by Ally Blake
He’d known exactly what he was getting himself into. In the beginning, when he’d first met Lydia, he’d thought she was like Ana—but that wasn’t the case. It had taken him a while to understand that.
Ana used anything and everything to build her career. She’d married him because he had the money she’d needed to bolster her fledgling business. She’d left him for Gaston because he could introduce her into the international jetset world she wanted to be part of. With Simon Cameron she’d finally joined the establishment.
Lydia was completely different. She believed passionately in what she was doing. She truly believed she could change the world—and who was he to say she couldn’t?
It was what Wendy had seen in her from the very beginning. The reason why she’d insisted on Lydia as her biographer. His godmother shared the same burning desire to make her life count and she’d achieved so much. He admired her. He admired Lydia.
He loved the way she gave herself passionately to whatever she was doing and if he’d hoped he might become her passion then that had been entirely at his own risk. He’d known that from the moment he’d realised that avoiding her wasn’t going to make the pain of living without her any less intense.
He turned as he heard Rosie’s feet scurry down the hall. Lydia bent down so she could lip-read clearly, her hands moving in confirmation. Nick watched his daughter’s face change. She was free to express what he couldn’t.
Her hands flew, her movements were jerky. He hadn’t learnt enough to understand what she was saying, but he got the gist from the expression on her face.
‘I’ve got to go to work,’ Lydia said, pulling her close and holding her.
Nick reached out and touched Rosie’s shoulder. His daughter looked up at him, her brown eyes questioning. He nodded in confirmation of what Lydia had said. ‘We’ll see her soon.’
Then he looked at Lydia. Her excitement had faded and her face looked pinched. Maybe she wasn’t finding this as easy as it had first appeared? Maybe she would find she wanted to come back to them? To him. But he had to let her go first. It had to be her choice.
Which meant he had to say goodbye—with Rosie looking on. It was up there among the hardest things he’d ever had to do in his entire life. ‘I’ll miss you.’
‘I’ll ring.’
He nodded. He’d never told her he loved her. It had never seemed quite the right moment. He’d wondered whether it was too soon, whether it would put undue pressure on her. At least that was what he’d told himself. The truth was he’d been scared it would drive her away.
But she was going anyway. He should have told her. It would have made no difference to what was happening now, but he would have said the words.
Rosie pulled away and ran back down the hallway, her feet echoing on the wooden floor. ‘What?’
‘She said to wait.’ He watched as Lydia took her lip between her teeth. She gave a gasping breath. ‘This is so hard.’
‘Lydia, I—’
She tried to smile and her mouth wavered. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t think it would be this difficult …’ She swiped at her eyes.
Nick just needed to hold her. He drew her in close and let his hand snake up to cradle her head. Her hair was soft against his arm and smelt of roses. He loved her. More than that, he ached for her.
For a moment they just stood there. ‘I do have to go,’ she murmured softly, her voice choked.
‘I know.’ Nick pulled back and looked into her incredible eyes. ‘I know you do.’
Lydia reached out and touched his face and then she leant forward to kiss him. He knew exactly what her trembling lips were saying—it was thank you.
He felt the tremor pass through his body. She hadn’t left yet and he felt utterly bereft. He would see her again. Brussels wasn’t the end of the earth—but she knew and he knew she’d made the choice to walk away from them. It would never be the same.
They heard Rosie’s footsteps coming down the stairs and Lydia instinctively stepped back. Every impulse prompted him to snatch her back into his arms, but he resisted. Instead he looked down at his daughter. ‘What have you got?’
Her young face was very solemn as she held out a white envelope on which she’d carefully drawn a stamp in the top right-hand corner. Lydia took it. ‘What is it?’
Rosie made a single sign.
Lydia bent down. ‘Oh, honey, I’ll remember you.’ She made the sign. ‘I’ll remember you and I’ll see you both soon.’
Then she stood up and left, without daring to look back at them. Nick watched her car snake down the drive until it had completely disappeared—and, in that moment, he knew how it felt to die.
If Wendy noticed she’d been crying she didn’t say anything. She accepted Lydia’s help in carrying the tea through to her small lounge and settled herself in the armchair.
‘Brussels?’
Lydia nodded, trying to instil some kind of excitement into her voice. ‘For a year.’
‘What a marvellous opportunity.’ Wendy’s eyes seemed unusually observant but she didn’t say anything more. She sipped her tea and then appeared to change the subject.
‘Pass me those letters.’ Lydia stood up and walked over to the sideboard she’d pointed at. ‘I thought you might like these. When I’m dead they’ll only be thrown away and you might find them interesting background reading for the chapter on the Sudan.’
‘Thank you.’
Wendy sat back in her chair. ‘I wrote them to Nick’s mother and I was very glad when George gave them back to me after she’d died. She was a wonderful correspondent, kept me in touch with what was going on at home. It can be very lonely saving the world.’ Her mouth twisted in a smile. ‘It’s not for everyone, Lydia, my kind of life.’
