Damn him, Libby thought with a quite uncharacteristic viciousness. Damn him! And now it might be hours before we can reach that point again.
Keir gave her a small, rueful grin as he asked for the bill and paid, and then they walked out into the darkened street. There were fewer people about now; the steep little alley-ways leading down to the harbour had a sinister look to them and the Opera House was an eerie ruin under the mood. Neither of them spoke as they walked across to the car park; the drive back to Zurrieq was equally silent. Libby shivered and pulled her light jacket around her, feeling suddenly chilled.
They went up to the Oat and Keir switched on the two big pottery floor lamps that lit the room with a gentle glow. The picture window was dark now, a panel of black in the silvery-green walls, but Keir didn't draw the long curtains that matched the cool colouring of the room. Instead, he walked over to a bar in one corner and asked Libby what she would like to drink.
'Oh-nothing strong,' Libby said in sudden alarm she must keep a cool head, and she had already had quite a lot of wine. 'Keir-' she watched as he made the drinks and brought them across to the window '-
Keir, we've got to talk.'
'I know.' His eyes held hers as he touched glasses, then he moved away very slightly and Libby sank into a chair. Her heart was jumping painfully. Keir watched her for a moment as if trying to make up his mind about something; then, the decision apparently made, he spoke abruptly.
'Libby. You asked me earlier why I'd asked you to come out here, to Malta. I wouldn't answer you then-'
he paused again, weighing up his words while Libby waited breathlessly. '-and I'm afraid I'm not going to answer you now,' he went on devastatingly. 'Because I can't.'
'You-you can't?' Bewilderment shook her first, then anger. 'What do you mean, you can't? Did you bring me all this way to play some foul game with me, Keir? Because if you did, I can only say it's the lowest, filthiest trick I've ever heard of. What's got into you? What's twisted you? What happened between us was over two years ago, Keir-can't you forget it?' She ignored the spasm almost of agony that creased his face and went on remorselessly. 'Sally was right, I should never have come. I should have ignored that letter-torn it up and thrown it away and pretended it had never arrived. '
She paused, panting for breath. All the bewilderment of the past few days, the unanswered questions, the pain of old memories re-awakened, came together in a tight knot of anguish. The only release was to attack; but words had run out on her and all she could do was glare at him, hating him with her eyes and the rigid tension of her body.
Keir stared at her and she wanted to slap him. Was he now going to pretend he didn't understand? What the hell was all this about?
'Letter?' Keir repeated, and she sighed with exasperation. 'What letter?'
'Oh, for goodness' sake! The letter you wrote me, of course! The letter asking-begging-me to come out here. Or maybe you don't remember,' she added cuttingly. 'Maybe it's just slipped your memory that you wrote me a letter. Convenient-but not very likely to convince, Keir. Because I just happen to have brought it with me. So you can't get out of it that way.'
To her surprise, he didn't try. He just turned away, passing a hand across his forehead as if sick of the whole thing. And that makes two of us, she thought viciously, watching him as she wondered what his next trick would be. Well, whatever it was, she knew one thing for certain. Tomorrow morning, first thing, she would be at the airport for the first available flight home. She· wasn't going to stay here to be made a fool of for a moment longer than she had to.
'Look,' Keir said, speaking as if trying to make sense of the tangle himself-only that was crazy, since he'd set the whole thing up. 'You may not believe this, but the first thing I knew about you coming here was your letter. The one you wrote to me. It arrived yesterday and all you said was that you were coming and the time of your flight in. I had no idea why you were coming-no idea about anything. Except,' he added, almost too softly for her to hear, 'that I was damned glad about it.'
Libby ignored that. She gave a snort of disbelief. 'Didn't know I was coming? Oh, try something better than that, Keir! You wrote to me-I've got the letter! You can't deny it. I'd know your handwriting anywhere.
What's the point?' She jumped to her feet and ran into the bedroom, scrabbling through a drawer and returning with the sheet of paper clutched in her hand. 'Look. Look! Can you really stand there and tell me that's not your writing? Can you really deny that you wrote it? Can you?'
