In Denial (42 page)

Leila closed her eyes. ‘And I share those feelings with you and I promise they will last for as long as we both want them to.’

‘
Forever will do,’ Adam said.

As he spoke he wondered whether his words would come back to haunt him.

*  *  *

‘
That was delicious,’ Gabrielle said as she put her knife and fork down on an empty plate.

‘
Thank you,’ Eric said. ‘I enjoy cooking but I enjoy watching people eat what I’ve cooked even more. Does that make me selfish?’

‘
Not at all. It means that you care.’

He shrugged. ‘I’ve never heard it put like that before.’

Elizabeth had said very little during the meal, in fact she had said very little since Gabrielle told her she was a minister. She ate in silence and just watched as Gabrielle and Eric talked about typhoons, expatriates in Hong Kong and some of the indiscernible changes which had occurred since 1997.

Elizabeth was aware that both Eric and Gabrielle had looked at her on any number of occasions for some sort of comment, but she was so wrapped up in her own thoughts she felt unable to enter into the inconsequence of social chit-chat. She wondered if Eric would have been as ebullient if he’d known it was a minister’s blouse he’d been trying so desperately hard to look down the front of. Elizabeth couldn’t get over the twist of fate of them going to the UK to bury their only daughter after her long battle with breast cancer, to meeting up with a young woman who looked hardly old enough to be out of university let alone be a minister of the Church

‘
I’m sorry,’ she suddenly said, and the other two looked at her. ‘I’m sorry if I’ve been a little anti-social during the meal. I’m afraid my thoughts were back in England and rather rudely I have to say that only Eric knows what I’m referring to.’

‘
I think I also know,’ Gabrielle said. ‘And I’m so sorry for your loss.’

Eric and Elizabeth stared at Gabrielle. ‘You are a very astute young woman,’ Elizabeth said, ‘and I hope you don’t feel used.’

‘
Used? Elizabeth, you have both been absolutely delightful and I definitely do not feel used. May I ask how old Jane was?’

‘
Just a few months away from her forty-eighth birthday,’ Eric said quietly, ‘with everything to live for. She had two delightful sons and a husband who doted on her. It was so sudden and so unfair.’ He looked vacantly at his wine glass. ‘So unfair,’ he repeated.

‘
The boys - Marcus is twenty-two and Paul eighteen - just wanted time to show their mother that she had done everything the right way. Those are not my words but theirs. Those are the words they spoke at their mother’s funeral just last week.’ Elizabeth’s head was also bowed. ‘You will understand, Gabrielle. You will have witnessed the grief of others.’

‘
I have, but no matter how often I witness the sorrow of others it doesn’t make it any easier.’

‘
Of course not.’ Elizabeth looked up at Eric. ‘The irony, Eric, is that our house guest is a minister also.’ She then turned back to Gabrielle. ‘The irony I speak of, my dear, is that Jane was training to be a vicar. It was a vocation she always wanted to follow once the boys were old enough.’

Eric lifted his head slowly, his eyes displaying his disbelief. ‘You are a minister, you are a priest?’

‘
I’m afraid so, Eric.’

Eric’s eyes were wide with incredulity. ‘But I -’

‘
You are a silly old man, Eric, and you have been so for many a long year,’ Elizabeth said, switching her gaze to Gabrielle and allowing the hint of a smile to cross her lips. ‘Just because she is a minister doesn’t mean to say she is not a woman first. Is that not right, Gabrielle?’

‘
I’m in Hong Kong because I’m a woman first.’

*  *  *

‘
What do you think?’ Adam said, looking up at the sky as they promenaded along the harbour wall. The sun had set but the increase in wind strength was evidence of what was coming their way. The clouds were scudding across the sky only allowing the moon to show through every now and again. Leila’s hair was almost horizontal as she clung to Adam’s arm and screwed up her eyes against the force of the wind.

‘
I think we’re in for one hell of a storm,’ Leila suggested.

The typhoon struck at just after two the following morning.

It swept in over Hong Kong Island and the whole area came to a virtual standstill. Businesses and property owners were well used to preparing for such an onslaught and where possible everybody had battened down and chosen their own way to sit out the ferocity of nature. Those who could do little to protect their flimsy shacks and their meagre possessions, prayed that on this occasion they would be spared.

Adam and Leila spent the two stormy days in the hotel. They made use of all the hotel facilities: they swam, went to the multi-gym, alternated between restaurants and bars, but most of the time they were in the room and in bed.

As Adam lay in bed listening to the wind buffeting the windows, he realised that although Leila was only yards away in the bathroom, he was missing her. Believing that fate had brought them together, he marvelled at how inextricably he was being drawn towards this woman, who had been a complete stranger only a few days earlier.

He gave up noticing people looking at them as they ate, drank, swam or exercised together. In Hong Kong, seeing a gweilo with a local woman was not unusual. But Adam detected that some of the staff in the hotel were talking about them, especially one of the under-managers in reception. At one point Adam almost went up to him to ask why he was showing so much interest in them, then sensibly decided he didn’t care what other people might think. He had long ago grown used to others stopping, staring and even pointing when he and Lucinda walked together. At first they had talked it through and there were times when a particular incident had even brought Lucinda to tears. But eventually such occurrences either diminished or they just didn’t notice them any more. After they had lived in Ashbourne for a while, Adam could always tell the visitors from the locals; the visitors were the ones who stared.

In the bathroom Leila was once again gazing at herself in the mirror.

She too could not believe what had happened. She was as hard as nails, wasn’t she? She no longer had any emotions to complicate such matters, did she? Because she could switch from pretence to reality in the blink of an eyelid … couldn’t she?

