Back In The Marriage Bed

Annie gave a sharp, piercing cry and she suddenly woke up, her body drenched in perspiration, her mind racing. As she sat up in her bed she covered her face with trembling hands.

Her dream had been so strong, so real, and the man in it, her dream lover, had been so—so scarily alive.

Shakily she tried to draw a calming breath of air into her lungs, and then she closed her eyes, reliving the moment when she had traced with her lips the shape of the tiny scar she had seen on her lover’s temple, the same scar in exactly the same spot that the man in the restaurant had had. How many times had she dreamed of that scar and not really known it?

She didn’t know. She only knew that a small fierce stillness had gripped him as she touched it. It was as familiar to her as her own reflection. But how could that be? What was happening to her? Was she experiencing some kind of sixth sense, some kind of special awareness, some kind of inexplicable glimpse into the future? Were they perhaps fated to meet, and was this—these dreams—fate’s way of warning her of what was to come, of what was to be? Her whole body started to tremble.

She had been so very close to death, and, although she was extremely loath to acknowledge it, never mind discuss it openly, had experienced the sensation she had read avidly and secretly about that was reportedly so common to people who shared her near-death experience: that feeling of rushing towards a wonderful welcoming place, being propelled through darkness into an indescribable sense of awesome light, then that sudden awareness of being turned back, pulled back, that voice that was not actually a voice announcing that it was not yet her time.

Had that experience somehow or other, illogical and implausible though it might sound, given her the ability to sense, to feel, to experience a special, wonderful event in her life that had yet to take place?

Had the secret yearning she had carried all her life, to share it with someone who loved her, affected her to such an extent that she was already living in her dreams what she had yet to live in reality? Was her dream lover, in fact, not so much a figment of her imagination as a very factual and real figure from her future?

Impossible, implausible…Yes, maybe, but then there were many mysteries that defied logical explanation and analysis.

The fear she had felt earlier in the evening, the sense of shock and panic, had given way to an excitement that was almost euphoric. Her dream lover wasn’t just a dream. He was real. He was…Ecstatically Annie closed her eyes, hugging her thoughts, her love, to her heart just as tightly as she yearned for him to hug and hold her.

It was a long time before she finally got back to sleep, and when she did finally succumb her exalted state had convinced her that the evening’s meeting with the real-life physical embodiment of her dream man had been an act of fate for which her dreams had been preparing her.

‘Annie, how are you feeling this morning, my love?’

A little groggily Annie focused on Helena as she walked into the bedroom carrying a fragrant mug of coffee.

‘I’m not sure,’ Annie admitted. ‘Those pills you gave me really knocked me out.

‘Helena,’ she demanded, her voice changing as she sat up in her bed and looked at her friend and mentor with fixed determination. ‘Helena, do you believe in…fate?’ she asked solemnly.

‘I’m not sure just what you mean,’ Helena responded cautiously.

‘The man—the one I saw in the restaurant last night,’ Annie told her in a low voice. ‘At first I thought I must be imagining it, that he couldn’t possibly be the same man I’ve been dreaming about…But then, last night, I dreamed about him again, and I knew…’

She took a deep breath and told Helena huskily, ‘I think that we must have been destined to meet somehow, Helena, and that he and I…’ She paused and shook her head, responding to her friend’s silence with a wry, ‘Oh, I know how far-fetched this must sound, but what other explanation can there be? I don’t pretend to know why I should have dreamed about him or why I should feel as though I already know him. I just do. Please don’t tell me that you think I’m being silly,’ she pleaded.

‘I won’t,’ Helena promised her quietly, pausing to sit on the bed and stroke the soft tumbled hair back off Annie’s face with one hand as she placed the mug of coffee on the bedside table with the other.

Annie was so very dear to her, very precious, so much the daughter, the child she herself had never had, but she was also, in Helena’s opinion, a very vulnerable young woman. The gravity of her accident and her injuries had meant that the energy that other young women of her age would naturally give to the process of maturing had in Annie’s case had to be given to her physical recovery, recuperating her health.

It wasn’t that Annie in any way lacked intelligence—far from it. She had obtained her degree and she had a concern for the world and the people in it which made her, in many ways, older and wiser than her peers. But it was a fact that because of the length of time she had spent recovering from the accident Annie had not had the opportunity to mature as a woman, to experiment sexually, to make mistakes, errors of judgement, to indulge in all the youthful follies that people normally did on their journey through the turbulent years that led from one’s late teens to one’s mid-twenties.

Now it seemed that she preferred the fantasy of her dream lover rather than dating a real live man, that she was stubbornly determined to believe in fate rather than reality.

‘You do think I’m being silly, don’t you?’ Annie accused Helena flatly as she saw the hesitation in her friend’s eyes.

‘Not silly,’ Helena corrected quietly. ‘But perhaps…’ She stopped speaking, and then smiled ruefully at Annie before asking her gently, ‘Has it occurred to you that this man may have been so familiar to you simply because he is familiar?’

‘From my dreams, you mean?’ Annie checked, nonplussed.

