'Why? I don't want you anywhere near me.'
Her colour receded. On the drive up to London she had not prepared herself for this level of cruelty. Had Alex still been seething with anger, she could have borne it better, but rejection couched in cold detachment was infinitely more final. 'Alex… haven't you ever done anything you're ashamed of 'on the spur of the moment'?' she prompted in desperation.
'Married you.'
Sara flinched as if he had struck her. 'Don't do this to us. Once you said to me, 'Nobody's perfect,' and I know that you have a right to be angry-'
'I am not angry.' But for an instant she saw a flash of stark, bitter pain in his narrowed gaze before he screened it. 'And you're embarrassing me,' he continued with cutting precision.
In a numb motion, Sara shook her head, wondering if she had imagined that pain. 'Alex?'
He shrugged back a white shirt-cuff to scrutinse his watch. 'I haven't got time for this-'
'If you say one more word, I may well hate you for the rest of my life,' Sara told him strickenly.
'Anything you feel you have to say, share it with your lawyer, not with me.' Alex strode past her to the door.
'I thought you didn't want a divorce,' she muttered unsteadily.
'I've changed my mind,' he imparted without turning round. 'I want you out of my life.'
As the door closed Sara was in such a daze that she slid down on the nearest seat, her stomach cramping up. Oh, you really made him listen, didn't you? Oh, you were really convincing, weren't you? she derided herself. But it had been as though Alex had retreated somewhere where she couldn't reach him.
'Sara?'
She glanced up to find Marco standing several feet away. She hadn't even heard the door open.
'What did you do to my brother?' he enquired with unhidden aggression.
'Where did you come from?' she mumbled.
'I was calling in to see how he was but I appear to have missed him. So what did you do?' he demanded again fiercely. 'He came round to my apartment last night and sat there like he'd been hit by a truck!'
'Did he?' She realised how low she had sunk when she experienced a flicker of hope.
'I could see he was hurting but not a blasted word could I get out of the stubborn bastard!' Marco complained. 'So what's going on?'
'I told him a lie about something and he assumed the worst and walked out.'
'And you're surprised?'
She sighed. 'You couldn't say anything to me that would make me feel any worse than I already feel…OK?'
' 1 don't like seeing my brother upset like, that. It would be much more healthy if he got drunk and punched walls instead of walking about like the living dead!'
Sara took a deep breath. 'Could you find out where he's gone?'
Marco walked to the door and bawled, 'Pete!'
'The Lake District,' Pete supplied cheerfully, walking in, obviously having been listening.
'What the blazes is he doing there?' Marco enquired.
'Visiting friends, I assume. He goes up there maybe twice a year. I've never gone along.'
'So?' Marco pressed impatiently. 'Who are they?'
'I spoke to the woman once. Her name's Elissa,' Pete informed them helpfully. 'I don't think I ever got her surname.'
Marco looked stunned. 'Elissa?' he repeated. 'Are you sure?'
The roof had fallen in round Sara's head. Shock was roaring through her in waves. Pete frowned in be- musement at them both as he walked back out again.
'Did you know about this?' Marco asked her sharply. 'That Alex was in touch with her again… I mean that he even knew where she was?'
'No.'
'Elissa living in England,' he muttered, still struggling with his own incredulity. 'And he never said a word.'
'I understood she was always too special to talk about.' Sara's voice quivered.
'If you're thinking that Alex is keeping a mistress he only sees twice a year, your head's away!'
'Is it?' She studied her feverishly linked hands through a blinding blur of tears.
'Alex is nuts about you-'
'He's never said so.'
'So he's a bit tight with the words!' Marco conceded in frustration. 'But he married you. He's living in a freezing cold house with one bathroom for your benefit. He's doing weird things like buying furniture and taking off out of the office in the middle of the day… This is not Alex as we have known him for the past thirty-four years!'
'No?''
'Sara, he's so sickeningly happy with you that he throws your name into every other sentence. Pete can't keep him in the office after five. This is a guy who cannot wait to get home to his wife every night. I ask you, is it likely he's doing a line with some old doll from his past?'
'I think I'd like to meet that old doll before I commit myself,' Sara admitted as she slowly got to her feet. Although she was still pale, her mouth was firmly set.
'What do you want to meet her for?' Marco regarded her in open dismay.
'Are you scared of what I might find? So am I… but it would be much more scary to sit at home wondering,' she confided.
It was already the middle of the afternoon. It was over two hundred miles to the small village where Elissa lived but Sara climbed into the Jag with unassailable determination. Alex might well have gone by the time she arrived… well, so be it. It was Elissa whom Sara needed to meet. She did not want to see Alex with the wretched woman. Such an encounter required a certain discretion, didn't it?
The further north Saragot, the more tense she became. Suddenly she doubted her own sanity, the need to know which had blanked out every other prompting. Alex had kept his continuing acquaintance with Elissa a secret even from his family… for how many years? And how did she know that he only saw Elissa twice a year? Pete would only be aware of those visits when Alex went directly from the office. And Elissa was discreet, wasn't she? Pete had only once spoken to her on the phone. The perfect mistress…?
She stopped for a meal at a motorway service station. She was exhausted and she forced herself to eat and drink simply to keep going. It was much later than she had hoped when she finally came upon the old stone farmhouse which lay about a mile outside the village on a steep, narrow road. There wasn't a single glimmer of life or light about Elissa's home. Sara stopped the car and rested her aching head back. So what now?
Was he in there with her? The idea totally wiped Sara out. Two long-time lovers entangled in the comfort of an adulterous bed… In silent agony she shut her eyes. Elissa had betrayed her first husband-why should she think twice about betraying a woman she had never even met? Why hadn't Alex married her? Why had she left him in the first place? Why hadn't he told Sara the truth?
But no, he hadn't lied except by omission. So what was the secret of Elissa's enduring appeal? If he still loved her, wouldn't he have married her?
And then finally Sara grasped wearily at an explanation for behaviour which struck her as incomprehensible. Only last night Alex had told her that he could understand a sexual obsession. Was that Elissa's continuing attraction after all these years? Was it possible that Alex had married her to try and break free of that affair? And was it possible that she had driven him straight back into Elissa's waiting arms again?
Sara hit her lowest ebb then. Alex had been happy with her. She wouldn't have had the courage to put her pride on the line today had she not been clinging to that awareness. Only Alex had not responded… Alex had been implacably cold and unimpressed.
Why had she come up here? What had she hoped to achieve by confronting a woman who probably knew Alex so much better than she did? Forcing herself on Elissa would be demeaning and pointless. It sunk in on Sara then that Alex really was gone, that it would be pathetic to pursue him one more step, that he had left her with nothing to do but retire in defeat. Her whole world fell in pieces around her the minute she reached that conclusion. She covered her convulsing face with her hands, a choked sob of despair ripped from her working throat.
Suddenly someone tapped on the windscreen and she was in such a state that she didn't even jump. She looked up and saw a woman in an incongruous pink dressing gown hovering. Gulping, she buzzed down the window
