One Minute Later

by Susan Lewis

  ‘It was an accident.’

  ‘That wouldn’t have happened if you …’

  ‘It’s the girl, isn’t it?’ Bleasdale blurted. ‘After all these years … You’ve been talking to the slut who …’

  Enraged, Vivi started forward, but Josh was faster. His fist slammed into Bleasdale’s face so hard it sent the man sprawling backwards onto the floor. Josh went to stand over him, white with loathing, his hands still clenched, and for a moment Vivi thought he was going to kick him. Instead, he hauled him up by his shirtfront and spoke savagely into his face. ‘That was from the nameless girl,’ he spat, ‘and this is from me and my father.’ He drove another blow into the side of Bleasdale’s head, and another. When he made to do it again Vivi stepped forward, needing to stop him before he went too far.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Josh panted, letting Bleasdale drop heavily to the floor and standing back. He glared down at his victim with all the repugnance it was possible for one man to muster for another. ‘Remember, there’s a witness to what just happened,’ he told him, ‘so before you try spinning this into some sort of unprovoked attack, you might want to think about the consequences of the real story coming out. There’s no legal time limit to manslaughter, and don’t rule out a murder charge …’

  ‘Josh,’ Vivi murmured softly. ‘We should go.’

  He didn’t argue, just wiped the back of his bruised and shaking hand across his mouth, and turned away from the groaning specimen on the floor.

  Had Vivi been able to drive she would have done so, but her licence had been taken away, so she returned to the passenger side of the Land Rover and buckled up as Josh sped away. He was still seething with rage, she suspected he was barely even seeing the road, and was no doubt bitterly regretting pulling back from Bleasdale when he had. She didn’t blame him, she despised the man just as much, but it had been time for them to leave. There had simply been no knowing how far Josh would go, and the last thing they needed was Bleasdale ending up in A & E. Too many questions would be asked, accusations would start flying, and the next thing they knew it would come out that he was her father and she’d rather die than have anyone know that, most of all him.

  Eventually, to her relief, Josh swerved the Land Rover off the road and drove into a deserted picnic area where he came to an abrupt stop.

  Several long moments passed as he struggled to regain control of his emotions. His face was taut and pale; his knuckles white as he gripped the wheel and stared blindly out at the glorious view of Bath. At any other time it would have captivated them; today they were barely seeing it. ‘I wanted to kill him,’ he said savagely, and she knew he meant it.

  She put a hand over his, letting him know that she understood.

  His voice was strangled when he spoke. ‘Neither of our mothers needs to know about this.’

  ‘Not yet, anyway,’ she agreed. There might come a time when it would be satisfying for them to learn that Bleasdale had been on the wrong end of Josh’s fist, but it wasn’t today.

  He took a breath, as though it might help control the turmoil of fury still roiling inside him. Then he threw open the car door and strode to the edge of the clearing, his hands over his face, his shoulders hunched against the onslaught of his grief.

  Vivi stayed where she was, understanding that the loss of his father, the whole pointless deprivation of the centre of his world, was overwhelming him. He needed these moments alone as the memories he treasured, the dreams of what might have been, the longing he’d always had for his beloved dad came vividly, painfully to life. Jack Raynor should never have died, wouldn’t have died, were it not for Charlie Bleasdale and his mindless, vindictive need for revenge. She knew now that it had all started over Jack’s refusal to let the Bleasdales hunt on Deerwood land. To teach him a lesson, Bleasdale’s sons had trespassed with their tents, inviting a showdown and getting one. The fact that Jack had humiliated them that night was an offence the Bleasdale sons had been unable to let go unpunished. Pride had to be restored, and it was for that that Jack had died.

  Thinking of her mother and the effect Bleasdale’s cruelty had had on the young girl whose name he still didn’t know, Vivi suddenly wished she’d let Josh finish what he’d started. The man deserved to be beaten to a pulp; he needed to know that he hadn’t got away with it; that nothing had been forgotten and would never be forgiven.

