‘Don’t go away,’ she whispered, tightening her arms about him.
‘I’m always here, if you want me.’
‘I want you,’ she said passionately. ‘I want you. Hold me.’
He did so, keeping her against him while they both grew calmer. She was suffused by a sense of well-being such as she had never known before, as though everything in the world was right. She was where she was always meant to be, in the arms of the man who had been made for her, as she had been made for him. Of that she had not the slightest doubt.
‘Do you remember what you said?’ he asked softly. ‘That we could have everything?’
‘Wasn’t I right?’
He shook his head. ‘No, I’ve just found out that it isn’t possible. Because, when you think you have everything, you discover that there’s something more and you’ll never reach the end. There will always be something more in you for me to find. And I will always want to find it.’
She nodded slowly. ‘And I’ll always want you to.’
He moved back carefully, looking down, trying to read her face in the moonlight. She smiled, and something in that smile seemed to reassure him, for he relaxed.
‘I wondered how it would be,’ he murmured. ‘I knew we belonged together from the first moment we met.’
She raised an eyebrow and surveyed him with a touch of mischief.
‘Really? You were very sure of yourself.’
‘No, I was never that. You scared me. I wanted you so much that I was haunted by the fear of not winning you. I thought maybe there was another man, and when I found that there wasn’t I couldn’t believe my luck. I waited for you outside the school and pretended I was there as a doctor.
‘I tried to be sensible. You’d have laughed if you could have seen my mental contortions. I didn’t call you for several days because I was trying not to be too obvious, but you must have seen right through me.’
‘Not quite,’ she said with a memory of herself growing frustrated because he hadn’t phoned.
‘I did it all wrong. I left it so long to call you that the school term came to an end and I thought you might have gone.’
‘So that’s why you came and haunted the gate?’
‘And I practically kidnapped you. Didn’t you notice?’
‘I can’t really remember. I was too busy for distractions.’
He regarded her in dismay. ‘Really?’
She just laughed. Let him wonder.
‘I thought you might have left early,’ he resumed, ‘and I’d have lost you through my own carelessness. I nearly fainted with relief when I saw you coming out of the school. After that, I did everything to make sure of you-asking you home to dinner-’
‘Yes, I didn’t give you much chance to refuse, did I?’ He grinned. ‘But how could I? You might really have refused, and I couldn’t chance that.’
‘Then you were quite right not to take any risks. And when you
‘That was the idea. I thought I’d got it all sewn up. I was insufferably pleased with myself, so I suppose I was really asking for fate to sock me on the jaw.’
‘This I have to hear. How did it do that?’
‘I arrived to collect you and you’d gone, “for ever”.’
‘It was just an accident.’
‘I didn’t know that. I thought you’d had enough of me and decided to get out fast. You might have left the country and vanished into thin air. I didn’t know how to contact you in England, and I couldn’t ask the school until term started weeks later. I nearly went mad.’
‘You could have texted my mobile phone.’
‘Not if you’d turned it off and blocked my calls,’ he said glumly. ‘Which you’d do if you were running away from me.’
She stared at him, astonishment at his vulnerability mingling with happiness that she affected him so strongly.
‘You’ve really got a vivid imagination, haven’t you?’ she said.
‘You arrived just in time to stop me going crazy.’
Light dawned. ‘Is that why you slammed your hand on the taxi?’
‘I had to do something. It was that or a heart attack. I’m not usually violent, it’s just-I don’t know-it mattered. And until then I hadn’t faced how
‘But I could tell you didn’t like me getting so worked up, so after that I backed off, played it cool, so as not to alarm you.’
‘I thought you were having regrets,’ she whispered.
He shook his head and said in a slow, deliberate voice, ‘If there is one thing I will never regret, it is you. If I live to be a hundred I shall still say that this was the supreme moment of my life. If you leave me tomorrow, I’ll still remember this as the greatest joy I ever knew. I say that with all my heart and soul. No, don’t speak.’
He laid his hand quickly over her lips, silencing what she would have said.
‘Don’t say anything now,’ he urged. ‘I don’t want you to be kind, or say what you think I want to hear. I’ll wait gladly until your feelings prompt you to speak. Until then, silence is better.’
She could have said everything at that moment, gladdening his heart with a declaration to match his own. But instinct warned her that his reticence sprang from a deep need, and the kindest thing she could do for him was to respect that need.
So she merely enfolded him in her arms, drawing him close in an embrace that was comforting rather than passionate.
‘It’s all right,’ she whispered. ‘It’s all right. I’m here.’
In a moment they were both asleep.
She awoke in the early hours to find him still lying across her in the same position. Everything about him spoke of blissful contentment.
Then he opened his eyes, looking at her. The same contentment was there, like a man who’d come home. It became a joyous, conspiratorial smile, the meaning of which they both understood. They had a shared secret.
Light was creeping in through the curtains over the window behind the bed. She pulled herself up in bed and drew the curtains back a little, careful in case they were passing another boat. But the river was empty. There was nobody to see her nakedness, so she moved up further. He joined her and they sat together at the window, watching a soft, misty dawn come up on the Yangtze, drifting slowly past.
It was like a new day in which the shapes were ill-defined, changing from moment to moment, but always beautiful, leading them on to more beauty and happiness.
Could you really start a new life like this? she wondered. Or was it nothing but a vague dream, too perfect to be true? And did she really want to know the answer just yet?
She slid down into the bed again, stretching luxuriously, and he joined her, laughing. Then he saw something on the side table that made him stare.
‘Hey, what’s this? Ming Zhi?’ He took the little panda in his hand. ‘You brought her with you?’
‘I like to have her near as a reminder not to get carried away,’ Olivia said.
He raised eyebrows. ‘What happened last night?’
‘I gave her time off.’
He set Ming Zhi down again and lay back, wrapping Olivia in his arms.
‘If she’s still off-duty, perhaps I should make the most of it.’
He didn’t wait for her to answer, but covered her mouth forcefully and proceeded to ‘make the most of it’ in a way that left her no chance to argue even if she’d wanted to.
It was a riotous loving, filled with the sense of discovery that two people know when they have answered the first question and are eager to learn the others. This was an exploration, with more sense of adventure than
