‘Well,’ she said brightly, ‘perhaps that wasn’t me, just someone who looked like me.’
‘What’s got into you? If this is a joke, it isn’t funny.’
The music swelled. Now the carol was being played louder, sung by joyful voices, and her nerves were being torn. She had to get out of this or go mad.
‘It’s not a joke,’ she said breathlessly. ‘It’s just that things look different in the morning.’
‘Yes, they can look different,’ he said slowly. ‘Better or worse, depending on what you want to believe.’
‘But that’s the problem,’ she said quickly. ‘Wanting to believe is dangerous-talking yourself into things because it would be so nice if…if…’
Roscoe was still holding her, trying to understand the violent shaking he could feel throughout her body.
‘What is it?’ he asked urgently. ‘Tell me. Don’t bear it alone.’
She slumped against him in despair. How could she make him understand what she didn’t understand herself? She only knew that she’d been brought to the edge of a deep pit, a place that many people found joyous but where she’d vowed not to venture. Now she stared down into the depths, appalled at herself for backing away but unable to do anything else.
Last night they’d talked happily about the risks they would take for their love. Now she knew she hadn’t the courage and nothing mattered but to get away.
The words of the carol were still pouring from the radio.
‘New day, new hope, new life.’
That was how it should have been and how it never would be again. It was all folly, all illusion, and she must put right the damage now.
‘Pippa, my darling-’
‘Don’t-it’s better not to call me that. We had a wonderful time last night, didn’t we?’
‘I thought so,’ he said quietly.
‘But now it’s time to wake up and return to reality.’
‘And what do you call reality?’
‘We both know what we mean by it.’ She gave another brittle laugh. ‘I’m sure we’ll see each other again, but nobody can live too long in that fantasy world.’
At last Roscoe released her. It was what she’d wanted but the feeling of his hands leaving her was achingly wretched because, deep inside, she knew he would never hold her again.
‘I see,’ he said. And now his voice was ominous. ‘So that’s how it is. We had a good time, now it’s over and it had nothing to do with the real world. Is that what you’re trying to tell me?’
Pippa summoned a carefree smile. ‘Why, that’s just it. A good time. And it was great fun, wasn’t it? But now…well, you knew from the start that I was a good time girl. I think you even called me a few worse things in your head.’
‘Before I
‘Well, maybe first impressions are the most reliable. Floozie, tart, heartless piece-’
‘Stop it!’ he shouted, seizing her again. ‘I won’t listen to this. I never thought that of you-or if I ever wondered for a moment you showed me how wrong I was-’
‘Did I? Or did I show you what you wanted to see? You were a real challenge, you know. Anyone can lure a man into her bed, but luring his heart-that’s another matter.’
Pippa felt dizzy as she said these terrible words. In her desperation to escape she had gone much further than she’d meant to and for a moment she hesitated on the edge of recalling them, hurling herself into Roscoe’s arms and swearing she meant none of it.
‘Do you mean that?’ he whispered.
She had one last chance to deny her words, reclaim all the joy life could offer her.
‘Do you mean it?’ he repeated. ‘Is that all there’s been between us? You trying to bring me down, to punish me for my attitude in the first few days?
One last chance.
‘Now the sun will always shine,
Joy is here for ever.’
Frantically, she switched the radio off.
‘You know the saying,’ she said with a shrug. ‘You win some, you lose some. I like to win them all.’
Now it was too late. The last trace of feeling had gone from him. His eyes were those of a dead man.
‘I suppose I should be glad you came clean so soon,’ he said. ‘You might have taken it much further before you…but it’s always wise to face the truth.’
A sneering look came into his eyes.
‘So all the worst I thought of you was right after all. I should have more faith in my own judgement. Are you pleased? Does it give you a nasty little thrill to have brought me down?’
She managed a cynical laugh. ‘I came to your bed and gave you a good time. That’s hardly bringing you down.’
His eyes as they raked her were brutal.
‘Oh, but you did much more than that,’ he breathed. ‘You put on the sweet, generous mask and it fooled me so thoroughly that I told you things that never before…’ He drew a shuddering breath. ‘Well, I hope it gave you a good laugh.’
She was about to protest wildly that he was terribly wrong, but she controlled the impulse in time and offered him a smile precisely calculated to infuriate him. It would break his heart, but if it drove him away from her it would be better for him in the long run. And for his sake she would hide her own broken heart and endure.
‘I see that it did,’ he grated. ‘Well, don’t let me keep you.’
‘You’re right,’ she said brightly. ‘We’ve said all we have to say, haven’t we?’
He made no attempt to follow her into the bedroom as she gathered her things and when she came out he was waiting by the front door, as though determined to make sure that she left.
‘Good day to you,’ he said politely.
‘Goodbye,’ she told him, and fled.
A robot might have functioned as Pippa did for the rest of the day. Her efficiency was beyond reproach, her smile fixed, her work done to the highest standard.
‘What the devil is the matter with her?’ muttered David, her employer and friend.
‘Why not ask her?’ his secretary suggested.
‘I daren’t. She terrifies the life out of me.’
At last it was time to escape back to the apartment that would now be her cage. As if by a signal, Pippa began to tidy the place, although it was already tidy. From now on order and good management would be her watch words. She would concentrate on her career, be the best lawyer in the business and never again try to break out of the prison created by her nightmares. Life would be safe.
At last, when she’d put everything else away, she came to the box rescued from the attic in Crimea Street. Taking out the gloves and scarves, she discovered some handwritten books at the bottom.
‘That’s Gran’s handwriting,’ she breathed. ‘But surely she didn’t keep a diary? She wouldn’t have had time.’
Yet the diaries went back to Dee’s early life, when she had been a nurse, and had still sometimes found the time to jot down her thoughts about the life around her. Sometimes amusing, sometimes caustic, sometimes full of emotion, always revealing an ebullient personality that Pippa recognised.
There were the long, anguished months when she’d loved Mark Sellon hopelessly, becoming engaged to him, then breaking it off because she couldn’t believe he loved her. But he’d been returned to her in the hospital, shot down by enemy planes, and she’d sat by his unconscious form, speaking more freely than she could have done if he’d been awake. Dee had written:
I told him that I must believe that somewhere, deep in his heart, he could hear me. Wherever he was, he must surely feel my love reaching out to him, and know that it was always his.
Pippa read far into the night, until she came to the passage that, in her heart, she had always known she’d find, written just after her grandfather’s death.
I saw you laid in the ground today and had to come away, leaving you there. And yet I haven’t really left you
