His face was dark and angry, and his mouth was compressed into a thin line. He looked round swiftly, then guided her into the sheltering angle of a building. As she backed against it, Helen felt crumbling mortar and little cushions of moss beneath her fingers.
‘You look terrible,’ Tom told her. ‘Don’t go and … just don’t be stupid, okay? I saw it too. We were both spying, and we saw what we deserved to see. Finish. Forget it now.’
Helen struggled to focus on what he was saying. What was he doing, intruding into this?
‘I’m not stupid,’ she told him mechanically. Then the thought struck her that he must feel for Pansy as she did for Oliver. Of course Tom loved her. Even this detached, accomplished man was vulnerable to her. He must be stinging from what they had just seen as much as she was herself.
For a moment sympathy flickered in her, drawing her to Tom in spite of herself. He didn’t look angry any more. His eyes were hooded and unfathomable in the fading light, but his face had relaxed and there was even a twist of wry amusement around his mouth. He must already be thinking that their mutual exclusion was funny, Helen saw. How cool he was. Yet he was generous enough to look out for her too. Tom Hart could be a valuable friend, she remembered. And she felt that she needed one now more than she had done in all her life. He stood between her and the bleak street, like a refuge.
Then she stiffened. Tom was no refuge. His sympathy and understanding, however real, was useless to her because of his love for Pansy. That made him hers, just like Oliver. That in itself divided him from Helen like a curtain of steel.
Behind her eyes she saw the scene in the warehouse again, with Pansy’s pliant body bent like a bow against Oliver’s.
No-one could help exorcise that. All she wanted was to be alone, as far away from here as possible.
‘Come home with me,’ Tom said gently. ‘We’ll do something English, like have a cup of tea. Then perhaps we’ll follow it up with a lot of bourbon. All this is quite funny, when you come to think of it.’
Helen shook her head. His amusement, and even his kindness, suddenly grated unbearably. She gathered her strength to push past him, staring deliberately over his shoulder.
‘I’d rather be by myself. I don’t want any tea, or any bourbon.’
The sob rising in her throat made her voice sound harsher than she had intended. Tom stood back at once to let her go and she stumbled away.
His half-smile had vanished. When she had gone he picked up a pebble and threw it sharply against the angle of the wall. It clattered dismally and then rolled away into a bed of sodden leaves.
All the way back to Follies House, she held herself rigid, as if she was afraid that something inside her might split and spill, messily, in front of the strangers who were passing by.
As last she reached the house. There was no-one there, and not a sound to be heard. As she went up she counted the stairs, numbering them off in her head to stop having to think about anything else. Only when she had unlocked her door and bolted it behind her, did she feel safe enough and private enough to cry.
She stumbled to the bed and, almost gratefully, let the tears come. Helen rarely cried, but now she abandoned herself to it. The storm of weeping that overtook her was not just for Oliver, but for herself too. Disjointed images and phrases flitted through her head with the shaking sobs. She saw Oliver’s face in the firelight at the Montcalm cottage.
He was so beautiful, and so gentle then.
She remembered the exhilaration of being driven at speed in his Jaguar and the prickle of champagne in her mouth.
Nothing like him has ever happened to me before. And never will again.
The excitement she had felt at simply being close to him was still with her.
I didn’t make demands on him.
But she had not been brilliant enough to keep him.
How could I, after he’d seen Pansy?
And, again,
It isn’t fair.
Alone in the dark, Helen cried as if she could never stop. But at last no more tears would come. Still in the same position, cold and cramped, she stared unseeingly upwards and forced herself to think.
She knew that she had walked into this loss with open eyes. She remembered thinking I don’t care what happens. I just want him now. She had relished the reckless thrill that the thought had given her.
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