Dark Obsession

by Valerie Marsh

  He stared at her astounded, and exclaimed, 'Oh—! That I never thought of! Sorry, darling, but I didn't know they still existed east of Birmingham.'

  'It doesn't matter,' she repeated. 'I don't suppose Grant believes they do either, and he's not likely to tell my aunt and uncle back home.'

  He continued to stare at her helplessly for a while, then glanced at his watch. 'Hell, I shall have to go! Keep in touch, eh?'

  'And you.' She smiled. 'Invite me to the wedding.'

  He winced, and still hesitating, reached over to clasp one of her hands. 'Are you sure you don't want me to fetch him back?'

  'No.' She shook her head. 'It's a long story, but if I could move any faster than a moderate crawl you'd have seen me start running the moment he came through that door.'

  'Women!' Seth said in bewilderment. 'Oh well, take care, darling.'

  There wasn't much else anyone could do in hospital, Fran reflected. Each visiting time she watched the doors, tense with that uneasy mixture of hope and dread, but Grant never came again.

  When she got home, Sacha fussed over her and friends called, and once Christmas was over she began to apply for jobs. She found she wasn't as lacking in qualifications as she had feared. One thing she did know inside out was make-up and how to apply it, and she got a job in a large department store, demonstrating and selling one of the more up-market brands. The pay wasn't brilliant, but it was steady nine till five-thirty work and she got paid at the end of the week, which was something. The haphazard rewards of modelling had always worried her.

  She didn't need to live on a perpetual diet either. She lost the exaggerated slenderness required for the camera and decided she liked herself better with a more rounded figure. The scales would have gathered dust if it hadn't been for Sacha's agonised weight watching. The winter parties were in full swing, and Fran heard her wails of despair as she pored over her calorie chart one day.

  'Avocados!' she screamed. 'Fran, have you seen what avocados are!'

  'Don't lie to yourself,' Fran said tolerantly. 'You knew perfectly well how much they were when you were eating them.'

  Sacha grimaced. 'After ten o'clock at night I lose all my will-power.'

  'Indeed,' Fran returned in dry tones.

  Sacha threw a cushion at her. 'That isn't what I meant! Come to this party with me tonight and preserve me from the peanuts. They're criminally high on the chart.'

  'Take up self-hypnosis. You count down from ten to nought, then picture yourself three stones heavier and repeat monotonously, "I must not touch the peanuts".'

  'Oh, do come,' Sacha coaxed. 'Everyone would be thrilled. They all keep asking about you, and there could even be some interesting men there.'

  'I'm off men at the moment,' Fran said with a faint smile.

  Sacha preserved a tactful silence and she guessed Seth had told her about Grant. She hadn't asked him to keep it to himself and he probably meant well. She had half-expected to hear from him after that revealing kiss, but there hadn't been a word from him either. Possibly just as well. Libby had first claim on him.

  She realised Sacha was regarding her enquiringly, and said, 'No, honestly, I just don't feel like a party.'

  'Darling, you're becoming an absolute recluse,' Sacha protested. 'It isn't good for you.'

  'You can't be a recluse when you're surrounded by people for the entire day,' Fran pointed out reasonably. 'Do get ready and go out, Sacha. All In ask is that if you bring any of them back with you, you keep the music down after one o'clock.'

  Sacha admitted defeat and went out later looking exotic and weird, her black hair scraped back so tightly she looked as though she had been scalped, and three brilliant red ostrich feathers stuck into the knot on the back of her head. Her red silk top was scandalously low cut, and Fran surveyed her dispassionately and observed, 'You'll probably get raped.'

  Sacha grimaced. 'No chance—Richard's taking me. You haven't met him yet. He's the most utter wimp, but he's filthy rich and he does have this fabulous car.'

  Fran laughed, and when she had left, flipped through the records and tapes for something to break the silence. Sacha's taste in music was as way-out as her clothes, and Fran seldom got round to buying anything for herself. She could never remember what they were called, and she baulked at the idea of humming them to the assistant in front of an interested queue as Sacha did quite happily.

