by Wendy Holden
She had got down as far as Edenville church when she realised how hard it was raining. It beat on her uncovered head, funnelling down her neck. The air roared and hissed and the road, normally grey, was a black and shining river. The gargoyles on the church tower spat and gurgled on to the grass below. Nell’s hair stuck to her nose and her lips. The cool, hard water from above streamed down her face along with her hot and salty tears.
She did not care about the storm. In as much as she could welcome anything, she welcomed it. The wild, whipped heavens and the lashing rods of water echoed the wildness and anger she felt inside. All her former passionate joy now seemed as vague and indistinct as the village now looked in the rain. Misery poured down on her, soaking every corner of her soul.
She gave herself to it utterly. Two storms now raged within Nell: the horror of the recent scene with Dylan and all the pent-up emotion she had stored since the non-wedding. She realised that, far from absorbing it and continuing with her life, the humiliation she had suffered over Joey’s rejection had merely been repressed. It now exploded; part rage, part hurt, part helplessness.
There was a bench just inside the gate of the churchyard. Nell sat on its soaking seat and lifted her streaming face to the streaming heavens. The storm roared and rattled in the trees, masking her howls and weaving them into its cataclysm. She felt like a force of nature; elemental and raving, possessed of a violent power. Or perhaps a violent powerlessness, because everything she was expressing came from sheer frustration.
Slowly, her yells grew less. There was, after all, a physical limit to how long her vocal cords could maintain this volume of noise. Her fists, shining and slippery with water, ached with the force of being beaten against the bench so many times. As the storm raged itself out, the tumult in Nell’s heart subsided and she achieved, if not calmness exactly, a relieving numbness.
As the curtain of water receded, the village and the churchyard came back. Dripping on the bench, Nell looked around at the newly revealed gravestones jutting upwards like grey teeth in green and grassy gums.
One arched one in particular caught her eye. Nell pushed herself up from the bench and approached Edwina Farley’s grave. She knelt before it, as she had seen George doing on that day, so recent, which now seemed so long ago.
She envied with all her heart the woman buried below, all passion spent, all earthly trials over, dead and numb and blissfully relieved of feeling. Not for Edwina the knowledge that she must drag the burden of this day long into the future and never be able to cast it off. She had been adored all her life. She had never known what it was to be rejected. Edwina and her might have looked the same, Nell reflected, but their romantic fates could not have been more different.
She leaned her forehead, burning despite the rain, against the rough, cool stone. ‘Oh Edwina. Help me.’
Eve had driven only a small way out of Edenville when the violence of the weather forced her to stop. Even with her windscreen wipers at full blast she could not see. Rain exploded on the glass and streamed down it. It was like driving underwater.
She pulled into a bus stop and waited for the weather to abate. As the rain drummed relentlessly on the windscreen, she thought about that afternoon, and what Dylan had said to her.
Eve had been expecting resistance. It was pretty obvious that Dylan didn’t want to see her, or anyone connected with his old life. He had told her as much when she visited him after the accident, but Eve was not the sort who gave up easily and besides, she had experience of authors. They said one thing at one time and then, a few years down the line, they were saying and doing the opposite.
It wasn’t, of course, surprising that Dylan hadn’t wanted to write when she’d seen him in hospital. He was recovering from a near miss with death, and that the fire and his writing were connected in his head was obvious. But with any luck, time and distance would persuade Dylan to pick up his pen again.
Certainly, Eve hoped so. She had never met an author with so much untapped potential. All Smiles, of course, had caused a sensation, but it was the potential of Charm Itself that excited her. Dylan had not let her see even the first chapters, preferring to keep it secret until it reached completion, but from the discussions they’d had about it, she felt it was taking him in a new, unusual direction.
All Smiles had been written with passion and conviction, but his style had been that of a young man. The emotional maturity of what lay ahead was thrilling. If only he could be persuaded to write it!
But if anyone could, she could, Eve reckoned. She had, after all, discovered him. She could remember the moment so well: flicking rapidly through the first few pages of his manuscript while standing up. And then reading more slowly, feeling about her, eyes glued to the page, for a chair and sinking into it. And reading on and on until around her the office had emptied, the lights dimmed, the sky outside had darkened and the moon had risen over the brightly lit city.
It wasn’t until it had sunk below the western horizon and the sun started to peep over the eastern one that Eve had finally let the last sheet of paper in her hand slide to join the rest drifting about her feet in a white and choppy sea. Only then had she looked up at the strip lights on the ceiling, rubbing her stiff neck but unaware really of anything except the excitement inside her, the thrill that every editor craves but few ever experience; the absolute, certain knowledge of greatness.
She had reached for the phone, left a message with his agent, Julian had called back within the hour and Dylan was in her office an hour after that, blinking slightly and unshaven but keen and wildly excited.