‘No. Not from your dreams,’ Helena stopped, and then said quietly, ‘Annie, he may have been familiar to you because you do actually know him.’

‘Know him?’ Annie looked perplexed. ‘No, that’s impossible.’

Helena waited before reminding her softly, ‘There are still some gaps in your memory, my dear. The weeks leading up to the accident as well as the event itself, and those weeks after, when you were in a coma.’

‘Yes, I know.’ Annie’s forehead creased in a small frown of distress. ‘But I couldn’t have known him…not the way I feel about him…the way we are…If I had he would have…’ She stopped, shaking her head. ‘No. It isn’t possible,’ she told Helena immediately and positively. ‘I would have known if he…If I…If we…No,’ she reaffirmed.

‘Well, I must admit it does seem unlikely,’ Helena acknowledged slowly. ‘But I felt I ought to mention the possibility to you.’

‘I understand,’ Annie assured her, giving her a warm hug. ‘But if he had known me he would have come forward when you advertised, wouldn’t he? And besides…’ A small secret smile curled her mouth, her eyes suddenly glowing with private happiness. ‘I know that if he…if we…’ She stopped and shook her head again. ‘No. I would have known,’ she told Helena calmly. ‘I’m sorry I gave you such a shock by fainting like that last night,’ she added more prosaically. ‘I think it must have been the effect of seeing him so unexpectedly on top of the champagne.’

‘Well, it was a very emotional evening,’ Helena responded.

‘You’ve been so good to me,’ Annie told her, lovingly reaching out to cover the older woman’s hands with her own.

‘Everything I’ve given to you you’ve given me back a thousandfold, Annie,’ Helena told her lovingly. ‘And you are going to give Bob and me our grandchildren,’ Helena teased her, deliberately lightening the atmosphere before giving a small exclamation. ‘Heavens! Bob! I promised I’d help him with our packing for this conference we’re flying out to attend tomorrow. Never mind,’ she added with a naughty grin. ‘He’s so much better at it than I am!’

Annie laughed. ‘Four days in Rio de Janeiro…How wonderful.’

‘Not as wonderful as you’d think,’ Helena countered ruefully. ‘The conference goes on for three days, and when you’ve taken time out for recovering from jet lag and for being dragged all over the place by Bob to see the local ruins…’

‘Stop complaining,’ Annie teased. ‘You know you love it. When the three of us went to Rome last year I was the one who had to go back to the hotel for a rest!’

‘Yes, that was wonderful, wasn’t it?’ Helena agreed, getting up off the bed as she told Annie tenderly, ‘Don’t rush to get up. You might feel fine but your body’s still in shock.’

‘It was just a faint, Helena, that’s all,’ Annie assured her friend, but she wasn’t totally surprised when, later in the day, Helena insisted on driving her to the hospital so that she could be checked over.

‘Mothers!’ the junior house doctor wisecracked after he had given Annie the all-clear. ‘They do love to fuss.’

‘Don’t they just?’ Annie said with a grin, then blushed a little at the admiring looks the young man was giving her.

CHAPTER THREE

‘NOW, you’re sure you’re feeling all right?’ Helena checked as Annie dropped her and Bob off at the airport.

‘I’m fine. Stop fussing,’ Annie told her with a good-natured smile as she hugged them both and kissed them goodbye. ‘And to prove it I’m going to go home and make a start on that gardening I’ve been threatening to do for months.’

The garden of her small house was long and narrow, and enclosed at the back by a high brick wall which ensured her privacy but gave the garden a rather closed-in feel.

For Christmas, amongst the other gifts they had given her, Bob and Helena had given her a gardening book with some wonderful ideas plus a very generous gift voucher for a local garden centre, and Annie, who had been studying the book intently, had now come up with her own design for the garden based on the principles in the book.

The first thing she needed, she had decided, was some pretty coloured trellising to place against the walls, and so, after she had watched Bob and Helena’s plane take off, she headed back to her car and drove towards the garden centre.

Several happy and productive hours later Annie climbed back into her car again. She had chosen and ordered her trellising, and made arrangements for it to be delivered, as well as getting from the man in charge of the fencing department the telephone number of someone who would come out and fix it in place for her.

As she started her car engine Annie was humming happily to herself. It was a bright sunny day, a brisk breeze sending fluffy white clouds scudding across the sky, and on impulse, instead of taking the direct route back to her own home, Annie opted instead to head towards the river.

The prettily wooded countryside on the outskirts of the town was criss-crossed with narrow country lanes, confusingly so at times—especially when one descended down through the trees and lost sight of the river, as she had just done, Annie recognised as she came to an unmarked fork in the road and paused, not quite sure which road to take.

Instinctively she wanted to take the right-hand fork, even though logic told her the left must lead down towards the river. With a small mental shrug Annie gave in to instinct and then wondered just what she had done as the road she had chosen narrowed virtually to a single track, winding up a sharp steep hillside banked with hedges so thick and high it was impossible for her to gauge just where she was. And yet even though she knew she had never driven up it before Annie felt that the road was somehow familiar.