moved to look at him, at the strong, lean face with its square chin, wide forehead and straight dark brows. His features were clean-cut, finely drawn, but his good looks weren’t the first thing that you noticed about him—it was his determination and self assurance that came across most strongly. You got the impression he would be irritated at being liked for his looks; it was his personality that was all-important.
Studying him, Clare thought that if she had met him in other circumstances she would have been attracted by him, the way young girls are often attracted by the hint of ruthlessness and power in a man.
She thought she’d better wake him, and said, ‘Mr Straker.’ Then, more loudly, ‘Mr Straker.’ He didn’t even blink, he was so soundly asleep. She hesitated, but then decided to let him sleep on and instead went upstairs to the invalid’s room.
It was the first time she’d seen Jack’s father, and Clare knew at once that he was dying. Her grandmother had looked just like that, so pale and sunken, when Clare had been taken to say goodbye to her before she’d died, ten years ago now. Sitting down in the chair where Jack had spent so many hours, she quietly kept watch while he slept.
It was over an hour before Jack woke, doing so with a start. Immediately he ran upstairs and was furious when he saw Clare by his father’s bed. Grabbing hold of her arm, he propelled her outside onto the landing. ‘Why were you with him?’
‘You were asleep, so—’
‘Did he call out? Why didn’t you wake me?’
‘You were so tired. I thought—’
‘Who the hell asked you to think?’ Jack snarled. ‘You keep out of there. I don’t want him waking to find some stranger with him instead of me. Is that clear?’
‘Perfectly clear,’ Clare answered shortly, her colour rising. Tugging her arm free, she headed towards the stairs.
Watching her, seeing the injured set of her shoulders, Jack gave an inner groan. ‘Look, I didn’t mean...’ But she was already running down the stairs.
The sleep had done him little good; for the rest of that day he kept dozing in the chair and jerking awake. In the afternoon his father’s breathing seemed to have eased a little and Jack looked at him hopefully, wondering if, against all the odds, he would recover. Towards evening, hardly able to keep his eyes open, Jack went down to the kitchen to make himself a drink. Clare, reading in her room, heard him go, and return some ten minutes later. Then came the most terrible sound—a great cry of anguish followed by, ‘No! No! Oh, God, no!’
Leaping up, she ran out onto the landing. Jack came slowly out of his father’s room, his face completely white and rigid with shock.
‘What is it? What’s happ—?’ Clare suddenly realised, and her heart filled with sympathy for Jack.
His voice slurred, unnatural, he said, ‘He’s dead.’
Clare reached out a tentative hand of comfort but he didn’t even see it. Brushing past her, Jack went down the stairs and into the study where he’d left his mobile phone. Even though he had expected this, the shock was so great that his mind was refusing to really take in what had happened, to accept the finality of it. It was as if that part of his mind and all the emotions that it would evoke had been blanked off, and he was concentrating entirely on practical things. With a hand that visibly shook, Jack called the doctor and told him.
‘There’s a snow plough in the village now,’ Jack was told. ‘I’ll get the driver to come up your lane and I’ll follow with an ambulance. They’ve already cleared most of the road, so it shouldn’t take too long.’
But it was over three hours before they heard a noise outside and saw the lights of the vehicles. Jack spent the time pacing the floor in the hall, just striding up and down, refusing to think, to feel, while Clare stayed quietly in the kitchen out of the way, sensing that he needed to be alone. The doctor, looking tired out, dealt quickly with the formalities. Old Mr Straker’s body was taken away in the ambulance and then Jack and Clare were alone again in the silent house.
Jack had gone up with the doctor to his father’s room and hadn’t come down. After a while Clare went upstairs and got ready for bed, but as she came out of the bathroom she heard what sounded like a groan, and stood irresolutely on the landing.
Inside the room Jack stared down at the empty bed, the mental padlocks he had put on his mind slowly dissolving as he at last began to accept his father’s death. And, because he had held back his feelings with such iron will-power and determination for all these hours, his feelings completely overwhelmed him as he relaxed. He was consumed by a tidal wave of grief that robbed him of all self-control. He went out of the room, staggering, holding onto the door jamb as if his legs wouldn’t support him.
Clare saw that his arm was up across his face and he looked to be in deep distress. Going to him, she took his arm and he leaned heavily on her. ‘I wasn’t there!’ he exclaimed brokenly, anger and guilt adding to his grief. ‘All these hours—and yet I wasn’t there when he went, when he needed me.’ Swinging away from her he leaned his head against the wall, beating at it with his clenched fists. ‘There was still so much to say. I didn’t even get to say goodbye to him.’
‘Perhaps he didn’t wake,’ Clare soothed. She shut the door of the room and tried to pull Jack away. He let her lead him. His body was shaking not only from grief but from utter exhaustion, she saw. ‘You’re so tired; you must sleep now.’
The bed in his own room wasn’t made up so she guided him into hers. He was still muttering incoherently and shaking his head from side to side in deep grief, blaming himself for going downstairs. ‘I shouldn’t have left him. I shouldn’t have left him.’
‘You weren’t to know.’
She sat him on the bed and bent to pull off his shoes, tried to push him back onto the pillow. But he got agitatedly to his feet and strode up and down the small room as if he were in a prison cell. Then abruptly he sat down again, his head in his hands.
Words were a waste of time; it was too soon for them, Clare realised. So she sat down next to him and put comforting arms round his shoulders. His body was shaking and for a while he couldn’t control his grief—the terrible pain of it, the dreadful fatigue that left him without the strength to hide it.
Somehow it didn’t feel strange, holding him like this. Jack was still virtually a stranger, and yet she knew exactly what he was going through—understood all the raw emotion that engulfed him. It didn’t seem at all incongruous that her slight strength should support him, that he should lean against her while he went through these first terrible spasms of ache and loss.
Clare went on holding him for what seemed a long time, but eventually his trembling eased a little and he wiped the back of his hand across his eyes and lifted his head. Clare went to move away but he turned within her arms. His eyes, dark and still wide with shock, held hers. She was wearing just an old shirt that she’d found in a drawer, a man’s, much too big for her and coming down to her knees. Jack, his face intense, reached out to touch it at the neck.
‘This was his.’
‘Yes.’ She tried to say sorry, thinking that he was offended by it, but the words died in her throat as she looked into his eyes and began to understand even more.
Slowly he ran his fingers down over her breast. ‘You’re so alive,’ he said huskily, his voice strained. ‘So
