‘No, thank you.’ Rhianna rose to her feet. ‘I think I’ll go below where it’s cooler for a while.’
And where I don’t have the nerve-racking disturbance of being in your company with all the attendant memories I can so well do without…
She added, ‘Actually, I might start packing my things, ready for going ashore.’
‘There’s no great rush.’ He sounded faintly amused. ‘But—just as you wish.’ He paused. ‘Although I can recommend the old Spanish custom of siesta.’
She said unsmilingly, ‘You’re too kind. But I think I’ve already experienced enough old Spanish customs to last me a lifetime.’
Downstairs, the air-conditioning was as efficient as she’d hoped, and her stateroom was pleasantly dim too as someone—Enrique, she supposed—had closed the blinds.
Her refuge, she thought, as she sank down on the sofa. But, as she soon discovered, only a fragile sanctuary at best. Because, as she stared in front of her with eyes that saw nothing, she found there was no escape from her inner images of the past.
Or, she realised with anguish, their pain.
CHAPTER EIGHT
HER flat was on the first floor, and she and Diaz had run up the stairs, she remembered, laughing and breathless, hand in hand. Outside her door they’d paused to kiss again, all restraint gone. When they’d fallen apart, Rhianna’s fingers had been shaking so much she’d hardly been able to fit the key in the lock, and Diaz, an arm clamped round her, his lips nuzzling her neck, had done it for her.
In the hallway they’d reached hungrily for each other again. His mouth pushing aside the loosened brocade lapels, seeking the curve of her breast. Her hands inside his unbuttoned shirt, spread against the hard, heated wall of his chest, registering the thunder of his heart.
He’d said her name hoarsely, and then, like a small uncertain echo, she’d heard ‘Rhianna’ spoken by a different voice, coming from an entirely different direction.
Her life had stopped. She’d turned sharply in disbelief and seen the small, slender figure standing, fragile and woebegone, in the doorway of the sitting room. Seen the dishevelled hair, the trembling mouth and the eyes swollen with tears.
‘Donna?’ She swallowed. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I had to come back. I had nowhere else to go.’ The other woman gave a little sob. ‘Oh, Rhianna, I’m so sorry. Please try to understand…’
She looked past her at Diaz, a hand straying to her mouth. ‘I—I thought you’d be alone. I didn’t realise…’
‘Don’t worry about it.’ Someone was speaking in her voice, Rhianna thought. Someone who sounded controlled and capable. Who wasn’t dying inside, of disappointment and so many other things besides.
She said levelly, ‘Donna, may I introduce Diaz Penvarnon? A cousin of my friend Caroline Seymour, whom I’ve mentioned to you.’ And paused. ‘Diaz, this is Donna Winston, a fellow cast member from Castle Pride. She was my flatmate until a short while ago, when she found—somewhere else.’
‘Which clearly hasn’t worked out,’ Diaz said quietly. He didn’t have to add, Exactly like tonight. But the words were there, all the same, hanging in the air between them, in all their regret and frustration. He said, ‘I’d better go. May I call you tomorrow? Are you in the book?’
She wasn’t, so she gave him her number hurriedly, watching as he logged it into his mobile phone.
Donna said with a catch in her voice, ‘I’ll make some coffee,’ and trailed off to the kitchen.
Diaz took Rhianna in his arms, smiling ruefully down at her. ‘I see the drama continues off-screen sometimes.’ He paused. ‘Man trouble?’
‘It seems so.’ I know so. She shook her head. ‘Oh, God, I’m so sorry…’
‘So am I.’ His lips were gentle on hers. ‘But we’ll have our time, Rhianna. That’s a promise.’
And even then, when it had all started to fall apart, she’d believed him.
He’d rung the next day. ‘How’s the friend in need?’
‘Still needy,’ she’d admitted, worn out after a night of tears, recrimination and seriously bad news, but feeling her heart lift when she heard his voice.
‘And clearly around for the foreseeable future?’ He sounded amused and resigned. ‘I shall just have to be patient.’ He paused. ‘All the same, may I see you this evening? A film, maybe?’