But now, the risk was that this moment of literary history, that first stage of launching All Smiles on an unsuspecting world, was about to become history itself. Because, as Eve knew – none knew better – it was no longer enough, these days, to write one great novel. You needed a follow-up if you weren’t simply to ebb in the backwash of the endless cresting waves of new writers. She had to transmit this knowledge to Dylan, who needed to understand it and to act on it. And until recently, she hadn’t even known where Dylan was.
Eve had never expected that, after leaving hospital, her star writer would disappear completely. She had imagined he would stay with his parents for a while, then drift back to London eventually. But Dylan had just vanished off the face of the earth.
Even his mother had no idea where he was. He never called, she said, although he did send postcards. ‘Postcards from where?’ Eve had demanded immediately. What was the postmark? This had been the first clue, non-specific though it was. A Midlands regional post office covered a pretty wide area.
But then a postcard had come showing a place called Edenville and Eve had wondered if that was a clue. On a hunch, she had gone there. The obvious place to enquire was the pub. And then yesterday, outside it, she had met Nell Simpson, who had proved the final link in the chain.
With what excited exhilaration she had headed up the hill to Bess’s Tower! Eve had never seriously doubted that Dylan would want to return to writing. It wasn’t just the money. Every author had an ego and wanted an audience. Surely Dylan was now missing the adulation that had been part and parcel of his status as leading-edge Young British Novelist?
The track through the woods had seemed like something from a fairy tale; quiet and sun-dappled with glimpses of enchanted glades between the straight trunks of birch and pine. She decided to park the car at the edge of the track and walk the last stretch. The tower itself had taken her breath away. Impatient though she was to see Dylan, Eve had had to stop and admire it. It had struck her as a supremely poetic spot; the perfect place for a writer. Light of heart, full of excited confidence, she had climbed the shallow stone steps and knocked on the door.
She heard the sound of descending footsteps, then the door had opened. Eve had expected Dylan to look surprised, but not horrified.
‘What are you doing here?’ he had gasp
ed. ‘What do you want?’
She had explained her mission and his brows had snapped angrily together. ‘I’ve told you before. I don’t want to write. That’s over.’
‘But . . .’ Eve had objected, now as astonished as he was. Dylan couldn’t possibly mean it. Could he?
‘Look.’ The glint in his eye told her the answer. And that his surprise was now sheer fury. ‘I’ve got a new life now.’
‘But . . .’ Eve put in again, before launching herself into a passionate speech about his talent, his potential and what he could achieve. What he, as a gifted artist, owed the world, and that of letters in particular.
This did not have the effect she had hoped for. Dylan had snarled that he owed the world nothing, especially after what it had done to him. It was a miracle that he was alive and given that he was, he would spend what time remained to him working quietly in his various gardens or being with his new companion. He did not mention her name and Eve did not dare enquire.
She had lost him, she recognised. After all her rekindled hopes and all the lengths she had gone to, she had failed.
‘But just tell me one thing,’ Dylan called after her as she turned away and began to trudge back in the direction of her car. ‘Who told you I was here?’
Eve paused, rummaging for the name. It was hard to find it underneath all the rubble in her mind. Things had been orderly before but Dylan had, one by one, exploded and destroyed all her plans. ‘Nell someone,’ she said doubtfully, eventually. ‘Simpson?’
She had looked up but he had gone. A flash of drained, white face and a pair of staring eyes were all she had seen before he slammed the door.
Now, sitting in her driver’s seat and staring at the javelins of rain hurling themselves at her windscreen, Eve felt like crying. It was her own fault. She had refused to accept Dylan’s reluctance to return to writing; had thought she could persuade him through her own indomitable will. Throughout her life and career she had crushed other people’s preferences beneath the juggernaut of her own. She had been successful in this, had gained a formidable professional reputation. But perhaps there had been a price to pay. She thought of her expensive but empty flat, looked around at her expensive, recently valeted car and down at her designer dress. Had any of this brought her happiness?
Eve drummed her manicured fingers on the steering wheel. The rain was starting to ease now; she could go. But something was preventing her from starting up the car and driving off. Something, she realised, had shifted within her; she needed to identify it, think it through.
As the storm continued to drift away, the answer arrived. She had been thwarted. Never in her life before had she failed to get what she wanted. Things up until now had had the happy predictability of a good novel. Even the search for Dylan, protracted and difficult though it had been, had had about it the air of a detective story whose end would be entirely satisfactory. But it had not ended that way. What now? she wondered.
Then she shook herself. What now was to return to London, her office and her job and make a star out of some other author. There were plenty of them wanting to become stars, after all. One or two of them even deserved to. Why waste her time on one that didn’t?
She was buckling her seat belt when a movement caught her eye. Something was out there. A dog which had failed to make it home in time and now decided to take its chances? No, it was a person, Eve saw, surprised. A woman. A very, very wet woman, who had obviously borne the brunt of the weather.
The rain had now completely stopped. All was silent and strangely calm and the air was full of water vapour. Through this ghostly mist Eve watched the figure come closer. It walked in a blundering, imprecise fashion, staggering from side to side of the pavement as if it were drunk.