  She watched Josh turn his face to the sky and wondered if he was talking to his father in his mind, trying in any way he could to reach him. What would he say, and if Jack were able to answer, what words of comfort would he use?

  Slipping from the car she went to stand with him, and as they gazed out at the view, hazed by rain, he pulled her into the circle of one arm.

  Minutes passed. Everything was so still and silent around them that it was as though they were alone in the world, standing on the edge of it and trying to decide where to go next.

  In the end, he said, gruffly, ‘I should get you home.’

  Stepping round in front of him, she cupped his face in her hands and looked into his still moist eyes. ‘There’s somewhere I’d rather go,’ she told him softly.

  He regarded her curiously.

  Saying no more, she took his hand and led him back to the car.

  The sun was a golden orange orb on the bay’s horizon by the time they drove into Kesterly and turned into the leafy streets of the Garden District behind the Promenade. For much of the journey Vivi had sat with her head resting on the seat back, her eyes turned to Josh’s profile, and each time he’d glanced at her her insides had fluttered with an intense and beautiful anticipation.

  She could sense that he was calmer now, that he’d finally let go of the anger that had consumed him and was focusing on them, refusing to allow anything or anyone to come between them. Their shared understanding of what they needed to do next excluded everything else.

  He came to a stop in the parking recess of a recently renovated Victorian-style house with large bay windows either side of a porticoed front door, and two small strips of garden edging the surrounding walls.

  They took an old-fashioned cage lift to the second floor, and his expression became sardonic, even uncertain, as they emerged onto the landing. ‘I want you to know,’ he said, taking out his keys, ‘that interior design is something I admire more than practice.’

  Laughing, she waited for him to open the door, and as she stepped inside the flat the scent of him immediately assailed her, as though he was already there to welcome her. She turned to look at him, and loved how perplexed he seemed.

  The sitting room with its pale oak floorboards and whitewashed walls was bathed in a crimson sunset glow. Twin casement windows overlooked the garden square below. The kitchen was a part of the room with a small bar sectioning it off, and she guessed the door opposite to the one they’d entered through led into the bedroom. The only furniture, looking vaguely lonely in the spacious surroundings, was a large brown leather sofa, probably donated by Josh’s mother or someone else in the family, and a retro entertainment centre containing a flatscreen TV and an untidy collection of DVDs, CDs and various games, no doubt for his nieces and nephews to play when they came.

  ‘I guess you’d call it more of a crash pad than an apartment,’ he said drolly. ‘As you can see, I haven’t really got round to furnishing it yet.’

  With a playful twinkle, she said, ‘Perhaps I can help you with that.’

  Clearly liking the idea, he pulled her round to face him and long minutes ticked by as he regarded her questioningly, seeming for a moment to have lost the ability to read her – or perhaps he needed to be sure that he understood her correctly.

  ‘Do you have a bed?’ she whispered.

  Though his eyes darkened with understanding, she could tell that he was still unsure.

  ‘I want you to make love to me,’ she said huskily.

  She felt desire rush through them both as his eyes closed and his forehead dropped to hers. ‘Vivi, you know how much …’
>
  ‘Please,’ she murmured.

  ‘But what if …’

  ‘It won’t, but even if it does, I don’t want to leave this world without knowing how it feels to be with you, in every way.’

  Seeming to sense the inevitability of it, he gently lifted her into his arms and carried her into the bedroom.

  It was almost as sparingly furnished as the sitting room, just a large, unframed bed, a wardrobe and two mismatched nightstands with his guitar resting against one and a reading lamp on the other. As he laid her down on the navy-blue quilt his eyes gazed deeply into hers and she held them, touching her hands to his face and telling him without words that she was yielding herself to him completely.

  When they were undressed and in each other’s arms the feel of his skin, the hardness of his body all over hers was the most potent and transcending sensation she’d ever known. She murmured and gasped as he kissed and caressed her; and when he entered her, tenderly and powerfully, she cried out and held him, circling him with her arms and legs, moving with him as they journeyed slowly, blissfully all the way to the stars.

