A break, she had thought then, will do me good. That had been two years ago and the break now seemed to be of a more permanent nature than she had originally intended.
‘My friend lives just around the corner, but I can manage on my own anyway.’
‘Can you?’
‘Of course I can,’ she said, surprised. ‘I always have.’
‘Yes.’ He looked at her thoughtfully. ‘I expect you have.’ He stood up and began rolling down his sleeves, before slipping on his jacket and thrusting his hands in the pockets. ‘I find that rather sad, though.’
‘Don’t feel sorry for me,’ Lisa said rather more acidly than she had intended. She shrugged. ‘It’s a fact of life. It’s important to know how to stand on your own two feet.’
‘Do you really believe that or is that the consolation prize for a life spent on the road?’
She flushed and looked away.
‘Not that that’s any of my business.’ His voice was gentler as he smiled and said, again, how sorry he was about what had happened. He handed her his card, plain white with his name printed on it, and the name of his company, and his fax number as well as three more work numbers, and an intricate abstract design at the bottom which she thought probably meant something, though what she couldn’t think.
‘Call me if you change your mind about the compensation I’m more than willing to give you,’ he said, and stopped her before she could open her mouth and inform him that she wasn’t about to change her mind. ‘Money might well mean nothing to you, but after this you could do with a good holiday somewhere and I would be happy to pay for it.’
‘All right,’ she said, propping the card against the glass of water on the table next to her.
‘But you have no intention of availing yourself of the offer...’
‘None whatsoever,’ Lisa agreed, and he shook his head wryly.
He walked over to the door and then paused.
‘I’m away for the next ten days,’ he said, ‘or else I would come and look in, and please don’t tell me that there’s no need or I’ll wring your neck.’
‘I don’t think I could cope with a sore neck and a fractured leg as well,’ she said, smiling. He had only been with her half an hour, if that, but seeing him standing there, with his hand on the doorknob, his body already half turned to leave, she felt a sudden, inexplicable pang which surprised and disoriented her.
She couldn’t possibly want him to stay, could she? she wondered. Wouldn’t that be altogether pathetic when he had come on what was, essentially, a courtesy visit? She should never have told him all that stuff about her parents. She seldom shared confidences, least of all with a stranger, and now she felt as though he was walking off with a little bit of her tucked away with him, and she didn’t like the feeling.
‘Goodbye, Lisa Freeman,’ he said. ‘You’re really rather a remarkable girl.’
‘Goodbye, Angus Hamilton,’ she replied, and when she tried to add a witty comment to that, as he had, nothing came out. She just continued smiling as he closed the door behind him, and then she pictured him striding along the hospital corridor, gathering admiring glances from all the nurses and female patients, walking purposefully towards his car, ready to be chauffeured back to his apartment or house or mansion or wherever it was he lived, because she hadn’t the faintest idea.
The mental scenario so overtook the thought of lying by a non-existent pool in the sunshine that, after a while, she shook herself and wondered whether perhaps she was missing the company of a man in her life rather more than she had consciously thought.
She had her little flat, a modern, one-bedroom place on a nicely kept estate a few miles from the nursery, so that travelling to and from work wasn’t too hazardous a prospect in her unreliable Mini. She had her friends, most of whom lived locally, and she carefully tended those relationships because in a world with no family friends became your only standby. She especially treasured them because friendships had been so hard to form as she’d roamed with her parents.
She hadn’t felt the absence of a boyfriend in her life. Why, then, had she been so stupidly invigorated by this man—someone whom she had never met in her life before, a man who lived in an orbit as far removed from hers as Mars was from the planet Earth?
She hadn’t thought that she was lonely, but—who knew?—perhaps she was.
Paul, her boss, had been trying for ages to arrange a blind date between her and his cousin, whose credentials seemed to be that he was a nice chap and supported the same football team as Paul did. Maybe, she thought, buzzing the nurse for some more painkillers because her leg, which had been feeling fine, was now throbbing madly, she would give him a go.
That settled in her mind, she eyed Angus Hamilton’s business card and then shoved it inside the drawer of the beside cabinet, where it was safely out of sight and safely out of mind.
Then she got down to the overdue business of ringing her closest friends, who sympathised with her bad luck and promised to visit with magazines and flowers and grapes—what else? She also phoned Paul, who soothed and clucked like a mother hen and told her that there was no need to rush back to work until she was ready, but could she tell him where that number for the delivery firm who were supposed to have delivered some shrubs that morning was, because they hadn’t and he intended to give them an earful?
Then she settled down, closed her eyes and spent the night dreaming of Angus Hamilton.
CHAPTER TWO
IT WAS two months before her leg was more or less back in working order. She was confined, by Paul, to doing what he called sitting duties, by which he meant tackling all the paperwork.
‘All very restful,’ he assured her, then proceeded to produce several box files of papers which were in a rampant state of disorder and left her to it.
But she was busy, and for that she was grateful. Only occasionally did she think about the missed holiday, wondering what it would have been like and promising herself that she would get there. Some time. Possibly even during the summer, although Paul didn’t like any of his staff, least of all her because he depended on her, to take their holidays during the busiest months of the year.
Rather too often for comfort, she thought about Angus. She must, she thought, have absorbed a lot of detail about him because he still hadn’t conveniently faded into a blurry image. She could still recall quite clearly everything about him, even little nuances which she must have unconsciously observed as he had sat there on the hospital chair talking to her, and stored away at the back of her mind.
She hadn’t told a soul about him. Not her friends, not Paul. He was a secret, her secret. Instinct told her that to talk about him would give even more substance to his memory.
He wasn’t about to reappear in her life, was he? What was the point of inviting curiosity about someone who had appeared and vanished as quickly as a dream?
She was so utterly convinced of this that when, nearly three months after she had last seen him and weeks after she had joyfully relegated her waking stick to the broom cupboard under the stairs of her flat, she found his letter lying on her doormat she was so shocked that she felt her
