‘I find it difficult myself,’ he admitted. ‘You gave no indication that you no longer found my attentions desirable. Our lovemaking the very night before you left was—’
‘Don’t!’ Karen was trembling, the muscle spasm high in her inner thighs a hint that her body might remember what her mind did not. ‘Can’t we talk about something else?’
‘What would you suggest?’ he asked drily.
She cast around. ‘Your home?’
‘Our home,’ Luiz corrected. ‘The home to which we shall be returning.’ He shifted from the bed to the chair he had occupied the night before, face expressionless again. ‘São Paulo is many kilometres from here, the city the largest in Brazil, the state one of the richest. Guavada is a cattle ranch lying to the northwest of the city.
Nothing of what he was telling her meant anything. A cattle ranch!
‘You’re a manager or something?’ she hazarded.
About to answer, Luiz broke off as the door opened to admit the same white-coated doctor from the night before, getting to his feet to greet the man.
The latter came to examine the bruise on Karen’s temple, shining a torch into each eye before finally pronouncing himself satisfied with her condition.
‘You are fortunate,’ he said, ‘that the damage was no worse.’
‘I don’t see amnesia as a light matter,’ she retorted. ‘Have you any idea how long it might last?’
The man hesitated, obviously reluctant to commit himself to a prognosis. ‘Your memory could return at any time,’ he said at length. ‘Shock can do many things to the mind. You must be patient and try not to worry about it.’
Easy enough to say, Karen reflected hollowly. How could she not worry about it?
Luiz walked with the man to the door, returning to announce that she was cleared to leave the hospital.
‘Your bag will be brought for you to select fresh clothing,’ he said. ‘Shall you need help in dressing?’
‘No!’ The denial came out sharper than she had intended, drawing another of the cynical smiles.
‘I was thinking of a nurse’s assistance, not my own.’
‘I’m sorry.’ She made a helpless little gesture. ‘It isn’t that I don’t trust you.’
‘Is it not?’ he asked softly. ‘Can you truly claim to believe that every word I’ve spoken is the truth?’
‘I have to believe it,’ she said. ‘I don’t have any other choice.’
‘No,’ he agreed, ‘you don’t. Just as I have no other choice.’
He had gone before Karen could summon the strength for any further exchange. Not that there was a great deal left to say. She was going with him because she had nowhere else to go. To what exactly she had still to discover.
The leather suitcase that arrived a few moments later was accompanied by a leather handbag, neither of which she recognised. She rifled swiftly through the contents of the latter, finding a passport in her married name, along with a wallet containing a wad of foreign currency.
She had no idea of the worth. Nor did it make a great deal of difference to the present state of affairs. What she did wonder was just what plan she and this Lucio Fernandas had supposedly made.
There was nothing in the handbag to provide an answer to that question. She opened the suitcase, disconcerted by the jumble of clothing inside. Packed hastily and with little regard to content from the look of it, which suggested a decision made bare minutes before departure rather than a planned exit. Stuck in the middle of it all was a framed photograph that brought a lump to her throat. It had been taken on a camping holiday bare months before her parents had been killed. They were laughing together, holding up the tiny fish her mother had just caught in the river flowing behind them. A handsome pair, with everything to live for.
Julie would have sent it through along with the other things she’d asked for, Karen concluded, blinking the tears from her eyes. It would have been the last thing she’d have left behind, for certain.
She sorted out a pair of lace panties and matching bra, topping them with a white skirt and sleeveless cotton top she’d never to her knowledge seen before. There were only two pairs of shoes. She chose the pale beige sandals that were the only ones with a highish heel. At five feet six she was far from short, but she needed the boost to face a man over six feet in height with any degree of confidence at all.
The handbag yielded a pouch containing a pale pink lipstick, smoky eye-shadow and a mascara wand. No surprises there: she’d never used a lot of make-up. She donned the touch of lipstick she’d spoken of, and ran a comb through her dried hair. The bruising looked worse than it had the night before, as did the grazes on her cheek and jaw, but she had more to think about than her appearance.
Her last clear memories were of attending a leaving party for a workmate, followed by dinner out with a group from the office. Julie had been out herself when she had got back to the flat. She’d made a hot drink and gone straight to bed.
That had been the twelfth of September. The day before yesterday, so far as her mind was concerned. Luiz had said they’d been married three months, but that didn’t tell her the date now.
He supplied an answer to that question on his return.
‘It’s the twenty-seventh of January,’ he said. ‘More than halfway through our summer. The temperatures on the plateau are milder than here on the coast. While the days are hot at this time of the year, the humidity is low, the nights refreshingly cool.’
‘It sounds good.’ Karen was doing her utmost to stay on top of her emotions.
Luiz came to close and lock the suitcase she’d left open on the bed, hoisting it effortlessly up. ‘I have a taxi waiting to take us to the hotel.’
‘Hotel?’ she queried.
‘I think it better that the two of us spend some time together before returning to Guavada,’ he said. ‘We have a great deal to discuss.’
Karen forced herself into movement, reluctant to abandon the only bit of security she knew right now. Luiz went ahead to open the door for her, falling into step at her side to traverse a short, beautifully tiled corridor to a bank of lifts.
The one that arrived silently and smoothly in answer to his summons was empty. They descended without speaking, to emerge in a luxuriously appointed lobby. The receptionist on duty at a central desk bade them a smiling farewell, expressing what Karen took to be good wishes for the future. A forlorn hope indeed while the past months remained a blank.
Although it was still only a little after nine-thirty, the temperature outside was already soaring. Karen was glad to dive into the air-conditioned taxi-cab. With the suitcase stowed, Luiz slid in beside her. His thigh lay next to hers, the firm muscularity clearly de-fined beneath the fine cotton of his jeans when he moved.
Stripped, he would be magnificent, came the unbidden thought, bringing a sudden contraction deep down
