His Frozen Heart

by Georgia Le Carre

  ‘Dr. Kane, why are you so angry with me?’

  His head jerked toward me, his eyes wild, his mouth twisted. I stared speechless at the expression in his face. It was almost a snarl, but I couldn’t quite tell what it expressed. I suppose it was similar to touching something and for a fraction of a second being unable to tell whether it was very hot or very cold. I could not tell if he was furiously annoyed or something else. And then the fraction of a second passed and I saw it for what it was. It was a raging desire. So strong he could barely hold it in check.

  I opened my mouth to speak and nothing came out.

  ‘Oh, hello,’ a plummy voice trilled close by.

  I couldn’t tear my eyes away from his, but he broke the connection and turned toward the voice.

  Cookie. Talk about bad timing. Reluctantly, I turned to face her. A terribly smart woman was standing next to us. My gaze ran quickly over her: attractive face, a shining pageboy bob and trim, horse-rider body clad in a divinely tailored gray and red dress. She was beaming at me, but oh dear, there was not one thing about her I recognized. I sighed inwardly. Oh well, it was going to be a long night.

  ‘Don’t you look super!’ she exclaimed, before turning her eyes back to Dr. Kane, the merest hint of a smile, like a delicious scandal, playing on her lips. ‘I’ll say, you’re a quick worker. Who on earth is this? You’d better introduce us.’

  I introduced them unenthusiastically.

  ‘How lovely to meet you,’ Dr. Kane said politely, offering his hand. His eyes once again returned to one-way mirrors.

  ‘How do you do?’ Cookie replied with a breathless laugh. I watched her hand disappear into his large one and remain there, only releasing seconds before they slipped into impropriety. Oh my God, she was flirting with him… Little two-faced bitch.

  The ferocity of the thought shocked and horrified me. It was like an ice pick straight into my heart. I dropped my eyes so they would not see how madly jealous I was.

  Of course, she invited him to join us, but to my immense relief, he declined her offer. I could not possibly have sat and watched her flirt with him for another minute. Bidding us goodnight, he went to his dinner.

  As we walked to our booth, Cookie turned to me with bright eyes. ‘Sorry to barge in on your tender scene.’

  ‘There was nothing to barge in on,’ I denied.

  She gave me a guarded look. ‘That’s all right then. Still, he is rather dishy for an NOCD.’

  ‘NOCD?’ I asked, puzzled.

  She gave me a funny look as if she had just realized that it was going to be a difficult night. ‘Not Our Class, Darling,’ she explained with a patronizing smile.

  Chapter 11

  Olibis

  I woke up early the next morning and lay on my bed. My mobile phone was blinking. I picked it up—a message from Ivana.

  Hello, darling. Should I send Watson to pick you up today?

  I put the phone back on the bedside and listened. The flat was very silent and still. And it was warm. It was never warm at Marlborough Hall. I stretched luxuriously. It was nice to be back at my own flat. Since being discharged from hospital this was the first time I had spent a night here and I realized that it was probably the best sleep I had had since I could remember. No dreams. No nightmares.

  I curled up into the warmth of my sheets and thought about the night before. It was the first time I had gone out on my own. No Daddy, no Ivana, and not even the driver to babysit me. I just called a taxi and went out on my own. It had felt good. And while out I had bumped into Dr. Kane. I hugged the pillow tightly thinking about that look Cookie had interrupted.

  Of course, the rest of the night had disintegrated into intolerable boredom, but still nothing could take the glow away from my unexpected brush with Dr. Kane. Cookie spent the whole night talking about people I could not remember and hadn’t the least clue about. Every time I shook my head and confessed that I did not remember someone, which was all night, she would raise her voice significantly, as if I was not suffering from amnesia but was stone deaf. ‘Oh, but you must remember Pip or Bobo or...’

  ‘I don’t remember any of it. I’m sorry,’ I said when we parted.

  Cookie made a moue with her mouth. ‘Think nothing of it. It’ll all come back, I’m sure.’ And then we parted without agreeing to ever see each other again.

