The Sleeping Truth : A Romantic Thriller (Omnibus Edition containing both Book One and Book Two)

by Irvine, Ian C. P.

  She starts to slide slowly down the door, ending up in a heap on the floor, her voice now broken by a flood of tears.

  “…you want explain me Andrew, why you have broken my heart?”

  I walk slowly towards her, crouching on my heels in front of her, reaching out to touch her hair, to calm her down.

  “Please,” I say, my voice shrill and trembling with fear and emotion. “please, Slávka, let me explain… I love you.”

  She squirms at the touch of my fingers, and at the mention of the word ’love’ she looks up at me, her eyes unfocussed and dull. Her face suddenly expressionless and empty.

  “Love? Love?” she starts to stand up. “You sleep with other woman because you love me? Oh, fine, yes, now I understand.”

  Pathetically I try to protest, to interrupt her, to stop her, but she does not listen to a word I say. Calmly she walks to the door of her flat and opens it, and half-turning with her back against the door and now facing the other side of the hallway without looking at me, she says “ODIŤ! Teraz.”

  There is a finality, an authority in her voice that silences me. For a moment I stand in the hallway, stunned and without words. The world seems to have stopped, time suspended. I know that this moment that is now passing is probably one of the most important I have ever lived, and that if I don’t say or do the right thing in the next few seconds, I will lose her. My future depends upon the next few words that will emerge from my mouth, the next movements of my hands and feet.

  I walk slowly towards her. I stop in front of her. I look directly into her eyes.

  “Slávka, you are the first woman I have ever trusted in my life. I love you. Don’t do this.”

  “I trusted you Andrew. I trusted you with my heart, my life and my future. You broke that trust. I thought you different Andrew. Special. But I make big mistake. You are worse than any man I have ever known. You are man that no woman can ever trust. ODIŤ!”

  “Please…”I start to say, but her face is a mask, her eyes unresponsive and unseeing, her body rigid and motionless.

  I start to back away from her, retreating backwards out of the door, ushered out by the power of her silence“...Please, we need to talk!” I beg, pleading, the tears now dissolving my words, my world beginning to wash away.

  Slowly, so slowly, I watch the door close before me.

  “Please,” I hear myself whispering, quietly.

  My hand starts to lift towards the door to prevent it closing completely, but it is too late. Then there are footsteps, the sound of Slávka walking back into her flat. Then the sound of another door closing. Her bedroom.

  I stand there staring at the green door only centimetres from my face, gently swaying from side to side. My tears stop, I swallow several times and my breathing begins to slow down.

  After ten minutes I turn around, go slowly down the stairs and start walking home.

  It takes me three hours to get back to the flat. Guy is standing in the hallway as I open the door and I walk in. He looks at me, and I look back at him without speaking a word. No questions are asked. No answers are given. Guy understands.

  “I’m here when you want to talk,.. okay?” he says. I nod.

  I walk into my room, shut the door, draw the curtains, get into bed and climb under my covers. I close my eyes.

  I am in hell.

  Chapter Fifty One

  .

  .

  Sleep comes as a blessing, a curtain of unconsciousness that descends to block out reality and allows me to dream that I am still with Slávka. I am with her in a room, a bright room full of flowers. I can hear bright and cheerful music playing and someone singing, although I do not understand the words. Slovakian folk music. Slávka comes to me and offers me her hands. “Dance with me, my Andrew,” she asks.

  I wrap my arms around her, and we start to dance. Round and round in circles. At first slowly, but then faster and faster. Curiously, it is only as we are twirling round and around that I notice she is wearing a bright red, patterned dress with a little white hat.

  “Ah, you like my Slovak National Costume?” she asks me, reading my mind.

  “Yes,” I reply, “You look so beautiful.”

  She stops dancing, and stands directly in front of me, looking straight into my eyes.

  “Then why did you sleep with other woman?”

  I start to cry. “Please, you have to let me explain!”

  She starts to laugh, then as I watch, she rises up into the air and flies away from me, towards the Tatra Mountains, not so far away in the distance.

  I try to fly after her, but my feet cannot lift off the ground. Out of desperation I start to flap my arms like a bird, although in the past I have never had to do this. Normally, whenever I want to fly all I have to do is just look up and will myself into the air, angling my arms in the correct way to rise and fall with the wind and the thermals, and I am instantly airborne. Yet this time, even though I try flapping harder and harder, I cannot take off. I have lost my ability to fly. Slávka has taken it from me.

  Helplessly, I watch Slávka getting smaller and smaller as she disappears into the distance, her laughter in stark contrast all the time getting louder and louder.

  “Slávka!” I scream. “SLÁVKA! COME BACK!”…

  There is a hand upon my shoulder. I open my eyes, and I see a woman sitting on the bed beside me.

  “Oh, thank God…I just had the worst nightmare!” I say to Slávka, sitting up in bed and reaching out to draw her to me. The woman stiffens in my arms slightly, and although her arms receive my embrace and I feel her hands upon my arms and my back, when she speaks her voice is strange.

