probably didn’t dare do anything else, Clare found herself thinking as the doors slid open. Then she was trapped with him in a small steel box. It was a relief when it stopped a few floors down and a hospital porter got in pushing a trolley.
As the doctor had predicted, things were hotting up. The main concourse was busy and bustling, with people and staff milling about.
At the reception desk a hard-pressed woman was trying to cope with a growing queue. A large calendar with a picture of Cape Cod on it proclaimed the month was June.
When they reached an area close to the entrance, where a straggling row of shabby wheelchairs jostled each other, Jos asked, ‘Can you manage to walk from here?’ His deep, incisive voice startled her. ‘Or shall I carry you?’
The idea of being held against that broad chest startled her even more. Sharply, she said, ‘Of course I can walk.’ They were foolhardy words that she was soon to regret.
Struggling out of the chair, ignoring the hand he held out, she added, ‘I’ve only lost my memory, not the use of my legs,’ and saw his lips tighten ominously.
Once on her feet, Clare swayed a little, and he put a steady arm around her waist. As soon as she regained her balance she pulled away, leaving a good foot of space between them.
His face cold and aloof, he walked by her side, making no further attempt to touch her.
Somehow she managed to keep her chin high and her spine ramrod-straight, but, legs trembling, head curiously light and hot, just to put one foot in front of the other took a tremendous effort of will.
His car was quite close, parked in a ‘Doctors Only’ area. A sleek silvery grey, it had that unmistakable air of luxury possessed only by the most expensive of vehicles.
By the time he’d unlocked and opened the passenger door she was enveloped in a cold sweat and her head had started to whirl. Eyes closed, she leaned against the car.
Muttering, ‘Stubborn little fool!’ he caught her beneath the arms and lowered her into the seat. A moment later he slid in beside her and leaned over to fasten her safety belt.
‘Have you had anything to eat?’ he demanded.
As soon as she was sitting down the faintness began to pass and the world stopped spinning. Lifting her head, she answered, ‘I wasn’t hungry.’
‘No wonder you look like a ghost!’
Knowing it was as much emotional exhaustion as physical, she said helplessly, ‘It’s not just that. It’s everything.’
He started the car and drove to the entrance, giving way to a small ambulance with blue flashing lights before turning uptown.
The dashboard clock told her it was two-thirty in the morning, and, apart from the ubiquitous yellow cabs and a few late revellers, the streets of New York were relatively quiet though as bright as day.
Above the streetlamps and the lighted shop windows, by contrast it looked black—black towers of glass and concrete rising into a black sky.
It was totally strange. Alien.
As though sensing her shiver, he remarked more moderately, ‘Waking up with amnesia must be distressing.’
‘It is,’ she said simply. ‘Not to know who you are, where you are, where you’re going—and I mean know rather than just being told—is truly terrifying.’
‘I can imagine.’ He sounded almost sympathetic.
‘At first you just seemed to be... angry...’ She struggled to put her earlier impression into words. ‘As if you blamed me in some way...’
‘It’s been rather a fraught day... And I wasn’t convinced your loss of memory was genuine.’
‘You thought I was making it up! Why on earth should I do a thing like that?’
‘Why does a woman do anything?’ he asked bitterly.
It appeared that he didn’t think much of women in general and her in particular.
‘But I would have had to have some reason, surely?’
After a slight hesitation, he said evasively, ‘It’s irrelevant as you have lost your memory.’
‘What makes you believe it now when you didn’t earlier?’
They stopped at a red light and he turned his head to study her. ‘Because you have a kind of poignant, lost look that would be almost impossible to fake.’
‘I still don’t understand why you think I’d want to fake it.’
He gave her a cool glance. ‘Perhaps to get a little of your own back.’ Then, as if conceding that some further explanation was needed, he went on, ‘We’d quarrelled. I had to go out. When I came back I found you’d gone off in a huff.’
Instinctively she glanced down at her left hand.
‘Yes—’ his eyes followed hers ‘—that was why you weren’t wearing your rings.’
It must have been some quarrel to make her take her wedding ring off. She racked her brains, trying to remember.
Nothing.
Giving up the attempt, she asked, ‘What did we quarrel about?’
For an instant he looked discomposed, then, as the lights turned to green and the car moved smoothly forward, he replied, ‘As with most quarrels, it began over something comparatively unimportant. But somehow it escalated.’
She was about to point out that he hadn’t really answered her question when he forestalled her.
‘I can’t see much sense in raking over the ashes. As soon as your memory returns you’ll be able to judge for yourself how trivial it was. Now I suggest that you try and relax. Let things come back in their own good time rather than keep asking questions.’
Questions he didn’t want to answer?
Yet if not, why not? Unless he didn’t want her to regain her memory?
Helplessly, she said, ‘But there’s so much I don’t know. I don’t even know where L..we...live.’
‘Upper East Side.’
That figured. It went with his obvious wealth, his air of good breeding, his educated accent. She frowned. His accent... Basically an English accent?
‘You’re not American?’
‘I was born in England.’
‘How long have you been in the States?’
‘Since I was twenty-one.’
‘How old are you now?’
‘Thirty.’
‘Do your family still live
