The Hidden Years (18 page)

Stephen Simmonds looked uncomfortable and shuffled his
feet, and Sage was surprised to discover how much satisfaction it gave
her to see the brunette's immaculately made-up face darken to a rather
unbecoming red.

Sage rather suspected that she was the kind of woman who
traded very heavily on her looks, using them to bludgeon those members
of her own sex who were less well-favoured into a state of insecurity
and those of the opposite sex into helpless submission.

'Well, the feasibility of the proposed new road is what we
have come here to discuss,' Stephen Simmonds interrupted quickly.
'Naturally we can understand the fears of the local residents, and, of
course, it's our job to assure them that full consideration has been
given to their situation and that the work will be undertaken with as
little disruption as possible to their lives.'

'And after it's been completed?' Sage asked drily. 'Or
don't you consider that having a six-lane motorway virtually cutting
the village in half is a disruption to people's lives? I suppose you
could always provide us with a nice concrete bridge or perhaps even a
tunnel so that one half of the village can keep in touch with the other
without having to drive from here to London and back to reach
it—'

'Don't be ridiculous! Naturally, provision will be made to
allow for normal daily traffic,' Helen Ordman interrupted acidly,
treating Sage to the sort of look that suggested that she thought she
was mentally defective.

'I think we'd better start,' Anne Henderson whispered on
Sage's left. 'People are beginning to get restless.'

Sage opened the meeting, introducing the guests and then
handing over to Anne Henderson, as she was naturally more familiar with
the committee's running of the affair. From her mother's meticulous
research and the minutes of the earlier meeting, Sage did, however,
have a very good idea of what to expect.

This one followed much the same pattern: a calm speech
from the man from the Ministry aimed at soothing people's fears and
making the construction of the road appear to be a reasonable and
unalterable course of vital importance to the continuing existence of
the country.

Anne Henderson gave a far less analytical and logical
speech against the road's construction, and it was plain from the
audience's reaction where their feelings lay.

The questions followed thick and fast, and Sage noted
cynically how carefully things were stage-managed so that Helen Ordman
always answered the questions from the men in the audience, turning the
full wattage of her charm on them, as she skilfully deflected often
very viable points with the warmth of her smile and a carefully
objective response which never quite answered the question posed.

These were early days, the first of a series of skirmishes
to be gone through before real battle was joined, Sage recognised.
Having studied her mother's flies, she was well aware of how much help
could be gained in such cases from the ability to lobby powerful
figures for support.

Was that why her mother had been in London? There had been
a time when it had been suggested that she might stand for Parliament,
but she had declined, saying that she felt she wasn't able to give
enough time to a political career. Even so, her mother had a wide
variety of contacts, some of them extremely influential.

Engrossed in her own thoughts, Sage frowned as the hall
door opened and a man walked in.

Tall, dark-haired, wearing the kind of immaculate business
suit she had rather expected to see on the man from the Ministry, he
nevertheless had an air of latent strength about him that marked him
out as someone more used to physical activity than a deskbound
lifestyle.

One could almost feel the ripple of feminine interest that
followed him, Sage recognised, knowing now why Helen Ordman had dressed
so enticingly. Not for her companion but for
this
man walking towards the stage,
this
man who had
lifted his head and looked not at Helen Ordman but at her. And looked
at her with recognition.

Daniel Cavanagh. The room started to spin wildly around
her. Sage groped for the support of the desk, gripping it with her
fingers as shock ran through her like electricity.

Daniel Cavanagh… How long was it since she had
allowed herself to think about him, to remember even that he existed?
How long was it since she had even allowed herself to whisper his name?

She felt cold with shock; she was shaking with the force
of it, the reality of the reasons for his presence immediately
overwhelmed by the churning maelstrom of memories that seeing him again
had invoked.

Memories it had taken her years to suppress, to ignore, to
deny… memories which even now had the power to make her body
move restlessly as she fought to obliterate her own culpability, to
ignore her guilt and pain— and yet after that one brief hard
look of recognition he seemed so completely oblivious to her that they
might have never met.

She heard Anne introducing him, was aware of the
low-voiced conversation passing between him and Helen Ordman and, with
it, the undercurrent of sexual possessiveness in the other woman's
voice, and bewilderingly a sharp pang of something so unexpected, so
shockingly unwanted, so ridiculously unnecessary, stirred inside her
that for a moment her whole body tensed with the implausibility of it.

Jealous…jealous of another woman's relationship
with a man she herself had never wanted, had never liked
even… a man she had used callously and selfishly in anger
and bitterness, and who had then turned those feelings, that
selfishness against her so remorselessly that her memories of him were
a part of her life she preferred to forget.

So many mistakes… her life was littered with
them— she was that kind of person—but Daniel
Cavanagh had been more than a mistake… he had been a
near-fatal error, showing a dangerous lack of judgement both of herself
and of him, a turning-point which had become the axis on which her
present life revolved.

He was taking his seat next to her, the economical
movements of his body well co-ordinated and efficient, indicative of a
man at ease with himself and with his life.

Now, without the softening influence of youth, the bones
of his face had hardened, the outline of his body matured. He was three
years older than she, which made him about thirty-seven.

A faint ripple of polite applause broke into her thoughts.
She watched him stand up and recognised almost resentfully that his
suit was hand-tailored, as no doubt were his shirts. He had always been
powerfully built, well over six feet and very broad.

She tried to concentrate on what he was saying, but could
hear only the crisp cadences of his voice, stirring echoes of another
time, another place, when he had been equally concise, equally
controlled, equally clinically detached as he had stripped her pride to
the bone, ripped her soul into shreds, destroyed the very fabric of her
being and then handed the pieces back to her with a cool politeness
which had somehow been even more demeaning than all the rest put
together.