  “Andrew, wake up…You were screaming. It’s Sal, not Slávka…”

  She pulls back from me and I feel her hand upon my forehead, brushing my hair away. I blink, a light goes on in the hallway outside my bedroom and suddenly I can see her face clearly. It is Sal, and Guy is standing in the doorway behind her.

  “Andrew, are you alright?” Sal asks, Guy looking at me from behind with concern written all over his face.

  “…Yes. Yes I am.” I reply. “I was … I’m sorry. I was having a nightmare.”

  “Do you want me to stay and talk with you,” Sal asks.

  “No,” I shake my head. “I’ll be fine. I’ll be fine. Sorry for waking you up.”

  Sal kisses me on the forehead, stands up and walks back towards Guy. For a moment they stand together in the doorway, Guy with his hand around Sal’s waist.

  “Let’s have a chat tomorrow, alright?” Guys says.

  “Sure,” I say. “Good night.”

  They close the bedroom door, a little light from the hall still sneaking under the bottom edge of the door. A moment later the light is switched off and I am left in darkness. I feel empty, alone, completely hollow, and just around the corner I feel there is a madness, a sense of impending panic, a terror which I know is waiting to engulf me.

  In an attempt to ward it away and to block out my life, I lie back on the bed, stick my head under the pillow and pull the covers over me.

  I am still in hell.

  .

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  .

  I wake up the next morning, and immediately I am hit by the emptiness that is gnawing away at me from the inside. It feels like that I have lost something, something which has left behind an intolerable space that I have to fill.

  I know what is missing, I know what is gone. But with every single thought of Slávka I experience an excruciating pain that makes me squirm in my mind, a mental discomfort that I try to evade by physically turning in my bed, moving my arms and legs, trying to find some level of peace where the pain is not so bad.

  I have lost her. She is gone.

  More pain.

  I will not see her again.

  A wave of terror sweeps through me.

  I see her face within my mind, I strive to feel her touch against my skin, to recreate the sensation of her closeness, her proximity,
her warmth.

  The door is closing, green and solid, and impenetrable, only centimetres from my nose.

  “ODIŤ! Teraz.”

  Why? Please! Let me stay…

  This physical sense of loss is something that I have never experienced to this degree before. It reminds me a little of when my father died, but it is different. Very different. Not the same. A pain of a different kind. Almost impossible to describe or capture. Yet one thing is clear. If this is the pain which you feel when you lose a woman you love, then I have truly, really truly, never been in love before.

  Or perhaps there are degrees of love. Perhaps I did love Kate and on a scale of one-to-ten, she was a ‘one’. Which would make this pain, this physical, gut-wrenching, unending pain, a ”twelve”.

  I see Slávka’s face again and a pang of loss shoots through me.

  This cannot be happening.

  I close my eyes, and roll from one side of my bed to the other, like a demented child in a nightmare dream. Which is what this is. A nightmare. A nightmare that I know will probably run with me for the rest of my life. On and on and on.

  How can I live like this without her?

  I must, …I have to make it right. To make her understand. I have to speak to her. If only I can communicate with her, then surely she will understand and forgive me.

  Looking at my watch, I see that it is 7.15 am.

  I reach for my mobile, and switch it on.

  Words flow from my fingers onto the keyboard, rapidly building text message after text message, a string of consciousness departing from my mobile and speeding through the ether to Slávka. Although after each message that I send, I sense that there is still something more that I should have written that I didn’t, and I realise that the words I never included in each previous text message were the ones that were most important, the ones that if only I had included them, they would have been the ones that would make it all right. That would make her understand. Make her come back to me.

  So, in a demented state of desperation, I write another message, then another, hitting the SEND button as soon as the “Message Full” button appears on the screen and telling me to start composing the next. Writing as quickly as I can, not checking to see that what I am writing makes sense, or is grammatically correct, not editing it in any way, or correcting my many spelling mistakes. A stream of consciousness pours forth as quickly as I can hit the keys, desperately trying to connect with her. Desperately trying to get her to understand. If only I can explain, then she will understand…

  First Message: “Slávka, I love you. Please, please call me. We have to talk. You don’t understand. I love you. I only slept with someone else because I was so hurt. You hurt me so much because I thought you had slept with someone else and that you had left me. When the nurse in the hospital told me about Mateg, I completely misundertsood. I didn’t think properly. I Really believed that you and he were lovers and that you were going to go back to Slovakia to be with him….” MESSAGE FULL. SEND.

  Message Two: Sorry, I thought that you had lied to me, that you have been unfaithful to me. I thought that you had been playing games with me and that you then were going to chuck me and go home. I was furious, because I had really trusted you and fallen head over heels in love with you, and then when I found out the you were going for an interview in Slovakia so that you could be with someone else, I just couldn’t believe it! I just couldn’t stop thinking that how could you have done this to me? How…”MESSAGE FULL. SEND.

  Message Three. “How could you have slept with someone else when I loved you so much? I was so unhappy. Then I got drunk with Gail. It was Gail. She had been dumped by her boyfriend Ben, and we were both drinking and crying together, and then we just needed consolation from each other. But I only slept with her because I needed to be with you. It was you that I was wanting to be with, not her. And when I woke up in the morning and I was no longer drunk, I felt so bad. “ MESSAGE FULL. SEND.

