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She cleaned up the spilled coffee while her mind ran round and round like a small animal trapped on a wheel. She could always vanish, she supposed. She had done it once two years ago, and she could do it again. But to do so would be to hurt Julie who didn’t deserve it, and more importantly, it would grieve Chas.
Lisa caught her breath at the thought of him in a wheelchair. He had always been such a strong, positive man. This new weakness would irk him terribly, she knew, and found herself wondering exactly when it had happened.
At the same time, she told herself fiercely that she wasn’t to feel guilty. If her disappearance from Stoniscliffe had had even a remote connection with Chas’s stroke, then Dane would have mentioned it. A mirthless smile curved her mouth. Boy, would he have mentioned it! So she wasn’t to blame herself, although she knew that her conscience would trouble her. Chas had been ill and needing her, and she hadn’t known. Why hadn’t Julie told her? she asked herself almost despairingly, and then shook her head at her own foolishness. Julie would have been obeying orders.
Chas would have wanted her to return to Stoniscliffe under her own steam, at her own wish. He wouldn’t take kindly to any sort of pleading on his behalf from anyone. Not even from Dane.
So that was yet another secret she had to keep, because Chas had never known the real reason why she had left Stoniscliffe in the first place, and that was the most important secret of all. No one knew the truth except herself, and the man who had just left her crouched, trembling like a child, in a corner of her own sofa.
She went across to the telephone and dialled Jos’s number. Myra answered almost at once, and her voice bubbled down the phone as she recognised Lisa.
‘Did you enjoy the trip? Are you worn out? Come to supper tomorrow night and tell me your version.’
‘I’d love to, but I can’t.’ Lisa hesitated. ‘Is he in a good mood, Myra?’
‘Fair to middling. Why, is there something wrong?’
‘In a way. I have to go away for a few weeks, that’s all.’
‘That’ll be enough,’ Myra said blankly. ‘What’s happened?’ She paused. ‘You’re not—ill or anything?’
Lisa guessed the real question behind the tactful words. ‘No, nothing like that. I have to go up north to organise a family wedding. My stepsister is getting married, and there’s a panic on.’
She could hear Myra talking to someone at the other end, her voice muffled and then Jos spoke.
He said sharply, ‘What is all this, Lisa? Myra says you’re going up north. You have to be joking!’
‘I wish I were.’ Lisa rapidly explained about the wedding. ‘But there’s more to it than that,’ she went on. ‘I’ve just found out that my stepfather had a stroke at some time, and that he wants to see me.’
‘Oh, hell!’ Jos was silent for a moment. ‘You realise that all this couldn’t be happening at a worse time.’
‘Please believe that if I could get out of going, I would,’ she said unhappily. ‘But they’re all the family I’ve got, and I owe them a great deal. Certainly I owe them this.’
‘Then obviously you must go, but for heaven’s sake get back as soon as you can. They have short memories in this game,’ he said grimly. He paused. ‘You said they were all the family you’ve got. Wasn’t there a brother as well? I seem to remember Dinah mentioning him.’
‘There was and there is,’ she said. ‘But I don’t regard him as a brother. It was Julie I grew up with.’
‘Lucky Julie,’ Jos commented. ‘Tell the stepfather he did a good job. And phone me as soon as you get back.’
‘That’s a promise,’ Lisa said, and replaced her receiver. Her hand was sweating slightly and she wiped it down the skirt of her dressing gown.
She would have to write to Dinah and she could pay Mrs Hargreaves and give her any necessary instructions in the morning. There was no great problem there.
The towering, the insuperable, the shattering difficulty was getting through, firstly, tomorrow, and then the days after that. If it hadn’t been for the wedding she might have been able to do a deal—to say to Dane, ‘I want to go back. I want to see Chas, to spend some time with him, and I’ll do it on the understanding that you go and stay far away from Stoniscliffe while I’m there.’
But because of Chas’s paralysis, Dane was going to give Julie away. He had to be there, and so there was no bargain to be struck.
Not that Dane struck bargains anyway, she thought. He made decisions and carried them through to his own advantage. If he negotiated, he expected to be on the winning side, and generally was. She had never seen him bested by anyone, although at one time she had dreamed dreams of doing it herself. But not any more. He had shown her brutally and finally that against him, she could not win, and she still had the emotional scars to prove it.
But she wasn’t going to think about that now. She couldn’t let herself think about that because otherwise she would turn tail and run away somewhere—anywhere, and Dane would know then exactly what he had done to her, and triumph in his knowledge.
