Walking in Darkness

It had not been a romantic declaration of love, but it had made her heart turn over. She could have told him there and then that she was in love, but she waited until Paul told her first. From the beginning she had let him set the pace, even when she was consumed with the need to know he loved her. Paul was the sort of man, she knew instinctively, who needed to be in control of everything in his life, and Cathy loved him enough to give him what he needed, whatever the cost to her.

He had proposed before he went back to England and she hadn’t even stopped to think about it before accepting. Her father had known she was seeing him, but he hadn’t had any idea it was serious and when she told him she was marrying Paul he had been stunned.

‘But . . . Cathy . . . he’s not much younger than me!’ he had protested.

It was an argument she had expected. She had her answer ready. ‘He’s forty-eight – but so what? I’m not far short of thirty. I think that’s quite a good age-gap.’

It had taken a while to talk her father round, but he had always been sensible enough to know when she was serious. And there were compensations. He couldn’t deny it was a good match: Paul was a very wealthy man with a great deal of power in his own country. He not only owned an important national newspaper, but was a major shareholder in a television company, and her father could see he would be a very useful son-in-law, although he would much rather have seen her marrying an American.

Telling Steve had been far harder. She didn’t like remembering his face, what he had said. She had realized she would hurt him, but not guessed how much. His feelings had been far more deeply engaged than hers. That much she had always known. It had made her uneasy at times: she felt love should be equal between lovers and ached to know a deeper intimacy than she had ever felt with Steve. In a way she knew him too well, he was more like a brother than a lover. She was fond of him rather than in love with him.

She hadn’t suspected that he would be so unforgiving. She had not seen or spoken to him since. That had hurt her, because he had been her friend long before he became her lover and she missed him. She still did.

But it had been just one more thing she had had to lose for Paul. She had walked away from her country, her family, her friends – and all the sacrifices had been worth it. She didn’t regret a thing. She would do it all over again.

Their wedding had been the social event of the year on the Eastern Seaboard; everyone who was anyone had been there. Cathy had refused to have her dress made by some top designer of the moment; she had delighted her grandfather by wearing the dress her grandmother had been married in, which had been put away in layers of tissue for seventy years. Cathy had loved to see it when her grandmother brought it out every spring to air in the sunshine for a day. She always imagined wearing it, had breathed in the fragrance of the pot-pourri of rose petals and lavender in little handmade gauzy bags which her grandmother scattered over it before putting it away. Full-length, with a sweetheart neckline, a tight, tiny waist and a skirt with a long train at the back, the dress had been hand-stitched in Paris in the Twenties. Ivory satin which was softly fading into cream, covered in drifts of real Chantilly lace, it had fitted her like a glove, as if it had been made for her, so she must have been exactly the same size as her grandmother on her wedding-day. Her grandfather had looked at her with tears in his eyes and said, ‘If only she could have been here to see you!’

‘She can see me, Grandee,’ she had insisted, sure of it, feeling her grandmother’s loving presence all that day while she wore the dress, like someone moving through a dream, a dream she still inhabited.

She clung to Paul’s driving body, groaning in wild orgasm and hearing his deep moans of satisfaction. One flesh, she thought, consumed with pleasure; I knew, from the first time I saw him, that we were meant to be one flesh.

While Lilli Janacek gave the hospital reception the documents proving that Sophie Narodni had medical insurance, Steve talked to the doctor who was dealing with her case, a short, energetic man with the hooked nose and profile of an Aztec, and perfect white teeth which he displayed in cheerful smiles all the time.

‘Very lucky, very lucky girl. Yes, you can see her, why not?’ He returned Steve’s grin of relief. ‘Good news, huh? Pity the other woman was not so lucky.’

He had lost Steve. ‘Other woman?’ Steve said blankly, frowning at him.

‘Your friend, Miss Narodni, trying to save herself, clutched at the woman next to her, fell sideways and hit the platform instead of falling under the train. She got some bad bruises and a minor head injury, which is the reason why we’re keeping her in here tonight, for observation in

case of concussion. The X-rays don’t show any sign of internal damage, but you never know.’

‘And the other woman?’ Steve was accustomed to holding on to the main thread of a subject even when someone buried it in endless strings of words. Interviewing people required not merely patience but the ability to cut through a lot of crap without losing your temper.

Dr de Silva soberly shook his head. ‘Fell under the train, I’m afraid.’

That shook Steve. ‘She was killed?’

‘No, and she shouldn’t die, unless she develops complications . . . You know, winter is a bad time to get sick, you can develop pneumonia if you’re kept bedridden for long, even with central heating and warm covers, and she isn’t going to be able to move about much, not for a long while, because she broke a leg, broke both arms, and various ribs, not to mention she was knocked out by the fall, which, oddly enough, was lucky for her, because it meant she didn’t try to move, and managed not to get fried alive by the electric current. They got it turned off before she recovered consciousness, which saved her life.’

Steve nodded, forehead still creased in a frown. ‘That was lucky. Poor woman, though – has she got any family?’

‘A husband and two sons. She works uptown, was on her way home when the accident happened.’

‘Did the police give you any idea how it happened?’

Dr de Silva gave him a curious look, shrugging. ‘Miss Narodni says somebody pushed her.’

Steve froze, staring at him. ‘Pushed her?’

‘So she says. Maybe some nut did push her, it happens, or maybe there was such a crowd on the platform that she got shoved forward.’ His bleeper went and he groaned. ‘Sorry, got to get that.’ He rushed off, along the green-walled corridor, white coat flying.

Steve stared after him. So his first crazy suspicions hadn’t been so crazy after all!

‘Everything OK?’ He looked up with a start as Lilli joined him. She frowned at his pale face. ‘Well? What did the medic tell you?’

‘Sophie is only being kept in overnight in case of concussion, but she isn’t seriously injured.’ He began to walk towards the elevator. ‘Come on, she’s on the second floor, room 323.’

Sophie was almost asleep when they walked into her room. Her lids lifting drowsily, she gazed across the room, saw Lilli first, gave a sleepy, incurious, almost childlike smile of recognition, then her eyes moved on to Steve and she drew in an audible breath of shock. At once she was wide awake.