  She dusted the cigarette ash out of the grooves of a Simon and Garfunkel record, then sorted a paperback from the pile leaning against the wall. Her aunt, she knew, would have been shocked to the core of her methodical soul if she could have seen the flat. Fran preferred more order herself, but she paid only a token contribution towards the astronomical rent. Sacha earned more in a month than she did all year, and she had a generous allowance from her parents besides. All the furniture was hers as well, so it was left how she liked it. She had a large poster proclaiming 'Chaos is Comfortable', on the back of the door. Fran retaliated with one she made herself, saying, 'Squalor is the sign of a disordered mind!' but Sacha only screamed with laughter.

  She settled in the corner of the settee with the book, but after half an hour the print began to blur and she laid it down. On the whole she felt reasonably well, but she wasn't a hundred per cent yet and she still tended to tire easily. When the bell rang she started, not sure whether she had actually been to sleep or not, and got up reluctantly to answer it.

  It was Grant.

  The sight of him jolted through her like an electric shock and she stood there frozen as his initial surprise gave way to conjecture. Finally, he said almost gently, 'Aren't you going to let me in, Fran?'

  After a second of indecision she slid the chain free, her fingers fumbling. She was crazy but she couldn't bring herself to slam the door in his face.

  He walked in behind her, his eyes straying round the room and taking in her coffee cup and her paperback lying pages down on the arm of the settee. Obviously she was alone, and equally obviously she must be staying here. In her half-stupor when she opened the door she had forgotten she was supposed to be living with Seth. Grant had been expecting to find Sacha.

  With a supreme effort of control she made her voice toneless and asked, 'What have you come for?'

  'Believe it or not, your address.'

  Facing him squarely, she said, 'Why?'

  'So I could see you. Why else would I want it?' He paused, examining her. 'You appear to be living here. Didn't it work out with Bernstein?'

  Oh God, what did she say to that? Stalling, she told him, 'I don't think that's a question I want to answer. And it isn't really anything to do with you, is it Grant?'

  Still studying her, he didn't reply at first, then he said, 'Perhaps—perhaps not.'

  Wondering if he was being deliberately enigmatic she stared back at him, searching his face as frankly as he had done hers. Irrelevantly she thought she had never noticed the keen intelligence behind those light eyes before. Probably because at fourteen she had been too concerned with the more obvious physical aspects, though she was more deeply disturbed by him than ever.

  She tightened her stomach muscles, fighting the sensation, and drew a steadying breath. 'What do you want?'

  'Ah, that's another difficult question,' Grant said reflectively. 'I don't think the time has come for it yet.'

  He took his coat off without being asked and looked for somewhere to put it. Ashamed of the state of the room, Fran held her hand out for it. She took it through to her bedroom and on the way back went into the kitchen to put the kettle on. Her hands were trembling so much that she rattled the cups when she was putting them down, and grains of coffee spilled from the spoon and scattered across the table. She watched them form dark brown pools in the water Sacha had slopped on to the table top.

  God, it was humiliating that Grant could reduce her to this state. Humiliating and stupid, because she actually knew so little about him that she would have to ask how he liked his coffee.

  Angrily she wiped the ta
ble clean and threw the dishcloth back into the sink, then stood a moment longer trying to calm herself before she went back into the lounge.

  Grant had his back to her studying their one and only picture. It was another of Sacha's acquisitions; an original oil painting which she had paid a fortune for, and totally incomprehensible to Fran, who liked to have some inkling of what a picture was meant to be about.

  Grant hadn't heard her, so for a moment she could watch him unobserved, her eyes hungrily following the lines of his shoulders and back under the thin, stretched material of his black sweater. As though sensing her presence, he turned suddenly and indicated the painting.

  'Yours?'

  She shook her head, thinking he knew as little of her as she did of him. 'My taste is for the less esoteric. I go for moonlit seascapes and anything that reminds me of a Constable.' He gave her a faint, unrevealing smile, and she said, 'Do you like your coffee any special way?'