Lydia looked up. She knew enough of Wendy to know she never spoke without an agenda. Often she spoke to stir up debate, but sometimes … sometimes she spoke because she wanted to be listened to.
‘There are days now when I wonder whether I made the right choice. You know, people are more important than anything. More important than causes. I think I lost sight of that a little.’
Wendy paused to sip her tea. ‘You have to know what kind of person you are. I prefer humanity when it’s at a distance. I’m better at loving “people” as a whole than trying to love any one individual. But that comes at a cost.’
Her sharp blue eyes looked over the top of her teacup. ‘Do you understand what I mean?’
Lydia nodded. She wasn’t sure that she did.
‘This is how I’ve chosen to live.’ She looked round her dark sitting room. ‘It suits who I am. I like not being answerable to any other person, but … I have chosen to be alone.’
There was a small silence and Wendy stretched out her hand. ‘It’s not my business to tell you how to live your life, but don’t shut out other possibilities and other ways of being useful.
‘Sharing your life with someone doesn’t mean you can’t make a difference. In many ways you can make more of a difference.’
Lydia felt the tears well up behind her eyes. She wasn’t sure what to say. ‘Nick … I—’
Wendy sat back in her chair. ‘I don’t need to know, but if you think I didn’t suspect something was going on between you two you must think I hurt more than my ankle.’
Amidst the pain Lydia felt a bubble of laughter. ‘I don’t, I—’
‘And, to tell you the truth, I envied you. I could have married, had a family of my own, but—’ she shook her head ‘—I was never brave enough to risk my happiness on another person.
‘I just want you to think about it. It might be right for you to live a life like mine. Maybe the causes you have will be enough for you. When you’re my age and you look back on what you’ve achieved … what is it you’d like people to say about you? What is it you’d like to have done?’
What was it she’d like to have done? Lydia thought about it all the way to the airport. She thought about it as she boarded the plane and as she landed in Bru
ssels. She thought about it as she checked into her hotel.
She cared about so many things. Justice. She cared passionately about justice. About fairness. About the starving. About the poor and oppressed. About the environment. About social deprivation.
They were the big issues—and in a way it was easier to care about them. There was distance in that. Lydia sat down on her hotel bed. She understood what Wendy had been saying about preferring humanity as a whole rather than individuals.
She had never thought about it before. Caring for individuals was more painful. Loving them was a risk. The things that had hurt her most had all been about individuals, when she thought about it.
University had been an easy focus to deflect her from grieving. She’d masked the pain of her parents’ death by campaigning for ‘big’ causes. Her need for a career had had nothing to do with Izzy. She saw that now. Her sister wouldn’t want that of her.
As an adult Izzy had told her she was glad she’d let her grow up with her cousins and not tried to hold it together alone. She hadn’t blamed her for not rescuing her from Steven Daly. All that guilt she’d placed on herself.
Why had it taken until now for her to be able to see it?
She’d spent years hiding from her emotions. Her career had been a convenient focus. A shield.
When her parents had died …
When Izzy had taken her overdose …
Those were the events that had changed her life. Had altered her. Loving people came at a personal cost. When she thought about the people she loved or had loved she thought of her parents, Izzy, Rosie …
She wanted Rosie’s life to be wonderful. She wanted to make sure her childhood was as perfect as it could be, that she grew up feeling loved and cared for. She wanted to make sure there was proper provision for her at school and that she wasn’t stuck at the back of a class, only seeing a teacher for the deaf once a week.
She was passionate about that? Was it wrong to care about that more than some international disaster?
And she loved Nick.
Nick.
She loved him. Lydia looked at the cream-painted walls of a hotel room that could have been in any city in any country of the world. What was she doing here?
Did she really want a life like Wendy’s? Wendy Bennington, human rights campaigner, acclaimed by many, but at the end of each day she was alone. Did she really want that?
Lydia lifted her handbag on to the bed and pulled out the envelope Rosie had given her.
The stamp she’d drawn in the corner showed a sad face and squiggles to indicate the perforations. It had given Nick time to kiss her.
Her fingers shook slightly as she tore open the top. Inside was a drawing and a photograph. The photograph was of Nick and her. Lydia smiled and ran her fingers over his face. It was one Rosie had taken. The image wasn’t central and she was slightly out of focus, but it was nice to have a photograph of Nick.
Lydia stood up and walked over to the kettle and propped the photograph inside the picture frame on the wall. Then she opened out the drawing.
Rosie had drawn a house with a sun in the corner of the picture. She’d coloured the roof in red and the door in green. It was a picture any clever five-year-old might have drawn, but in the foreground she’d drawn three people. One much smaller than the others and all three were holding hands.
Lydia felt as if someone had reached in and squeezed her heart until it cried blood. Rosie had drawn a family. Them? She’d said she’d drawn it so that Lydia would remember.