  I rolled out of bed and went into the bathroom. I stood in front of the looking glass. My hair was disheveled. I ran my fingers through it and replayed a very special secret: Dr. Kane telling me I have beautiful hair. I never considered my hair beautiful. It was so flyaway that if I did not use half a can of hairspray or tie it back in a ponytail it was always in my face. But he thought it looked like spun gold.

  And later he had stared at my mouth. I looked at my mouth, still swollen from sleep, and suddenly I was no longer standing in my bathroom, but somewhere else. Somewhere I did not recognize. It was not like an old photograph, flat, leached of color and fading, but crystal clear, vibrant and real.

  I was back in the past—I was remembering!

  I saw myself sitting in a plush, red velvet and gilt Louis the XIV armchair, naked but for a pair of shiny black stiletto boots. My hair was long and worn differently and I was wearing false eyelashes. The vision hung in front of me shimmering like a lost city, but so real I could almost reach out and touch it. My heart was racing in my chest. I had remembered a little piece from the past, but it was another piece of the jigsaw.

  And then the thought: How could it happen that I was sitting on a red velvet chair naked but for a pair of boots? I ran from the bathroom to my wardrobe to where all my shoes were kept. Some were still in boxes and I opened them all in a rush. But they were just normal shoes, the kind I usually wore. There were no shiny black stiletto boots. I sat back on my heels, confused. Was it really a memory or a figment of my imagination? But it was so real. Had I become confused with the hypnosis? I knelt in front of the open wardrobe. I felt numb and empty. The image of me naked on the red and gilt chair floated into my mind. It was a different me. In a different room. But it was me.

  I didn’t want to give it up. It was mine. I was ready for my past to return.

  I wanted to call Dr. Kane and tell him about the vision, but it was a Saturday and his offices would be closed. Perhaps it was a good thing. I remembered Ivana warning me to be on guard for false memories.

  Was it a false memory? False.

  I stood up and ran to my make-up drawer. I rifled feverishly through the neatly ordered cosmetics in there. I knew it was there. It had to be. And I froze. I found it: a shiver looking for a spine to run up.

  A pair of 100% mink false eyelashes.

  I opened the purple velour box, ran my thumb along the feathery edge, and I knew. The name of this version was Girl You Crazy and I had worn these before. When I was sitting on the red velvet chair. The memory was not false. It was real. What happened to the shiny boots?

  I closed my eyes and tried to force the vision back, but the curtain had tumbled down. All the solidity, sound, taste and smell were gone from the vision. It had become just another memory in my head. I felt strangely bereft and a tear rolled down my face. It burned like acid. Beneath the calm and the resignation I was still vanquished and raw. I swallowed hard. I shouldn’t cry. Ivana would be so disappointed if she knew that I was indulging in self-pity and hysteria on my first day away from my family.

  I remembered the neurosurgeon saying, ‘It’s all still there. It’s not a question of storage, simply one of access. With time… It could come back. Perhaps not all. Most. At least some.’

  I wiped my tears away with my hands. Then I went to use the bathroom. After I was dressed I opened the fridge and smiled. Ivana had had it stocked with everything I could possibly want. Milk, orange juice, eggs, bacon, thick slices of good ham, homemade pancakes, bottles of Oxford marmalade and jams bursting with chunky berries. I sat down to a bowl of cereal. I chewed slowly and…relished my solitary state.

  After I p
ut away my breakfast things I phoned Ivana. She sounded anxious to have me back in Marlborough Hall. But I was enjoying my sense of freedom after having been in an almost child-like state. It was a nice change from my father treating me as if I was a mental patient that required kid gloves, and my stepbrother and half-sister giving me pitying looks when they thought I wasn’t looking.

  ‘I’m fine,’ I reassured her, but she made me promise to be home by Wednesday.

  After the call I put the phone down and wandered around the flat. I looked in cupboards, touched clothes, books and things that I had acquired and had no memory of. I opened a drawer and found cards—birthday cards from family and friends. An hour passed. I tried to imagine what I did in this flat before the accident and I could not imagine it. Daddy said I did some PR work for the company. But obviously it can’t have been an important job as my absence was not being noticed.

