I’ve never met anyone as much like me before in my life. That was why it was so easy. Looking at you is like looking into a mirror.’
‘Except I wear more make-up.’ Hopelessly unprepared for such a turn of events, Maxine resorted to flippancy. It gave her time to think.
But she had reckoned without his ability to read minds.
‘You’re also more nervous,’ Bruno replied, sliding his arm around her waist. ‘And there’s no need to be. Stop trying to analyse it, sweetheart. It’s happened, whether you like it or not.
Some things are just out of our control. All we have to do now is enjoy it.’
He was breathtakingly self-confident. Maxine decided with some regret that he was also right.
‘Has it even occurred to you that I might say no?’ she asked, because it went against the grain to be too much of a pushover.
Bruno grinned. ‘What would be the point? We both know you’re going to say yes.’
Everything seemed to be happening in ultra-slow motion.
Just crossing the street was like climbing Everest. Janey, dimly aware of Guy’s Mercedes accelerating away behind her, felt the muscles in her legs contract with each step. She listened to the sound of her own uneven breathing and she saw the figure in the shop doorway turn in her direction, tilting his head in that achingly familiar way.
Still numb with shock, she tried to formulate some kind of plan. It was so strange, she had no idea what she was going to say. All she could think of was the fact that her hands were cold.
Alan had always hated being touched by cold hands. If she touched him, would he wince and draw away? Should she just keep her hands jammed in her pockets? God, was this really happening?
‘Janey.’
It had taken forever but somehow she had made it across the street. Her heart was pounding in her ears and she still couldn’t speak but to Janey’s immense relief she didn’t need to because Alan was saying it all for her, pulling her into his arms and hugging her so tightly she could hardly breathe. Over and over again, as he covered her face with kisses, he murmured ‘Janey, oh Janey, I’ve missed you so much ... you don’t know how long I’ve dreamt of this day.’
‘You’re alive,’ she murmured finally, touching his face as if to prove it beyond all doubt.
His cheek was warm and her hands were cold but he didn’t flinch away. She had almost forgotten how good-looking he was.The sun-bleached hair was shorter; the face, confusingly, looked both older and younger and a new, pale scar bisected his left eyebrow. But the eyes, light blue and fringed with long lashes, were as clear as they had always been. They,at least, were unchanged. The eyes, and that hypnotically reassuring voice .. .
‘Oh my poor darling,’ Alan whispered tenderly, taking her icy fingers and pressing them to his lips. ‘Don’t say that; I can’t bear to imagine what I must have put you through. All I can say is that at the time I thought I was making the right decision for both of us. The trouble was,’ he went on, breaking into a sad smile, ‘no matter what I did or how hard I tried, and God knows I tried, I could never stop loving you.’
Chapter 38
Stupidly, she had almost forgotten that the flat had been Alan’s home too. It seemed odd, watching him walk into the kitchen and know without having to ask where things were.
‘It should be champagne, of course,’ he said cheerfully, uncapping the half-empty bottle of cooking brandy that was all Janey had in the way of something to drink, ‘but you look as if you could do with warming up, so .. . cheers.’
He had filled her balloon glass almost to the brim. With a trembling hand Janey raised it to her lips and gulped down several eye-watering mouthfuls, willing it to have some kind of effect on her numbed brain. She had fantasized over this scene a thousand times, her fevered imagination running riot as she covered every possible eventuality. It had never even crossed her mind that she might be so lost for words she would barely be able to say anything at all.
There were still too many questions to be answered. Alan had disappeared from her life and she didn’t know why. Now he was back and she was still none the wiser. The brandy, however, was beginning to make its presence known; she could feel that much, at least.
‘Sit down,’ she said haltingly, when Alan had switched on the gas fire and paused to admire the new painting above the mantelpiece. ‘You’d better explain everything. Right from the start. I need to know why you did it.’
She had chosen the armchair for herself. Alan sat on the sofa opposite, nursing his drink and looking contrite.
‘I want you to know, Janey, that I’m desperately ashamed of myself. I took the coward’s way out, I realize that now, but it really didn’t seem like that at the time. ‘I was under pressure, confused, I couldn’t figure out any other way of going about it without causing you even more pain.’
As far as Janey was concerned, even more pain was a physical impossibility. She had hit the threshold and stayed there, trapped like a bluebottle stuck to flypaper.
‘Go on,’ she said briefly, her eyes clouded with the unbearable memories of those first months. ‘What are you trying to tell me, that you’d met someone else?’
‘No!’ He looked appalled. ‘Janey, absolutely not. Oh God, is that what you thought?’
Impatience began to stir inside her. ‘I didn’t know what to think,’ she replied evenly. ‘I tried everything, but there were never any answers. And you weren’t there to ask.’
Alan had known this wasn’t going to be easy. He shook his head and tried again. ‘I know, and it was all my fault. What’s the expression? Be careful what you wish for, because you may get it.’
Janey stared at him.
‘Don’t look at me like that, sweetheart, please. The truth is, I loved you too much. You were what I wished for, and I got you.’ He hesitated for a second, then went on, ‘And it scared the hell out of me. It became a kind of obsession, you see; I managed to convince myself that sooner or later you would fall out of love with me. It’s a terrible feeling, Janey, to think you aren’t good enough for your own wife. It was all right for you; you knew how