Two days ago the answer would have been a definite yes.

Now she wasn’t sure.

She reached her decision, as dangerous as it might be, over breakfast that morning: she was not going to carry out the Master’s order. She shook her head as she tried to come to terms with the absurdity of holding a glass of fruit juice to her lips and making the decision not to kill the man who was sitting opposite her, the man who was smiling at her and the man who always wanted to please her as much as she wanted to please him. It wasn’t just absurd it was totally unbelievable. But as a result of making what she believed to be the right decision she realised that she was signing her own death warrant. Even if she left Hong Kong there would be nowhere she could hide; they would find her and the Master would have his revenge. Somebody else would be assigned to Adam and they would both finish up dead. But she could never be the one to kill him. She had found the person she did not believe existed and even if it meant that they had a few weeks, months or even, if God permitted, years together then it would be better than not having any time at all.

She had never been in love before, if that’s what it was, and it was the strangest of feelings. But having found something she had never believed existed she was not going to destroy it herself.

She had seen him fighting his feelings and she’d seen him asking the same question - what was happening? When he called her after he’d been mugged Leila believed he really could be hers, regardless of what she’d been ordered to do. She was the first person he had thought of and she had gone to him. She had seen the expression on his face as she drew up in the taxi and felt him cling to her when she’d asked whether he was all right.

It had all happened so quickly.

Perhaps when two people are attracted in that way there is little doubt in either of their minds about what they have found. It was as though they had been together forever but were never given the opportunity to meet. There had been a barrier which had at last been lifted to give them both the freedom they so longed for. She could be free from the shackles that had controlled her life for over twenty years, and he would be free from the grief he had suffered. Their freedom would not last for long but at least they would have what they needed for however long.

Leila’s eyes began to water as she let her mind take her down so many unbelievable avenues. He was out there waiting for her. She would get back into bed and they would hold each other as though their very lives depended on it. Ironically, in their case that is exactly how it was. By holding each other and feeling the way they did they had signed their own death warrants.

Dabbing her eyes with a tissue, Leila took one last look in the mirror before lifting the towelling robe from the back of the door. She slipped the robe on and fastened it at the waist.

Opening the door and moving into the room, she smiled as she saw him looking at her. ‘Adam,’ she said from the doorway, ‘we have to talk.’

Gabrielle felt her bedroom physically move and saw the water in the glass by her bed tilt. It was like being on a cross-channel ferry in a heavy swell; the only difference was that they were twenty storeys from ground level. The Elliotts tried to convince her it was perfectly normal and the blocks were designed and built to withstand much worse, but it was still very frightening.

The storm raged for many hours and as the time slowly passed Gabrielle’s belief that the block of flats was going to crumble under such a force, did not lessen. Even when she saw her hosts showing little concern, it didn’t help. She had also seen Eric looking at her and smiling, but that just added to her fear. How could he be so unworried? Surely the previous storms had not been as intense as this one?

The storm also gave Gabrielle time to think. From the moment she had decided she had to find Adam Harrison and try to explain how she felt, she’d been living in a whirlwind which in many ways was far worse than the storm outside. She had known from the outset that unless she followed her instinct she would always regret it, even if her impulsive behaviour led to nothing.

Trying to explain her behaviour to her parents, the drive down to Ashbourne, her meeting with the police, Jeremy Jacobs, Annabelle Tregarthen: they all seemed so long ago and to a great extent inconsequential now. Even the tragedies of Winterbourne Kingston were ages in the past.

What was real was now.

She was in Hong Kong and she was close to achieving her aim, if she even knew what that was. She had never ached for a man before so it could not be that, but she did want to touch him and for him to touch her. They had spent hours together when they had touched, although that could have been no more than a means of communication. But maybe it had communicated more than either of them realised.

Gabrielle felt the building shudder under another sudden gust and she shuddered with it.

She wanted somebody to hold her. She wanted to feel the security of someone’s arms around her, telling her that it was all going to go away. She wanted Adam to hold her; to feel his body against her body. She wanted to feel his warmth, she wanted to feel everything they could give to each other.

Was that love?

Elizabeth had said she thought Gabrielle was in love. How could she know? And what did being in love really mean? Did being in love mean sacrifice? Did it mean putting the other person’s needs above your own? Did it mean the person you loved was your best friend, who was more important than life itself? She had gone to the other end of the earth for him and fully intended going back with him. Was that what being in love meant?

She got out of bed and walked over to the window, pulled back the curtains and looked at the wild scene below her. The rain lashed against the window and blurred the street lights. The palm trees were putting up a good fight and staying their ground but there wasn’t a soul out there, not even a car, nothing to show that there was any life besides her own.

She shuddered once again and wrapped her arms around herself.

Yes, she was in love. She had to be.

‘
Adam, where are you?’ she asked her window reflection.

*  *  *

Outside the hotel the typhoon still raged. The storm-blurred harbour was a fitting backdrop to Leila as she told her story. Once again she was kneeling on the bed, her hands in her lap. She was still wearing the bathrobe but it had fallen away from her thighs.

Sitting up in bed with a single sheet over his legs, Adam listened. She told him everything. She told him about her initiation at the age of fifteen into The 7th Dragon Triad. She told him about her life for the last twenty-two years: how on the surface she led a perfectly normal existence except she had neither husband nor boyfriend; how this normal existence was a cover for the control the 7th Dragon Triad had over her. How she wished she could go back all those years and change what she had done, because once she was in, there was only one way out.