Blackness. Dark and velvet soft. Spinning, falling, floating. Hands touching my face, voices whispering, somebody smoothing hair away from my cheeks. Traffic rushing by? Or is that the roaring of my own blood I can hear? Traffic was before, wasn’t it? Or was that was another time?
“Cleo! Cleo! Wake up. Look at me.”
The voice is insistent. I try to open my eyes but the glaring light hurts and renders the face gazing down at me little more than a shadow. I put my hand over my eyes to shield them, but cool fingers peel my hand away again.
“Cleo, it’s me, Alex.”
I blink and, sure enough, there Alex is. Rafe is cradling my head in his lap, raining kisses onto my cheeks and my lips, and doesn’t see his brother crouched by my side. I groan and raise my fingers to my head; they come away sticky with blood. The sky is whirling like a roundabout. Rafe. Alex. Rafe. Alex. It’s hard to see which Thorne brother is which; they’re moving so fast.
“Rafe?” I whisper. “Alex?”
Alex brushes my face with icicle fingers. “Cleo, listen, I don’t have much time. I think my journey here is done. You need to get in touch with the Professor. He’s been desperate to speak to you. He wants to offer you the Assistant Director’s job.”
I’ve hit my head; no wonder this makes no sense. “No, no. He gave the job to Simon.”
“Not anymore. He knows everything and he heard it all from Simon. He won’t doubt you ever again.”
I struggle to sit up. “That’s impossible. Simon would never tell him.”
Alex grins. “Not on purpose, but imagine if the phone in your office had somehow managed to dial the Professor and he’d heard everything when he’d picked up? Do we know a little pharaoh who likes playing with telephones and an Egyptologist who’s incensed by Simon’s disgusting behaviour and the disrepute this might bring to the museum? Can you imagine how a phone call to the Professor might have happened just at the same time Simon was bragging about what he’s done?”
“Aamon and Henry Wellby? They did that? And the Professor knows that Simon stole my research? He believes me?”
Alex nods. “Simon can’t deny it either. The Professor heard him gloat about everything he’d done. He’s condemned himself out of his own mouth.”
“Aamon loves playing with that phone,” I recall.
“And he loves you too,” Alex says softly. “You’ve uncovered his story, Cleo, and set him free. He won’t forget that.”
I close my eyes again. The darkness is so restful…
“Cleo, sweetheart,” Rafe’s lips are only inches from mine. I feel his warm breath on my cheek. “Who are you talking to?”
I open my eyes again. Rafe’s face swims into focus, his violet eyes brimming with concern. I’m poised to tell him everything at last but Alex puts his finger on his lips and shakes his head. He’s starting to fade in front of my eyes.
“Where are you going?” I say. “Don’t go!”
“I’ll never leave you,” Rafe promises. “Never.”
But my attention is fixed on Alex, who’s becoming more and more translucent with every passing second.
“I don’t know,” he says. “But I do know that I’m done here. I’ve completed my journey and it feels good. It’s all going to be OK. Neither of you need me anymore.”
“That’s not true!” I whisper.
“It is, I swear,” says Rafe. “I’m never letting you out of my sight again, Cleo Rose Carpenter.”
Alex smiles. “See? You really don’t need me now. You’re going to be a huge success and I know you’ll both be happy. Cleo, trust me on this. I have to go now. It’s my time.”
“Don’t go!” I cry. I try to sit up but the world revolves in a sickening blur and only Rafe’s arms stop me from falling back onto the platform. I want to tell Alex I’m sorry we argued, that I don’t blame him for anything that happened, that I’m glad I had the chance to get to know him – but it’s already too late. Alex has gone. I close my eyes and there’s his face again, gazing down at me in amazement as I lie in my hospital bed, laughing at Lilac Delaney’s shenanigans, his green eyes furious when I ignored him. I see his cheeky grin when I made him put his fingers over his eyes in the changing room, and I hear his teasing voice. There’s an ache in my head, as though my skull is going to split. I open my mouth in a cry of pain but only silence rushes in. My heart begins to race and panic swamps me. Everything goes dark.
“Cleo, please wake up. Please.”