‘Yes,’ she said, smiling foolishly into space. ‘That would be lovely.’
Donna, having slept late, mooned tearfully round the flat most of the day. In the late afternoon she said she was going to see her agent, and departed.
Rhianna, sighing with relief, could only pray that she’d also visit a company arranging flat rentals.
Because she cannot stay here, she told herself, sinking gratefully into a deep hot bath. Not again, and not now. Things have gone too far, and she knows that.
She was still in her robe when the door buzzer went, and she looked at her watch and laughed, because he was nearly forty minutes early.
She was still smiling when she opened the door.
‘Hello, Rhianna,’ said Simon, and walked past her without waiting for an invitation. ‘Are you alone? Good. Because it’s time for a serious chat, I think.’
‘Not now,’ she said quickly. ‘It—it’s really not convenient. I’m expecting someone.’ The last person in the world who should find you here…
‘Tough.’ He went into the sitting room, straight to the corner cupboard, and found the Scotch, pouring himself a generous measure.
When he turned, there was brooding anger in his face.
‘I suppose she’s told you?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Also that you’ve dumped her, accused her of getting pregnant deliberately in order to trap you, and ordered her to have an abortion. Nice work, Simon.’
‘Of course you’re on her side,’ he said. ‘All sisters together against the male oppressor. I know how it works. But don’t be taken in by the innocent big brown eyes. She didn’t need much persuading—as you must have noticed when you walked in on us that night.’
She hadn’t forgotten. One of her rare migraines had threatened, sending her home early from a supper party. She’d heard noises from the sitting room and pushed open the door, to see Donna and Simon, naked and entwined on the rug in front of the fireplace, engrossed in vigorous and uninhibited sex.
Donna had seen her first and screamed. Simon had flung himself off his partner’s body with more haste than finesse.
Rhianna had retreated to her room, sitting on the edge of the bed, fighting incipient nausea as the implications of what she’d interrupted came home to her.
She took a breath. ‘Believe me, I’m on no one’s side,’ she said bitterly. ‘But do you realise she was actually threatening suicide last night?’
‘That’s just ridiculous talk,’ he said flatly. ‘Ignore it.’ He added, ‘You do realise, I hope, that this baby simply cannot be born? I’m not going to lose all I want out of life just for one bloody stupid mistake.’
‘Don’t you mean a whole series of them?’ She faced him, chin up, angry herself as she wondered defeatedly what had happened to the Simon she’d once known and whom, briefly and long ago, she’d thought she wanted.
I used to envy Carrie so much I was ashamed to look at her, she thought. Now I’m just ashamed.
She added fiercely, ‘This is hardly a unilateral decision by you. A termination is incredibly serious for a woman.’
‘And my future is equally serious,’ he retorted, taking a gulp of whisky. ‘For God’s sake, Rhianna. You know what this would do to Carrie if she found out. That can’t be allowed to happen. Admit it, damn you.’
‘Yes,’ she said bitterly. ‘I know. And I swear she won’t find out from me.’
‘Good. Then you’ll do whatever’s necessary? Donna trusts you, and you can persuade her to do the right thing—if not for my sake, then for Carrie’s.’ He finished the Scotch and put the glass down. ‘You’re a great girl, Rhianna,’ he wen
t on more slowly. ‘And you look bloody amazing in that robe. I’d bet good money you’re not wearing anything underneath it. Care to prove it—for old times’ sake?’
‘There are no “old times”’. She looked at him with steady contempt. ‘There never were. Now get out of here at once.’
He whistled. ‘Hard words, but you’re still going to help me, aren’t you? Because you don’t really have a choice.’ He paused at the front door she’d thrown open. ‘I’m relying on you, remember,’ he added. ‘So don’t let me down.’
He turned to go, and she saw his face change. Looking past him, she realised that Diaz had indeed arrived ahead of time, and was standing motionless at the top of the stairs, his brows drawn together as he watched them.