  'Fairly strong and without sugar. Otherwise I'm not fussy.'

  She gave it him black and he punctiliously remained standing while she cleared a chair of Sacha's jumble and sat down. Then, he demanded abruptly, 'Is it finished between you and Bernstein?'

  'Why are you asking?'

  His flash of impatience was quickly hidden but his eyes were steely with purpose when he raised them again. His voice level, he said, 'It was a straight question. Do I get an answer?'

  'That depends.'

  He raised his brows in enquiry, and she said deliberately, 'How is Julia?'

  Instantly his face closed, an impenetrable barrier coming down between her and his thoughts. After a second of hesitation he said curtly, 'She's fine.'

  Turning, he picked up his cup, and Fran said flatly, 'You do feel some sense of guilt, then.'

  His head jerked round in a swift movement. 'Yes! But since you couldn't possibly know the cause, what am I meant to infer from that?'

  Taken aback by the question and the harshness of his tone, Fran found herself stammering. 'I… I should have thought it was obvious. After all, she is your wife, and…'

  'Ex-wife!' he interrupted in the same harsh voice.

  For a moment everything whirled round her, the shock was so sudden and extreme. She saw him through a haze, his words repeating themselves endlessly in her petrified brain, then his face came into focus again, and still stupefied, she whispered, 'I didn't know… I had no idea. When…? Why…?'

  'She left me,' he said, his face unreadable now. 'Three years ago. Didn't your aunt ever tell you?'

  Still whispering, she said, 'No.'

  To her eternal shame she had hardly ever been back the last few years, and then only for flying visits. And any reference to Grant she had cut off so sharply that her aunt and uncle had ceased to mention him. Probably his divorce had been reported at the time but she had missed it, and there had been nothing since to cause her to wonder. For a celebrity, Grant managed to keep a remarkably low profile in his private life.

  She looked up and met his grim stare. Incredibly hardening his voice, he demanded, 'Do you really think I should be here if I was still married?'

  Reading condemnation for herself, she retorted, 'How should I know? One can't form judgments of that sort at fourteen!'

  As she uttered the words she felt heat rise up in her, a sweat of embarrassment filming her temples at the thought of the memories they must evoke for him as well as for her. She could see now the expression on his face as he realised her action had been no accident, but conscious, sexual provocation. Whether she would have taken fright if she had succeeded in her aim she didn't know, and it scarcely mattered now. It was Grant who had needed protection from her, not the other way round.

  There was no possibility that he might regard it as a trivial incident to be lightly forgotten. She had put the fear of God into him with her adolescent passion— forced him to leave his home and the horses and dogs he loved to escape from her. He had been twenty-eight and fully alive to the danger she represented to him. Spurned passion could change without warning to a hatred just as violent in girls of that age. There were countless cases of their fantasies forming the basis for accusations which had ruined men before now. Even when their victims were proved innocent some of the mud would always stick, leaving that lingering doubt which was never completely forgotten.

  Oh yes, Grant would remember, as clearly, if not more so, than she did.

  She tensed as realisation hit her. Of course he remembered! What else but that memory could have brought him here tonight? She was adult now, not a danger but a promise if that overwhelming physical attraction he held for her had survived the passage of time.

  And it had. The knowledge shamed her so that she could hardly bear his eyes on her, hardly bear to look at him in her turn.

  He was watching her, whatever thoughts her sharp reply had given rise to hidden behind his impassive expression.

  'Let's start again from the beginning,' he said evenly. 'Now we've established that I have single status again, can I repeat the question? Is it over between you and Bernstein?'

  In a quandary she wondered how much to tell him. It was unthinkable to admit that even though she believed him to be married she had been so terrified by her own inability to resist him that the whole thing had been an arranged fiction. In the end she took the simplest course and said, 'It's finished.'

  'Completely?'

  She nodded, and without inflection he said, 'The man's in love with you.'

