the small stage. She could feel the hot burn of embarrassed colour sweeping her skin. At thirty-eight she ought to be long past the stage of blushing like a schoolgirl, she told herself ruefully; long, long past it.
It seemed she was the last to arrive—the others were already up on the stage, little Michael squirming excitedly in his chair as she went to join them.
She couldn’t help it; as she saw him smiling at her her eyes filled with tears, not of sadness, but of joy—joy in people’s generosity and warmth, and joy in Michael’s innocent love of life.
At the moment his illness was in remission; he had received a stay of execution, but for how long?
As she bent to hug and kiss him, she prayed that somehow a miracle could happen and that Michael could be saved; but there were so many other Michaels in the world, so many other children who…
She checked her thoughts, reminding herself that emotionalism did nothing to help Michael, that it wasn’t sitting in a corner crying which had raised the money to further research, but other people’s generosity and hard work.
As she took her place with the others she glanced down into the mass of people gathered in the hall. She could see Jessica sitting in the front row, not far from Tony Aimes.
Was it really almost twenty years ago that she had first started working for Tony as his secretary? Where on earth had the years gone?
During that time Tony had been married and then divorced; Jessica had grown from a baby to a woman; and she—what had she done with her life? What had she achieved on a personal level?
She had financial security, a very pleasant lifestyle, and she knew that many people would have envied her. There were others though, she knew, who looked at her and pitied her for her single, manless state.
That had never worried her. Better by far to live alone in contentment and peace than to suffer the kind of anguish which she knew all too well could come from loving another person. Especially when, like her, one had a propensity to love too well…too intensely, perhaps, and certainly too unwisely.
The chairman of their small committee was getting to his feet, explaining for the benefit of the audience the purpose of their fund-raising. Her stomach muscles knotted and tensed as she waited for her own cue, the moment when she would have to get up and hand over the cheque to Ian.
She had rehearsed her few lines over and over again and was surely word-perfect by now. All she really had to do was to add her thanks to those of the chairman, and then hand over the cheque to Ian.
At the back of the hall people from the local radio station and TV company were busily recording the event, and the movement of the camera, catching the light momentarily, distracted her so that she looked away from the stage and into the audience.
Quite how it happened she had no real idea; quite why she should so unerringly pick out one face among so many, and a face she had not seen in twenty years, moreover…Surely it should not have been possible for her to recognise him so instantly, to know with that gut-wrenching, heart-stopping surge of awareness that it was him, even from that one brief glance; but it was.
Lewis was here. Here in the civic hall…here in her home-town…here in the place, the life she had built so determinedly to exclude him…to exclude everything about him.
Everything bar the child he had given her; and the pain he had inflicted upon her.
Lewis Marsh…her husband…her lover. The only man she had ever loved…ever wanted. The man she had thought loved her in the same way…the man who had told her that he did love her, who had begged her to marry him, who had told her that they would always be together, throughout life and throughout eternity.
Eternity! Their marriage had lasted just over a year.
She started to tremble violently, her heart pounding with sick shock as her brain refused to take in what her eyes were telling her.
It must be a mistake; it couldn’t possibly be Lewis.
She had, out of shock and self-protection, already focused her gaze as far away from him as she possibly could, but now, like a child anxiously searching a darkened room for an imagined monster, she looked hesitantly back, searching the packed hall feverishly, praying that she had been mistaken.
Twenty years was, after all, a long time…long enough for mistakes to be made, for her memory to play tricks on her. The Lewis she remembered no longer