The Hidden Years (2 page)

Which was surely ridiculous given the fact that she and
her mother had long ago said all that there was to say to one
another… When she herself had perhaps said too much,
revealed too much. Been hurt too much.

As she waited, her body taut, her face smooth of any
expression, even in repose there was something about her that reflected
her inherent inner turbulence: her dark red hair so vibrant with life
and energy, her strong-boned face quick and alive, the green eyes that
no one knew quite where she had inherited as changeable as the depths
of a northern lake under spring skies. The nurse glanced at her
occasionally, envying her. She herself was small and slightly plump, a
pretty girl in her way, but nowhere near in the class of the stunning
woman who sat opposite her. There was elegance in the narrowness of her
ankles and wrists, beauty that owed nothing to youth or fashion in the
shaping of her face, mystery and allure in the colour of her hair and
eyes, and something about every smallest movement of her body that drew
the eye like a magnet.

Somewhere in this huge anonymous building lay her mother,
Sage told herself, impossible though that seemed. Her mother had always
seemed almost immortal, the pivot on which so many lives turned. Even
hers, until she had finally rebelled and broken away to be her own
person. Yes, her mother had always seemed indestructible, inviolate, an
immutable part of the universe. The perfect wife, the perfect mother,
the perfect employer—the epitome of all that her own peer
group was striving so desperately to achieve. And she had achieved it
against the kind of odds her generation would never have to face. Her
mother was a woman thirty years ahead of her time, a woman who had
taken a sick man, at one time close to death, and kept him alive for
over twenty-five years. A woman who had become the mistress of a sick
house and a dying estate and had turned them both into monuments of
what could be achieved if one was single-minded and determined enough,
if one had the skill, and the vision, and the sheer dogged willpower
needed to perform such miracles.

Was this perhaps the root cause of the disaffection
between her and her mother? Not that her mother had not loved her
enough, but that she had always unknowingly been jealous and resentful
of her mother's gifts? Was she
jealous
of her
mother's achievements? Was she masking those feelings by letting
herself believe that it was her right to feel as she did…
that the guilt, the betrayal, the blame were her mother's and not her
own?

'Miss Danvers?'

Her head snapped round as the impatient male voice
addressed her. She was used to the male awareness that momentarily
overwhelmed this doctor's professionalism. It was a dubious gift, this
dark, deep vein of sexuality that seemed to draw men to her in desire
and need. Desire but not love. Something sharp and bitter moved inside
her—an old wound, but one that had never healed.

To banish it she asked crisply, 'My mother…?'

'Alive. At the moment,' he told her, anticipating her
question. He was focusing on her properly now, banishing his earlier
awareness of her; a tall, thin man who was probably only six or seven
years older than she was herself, but whose work had aged him
prematurely. A gifted, intelligent man, but one who, at the moment,
looked exhausted and impatient.

Fear smothered Sage's instinctive sympathy as she waited
for him to go on.

'Your mother was unconscious when she was brought
in—as yet we have no idea how serious her internal injuries
are.'

'No idea…' Sage showed her shock.
'But…'

'We've been far too busy simply keeping her alive to do
anything more than run the most cursory of tests. She's a very strong
woman, otherwise she'd never have survived. She's conscious at the
moment and she's asking for you. That's why I wanted to see you.
Patients, even patients as gravely injured as your mother, react very
quickly to any signs of distress or fear they pick up from their
visitors, especially when those visitors are close family.'

'My mother was asking for
me
?' Sage
queried, astonished.

'Yes!' He frowned at her. 'We had the devil of a job
tracing you…'

Her mother had asked for
her
. Sage
couldn't understand it. Why her? She would have expected her to ask for
Faye, David's wife—David's widow—or for Camilla,
David and Faye's daughter, but never for her.

'My sister-in-law—' she began, voicing her
thoughts, but the surgeon shook his head brusquely.

