was talking again. His words came and went. She could hear snatches, as if through a thick, impenetrable fog.
‘Naturally I don’t want you to have any immediate concerns about accommodation. So I’ve taken an apartment for you, which is yours for the next month. That should give you ample time to make alternative arrangements—’
The words were coming and going, coming and going…
In strange, dissociated slow motion, she felt herself stand up.
‘Clare?’ His words had broken off. Her name came sharply.
‘Will you excuse me a moment?’ she said. Her eyes drifted to his. He seemed very far away. As far away as a distant star.
She felt for her handbag and walked away from the table. It was the strangest feeling—feeling nothing. That was what was so strange about it. Walking through a fog of nothingness.
She found the Ladies’ and went inside. There was no one else there. For a moment she just looked at herself in the mirror above the row of gleaming basins.
She was still there. That was odd. She’d thought she had gone. That everything had gone.
But she was still there.
She blinked a moment. Her fingers closed around her clutch bag. For one moment longer she just looked at herself in the mirror. There was the faintest scent of lilies in the air, from the massive bouquet that adorned one of the vanity units to the side.
A sudden, hideous spurt of nausea leapt in her throat.
She turned on her heel.
The door swung open in her hand, and she was in the carpeted corridor outside. To her left was the way back to the restaurant. To her right the corridor led to a side entrance to the hotel that opened into a quiet street off the main West End thoroughfare the St John was situated on.
Her feet walked to the street door. It swung open at her touch.
Outside, on the pavement, the night air should have felt chill. But she did not feel it. She did not feel anything.
She started to walk.
CHAPTER TWO
CLARE had not seen him again from that moment to this—standing now, staring at him, as he sat in the deep leather chair, one hand raised imperiously to summon her.
It was Xander.
Xander after four years, there again, now visible and in the flesh.
It was as if everything inside her had drained out, leaving her completely, absolutely hollow.
She saw the expression change as in slow-motion across his face. Saw him recognise her.
‘Clare?’
She heard him say her name, heard the disbelief in it, even though he was some way from her. Saw him start to his feet, jerk upright.
He started to stride towards her.
She turned and ran.
Blindly she pushed her way across the room, getting to the service door by the bar and thrusting through it. The staff cloakroom was just near, and she dived inside, and then deeper, into the female staff toilet, slamming the door shut and sliding the bolt with fumbling fingers. She yanked down the lid of the toilet and collapsed.
She was shaking. Shaking all over. Shock juddered through her like blows, one after another. How, how could Xander have walked in here? Hotels like this, impersonal and anonymous, did not appeal to him. She knew that—that was why she’d taken the risk of getting a job here. If she’d had the slightest idea he’d ever come here she would never have chanced it!
But he had. He had walked in and seen her, and crashed the past right into the present in a single catastrophic moment.
I’ve got to get out of here!
The need to run overwhelmed her. She had to get out, get home, get away…
Forcibly, she stopped herself shuddering and made herself stand up, walk out into the cloakroom. Her bag and coat were hanging on a peg. The bag held her ordinary clothes, but she didn’t waste time changing, only yanking off her high-heeled shoes and slipping her feet into her worn loafers. She could walk faster in them.
Memory sliced through her.
That night, walking out of the St John, walking along the pavements, walking without thought, without direction, without anything in her mind except that terrifying absolute blankness. She did not know how long she had walked. People had bumped her from time to time, or woven past her, and still she had gone on, stopping only at crossings, like a robot, then plunging across when the coast was clear. She had walked and walked.
Eventually, God knew how long later, she’d realised she could not go on, that she was slowing down—as if the last of the battery energy inside her was finally running out. She had looked with blank eyes. She’d been on the far side of Oxford Street, heading towards Marylebone Road, on a street parallel to Baker Street, but much quieter. There had been small hotels there, converted out of the Victorian terraces. There had been one opposite her. It had looked decent enough, anonymous. She’d crossed over the road and gone in.
She had spent the night there, lying in her clothes on the bed, staring blindly up at the ceiling. Very slowly, her mind had started to work. It had been like anaesthesia wearing off.
The agony had been unbearable. Tearing like claws through her flesh. The agony of disbelief, of shock.
Of shame. Shame that she could have been such an incredible fool.
To have been so stupid…
I thought he had started to feel something for me! I thought I meant something to him—had come to be more to him than a mistress… someone who mattered to him. Someone who…
Her hand had slid across her abdomen, and the agony had come again, even more piercing.
What am I going to do?
The words had fallen like stones into her head.
They had gone on falling, heavier and heavier, crushing her, hard and unbearable.
It had taken so long to accept the answer that she had known, with so heavy and broken a heart, was the only one possible.
I did the right thing. I did the only thing.
The words came to her now, as she yanked on her coat.
Nothing else was possible. Nothing
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