  Later, long after darkness had settled over the town, they drove to Bay Lane so Vivi could collect the home monitor and the medication she’d need in the morning. After being together so intimately they weren’t ready to be parted, even for a few hours. And the fact that she’d experienced no shocks, at least not yet, or even the wrong sort of breathlessness while they were making love, had been almost as great a relief to them both as the exquisite release of so much pent-up desire. She felt tired now, but was glowing inside and out. She wasn’t going to allow herself to be afraid, or to spend this precious time dreading a shock that she had no way of controlling. She’d rather tell herself that they could make love again and again, and maybe they would.

  When they got to the house her mother wasn’t at home; she’d texted earlier to say that she and Gil had been invited to Deerwood for the evening. I expect we’ll see you there, she’d said. Both families were probably wondering where they were by now, but the certainty that they’d be together would stop them from worrying.

  Because Vivi had to go everywhere with an overnight bag in case a call came from the transplant centre, she had no need to pack any clothes or toiletries, but she wanted to anyway. ‘Maybe I can stay for more than one night?’ she said playfully against his lips, while handing him the fourteen different sorts of medication that she had to take each day.

  ‘Maybe,’ Josh said, ‘we could turn my flat into our home.’

  She stood back to look at him. Did he mean what she thought …? Seeing from his expression that she’d understood him completely, she felt suddenly so emotional that she could find no words.

  ‘We don’t have to make love every night, if that’s worrying you,’ he told her.

  ‘But I want to,’ she insisted, turning her mouth to his hand as he wiped away her tears. ‘And I want to make your flat our home.’ What was the point in denying themselves? The call might never come, and if there was no new heart for her, then surely they should be spending every minute of every hour that they could together.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  VIVIENNE

  Present Day

  Jim Lynskey had gone silent again. Neither his vlog nor his blog had been updated for over a week, nor had he responded to the many messages Vivi had sent. She checked her account three or four times a day, and tried hard to think positively, but inside she couldn’t stop herself fearing the worst. She knew it made no sense to believe that she was being shown her future through him, that everything he’d experienced she was going to experience too, but she could think of no other reason for the way she’d connected with him when there were so many others who shared their need for a new heart.

  If he was back in hospital then something must have happened to put him there – another infection? A serious deterioration? A fault with his Ventricular Assist Device? Or maybe, by now, he was recovering from a life-saving transplant and would soon be ready to sit up and sing at the top of his voice. He loved music, she knew that from his vlogs, and he was passionate about football too, although of course he never played.

  Maybe he’d been invited to train with West Brom, his favourite team, and was too busy experiencing the exhilarating adrenalin rushes to his new, healthy heart to bother with his old life any more. Of course that wouldn’t be the case, the recovery period after the transplant was far too long to allow for it, but she liked to imagine it nonetheless.

  ‘Do you know how to contact his family?’ Josh asked from the kitchen, where he was taking the heavy dish of mushroom bourguignon, made by Vivi, from the oven.

  ‘I’ve found his mother and sister on Facebook,’ she replied, ‘but they’re not posting anything either. If I could private message them I’d ask how he is, but we’re not connected and I don’t feel right about just crashing in on them.’

  As the entryphone sounded, alerting them to Sam and Michelle’s arrival, Josh placed the hot dish on the hob and went to buzz them in while Vivi closed her laptop and told herself firmly that Jim was OK. He’d be back online again any day now and she’d be FaceTiming, or at least messaging him, to congratulate him on his successful transplant.

  By the time Sam and Michelle came into the flat their hosts were standing at the centre of the sitting room, ready to welcome their best friends to their very first dinner party in their new, shared home. The fact that both Sam and Michelle had helped to move Josh’s old furniture out and replace it with Vivi’s far more elegant, and in some cases whimsical, pieces, was a minor detail. They hadn’t seen the place since it was properly finished, in part because Vivi had wanted to wow them with how cosy yet glamorous it now was, but also because she’d had to spend the last few days in bed recovering from too much activity.

