by Roz Fayrer
‘You never would have done that,’ Adam replied with a fierceness that seemed to give them both strength.
‘I believe that now. But not then. And then when I lost the baby, I thought it was my fault. That somehow my thoughts and fears had caused it.’
‘It was never your fault. It was just a horrible thing that happened to you. To us.’
‘I know. Thank you Adam,’ she said pulling back in his embrace. She settled her forehead against his own, and finally Adam felt a small measure of calm within his chest.
‘For doing that for me. I needed to hear it, but… you? It’s something else for you, isn’t it?’
And just like that the calm turned back in on itself and a tendril of fear wound tightly in his gut.
‘Talia,’ he said, the warning in his tone clear.
‘Can you tell me about Laura?’
Adam jerked back from her embrace and cursed.
‘You don’t know when to stop, do you?’ he demanded.
Chapter Six
Adam stalked past her into the room and was halfway to the door when Talia’s voice stopped him in his tracks.
‘I have one night Adam. One night, before flying back to Dominic, and on to a meeting with the Demarche Group. So if we’re going to lay the past to rest, if we’re really going to do this, it all comes out. Here and now.’
Adam’s heart thudded in his chest, painfully, like a caged tiger waiting to escape. It was so tempting. So ridiculously tempting. To lay it all out, in all its horrible glory.
‘How much do you know?’ he asked her.
Again, she cocked her head to one side. ‘Not much. Lucca said that it was your story to tell.’
‘Bloody Lucca Chatsfield,’ he said, his hand going to the back of his neck, kneading the ache he felt there. ‘Her sister works here. Jessie Loe, Executive Assistant to Lucilla Chatsfield. I didn’t know that when I first came here. All I knew was that Lucca was offering the Penthouse suite for a song. I might not even have met her if they hadn’t had to move me to make room for their father for a couple of weeks. I’d fired off an email to Lucilla demanding to know why, and got Jessie’s email response and a bloody hamper.
‘But I needed to make sure it was her. Laura had told me about her twin sister, but I was not prepared. Not prepared for that same face, smiling, and I was expecting this look of recognition. I,’ he said laughing at himself, ‘I was looking for it. Looking to be flayed alive with guilt and pain from the same eyes that Laura had. But Jessie had no idea who I was. I wanted to talk to her. Wanted to find the words to tell her about her sister.
‘But then I messed it all up and now she thinks I’m some kind of secret admirer,’ he said, sitting down heavily in the chair in the corner of the room.
‘Let me guess, you fell back on the Brightman charm?’ Talia asked, taking a seat on the bed, curling her legs beneath her.
Adam smiled ruefully and nodded. Talia had always known him too well.
‘Please tell me you didn’t send her flowers,’ she asked, and rolled her eyes at him when he nodded in response. ‘Oh for God’s sake. You can’t do that, you’ll kill the poor girl when she knows the truth.’
He blanched at her words, fear and guilt clawing its way out of his stomach and into the room around them.
The moment Talia realised her mistake, she let out a small puff of breath that reached where he sat opposite her.
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered.
‘There’s a lot of that about,’ Adam replied, trying and failing to find the right tone.
A car passed far below the balcony on the central London street, leaving a blast of base-beats in its wake. It wasn’t the same tune, not even the right decade, but it was close, too close. His mind shifted away to an earlier time. Laura’s face flashed behind his eyelids, her smile, her laugh, teasing and light in a way he didn’t think he’d ever heard since.
‘You would have liked her Tali. She was a fresh breeze on campus. So English, but so… light. Everything about her was light, easy, fun. But not in a mindless way. My father had passed away a few months before my semester started, and everything at home was heavy and horrible.’ Adam ran a hand through his hair, as if sweeping it back would get rid of the film of the past that had descended over him. But it didn’t.
Images of Laura walking through the courtyard in front of the main building at NYU, denim shorts encasing legs, a thin flowery shirt tucked in beneath a broad leather belt. Her rucksack slung over one shoulder as she turned back to clock him checking out her backside.
‘Laura loved life. She loved to laugh, exuberance didn’t even begin to cover it. She had this inner warmth that…’ he shook his head, ‘I’d never seen before. Not amongst all the debs and the socialites, the money and the parties. She wasn’t like my mother, or my father’s women. She had no questions about herself, you know? She knew who she was. She didn’t have the same heaviness dragging her down like…’
‘Like you or me?’ Talia finished.
‘Yeah.’
Adam got up from the seat, his knees clicking a little, as if to remind him of all the years that had passed between then and now. Restlessness filled his body, as he tried to fight the urge to flee from the next memories, the words that he’d never found before.
‘She was a couple of years younger than me, but she slotted in somehow to the crowd that I hung around with. They were… well, I suppose they were just like me. More money than sense, the need to escape the pressures from home and uni. Put a group together like that and they’ll try anything. They weren’t a good crowd Tali. And although I’d always sat on the edges of it, Laura jumped straight in.