  'Perhaps.'

  'Poor devil,' he commented grimly.

  Her reply had sounded callous she knew, but there was no explanation she could give without betraying herself. She hadn't known how Seth felt about her. Looking back now she realised there had been signs, but to her it had been nothing but a business partnership that had developed into friendship. They often sat in his office drinking coffee and talking until late in the evening, but when he took her home and tried to kiss her, she'd turned his advances lightly aside. She'd merely thought that he couldn't help trying it on with any attractive girl, and she hadn't wanted their relationship complicated.

  When she looked back at Grant his expression was still grim, and with a glance at her yellow jeans he said abruptly, 'Go and put something else on and I'll take you for a meal. It will have to be somewhere that will let me in without a tie, so don't dress up too much.'

  Uncertainly, she said, 'I've already eaten. I had something when I got in.'

  'We'll go for a drink then.'

  His tone was uncompromising, and she saw a sudden gleam of humour in the light eyes. 'If you imagine you can trust yourself to me alone here, Fran, I feel bound to tell you you're mistaken.'

  Taken aback by his bluntness she flushed, then felt a wild excitement surge through her. Hurriedly, she said, 'I'll go and change,' annoyance mixing with the excitement as his laughter followed her.

  His dark blue Daimler was parked a little way down the street. As she got in she remarked, 'Quite a change from the Range Rover,' and immediately felt her face colour because it was a reminder of the past again, and of that day neither of them would ever forget. With a kind of despair she reflected that the intervening years might never have been. She still quivered at his nearness, as eager for his touch as that reckless, inviting fourteen-year-old had been.

  She wondered what would have happened if Grant hadn't insisted on coming out, and knew she didn't really want to go with him to some hotel or pub where they would be restrained by company. She shied away from what she really wanted, refusing to allow herself the thought, and saw Grant turn his head quickly to look at her. His hand was still on the ignition key and she knew he was as aware of her and what she was feeling as she was of him. She sensed indecision in him for a moment then he switched on the engine and she sighed with an odd mixture of relief and disappointment.

  He took her to a wine bar, picking it at random, and they sat at a dimly lit table in a corner and shared a carafe of white wine. It was noisy so that they had to sit close togeth
er to hear each other speak, and she asked him about his writing because it seemed the safest topic.

  Eyes narrowed in a smile under the thick lashes, he said, 'It's a broad subject. Which particular aspect do you want to know about?'

  She shrugged, suddenly feeling hot in her winter-weight cape. 'I don't know, really. I suppose it's just that it's hard for me to think of you as a writer.' She couldn't avoid their mutual background forever so she took the plunge. 'I always think of you in connection with horses and dogs and talk of wheat crops.'

  He nodded, still smiling. 'What happened to the little chestnut mare?'

  'My uncle had to have her put down. She got rheumatism badly.'

  'And there's only one of the three Jack Russells left. She's an old dog now.'

  'Which one?'

  'Ruff, the runt of the litter. She outlived them all.' For a moment he stared down into his glass, his face withdrawn. 'We're all nine years older. A lot has changed.'

  'Particularly for you. Country gentleman to famous playwright.' Driven to utter the words in spite of an inner warning, she said, 'And you've been married in between as well.'

  It was the nearest she dared get to a direct question. She had phrased it so that he could ignore it if he wished, but he chose not to. Raising his eyes from the glass, he said, 'You're out of bounds, Fran.'

  'I'm sorry,' she muttered. 'I'm being inquisitive.'

  He shook his head, leaning back. 'No, that's the wrong word. It implies nosiness and I know it wasn't that.' He paused, turned inward on his own thoughts for a while, then said in a level voice, 'It would be unfair—insulting—to Julia to discuss the reason for the divorce with you, except to say that she was completely innocent. The fault was mine and I deeply regret it, but unfortunately it was one of those things that is impossible to resolve, so…'

  He raised his shoulders and Fran said quickly, 'Subject closed. It was appallingly bad mannered of me to bring it up.'