The Hidden Years

That had been almost twenty years ago. Since then time had rubbed smooth some of the rough edges of her restless personality, experience gentling and softening the starkness of a nature that weaker souls often found too abrasive. Now in her early thirties, she had learned to channel those energies which had once driven her calmer and far more self-possessed mother behind the wall of reserve and dignity which Sage had wasted so much of her childhood trying to batter down, in an effort to reach the elusive core of her personality which she had sensed her mother withheld from her; just as she had always felt that in some way she was not the child her mother had wanted her to be.

But then of course she was not, and never could be, another David. David… her brother. She missed him even now…missed his gentle wise counsel, missed his love, his understanding. David…everyone who had known him had loved him, and deservedly so. To describe his virtues was to make him appear insipid, to omit due cognisance of the essential sweetness and selflessness of both David the child and David the man, which had made him so deeply loved by everyone who knew him. But she had never been jealous of David, had never felt that, but for him, her mother would have loved her more or better…so the schism between them went too deep to be explained away by a maternal preference for a more favoured sibling. Once it had hurt, that knowledge that there was something within her that turned the love her mother seemed to shower on everything and everyone else around her into enmity and dislike, but maturity had taught her acceptance if nothing else, acceptance and the ability to distance herself from those things in her past which were too painful to confront. Things which she avoided, just as she avoided all but the most necessary contact with her mother. She seldom went home to Cottingdean these days.

Cottingdean: the house itself, the garden, the village; all of them her mother’s domain, all of them created and nurtured by her mother’s will. They were her mother’s world.

Cottingdean. How she had hated and resented the place’s demands on her mother throughout her childhood, transferring to it the envy and dislike she had never felt for David. Too young then to analyse why it was that her mother seemed to hold her at a distance, to dislike her almost, she had jealously believed that it was because of Cottingdean and its demands upon her mother’s time; that Cottingdean meant far more to her mother than she ever could.

In that perhaps she had been right, and why not? she thought cynically—Cottingdean had certainly repaid to her mother the time and devotion she had invested in it, in a way that she, her child, her daughter, never could.

Cottingdean, David, her father—these had been the main, the important components of her mother’s life, and she had always felt that she stood apart from them, outside them, an interloper…an intruder; how fiercely and verbally she had resented that feeling.

She pushed open the plate-glass door and walked into the hospital’s reception area. A young nurse listened as she gave her name, and then consulted a list nervously before telling her, ‘Your mother is in the intensive care unit. If you’d like to wait in reception, the surgeon in charge of her case would like to have a word with you.’

Self-control had been something she had learned long ago, and so Sage allowed nothing of what she was feeling to be betrayed by her expression as she thanked the nurse and walked swiftly over to a seat. Was her mother dead already? Was that why the surgeon wanted to see her? A tremor of unwanted sensation seized her, a panicky terror that made her want to cry out like a child. No, not yet… There’s too much I want to know… Too much that needs to be said.

Which was surely ridiculous given the fact that she and her mother had long ago said all that there was to say to one another… When she herself had perhaps said too much, revealed too much. Been hurt too much.

As she waited, her body taut, her face smooth of any expression, even in repose there was something about her that reflected her inherent inner turbulence: her dark red hair so vibrant with life and energy, her strong-boned face quick and alive, the green eyes that no one knew quite where she had inherited as changeable as the depths of a northern lake under spring skies. The nurse glanced at her occasionally, envying her. She herself was small and slightly plump, a pretty girl in her way, but nowhere near in the class of the stunning woman who sat opposite her. There was elegance in the narrowness of her ankles and wrists, beauty that owed nothing to youth or fashion in the shaping of her face, mystery and allure in the colour of her hair and eyes, and something about every smallest movement of her body that drew the eye like a magnet.

Somewhere in this huge anonymous building lay her mother, Sage told herself, impossible though that seemed. Her mother had always seemed almost immortal, the pivot on which so many lives turned. Even hers, until she had finally rebelled and broken away to be her own person. Yes, her mother had always seemed indestructible, inviolate, an immutable part of the universe. The perfect wife, the perfect mother, the perfect employer—the epitome of all that her own peer group was striving so desperately to achieve. And she had achieved it against the kind of odds her generation would never have to face. Her mother was a woman thirty years ahead of her time, a woman who had taken a sick man, at one time close to death, and kept him alive for over twenty-five years. A woman who had become the mistress of a sick house and a dying estate and had turned them both into monuments of what could be achieved if one was single-minded and determined enough, if one had the skill, and the vision, and the sheer dogged will-power needed to perform such miracles.