She was restless, pacing round the flat like an animal in a cage, and she had to make herself stop, and fetch the hairdryer and sit down and do something about her ill-used hair which was going to dry like a furze bush if she wasn’t careful, and contribute nothing to her self-confidence. There was something soothing and therapeutic in sitting there, brushing the warm air through her hair, and restoring it to something like its usual smooth shine. She wished she could smooth out her jitters as easily.
She didn’t sleep when she went to bed, but she told herself that she wouldn’t have slept anyway. She’d had no exercise or fresh air to make her healthily tired.
There was too much to do in the morning to give her time to think. She packed and tried to eat some breakfast, while she gave a surprised Mrs Hargreaves her instructions. Then she found Dinah’s tour schedule and wrote her a hasty explanatory note, addressing it to the current theatre.
She dashed out, posted the letter, and as she walked back from the box on the corner, she saw there was a car parked in the street outside the flat. She lived over a shop—a boutique really where they sold small pieces of antique furniture and jewellery, catering for the connoisseur market, and of course the car could have belonged to one of the said connoisseurs, but somehow she didn’t think so.
She stood for a moment, her hands buried in her coat pockets, and stared at it, and wished she was able to turn round and walk away again as fast as she could. It was dark and sleek and shining and looked extremely powerful. It proclaimed money and a quiet but potent aggression.
Dane was waiting at the top of the stairs. He swung impatiently to meet her.
‘I was beginning to think you’d run out on me.’
‘I had to post a letter.’ Lisa despised herself for the defensive note in her voice. She had nothing to apologise for. She wasn’t late; he was early. She took her key out of her pocket and Dane calmly appropriated it and fitted it into the lock.
‘Thank you,’ she said between her teeth, and went past him into the flat.
‘If you’re ready, I’d like to leave as soon as possible,’ he said. ‘The weather forecast isn’t too good for later in the day.’
It would be brave weather that would dare interfere with his arrangements, she thought bitterly as she went into the bedroom to close her case. She tugged russet suede boots on over her slim-fitting cream cord jeans, and pulled a matching coat, warmly lined, on top of her cream Shetland sweater. She had left her hair hanging loose round her shoulders as she had worked and packed, but now it was a moment’s task to sweep it into a smooth coil and anchor it securely on top of her head. It was a severe style, but it suited her, highlighting the line of her cheekbones and her smooth curve of jaw.
She picked up her case and the weekend bag that matched it and went into the living room. Dane was standing by the window looking down into the street.
‘Is that all you’re taking?’ His glance ran over her luggage.
‘It’s enough,’ she returned shortly. ‘I’ve learned to travel lightly.’
‘But not alone.’ There was a barb in the smooth words which angered her, but she decided to ignore it. The journey ahead was going to be trying enough without a constant sparring match going on between them.
Dane picked up the cases. ‘I’ll put these in the boot while you see to any locking up you need to do.’
She was fastening the safety catches on the windows when the phone rang.
‘Lisa?’ Simon Whitman’s voice sounded plaintively down the line. ‘Jos has just told me you’re off up north for an unspecified time. What’s going on?’
Her heart sank at the note of grievance in his voice, which she had to admit was fully justified. Before the West Indies assignment, she and Simon had been seeing quite a lot of each other. She had met him some months before through her work, because he was a young and promising executive with an advertising agency which often used Jos’s photographs. They had got on well almost immediately, and she had accepted the invitation to dinner from him which had speedily followed. They were starting to be spoken of as a couple, to be invited to places together, and although Lisa wasn’t sure that was entirely what she wanted, she was happy enough with the arrangement to allow it to continue unchallenged as long as Simon didn’t start making demands she couldn’t fulfil. Up to now, he had shown no signs of this. On the contrary, he had seemed quite happy to keep their relationship as light and uncommitted as she could have wished, but just then she had heard a distinctly proprietorial note in his voice.
She said, ‘A family emergency of sorts.’ She should have let him know, she thought. He should have been on her list ahead of Dinah and Mrs Hargreaves really, but the truth was she had never even given him a thought. She went on, ‘It’s been landed on me so suddenly, I haven’t really had a chance to contact anyone.’
‘I didn’t think I was just anyone,’ Simon said, and there seemed no answer to that, so Lisa didn’t make one. After a pause, he said ‘Will you be gone for very long?’