'We have notified her, but at this stage we have to limit
your mother's visitors. There's obviously something on her mind,
something distressing her… With a patient as gravely ill as
your mother, anything we can do to increase her chances of recovery, no
matter how small, is vitally important, which is why I must stress that
it is crucial that whatever it is your mother wants to say to you,
however unlikely or inexplicable it seems, you must try to find a way
of reassuring her. It's essential that we keep her as calm as we
possibly can.'

The look he was giving her suggested that he had severe
doubts that she would be able to do any such thing. Doubts which she
herself shared, Sage acknowledged wryly.

'If you'd like to follow me,' he said now, and, as she
followed him down the narrow, empty corridor leading off the main
reception area, Sage was amused by the way he kept a wider than
necessary physical distance between them. Was he a little intimidated
by her? He wouldn't be the first man to react to her like that. All the
nice men, the ones with whom she might have found something approaching
peace and contentment, shared this ambiguous, wary attitude towards
her. It was her looks, of course: they couldn't see beyond them, beyond
the dangerous sensuality they invoked, making them see her as a woman
who would never need their tenderness, never make allowances for their
vulnerabilities. They were wrong, though. She had far too many
vulnerabilities of her own to ever mock or make light of anyone else's.
And as for tenderness—she smiled a bitter
smile—only she knew how much and how often she had ached for
its healing balm.

'This way,' he told her. Up ahead of them were the closed
doors barring the way to the intensive care unit.

Sage shivered as he pushed open the door, an instinctive
desire to stop, to turn and run, almost halting her footsteps.
Somewhere beyond those doors lay her mother. Had she
really
asked for
her
! It seemed so out of character, so
unbelievable almost, and the shock of it had thrown her off guard,
disturbing the cool, indifferent, self-protective shield she had taken
up all those years ago when the pain of her mother's final betrayal had
destroyed her reluctant, aching love for her.

She shivered again, trying to recognise the unfamiliar
image of her mother which the surgeon had held up for her. Surely in
such extremity as her mother now suffered a person must always ask for
whoever it was they most loved, and she had known almost all her life
that for some reason her mother's love, given so freely and fiercely to
others, had never really been given to her. Duty, care,
responsibility… they had all been there, masquerading under
the guise of mother love, but Sage had learned young to distinguish
between reality and fiction and she had known then, had felt then that
insurmountable barrier that existed between them.

As she hesitated at the door, the surgeon turned
impatiently towards her.

'Are you sure she asked for me?' she whispered.

As he watched her for a moment he saw the self-confident,
sensually stunning woman reduced to the nervous, uncertain child. It
was the dangerous allure of seeing that child within such a woman that
made him say more brusquely than he otherwise might, 'There's nothing
for you to fear. Your mother's injuries are all internal.
Outwardly…'

Sage glared at him. Did he really think she was so weak,
so self-absorbed that it was fear of what she might
see
that kept her chained here outside the ward? And then her anger died as
swiftly as it had been born. It wasn't
his
fault;
what could he know of the complexities of her relationship with her
mother?
She
didn't really understand them
herself. She pushed open the door and walked into the ward. It was
small, with only four beds, and bristling with equipment.

Her mother was the ward's only occupant. She lay on one of
the high, narrow beds, surrounded by machinery.

How tiny she looked, Sage marvelled as she stared down at
her. Her once naturally fair hair, now discreetly tinted blonde, was
hidden out of sight beneath a cap; her mother's skin, so white and
pale, and so different from her own with its decidedly olive tint,
could have been the skin of a woman in her late forties, not her early
sixties, Sage reflected as she absorbed an outer awareness of the tubes
connected to her mother's body, which she deliberately held at bay as
she concentrated instead on the familiar and less frightening aspects
of her still figure.

Her breathing was laboured and difficult, but the eyes
fixed on her own hadn't changed—cool, clear, all-seeing,
all-knowing… a shade of grey which could deepen to lavender
or darken to slate depending on her mood.