She pushed the sheet at Keir and stood back, trembling, while he stared at it. She couldn't help biting her lip at its crumpled state-would he guess that it was because of the times she'd read it? But it was unmistakably his, the writing firm and black across the page. He couldn't say it wasn't-could he?
At last Keir looked up. Their eyes met and she saw that pain in his again, the pain she had noticed and wondered about earlier. What had happened to him, to make him look like that-as if he were haunted?
And was it anything to do with this letter, and his strange behaviour since her arrival?
'Well?' she challenged him, unable to stand the tension any longer.
Keir shook her head slowly. He held out the sheet of paper and looked at it again.
'Well?' she bit out. 'Are you still going to deny it? Are you still going to say that you didn't write that letter?'
He shrugged, almost helplessly. Then he sighed, as if he had no alternative and said simply: 'All I can say, Libby, is that to my knowledge I didn't write this letter. I'm sorry, but that's the fact. I have no recollection at all of writing these words.'
'You-you what?' Libby struggled for words. 'You have no recollection? To your knowledge-what kind of an answer is that? Can't you even give a straight reply? Can't you say yes or no, or are you still trying to twist things, still trying to make black look white?'
He shook his head again. 'I'm not trying to twist anything, Libby. I'm not in any position to. What I've just told you is the truth-I don't have any recollection of writing this letter. Because I don't have any recollection of anything that's happened in the past two years. It's all a blank, Libby. One long, grey blank.'
CHAPTER THREE
Libby’s grey eyes clouded with bewilderment as she stared at Keir. Her slender fingers trembled slightly as she ran them through the feathers of dark hair that framed her puzzled face, and she shook her head slightly, wondering if she could possibly have heard aright.
'A blank?' she repeated. 'Ar-are you saying that you don't remember? You don't remember writing me that letter?'
'That's exactly what I'm telling you,' he said, and his deep voice was ragged. 'I don't remember a thing about it-although I quite obviously did write it, I'm not trying to deny it. And it's not only that I've forgotten-as I told you, as far as I'm concerned the past two years just haven't happened. They're a complete blank. It's as if the entire world is playing some giant confidence trick on me in telling me they've passed at all.'
Libby sank back into her chair. She felt totally lost.
Could this really be true-or was Keir himself playing a confidence trick on her? And for what reason? But no, surely that couldn't be the case. He wasn't that kind of man-was he?
'You'll have to tell me all about it,' she said at last. 'What caused it-just what can you remember? And why do you think you sent for me, if you can't remember doing it?' She looked at him again, eyes wide and smoky in her white face. 'Can I be of any help, or am I just going to make things worse by staying?'
Keir shrugged, and she could have sworn that he was as bewildered as she was herself. The skin was stretched finely against his cheekbones and over his temples, and she realised with a pang that his haunted look could be caused only by the forgotten ghosts of his own past.
'I'll tell you what I know, Libby,' he said slowly. 'It's the least I can do. And maybe you can tell me a few things that will help-though whether you stay or not will have to be your decision. You see - I don't know what broke us up.
I don't know what's been happening to you since my last memory, two years ago.' He paused, and then added with a quietness that drove a shaft of fear into Libby's heart: 'I don't know what's happened to me.'
'You-you mean there might have been other women?' Libby whispered, and he gave her a sardonic glance.
'What do you think? I'm pretty sure there have been other women-I've never been the kind of man to live like a monk, I know that. But-' he shrugged again, looking suddenly helpless '-the way I feel now, the way I felt two years ago, there's only been one woman who really mattered.' His eyes, dark as sapphires, rested on her face with a bald hunger. 'You.'
A tiny gasp escaped from between Libby's parted lips.
Keir was telling her he loved her, loved her as much as he'd loved her before the break-up of their engagement two years ago. Her heart leapt-and then chilled as she realised the warning behind his words. What had happened during the past two years? Had he fallen in love with someone else-and if so, when he regained his memory, would he still be in love with her? Or would his rediscovered love for Libby endure?