‘That scene, it wasn’t for me. Mum’s drinking had, well, let’s just say, given me a healthy dislike and distrust of that oblivion. I needed control, I needed something to hang on to. But Laura, she was like a leaf that wanted the wind to blow and she didn’t care where she fell…’
Adam looked out of the windows, London lit up before them like a blanket made of multicoloured stars. In the distance a plane was crossing the city, the lights on its wings flashing, here I am.
On, off. On, off.
Just like the lights in the club that night. Only they were stronger.
‘It was some Brooklyn dive, far away from campus, far away from the moneyed security of what we knew. It had an air of danger, and damn it that appealed. It made us feel grown up. God, that sounds so young and so childish,’ Adam spat with disdain. ‘What was danger when we were invincible? Our entire lives were stretched out before us, just waiting for us to reach out and grab them. But that was for tomorrow. That night, that night was ours. Our time, to do what we wanted.’
Adam smiled at his own reflection in the glass, and turned back to Tali. ‘Do you remember the clubs from the 90s? Everything was neon, as if that colour was ever a good idea. It was a paint party. Everyone was covered in tiny droplets of glow in the dark paint, long smears where lovers had caressed, strangers had brushed up against each other.’
Flashes from the club that night stuttered through his mind with each blink of his eyes.
‘But something was off. Usually everyone would be happy, loved up in some chemically induced bubble, enough to make me stomach it without having to take anything. But this time was different. It was awkward, urgent, tense. As if everyone was so determined to have a good time. Too determined. As if that determination had somehow superseded any other feeling or desire or want. I don’t know when the determination turned into aggression, but somehow one had slipped into the other.’
I want to try it.
Laura’s words slipped into his mind, the way that she had whispered them into his ear that night.
You don’t need it, sweetheart, he’d said. No, he’d shouted it at her through the heavy base pounding around them. She’d looked at him confused, as if either she hadn’t heard him, or didn’t like his answer.
She’d just nodded, smiling, pulling at his arm. Do it with me?
; Hell no. He’d tried to tug her back, but the wet paint on her arms made her skin slick and she slipped through his hold and danced off into the crowd.
He’d gone after her, searched for her in the writhing faces of the people on the dance floor, image after image crashing down on him. Faces in ecstasy, faces contorted, jaws grinding, people determined to lose themselves, and none of them Laura. He’d felt hands on his arms as he’d passed, begging him to join them, pulling him in the wrong direction. He’d banged against a meathead, who stared him down, and fear began to spiral in his gut. He turned back. Who was he to tell Laura what to do? What right did he have to stop her from whatever she was looking for?
He’d grabbed a friend beside the bar. Told him he was getting out of there. He’d cast one last look at the crowd and there she was. Standing on the periphery, her arms spinning spirals in the air, hips swaying to the beat, as some guy was pulling her backwards into him. Her eyes were open, gazing into the world with wide-eyed wonder as if the dingy, horrible club was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen.
Adam had slipped through the crowd and managed to get hold of her.
Come on, we’re leaving.
He’d ignored the shouts from the guy who still had his arms locked around Laura’s waist.
Addy, it’s amazing. It’s the most amazing thing. You should try it.
He’d tried again, pulling at her shoulders, trying to make her look at him, but her eyes were locked on some imaginary world in her mind.
Let’s go.
No.
One simple word, but uttered with such horror and disgust, as if she couldn’t even contemplate why he’d want to leave.
Jesus, Addy. I want this. This is mine. This is ours.
She’d looked around her, including all the people around her that night in her own personal liberation, and cut him out. It was as if she’d drawn a line in the sand, one that he’d never be able to cross.
He turned his back on her and walked away, ignoring the calls of his friends, ignoring the pounding music that crushed into his head with the force of a full-scale migraine.
He’d managed to get back to the bar, the door was almost within reach, when the screaming started. Even to this day, Adam could never figure out how it had cut through the noise of the bar that night. But it had. He’d almost carried on. He’d almost walked through that door and never come back.
But it was as if he’d heard his name on her lips.
There was a wall of people between him and her. Everyone had stopped. The music poured over them and each and every one of them was stood still, eyes staring in horror at the centre point before them. Fear had gripped his entire body, locking his voice in a silent scream.
He pushed the last people out of the way and there on the floor was Laura. Her body convulsing, shaking on the floor, a trail of white froth spilling from her mouth. He dropped to his knees, shoving someone away from her body. He brushed the hair away from her face, a face that was already somehow impossibly cold. Her eyes still locked on some private, unseen world that was far beyond him.
He frantically felt for a pulse at her neck, but it was gone. Nothing. There was nothing.
Just his hand, on her neck and her lifeless body in his arms.
Adam heard the struggled intake of breath in front of him and looked up to see Talia, her dark expressive eyes wide with horror, sadness and tears. His hand was beneath her jaw, pressed against her neck and for some sick moment the past and the present collided and Adam didn’t know where he was.
He made to bring back his hand, but Talia drew hers up to hold his in place.
‘Feel it,’ she said simply. ‘Feel my pulse. I’m here. I’m alive. I’m not Laura.’
Chapter Seven
Talia was speaking into the phone. Adam could hear her low tones eaten up by the room behind him. He splashed another fistful of water over his face and stared at his reflection in the bathroom mirror.