‘So this is the expected admirer,’ Simon said mockingly. ‘Well, well, you are a dark horse, Rhianna. I’ll give your love to Carrie—shall I? Hello and goodbye, Diaz. Have a pleasant evening. I guarantee you will.’ He winked at Rhianna and went, the sound of his footsteps clattering down the stairs.
Rhianna stood dry-mouthed as Diaz, still frowning, walked towards her, knowing that he would ask questions she would not be able to answer.
And felt the last remnants of hope shrivel and die inside her, as she had always somehow known they must.
As the flat door closed behind them, Diaz said abruptly, ‘Does he make a habit of calling here?’
I don’t want to lie to him. Please don’t make me lie to him…
She said, ‘He’s around from time to time.’
‘Carrie didn’t say you were seeing each other.’
‘She probably didn’t think it worth mentioning.’ Rhianna forced herself to play along and shrug lightly. ‘After all, we’re hardly strangers, he and I.’
‘No,’ he said slowly. ‘I hadn’t forgotten.’ He paused. ‘Is that how you usually receive him—dressed—or undressed—like that?’
‘Of course not.’ Her indignation at least could be genuine. ‘And I certainly wasn’t expecting him this evening, if that’s what you think.’
‘Frankly,’ he said, ‘I don’t know what to think. After all, it was hardly the welcome I was anticipating.’
She looked away. ‘Nor the one I’d planned, believe me.’ Her voice was bleak.
He glanced around. ‘So, where’s the weeping willow?’
Rhianna bit her lip. ‘That’s neither kind nor fair.’
‘Perhaps I’m not feeling particularly charitable. And you didn’t answer my question.’
‘She’s gone out,’ Rhianna said.
His brows rose. ‘Good news at last,’ he said softly. ‘So, why don’t we forget about the cinema and stay here?’
If she took two steps forward, she thought, she’d be in his arms, all questions silenced. He wanted her. She wanted him. Simple.
Except it was nothing of the kind. Because she knew, none better, the dangers of sex without any kind of commitment. She’d heard them being paraded only a little while ago, in this very room.
She was aware of her own feelings, but not his. Diaz was still an enigma to her. He’d spoken of her running away five years before, but he’d made no attempt to follow. He’d let her leave Penvarnon alone and, as far as he knew, friendless. It had been Francis Seymour and Carrie who’d stood by her, not him.
And he was here with her now only because of this nameless, inexplicable thing between them that had burst into life that night in the stable yard, subjecting her to the torments of the damned ever since.
Something apparently that he’d not been able to forget either, even as he lived his life, made his money and slept with other women.
An appetite in him that she’d aroused and he wished to satisfy. And when he’d taken all she had to give and he was no longer hungry—what then? What was to prevent him just walking away, leaving her used up and discarded? Like Donna?
And all on the strength of one short-lived and disastrous encounter when she was eighteen years old.
I’m worth, she thought, far more than that.
Aloud she said, ‘Because Donna will be back very soon. So it appears that it’s the cinema or nothing.’ She added coolly, ‘And in your present mood, Diaz, I have to say the second option seems preferable.’
‘I could make you change your mind.’
Yes, but not my heart…
‘Why, Mr Penvarnon,’ she said mockingly, just as if she wasn’t weeping inside, ‘how very uncool.’
The look he sent her was long and totally deliberate, stripping away the concealing robe in order to create her nakedness in his imagination. And knowing what he was doing, and why, made it no easier to bear.
She stood, her body burning, hardly able to breathe, until at last he turned away, and she heard the outside door close behind him.
Then she sat down and covered her face with her hands.
She’d thought at the time that it was the nadir—the depths—the worst that could happen.
But I was wrong about that too, she told herself now.
She got up from the sofa, pushing her hair back from her face. She’d come down here to pack, she thought, not indulge in useless introspection. Therefore pack she would.
Be positive, she adjured herself. After all, there could hardly be more than another twenty-four hours for her to endure in his company. And if there was still a measure of physical attraction between them, then it could not be allowed to count. She didn’t need it, and nor did he. Finis.
