movement that she made. Without sight, every little sound, every disturbance in the air was heightened beyond imagining and his brain was somehow able to translate them into a picture. Just as every tiny nuance in her voice was amplified so that he could not only hear what she was saying, he could also hear what she was not.
The air moved and he saw the quick shake of her head, the slide of glossy, sharply cut hair. He touched her face and saw a peaches and cream complexion. Kissed her and-
‘I felt it when I cleaned the dust from your face,’ she said, her rising inflexion replying to some uncertainty that she’d picked up in his voice. It was a two-way thing then, and he wondered what image came into her mind when he moved, spoke. When she touched him…
‘As noses go,’ He said, ‘I have to admit that it’s hard to miss.’
‘Oh, it’s not that bad. Just a little battered. How did it happen?’
She was back in control now, her voice level, with no little emotional yips to betray her. She’d clearly trained herself to disguise her feelings. How long had it taken, he wondered.
How long before it had become part of her?
How long had it taken him?
‘At school,’ He said. ‘It was at a rugby match. I charged down a ball that was on the point of leaving another boy’s boot.’
‘Ouch.’
‘I was feeling no pain, believe me,’ he said, remembering the moment, even so many years later, with complete satisfaction. ‘I’d stopped an almost certain last-minute drop goal that would have stolen the match. I don’t think I’d have noticed a broken leg, let alone a flattened nose. I was just mad that I had to go to A and E instead of going out with…’
He stopped, his pleasure at the memory tripping him over another, spilling his own emotional baggage.
‘Out with?’ she prompted, then, when he didn’t respond, ‘It was your father, wasn’t it? He’d come to see you play.’
‘Yes…’
How could that one small word have so many shades? he wondered. In the last few moments it had been a revelation, a question, reassurance and now an acknowledgement of a truth that he could barely admit. Because she was right. His father had been there. Even with an election looming, he’d taken time out of a packed schedule to be with him that day.
‘Yes,’ He repeated. ‘My father had come to see the match.’
‘Good photo op, was it?’ she asked dismissively. ‘Senior politician with his son, the blood-spattered hero of the sports field. I bet it looked terrific in the papers the next day.’
‘No!’ he responded angrily. That touch of derision in her voice had him leaping to his father’s defence. How dared she…?
‘No?’ she repeated, but this time the ironic inflection didn’t fool him.
‘There was no photograph,’ he said, his voice flat, giving her nothing.
‘No photograph? But surely you said that was all it ever was?’
She was pure butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-her-mouth innocence, but he knew that it had been a deliberate trip-up. That she’d heard something in his voice-his own emotional yip-and had set out to prove something.
‘So-what?’ she persisted, refusing to let him off her clever little hook. ‘He turned up just to see his son play for his school like any other proud father? No agenda? No photo opportunity?’
She did that thing with her fingers-making quotation marks-and he grabbed at her hands to make her stop.
‘You are a witch, Miranda Grenville.’
‘I’ve been called worse,’ she replied, so softly that her voice wrapped itself around him.
‘I can believe it.’ Then, her hands still in his, he said, ‘It was my birthday that week. My eighteenth. Dad came down from London to watch the match before taking me out to dinner.’
‘You missed your birthday dinner?’
‘Actually, it was okay,’ he said. ‘We sat in A and E, eating sandwiches out of a machine, surrounded by the walking wounded, a couple of drunks, while we waited for someone to fix me up. Give me a shot.’
‘Waited? Are you telling me that as the son of a Government minister you didn’t get instant attention?’ she said, still mocking him, but gently now.
‘The doctors were busy with more serious stuff. It didn’t matter. We talked about what I was going to do on my gap year. About the election. It wasn’t often I got him to myself like that.’
‘So the evening wasn’t a total wash-out.’
‘Not a wash-out on any level,’ He admitted. It had been the last time they’d been together like that. His father had been given a high-powered cabinet job after the election. He’d gone to university.
Manda knelt back on her heels, her hands gripped with painful tightness as Nick, seemingly unaware of her, relived a precious evening spent with his father. Did he, she wondered, realise how lucky he was?
She yearned for just one memory like that.
One day when her mother or father had taken time out of their busy lives to come and see her at school, take her out for tea. For her birthday to have been more than a date in a secretary’s diary.
‘I suppose now you’re going to tell me that I should remember all the good bits, forget the rest,’ he said, breaking into her own dark thoughts.
‘I wouldn’t dream of suggesting any such thing,’ she said.
‘Don’t be so modest, Miranda. We both know that you would.’
‘Then we’d both be wrong,’ she said vehemently. ‘I’d tell you to remember all of it. Every little thing. The good, the bad, the totally average and be grateful for every single moment.’ She caught herself. Shrugged awkwardly. ‘Sorry. It’s none of my business.’
The stone was hurting her knees and she shifted to a sitting position.
‘Here. Lean back against me, you’ll be more comfortable.’ Then, his arm around her, he said, ‘Tell me one of your memories, Miranda. Your first day at school. Was that good? Bad? Totally average?’
‘Not great. All the other new girls had been brought along by their mothers. Mine was away somewhere.’ She had always been away. ‘Let’s see…September? Shooting in Scotland, probably. Anyway, I told whichever unhappy creature was my nanny at the time to take me home since obviously it had to be a mother who delivered me to school.’
‘Did she?’
‘What do you think? The poor woman couldn’t wait to be shot of me and I was handed over kicking and screaming. No reprieve. A first impression that I strived to live down to. Can you remember your first day?’
‘I wish I couldn’t. My mother cried. I was so embarrassed that I wouldn’t let her take me nearer than the end of the road after that.’
‘Oh, poor woman!’
‘What about me? I had to live with the shame.’
‘What horrible little brats we both were.’
‘We were five years old. We were supposed to be horrible little brats.’
‘I suppose.’
‘Tell me about your first kiss,’ he said.
She sighed. ‘We’re doing all the horrible stuff first, are we?’
‘Was it horrible?’
‘I was fourteen. That dreadful age when you’re pretending to be grown up but you’re not. When kissing is a competitive sport, something to be dissected in detail with your friends afterwards and points awarded for technical merit, artistic style and endurance. Mine was with a boy called Jonathan Powell, all clashing teeth and acne. Of course, when we compared notes afterwards I lied through my back teeth. You?’
‘Thirteen. Her name was Lucy…Something. I think she must have been practising because I had a really good time.’
‘Not just a brat, but a precocious brat and, before you even think of taking this to the next logical step,’ she warned, ‘forget it.’
‘Okay. You choose. Tell me something that happened to you. Something that’s stayed with you.’
‘My very own heart-warming moment?’ she replied, mocking herself.