He didn’t look any different. He didn’t know what he expected. Perhaps to see his twenty-year-old self staring back at him with impotent accusations. But it wasn’t there. His chest was heavy with grief and loss, but for the first time, some of that guilt had shifted. Not gone, but just slightly to the right of his heart.
He dried his hands on the soft cotton towel and stood on the brink of the bedroom, leaning against the doorframe. Talia had her back to him, the bedside lamp outlining the lithe shape of her body, the beautiful arc of her back, where her dress dipped low.
Her head was lowered as she spoke quietly into the phone and Adam wished for the first time that he was a painter or a photographer, something to catch this subdued beauty. He’d never forget the sight of her, for as long as he lived.
She hung the phone up and turned to him. ‘How are you feeling?’ she asked softly.
‘I was going to ask you the same thing,’ Adam replied.
She cocked her head and her long neckline was exposed again. And he remembered raining kisses down on skin that felt like silk beneath his lips. He shook his head against the memories, fisting his hands to stop himself from reaching out to her. She belonged to another now. And he didn’t want to taint her with any more sadness than he already had.
She’d kicked off her shoes at some point and for some reason the sight of her in her stockings made her look impossibly innocent.
‘I should go,’ he said. Not really meaning it, but not wanting to stay either.
‘Don’t.’
She stood on the opposite side of the bed, and Adam knew it was the equivalent of the Grand Canyon. Something to be awed and respected, but never crossed.
The knock on the door surprised them and they both jumped. Awkward laughter split the room and Talia went to open the door.
Adam saw Daniel through the crack in the door and frowned and then smiled at the bottle of top shelf whiskey in his hands. Daniel looked him over once, assessing and then nodded.
Adam stepped through to the balcony, and with half an ear listened to the whispered conversation between him and Talia.
‘…sure he’s okay?’
‘He will be.’
‘I’m glad that he had you here for him.’
‘It’s just for tonight. Will you keep an eye on him?’
Adam sighed out into the night.
‘We all have our demons Miss Tripathi, but I’ll try.’
The door closed, and the chink of glass against bottle drew closer, bringing Adam back from the balcony and into the room.
He took the bottle and the glass and poured a measure even Daniel would have been proud of, and downed it in one, this time feeling the burn all the way into his gut. Warmth spread out from there, reaching back upwards to his heart.
He looked down at the empty glass. ‘There’s only one,’ he said.
‘Only one what?’
‘Only one glass Tali.’
Her face, so usually free of expression, so usually clear, clouded and a hundred different emotions, sadness, joy and something in between passed across her face.
‘I can’t drink Adam…’
He bit back the curse that threatened to fall from his lips.
‘I’m pregnant.’
***
In the silence of the room, Adam’s pulse thundered in his ears and the whole night flashed before his eyes.
‘Please say something.’
‘Is that why you’re here? To tell me that? Today of all days?’ he demanded.
‘No. I came here for you. I want you to find the peace and happiness that I’ve found with Dominic.’
Adam looked at her for the first time that night with fresh eyes. He took her in, the whole of her, not like the way he had done earlier in the bar, not like a man looks at a woman, but like a friend looks at a friend. There was a slight softening around her middle. Not really noticeable to a stranger, but noticeable to someone who had kissed and caressed that very same place.
And somehow knowing that there was a life inside of Talia, that she wou
ld protect with the passion of a tigress, and nurture into a beautiful person, it made him feel right. It made things right, in a way they hadn’t been for a long time. But right, for her.
‘I’m happy for you Tali. I really am. But I don’t think that I can wash away the sins of the past so easily.’
‘Well, you’re certainly not going to do it with whiskey.’
‘Christ Tali, you were the one who brought the bottle!’
‘Sometimes you need old friends about you.’
‘Is that what you are Talia? An old friend?’ he said, laying the challenge between them.
‘I’m just a girl you used to know.’
***
Talia sat back on the bed, and Adam collapsed into the chair opposite her. Adam felt it, the stinging attraction between them, the warmth of skin that had once so willingly lain beneath his hands, the touch of her lips to his… and buried it. All those things belonged in the past. He felt Talia’s gaze on him, watching, careful and waiting.
‘It wasn’t your fault. Laura’s death.’
Adam grunted, incapable of any other kind of response.
‘It wasn’t. Laura was a young girl, trying to find her way in the world. Adam, you talked about her as if she were perfect, as if she were complete. No one is at that age,’ she held up a hand as if to ward off the objections already waiting behind his closed lips. ‘She may have been all the things you said, but, Adam, no one is perfect, and you have to forgive her as much as you have to forgive yourself.’
‘I don’t blame her,’ he said in horrified protest, but as soon as the words were out of his mouth, he knew they sounded false.
He’d been angry for so long, at himself, at the world, and perhaps the thing that terrified him most was that he was angry with Laura. She’d been the one right thing in his life, and she’d left him too.
‘How can I blame her?’ he asked Talia as much as himself. And he realised he wasn’t asking how, but how could he not.