by June Gadsby
I could hide my rising anger no longer. “Hilary, we’re three years down the line and I haven’t had so much as a telephone call from Callum, nor a letter, nor a Christmas card to remind me that he’s alive.”
“Then you’re both fools,” she shouted and jumped to her feet, frustration showing in her flushed face. “If it helps at all, Megan, Callum and I have been officially separated for two years. We’ve never lived together properly as man and wife. Callum spent most of his time touring, giving concerts around the world. For appearances sake, he used to come home to see me from time to time. He wouldn’t admit to it, but that’s what it was really. When he decided to live permanently in France we agreed to go our own separate ways. To be honest, it was a relief. He only came back to England to do a series of interviews and book signings. Anyway, I knew there was someone else in his life. There have been several casual affairs, but nothing serious. He’s a man, after all. This time it was different. It was the real thing. I suspected it was you, but I wasn’t sure until he wrote that book.”
“Oh, Hilary, please forgive me,” I got to my feet and faced her across the room. “I never wanted to be the one to hurt you. Neither of us did, but it was just…well, too big for us to handle.”
“Then you were both so terribly lucky. Why on earth did you throw it away…that chance of happiness?”
“Hilary…” I hesitated, shook my head and clamped my lips tightly shut, not sure how to answer her.
She licked her lips and looked at me steadily. There was a great sadness in her eyes, but no animosity that I could detect.
“I have only one thing to say to you, Megan. Go to him, my girl. Don’t waste any more of your life. Make him happy…the way I never could.”
Then she turned and walked slowly out of the room and out of the house. I still hadn’t moved when I listened to her footsteps crunching on the gravel and finally fading away.
Chapter Thirty-Two
I drove the little hired Citroen car at a painstakingly slow pace, meandering through the French country lanes, avoiding towns as best I could. I wasn’t used to driving on the right, but there were other reasons for my care and my low speed. One of them was a churning in the pit of my stomach warning me that it might all turn out to be a great big mistake.
My head was so full of doubts and fears and unvoiced questions I found it difficult to concentrate on the route and went wrong several times, having to stop and study the map and, with difficulty, ask directions from the odd passer-by. Most of the people I spoke to in my terrible, halting French, were farm workers in the fields. They seemed to understand me all right, but understanding their voluble, regional French accents when they replied was very often beyond me.
Repeatedly, I asked myself what I was doing going to seek out Callum after such a long silence between us. Surely, I was on a fool’s errand and we would both end up by being embarrassed and humiliated. Hilary had to be wrong. But Oh, please God, make her right. Make her right.
When I saw the sign for Labagnac my heart leapt, then sank down again into a nagging depression. What if I rolled up to find him with another woman? What if he looked at me and I saw in his face that his feelings had changed, that he had stopped loving me? Would I just smile sweetly and leave him with a cheery wave of the hand, telling him it was nice seeing him again after all these years? Or would I open my heart to him, fall on my knees before him and beg him to love me.
Like Greg had done the day I had told him I was leaving him and filing for divorce. His ‘what have I done wrong? seemed such a ridiculous question at a time when I had finally run out of patience and sympathy with his continuous falls from grace. He had tried to be a good husband, the kind I dreamed of having, for a long time. I had to give him credit where it was due. But it hadn’t lasted. Like all the times before, he drifted off course. At first on a vague, wavering line, then he descended at full tilt. Especially when I told him about the affair with Callum.
Whether Callum still wanted me or not, I knew that I had finally done the right thing. I didn’t need Greg. Maybe I never did. And, if necessary, I would learn not to need Callum.
It was early evening. The sun was bathing the village in amber gold as I drove through it, glad that the streets were deserted. No-one had seen me arrive, so if I didn’t stay, they would never know that I had been there or why.
Suddenly, my heart started fibrillating as I mounted the hill from the village and turned the corner at the top. There, before me, was Le Manoir, silhouetted against a turquoise blue sky with pink clouds and the sun just beginning to sink behind the snow-peaked mountains.
“Oh, please, please.” I murmured out loud, a prayer without words to an unknown God.