'How-how did it happen?' she asked, moistening dry lips. 'Did you have some kind of accident?' She had only a hazy idea as to how people lost their memories, but wasn't it usually the result of a knock on the head?
Keir nodded ruefully. 'A water-skiing accident, or so they tell me-I don't even remember that. I can believe it, though; from the bruises I had afterwards. Broke a couple of ribs, too, but they've mended now. All I've got are some blurred recollections of being in hospital, gradually clearing-and then the realisation that I didn't seem to have any life before that. Everything was a blank at that stage-I knew nothing at all, even my own name. It was almost like being born-I didn't even know there was any reason why I should remember anything. I could have been starting life-it might even have been the normal start to any life, for all I knew.
He paused and Libby watched him silently, her mind filled with the horror of it. It had never occurred to her that a lost memory might be quite so obliterating. In all the stories she had read, the person had known all about everyday life-she had never heard of anyone's memory being so completely and horrifyingly wiped out as this.
'Fortunately that stage didn't last long,' Keir went on. 'I suppose anyone who's been knocked out for any length of time experiences it to some degree-even the confusion as you recover from an anesthetic must be much the same. I just had it a bit worse and a bit longer. But after two or three days I knew enough to realise just what I didn't know.'
'But it did come back?' Libby whispered. 'At least you know who you are, everything about yourself.'
'Everything except the last two years,' he reminded her. 'And I've got a feeling they're important ... It didn't come back all at once. It came back in patches-a bit here, a bit there. And at the same time I was losing new bits-bits that happened after the accident. I'd do something one day and have no recollection of it the next. I guess that's what happened about your letter. Obviously, I wrote it-and I know I meant every word.
But I forgot it almost immediately. And until your letter came, saying that you were on your way, I'd no idea I would ever see you again.' His voice dropped as he said: 'It was like a bolt from the blue. I couldn't believe it. I didn't know what.to make of it. '
There was a tiny silence; then Libby asked in a low voice: 'Just what do you remember, Keir? About us?'
And found her' heart thumping unevenly as she waited
for his answer.
Keir's eyes burned into hers as he looked at her. For a moment, a long, endless moment, she wanted to throw herself into his arms, tell him that it didn't matter, none of it mattered, she was here now and they were together and could forget that past-remember only what they wanted to remember, both of them-but a new caution held her back. Once, she would have done just that. But two years had gone by since then; she was older and wiser, perhaps a little cynical. This was a situation she had never dreamed of; she must hold back, must tread very, very warily. She couldn't risk getting hurt again.
'What do I remember?" Keir said musingly. 'Oh, I remember so much every detail of those few months, as sharply as if they'd just happened. As far as I'm concerned, they have only just happened, you see!
But my last memory is of that day on the moors-the one we were talking about earlier.' He stopped, then added: 'I remember lying in the heather with you and wanting you so badly-and then there's nothing until I found myself here on Malta, in the hospital, and you no longer anywhere in my life.'
The silence was longer this time as Libby tried to assimilate all that he had told her. If it were true, she knew more of Keir's life since their break-up than he did himself. Admittedly, she knew only what she had read in gossip columns, but Keir didn't even seem to know that.
Could he really be totally unaware of all that had happened? The quarrel-the pain-the aftermath?
And the way he had spent his life since then? The books he had written-the women he had known?
And one woman in particular-the Italian countess, Pia. Could he really have forgotten her?
Feeling her way as delicately as a cat treading on unfamiliar ground, she said: 'Haven't you any idea at all? I mean, there must be people on Malta who know you, who can tell you why you're here, things like that. Doesn't that help?'
'Up to a point, it does.' Keir stood up and moved restlessly across the room to stand silhouetted against the wide window. 'I know I'm here to write a book on Malta and its history. I've got my notes and I can pick up and go on with that, although I have to go over a lot of the ground again-my notes are too sketchy in some places, where I was obviously relying on my own memory.' His mouth twisted at the phrase. 'I've got a good friend here too, who's been able to tell me quite a lot about what's happened in the blank time.' Libby felt her heart twist at those words. Surely he could only mean a woman-the exotic Pia, perhaps-and if so, her own position was going to be impossible.