Was this perhaps the root cause of the disaffection between her and her mother? Not that her mother had not loved her enough, but that she had always unknowingly been jealous and resentful of her mother’s gifts? Was she jealous of her mother’s achievements? Was she masking those feelings by letting herself believe that it was her right to feel as she did…that the guilt, the betrayal, the blame were her mother’s and not her own?

‘Miss Danvers?’

Her head snapped round as the impatient male voice addressed her. She was used to the male awareness that momentarily overwhelmed this doctor’s professionalism. It was a dubious gift, this dark, deep vein of sexuality that seemed to draw men to her in desire and need. Desire but not love. Something sharp and bitter moved inside her—an old wound, but one that had never healed.

To banish it she asked crisply, ‘My mother…?’

‘Alive. At the moment,’ he told her, anticipating her question. He was focusing on her properly now, banishing his earlier awareness of her; a tall, thin man who was probably only six or seven years older than she was herself, but whose work had aged him prematurely. A gifted, intelligent man, but one who, at the moment, looked exhausted and impatient.

Fear smothered Sage’s instinctive sympathy as she waited for him to go on.

‘Your mother was unconscious when she was brought in—as yet we have no idea how serious her internal injuries are.’

‘No idea…’ Sage showed her shock. ‘But…’

‘We’ve been far too busy simply keeping her alive to do anything more than run the most cursory of tests. She’s a very strong woman, otherwise she’d never have survived. She’s conscious at the moment and she’s asking for you. That’s why I wanted to see you. Patients, even patients as gravely injured as your mother, react very quickly to any signs of distress or fear they pick up from their visitors, especially when those visitors are close family.’

‘My mother was asking for me?’ Sage queried, astonished.

‘Yes!’ He frowned at her. ‘We had the devil of a job tracing you…’

Her mother had asked for her. Sage couldn’t understand it. Why her? She would have expected her to ask for Faye, David’s wife—David’s widow—or for Camilla, David and Faye’s daughter, but never for her.

‘My sister-in-law—’ she began, voicing her thoughts, but the surgeon shook his head brusquely.

‘We have notified her, but at this stage we have to limit your mother’s visitors. There’s obviously something on her mind, something distressing her… With a patient as gravely ill as your mother, anything we can do to increase her chances of recovery, no matter how small, is vitally important, which is why I must stress that it is crucial that whatever it is your mother wants to say to you, however unlikely or inexplicable it seems, you must try to find a way of reassuring her. It’s essential that we keep her as calm as we possibly can.’

The look he was giving her suggested that he had severe doubts that she would be able to do any such thing. Doubts which she herself shared, Sage acknowledged wryly.

‘If you’d like to follow me,’ he said now, and, as she followed him down the narrow, empty corridor leading off the main reception area, Sage was amused by the way he kept a wider than necessary physical distance between them. Was he a little intimidated by her? He wouldn’t be the first man to react to her like that. All the nice men, the ones with whom she might have found something approaching peace and contentment, shared this ambiguous, wary attitude towards her. It was her looks, of course: they couldn’t see beyond them, beyond the dangerous sensuality they invoked, making them see her as a woman who would never need their tenderness, never make allowances for their vulnerabilities. They were wrong, though. She had far too many vulnerabilities of her own to ever mock or make light of anyone else’s. And as for tenderness—she smiled a bitter smile—only she knew how much and how often she had ached for its healing balm.

‘This way,’ he told her. Up ahead of them were the closed doors barring the way to the intensive care unit.

Sage shivered as he pushed open the door, an instinctive desire to stop, to turn and run, almost halting her footsteps. Somewhere beyond those doors lay her mother. Had she really asked for her? It seemed so out of character, so unbelievable almost, and the shock of it had thrown her off guard, disturbing the cool, indifferent, self-protective shield she had taken up all those years ago when the pain of her mother’s final betrayal had destroyed her reluctant, aching love for her.

