In Denial (13 page)

‘
But Father -’

‘
You say that once more and I will ...’ He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. ‘Now go!’

Adam slowly stood up, his eyes disbelieving. ‘I won’t defy you, Father, not now. I’ll go as you order but you won’t always be able to come between Lucinda and me. One day we’ll get married, with or without your permission.’

‘
Get out,’ Joseph said in a controlled voice, his heart thumping, his head reeling with the magnitude of what was happening.

*  *  *

‘
And did you?’ Gabrielle asked, her mind playing incomprehensible tricks.

She was living what he was telling her.

She was there.

She was in Hong Kong.

She was Lucinda, almost knew exactly what Lucinda must have been going through and she didn’t understand why she was feeling this way.

Adam nodded. ‘I left the house half an hour later. I was in a daze as I’m sure Lucinda was in a daze. We didn’t get the opportunity to speak again.’ He picked up the half-full wine glass and drained it. ‘As I walked down the driveway to the waiting taxi, I began to understand the enormity of what we’d done. Not in our eyes but in our parents’ eyes. It was going to be years later before either of us really fully appreciated the situation we’d created.’

‘
When did you next see Lucinda?’

‘
Not until we were both twenty-one, so seven years later.’ Adam paused while Gabrielle refilled his glass. ‘I was determined to make them proud of me again but I was also determined that Lucinda and I would not renege on our promises. I worked hard and did well, and after leaving boarding school I went straight to university. There was no question of taking a year out or anything like that. I -’

‘
Which university? I’m sorry to interrupt, what were you going to say?’

‘
I think I was going to answer your question.’ A flicker of a smile crossed his lips. ‘Leeds. I went to Leeds University and read Economics and History. For some reason the two seemed to go together.’

‘
And then you saw Lucinda again?’

‘
Yes. My parents - that’s how I still regarded them - came to England in 1991 and settled in south London. They bought a house in Bromley. They came to St Gerrard’s - the boarding school I was sent to in Sussex - a few times before I left but they would never answer any questions about Lucinda. Then, when I graduated from university they were there as well. I can’t fault them. They could so easily have completely disowned me. They hadn’t let me know they would be there, at the university that is, but when we were all milling around after the ceremony I just happened to look up and they were standing in front of me, my Chinese father and my Sri Lankan mother. They had come to see their son graduate. It meant so much to me.’

‘
And Lucinda?’

‘
That was the amazing thing. I’d expected they would do everything they could to keep us apart but after we had got over the awkwardness and then the hugs with which we tried to claw back so many years, they told me she was outside waiting for me. She’d been with them watching the ceremony but afterwards -’

‘
Go on.’ Gabrielle felt herself shudder.

*  *  *

Adam had never expected he would ever retell the story of his life with Lucinda and now that he was doing so, it was with mixed emotions. He wanted Gabrielle to understand but also he wanted her to appreciate that because he’d lost so much, there was no point in going on. The emptiness he felt wasn’t a vacuum that could ever be filled. It was a black hole; it swallowed all reason and it ignored the laws that governed life. At the same time he simply wanted to walk away and finish what he’d started. There was nothing left. The very fact that he was able to tell his story without showing any outward emotion was testament enough.

‘
She was on the other side of the car park sitting on a bench under some trees. As I walked towards her all the cars, the other graduates, their friends and relatives seemed to disappear. It was as though a channel had been carved through time and at the end of it she was there waiting for me.’

*  *  *

‘
Hello Adam,’ Lucinda said, lifting her hands so that he could take them in his.

Adam held her fingers and gazed into those eyes. It was seven years and she had matured into the beautiful woman she was always destined to be from the moment she was born. An image of how she had been at fourteen flashed into his mind and he saw for the first time the reality of the young girl she had been then.

In a matter of seconds he understood.

He wished they could go back and undo what they had done.

He had thought about her every minute of the day for seven years but now he could see that those seven years could have been so different. Their dreams could have been unaffected if only they had stopped and thought.

‘
Is this real?’ he asked, his voice catching. ‘Are you real?’

Tears left the corners of Lucinda’s eyes and Adam reached down to wipe them away. ‘No, don’t,’ she said, taking his hand. ‘It’s how I feel. They are tears of happiness and they have replaced the tears of sadness I’ve cried every night for such a very long time.’

Adam was only vaguely aware of a couple of families a few yards away who stopped at their cars and were watching this emotional scene being enacted in front of them. They must be wondering, he thought, why a beautiful young Asian woman in a white dress, her long jet-black hair shining in the sunlight, was openly crying as she looked up at a tall white man dressed in a dark suit and graduation gown.

‘
You have no idea how I’ve longed for this moment,’ he said.

She smiled. ‘I think I have some idea, don’t you?’

‘
Do you feel as nervous as I do?’

‘
Doubly so. I feel as though we’re strangers who’ve known each other a lifetime.’

‘
And longer.’

Lucinda ran the backs of her fingers down Adam’s cheek. ‘I can’t believe it, and yet I have no doubt about what is happening.’ She closed her eyes and smiled again. ‘I think the word for what we’re doing and saying is unfashionable but it’s still unbelievable.’

‘
There’s nothing unfashionable about where we are and who we are.’ Adam looked around them. The onlookers had gone. ‘Do our … it seems strange now having to say it, but do Mother and Father know what -’

‘
They were the ones who suggested it. They were the ones who insisted I should be here.’

