by Julia James
Following her to London.
The pain came again. Pain for herself. Pain for him.
I don’t want to do this to him! The cry came from deep within her. I don’t want to do this to him—but I must...I must!
She knew with a sick dread that she could not flee for ever. Could not hide for ever. At some point, eventually, she would have to go back to London.
Face him.
An ordeal she would have given the world not to have to face. An ordeal she could not face yet.
I need time—just a few days...
A few days to accept what had happened.
To accept that everything between her and Rafael was over...
* * *
Rafael was in London. He hadn’t moved from his apartment there since the morning he’d arrived. The morning he’d arrived to find that Celeste had not gone to her flat. Had not gone to her agency. That her agency thought she was still in New York. That there was no urgent assignment they’d called her back for. That they had no idea where she was.
So he’d stayed in London. Where else should he go? If she turned up back in New York he would be informed. If she turned up at her London flat he would be informed. If she contacted her agency he would be informed. He’d even contacted Louise and asked...begged...her to tell him if she heard any news about her. He knew of no one else in the modelling world she might know.
But for five endless days now she had simply disappeared off the planet.
He’d stopped phoning, stopped texting. She wasn’t going to reply, it was clear. He could only wait until she reappeared out of the thin air she’d vanished into.
He reached sightlessly for the whisky bottle on the table beside the sofa, then stopped himself. He had to get a grip. Had to control himself. Getting mindlessly drunk to numb himself would serve no purpose.
He set the bottle back with a clunk on the table. As he did so, his mobile suddenly buzzed into life. He fell on it like a drowning man.
‘Ms Philips has just returned to her apartment,’ said the operative set to watch her flat.
Rafael could feel relief flooding him. Drowning his senses. Gratitude poured through him. He was out of his apartment moments later, flinging himself into his waiting car, and within twenty minutes he was outside her flat in Notting Hill. Launching himself up the steps from the pavement, he pressed the buzzer to her flat.
How long would it take her to answer? Perhaps she was in the bathroom, the kitchen—somewhere it might delay her picking up the entry phone. Maybe, of course, she just wasn’t going to answer her door at this hour of the night.
He flicked open his mobile, phoned her. But before it connected the front door was buzzed open. He was inside instantly, running up the stairs to her floor. Not caring if his rapid tread disturbed her neighbours. Not caring about anything in the entire universe except seeing her again—being with her again...
Celeste—his Celeste...
Always my Celeste!
Because he knew that now. Knew it with every fibre of his being. Knew it with every cell of his body. He could not do without her. Could not live his life without her. She was everything to him—everything!
Had he once truly, actually considered marrying Madeline? Had he ever been that deluded? It was impossible to believe now. Impossible to believe that he had felt anything for her.
Even desire...
But as he circled the stairwell, two steps at a time in his haste, he pushed Madeline out of his head. Celeste was everything Madeline was not—and was everything to him.
He rounded the last corner of the stairs onto Celeste’s landing. She was standing in the open doorway of her apartment. He’d never been there, he realised with a rush of surprise. Well, it was of no account. She wouldn’t be needing it any longer.
His arms went around her, enveloping her in a hug. ‘My God, where have you been?’ he asked into her hair. He drew back, holding her shoulders, drinking her in like a man who had been in the desert for five punishing, killing, waterless days.
She was in a dressing gown. Nothing glamorous or stylish—just a plain, light blue, thin wool, ankle-length, waist-tied wrap. Her hair was in a ponytail, her face bare of make-up. But his eyes feasted on her. She was the most beautiful woman in the world. The most wonderful. The most precious...
He guided her inside so he could kiss her properly.
But she backed away from him. ‘Rafael, no—’
Her voice was high-pitched, and there was something wrong with it. He looked at her, consternation in his face.
‘Are you all right?’ Concern was open in his voice. He wanted to put his arms around her again, hold her close.
‘Um...’ she said.
She was looking deathly pale, he realised suddenly. His expression changed.
‘Are you ill?’
The question shot from him, infused with fear. God, was that it—was that why she’d suddenly rushed off? Nothing to do with Madeline at all! Images sprang in his head of her in hospital, having tests, being told nightmare news...
She gave a half shake of her head.
‘Thank God!’ he exclaimed. He looked around. They were in a tiny hall, and he could see a sitting room beyond, through the open doorway, with the large sash windows—curtained now—that he’d seen from the street below.
He went through into it and she followed numbly. He turned back to her, having taken in an impression of simple decor, soothing and tranquil, a soft, comfortable sofa in grey fabric, and a pale oak dining table and chairs. There was a pale grey carpet, landscape prints on the walls and books stashed in an open-front bookcase against the wall. An old-fashioned Victorian iron fireplace held fat candles on its hearth.
He looked at her. Words fell from him. ‘I’ve been worried out of my mind.’
Two spots of colour started to burn in her cheeks. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m...sorry.’ She paused. ‘But I...I had to go...’