‘I hope not,’ she said. ‘For as long as it takes, and no longer. I do have my living to earn, and as Jos reminded me, they have short memories in the fashion world.’
‘They’ll remember you.’ His voice warmed, lifted a little. ‘I can’t get you out of my mind, night or day.’
That troubled her a little, but she found herself smiling. ‘It would be nice if the other agencies in town felt the same. Do you think you could become contagious?’
She was aware that Dane had come back into the room and was standing by the door, silently watching and listening. Anyone else would have had the decency to withdraw out of earshot, she thought bitterly as she turned a resentful shoulder on him.
She could hardly hear what Simon was saying. She had to force herself to concentrate on his words because she was too conscious of that other dark and disturbing presence behind her.
Simon said with that special note in his voice which belonged to almost everyone who had spent their entire lives south of Potters Bar, ‘It will be awful in the north at this time of year, and they reckon there’s bad weather on the way. You’ll take care, won’t you, love?’
Lisa said, ‘I can take care of myself.’ And froze as she realised what she’d said, the words acting like a key to unlock the secret place in her mind and unleash the nightmares which lurked there. She found she was gripping the phone until her knuckles went white. She answered Simon in monosyllables ‘Yes’ and ‘No’, praying that each response was the right one because he might have been talking so much gibberish.
Eventually she said with a kind of insane brightness in her voice, ‘Look, I really must go now. I’ll see you when I get back.’
Simon said goodbye in his turn. He sounded disappointed, as if for all his warnings about the weather he had hoped she might give him the address she was going to, the telephone number so that he could make contact.
She replaced the receiver on the rest with unsteady fingers, and turned slowly.
Across the room, Dane’s eyes met hers, cold and watchful, and she knew that her words had triggered off memories for him too and for an endless moment the past held them in its bleak trap.
If she backed away, he would come after her, a jungle cat stalking his prey. But she had no reason to back off. Because this time what she said was true. She could look after herself, and she would. Neither Dane nor anyone else had the power to harm her.
And sitting beside him in silence, as the car devoured the miles on the motorway, Lisa found herself repeating those words over and over again as if they were an incantation that would keep her safe.
CHAPTER THREE (#ubd9574dc-2919-5ee5-b2dc-d5231864fa22)
THEY had been travelling for over an hour and a half when Lisa realised that Dane had signalled his intention of turning off the motorway.
‘Where are we going?’ she asked sharply.
‘To eat. There’s a pub I often use not far from here.’
‘Must we stop? I’m not particularly hungry.’
‘I intend to stop, yes,’ he said coolly. ‘If you don’t want to join me you can always wait in solitary splendour in the car.’
Lisa compressed her lips angrily. She had no intention of doing anything of the kind, as he was perfectly aware.
The village they eventually came to was charming, with well tended houses clustering round a green and a duck-pond. The inn, set back from the road, was a long low building, whitewashed and spruce, and there were already several cars parked at the rear.
Lisa fumbled with the catch on the passenger door, trying desperately to release it while Dane attended to the security on the driver’s side, but it resisted all her efforts, and to her annoyance Dane had to come round and open the door from the outside. For a moment she was afraid he was going to help her out. She didn’t want him to touch her, and she scrambled out with none of her usual grace, bitterly aware of the slight mocking smile which twisted his mouth.
As they walked towards the inn door, a large Alsatian came round the corner of the building. He paused when he saw them, his ears cocked inquisitively, the long plumy tail beginning to wave slightly.
‘What a beauty!’ Lisa exclaimed impulsively, and put out her hand. The dog came up and sniffed at her fingers, then allowed his head to be gently scratched.
‘You never learn, do you, Lisa?’ Dane said harshly. He took her hand and turned it palm upwards, pointing to a faint white mark. ‘Didn’t Jeff Barton’s collie teach you anything?’
Lisa flushed as she pulled her hand away. It had been her first summer at Stoniscliffe, she recalled unwillingly, and she had seen the dog in the lane outside the house and run eagerly out of the gate to pet it. When it had turned on her snarling and bitten her hand, drawing blood, she had screamed more in terror than in pain, and Dane who was home on a short holiday had been the first to reach her. She had flung herself at him, sobbing, arms clinging, but he had put her away from him and she had been bundled unceremoniously into his car and taken to the local Cottage Hospital for the wound to be dressed, and for an anti-tetanus shot which had been worse. She remembered sitting beside Dane in the car, weeping, while he had said with cool contempt, ‘Don’t you know better than to put your hand out to a strange dog, you little fool?’
