Walking in Darkness

He straightened to shut the wardrobe door, and saw her. They stared at each other without speaking; the abyss between them had been growing ever since he had discovered that she was not Don Gowrie’s daughter. Now it was so wide, so deep, she felt she would never be able to reach him again.

‘What are you doing?’ she stupidly asked, wanting to howl and scream like a wounded animal. How was it possible to feel such pain but talk in such a normal voice?

‘Packing a case.’ His face moved, then, with some thought she saw but could not identify – what was he thinking? His bones had tightened as if he was in pain, but his eyes stared at her from that terrible distance.

‘I can see that. Why? Why are you going? Where are you going?’

‘Back to London. I’ll be staying at the flat there for a while, I’ve got problems to deal with . . . it looks as if we can’t be at Salmond, I’m probably going to lose the company.’

‘Oh.’ It was another shock; the news shook her. ‘Oh, God, Paul, I’m so sorry.’ What did that mean? For them? If he lost the company would he leave her? Or not? ‘Can’t my father . . .?’ She stopped, shivering, at having used that word – she couldn’t stop thinking of him as her father yet, she didn’t know how else to think of him. She needed time to get used to the real truth. ‘Can’t he help?’ she huskily finished.

Paul shook his head. ‘Nobody can help. It’s all over, bar the counting.’

‘What happened? I thought various of your shareholders had pledged their votes to you.’

‘They changed their minds.’

‘Why?’

He shrugged. ‘They just did.’

‘Talk to me, Paul! Tell me what is going on!’

‘I haven’t got time now. I have to go.’

‘Why don’t I come with you?’ she pleaded. ‘Let me come! You shouldn’t be alone with all these worries, let me come.’

‘No!’ He took a long, rough breath, shuddering with it. ‘I’m sorry, no.’

A chill certainty seeped into her. ‘You’re leaving me,’ she half accused, half stated. ‘You aren’t coming back, are you?’

He looked away, his face stiff and set, nodded. ‘I’m sorry, Cathy. It’s over.’

‘What do you mean – over? Just like that? You’re leaving me without a word? Why? Why, Paul? At least tell me, to my face, why you’re going?’

‘There’s nothing to talk about. I’m sorry,’ he said again in a terse, harsh voice, and picked up the case, moving towards the open door.

She couldn’t just let him go without trying to hold on to him, she needed him too much. She kept remembering their nights together, their bodies moving in hot desire and then, when they had exhausted themselves with love, how they had slept closely entwined, arms and legs around each other, skin to skin, breathing as one creature, totally at ease one with the other. He couldn’t just have married her for her father’s money: he had loved her, she could have sworn he loved her, or he was the greatest actor in the world.

She stepped between him and the door and threw her arms round his neck, clinging, pushing her body into his. ‘Don’t go, please don’t leave me, I can’t bear it, I need you.’ She lifted her face to kiss him but he sharply jerked his head aside so she buried her mouth against his throat, kissed him with desperate urgency, her mouth moving, inviting, begging, breathing in the scent of his skin.

For a second she felt the surge of emotion rising in his body like sap in a tree. His hands gripped her shoulders, the fingertips moved, caressingly, he was breathing as if he were drowning, then he groaned, ‘NO!’ and suddenly thrust her away with a violence that sent her sprawling backwards on to the smooth white carpet.

By the time she had struggled back to her feet, Paul had gone. Cathy was crying by then, wildly, helplessly, her whole body shaking with the force of her sobbing. She ran into the bedroom and threw herself on her bed, face down.

Downstairs, Steve, Sophie and Vladimir were standing in the hall, beside the open fire, arguing. Steve had given Vladimir a brief sketch of the discussions w

ith Gowrie which had gone on while he was waiting outside the gates of Arbory House. Vladimir listened, glowering, a large half-drunk tumbler of whisky in his hand. It was his second. After his first he had asked to be shown around the hall. He wanted to have a closer look at some of the pictures hanging on the walls.

As Paul came down the stairs, Steve and Sophie looked round, and immediately noticed the case he was carrying.

‘Going somewhere?’ Steve asked drily.

‘Where’s Cathy? Is she OK?’ demanded Sophie anxiously.

‘Why don’t you go up to her?’ He was brusque, unsmiling; she saw a darkness in his eyes and was afraid for Cathy – had they quarrelled? Surely to God Cathy hadn’t been right? He wasn’t leaving her because she wasn’t Gowrie’s daughter?

Vladimir, in his obsessed way, was still thinking about what they had been discussing. In Czech he burst out, ‘I don’t care what you two say, Sophie, unless that bastard Gowrie is nailed and we tell the world just what sort of creep he is, he’ll end up president of the United States – and God help all of us then! Doesn’t that bother you?’