  Fortunately she was up again now, and her lungs were no longer struggling quite so hard to take in air, due to the reduced blood flow that had caused the problem in the first place. Best of all was that she hadn’t suffered any shocks since the night she’d run onto the beach, apart from the one that had happened at the time. Not a single one had struck her since then, which was as amazing to her as it was to everyone else, including her cardiac team. She’d fessed up to them after deciding it was probably best they knew, so they’d have a full picture should something happen further down the road. So it would seem that in spite of the strain she’d put on her heart by running like that, she hadn’t, as far as they could tell, hastened herself to the next stage of treatment: to bypass surgery for the fitting of a Ventricular Assist Device. Nor had the frequency with which she and Josh were making love, albeit gently, caused a problem yet, although she knew from her chats with the clinic that the scrutiny of her overnight readings had begun to show a few anomalies lately.

  ‘Are you concerned?’ she’d asked the cardiac physiologist, Trey, when he’d told her. She’d felt sick with nerves and fear, feeling her time with Josh shortening as if someone were pressing a delete key.

  ‘Let’s just say we’re interested,’ he’d replied tactfully, and clutching at what sounded to her like a mild concern she’d been happy to leave it at that.

  ‘This place is amazing,’ Michelle declared, throwing out her arms, then wrapping them round Vivi. ‘You’ve made it so … so … what’s the word?’ she asked Sam.

  ‘Feminine?’ he suggested.

  ‘You should see the bedroom,’ Josh muttered, though Vivi knew he loved it almost as much as she did, for the sight of him lying naked in a sea of frost-blue linens and gossamer voile, flagrantly and uncompromisingly male amongst all this femininity, was so erotic that she simply couldn’t keep her hands off him. He was nothing if not an exhibitionist, she’d discovered, and it seemed the trait was rubbing off on her, for they loved being naked together whether in bed, in the bath, or in each other’s arms.

  ‘It’s stunning,’ Michelle told her decisively. ‘Your things fit in here beautifully, and you are looking so scrumptious we might have to eat you
for dinner.’

  ‘Don’t worry, we have something much tastier,’ Vivi assured her as she hugged Sam hello, ‘but with even less meat. In fact no meat at all.’

  Catching Sam’s worried expression, Josh handed him a beer and Michelle a glass of wine as he said, ‘We’ve become reducetarians.’

  Sam blinked. ‘What’s that when it’s at home?’ he demanded.

  ‘It means we still eat meat,’ Vivi explained, ‘but a lot less of it, which is good for our health, the planet and animals. There’s a book about it. I’ll send you a link if you like.’

  ‘Yes please,’ Michelle responded.

  Sam’s alarm showed as he looked at Josh for help.

  ‘Actually, I’m on board for this one,’ Josh told him. ‘Stopping animal cruelty is my thing, you know that, and if it has positive side effects for health and the planet, why wouldn’t we do it?’

  ‘My husband’s such a Neanderthal,’ Michelle teased, rubbing Sam’s arm, ‘but don’t worry, darling, your Sunday roasts and burger barbies are safe. They’ll just be ethically sourced, the same as they’ve always been.’

  Enjoying the relief on Sam’s face, Vivi went round to the kitchen to check on things, while Josh lit candles and turned down the lights. ‘Tonight’s recipe is one of Josh’s grandmother’s,’ she informed them, ‘and all the ingredients have come from Deerwood, including the mushrooms.’

  ‘Oh, magic,’ Sam joked, rubbing his hands and making his wife and Josh groan.

  Looking up as her phone rang, Vivi was aware, as Josh went to get it, that he, like her, was daring to hope that it might be the call they were waiting for. The need to hear from the transplant centre had all but dominated their days since they’d moved in together, and they couldn’t be sure whether willing it to happen would bring it about, or was it in some way jinxing it?

  It wasn’t the centre, and she wondered whose disappointment was the greater, hers or his. The fact that every day was giving her more and more reasons to live made no difference at all to where she came on the transplant list – or to the fate that would ultimately decide whether she should die before a donor could be found. It was such a horrible thought that she could never allow herself to stay with it for long.