mean nothing once the disease strikes. Look at me, have a good hard look. This is you in a few years’ time. And he won’t be able to do anything, if that’s what you’re thinking. All the money in the world can’t. I know, I’ve asked.’
Sandra’s tormented face had glared at her with raw frustration in every pore. ‘He thought he was getting a beautiful little doll to show off to all his jet-setting friends and instead you are going to be a millstone round his neck! That’s really very funny when you think about it. Can you see the joke, Amy? Can you?’
‘You’re sick in more than body, Sandra,’ Amy had whispered faintly as she stared back into the maddened eyes. If it weren’t for the fact that her sister was a prisoner in the wheelchair, she was sure she would have leapt at her face like a small demented goblin. As it was, her hands were gripping the arms of the wheelchair in a claw motion that was infinitely chilling.
‘What do you know about it?’ Sandra had screamed bitterly. ‘You were always the favoured one, so pretty, so perfect. You’ve had a charmed life so far with everything going your way. Not like me!’
‘No, I haven’t.’ Amy had stood for a moment poised on the threshold of Sandra’s room in the old terraced house in the heart of Glasgow, her hand clutching the chilling medical report Sandra had given her a few minutes before, her sister having watched with fiendish satisfaction as she absorbed the portent of the doctor’s statement. ‘I had a miserable childhood with Aunt Alice and Uncle Julian. The only real happiness I’ve known has been since I’ve met Blade.’
‘Well, excuse me if I don’t shed any tears for you.’ There had been something truly malignant in Sandra’s dark eyes. ‘I hate you, Amy. I’ve always hated you. I shall die hating you.’
She had left then, stunned and broken, still clutching the damning evidence in nerveless hands, and it had been a miracle she had ever reached London safely the way she had been feeling. She couldn’t remember the journey at all.
She had stumbled into the beautiful city garden, her face white and stiff and her whole body shaking, and sat for hours as her tired mind screamed back and forth as she tried to come to terms with what she had read. In a few years she was going to die.
She shook her head blindly. Slowly, very slowly, Sandra had emphasised. Day by day, week by week, month by month, her strength would ebb and her muscles wither as her body gave up the fight to go on. She was going to die. She had ripped the report into tiny tiny pieces but had found each word was imprinted on the pages of her mind.
Blade’s deep voice suddenly cut into her thoughts as he replied to something Mrs Cox had said, and she came back to the present with a little jerk of her body, amazed to find herself in the small room with its old heavy furniture and glowing fire.
Yes. She would do anything, anything, to keep the truth from him even if it meant he would leave this place hating the very sound of her name.
CHAPTER THREE
SHE had half expected Blade to do a repeat of the previous day’s fiasco, but when he didn’t appear the following lunchtime, far from being reassuring, it turned Amy into a veritable bag of nerves. Every jingle of the old doorbell, every muffled male voice, and she shot over to the kitchen door or swung round in the restaurant until by the time she was ready to leave at eleven her head was pounding as though she had been hit by a sledgehammer.
As she stepped out into the quiet village street just after eleven the cool sweet air, redolent of large open spaces and high empty skies, was wonderfully soothing to her overheated metabolism.
She stood for a moment on the narrow stone step and breathed deeply with her eyes shut. As she opened them again two events happened simultaneously. A large dark figure detached itself from the shadows and began walking towards her at the same time as John called her name from his cheerful little Morris Minor parked a few yards down the road. ‘Amy? Over here.’
She felt for a moment as though she were caught up in a play, a macabre twisted play. Blade had frozen in mid-stride, his eyes flashing from her horrified face to the car partially hidden by the darkness, and then he moved like lightning, reaching the car before she could even pull herself together sufficiently to move.
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