Rafe is holding in me in his arms. I feel his warmth at my side, the weight of his leather jacket slung over my body, the heat of his mouth pressed against my temple. The snow is still falling softly, brushing my face in an angel’s kiss, and when I open my eyes I see that it’s even settled on his shoulders. I blink before reaching out to touch his face wonderingly. Is this real? Or is it another dream? Or maybe I’m still in my hospital bed and none of this ever happened at all? The world looks as it always did; yet it feels different. Sharper and brighter, somehow, and when Rafe brushes my tears away with his fingers my nerve endings crackle with longing.
I feel alive. Violently and excitedly and utterly alive.
I glance around for Alex but he’s not here. Usually I can feel him. Him and all the others. When they’re about I have a sensation like an ice cube slithering down my spine and all my nerve endings tingle – but there’s nothing now, no residual trace that he was ever here. Instead there’s just the empty platform, the sickly orange lamplight and the snow falling softly while the church bells ring in the distance.
“Can you stand up?” Rafe is asking gently. “Try and hold onto me. You hit your head pretty hard. It’s grazed.”
“Seems to be a habit.” I grip his arms and together we manage to haul me upright. The world rotates in a giddy rush, so I clutch him tightly – although when Rafe’s arms close around me I’m no longer sure if it’s the blow to my head that’s making everything spin.
He leans closer; his words are warm against my ear. “I’ve been driving around like a maniac trying to find you. I even went to the museum – all hell was breaking loose with that blond colleague of yours – and I even gatecrashed your father’s school production. He strikes a hard bargain, your old man; he made me sign autographs for the school raffle before he told me you’d be here.” He wiggles his fingers and grimaces. “I’ve probably got RSI. See what happens when you don’t answer my calls?”
“See what happens when you get back with your ex.”
“My ex? Natasha?”
“Yes, Natasha.” My head aches too much to waste time arguing. “I saw you with her, Rafe. You were in the studio together. You don’t have to deny it. I came to see you and when you didn’t answer I walked to the back of the house.”
He raises an eyebrow. “Ah, that old trick of yours.”
I ignore his teasing. The hurt of earlier is flooding back. “I know what I saw and I saw you together.”
But Rafe is laughing. “Oh, really? You did, did you?”
“What’s so funny?” I’m offended and try to pull away but his arms just tighten.
“You,” says Rafe simply. He tilts my chin skywards with his forefinger so that I’m looking up at him. His violet eyes are crinkling with amusement. “For such a clever woman you certainly jump to some hasty conclusions. I thought you were supposed to be good at weighing up evidence and then analysing it? Yes, Natasha came to see me and yes she was at my house. Do you know why?”
I shrug. I don’t want to know.
“Because she came to say she was sorry about how she treated me,” Rafe says. “I’m not fooled. She’s read the papers, I suppose, and seen how well the new song has done – and Tasha loves publicity. I turned her down, Cleo, and I told her about you. She cried then. Her latest boyfriend has dumped her, as it turns out, and she’s in a bad way. She sobbed; I gave her a tissue and then sent her packing. But I never once contemplated getting back with her. Shall I tell you why?”
I reach up and touch his face. “Why?”
>
He traces the curve of my cheek with a tender finger. “Because, Cleo Rose Carpenter, there’s only one person I have ever loved and ever wanted, and she’s standing here with me right now in the snow, in the exact place where I first fell in love with her.”
Then he leans in to kiss me and I melt. Never mind the cold or my aching head; all other thoughts vanish in a heartbeat.
We break apart and smile wonderingly at one another. Rafe winds one of my curls around his finger and then shakes his head.
“I really can’t explain how I came to find you again,” he says quietly. “I don’t think it’s something I’ll ever be able to understand.”
I rest my thudding head against his chest. Rafe has no idea just how inexplicable this has all been.
“This probably sounds crazy,” he continues, “but I have the strongest feeling that if my brother could see us now he’d be very pleased. Ally always wanted a happy ending for my Christmas Eve story.”
I nod but say nothing. Alex has gone, I can feel that, but I also know that Rafe is right too in a way. Love never leaves us. We live and we die but the love we have is forever.
