The Hidden Years

Memories it had taken her years to suppress, to ignore, to deny…memories which even now had the power to make her body move restlessly as she fought to obliterate her own culpability, to ignore her guilt and pain—and yet after that one brief hard look of recognition he seemed so completely oblivious to her that they might have never met.

She heard Anne introducing him, was aware of the low-voiced conversation passing between him and Helen Ordman and, with it, the undercurrent of sexual possessiveness in the other woman’s voice, and bewilderingly a sharp pang of something so unexpected, so shockingly unwanted, so ridiculously unnecessary, stirred inside her that for a moment her whole body tensed with the implausibility of it.

Jealous…jealous of another woman’s relationship with a man she herself had never wanted, had never liked even…a man she had used callously and selfishly in anger and bitterness, and who had then turned those feelings, that selfishness against her so remorselessly that her memories of him were a part of her life she preferred to forget.

So many mistakes…her life was littered with them—she was that kind of person—but Daniel Cavanagh had been more than a mistake…he had been a near-fatal error, showing a dangerous lack of judgement both of herself and of him, a turning-point which had become the axis on which her present life revolved.

He was taking his seat next to her, the economical movements of his body well co-ordinated and efficient, indicative of a man at ease with himself and with his life.

Now, without the softening influence of youth, the bones of his face had hardened, the outline of his body matured. He was three years older than she, which made him about thirty-seven.

A faint ripple of polite applause broke into her thoughts. She watched him stand up and recognised almost resentfully that his suit was hand-tailored, as no doubt were his shirts. He had always been powerfully built, well over six feet and very broad.

She tried to concentrate on what he was saying, but could hear only the crisp cadences of his voice, stirring echoes of another time, another place, when he had been equally concise, equally controlled, equally clinically detached as he had stripped her pride to the bone, ripped her soul into shreds, destroyed the very fabric of her being and then handed the pieces back to her with a cool politeness which had somehow been even more demeaning than all the rest put together.

‘I pity you,’ he had told her, and he had meant it. He, more than anyone else, more than Scott even, had been responsible for the destruction of the hot-headed, headstrong, self-absorbed girl she had been and the creation of the cautious, careful, self-reliant woman she had made herself become.

Perhaps she ought to be grateful to him… Grateful…that was what he had said to her, flinging the words at her like knives.

‘I suppose you think I should be grateful…’

And then he had turned them against her, using them to destroy her.

All these years, and she had never allowed herself to remember, to think, cutting herself off from the past as sharply as though she had burned a line of fire between her old life and the new.

She was still cold, desperate now to escape from the hall, to be alone, but she couldn’t escape, not yet—people were clamouring to ask questions. Whatever Daniel Cavanagh had said, he had stirred up a good deal of reaction.

She ought to have been listening. She ought to have been able to forget the past, to forget that she knew him…she ought to have been concentrating on what he was saying. That after all was why she was here. Sage closed the meeting without being aware of quite what she had said and the world came back into focus as Anne was saying something about the vicar having suggested that they all went back to the vicarage for an informal chat and a cup of tea. She shook her head, fighting to hold on to her self-control, to appear calm.

‘I’m sorry, I can’t.’

‘No, of course, you’ll be wanting to get back… Has there been any more news from the hospital?’

Sage shook her head again. It was beginning to ache dreadfully, a warning that she was about to have the kind of migraine attack she had long ago thought she had learned to control.

All she wanted to do was to shut herself away somewhere safe and dark, somewhere where she wouldn’t have to think, to pretend, somewhere where there was no tall, dark man standing at her side making her remember, making her feel.

She was the first to leave the hall after the meeting had broken up, her footsteps quick and tense, her nostrils flaring slightly as she got outside and was able to breathe in the cool fresh air.

Her Porsche was parked only yards away, but she doubted her ability to drive it with the necessary degree of safety. Her stomach was churning sickly, her head pounding… It wasn’t unheard of for her to actually black out during these migraine attacks.

If she had any sense she would telephone the house and ask Jenny if someone could come and collect her, she recognised, but to do that would mean lingering here, and inviting the possibility of having to face Daniel.