'I pity you,' he had told her, and he had meant it. He,
more than anyone else, more than Scott even, had been responsible for
the destruction of the hot-headed, headstrong, self-absorbed girl she
had been and the creation of the cautious, careful, self-reliant woman
she had made herself become.

Perhaps she ought to be grateful to him…
Grateful… that was what he had said to her, flinging the
words at her like knives.

'I suppose you think I should be grateful…'

And then he had turned them against her, using them to
destroy her.

All these years, and she had never allowed herself to
remember, to think, cutting herself off from the past as sharply as
though she had burned a line of fire between her old life and the new.

She was still cold, desperate now to escape from the hall,
to be alone, but she couldn't escape, not yet—people were
clamouring to ask questions. Whatever Daniel Cavanagh had said, he had
stirred up a good deal of reaction.

She ought to have been listening. She ought to have been
able to forget the past, to forget that she knew him… she
ought to have been concentrating on what he was saying. That after all
was why she was here. Sage closed the meeting without being aware of
quite what she had said and the world came back into focus as Anne was
saying something about the vicar having suggested that they all went
back to the vicarage for an informal chat and a cup of tea. She shook
her head, fighting to hold on to her self-control, to appear calm.

'I'm sorry, I can't.'

'No, of course, you'll be wanting to get back…
Has there been any more news from the hospital?'

Sage shook her head again. It was beginning to ache
dreadfully, a warning that she was about to have the kind of migraine
attack she had long ago thought she had learned to control.

All she wanted to do was to shut herself away somewhere
safe and dark, somewhere where she wouldn't have to think, to pretend,
somewhere where there was no tall, dark man standing at her side making
her remember, making her feel.

She was the first to leave the hall after the meeting had
broken up, her footsteps quick and tense, her nostrils flaring slightly
as she got outside and was able to breathe in the cool fresh air.

Her Porsche was parked only yards away, but she doubted
her ability to drive it with the necessary degree of safety. Her
stomach was churning sickly, her head pounding… It wasn't
unheard of for her to actually black out during these migraine attacks.

If she had any sense she would telephone the house and ask
Jenny if someone could come and collect her, she recognised, but to do
that would mean lingering here, and inviting the possibility of having
to face Daniel.

Already she could hear his voice behind her, and the
softer, almost caressing one of his companion.

Had the woman no pride? she asked herself savagely. Didn't
she realise how obvious she was being, or didn't she care? Daniel was
not your ordinary straightforward male… Daniel knew all
there was to know about the female psyche. Daniel…

'Sage… I hear that, like me, you aren't able to
join the others at the vicarage…'

He was standing next to her—good manners, good
sense, demanded that she turn round and acknowledge him, but she
couldn't move, couldn't even turn her head, couldn't even open her
mouth to respond.

'Daniel, must you go? There's so much we need to
discuss…'

Thank goodness for predatory women, Sage thought in relief
as Helen Ordman came between them, possessively taking hold of his arm.

'Yes, I'm afraid I must. I've got a board meeting in the
morning, and a mountain of papers to read through… Sage, I
suspect that scarlet monstrosity must be yours. You always were an
advocate of conspicuous consumption… in all
things…'

He left her as he had found her, speechless and immobile,
staring after him with, as she discovered with sick chagrin, eyes that
were stupidly filmed with angry tears.

She deliberately waited until Daniel Cavanagh had driven
off, in a steel-grey vintage Aston Martin, which she knew quite well
had cost far more than her new-model Porsche, before walking away from
her own car in the direction of Cottingdean.

The house was only a couple of miles from the village, not
far at all, and a pleasant walk on such a warm spring evening. As a
teenager, before she had learned to drive, she had travelled those two
miles sometimes several times a day and thought nothing of doing so.

Then, though, she had not been wearing three-inch heels,
nor had her body been reacting as violently as though it were suffering
the most virulent form of viral flu.

What had happened to the life of which she had felt so
powerfully in control? When had that control started to disintegrate?
With her mother's accident… with the knowledge that the
strictly controlled physical and emotional involvements which were all
she allowed herself to share with the opposite sex were designed to
appease an appetite she no longer had…

The chain had begun to form long before tonight, long
before this unwanted resurgence of old memories, but she couldn't deny
that seeing Daniel Cavanagh again had formed a link in it, so strong,
so fettering that she doubted that she could break it open and slip
free and safe back to her old life.

She saw the car headlights coming towards her, and
instinctively walked off the road and on to the grass verge, only
realising when the car swept past her that it was Daniel's grey Aston.

She could hear it slowing down and stopping. Panic
splintered into sharp agony inside her. She desperately wanted to run,
to hide herself away from him… Not because she feared him as
a man… No, she well knew she had nothing sexual to fear from
him. No, it was her own memories she wanted to flee, her own pain, her
own self-condemnation.

She heard the car door open and then close, and knew that
he had seen her. If she walked away now, if she ran away
now… Pride made her stand stiffly where she was, but nothing
could make her turn to face him as he walked towards her.

'I thought you were driving back.'

'I decided I preferred to walk.'

'In high heels?'

He always had been far too observant.

'There isn't a law against it,' she told him sharply.
'Although, of course, if you get your way and you run a six-lane
motorway through here, the days of walking anywhere will be over for
all of us.'

'The motorway will run over a mile from here. You won't
even see it from Cottingdean. It won't interfere with your lives there
at all. But then you always did prefer emotionalism to logic, didn't
you, Sage?'

'What are you doing here, Daniel? You're on the wrong side
of the village for the motorway and London…'