Stolen (12 page)

There was the Space Age party when Adam was Spock from
Star Trek
and Simon was Captain Kirk. Lotte was dressed as Princess Leia from
Star Wars
. She was in so many of the pictures, and she was sure she’d never seen all of them before: at a dinner party, riding a carousel at the fair and lying on the sofa at Simon’s flat.

‘And what about this one?’ Simon asked as he turned the page, and there she was again, this time in turquoise hot pants and a white camisole top. It looked as if she were in a night club or restaurant.

Lotte stared at it. She was very suntanned in the picture, and although she had no memory of seeing it before, all at once she remembered. It had been taken on her twentieth birthday in June 2000. She’d had a week’s holiday and the weather had been so good she spent it all lying on the beach. She could almost feel the sultry heat in the club that night, hear Ricky Martin and Christina Aguilera’s record ‘Nobody Wants to Be Lonely’. She knew she looked good, and felt anything could happen that night.

‘Well?’ Simon asked, his expression fearful, but also determined. ‘Do you remember?’

‘Yes,’ she sighed. She understood why he looked that way. That night was a major milestone in her life, but Simon was afraid that remembering it would prove too painful for her.

She remembered another song from that night, ‘Whole Again’ by Atomic Kitten. It had been ‘their’ song, and just as the events of that night had made her feel whole again, she knew she must recall everything again now to help the healing.

She could see Mark as she saw him for the very first time. Lean-faced with short-cropped dark hair, sleepy dark eyes looking right at her, deeply tanned skin that had a gloss as if he’d rubbed himself in cocoa butter. Slim and muscular in a black tee-shirt and jeans.

They smiled at each other, and then he was gone. Then suddenly he was right behind her. ‘You’re gorgeous,’ he whispered right into her ear.

Every hair on her body jumped to attention and she felt a churning sensation in her stomach which was quite different from having too much to drink.

‘I hope the memory isn’t too painful,’ Simon said, taking her hand and squeezing it. ‘But I kinda thought if we got that one out, maybe others would follow. All of us in the salon who were there that night remember it so clearly. You and that guy just moved together like you were two magnets attracted to each other. I wish I’d taken a picture of him too.’

‘I don’t need one, I can remember everything about him,’ Lotte said.

Simon went on turning pages of his albums. There were pictures taken at hair shows and exhibitions, many of the models sporting totally outrageous styles. One picture showed Lotte receiving the trophy for the best wedding style, and another coming third in the whole of the south of England for a cut she did. She remembered those evenings, the delight of knowing she was a really good hairdresser, the pleasure of hearing people’s praise, the smells of the products heavy in the air, that chatter and laughter and the underlying tension as the competitors waited to be judged. Yet after Mark none of that touched her as deeply, it was never as important again. She really only entered the competitions for the sake of the salon, not for herself.

‘You look tired now,’ Simon said later, perhaps noticing she hadn’t spoken for a while. ‘I’d better go, I’ve been here longer than I intended. Are you OK?’

‘It’s been good to look at your pictures,’ she said truthfully. ‘But I could do with a snooze before the doctor comes.’

He gathered up his things, stuffed them into the red holdall and slung it over his shoulder. ‘Bye, babe,’ he said, bending to kiss her. ‘I’m going to try and find the doctor before I go and see what he thinks about you coming to stay with Adam and me. I guess the police will be concerned about your safety, but we can make it really secure there, can’t we?’

Lotte smiled up at him, touched by his kindness and desire to get her back on her feet. ‘I’m sure we can. As long as I keep the door locked, who could get in?’

Lovely as it had been to have Simon visit, Lotte was glad to be alone again, for she could hear ‘Whole Again’ playing in her head, and she wanted to return to the memories of that night.

Mark led her out among the dancers but they didn’t really dance, just held on to each other and smiled. There were coloured lights spinning, it was too noisy to hear each other speak and people kept jostling them, but none of that mattered. His hands were on her waist, hers were on his shoulders, and they moved together like one person.

