nothing.’
‘You can tell me it’s nothing all you like,’ she said tearfully. ‘I wish you could be honest with me. Is that too much to ask?’
Robert watched her beautiful, expectant face and felt suddenly sorry. How could he possibly explain to her the history he and Lana shared? Elisabeth, so upstanding, so respectable; and he hiding a terrible secret, a monstrous crime that would bury them both. No, she didn’t know what he was capable of–and she didn’t want to.
‘It’s not too much,’ he said. He wanted to say more but the words didn’t come. It was hopelessly inadequate.
Instead he guided her on to the boat, slipping an arm round her bare shoulders as they took a seat on the padded leather bench. ‘You look wonderful,’ he murmured.
She nodded, not looking at him.
The dark water below glinted in the moonlight. As they moved off the smell of salt filled the night air.
Elisabeth feared that if she spoke she would burst into tears. She watched the open water and the bobbing, distant red lights of vessels on the horizon.
Back on the yacht they had fumbling, drunk sex before Elisabeth fell asleep.
Robert lay awake for a while, the gentle rock of water beneath him, before giving up and going out on deck. The still-warm air filled his lungs and he looked out across the black sea, stars twinkling above like air-holes punched in the sky. And that was what they were, for he could breathe better at night. He could be alone and remember the evenings he had spent all those years ago in Belleville, before the tragedy. When they had been young and innocent and free and in love.
He wondered what she was doing now. Was she thinking about him? For all his money and success he didn’t have the one person he would give it all up for in a heartbeat. She couldn’t be happy with Cole Steel, could she? Not the same kind of happiness they had shared.
It couldn’t go on. He had to tell Elisabeth the truth, and if it was out in the open he could decide if they still had a future. And yet it was a risk. He hated himself for still caring this way, couldn’t understand why he did, but, damn it, he had to protect Lana.
But, then, it wasn’t Lana who had done that awful thing back in Belleville, was it?
It was him.
Belleville, Ohio, 1997
‘D’you need some help with those?’
Laura turned round at the school gates, her arms laden with books. She regarded him with wide, serious eyes.
‘No, thanks.’ She kept going.
Undeterred, he followed. ‘Come on, I’ll walk you home.’ He went to take the books off her and she flinched as though she’d been stung.
‘I said I can manage.’ Her green gaze stared at the ground, too afraid to look at him. But there was a catch to her voice that belied her assurance.
He shrugged. ‘Suit yourself. I’m going this way anyway.’
She seemed to hesitate a moment. Then from nowhere a stampede of boys rushed past, knocking into her and sending her armful thumping to the ground. She stooped to gather the books, humiliation burning. The boys’ shouts faded into the distance.
Robbie knelt to help. ‘Jerks,’ he said.
He picked up one of the heavy tomes and flipped it over, scanning the spine. ‘You can’t be reading all these,’ he teased. When he passed them over he pretended not to notice the cut on her lip. Or the mottled grey bruise that wrapped itself round her delicate white wrist, visible when her sleeve pulled back.
The ghost of a smile. ‘I like stories,’ she said, brushing a lock of copper hair from her eyes. Getting to her feet, she gripped the books to her like armour.
They walked together for a while.
‘You don’t talk much,’ he observed.
She opened her mouth to think of an answer and he smoothly lifted the stack from her. Without it she looked defenceless, and folded and unfolded her arms as if she didn’t know what to do with them.
‘Why are you doing this?’ she asked, meeting his eye for the first time.
‘Doing what? ‘
‘Being nice to me.’ She couldn’t understand it. At seventeen Robbie Lewis was nearly three years older than her, clever and popular and handsome. His friends must have put him up to it–let the poor little orphan imagine for a second that she had a chance.
His expression was difficult to read. ‘What do you mean?’
Laura wasn’t stupid. Boys were only after one thing. She’d learned that from her own brother. Sometimes he brought a girl home after she’d gone to bed: she’d lie down in the darkness, listening to the filthy scrabble of rats and mice, and among them, below them, the weird frantic sounds coming from Lester’s room.
But if he didn’t go out it was worse. It meant he would stay with her, watching her sideways, and if he got drunk enough he would do that terrible thing and make her undress for bed in front of him. Just sitting there, not daring to touch, his lizard eyes soaking up every inch of her body. She, racked with shame, would stand shivering, with each shaky breath fighting the instinct to cover herself. But she knew she could not: one time she had put a hand on that part between her legs and Lester had hit her across the face, so hard she couldn’t hear properly for a week. And recently he had developed a taste for that.
‘There’s nothing wrong with being nice,’ said Robbie.
Tears sprang to Laura’s eyes and she turned her head so he couldn’t see.
Robbie kept pace as she quickened her step. ‘Wait up a second, what’s the big hurry?’
‘Just leave me alone.’
‘Hey, hang on—’
Abruptly she stopped.
‘I’m not interested,’ she said primly, sticking her chin in the air. ‘In what?’
‘You know.’
Robbie frowned. ‘Not really.’
Laura was so unlike all the other girls at school, those catty girls he’d heard gossiping in the corridor, saying mean things about her old clothes and her messy hair. She was a thousand times more lovely than they’d ever be. And yet his urge was to protect her, to look after her. He’d seen her walking with