‘To a non-existent modelling assignment?’ His eyebrows rose.
She took a breath. ‘No. You know that was just an excuse.’
He looked at her. Every antenna he possessed had gone on high alert.
‘So why did you leave?’ he asked. He kept his voice steady. He had to know! If it were because of Madeline then he must find a way to convince her that she meant nothing to him now!
Celeste looked away. Then back at him. ‘Would you mind if I made myself some tea? It’s been a long journey. I’ve just come back on Eurostar.’
‘Eurostar?’
‘I flew into Frankfurt,’ she said, ‘from JFK. And since then I’ve been...’ She fell silent.
I’ve been trying to find the strength to do what I must do now, and I don’t know whether I can, though I know I have to. I have to because you’ve turned up now, like this, and I’m not ready... I’m just not ready. But I’ve got to do it because it has to end now...right now. I have to end it...
She moved towards the kitchen that opened off the sitting room. It was compact, and Rafael came and stood in the doorway, making it seem smaller than ever. Making the air in it hard to breathe.
She filled up the kettle. ‘Coffee?’ she asked, trying to sound normal. ‘It’s only instant, I’m afraid. I don’t have a machine.’
Into her mind’s eye leapt the formidably complicated machine in the Manhattan apartment that only he knew how to use. That she would never learn to use now...
She tore her mind away, focussed only on putting the kettle on, getting out the coffee jar, her tea caddy. No China tea tonight—this needed strong Indian...Assam. With a strength to get her through the coming ordeal.
She busied herself with mugs, with tea and coffee and boiling water, milk out of the fridge—milk she’d bought at a late-night convenience store near the station before she’d got
a taxi here. Her mind darted inconsequentially, trying to find an escape. An escape from what was going to happen.
But there was no escape. She knew that. Knew it with the certainty of a concrete weight crushing her. Crushing her in to the ground.
Burying her.
Anguish cried within her.
I thought I was free! Free of the past! Free to make myself anew! Free to claim what was being given to me! Free to take Rafael’s hand outstretched to me! Free to be with him—to hold him and kiss him and embrace him!
Free to love him...
Because she had fallen in love with him. Of course she had. How could she not? Self-knowledge sliced through her, cleaving her in two. She had fallen in love with him somewhere along the way...some time when she had lain in his arms, cherished and safe...
But she hadn’t been safe at all.
And she hadn’t been free.
‘I want you to tell me what’s wrong!’
Rafael’s voice penetrated her anguish. His accent was pronounced—a sign of the tension he was under—although he was keeping his voice rock-steady. He sat himself down on her sofa, waiting for her to sit beside him.
Her eyes went to him. Her heart leapt. Oh, how good it was to see him again! How good to let her gaze feast on him, to drink in every sculpted plane of his face, every feathered sable shaft of his hair, every lean, honed line of his body! How good it was to see him again...see him here.
I have to make a memory of this moment! I have to imprint his image on the sofa, so that I can always see him there. Always have this moment...only this moment...
She moved restlessly, hands cupping her mug of tea, going not to sit beside him but on the edge of the armchair by the fireplace. She saw his eyes flicker uncertainly as she took her place away from him.
She didn’t want to—she wanted to set down her tea, take his coffee from him and then wrap her arms around him as if he were the life raft of her life.
But she could not do that. She could never do that now. She was adrift, alone on an endless sea that was carrying her far, far away on a current that had started long ago, trapped in it for ever...
‘Why did you leave?’ he asked.
He looked into her face and knew the answer. The answer he hadn’t wanted to hear. The answer he’d thought needed no response from him. But it must, or why else would she have done what she had.
‘It’s because of Madeline, isn’t it?’ he said. His voice was quiet. Deadly.
Her eyelids dipped over her eyes. ‘Yes,’ she said.
He looked at her. The fumes from the coffee cup on the low table in front of him rose in a coil. Madeline had thrown her coil around them—he had thought he’d broken it, but it must be tightening still around Celeste or else why would she have run from him?
‘She said something to you, didn’t she?’ he said, never taking his eyes from her. ‘She dripped some vicious, toxic poison into your ears before I came, and that’s why you left.’
That had to be it—it had to! But Celeste was shaking her head.
His face worked. ‘Then why—in God’s name, why? Didn’t I make it crystal clear to you just why I would never in a thousand years have anything more to do with her? Do you think I would ever want anything to do with her—with anyone who’s like her?’
He took a shuddering breath. Celeste was looking at him and her face was set.
His expression changed. Slowly, he spoke. ‘You think I was too harsh, don’t you?’
His words fell into silence.
He spoke again. ‘You think I was too harsh, too condemning. Too pitiless—too puritan! Despising Madeline for what she did—how she earned her first money!’
He sat back, drawing a breath. Never taking his eyes from her. Then he spoke again.