But Keir went on without noticing her sudden flush. 'But being told isn't the same as actually remembering. I can accept it, believe it even-but I don't know it. It's not personal experience any more.'
He paused and she saw the frown of concentration as he tried to find words to explain. 'It's like hearing about someone else. My own emotions aren't involved-in away, I suppose I've lost them too, and that's the worst thing of all. Losing your emotions.'
And when you regain them, Libby thought. When the memory comes back-as surely it must-and those emotions with it. How would Keir feel about her then-when he recalled the quarrel that had broken them apart?
Perhaps it would be better for all concerned if she left now-got out of his life, and got him out of hers, before the worst happened.
'That's why it's so incredible that you're here,' Keir said softly, coming to stand before her, his eyes the deep blue of the night sky outside. 'And it's why those two years suddenly don't seem so important.
Because whatever's happened, it's brought us together again-given us the chance to start again.' A sudden anxiety creased his forehead and he dropped down beside her, his hands urgent on her arms as the dark eyes bored into hers. 'We can start again, can't we, Libby? There's no one else? You-' his hand slid down to her own and turned it palm downwards '-you're not married, or engaged or anything? You're still free?'
'Free?' Libby struggled to retain control. His fingers were like fire on her bare arms, his breath was warm and sweet on her cheek, and his lips were altogether too close. It couldn't happen-not this way, however much she wanted it. And she did want it, she had to admit that even in the midst of the turmoil in her mind. She wanted Keir now just as much and as badly as she'd wanted him on that summer afternoon by the chuckling river on Dartmoor ... But it mustn't happen-not now. 'Keir, wait-you can't spring all this on me and expect everything to be the same between us. We broke up, remember-?' She bit her lip. 'I mean, you know we did you must know, even if you don't actually remember. I-'
'I didn't know,' he reminded her. 'Not when I
received that letter. To me, then, we were still engaged still committed to each other.'
'But you knew afterwards,' Libby said slowly, trying to recall every word he had said since her arrival-was it only a few hours ago? 'You knew before I arrived that we'd broken up. '
'And what made you think that?' he broke in. Then he let go of her arm and brushed back his glinting gold hair with an impatient gesture. 'All right, I knew that something had gone wrong-or we'd have been married by now. And I knew that we weren’t 'don't ask me how, I just did know that. But what there was left well, I had no idea, how could I have? And when I got your letter saying you were coming-remember, I didn't know I'd written to you-well, I thought everything must be okay. I thought we must have made it up, come together again. And then you arrived-and you looked at me like I was a ghost.' Libby, staring at him, remembering his words. Don't look at me as if I’d come back from the dead.
'I kissed you, and you held back from 'me. You didn't respond. Hell, Libby, can't you imagine what I was going through? Why did you come if we hadn't made up whatever we'd quarrelled about? I couldn't understand it. And you spoke to me as if I were a stranger-when you spoke at all. Was I on holiday, was this my flat? Polite little questions that nearly drove me to breaking point.' He stood up, breathing hard, and Libby's hands crept to the arms of her chair and held them tightly. She could understand only too well how he must have felt. He must have been as bewildered as she.
'That's why I tried to talk about our engagement-I had to find out. But you stonewalled me at every point.
You just wouldn't co-operate. Until that very last moment-and then we had to be interrupted by that damned waiter.' His mouth twisted in a mirthless grin. 'I thought we were beginning to find our way back then. Were we, Libby?'
He was beside her again, and Libby felt panic stab at her breast. He mustn't touch her-it was going too fast, she needed to think. With a quick movement, she got up from the chair, slipping past Keir to the window and staring out into the darkness. A tiny pinpoint of light showed somewhere out at sea and then disappeared. She was acutely conscious of the steady thump of her heart, the roar of blood in her ears.
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