She opened the wardrobe and gave the selection of clothes there a jaundiced look.
She’d keep out her coffee linen dress, she decided, pulling a face, and stow the rest in her travel bag. But as she dragged it from the back of the cupboard it toppled over, and a medium-sized brown envelope slid out of the front pocket.
Rhianna picked it up, frowning. It was addressed to her, in handwriting she didn’t recognise, she thought as she weighed it speculatively in her hand. Who on earth? And what on earth?
She wasn’t in the mood for mysteries, but she couldn’t help being curious all the same as she ran a finger under the flap. Inside she found a folder of photographs and a note.
She sat down on the bed, switched on the lamp, and read the note first.
Dear Miss Carlow,
We found this when we had the bedroom unit in the flat taken out. It must have fallen down behind it. We could see it belonged to your late aunt, and thought you might want to have it, so I put it with your things. I hope I did right.
M. Henderson.
So, Rhianna thought with a grimace, I seem to have a legacy from Aunt Kezia after all. How very weird.
She opened the folder and tipped out the handful of snapshots it contained.
It was an odd collection, all apparently taken round Penvarnon House and its grounds. None of the local views she might have expected. Just people. And clearly not posing. No one was smiling or saying ‘cheese’ because they’d glanced up and seen a camera on them.
And Aunt Kezia had been no photographer either. The angles were odd, capturing her subjects’ back views, and the shots were hurried and blurred because the subjects were moving.
She studied them more closely, recognising Francis Seymour in several of them. But mainly they featured another man entirely, and for a bewildered moment she thought, It’s Diaz. Why did she take all these pictures of Diaz?
Then she looked again, and realised that this was Diaz as he would be in ten or twenty years time—broader, heavier and greyer. But the resemblance was almost eerily strong, and she said, under her breath, ‘Of course—it’s his father. It’s Ben Penvarnon.’
The next one showed a woman seated on the terrace at the house, her head bent, her body slumped, and it was only when Rhianna looked more closely that she realised she was sitting in a wheelchair.
How cruel, she thought, of Aunt Kezia to take a photograph of Esther Penvarnon, her employer, like this, and how unnecessary.
The rest all seemed to be of Moira Seymour, taken invariably from a dist
ance and only just recognisable. In one she was standing near the top of the path down to the cove, glancing back over her shoulder, as if she knew there was a camera trained on her. In others she was emerging from the shrubbery, pushing the bushes aside, her face white and formless, or standing under the shadow of a tree with her husband.
There was something strange, even furtive about the photographs, Rhianna thought with distaste as she shuffled them together to replace them in the wallet. Then paused, because there was something else there. A slip of folded paper.
A cheque, she realised, for twenty-three pounds, made out to K. Trewint, and bearing the signature Benjamin Penvarnon. It was over twenty-five years out of date, and had clearly never been presented.
Rhianna stared at it in utter astonishment. How could her aunt possibly have overlooked such a thing? She’d have backed her to pay it into her account the same day—even if it had only been for twenty-three pence. So how could she have forgotten?
She refolded it and put it back in the wallet with the snaps, aware that her breathing had quickened. She felt as she’d done once when she was very young, when she’d turned over a stone in the garden only to release a host of creeping things that had scuttled everywhere. She’d screamed, knowing that if one of them ran over her sandal she wouldn’t be able to bear it, and that she’d be sick or worse.
Now, she just felt—grubby in some odd way, wishing very much the bedroom unit at the stable flat had stayed where it was, with its secret intact.
Her instinct told her to destroy the entire folder, but she could hardly throw it overboard. It didn’t seem fair to the dolphins. So she’d have to take it back to London with her and get rid of it there, she decided, tossing it back in her bag.
And now what she needed most in the world was a shower, she thought with a sudden shiver.
In the bathroom, she stripped and walked into the cubicle, rubbing handfuls of her favourite gel into every inch of her skin as if she were taking part in some essential decontamination process. Then she stood, head thrown back and eyes closed, allowing the cool, refreshing torrent to pour over her until every last trace of foam had gone.
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