‘Celeste, I come from a country that is poor—with a level of poverty almost unthinkable in the pampered West, in the developed countries of Europe and North America and Australasia. I come from a region where peones toiled on the land, barely scraping a living by subsistence farming or working on the landlord’s vast estancias, where those in the cities lived in shacks and shanty towns. Where children begged in streets with gutters running with sewage, where they slept in doorways at night and stole by day, and inhaled glue to numb their hunger and their fear.’
He looked relentlessly into her eyes.
‘And where women, young and old, would sell their bodies for a meal, or for shelter, or to feed their children! That, to me, is poverty! That, to me, is need and desperation! And if you think—’ His voice gritted with intensity, his eyes burning. ‘If you think that I would ever, ever condemn a woman in those pitiless circumstances from surviving in any way she could, then you have misjudged me utterly!’
He leant forward now, infusing his body with urgency.
‘Those women have no choice! Their only choice is prostitution or to go hungry—or to see their children hungry! They are driven to it by desperation!’
His expression changed. Hardened like steel.
‘Madeline Walters never experienced anything like that! She was never going to starve in the gutter! Never going to go to bed hungry! She took to prostitution because it was easy money! That’s all! She mocked me because I’d worked hard and long for what I’d saved! Mocked me for working non-stop at back-breaking work in bloody awful conditions when she could earn a thousand pounds a night on her back in a luxury hotel room! She chose to sell her body for sex! She wanted to do it! She wanted to make money fast—any way she could! And she wasn’t fussy about how she did it! That’s why I despise her. Condemn her. And I would condemn any woman who made the same choice—chasing easy money by whoring herself out!’
He fell silent. Celeste hadn’t moved. Not a muscle. Then, with a little jerk, she lifted her mug to her lips and took a mouthful. The tea was too hot still, and scalded her mouth. But she did not feel the pain.
There was too much in the rest of her body.
Consuming her.
Slowly, she set aside her mug. Slowly, she got to her feet. Slowly, she looked back to Rafael. The time had come. The moment was here. The moment when she destroyed the happiness she had so briefly glimpsed.
I thought I was free to be happy! But I can never be free—never!
The slicing knives cut into her heart—her soul. Because the past had not gone. It had never gone. Could never be gone. It had become the very future that was now rushing in on her, forcing her throat to work, her words to be shaped, her mouth to open and her voice to sound.
Any woman, he had said... He would condemn and despise any woman.
Say it—say what you must! What you cannot keep silent on any longer!
She had thought she could keep silent. Thought she could silence the past—silence all that she had done. But to do so now was impossible.
She made herself speak. Forced herself.
‘I have to tell you something,’ she said. Her voice was as thin as a reed.
He was looking at her. Such a short distance away, but separated from her by a gulf so large it could never be bridged. Into her mind came a memory—a memory of standing on the lawns at that Oxfordshire mansion, gazing at the Milky Way. Of Rafael coming to her, telling her about the Chinese legend of lovers separated on either side of the galaxy.
It was us all along...those lovers parted by an ocean of stars.
Pain pierced her as the knives in her heart sliced again.
His face had changed expression. There was concern in it again, tenderness. The pain came again.
‘I’ve upset you,’ he said, ‘and I’m sorry. I know it must be difficult for you—painful, even—to hear about women like Madeline. Women who choose to exploit their sexuality as she did! To use it to make money.’ His mouth twisted in angry contempt. ‘Easy money.’
He to
ok a breath, his eyes holding hers.
‘Celeste, I know you’ve had some trauma in your past. Some ugly experience that traumatised you—made you lock yourself away in a prison of celibacy because of what had been done to you! I’ve never asked—never probed. But I saw how you reacted to Karl Reiner when he said those foul words to you—and how you reacted to what he was intending for Louise. I’ve always thought that you must have been through something similar—and that there was no one to save you from it! So I can understand—I truly can—how distressing it must be to you when someone like Madeline flaunts what she’s done and makes a calculated decision to use the likes of Karl Reiner for commercial gain. I know,’ he said, and his voice was resonant, ‘that whatever happened to you, you never intended it to happen! You never chose it! You are nothing, nothing like Madeline!’
A sound came from her. A sound like something breaking. Her face was stretched like brittle plastic over steel mesh beneath. Her eyes seared him to the bone. Her voice tore like talons.
‘I am exactly like Madeline!’
He surged to his feet. ‘You are nothing like her! How can you say that? You saw how Karl Reiner was getting Louise drunk, drugged—whatever it would take to get her into bed with him without her realising it was happening!’
A hand slashed in front of him. ‘I am not Louise! Don’t think of me as her, or anything like her! I knew exactly what I was doing! And I knew exactly how much money I was being paid for it!’ Her eyes were slitted like a snake’s. ‘Because fixing a price for sex is the first and most important thing any prostitute does!’
* * *
He froze. His brain froze. Stopped working completely. He just stood there, immobile.
She was not, though. She was swaying, very slightly, and there was a look on her face that was entirely and totally blank. As though she were no longer inside her body.