“This isn’t the end,” I say, and as I speak I’m not just thinking about us but also about my family, and Aamon and all the strange and wonderful things that have happened to me lately. I rise onto my tiptoes and brush his mouth with my own. “This, Rafe Thorne, is a very happy beginning.”
He wraps me in his arms and together we walk along the platform and towards the snowy world beyond, a world that’s suddenly brimful of hope and wonder. I know that in life I won’t have all the answers, but I’m fine with this now.
Still, as Rafe and I head homewards, smiling into the snowfall, there’s one thing that I’m absolutely certain of: wherever he is now, I know that Alex Thorne is smiling too.
Christmas
One year on
“This is it; the last box is down from the attic. There’s nothing else left now from Mellisande.”
Rafe deposits a large cardboard box onto the floor with a thud and wipes his brow with his sleeve. Puffs of dust shimmy in the lamplight and a spider scuttles away hastily.
Although it’s only mid afternoon the light is already fading from the snow-laden sky, throwing our small courtyard garden into blue and purple shadows. The spires and rooftops beyond are silhouettes, a classic view that I’ve quickly come to love every bit as much as I used to love the rooftops and chimneypots of London.
Inside our cosy red sitting room, the wood burner is doing a sterling job of keeping the December cold at bay and the two big lamps flood the place with pools of golden light. A Christmas tree stands to attention in the far corner, with a single row of twinkling coloured lights and topped with an angel (who has the tip of the tree in a very interesting place). I did start to tell Rafe that angels may have originated with the Egyptian winged goddess Isis, but he stopped me mid lecture with a kiss that led to a very happy hour or so – after which you could have told me it was the Tooth Fairy perched up there and I wouldn’t have given a hoot.
Right now I’m sitting on the rug with my back against the sofa, keeping my toes warm by the wood burner and leaving the organisation of our first Christmas in the new house entirely up to him. After all, everybody knows that a) I don’t do Christmas and b) I’ve got far more important things to occupy me than the location of a few baubles. There’s a c) as well actually. Rafe Thorne, I’ve come to learn, is a complete Christmas junkie. He’s already invited everyone for Christmas dinner: my father, Susie and Dave (he was useful for far more than fetching milk, as it turns out), and Tolly and his latest arm candy. He’s also wound fairy lights around all the trees in the garden and wrapped the gifts. I guess I shouldn’t have expected any less from a man who’s written two of Britain’s bestselling Christmas hits and, according to the download chart, is about to make it a hat-trick.
I’ll have to keep a close eye on him. He’ll be illuminating the whole house like Oxford Street if I’m not careful…
Rafe looks up from the box thoughtfully. “The rest of the Christmas-tree decorations are in here, aren’t they?”
I abandon the book I’m in the middle of reading and, as always, my stomach does a delicious cartwheel just at the sight of him. Will this ever wear off? Somehow I don’t think so. Even covered in cobwebs and wearing his scruffiest ripped jeans and sweater, Rafe Thorne is heart-stoppingly gorgeous.
“If you’d allowed me to be in charge of packing up Mellisande we’d know for sure,” I tease. “The boxes would have been labelled and I’d have made an inventory too. We’d know where everything was and the tree would be long decorated by now.”
“There was no way I was letting you crawl about in the attics back then. You’d have got wedged in the hatch anyway,” grins Rafe. Box abandoned for the moment, he crouches down on the rug beside me and picks up my book, turning it over in his hands.
“Spot’s Christmas. Very intellectual, Dr Carpenter. Do your students enjoy this?”
I laugh. “There’s a waiting list for it in the Bodleian, I’ll have you know! Anyway, Ally seems to like it. There’s plenty of time for me to wean her onto Howard Carter’s excavation papers.”
“Over my dead body,” says Rafe, grimacing. “She’s going to be a musician.” He gives me a searching look. “You did play Mozart to her while she was in the womb, right?”
We both glance down tenderly at the chubby baby lying next to me on the rug and gurgling away happily to herself. Alexandra Claudia Thorne. Reader of Spot, in-the-womb listener to lectures on the ancient world, and the biggest and best surprise I’ve ever had.
