He slowly lifted his head and looked into her liquid brown eyes, begging her for forgiveness. She nodded, encouraging him to continue to open up his thoughts. The dysfunctional family situation and childhood experiences had scarred both brothers. But whereas Josh reacted by retreating into his own private world and cutting all ties with reality, Freddie reacted with violence and malice.
“The other half of me loved Josh and wished him well. How could I not? He was always so sad and lonely, obsessed with the fantasy that there was a father out there who would have loved him had he known of his existence. Josh grew into this miserable insecure introvert. I often wept for him. When we were boys he was my biggest friend and my worst enemy. But then our career paths forked and we were no longer in direct competition. I flourished in my field and my fifty-fifty love and hate feelings for him were replaced by genuine goodwill. I helped him build up his confidence...…especially with girls. I made them see past his silent moody character and he used to rely on me to get him through the conversation part of the evening. We had always been able to share women and jokes and laughs. We did a lot of daring stuff together and we were inseparable. I have missed him terribly these past few years and my life was just never the same after he met you.” He went silent, his mind wandering far off to his younger happier days.
Maria sat back, deep in thought. This mess was never destined to happen. If her father hadn’t sought out Josh everyone would be on the original path which had been written out from the beginning of time. She should have died in that park, and Josh and Freddie should still be the best of friends doing what they had been doing from their early teenage years, bed-hopping and causing chaos to thousands of female hearts. Josh should never have found his soul mate and therefore he should never have settled down. But her father had chosen to meddle with destiny so that she would be able to walk amongst the living, and the repercussions were still being felt by everyone who came in direct contact with her. That terrible sense of guilt engulfed her.
“I’m sorry, Freddie.”
Her whispered apology broke his reverie. “Yes, there was a time when I genuinely wanted to give him the world. But the thing is, our interests did eventually cross again and we fell in love with the same girl, and he outshone me once more. Revenge for Josh is not the only reason I want you here with me. I did fall in love with you that first night I saw you at the surgery with a bashed forehead. But...a part of me hated you too, for rejecting me and for seizing my brother’s heart. I was once again split in two as those intense conflicting feelings of love and hate battled inside me. After your hasty marriage I tried really hard to get on with my life without Josh... and you, but the day Ben was born destroyed all my resolve. I saw you dying and the part of me that loved you could not bear to lose you again. And then we started working together and I got to know the real you....”
He pressed the bridge of his nose and squeezed his eyes in pain. “...and my feelings got deeper and deeper. You have that strange irresistible quality that Josh fully recognised too. It is not beauty, no offence but I have dated prettier girls than you and so has Josh. Yes, that elusive factor enslaved us both. Perhaps it is the way you speak so softly, or walk, or the way you flick your curls back every time you laugh, or the way your brown eyes bore into our soul leaving us naked of any thoughts. You listen, a gift possessed by very few. You give everyone a piece of your own special time, your undivided attention. I can hold a decent conversation with you, a conversation that is deep and meaningful. You were the first to want to spend time with me for my mind and thoughts rather than for physical pleasure and lust and for what I can do to you in bed. Talking to you brings out the best in me.”
His intense blue eyes met hers and she knew that his speech was heartfelt and honest. His eyes were no longer the cold cruel blue they had been a while ago, but the warm deep blue of the cloudless summer sky, eyes that could melt any heart. He was like a little lost boy pleading for help. He did not know who he really was. His childhood and the love and hate feelings he constantly felt gave him the double personality he now had. Her heart went out to him. But she had to be careful; she had seen his venom many times before, he was volatile and his evil side could emerge without any apparent provocation.
“I’m not that perfect Freddie. Don’t put me on the pedestal I don’t deserve. I betrayed my husband with his brother, remember? There’s nothing more evil than that. Please don’t waste your life on me. There are plenty of willing girls out there who would kill to have you and they would all make me look shabby and plain. Let’s forget what happened in Switzerland and start afresh. Josh and I will drop all charges. We can say that I was willing to run away with you back then in Murren and that none of that was your fault. You can resume your life just as it was before this mess. The three of us, you Josh and I can be friends again. You are a brilliant doctor and it is a waste of those talents to remain in hiding forever.”
He laughed, “You cannot sweet talk me out of this, my dear. Don’t worry about my medical skills. I still practice medicine and I have managed to work in different hospitals under different names. It’s amazing how easy life can be when you are on the run with loads of money. You can blend in everywhere. During these past two years I have even gone to work in Africa as a volunteer, so as you can see I am not so completely heartless.”
“I know that and I have seen how considerate and kind you can be towards your patients, towards me when I needed your help. Please Freddie....”
“Maria, I know that once Josh is out of the way you will start to love me. If you try to look deep inside you, you’ll admit that there was a time when you wanted me in your life too, not as much as you wanted Josh, but still, the attraction was there. And Josh knows about this. Do you remember what he said in the cellar in Murren?”
