Past All Forgetting

When she spoke, her voice was higher than usual and oddly breathless.

‘All right,’ she said. She got up slowly, shivering a little although there was barely a hint of a breeze. The water rippled glossily as Rian swam one long, lazy stroke nearer. Her fingers, made suddenly clumsy, hesitated on the buttons of her shirt.

‘You said you’d turn your back,’ she reminded him lamely.

‘If that’s what you want.’ There was a warm persuasive note in his voice, which made her gasp as if he had caressed her. ‘Is it, lovely Janna?’

She had taken two unwary steps towards him before she realised the trap that had been set for her. Steely fingers, cold and wet, clamped round her ankle. Off balance already, she stumbled, and within a second she was flying through the air, or so it seemed, to land in the water in an undignified and painful belly-flop. She came back to the surface, winded and choking, having swallowed half the river in her astonishment.

On the bank, Rian was fastening the belt of his jeans and observing her flounderings with sardonic amusement.

‘I don’t think you’ll ever make the Olympic squad,’ he observed, judicially, pulling his dark sweater over his head. ‘But the local life-saving team might be glad of a volunteer. I’ve heard they prefer them fully dressed.’

‘You bastard!’ she screamed at him.

‘Such language from one so young,’ he said reprovingly. ‘If it’s any consolation to you, I was tempted for a while, and I’m warning you, Janna, stay in your own league from now on.’ He half turned to go. ‘And I meant what I said about keeping you warm. I don’t know how you got here, and I don’t care much. I presume you cycled, or walked, so you can get home the same way—only faster. It’s a balmy enough night. You shouldn’t even catch cold.’ He was gone.

Janna hauled herself out of the water and heard his car engine start up in the distance. Tears of rage and humiliation mingled with the drops of water on her face, as she stood dripping and bedraggled on the bank. She would never forgive him, she swore savagely to herself. And she would make him pay for this if it was the last thing she did.

She was walking round the market a few days later and had stopped to examine some remnants of material on a stall, when a hand descended on her arm and Rian’s voice close to her ear said, ‘None the worse for your ducking, I see.’

She wrenched herself forcibly free, and gave him a wrathful look.

‘No thanks to you,’ she said distinctly. ‘I might have drowned—or gone down with pneumonia.’

‘Hardly,’ he said drily. ‘I was sure somehow you’d manage to survive, Janna.’

‘Thank you.’ Her tone held bitterness. ‘I know better than to regard that as a compliment.’

He sighed. ‘Is that what you want—compliments?’

She stared down at her feet. ‘You know what I want,’ she muttered at last. ‘I want you to treat me as if I was a woman.’

‘Then stop behaving like a child,’ he said, but his voice was gentler and held a trace of laughter. ‘How old are you, Janna?’

‘I shall be seventeen in just over two weeks’ time.’ She sent him a hostile look. ‘I suppose to you I’m sixteen.’

‘Stop supposing,’ he said patiently. ‘Come and have coffee with me instead.’

‘Are you serious?’ she asked incredulously.

‘I think so.’ There was an edge to his voice. ‘It’s only a hot drink I’m offering, not an invitation to bed.’

She flushed indignantly and he gave a slight groan. ‘God help me, this was meant to be a peace move, not a resumption of hostilities. Come and have coffee, Janna.’ His thumb moved caressingly on the soft flesh of her arm, sending a pleasant tingle through her senses. He grinned at her and she thought furiously that he probably knew quite well the effect that his casual touch was having on her.

He pulled her arm through his and led her off through the market-day crowds. The town’s most popular café was situated in rooms at the rear of the baker’s shop, and they lingered to make a selection of cream cakes at the counter before continuing to the rear and finding an unoccupied corner table.

‘Well, this is pleasant.’ Rian pushed the sugar bowl towards her.

She helped herself to a spoonful, her lips compressed.

‘Please don’t patronise me,’ she said eventually.

‘Nothing was further from my thoughts,’ he returned mildly. ‘Don’t be so prickly, Janna.’

She stirred the spoon round the cup, watching the swirl of the liquid. ‘Can you blame me?’

‘Not altogether, perhaps, otherwise I shouldn’t be here.’ He reached his hand across the table and clasped hers lightly. ‘Pax, sweet witch. I can’t be your lover, but I could be your friend, if you’d let me.’

‘On the grounds that half a loaf is better than no bread at all?’ She gave him a defiant look. ‘Is it really so impossible? Funnily enough, I got the distinct impression that you fancied me.’

‘I plead guilty as charged,’ he said slowly. He released her hand and sat back in his chair. ‘Janna, you may well be counting the hours to your seventeenth birthday, but I was going through the same process ten years ago. There’s no way around that.’

‘Ten years isn’t such a tremendous gap.’

‘At this precise moment, it seems a lifetime.’ He drank some of the coffee, grimaced slightly and pushed it aside. ‘Apart from anything else, did no one ever tell you that sometimes the man prefers to make the running?’

She blushed vividly. ‘I just wanted you to notice me,’ she claimed in a low voice.

‘As if anyone with normal faculties could possibly overlook you!’ He gave her a wry look. ‘You’re a spectacular lass, Janna. If you were a few years older, you’d have to fight me off.’

‘That’s a great comfort,’ she said past the lump in her throat. ‘I think I’d better go. Thanks for the coffee.’

‘Oh, hell.’ He pushed a hand through his dark hair. ‘This is not turning out at all as I expected.’

‘Does anything ever?’ She picked up her leather shoulder bag and rose. She walked to the doorway through the clustering tables and disappeared, oblivious of the curious stares being cast in her direction from all over the room.

Janna climbed wearily off the bed and padded across the room to the window. She dragged the curtains shut with jerky movements, closing out the darkness.

She glanced restlessly around her. Her briefcase stood beside the desk in the corner. It contained her record book, among other things. She could check on her syllabus, plan her work for next half-term. Anything would be better than this constant retrospection, yet she doubted her ability to concentrate on anything more than her personal problems. Wherever she looked, Rian’s face seemed to be imprinted on her vision, dark and vengeful.

She started as the sound of the doorbell pealed through the house, and for one crazy moment, panic filled her. Then common sense came to her rescue and she told herself that it might well be visitors for her parents. But a minute or two later there was a light tap on the door and Mrs Prentiss peeped in at her.

Her brows rose a little as she saw that Janna was neither undressed nor in bed.

‘Vivien’s downstairs, dear. I told her you might be asleep …’ Her voice tailed away questioningly, and Janna forced a smile.

‘I feel much better, actually. I’ll come down.’

Vivien was waiting in the sitting room. ‘Poor old thing,’ she exclaimed sympathetically as Janna entered. ‘I didn’t know you were a migraine sufferer. How rotten! Yet I thought you looked rather peaky when you dashed off after school.’ She delved in her handbag and produced an envelope. ‘That’s why I’m here, really. What with you being out at lunch time, and then the films, Mrs Parsons didn’t get a chance to have a word with you, so she’s written you this note instead.’

‘Note?’ Janna took it, wrinkling her brow. ‘This is all very official. What is it? The sack?’

‘Hardly.’ Vivien grinned at her. ‘Of course, I was forgetting that you’d missed all the excitement at lunchtime. We’re going to have a new pupil—a little girl—and Mrs P. is putting her in your class.’

‘That’s hardly my idea of excitement,’ Janna said dryly. ‘What is she? A second Einstein?’

Vivien shrugged. ‘Who knows? Apparently she’s part Vietnamese—on her mother’s side. She has this enormously long name which means Flower of Morning—rather pretty, don’t you think?—but her father calls her Fleur.’