She shivered again, trying to recognise the unfamiliar image of her mother which the surgeon had held up for her. Surely in such extremity as her mother now suffered a person must always ask for whoever it was they most loved, and she had known almost all her life that for some reason her mother’s love, given so freely and fiercely to others, had never really been given to her. Duty, care, responsibility…they had all been there, masquerading under the guise of mother love, but Sage had learned young to distinguish between reality and fiction and she had known then, had felt then that insurmountable barrier that existed between them.

As she hesitated at the door, the surgeon turned impatiently towards her.

‘Are you sure she asked for me?’ she whispered.

As he watched her for a moment he saw the self-confident, sensually stunning woman reduced to the nervous, uncertain child. It was the dangerous allure of seeing that child within such a woman that made him say more brusquely than he otherwise might, ‘There’s nothing for you to fear. Your mother’s injuries are all internal. Outwardly…’

Sage glared at him. Did he really think she was so weak, so self-absorbed that it was fear of what she might see that kept her chained here outside the ward? And then her anger died as swiftly as it had been born. It wasn’t his fault; what could he know of the complexities of her relationship with her mother? She didn’t really understand them herself. She pushed open the door and walked into the ward. It was small, with only four beds, and bristling with equipment.

Her mother was the ward’s only occupant. She lay on one of the high, narrow beds, surrounded by machinery.

How tiny she looked, Sage marvelled as she stared down at her. Her once naturally fair hair, now discreetly tinted blonde, was hidden out of sight beneath a cap; her mother’s skin, so white and pale, and so different from her own with its decidedly olive tint, could have been the skin of a woman in her late forties, not her early sixties, Sage reflected as she absorbed an outer awareness of the tubes connected to her mother’s body, which she deliberately held at bay as she concentrated instead on the familiar and less frightening aspects of her still figure.

Her breathing was laboured and difficult, but the eyes fixed on her own hadn’t changed—cool, clear, all-seeing, all-knowing… a shade of grey which could deepen to lavender or darken to slate depending on her mood.

She was frowning now, but it was not the quick, light frown with which Sage was so familiar, the frown that suggested that whoever had caused it had somehow not just failed but disappointed as well. How many times had that frown marked the progress of her own life, turning her heart to lead, shredding her pride, reducing her to rebellious, helpless rage?

This frown, though, was different, deeper, darker, the eyes that watched her full of unfamiliar shadows.

‘Sage…’

Was it instinct alone that made her cover her mother’s hand with her own, that made her sit down at her side, and say as evenly as she could, ‘I’m here, Mother…’?

Mother…what a cold, distant word that was, how devoid of warmth and feeling. As a small child she had called her ‘Mummy’. David, ten years her senior, had preferred the affectionately teasing ‘Ma’, but then David had been permitted so much more licence, had been given so much more love… Stop it, she warned herself. She wasn’t here to dwell on the past. The past was over.

‘It’s all right,’ she whispered softly. ‘It’s all right, Mother. You’re going to be fine…’

Just for a moment the grey eyes lightened and mocked. They seemed to say that they knew her platitude for exactly what it was, making Sage once more feel a child in the presence of an adult.

‘Sage, there’s something I want you to do…’ The words were laboured and strained. Sage had to bend closer to the bed to catch them. ‘My diaries, in my desk at Cottingdean… You must read them… All of you…’

She stopped speaking and closed her eyes while Sage stared at her. What on earth was her mother talking about? What diaries? Had her mind perhaps been affected by her injuries?

She stared uncertainly at the woman in the bed, as her mother opened her eyes and demanded fiercely, ‘Promise me, Sage… Promise me you will do as I say … Promise me…’

Dutifully, docilely almost, Sage swallowed and whispered, ‘I promise…’ and then, unable to stop herself, she cried out, ‘But why me…? Why did you ask for me? Why not Faye? She’s so much closer to you…’

The grey eyes seemed to mock her again. Without her knowing it, her fingers had curled tightly round the hand she was still holding.

‘Faye doesn’t have your ruthlessness, your discipline… Neither does she have your strength.’ The voice dropped to a faint sigh.