On a slightly-deranged emotional level, no, she most definitely didn’t want to hear. But the wise and mature woman she wanted to be, knew that she had to hear. ‘Yes, of course I do.’ Fran dried her hands on a tea-towel and waited while he finished putting knives in one of the drawers.
‘We first met at university when I was in my final year and Megan in her first. So long ago now,’ he murmured as he looked back on the galloping years with a kind of disbelief. ‘We had a brief fling at my graduation party, and then I left for London and I didn’t see her for a long time after that.’
Fran nodded as she recognized the bond of young, shared passion. Powerful stuff.
‘Megan came to my office to see me because she’d written a book, and knew that I was working for Gordon-Browne. She brought the manuscript across to me, and I promised that I’d have a look at it for her.’
‘And was it any good?’
Sam’s laugh was tinged with sadness. ‘The book was rubbish,’ he said brutally. ‘And when I told her so, she had the most terrible tantrum I’d ever seen. And after that, she decided to fall in love with me.’
‘You make it sound like a clinical decision—’
‘Maybe it was.’ He shrugged.
‘And one that you had no part in,’ observed Fran, in surprise.
‘Sometimes it is a bit like that, don’t you agree?’
‘Maybe,’ said Fran thoughtfully, remembering how at first Sholto had felt secure in the stability she had provided for him. The same stability which had made him feel caged once passion had burnt itself out.
‘I think my refusal to compromise my standards, by taking Megan’s work on simply because I knew her, really appealed to her. She saw me as strong and unbendable.’
‘And aren’t you?’
He gave the glimmer of a smile. ‘Not always, no. But we always give our lovers the qualities we want them to have.’
‘Maybe we do,’ she said thoughtfully.
‘Didn’t you do that with Sholto?’
‘I’m not sure.
What attracted me to Sholto was that he needed me. He was so wild, so artistic, so gorgeous, and yet he was attracted to mousy old me.’
‘I think you’re putting yourself down unnecessarily,’ he said drily.
‘Maybe I am,’ she agreed. ‘He was also the kind of person who was ruled by his emotions rather than common sense.’
‘The opposite to you, in fact?’ he hazarded.
‘In a way, yes, I suppose he was. And all the very things which first attracted me to him and him to me—were ultimately the things which drove us apart.’
‘I thought it was his infidelity which did that?’
Fran nodded. ‘But he was only able to be successful with women because he was so sensual and so in touch with his emotions.’
Sam shook his head. ‘I don’t rate unfaithfulness as being successful with women, quite the opposite, I’d say. And if he was so in touch with his feelings, then why the hell didn’t he consider that he was hurting yours?’
Fran smiled at the passionate defence, and thought that he had very cleverly turned the conversation away from him. And Megan.
‘So when did Megan get ill?’
Sam grimaced. ‘We’d been together about six months, just got engaged, when she started feeling tired all the time. At first, we thought that she might be pregnant.’ He paused as his mind took him back. The initial stunned excitement coupled with sheer panic that there might be a baby on the way. ‘But she wasn’t. I nagged her to see the doctor, and when eventually she did it was like one of those bad dreams you pray you’re going to wake up from.’ He paused again, but this time his face looked ravaged. ‘She was twenty-four years old and they told her that she had less than a year to live.’
Unnoticed, Fran poured them both a brandy from a bottle which had been used to flambé the bananas, and handed him a glass.
He drained the drink in one swallow, without seeming to notice that he had done so. ‘She had test after test. Drug after drug. But every time we tried a new treatment, it dragged her down more and more. In the end, she refused everything except painkillers, she said that acceptance was an easier thing to live with, than false hope.’