She could see now that the woman was tall and thin, without a coat, her long arms clutched about her body and wet hair plastered to her cheeks. Something about her, and not just her soaking condition, told Eve that she was in distress. Great distress. The pale face upturned to the raining heavens was clearly that of a woman on the edge.
She opened the car door and yelled to the figure through the mist. ‘Are you OK?’ It was a silly question; the woman was obviously far from OK. But the underlying message, the offer of help, was meant kindly and the woman seemed to understand this. She turned her head to Eve and staggered over.
‘Get in,’ Eve commanded. She might not be able to force a recalcitrant author to return to the keyboard but she could make a woman risking pneumonia take shelter from the storm.
The stranger got in the back and Eve turned round to look at her. Her wide-spaced blue eyes were as blank as an automaton’s. She sat up straight, her clothes spreading a dark pool of wetness on the buttery beige suede of Eve’s pristine back seat. ‘Goodness,’ Eve said. ‘You are in a state.’
The blankness faded from the woman’s eyes and she seemed to focus for the first time. She looked about her, at Eve and at the wet seat beneath her.
‘What’s your name?’ Eve said, as her companion seemed incapable of speech.
The woman did not reply immediately. She seemed to be trying to remember who she was. Was this, Eve wondered, someone who had lost her mind, who extreme trauma had turned mad and stripped of identity?
What was she to do with such a person? Eve ran her eyes up and down the woman, gathering what information she could. Well, if wetly dressed, though by no means expensively. Hair recently cut, if wild and stuck all over her face and shoulders. No obvious bruises. No wedding ring. Very attractive.
Finally, the woman spoke. ‘I’m Nell,’ she said in a low voice. ‘Nell Simpson.’
Eve’s jaw dropped. ‘That’s impossible,’ she said. ‘You can’t be. I’ve met Nell Simpson already today and she looked completely different from you.’
CHAPTER 58
It wasn’t his day for Byron House, but Dylan went anyway. He would tell Dan he was leaving after he had told Anne.
Dan would be OK. If he played his cards right, he was heading for a relationship with Rachel, a woman who seemed to be on course for a well-paid legal future. If it all worked out and they stayed together, Dan would be well looked after.
Byron House was another matter. Depending on the length of Dan’s convalescence, they could, Dylan knew, be without help for a significant time if he left.
But he would leave. After what had just happened with Nell there was no possibility that he could stay. Being in the same place was an unbearable prospect. But Anne must be told. He would do her that courtesy, at least.
Dylan drove to Byron House in his battered car. It was still filled with Dan’s cracked and rusting gardening equipment. His head still ached but the one benefit of the most nauseatingly painful, drawn-out, synapse-destroying hangover he had ever experienced was that it acted as a buffer between yesterday’s events and now.
Angela was not sure at what point she had known for definite what was wrong with her. Certainly, it was before the consultant’s assistant had appeared in the waiting area, apologised for the more-than-hour-long delay and asked Angela to follow her into the consultant’s office.
Angela had been immersed in one of the oncology waiting area’s creased and battered magazines in which various of life’s unfortunates sensationally related holiday mishaps, appalling accidents or unimaginably sordid encounters with near relations. She laid it aside calmly and stood up.
She felt she knew what was coming. She felt that she had known even as she had driven into the hospital car park, passed through the sliding entrance doors and keyed her presence into the automatic reception because the queue at the real one was so long. Perhaps this was why, walking down the wide corridors on her way to the clinic, Angela noticed for the first time that the hospital had a chapel. She had paused and looked in. It was a small room with a bright blue carpet and abstract stained glass. A fudge-coloured wooden cross stood on a
fudge-coloured wooden table.
The consultant’s assistant showed her into the presence of the expert, a tall, tanned silver fox with attractive bags under his eyes. Angela was only dimly aware that once she might have fancied him. The assistant closed the door behind her with theatrical softness and part of Angela wanted to cry out and ask her to stay; nothing bad, after all, could happen in the presence of the cheerful girl with the pearlised make-up. But the other part of her was resigned.
‘You’re taking the news very well,’ the consultant said, after informing Angela about what was required.
She had accepted without comment what was obviously meant to be a compliment. But how else should she take what she had just been told? The news did not seem the sort of news to which one could react hysterically. It seemed too big and important for that. She must concentrate, consult her calendar, enter the dates she was being offered. There was no point in feeling sorry for herself. If her disease could be beaten, she would use every iota of her energy to beat it.
Angela knew, even so, there was a good chance that it could not be beaten. But instead of feeling panicked she was aware of a new clarity.
Things were different, she realised, and she must approach them differently. From being powerful, she was now powerless. She had used and exploited others, sometimes for her own entertainment. Now she must depend on others to save her.
As she walked towards the hospital exit, hugging her frightening new knowledge to herself, Angela mentally listed the restitution she would make. She would be nicer to Gail, take an interest in her family. Did Gail have a family? Angela had no idea.
She would help her colleagues. Dress up in a stupid costume to help Julie with her American wedding. And give the much-abused Nell Simpson an office at last.