She was frowning now, but it was not the quick, light
frown with which Sage was so familiar, the frown that suggested that
whoever had caused it had somehow not just failed but disappointed as
well. How many times had that frown marked the progress of her own
life, turning her heart to lead, shredding her pride, reducing her to
rebellious, helpless rage?

This frown, though, was different, deeper, darker, the
eyes that watched her full of unfamiliar shadows.

'Sage…'

Was it instinct alone that made her cover her mother's
hand with her own, that made her sit down at her side, and say as
evenly as she could, 'I'm here, Mother…'?

Mother…what a cold, distant word that was, how
devoid of warmth and feeling. As a small child she had called her
'Mummy'. David, ten years her senior, had preferred the affectionately
teasing 'Ma', but then David had been permitted so much more licence,
had been given so much more love… Stop it, she warned
herself. She wasn't here to dwell on the past. The past was over.

'It's all right,' she whispered softly. 'It's all right,
Mother. You're going to be fine…'

Just for a moment the grey eyes lightened and mocked. They
seemed to say that they knew her platitude for exactly what it was,
making Sage once more feel a child in the presence of an adult.

'Sage, there's something I want you to do…' The
words were laboured and strained. Sage had to bend closer to the bed to
catch them. 'My diaries, in my desk at Cottingdean… You must
read them… All of you…'

She stopped speaking and closed her eyes while Sage stared
at her. What on earth was her mother talking about? What diaries? Had
her mind perhaps been affected by her injuries?

She stared uncertainly at the woman in the bed, as her
mother opened her eyes and demanded fiercely, 'Promise me,
Sage… Promise me you will do as I say… Promise
me…'

Dutifully, docilely almost, Sage swallowed and whispered,
'I promise…' and then, unable to stop herself, she cried
out, 'But why me…? Why did you ask for me? Why not Faye?
She's so much closer to you…'

The grey eyes seemed to mock her again. Without her
knowing it, her fingers had curled tightly round the hand she was still
holding.

'Faye doesn't have your ruthlessness, your
discipline… Neither does she have your strength.' The voice
dropped to a faint sigh.

Beneath her fingers, Sage felt the thready pulse flicker
and falter and a fear greater than anything she had ever known, a fear
that overwhelmed anger, resentment, pain and even love poured through
her and she cried out harshly, 'Mother…no,' without really
knowing what she was crying out for.

Then she heard the light, quiet voice saying reassuringly,
'I'm here, Sage. When you read the diaries,
then
you will understand.' She closed her eyes, so obviously exhausted that
for a moment Sage thought she had actually died.

It was the surgeon's firm touch on her arm, his quiet
words of reassurance that stilled her panic.

'She wants me to read her diaries,' she told him, too
bewildered to understand her need to confide, to understand…

'Sometimes when people are closest to death they sense
what is happening to them and they dwell on certain aspects of their
lives and the lives of those around them.'

'I never even knew she kept a diary.' Sage was speaking
more to herself than him. 'I never knew… She made me
promise,' she told him inconsequentially, knowing already that it was a
promise she must keep. A promise she
had
to keep,
and yet already she was dreading doing so, dreading what she might
read… dreading perhaps confronting the truth and the pain
she thought she had long ago put behind her.

As the surgeon escorted her from the ward, she cast a
last, lingering look at her mother. 'Will she…?'

Will she die? she wanted to ask, even while she knew that
she didn't want to know the answer, that she wanted to hold on to the
hope… the belief that because her mother was alive she would
live.

She had often heard people say that there was no pain, no
guilt, no awareness of life passing too quickly more sharp-edged than
when an adult experienced the death of a parent.

Her father had died while she was a teenager, his death a
release to him and something that barely touched her life. She had been
at home then. Her father, because of his poor health, had never played
a large part in her life. He was a remote, cosseted figure on whom her
mother's whole life pivoted and yet somehow someone who was distant
from her own.