She didn’t care what he did for a job, where he lived or anything much else about him. For the first time in her life she knew what it was to want a man. And she knew just by the way he looked at her that he wanted her. That was enough.

Mark bought a bottle of Cava later and they went down on to the beach to drink it. It was a hot, sultry night with no wind and the moon cast a silver path on the sea. There were many other couples doing just the same as them, and as they sat on the shingle passing the bottle between them they could hear the noise of the town behind them. But none of this intruded on them; all they heard was the gentle sound of waves breaking on the beach.

Mark told her then that he was in the navy, home on leave for two weeks. He was twenty-four, and the street where his family lived was just a few away from her parents.

No one had ever kissed her like he did. Sensual, deep kisses that made her stomach churn and all sense of reality vanish. If he had tried to take her there on the beach surrounded by other couples, she doubted she would have stopped him. She just wanted him.

Later they went back to her flat. Fortunately Simon and Adam were out. There in her single bed they made love.

It was so hot they had no covers over them, and with the windows open wide the Saturday night sounds of Brighton – music, traffic and shouting drunks – wafted in.

She was embarrassed because he wanted her to put the condom on him and she didn’t really know how to do it, and when he penetrated her it hurt more than she’d expected. But even if it wasn’t quite as wonderful as all the petting and kissing before had been, Lotte felt she’d moved up a level in maturity.

The next morning she woke early and just lay curled up beside Mark, drinking in everything about him. He was every bit as handsome as she’d thought the previous night, even with a shadow of stubble on his chin. Such beautifully shaped lips, full and soft, turning up at the corners as if he were smiling. She liked his hair, it was cut like Tom Cruise’s in
Top Gun
, sort of floppy on the top but very short at the back and sides. He had a rather long neck and a small, straight nose, and then that hunky muscular chest with just a sprinkling of dark hair.

He woke up as she was looking at him. ‘Hello, gorgeous,’ he said sleepily. ‘I expected to find I’d dreamt you. But you are for real.’

In the ten days that followed Lotte was often tempted to play ill so she could be with Mark all day. As it was, they made love half the night, and she stumbled off to work almost asleep on her feet. Mark met her for lunch, just half an hour sitting in the sunshine holding hands, and then she had to wait all the way through till five to find him waiting for her again.

‘He is a dreamboat,’ Simon said thoughtfully, watching from the salon window as Mark crossed the road. ‘What are you going to do when he goes back to sea?’

‘Catch up on my sleep,’ she said and laughed. She had pondered that same question many times already. She knew she loved Mark even if she didn’t dare tell him so, and the thought of being without him filled her with panic. It was as though she’d only been firing on half her cylinders until he came along and made the other half work. He was on her mind from the moment she woke till she fell asleep. She could talk to him about anything – she’d even told him all about her parents one night. He’d been at primary school with Fleur, as it turned out, and though he didn’t remember much about her, as she was a couple of years ahead of him, he did know she had died and recalled his parents saying how tragic it was.

The last night before he had to go back to Plymouth, Mark told her he loved her, and promised that on his next leave he’d take her to meet his parents. ‘They are going to love you too,’ he said, holding her face cupped in his hands and looking at her as if he was trying to imprint every detail of her face on to his mind.

Their lovemaking that night was slow and tender, both of them aware that the hours left together were ticking away. That Saturday morning was a beautiful one, promising to be very hot later, and he walked with her to Kutz before going home to collect his gear and then catch the train to Plymouth.

Lotte cried as he kissed her goodbye, but he promised he would phone and write as often as he could.

‘My little Tinker Belle,’ he murmured, stroking back her hair from her face. That was his nickname for her – he said she’d sprinkled magic dust on his life. ‘We’re together for the long haul now, a few weeks apart won’t matter. You’ll be in my heart every minute of each day. We were meant for one another.’

Around ten that morning a client came into the salon and said someone had been knocked down by a truck up near the railway station. At lunchtime on the local news they reported a man had died in the road accident but said the police were withholding his name until his family had been informed.