Maria looked away, she knew what Freddie was talking about, she could still hear her husband’s pleading voice echoing in the cellar, “...leave me here to die. Without me hovering around her, I know that she will begin to love you, I just know that, call it my sixth sense again...” And he had forcefully repeated this conviction only the day before when he had told her about his dream. Josh had never felt secure with her.
“I remember what he said but you are both wrong. The whole thing started because I wanted to pay Josh back for being so irresistible to other women and for being so perfect physically. I wanted to make him jealous of me and I wanted to hurt him. I needed your attention because at the time he was often away filming, and things just snowballed from there. Freddie, I admit I was attracted to you but I still loved him and I would never have left him.”
“I knew that too and that was why I had to take you away from him. Maria, you will start to love me one day.”
“You deserve someone better than me, someone whose heart totally belongs to you...” she tried again but Freddie shook his head. She had to go with the flow. “Fine, but you can’t force yourself on me like you did last time. You have to give me time to adjust and allow my love to grow.” Buying time was the only thing she could hope for now.
“I’ll think about that, but I am not prepared to wait forever.” Freddie sat back on his seat and looked at her, suddenly seeing her for the first time that day. He handed her a napkin, “Your lip is bleeding. I’m sorry I had to hit you again today. I keep turning into this monster. Here, let me have a look at it.” He was gentle and kind as he leaned forward on his seat and looked at her bleeding lip, “You’ll survive,” he told her with a sweet smile that lit his handsome face.
Then he started to kiss her, tasting her sweet blood as it trickled from her wound. There was no lust or violence in that long kiss, only tenderness and love and a desperate plea for help. He pulled her from her seat and huddled her on his lap as he continued to kiss. She stiffened, hardly breathing, scared that she would somehow unleash the violent Freddie. She responded with what she hoped was enough passion to keep the evil Freddie locked up. She shook with fear.
He misunderstood her trembli
ng, “It seems like I will not have to wait for long. I think I can survive for another couple of days.” He smiled impishly and settled back on his seat. He gently pushed her head onto his chest and continued to cuddle her on his lap, saying nothing as he lost himself in his own thoughts.
Maria wanted to stay away from him; his strong arms circled around her as he stroked her thighs, his musky aftershave, and his warm breath on her hair were making her claustrophobic and sick. But she did not dare stand up and walk to the opposite seat.
She looked down and thought about their conversation, about the two extreme sides of Freddie. She thought about the gentle and considerate side. She remembered his strong and reassuring presence the night Ben was born. She would never have made it through that night hadn’t he been there to urge her on. And after that, he continued to show genuine concern for her and her subsequent pregnancy. She still remembered him rushing into her office after he had been told by one of the nurses that she had fainted as she often did during all her pregnancies. He had fussed over her and pampered her, making her feel like a queen. If he could he would have wrapped her in cotton wool and she had enjoyed his attention and she even encouraged it. They got into the habit of sharing serious conversations and secrets whilst brainstorming over medical issues. They worked well together, their medical brains complementing each other and they became good friends. They had connected on an emotional level.
But they also connected on the physical level too. He would often put his arms around her shoulders and hug her too close to him, or take her hand and ask her to sit on his lap while they worked together. Now that was improper but she never refused. She never thought twice about the lavish restaurants he took her to during their lunch break and the way their serious conversations would shift towards the inappropriate as he told her about the intimate dirty stuff he did with his girlfriends. Those conversations would inflame her thoughts and fill her with a deep yearning. She had been physically attracted to him, she realised with a start. Josh had been right.
But she was never in love with him. Physically attracted yes...but not in love. It was similar to the flimsy attraction anyone had for an irresistibly handsome pop star or an actor, the same crazy madness Josh had to face in his career when fans thronged just to get a glimpse of him. The word superficial described it best. It was nothing like the deep and entrenched love she felt for her husband. She could definitely tell the difference between the two. She would be ready to die for one but not the other.
She had been playing with fire and she had brought all this misery on herself. She had teased out the violent half of Freddie when he finally realised that physical attraction and love were not one and the same thing. It dawned on him that Maria would never love him the way she loved Josh. His brother had outshone him again. That was the last straw to tip him into that crazy state. She remembered his intense pleasure with blood, violence and sex. There was definitely something mental about the way he had acted in Murren.
But Freddie was not malignant, she concluded. If he were he would not flip from extreme violence to genuine altruism in seconds. He was mentally sick. He had this double personality that his childhood had induced. He had experienced conflicting emotions from very early on in his life and he had continued to battle with them all throughout his existence. The love and hate feelings he had always felt for Josh had now been extrapolated on to her too. He loved her intensely but also despised her profoundly whenever she was unable to return that love. She had diagnosed the root of his illness. She had to address his childhood. He would need medications and support and she would go to the ends of the world to help him.