  And all that time I kept thinking of Dr. Kane and that look that had passed between us. For those few seconds I had not felt cold and numb. I’d felt alive. I knew I had not imagined it. Last night he wanted me as much as I wanted him. The clock in the living room chimed. It was nearly time for lunch. Outside it was a fairly decent day and I decided a walk in the brisk air would do me good. So I dressed warmly and left my flat.

  By the time I turned into New Bond Street the weather changed somewhat. Dark rain clouds were hovering above. I passed the designer boutiques where Ivana took me shopping when I first got out of hospital. She had impeccable taste and I was so lost and numb I totally left it to her to choose all my clothes and even my perfume. But now that I felt more like my own person I wanted different things.

  It was only after I turned left onto Burlington Street and continued down Vigo Street that I consciously realized where I had been going all along. I was on Regent Street when it started to rain. Huge fat drops that fell on my bent head, shoulders, breasts and hands. For a moment I did nothing, just felt them. The coldness.

  And then I raised my face up to the drops and let them break on my skin. I opened my mouth and they rained down on my tongue and ran down my throat. I began to laugh. It was the laugh of a mad woman. People who were hurrying under umbrellas turned to stare at me.

  I became drenched very quickly. My clothes stuck to me and I shivered with cold as I walked down Shaftesbury Avenue and turned into Rupert Street. Not far to go now. I walked up to the door of Number 34 and rang the bell. Please be in, I prayed.

  ‘Yes?’ His voice came through the speaker muffled but recognizable.

  ‘It’s Olivia,’ I replied.

  There was a shocked pause, then the buzzer sounded. The door to his flat was yanked open and he stood framed in the doorway looking down at me. He was wearing a gray T-shirt and faded blue jeans that clung to his hips. His eyes widened when he saw me. I swiped my hand down my hair. Rivulets of water ran down my body. I clenched my teeth to stop them from chattering and walked up the stairs toward him. I knew I must have looked like a drowned rat.

  An expression crossed his face. It could have been anger, frustration or even just plain irritation. ‘Come in,’ he said and quickly pulled me into his apartment.

  Instinctively I tried to snuggle into the wonderful heat of his sturdy form. But he closed the door and letting go of my hand took a step away from me. It was a rejection, pure and simple. But I knew I had not dreamed last night.

  ‘Get out of those and I’ll stick them in the dryer. You can have a hot shower in the bathroom. Come, I’ll show you where it is.’

  He was turning away when my chilled, sluggish muscles reached out and touched his arm. He spun around so quickly it was as if I had burned him. I looked up at him, startled. ‘Wait,’ I blurted through numb lips.

  Our eyes locked.

  Like a man in a daze he reached out and his long pianist’s fingers traced my jaw gently and caressed my cheek. As if he did not quite believe I was real. I turned my cheek toward the life-giving warmth of his palm.

  ‘Olivia—’ He stopped abruptly.

  I shivered.

  ‘You shouldn’t even be here,’ he muttered, shaking his head.

  ‘Why not?’ I asked.

  ‘Have your shower and then you have to leave.’

  ‘Why do I have to leave?’ I insisted.

  ‘I can’t.’ He turned away and walked up to a window and stood staring out into the driving rain. His back was rigid with tension.

  ‘Dr. Kane?’

  ‘Have your shower, Olivia. Second door on your right,’ he said coldly, without turning around. He did not even want to look at me.

  For a few moments there was silence. Then I walked up to him and touched his back. He whirled around, his jaw clenched tight.

  ‘Please—’ His voice was tortured.

  ‘I want you.’

  The gold went from his eyes. They glowed like wet amber. Wild, ancient, and powerful. Suddenly, as if it was too much to resist, his hand reached out and grabbed a handful of hair from the back of my head. My mouth went dry. I swayed toward him. I could smell him. Soap. Alcohol. At this time of the afternoon? And something else. The smells of his day? Impossible to tell. Intriguing nevertheless.

  The other hand, rough with urgency, curled around my waist. Hot, solid and possessive. His lips traveled downwards. It must have been only a second but it seemed to take ages. Breathlessly I waited for his lips to find mine. I felt him inhale before our lips touched. And then all hell broke loose and I lost all sense of time or place.