Then she glanced back at the photo—and at Nick’s face. He was looking down at her, the expression in his face one of total love and acceptance.
How had she missed that? She felt the first tears start to fall as she reached for the telephone. She’d never been so unsure as to what she should do.
Her sister’s voice sounded sleepy.
‘Izzy, it’s Lydia. I need to talk to you …’
Nick kissed Rosie goodbye and waved her off with Rachel. His life had taken on a strange pattern over the past few days. He felt listless. Lost.
No prizes for guessing why that was. Lydia hadn’t phoned. She’d be busy sorting out her life in Brussels. He knew that. He had her mobile number and he could have rung it any time, but the thought of hearing her voice and not being able to hold her was torture.
He stood at the window and watched the rain come down in stair-rods. Was it raining where Lydia was? Was she happy? Missing him?
Thinking about him at all?
Then he saw her car. It was almost as though he’d conjured her up by thinking about her. He left the sitting room and went out into the hallway, almost not believing she was real.
Christine stopped him. ‘Lydia Stanford asked for the gates to be opened. I’ve let her through.’
Nick didn’t wait for his housekeeper to finish speaking. He walked out of the front door and stood foolishly in the rain, his face, hair, T-shirt quickly becoming soaked through.
Lydia saw him.
She sat for a moment clutching Rosie’s picture. She’d come so many hundreds of miles and she didn’t know what to say. She might be about to make a complete and utter fool of herself. She wasn’t sure she could do it.
What if she’d misread Nick’s expression in the photograph? What if she’d been a momentary diversion? What if …?
She looked up. Nick was waiting. He must be wondering what she was doing letting him get soaking wet. Slowly she opened the car door and climbed out. The rain poured down on her, but she scarcely noticed. Nick didn’t move towards her, didn’t say anything. He was watching, waiting.
‘I couldn’t do it,’ she managed, her voice broken. She held up Rosie’s drawing, now completely sodden but the wax picture still there. ‘I opened Rosie’s envelope and I couldn’t do it. Brussels. I’ve told them I can’t do it. That I needed to come …’ Home.
She was crying, but her face was so wet with rainwater it couldn’t matter. If he didn’t speak soon she was going to wish the ground would open up and swallow her whole.
She tried again. ‘It’s a family …’ Her voice broke. ‘Nick. She drew a family. She drew us.’
Please understand, she begged silently. She’d never felt so vulnerable as she did now. She had meant to tell him that she loved him, but she was too frightened to say the words.
Help me.
And then he moved, slowly.
His hands cradled her face and he reached down to kiss her. He must have known she was crying then because she could taste the salt in her own tears.
She was wet, cold, tired and … happy. Her hands snaked round him and held him close. He felt so reassuringly solid. Real. And he hadn’t rejected her. He didn’t seem to blame her for leaving.
Then he pulled her away and stared down into her eyes. ‘I love you.’
She felt as if the floor had disappeared beneath her feet. Was it really going to be that simple? ‘Why didn’t you ask me to stay?’
‘Would you have?’
‘I might have done.’ Then she thought. ‘Probably. I think. I don’t know.’
His mouth twisted. ‘I nearly did, but I forced myself to let you go. I thought that was what you wanted. I don’t want to be a compromise on the life you really want.’
‘You’re not.’ And that was the moment Lydia knew Wendy had been right. She had a new passion, one that transcended every other passion. It didn’t take away from the other things she could or would do with her life, it would only add to it. ‘I love you.’
Nick put his arm round her and led her into the house. They dripped on the beautiful wooden floor.
‘I must look a mess.’
‘You look beautiful.’ His words echoed what he’d said before and she smiled.
‘I’m sorry, Nick.’
He gathered her close and she could hear his heart beating and feel the soft kiss he placed on her hair.
‘I’m so sorry I had to go away to realise how much I love you.’
He t
ilted her face and kissed her. Then he smiled, that heart-stopping beautiful smile that made her bones turn to liquid, and carefully interwove his fingers through hers. ‘I didn’t want to hold you back. You’ve got such dreams and I … I didn’t want you to ever feel you’d sacrificed too much.’
‘But if it’s what I choose …’
Nick lifted her up in his arms and carried her up the wide staircase as though she weighed nothing. ‘If it’s what you choose, then that’s completely different—and I’ll support you absolutely with whatever you want to do in the future.’
‘Ditto.’
He set her down inside his bedroom. ‘You’re soaking; let me help you.’ He reached out to peel away her wet top, but stopped to kiss her. ‘Marry me?’
Lydia smiled. ‘I’ve got every intention of marrying you, but not if you propose to me while you’re taking my clothes off! I’m not telling my grandchildren that.’
Nick smiled that smile as he pulled her in closer. His voice was warm against her ear. ‘Then lie.’
All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author, and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all the incidents are pure invention.
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