She had to make sure that the kind, gentle Freddie stayed. She would be able to talk him out of the violent one. She was sure that she could handle this until Josh came and then she would refer him to professional psychiatrists. But would Josh come for her? She had to believe and hang on the thought that he would listen to her, she had begged him to come, and he had always given in to her every wish and plea in the past even though it had been against his better judgement. But he would also find anything that would put her life in danger very painful to do.
She wished that she had listened to him and avoided Freddie. If she had, would this still have happened or would she be happy at home? And going back even further, if she had listened to him the night Ben was born, would she still be here? Josh had wanted to take her to hospital to check out her contractions, but she had downplayed her symptoms because she did not want him to miss his moment in the spotlight. She had thought that there was enough time, after all, the birth of her twins had lasted for more than ten hours. Yes, if she had listened to him, Ben would have been born in the security of a ward, away from Freddie. The resuscitation was the important key that had opened up the madness. Prior to that Freddie seemed to have accepted their union and he had only feebly attempted to break them apart.
But it was pointless to ruminate over the ‘what ifs’, there was nothing she could do about them, they were outside her influence now. All she could do was to learn from her mistakes and try to move on. Perhaps Freddie had been right, she was insolent and she never listened to Josh. She had been hard-headed from the start and had made his life very difficult. He had told her so himself.
Thinking of Josh made her heart twist and she had to clutch her chest in agony. She could not bear to live without him by her side. But now she had to stop the desperate tears because she did not want Freddie to know that she was crying. She would not be able to handle his wrath in her present state of mind. She had to stop thinking of Josh’s face as they said their goodbyes or his face after one of his terrifying dreams. That would definitely make her cry. No, she wanted to remember his happy face as he watched her coming down the church aisle a long time ago in that deserted church deep in the English countryside. She wanted to remember his face as he slowly placed his hand on her pregnant belly and felt his children move beneath her skin. She wanted to remember his face when he held his children seconds after their birth. Yes, his face had said it all as he looked into her eyes and thanked her from the bottom of his heart.
She started to feel sleepy. She realised that she had not slept at all the night before. She tried to stay alert but the regular soft beat of Freddie’s heart was lulling her into that false sense of security she should not be feeling here in his arms. She felt herself slowly drifting off to that magical island of Kemmuna. Josh was there by her side, lying on the sand as he played with her curls falling down her suntanned back. She could feel his happiness radiating out to her, washing her with bliss. She could hear his heartfelt laugh echoing around that silent beach. His arms were dragging her close to his body as his lips found hers. She was soon dreaming of her past happy life…a life that she herself had unwittingly shredded apart.
The White Cell
Maria woke up with a jerk as the plane started to land. Freddie was sitting opposite her, intently studying her face. At some point he must have transferred her to her own seat. Fear started to well up inside her as she wondered what mood he was in. Then she noticed that she was wrapped in a warm blanket.
“You were cold,” Freddie said, flashing his handsome smile at her. So far so good, though she knew that she shouldn’t have slept so soundly. “Why were you smiling in your sleep?” he continued.
She did not want to answer that, so she looked away, hoping that he did not possess Josh’s gift of reading right through her every thought. He didn’t. He jumped to his own conclusions.
“I bet you were dreaming about my kiss. Maria, I think we have a very good start here. Subconsciously you might even want this. Dreams are nothing but suppressed desires, you know.”
She shrugged and tried to smile shyly, wanting him to believe that he had hit the nail right on the head. He looked elated with that simple performance and he gently took her hand and helped her out of the plane. They walked hand in hand through a path deep in the forest. He was the bubbly happy Freddie again, cracking witty jokes as he he
lped her over the forest’s uneven ground. Maria could not decide who was scarier, the violent Freddie or the friendly extrovert. The sweeter he was, the more violent he was likely to turn when she would eventually have to reject him.
The dark green canopy of the overhanging forest abruptly ended and the dazzling bright blue sky emerged. The path led them to the cliffside. She stopped. The cliffs were indeed exactly as Josh had described them, treacherous and steep. They looked even more so in real life than in the close-up photos. She shuddered. Josh’s dreams were so accurate that she did not see herself escaping the cliff scene should he decide to come for her.
Freddie tugged her hand and they continued to walk along the cliff’s edge towards a white house, the same house that Josh had seen in his dreams and she had seen in Marco’s photos. She looked at her white prison and she was relieved to see someone standing just outside the door. She might persuade whoever it was to help her and Josh. If Freddie could bribe, so could she. There was also the pilot of the plane as well as two other men trudging along somewhere behind them. She might be able to buy her way out. Surely they were not all raving lunatics like Freddie.
The Blake Soul Page 30