Already she could hear his voice behind her, and the softer, almost caressing one of his companion.

Had the woman no pride? she asked herself savagely. Didn’t she realise how obvious she was being, or didn’t she care? Daniel was not your ordinary straightforward male… Daniel knew all there was to know about the female psyche. Daniel…

‘Sage… I hear that, like me, you aren’t able to join the others at the vicarage…’

He was standing next to her—good manners, good sense, demanded that she turn round and acknowledge him, but she couldn’t move, couldn’t even turn her head, couldn’t even open her mouth to respond.

‘Daniel, must you go? There’s so much we need to discuss…’

Thank goodness for predatory women, Sage thought in relief as Helen Ordman came between them, possessively taking hold of his arm.

‘Yes, I’m afraid I must. I’ve got a board meeting in the morning, and a mountain of papers to read through… Sage, I suspect that scarlet monstrosity must be yours. You always were an advocate of conspicuous consumption…in all things…’

He left her as he had found her, speechless and immobile, staring after him with, as she discovered with sick chagrin, eyes that were stupidly filmed with angry tears.

She deliberately waited until Daniel Cavanagh had driven off, in a steel-grey vintage Aston Martin, which she knew quite well had cost far more than her new-model Porsche, before walking away from her own car in the direction of Cottingdean.

The house was only a couple of miles from the village, not far at all, and a pleasant walk on such a warm spring evening. As a teenager, before she had learned to drive, she had travelled those two miles sometimes several times a day and thought nothing of doing so.

Then, though, she had not been wearing three-inch heels, nor had her body been reacting as violently as though it were suffering the most virulent form of viral flu.

What had happened to the life of which she had felt so powerfully in control? When had that control started to disintegrate? With her mother’s accident…with the knowledge that the strictly controlled physical and emotional involvements which were all she allowed herself to share with the opposite sex were designed to appease an appetite she no longer had…

The chain had begun to form long before tonight, long before this unwanted resurgence of old memories, but she couldn’t deny that seeing Daniel Cavanagh again had formed a link in it, so strong, so fettering that she doubted that she could break it open and slip free and safe back to her old life.

She saw the car headlights coming towards her, and instinctively walked off the road and on to the grass verge, only realising when the car swept past her that it was Daniel’s grey Aston.

She could hear it slowing down and stopping. Panic splintered into sharp agony inside her. She desperately wanted to run, to hide herself away from him… Not because she feared him as a man… No, she well knew she had nothing sexual to fear from him. No, it was her own memories she wanted to flee, her own pain, her own self-condemnation.

She heard the car door open and then close, and knew that he had seen her. If she walked away now, if she ran away now… Pride made her stand stiffly where she was, but nothing could make her turn to face him as he walked towards her.

‘I thought you were driving back.’

‘I decided I preferred to walk.’

‘In high heels?’

He always had been far too observant.

‘There isn’t a law against it,’ she told him sharply. ‘Although, of course, if you get your way and you run a six-lane motorway through here, the days of walking anywhere will be over for all of us.’

‘The motorway will run over a mile from here. You won’t even see it from Cottingdean. It won’t interfere with your lives there at all. But then you always did prefer emotionalism to logic, didn’t you, Sage?’

‘What are you doing here, Daniel? You’re on the wrong side of the village for the motorway and London…’

‘Yes. I realise that. I took a wrong turning and had to turn back again.’

She had the odd feeling that he was lying, although what he was saying sounded plausible. Was it because of her knowledge of the man, her awareness that taking a wrong turning in anything was the last thing he was likely to do, that she found it hard to believe him?

He was watching her, she realised, refusing to give in to the magnetic pull of his concentration. His eyes were grey, the same metallic colour as his car, and she didn’t need to look at him to remember how powerful an effect that intense concentration could have. He also had the most ridiculously long curling lashes. She remembered how she had once thought they gave him a look at times of being almost vulnerable. More fool her; ‘vulnerable’ was the very last description that could be applied to him. He was solid steel all the way through.

The sick pounding in her head, which had started to ease a little as she walked, had returned. Automatically she raised her hand and pressed her fingers to her temple.

‘Migraine?’