‘
But -’

‘
Don’t go there, Adam. They did what they did to protect us. If they had let us carry on the way we were then all could so easily have been lost. They were trying to protect any residual innocence and in turn secure our futures whether we were to be together or not.’

*  *  *

Gabrielle was almost in tears.

‘
That was beautiful. So your mother and father had always expected you and Lucinda would eventually be together?’

Adam smiled. ‘Expected is probably more retrospective than intended. When Lucinda and I were fourteen we had committed the sin of all sins but when after seven years there was obviously no change in how either of us felt I think the acceptance was heartfelt rather than resentful.’

‘
So you got married?’ Gabrielle stopped. She hadn’t forgotten why they were here but she’d allowed her involvement to mask how Adam was feeling. With her questions she was ignoring the depths to which his emotions had fallen. ‘I’m sorry,’ she added without explanation.

‘
There’s no need,’ he said gently, gazing for a few moments at the exquisite shape of her bowed head and the cascade of golden tresses. ‘It’s late and you have a reputation to hold on to. It’s time I was going.’

‘
No!’ she shouted before she realised the implications of her outburst. ‘You can’t go. Where will you go?’

‘
Back to the hotel? I hope Doris will accept my apologies for missing dinner.’ He leant back in his chair and looked at her. ‘Gabrielle Brooks, I think you can look back on today as being a job well done. There’s one soul still on this earth who wouldn’t be here if you had not become involved.’ The chair scraped on the stone floor. ‘Yes, consider it a job well done.’

Adam could hear what he was saying but was wondering why he was saying it. Gabrielle’s patience, understanding and above all tolerance had guaranteed his existence for more than just a day or two. He had to admit that by asking the right questions at the right time she had given him food for thought. There was a glimmer of hope because the will to go on, which had not been there before, was now beginning to grow in his mind. He had lost everything, or so he thought. Was there now a chink of light at the end of the bleakest and darkest of tunnels where previously there had just been blackness?

The police admitted they hadn’t a single clue. There appeared to be a total lack of motivation for anyone to take his family from him in the most gruesome way imaginable.

But now, armed with a new incentive, he believed he might be able to find what the police had not found. By talking with Gabrielle Brooks the seeds were sown.

He knew where he would start but knew not where it would end.

*  *  *

Adam spent one more night in The Colcorran Arms.

In the morning and under Doris’s watchful eyes, he got into the Lexus and drove away out of her life and, more regretfully, out of Gabrielle’s too.

On returning late to the hotel that night he had thought he was alone. He assumed that Gabrielle had phoned ahead because Doris appeared from the unlit bar and was watching him from the bottom of the stairs as he let himself in with the keys she had given Gabrielle in case he needed them. He could see in her eyes what she wanted to say but accepted it was unlikely she would say it.

He decided to speak first. ‘Thank you,’ he said, closing the door softly. ‘You know what for.’

Doris continued to stare at him, her arms folded across her chest. She was in her dressing gown and Adam smiled inwardly as he noticed her pink slippers with three little blue wool baubles dangling from them.

‘
A bit o’ human kindness and understanding costs nothing, Mr Harrison.’

‘
It definitely doesn’t, Doris. I’ll be leaving in the morning. I think the money I gave you covered tonight and breakfast in the morning.’

‘
Indeed it did, Mr Harrison, and more. But under the circumstances money is of little consequence.’

Adam took a step further down the hall but Doris continued to bar the way to the stairs.

‘
She’s quite a lady,’ he said.

‘
That’ll be the vicar you’re talking about?’

‘
Indeed I am, Doris.’

‘
She’s more than that, Mr Harrison, but too few people appreciate the goodness that beats in that young lassie’s heart.’

Adam nodded. ‘I think we are two of those that do.’

‘
You’re right there.’ Doris moved away from the stairs. She’d watched and listened and now she seemed happy. ‘You’ll be driving back south in the morning?’

Adam almost smiled. ‘Yes, Doris, I’ll be driving back south.’

*  *  *

He wondered how much more Gabrielle told Doris in the few minutes it took him to drive the short distance from the vicarage to the hotel. She and Doris had shared a confidence before he knew Gabrielle existed and therefore he didn’t regard as gossip whatever had passed between the two women; it had been too serious for that. His life had been at stake and between them they had felt the need to do something about it. As Doris had said, ‘A bit o’ human kindness and understanding costs nothing, Mr Harrison.’

After he’d made preparations to leave the vicarage, Gabrielle apologised for her outburst. ‘I’m so sorry for reacting the way I did,’ she said, moving with him across the large kitchen. ‘It’s just that -’

Adam interrupted her. ‘I’ve left you with only half a story, is that what you were going to say?’

‘
It’s not exactly a story. You’re not part of a narrative. You’re a living human being and -’

Adam held Gabrielle’s hands in his. ‘As I said just now, you set out to achieve something today and you achieved it. I’m still here and believe it or not I’m more than grateful. You’ve opened my eyes to a few things that were being masked by my own self-pity. I know it sounds as though I’m downgrading what you’ve done, but under the circumstances the fact that I’m still here is proof.’

Gabrielle was fighting the tears she could feel building up in her eyes. She wanted to ask him why she felt the way she did, but could not. It was neither appropriate nor warranted. Yes, she’d achieved what he said but in just a few short hours he had taken over her world. The thought of him walking out now was more than she could bear.