Shaking her head, Liz finished her sentence. ‘It’s no use going there. They’ve already taken him to hospital. At least, that’s what they said in the sandwich shop.’
There was a small cluster of people outside the house in the High Street, the same cluster that gathered to watch men digging a hole in the road, or the scene of an accident. Impatiently Miranda pushed her way through them, ignoring the protest of a burly man who had been talking to one of the onlookers, darting in through the open door as he called out after her, ‘Hey, you can’t go in there.’ A shaft of sunlight illuminated the bare interior of the hallway; she noticed absently that it came from an upper storey and recognised that Ben must have gone ahead with the renovators’ suggestion for redesigning the stairwell. The sunlight was thick with dust, arid and choking; it clung to her skin, powdering it, the air tasting old and dank when she breathed in.
As she looked upwards she could see a pile of rubble—bricks, plaster, pieces of wood—and her heart jerked fearfully inside her chest. She held her breath, trying to stifle her fear, her pain, slowly making her way up the temporary wooden staircase until she was on a level with the collapsed wall. What she had seen from below had simply been a small part of the devastation. Now that she was on a level with it she could see the magnitude of what was happening.
An entire interior wall appeared to have collapsed, spewing bricks and plaster everywhere. She could see through the gap in the wall quite clearly into the room beyond it.
Trembling now, she walked towards it. The house was empty, quiet; there was just her and the dust her coming had disturbed to swirl heavily around her.
As she reached the fallen masonry she saw something lying on the floor. A jacket… Ben’s jacket, surely.
Trembling, she bent down and picked it up, pressing the soft fabric to her cheek. Yes, it was his. It smelled of him. Her fingers closed on it compulsively. Where was he? How badly was he hurt? If only she had known… been here… She felt the pain, the panic, building up inside her, a huge tearing agony she couldn’t contain.
Tears pricked her eyes, and as she blinked them away she saw the blood on the jacket.
A long agonised moan of pain ripped her throat, she dropped to her knees, pressing the jacket to her face, protesting on a tortured moan.
‘No… please… Ben… Ben!’
‘Miranda.’
The shock of hearing him say her name spun her round, her eyes huge with disbelief as her tears rolled down her dusty face.
‘What is it? What are you doing here? This floor isn’t safe.’
He was coming towards her, reaching her as she stood up, repeating almost angrily, ‘What are you doing here? Why are you here?’
‘I heard… I thought you’d been hurt.’
She saw suddenly that he had been, that his shirt sleeve was rolled back and that there was blood on his arm. She swayed as she saw it, shivering when he reached out to steady her.
‘It’s only a cut,’ he told her roughly, stopping when he saw that she was clutching his jacket. ‘So, you thought I’d been hurt. And that’s why you came rushing round here. Am I supposed to believe that after the note I found this morning?’
He was angry, she recognised, flinching back from him.
‘Or were you hoping that I had been injured… that a few tons of falling bricks might have conveniently deprived me of all memory of last night?’ He gave her a savage, wolfish smile. ‘Well, let me tell you this: the whole damned building could have fallen on me before that could happen.’
She couldn’t bear the pain of what he was saying to her, and reacted to it instinctively, denying his words, crying out to him, ‘No, you’re wrong! I didn’t—’
‘You didn’t what, Miranda? You didn’t walk out on me, leaving me a polite little note saying thanks but no thanks? Well, that wasn’t the message I received.’
He was angry, and not just angry, but bitter as well.
‘No, please… it wasn’t like that. You don’t understand.’
‘Then explain it to me. Tell me why, after the most perfect loving I can ever remember, I woke up this morning to find you gone and that chilly polite little note waiting for me.’
She shook her head despairingly. ‘I can’t… I can’t explain.’
‘You mean you won’t.’
She started to shiver. ‘You’re angry with me.’
‘Angry with you?’ He gave her a biting, incredulous look, pushing his fingers through his hair, his body tense and aggressive. ‘My God, you’re speaking like a child. You must have known.’
A shout from below interrupted them. Miranda watched as Ben went to the head of the stairs and called back, ‘Yes, I’m up here. Any news from the hospital?’
‘Yes,’ the other man called back. ‘He’s going to be OK. Lucky bastard. After what he tried to do, he doesn’t deserve it.’
‘And his wife’s been informed?’ Ben wanted to know.
‘Yes, we did as you instructed and made sure someone took her out to the hospital. Oh, and Jack Meade said to tell you he’ll have the men in after lunch to make everything safe.’
‘Thanks, Rob.’
Miranda watched as Rob, the man who had been guarding the front door, went back to his post, leaving the two of them alone.
Her throat felt stiff and sore, and, now that the initial shock of believing that Ben had been hurt and then discovering that he was safe was over, she felt oddly weak, as fragile as though her body could hardly support the burden of her emotions.
‘What happened?’
The words sounded disembodied, vague and uncertain.
She watched as Ben turned round and studied her.
‘We’re not totally sure as yet, but it seems that Charlesworth decided to have another go at making his dislike of me felt, only this time he misjudged things badly, and the wall he had been tampering with, no doubt hoping to cause a set-back and more expense for me, collapsed on top of him.
‘Luckily I was here at the time. I had just come in, heard the commotion and got up here just in time to drag him free. He’d been stunned by a falling brick when the wall first started to collapse. He was damned lucky he wasn’t killed.’
Miranda closed her eyes. She was trembling all over, visibly shaking as she recognised what Ben wasn’t telling—that he, in saving Ralph, had been equally at risk.
‘Miranda.’ His voice sharpened with anxiety, as he came towards her, demanding roughly, ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’
He had reached her, was touching her before she could evade him, the sensation of his fingers on her arm, even with the thickness of her shirt between them, making her feel so vulnerable that she tensed immediately and tried to pull back, her face empty of all colour, its pallor heightened by its coating of dust.
‘You’ve been crying.’
The husky comment made her focus on him, her eyes dark and frantic.
‘I told you; I thought you’d been hurt,’ she repeated dully.
She was still holding his jacket and, as though she suddenly realised how betraying her behaviour was, she opened her fingers and dropped it.
Ben stared down at her for a few seconds and then bent to pick it up.
She started to tremble again, even more violently than before.
‘Miranda.’ His voice was heavy and sombre and a knife-like pain sliced through her. He had guessed the truth she was trying to conceal. He was going to confront her with it; she couldn’t endure that… couldn’t endure his compassion, his pity…
‘No.’ She tore herself free of him, almost flinging herself down the stairs and darting out of the building, much to the surprise of the small crowd still gathered there.
When she got back to the office, Liz was waiting for her, her face creased with concern.
‘Miranda.’
‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ she told her tightly.
She walked into her own office and closed the door, walking unsteadily over to her desk and sitting down in her chair.
She was shaking again, even more than before. She was crying as well, she realised, as she felt the wetness on her skin and the shudders that tore at her chest and hurt her throat.
Putting her head down on her desk she gave in to her emotions and wept.
When she heard her office door open, she didn’t bother to lift her head. Her tears had exhausted her. Drained her. She had no energy, no will, no ability to do anything.
‘It’s no good, Liz,’ she said in a low, exhausted voice. ‘I can’t help it, I love Ben Frobisher and it’s never going to get any better… never ever going to go away.’
‘I’m very glad to hear it.’
‘Ben!’
She lifted her head, her lips framing his name, but no sound emerged as shock held her in its grip.