‘I suppose you told your friends all about it, which is why I’ve been invited to their villa?’ he bit out. ‘Well, I don’t need their sympathy—or yours, either, come to that. I’m not the first guy to get dumped by a woman, and I won’t be the last! I won’t die of it.’
‘Of course you won’t, and I didn’t tell anyone else about Laura!’ she said, her voice soothing; and that made him feel as edgy as a cat whose fur was being stroked the wrong way.
‘I don’t want to talk about her!’ Patrick muttered. He couldn’t bear to talk about Laura, and yet he couldn’t stop thinking about her. How long did it take to get over this sort of pain? It wasn’t like a headache, or even like a migraine—he had bad ones, sometimes, when he had been working very hard, whirring yellow lights and zigzags in front of his eyes turning him almost blind. At least you always knew they would be over within a matter of hours. You took a couple of pills and lay down in a darkened room to wait.
You couldn’t do that with the sort of ache he had at the moment; there was no way of knowing how long it would last, and no pill you could take.
‘It will take you ages to get a taxi in this mob,’ Rae pointed out. ‘At least let me drive you to your hotel.’
He hesitated, which, with Rae, was always fatal. ‘Come on,’ she coaxed, sliding her hand through his arm again, and he let her lead him across the road into the car park lined by palm trees.
As Rae unlocked her little red Fiat, he said roughly, ‘But only if you promise not to ask any questions!’
‘I won’t even mention Laura,’ Rae reassured, as they both got into the car.
But she had. Laura, he thought, the mere sound of the name opening a new wound in his heart. Oh, Laura, how could you do this to me?
When he was younger, he had never had a problem attracting girls—not that he was handsome; he had never been that. He had learnt in his teens, though, that he had something—he wasn’t sure what it was, but he did know that for some reason girls liked him. Maybe it was his build—he had shot up when he was sixteen, to almost six feet, and he had a good body, because he liked sport, especially at school. He wasn’t a beefy, hefty man, but he was wiry, his arms and legs tough and muscled, and he dressed well, kept his brown hair smoothly brushed.
But he had often thought it was his temperament girls went for—he was light-hearted, liked life on the sunny side, enjoyed being with other people, smiled a lot; and he hadn’t taken anything seriously until he’d met Laura Grainger and fallen in love like Humpty Dumpty falling off a wall.
And now, like Humpty Dumpty, he was in pieces, and not all the King’s horses or all the King’s men could put him together again.
He had known from the start that Laura didn’t love him as much as he loved her, and perhaps it was even her coolness that first attracted him? She was a challenge after years of finding it easy to get girls. One look at her, and Patrick had actually heard his heart beating. It had been an odd experience. That was how he’d known he was in love. What else could make you suddenly aware of your own heart beating? He’d never been aware of it before.
He had soon realised that Laura didn’t just look cool—she was cool. She was beautiful and clever, quite accustomed to being chased by men; and very different from the other girls he had dated. They had been eager to wait on Patrick hand and foot—done his washing, cleaned his flat, cooked him meals. Laura hadn’t; she was far too busy running her public relations agency. She wasn’t the domesticated sort, either. They ate out quite often, and when they ate at home it was usually in Patrick’s immaculate flat, and Patrick cooked the meal.
He had always enjoyed looking after himself; he was a practical man who was good at doing practical things.
Whether it was painting or modelling in clay or bronze, or ironing, cooking and cleaning, he was deft, with quick, capable hands; and he was intensely interested in detail. He had endless patience with objects, and people. Whatever the work, Patrick enjoyed the sense of satisfaction he got from a job well done, but it was even more of a pleasure to him when he was doing it for Laura.
Her name carried so many echoes, like remembered music—Laura, he thought; Laura, cool as a winter morning, distant as the dark blue horizon he saw as Rae’s red Fiat turned into the Promenade des Anglais and sped along beside the sea.
He had always had a dream girl at the back of his mind, the sort of girl he wanted to marry one day, and the minute he had seen her he’d known Laura perfectly matched that image—with her cat-like green eyes and pale golden hair, the slender elegance of her body and that fine-boned face.
He’d once asked Laura, ‘Did you ever daydream about the sort of man you wanted to marry?’ Of course, he’d hoped she would tell him he was her dream come true.
‘Of course, doesn’t everybody?’ she had smiled. ‘I knew it would have to be a man who was ready to share everything with me—fifty-fifty. Who was cheerful about cooking supper if I was tired, or would do the shopping for me when I had to work late, who didn’t expect me to wait on him the way my mother waited on my father, as if she were a servant and he were the