None of this even registered with Lotte. Her mind was stuck on wondering how she’d get through the next few weeks without Mark. But as she came out of the salon with Simon at six, dragging her feet with tiredness, they both spotted a news bulletin on a stand selling the evening paper.

It read, ‘Leave ended with death for local sailor.’

Lotte blanched, her legs suddenly like jelly. ‘It can’t be him,’ Simon gasped, and he went over to the newspaper stand to read the story. But just the way his shoulders slumped as he read the front page told Lotte that it was Mark who was dead.

People said things like, ‘Well, you only knew him for such a short time.’ As if that made it hurt less! When she called on Mark’s family they looked at her oddly as if she was trying to elbow her way into their grief. Clearly to them she was just the girl he’d been knocking off during his leave. His mother even said if he hadn’t been up half the night perhaps he might not have run across the road in front of the truck. Lotte had no standing at the funeral; her flowers weren’t put on the coffin. She didn’t even know any of his naval friends who came up from Plymouth to pay their last respects.

If it hadn’t been for Simon and Adam she might have stepped in front of a truck herself. It crossed her mind many times that death by any means was preferable to living with such pain.

Lotte found herself crying as she recalled those terrible grief-filled weeks after Mark’s death. She remembered that she refused to get out of bed, to eat, bathe or talk to anyone. It was only when Simon became ill that she stirred herself to take care of him.

‘You will meet someone else one day that you can feel that way about again,’ Simon assured her. ‘You can get over it too. One day you’ll suddenly realize you haven’t thought of him for a day, a week, or even a month. It is curable.’

Lotte felt Simon was right. She didn’t know whether she’d thought about Mark constantly for all of the time since then, but remembering him now didn’t hurt the way she remembered it.

Had there been another boyfriend since? She would have to ask Dale.

Chapter Six

‘What is your problem?’ Marisa snapped at Dale. ‘The guests who come into the spa come to give themselves a treat or to make themselves feel special. They certainly don’t want to be greeted by someone sniffing and sobbing!’

‘I’m not sniffing and sobbing,’ Dale retorted.

‘Your eyes are red and puffy,’ Marisa said contemptuously. ‘It looks like you’ve been crying all night.’

Dale had been crying most of the night.

Simon had rung her as he was leaving the hospital yesterday to tell her and Scott about Lotte being attacked on Saturday and that earlier the same day a doctor had informed her she’d had a baby recently.

It turned out that all the Sunday papers had covered the story about the baby, and reports of that and the attack had been on both radio and television that morning. But no one in the spa had read any Sunday papers or heard the radio or television bulletins, so Simon had to break the dreadful news. Dale was so shocked she could barely speak. Simon’s voice kept cracking and it was clear he was in no fit state to discuss it further either.

After getting this news Dale somehow managed to give both a massage and a manicure without breaking down. But the minute the last client had gone, she fled back to the cottage. Frankie, Scott, Michelle and Rosie were all there, and the minute Dale saw them all, she burst into tears.

They were all shocked rigid by the news. Scott was every bit as upset as Dale, and he pointed out that if this man was prepared to risk everything to try to kill Lotte in a public place, it put a whole different complexion on the mystery of her having been found washed up on the beach. The question they were all asking was what could be so bad that she had to be killed for it.

‘This can’t be right,’ Dale kept repeating through her sobs. ‘No one could have so many terrible things happen to her. Where is the baby? Who was the father? Who is this man who tried to kill her? And why did he want to do that?’

Scott was almost as distraught as Dale, and Frankie tried to make them feel better by going over to the kitchen and getting them some dinner on a tray. But it wasn’t food they wanted, just answers no one could give them.

Frankie rang the hospital on their behalf to see how Lotte was. The Ward Sister said she was unhurt and recovering some memory, but advised them not to visit her for a couple of days as she needed complete rest.

Dale downed several glasses of brandy, hoping for oblivion, but instead she lay awake crying, wondering how her friend was ever going to get over this.

Then the next morning she had Marisa on her back.

‘Well, what is it about? A boyfriend dumped you?’ she asked curtly.