She hadn’t told him that she knew very little about dogs at all. Aunt Enid had not had time for pets of any kind, and none of the neighbours in London had apparently been dog-lovers either. She had only wanted to stroke the dog, to play with him, because he had seemed friendly enough, she thought passionately. And she hated Dane more than she did already for not understanding, and for pushing her away. He was worse than the dog!
Now she smiled wryly at the memories. ‘If he was treacherous, they’d hardly let him roam round loose. Besides, I’ve learned to deal with dogs. It’s people I’m still not sure of.’ As she let the Alsatian go to greet some more newcomers with a final pat, she added casually, ‘Even the apparently civilised can behave like animals sometimes.’
As she stole a glance at him, she saw that her jibe had gone home. He was suddenly very pale under his tan, and his eyes were glacial, and she felt a bitter satisfaction as she walked ahead of him.
Inside the inn, she found that only the minimum concessions had been made to modernity. The ceiling still sported the original low beams and a log fire blazed brightly in an enormous stone fireplace. Solid high-backed oak settles flanked the hearth and Dane indicated they should sit there by a slight, silent gesture.
‘What would you like to drink?’ He fetched a menu from the bar counter and handed it to her. ‘They have real ale here.’
Lisa shook her head. ‘I never touch alcohol in the middle of the day. Just a tomato juice, please.’
The menu was quite short, and seemed to avoid the usual grills and basket meals, offering homely dishes like shepherd’s pie and hotpot. There was also home-made vegetable soup and a selection of sandwiches.
‘The soup’s almost a meal in itself,’ said Dane, seating himself beside her on the settle. She had hoped he would sit opposite and it was as much as she could do to stop herself edging away. ‘And no doubt Chas has ordered a celebration dinner this evening.’
‘For the return of the prodigal daughter,’ she made her tone deliberately flippant. ‘Very well, then, I’ll have the soup and a round of cheese sandwiches.’
‘I’ll have the same,’ Dane told the smiling girl who had come to take their order. Lisa noticed she had greeted him as if she knew him well, as had the landlord’s wife who was serving behind the bar.
She sipped her tomato juice, and tried to ignore the curious glances coming her way, as other people in the bar half-recognised and tried to place her. But not all the glances were for her. Most of the women were looking at Dane, some covertly, and some quite openly. There was little to wonder at in that, of course. Women had always looked and more than looked.
Lisa had to acknowledge that if she had been a stranger, seeing him for the first time, she would probably have looked herself. He was incredibly attractive, with an implicit sexuality, and the aura of unquestioned money and success to add an extra spice. And he had charm when he chose to exert it. The young waitress was clearly under his spell, but then, Lisa thought, she had never had the misfortune to cross him in any way. She would have no idea of the strength of that relentless cruelty and arrogant maleness which dwelt just below the surface glamour.
‘Dane’s a good friend,’ she had once heard Chas telling a business associate, ‘but he makes a bad enemy.’
Well, she had first-hand knowledge of just how bad that enemy could become, and it had nearly destroyed her.
Dane said, ‘I hope I didn’t make you cut short an important conversation back at the flat?’
After a few seconds of incomprehension, she realised he was referring to Simon’s call, and she flushed a little. ‘Not particularly. We’d already said what needed saying before you came back.’
‘It was a man.’ It was a statement rather than a question.
‘It was.’ He had overheard too much for her to deny it.
‘The man?’ He picked up his glass and drank from it.
‘One of them.’ And that had been an invention which could well backfire on her, she thought vexedly.
‘You don’t bestow your favours exclusively?’ It was said lightly, but she could feel the undercurrent of contempt. But why should she care? She didn’t want or need his good opinion.
‘I’m not actually expected to.’ And that at least was the truth. ‘Is there any purpose behind this inquisition?’
‘Naturally.’ He gave her a long hard look. ‘I’d like to point out that during your absence, my sister has managed to achieve a measure of stability in her life. I wouldn’t want anything to upset that.’
Lisa was very still. ‘I don’t think I have that measure of influence over Julie.’
‘And I think you underestimate yourself,’ he said.
‘In that case I’m amazed you should have pressed me to come back with you. I’d have thought you’d have done your utmost to ensure that I stayed away permanently.’
‘If it had been left to me alone, I probably would have done,’ he said levelly. ‘Believe me, Lisa, the last thing I wanted was for you to come back into her life—into any of our lives, and I give you credit for equal reluctance.’
