was talking about himself. Candy stared at him. She wasn’t at all sure how they had reached this point, but suddenly she knew he was talking about himself.
‘You tell yourself that one day you’ll perhaps take a chance again, open up, get back into the game, and then after a time you wake up one morning and realise you’re self-sufficient. You don’t need anyone.’ His eyes were granite hard now, and inward-looking.
‘Surely that’s good?’ she asked faintly.
Her voice seemed to bring him back to the present and he blinked once, a mask covering his face as he said, his voice remote, ‘Maybe, maybe not. Who knows?’ The brief moment of intimacy was over.
Candy remained where she was as Quinn walked to the front door, but once he had opened it and stepped out into the bitingly cold air, in which the odd desultory snowflake was beginning to whirl and dance, she followed him to the doorway and watched him walk down the narrow garden path in the grey twilight.
‘Goodbye, Candy.’ He turned at the gate, raking back his hair as he said, ‘I might make the odd phone call to check you’re still in the land of the living, but I promise no house calls. Okay?’
‘Okay.’
It was what she had wanted, and she couldn’t have made it any plainer, so why did she feel so wretched now? Candy asked herself as she watched him back the Aston Martin out into the lane.
She was tired; that was what it was. And the day had been full of different impressions and images—she wasn’t thinking straight.
She raised her hand once as he left, but he didn’t glance her way.
Fine. She bit down hard on her lip and then closed the front door and turned to survey her new home. The breakfast bar was still piled high with food, and then she saw the little note he must have scribbled while she had been upstairs. It was propped next to an opened bottle of red wine and it read, ‘Have a couple of glasses while you cook the steak. The salad’s all ready. Q.’
She drank the first glass sitting in front of the crackling fire, and she was fighting back the tears without having any idea why she wanted to cry. After putting the steak on a low grill she took the second glass up to the bathroom with her and sipped it while she soaked the aches and pains of the long journey away.
It was dark when she tottered downstairs again, and it was really snowing outside, thick, heavy fat flakes blotting out the view beyond the window. She drew the thick red curtains, dished up the steak and salad and poured herself another glass of wine in a spirit of recklessness before throwing another couple of logs on the fire.
She loathed men! She bit into the steak and felt the juice dribble down her chin. She did, she loathed them all. And she was going to do exactly what she had made up her mind to do weeks ago in Canada. Concentrate on her painting, forge a career for herself, both here and across the Atlantic, and make her work her life. She knew where she was with paint and paper. They didn’t lie, they didn’t run away and leave her, she could trust them.
She finished the steak and salad, drained the glass, took a long, hard deep breath and headed for the stairs. The dishes, along with the unpacking could wait for tomorrow.
And nothing—nothing—had changed.
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