it. They’d agreed it was an aberration. So why was Patrick trying to exhume it? A porcelain teapot blurred as Helen’s eyes moistened; unexpectedly she felt choked with a sense of betrayal at his engagement to another woman.
‘But you proposed marriage to her,’ she accused. ‘Nobody forced you to say those words.’
Patrick cupped her chin, guiding it towards him. The cautious sun leaking through the French windows had taken shelter behind a cloud and his face was in shadow, although she could guess at its unflinching expression because his tones were harsh. ‘It’s true I asked her to marry me and she agreed. But I wanted to be normal, to have a home. I thought Miriam and I could cobble together a reasonable facsimile of a life, I truly did. You made me believe our love had to be aborted, that it was warped and grotesque and ultimately it would poison our lives.’ The thumb holding her chin, its pressure forcing her to meet his gaze, stroked her skin. His voice melted. ‘And then, Helen, we met again a few weeks ago – not by design but because we were meant to be together. What’s unnatural is not how we feel about one another but for the two of us to be apart, denying our love. I recognised that the instant I looked into your eyes again and something fundamental leaped within me; it was as if there had been no parting, that we’d been separated in body but not in spirit. I knew you felt the same way. I know you do now, however much you deny it.’
‘I’m not going to repudiate it.’ Helen’s delivery was sombre; she closed her eyes and fumbled for a path out of the maze. Her brain was malfunctioning; Patrick had that distracting effect on her. Love turned her critical processes to slush.
Miriam’s name – she couldn’t even put a face to her – sliced through the silt. Helen had never met her but she felt a sense of responsibility towards the woman. After all, they were in love with the same man.
‘Patrick, I long to believe in happily ever afters. I wish on every full moon and rainbow, on each coin I toss into a fountain, every black cat that crosses my path, and every candle I light there’s one out there for you and me. But I can’t convince myself. What’s between us is intrinsically wrong. Nature, precedent, the force of history flows against it – we’d have no luck. And whatever else we renounce voluntarily, luck we can’t forsake.’
She focused on his eyes, willing him towards comprehension, glimpsing a pair of tiny Helens in his pupils. They seemed to belong there. Oh God, to have this over with, to crawl back into bed and cancel out the world with its oppressive desires. Or to crawl back into bed and bring Patrick with her, to obliterate the world with him beside her, on top of her, inside her … Helen shuddered and, gathering together the tattered remnants of her self-control, she stood to distance herself from him.
‘And as for yourself and Miriam, Patrick, it strikes me you’re selling yourself short by planning to marry someone you don’t love wholeheartedly, and you’re selling her short too. She deserves better than a putative lover who’s using her as emotional blotting paper.’
‘But you urged me to go ahead and marry Miriam.’ His black eyebrows were mutual rods of indignation. ‘When we spoke in the park you insisted I was duty-bound to honour our engagement.’
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