Rafael's Love-Child

‘The date you gave to the doctor was the right day, right month last year. And you are not twenty-three, but twenty-four. The accident, the injury to your head, left you with partial amnesia. It’s not just the last few days that you can’t remember. You’ve lost a year of your life.’

CHAPTER THREE

YOU’VE lost a year of your life. A year of your life. A year.

The words Rafael had flung at her formed a tormenting, thudding refrain inside her skull whenever she wasn’t thinking about anything else.

And she had too much time to think. Nothing held her attention; nothing distracted her from the appalling fact that she could not manage to come to terms with.

In the daytime she could try to read, or watch television, but inevitably she had found it was impossible to concentrate. She would find that she had been staring blankly at the screen or a page on which not a single word had registered, and all the time those impossible, incredible words had swung round and round in her mind, beating at her brain with a bruising sense of horror. But the nights, in the silence and the darkness, were much, much worse.

You’ve lost a year of your life.

How was it possible? How could this have happened? More importantly, why had it happened? How could she simply forget about a year that she had lived? How could something wipe out twelve months, three hundred and sixty-five days of her existence, destroying it and leaving not a trace of anything behind?

‘No!’

She cried the word aloud in an attempt to drive away the demons of fear and panic that seemed to prowl around her, hidden in the shadows, tormenting her.

She wouldn’t give in to this, she vowed. Wouldn’t go down under the waves of horror that threatened to engulf her. She would fight them with everything at her disposal. Her past couldn’t stay buried for ever. Her memories would have to emerge some day, and she would do everything she could to make sure that day came just as soon as possible.

Not that she had much to go on. Her few belongings were no help. The clothes she had been wearing at the time of the accident had been ruined, but she was assured that they had been strictly anonymous, inexpensive chainstore items, with no distinguishing marks on them at all, ditto her shoes. And the small, battered brown leather handbag that had been picked up at the crash scene held only a purse containing just a few pounds in cash, a comb, a packet of tissues and a key. That was all.

‘If only there’d been a diary, or something with an address on it!’ Serena had wailed when Dr Greene had assured her that nothing had been taken or hidden from her.

‘It’s been left exactly as it was handed to us, I’m afraid. The police have investigated that address in Yorkshire that you gave us, but it turned out to be a dead end.’

‘No help at all?’

The doctor shook her dark head, grey eyes sympathetic.

‘I’m sorry, no. It was just one bedsit out of a dozen or so in an old house that’s usually rented out to students. Apparently when you lived there everyone who shared the house with you was in their final year. They’ve all moved on, far and wide, and very few of them even bothered to leave forwarding addresses.’

‘And Leanne?’

Leanne was someone she’d remembered. A friend from her student days. Her best friend.

‘I went to university late, because my mother was so ill,’ she’d told the doctor, sadness clouding her eyes at the memory. ‘She had ovarian cancer and I postponed my starting date because I wanted to stay at home and nurse her. So I was twenty-two when I started my course. It seemed that everyone else was so much younger than me, and I didn’t really make any friends until I moved into Alban Road. That was where I met Leanne.’

‘You said she’d emigrated to Australia?’

‘That’s right. She was engaged to an Australian doctor and she was going to live with him after the wedding.’

Serena had been invited to the wedding, she knew that much. And she was sure she would have gone. There was no way she would have missed her friend’s big day. But, try as she might, she couldn’t recall anything about it. It seemed that the start of Leanne’s marriage marked the end of the lifetime she could remember.

‘But Australia’s a huge place when you’ve no idea where to start looking. Worse than the proverbial needle in a haystack. I would have had her address somewhere; I know I would! But I’ve no idea where it is now.’

That address must be wherever she had lived in the year since she had left Yorkshire. Because she had learned that much at least. Something had happened to her; something so important or traumatic that she had thrown up her university course and…

And what? Lying awake in the darkness, Serena thumped her pillow in a rage of impotent frustration. The answer to that question was lost, along with her memory.

‘So what do I do now?’

Because she had to do something. The injuries she’d received in the crash were well on their way to mending, the cuts all but healed, even the worst of the bruises fading away completely. Physically, there was nothing to keep her in the hospital any longer.

‘Oh, I don’t think you need to worry about that.’ Dr Greene smiled. ‘Mr Cordoba has it all in hand.’

‘Just what are you up to now?’

Rafael had barely had time to get through the door into her room that evening before Serena rounded on him, flinging the furious question into his face.

‘Up to? My dear Miss Martin, precisely what are you talking about?’

‘You know perfectly well what I’m talking about!’

Serena faced him defiantly across the room, black coffee-coloured eyes flashing fire, her chin up, every inch of her slender body stiff with rejection of his high-handed way of behaving. He hadn’t brought Tonio with him this time, she noted gratefully, knowing that the little boy would distract her from the questions she had to ask.

‘And I’m not your “dear Miss Martin”! I’m not your “dear” anything! You can’t just move in and take over my life.’

‘And how—exactly—am I supposed to be doing that?’

The coolly drawled question incensed her, as did the slow, indolently assessing way those brilliant eyes swept over her, narrowing slightly as they considered the oatmeal-coloured loose trousers and cream tee shirt she was wearing. The insolent sensuality of the survey made her heart kick against her ribs, her breathing catch for a second.

‘The clothes suit you well.’

‘Don’t change the subject!’ Serena exploded, bitterly conscious of the fact that if it had not been for Rafael she would have had nothing to wear, or at least something far less expensive and stylish.

‘This is my life we’re talking about. And you can’t take people’s lives and assess them as if they were some sheet of figures you’ve been handed to check through. You can’t just add up the income and the outgoings, take away the number you first thought of, decide if it’s worth the investment you were planning on, and then draw a nice neat line under everything—done—finished—sorted out!’

Rafael’s laughter had a disturbing edge to it, one that took his response to a point a long, long way from true amusement and turned it into something that sent a trickle of icy apprehension sliding down her spine.

‘Who the devil thought to name you Serena with a temper like that?’ he murmured sardonically, moving to throw his long body down into the easy chair that stood beside the window. ‘But then I suppose I should have expected it from…’

‘From what?’ Serena demanded when he let the sentence trail off unfinished, his eye apparently caught by something in the street outside. ‘You should have expected it from whom?’

She regretted the angry emphasis she had put on the last word as Rafael’s proud head snapped round again, his beautiful eyes no longer warm with any degree of amusement but cold and sharp as if carved from golden ice.

‘From someone with your hair colouring,’ he told her curtly. ‘Fiery hair, fiery temper—isn’t that true?’

‘I—’ Serena began indignantly, but, meeting a flashing warning glance that made her toes curl in fearful response, she hastily gulped down the irritable protest, forcing herself to begin again.

‘Believe it or not, I’m not usually like this. As a matter of fact, I’m usually pretty equable. Oh, don’t you dare look at me like that!’ she flung at him when the twist of his mouth, a tilt of his head questioned her assertion without words.

‘I rest my case,’ he murmured with silky cynicism.

‘If you must know, you make me lose my temper! You drive me to it.’

‘And why is that, do you think?’