There were no lights on in the house as I approached, driving in slow-motion down the avenue of mottled plane trees towards the entrance. The door was shut; the shutters half-closed against the glare of the sun. I switched off the car’s engine and listened to the silence. Only the silence was filled with the croaking of frogs and the chirruping of crickets, and the strident notes of a blackbird. I wondered, stupidly, if it was the same blackbird that had serenaded Callum and I as we made love so long ago.
A sudden burst of muffled conversation coming from the rear of the house made me start. The voices, all of them French and none of them belonging to Callum, tailed off and drifted away on the light breeze that caught at my hair and cooled my flushed face.
I followed the path around the side of the house, turned the corner and saw him. He was standing at the edge of the pond, tall and slender, his back to me. I was reminded of the day I fell in and came out covered in mud and slime and carrying a wriggling fish in my tee-shirt. How we had laughed about that.
He didn’t hear me approach. Or if he did, he made no sign. I stood for a moment, drinking him in, reluctant to meet his gaze, because I was afraid of what I might read in his expression.
Then, almost as if I had spoken his name, he turned and saw me. He blinked once, slowly, as if he couldn’t believe his eyes. I saw him swallow with great difficulty before he could speak.
“I didn’t think you would come,” he said in a hoarse whisper and his dark eyes reflected the setting sun as they filled with unshed tears. “Oh, my darling girl!”
He held out his arms and I flew into them. As our mouths found one another we laughed and cried together. There were so many things I wanted to say to him, but nothing was more important than this moment.
I took his hand, kissed the long, slender fingers. “Have you any idea just how much I have loved you since the first time we met?”
“I think I knew, but I brushed it aside for too long. Far too long.” His voice was thick and unsteady.
“And Greg? He knows about us? How did he react to all this?”
“He was shocked, of course. Furious that I should give myself to any other man…”
I saw Callum’s eyebrows rise and knew what was going through his mind. “Oh, what a fool that man is.” Callum gave me a tight squeeze and placed a tender kiss on the top of my head. “Oh, God, Megan, have we both been fools, or is it just me?”
“Both of us,” I replied, stroking my fingers down his cheek as he pulled me tightly into his embrace. “But not anymore. And we have the rest of our lives to make up for it.”
His fingers stroked my flushed cheek, then he kissed me again with such gentle passion that a lump rose in my throat and tears filled my eyes, but they were tears of pure joy and he kissed them away. His arms held me tightly against him and it was as if we had become one and nothing would ever tear us apart.
- The End –
June Gadsby books published by Books We Love
When Tomorrow Comes
To the Ends of the Earth
Glory Girls
A Touch of Magic
The Rose Carousel
Voices of the Morning
The Ironmaster
The Real Thing
The Jealous Land
This Affair
June Gadsby, a
uthor of multi-genre novels – historic, romantic suspense, wartime thrillers.
A miner’s grand-daughter, child of a broken marriage from the north-east of England, June stunned everybody when, at the age of eight she announced that she was going to be an ‘author’, rather than the artist they all thought she would rather be.
June had three passions that got her through those early years and they remain her passions even now. Writing, art and books. She never gave up hope of being a published novelist, despite repeated warnings that that she would never make it. Writing and painting were, they said, nice little hobbies, but unsociable pursuits that would get her nowhere.
Undaunted, June kept the painting as a hobby [though she sold quite a lot of paintings along the way] and kept writing, story after story, book after book, submitted them, got the proverbial rejection slip, though many publishers wrote personally to say that she was, in fact, a good writer, but…
Not even a bad marriage to a mentally sick and potentially dangerous man killed her ambition to become a published author, though there were times when she thought she might not live to see the day. Bad marriage over and long, complicated relationships that led nowhere, June finally met and married her present husband, Brian, who has, during their 34-year-old marriage, given her the help and support she needed. Publication came in the shape of travel articles, short stories on local radio, an article in Writers News – and the latter prompted a literary agent to get in touch and ask if he could help. In the space of ten years June saw 23 books published and the reviews were rewardingly good.
Today, she has signed with Books We Love to publish her novels in digital and soft cover and, best of all, she is writing again and heading in the direction she has always wanted to go – psychological thrillers – but always with touches of romance and humour.
“I’m a romantic,” says June. “And, above all, my sense of humour will always keep me going, no matter what.”