  The brutal warmth of his mouth was incredible. All that was cold and lost inside me went up in flames like kindling on a dry night. I laced my fingers through the lushness of his thick hair and moaned. His tongue was fire. Irresistible. A madness that swept along my lower lip. When he bit the edge of my bottom lip hard enough for me to gasp with a mixture of pain and pleasure, his tongue snaked into my open mouth, muscular, cocky, and tasting indescribably delicious.

  A rush of heat flared between my legs. I stood on tiptoes like a child reaching for a treat on a high shelf, and sucked the hot and silky flesh like it was toffee. I could have sucked him forever. The greed that flashed inside me was as shocking as the impatience that poured out of me.

  I was starving for him.

  My hands moved of their own volition. Sure, they were very sure. They knew exactly what they were doing. They had done this before. Definitely. With whom I had no idea. But definitely my hands knew what they were doing.

  They moved to his belt and unfastened it with an expertise that I could never have expected. His zipper slid down the way it was designed to do. My palm was rubbing his bulging erection through cloth. I felt the massive head of his cock jutting out over the waistband of his underwear. My fingers hooked into the top of his briefs.

  Abruptly and with a grunt of dismay he pulled away from my restless hands. Holding me firmly by my upper arms he took a long step back. His eyes were glazed. ‘This is fucked up,’ he growled harshly. ‘I can’t do this. It’s wrong.’

  The magic shattered. My heart started to ache. ‘I don’t care if it is wrong,’ I cried desperately.

  ‘I do. I could damage you, Olivia,’ he said harshly.

  ‘So damage me,’ I challenged.

  He looked at me with anguished eyes. He had vowed to abstain… But how he wanted me. He took another step away and I saw something haunted in his eyes. A raw, bare look. Unbearable hurt. The kind of hurt you never recover from. I recognized it because I had seen the same look in the mirror. All broken pieces and jagged edges. Of a lost soul.

  ‘No,’ he said, his voice coarse with lust. ‘It’s too complicated. You don’t understand.’

  ‘I’m not an animal or a suspect to be observed and monitored from afar,’ I shouted.

  ‘Don’t you think I know that?’ he spat at me.

  ‘Fuck me then,’ I cried.

  At the tone of my voice he changed. As if I had slapped him. As if I had made him remember where he was and what he had been about to do. How close he ha
d come to doing something he would regret. He zipped his jeans. ‘You’re soaked through. We need to get you into a hot shower,’ he said in a brisk, businesslike tone.

  It was a rejection. He was rejecting me. I started to shiver, my teeth suddenly chattering.

  ‘Come on,’ he said, taking my arm. He took me to his bathroom, where he switched on the shower, and undressed me. I saw his eyes skim over my scars. When I was naked he stood me under the hot spray. The heat was good. I stopped shivering and looked at him through the water running down my eyes. He stared back wordlessly.

  ‘I’m going to leave you now,’ he said through clenched teeth. ‘There’s a bathrobe behind the door. Use it.’

  I listened to his footfalls leave the tiled floor and the door closed. I stood in the steam and the heat for a long time, my silent tears mingling with the water. I felt so empty. So lost. I had offered myself to him and he had turned me down. And then I remembered the look in his eyes when they skimmed my scars, and I had to put my palms against the tiles to support my suddenly weak knees.

  God! I’ve been blind. So blind.

  Chapter 12

  Marlow

  Hearse was playing in the background—bittersweet, gutterfolk songs. Fireworks came on and the twanging sound of an electric guitar filled the air. A man’s voice sang, ‘Gonna be here all night’.

  She stood at the door wrapped up in my bathrobe. She had rolled the sleeves up, but it was way too big for her and it trailed on the floor. Her skin was red, her eyes swollen. We stared at each other. She moved her arm and I glimpsed a curve of pale soft skin.

  She was naked under my robe! Music swirled around us. Lust raged inside me. That’s what one taste of an obsession does. It makes you a savage. What did she know? Coming here and telling me to go on and damage her. I wanted to open her up and fuck her until she screamed for mercy in that touch-me-not voice of hers. My breath came heavily. Get a grip. My fists clenched. This couldn’t be about me.