I cross my fingers behind my back. “Of course.”
“Fibber,” says Rafe, scooping up the baby and dancing around the room with her. “Mummy can’t fool me. Never mind. Daddy will just have to take you to the studio when you’re bigger. Would you like a guitar?”
Baby Alexandra gurgles up at her father delightedly. Like me, she adores absolutely everything about Rafe and now her violet eyes are huge with amazement as he waltzes her past the Christmas tree and shows her the fairy-grotto garden. I uncurl myself from the rug and place Spot on the coffee table, next to the proofs of my new book, Aamon: Egypt’s Lost Pharaoh. Once Ally’s fed and asleep I’ll get back to going through them. I glance across the room to the small statue in pride of place on the mantelpiece and it seems to me that he’s smiling, which is ridiculous, I know; it’s the sort of nonsense I would have come out with during the very weird time of my head injury. Of course the statue’s not smiling! It’s an inanimate object, and there was never a small sloe-eyed boy either, or a cat. It was all my cerebral cortex playing tricks on me.
As I watch Rafe dancing around the house with our beaming daughter I wonder how it’s possible that life can change so much in a year. If you’d told me twelve months ago that one year later I’d be living with my Christmas stranger and lecturing at Oxford, and that I’d have the most delicious violet-eyed baby, I’d have called for the men in white coats. It’s funny too that it was a total breakdown and my own near miss with the men in white coats that brought all this about.
Of course, I’m confident now that it was my head injury that had caused me to think I was seeing and hearing things. My brain had obviously sustained more damage than I’d realised, and the only way my mind could deal with it was to construct a narrative, linking together a chain of coincidences and attempting to weave meaning from them. Ghosts coming back to make sure their families are happy are the stuff of Hollywood movies, not the real world. I’ve not seen or heard anything unusual since I slipped and fell on the snowy platform; fortunately the second bump on the head didn’t do any more damage. My consultant says there’s nothing wrong with me at all now, which is why life is back to normal – or, in this case, better than normal.
I do often think of Alex though, or rather the Alex I imagined. I think if he could see his brother now he’d be very happy. The drunken, blame-crippled Rafe has long gone and in
his place is a talented, handsome man who quietly writes top-ten hits for Britain’s biggest pop stars and looks after our daughter while I teach my students. Our narrow Oxford house with its uneven floors, wiggly stairs and sloping ceilings might not have the kudos of a rock-star pad on the banks of the Thames, but it’s a stone’s throw from my college and the Cherwell’s waters are just a splash away. There’s not a ghost in sight either. Ally often watches something I can’t see and laughs merrily, but all babies do that. It doesn’t mean anything.
I watch as Rafe pairs his iPod with the Bluetooth speaker and starts bopping to “One Christmas Kiss” with Ally. She’s laughing.
“She really likes that one,” I remark.
“Of course she does.” Rafe stretches out his hand and the three of us dance together. “She knows that her uncle’s singing about Mummy.”
We sway and spin by the tree. The sharp scent of pine needles fills the room. How funny that exactly a year ago I was at the museum party feeling as though my world was in tatters. Simon Welsh certainly got his comeuppance. He was summoned to the disciplinary panel and he resigned before he could be sacked. The last I heard he was working as a history teacher somewhere, although that could have been just a rumour started by Dawn. The Prof was mortified by what had happened and offered me the Assistant Director’s job and anything else I wanted to persuade me to stay, but oddly the one thing I’d craved so badly no longer appealed. To his and my own great surprise, I turned the job down to focus on writing Aamon’s story – and, to my even greater surprise, being pregnant. The last thing I did before I left London was to arrange an exhibition about Aamon, which told his forgotten story for the first time. I’d almost burst with pride when it became one of the museum’s biggest attractions. Now the whole world knows that there was once a boy pharaoh who loved cats and who was killed in cold blood by his ambitious stepmother. Lecturing undergraduates about the Aamonic period, my specialism, is something I adore too – and when I was offered a fellowship at my mother’s old college I couldn’t say no. Rafe has his studio in the basement and writes and looks after Ally while I work. It’s pretty much perfect.
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