She knew who the letter was from even before she ripped open the envelope. The writing was firm, in black ink, and the postmark was London. Apart from Angus Hamilton, she knew no one else in London who would send her a letter.
The message was short and to the point. He was going on a cruise with a few friends and would she like to accompany them. ‘Of course,’ she read, sitting down on the small sofa in her lounge and tucking her feet underneath her, ‘you will not even think of refusing this invitation. Consider it an act of charity on your part to ease my guilty conscience over the accident.’ As a postscript, he had added, ‘I trust you are now back on both feet.’
Of course, she had no intention of accepting, never mind his guilty conscience. She kept the letter in her bag and pulled it out whenever there was no one around, and then told herself why she had no intention of accepting his invitation.
For a start, it just wasn’t her to rush off and do something like that. Spontaneity was all well and good, but she had spent so many years being swept along on the tide of her parents’ spontaneity, like a leaf constantly caught up in a wind storm, that she had come to realise that thinking things through was a much better alternative. Thinking things through gave coherence to the whole disordered business of living.
When her parents had died, she had been just seventeen and craving for what most girls her age would have hated: somewhere to call a home, somewhere safe where she could gaze out through the window and watch the seasons change and the years pass, without any plans for moving on. She never wanted impulsiveness to dictate her actions. Never, never, never. It was dangerous.
Then, reluctantly, she remembered his face. She remembered the pity she had glimpsed there when she had told him that she was used to standing on her own two feet. Pity at what he saw as a sad little thing.
Her parents had felt a little sorry for her as well. How could they have produced such a quiet, timid version of themselves, when they were so exuberant? They had never understood that spending a year or eighteen months in one place before moving on to a different place with different faces and different landmarks was something that she had found increasingly disorienting.
So she found herself accepting his invitation. It was as easy as that. Something stronger than common sense, some powerful emotional urge, tipped the scales, almost when she hadn’t been looking.
She called the number on the letter, spoke to an efficient-sounding woman who informed her that she was Mr Hamilton’s personal assistant, and threw caution to the winds before she could work out all the pros and cons and ifs and buts.
And here I am now, she thought three weeks later, paying the price for a few moments of recklessness. Feeling nervous and sick and apprehensive and knowing that I’m not going to enjoy a minute of this. It will be an ordeal.
The only saving grace was that there would be lots of people around on the liner so if she found the company of Angus and his friends too uncomfortable she could always lose herself in the crowd. No one would think her odd. Cruise liners were always full of solitary women.
She closed her eyes when the plane took off and for an instant she stopped thinking about what lay ahead of her and thought instead about the dynamics of something as heavy as this being able to travel in the air. She hoped that all the nuts and bolts were firmly screwed together and risked a quick look through the window, openmouthed at the sight of land fast disappearing beneath her, to be replaced by an infinity of sky and clouds.
She hadn’t felt nearly so nervous about Lanzarote. She wondered whether the captain would turn back and let her off at Heathrow if she asked nicely. Failing that, she could hop it back to England when they landed at Barbados and Angus Hamilton, with his far-fetched notions of applying a balm to his guilty conscience, would be none the wiser. He would shrug those powerful shoulders of his and get on with his holiday knowing that he had tried to make amends and she had rudely refused.
He probably would not even miss the money he had spent on her airline ticket.
But since she knew, deep down, that she would obey the instructions kindly laid out for her in the letter from his secretary she didn’t feel much better.
She arrived at Barbados feeling rather ragged and, as the unknown secretary had helpfully advised in the letter which had accompanied the airline ticket, made her way to the transit desk and eventually onto the connecting flight to St Vincent.
This time the scenery through the window was rather more spectacular. She left Barbados looking down at glittering blue sea and strips of white sand and landed in St Vincent to the same staggering view.
The taxi driver was waiting outside the airport for her—just as the secretary had said he would be—when she emerged with her suitcase and her holdall.
She had worn a loose, flowery skirt and a shortsleeved shirt, but nothing had prepared her for the heat that hit her the minute she was in the open. It was the sort of all-enveloping heat which she had never before experienced in England, not even when it got very hot during the best of the summer days.
There was a great deal of activity outside the airport, taxi drivers waiting hopefully by their cars to take tourists to their destinations, but there was nothing frenetic about any of it. No one seemed to be in any kind of rush to get anywhere.
‘Where are you taking me?’ she asked the driver as he cruised off at one mile per hour.
‘Not far.’ He looked at her in the rear-view mirror, showing two rows of gleaming white teeth. ‘The hotel, it just along the south coast. Very nice place.’
Lisa lapsed into silence to contemplate the scenery, leaning forward slightly in her seat with her hands nervously clutching her bag.
Outside, the marvellous vista unfolded itself. Everything was so lush and green, heavy with the scent of the Tropics. She half wished that it would go on for ever, partly because it was so beautiful and partly because she was beginning to feel sick and nervous all over again.
What on earth was she going to say to him? She wasn’t accustomed to mixing in sophisticated circles. She would be completely at a loss for witty, interesting topics of discussion. After one hour, she would no longer be the novelty which had amused him months ago in a hospital ward. She would revert to being just an ordinary young woman without much of a talent for being in the limelight.
The taxi driver pulled up outside the hotel, which appeared to comprise a collection of stone cottages strewn with well thought out randomness amongst the lush vegetation.
He helped her with her luggage and she was almost sorry to see him depart into the distance, driving away as slowly as he had arrived.
She looked around her helplessly, noticing with a sinking heart the other visitors at the hotel who seemed to waft past her, laughing in their elegant attire. Would they all be on the liner? she wondered. Was this hotel one of the stops between ports? She had no idea. She glanced down at her clothes self-consciously, and when she raised her eyes to the reception desk there he was, standing there, just as she remembered him.
He was wearing a pair of light olive-green trousers and a cream shirt and he was, thankfully, alone.
As he approached her, she noticed how the other females strolling through the foyer darted glances at him, as if they couldn’t help themselves. ‘I thought,’ he said, ‘that you might back out at the last minute.’
He was taller than she remembered. From a supine position on a hospital