  Message Four: “so bad that I just got up and left and came home to my flat, and then you were there and I was so happy. I was so happy that I had been wrong, and that you did love me, and that it had all been a terrible, terrible, misunderstanding. I am so sorry. But I love you Slávka. I really really love you Slávka. Honestly, you have to understand. It was a terrible terrible mistake. We need to talk. TO sit down togethter to talk about this. Can we meet today? Shall I come round..” MESSAGE FULL. SEND.

  Message Five: “Shall I come round to yours, or will you come round to mine?” SEND

  .

  I pause. Staring at my handset. Waiting for a reply.

  There is none.

  Message Six: “Please call me, or write to me. I love you. There has been a terrible terrible misunderstanindg here. I really love you and I need to be with you….”

  Message Seven: “….I love you…..

  Message Eight. Message Nine. Message Ten….

  .

  I know that if only I can convey to her just how much I love her, that somehow it will make it all right. That somehow, she might read one of the messages and that particular message could be the one that will help her realise just what happened, and that she should forgive me, and that it was all a terrible, terrible mistake,…and perhaps, when she reads that message she will reach for the phone and call me…

  But it is the persistent fear that I may have still missed something important out, and that those words which I might have missed out could be the most important words of all,-those magic words that could make it all better-, it is this fear that drives me to write messages fifteen, sixteen, and seventeen.

  .

  No reply.

  It is 8.15 am.

  9.30 am.

  No reply.

  Message eighteen.

  10.02 am.

  Message nineteen.

  11.22 am.

  Message twenty.

  Beep Beep…

  .

  “You have 1 Message.”

  .

  I dive for the phone, hope and love and happiness on the verge of exploding within me. This is it…Message Twenty was the magic text. I did it…

  .

  Hit Inbox. Hit top message from Slávka.

  My fingers are shaking…

  .

  “Andrew. TWENTY MESSAGES! Stop. You not trust me. Without trust there is not relationship. I do not understand, why you not trust me? Why?

  Please, never ever contact me again.”

  .

  I am in hell.

  Chapter Fifty Two

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  .

  The thing about heartbreak and loneliness, as I am now discovering, is that it is all consuming. Every second. Of every moment. All day long. A dull, dull ache that follows you around wherever you go, whatever you do, accompanied by its companion, a dark, ominous shadow cloaked in pain, which whenever I stop and let my brain idle just for the slightest second in time, reaches out and touches my consciousness, letting me know in no uncertain way that Slávka is no longer my girlfriend and that she never wants to see me again.

  .

  Just after 3 pm there is a knock on my bedroom door. I pull back my sheets and stick my head out into the unfriendly world outside. My bedroom door slowly opens and a woman steps inside.

  “Andrew…are you okay?” the familiar voice whispers.

  I pull back the covers, climb out of bed and go to her. We embrace. She kisses me on my cheek and pulls me back to her and holds me close once more.

  “I’m so sorry,” she says. “I called first thing this morning, and Guy told me how upset you were. I already had my ticket so I jumped straight on the plane and flew right down.”

  “Thanks,” I reply, probably more grateful to see my sister than I have been in a long time. “Thanks.”

  “Come on,” she says. “I’ll make us both a cup of tea, and you go and get a shower. Guy told me what happened, and it’s not good to just lie in bed and mope. You have to get on with things. It’s a beautiful day outs
ide. When you’re dressed, I’m taking you for a long walk along the South Bank along the Thames. I’ll buy you a drink and some dinner, and we can talk. Okay?”

  As usual, Hannah knows best.

  .

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  .

  “I’m sorry. I was really harsh to you when we spoke on Wednesday,” Hannah says to me, as we lean against the railings on the embankment, staring across the Thames at the wonderful, granite buildings on the other side now sparkling impressively in the bright sunshine. She leans across and kisses me on the cheek. “I was just so angry and also a little disappointed in you…I can’t believe you…”

  “Look, what’s done is done. I was stupid. And now I’m paying the price, okay? But I’m really glad you’re here now. That’s what counts.”

  We had walked along the South Bank from Waterloo and had an early dinner in one of the outdoor restaurants overlooking the Thames near the Tate Modern, and I had poured my heart out to Hannah, telling her exactly what had happened since we last spoke on the phone, and how bad I now felt.

  I focussed a lot on how bad I now felt.

  And then I told her again.

  When I was finished and I had started to repeat myself endlessly over and over, Hannah had interrupted me and tactfully tried to move the conversation on, suggesting that we carry on walking for a bit.

  Walking, I was discovering, is very therapeutic. Especially today, with the weather being so perfect. Ordinarily I would be enjoying the surroundings, basking in the pleasure of just being here, surrounded by so many beautiful buildings, the ambiance of the river, the gaiety of the people all around, enjoying the Southbank in summer, but today this is all lost on me. I am focussed only on my own inner-hell and the depths of despair that I have sunk into.

  “Andrew, I know what you’re going through. Honestly, I do. Can you remember just what a mess I was when Simon dumped me?”