Painted the Other Woman

‘As for you and me—’ She swallowed. There was a stone in her throat. Making it hard to speak. Impossible almost. But she had to force the words all the same.

She stared out ahead of her, towards the granite tor beyond. Rocks that had thrust up out of the burning earth so deep below, then cooled and congealed in the air. Hardened and set. Unchangeable now. Only the wind and the rain would weather them, wear them down over aeons of time. Aeons that mocked the brief, agonised flurry of human lives. Just as the vanished ghosts of the dead village they stood in haunted those who came after them.

‘As for you and me,’ she said again, ‘what does it matter? What happened was … a mistake. An error. Regrettable, but understandable. It can’t be mended, but—’ The stone was harder now in her throat, but she had to get the words past it all the same. ‘It can be ignored.’

She heard his intake of breath behind her. Then, carefully, he spoke.

‘No—it can’t. It can’t be ignored. It has to be faced. I have to face it.’

The hands came again—lightly, briefly, on her shoulders. She could barely feel them, yet it was like electricity shivering within her as he turned her around to face him. Face what he was going to say.

His expression was sombre. The bleakness in his eyes was absolute.

‘I wronged you. I wronged you and I will regret that all my life—however unintentioned it was, the wrong remains. But if you ask me to regret what happened, then … I won’t. I can’t. I came here to you afterwards wanting only one thing. Thinking that because you were now no longer a dange

r to my sister I could indulge myself—take from you what I wanted so, so badly. Have you back for myself again.’

He gazed down at her, and behind the bleakness in his eyes something else flared. Something that was dangerous to her. That threatened her. That sought to set aside the aeons of time that formed the moors, the millennia that separated them from the people who had once dwelt here in the shadow of the tors. That sought to mock the effect of time on human lives.

Something that was stronger than time. That would outlast all things.

‘To have you back,’ he said. ‘To have you as you were in that brief, precious time we had—a time that enraptured me. And tormented me. Tormented me because I knew it was only a fleeting bubble—a bubble I would have to burst, cruelly and callously, when I denounced you.’

Emotion came to his eyes again, but it was stormy now. ‘I hated what I had to do—hated what I thought you were. It made me even harsher to you than I had to be. And when I followed you down here, saw how you lived, I could see how Ian must have turned your head, beguiled you … led you astray.’ He paused again, then said what needed to be said. ‘Just as his father led your mother astray.’

Her eyes fell. She could not answer him. He answered for her.

‘We’re human, all of us, Marisa. We make mistakes. Your mother made hers. I made mine—misjudging you. Misjudging Ian.’

He paused and her gaze flickered back up to him. The bleakness was back in his eyes.

‘We make mistakes and then we pay for them. Your mother paid for hers. I shall pay for mine.’ He paused. ‘Mine … my payment … will be doing without you.’ He took a razored breath. ‘I won’t impose upon you by giving a name to why that will exact a price from me, but be assured it will be a heavier price than I ever imagined possible.’ His mouth twisted. ‘A price I didn’t know existed until I started paying it.’

He lifted a hand as if to bid her farewell, as if to bid farewell to many things.

‘I’ll go now,’ he said. ‘I wish you well—it’s all I can do, isn’t it? All that you could possibly want me to do. I wish you well and leave you be.’ He looked around him, across the wide, sunlit moorland, ablaze now with gorse and new growth, at the blue sky above arcing from east to west. A wild bird was singing somewhere as it rose on currents of air. Then his eyes came back to her.

Looked their last on her.

He felt the knife slide into his heart as he tore his gaze away again, and set it instead on the lofty tor beyond, piercing the sky with its dark, impenetrable mass. He started to walk towards it, following the path that led there, leaving her behind.

She watched him go. Watched his figure start to recede. Watched him walk out of her life.

There was a haze over the sun. Which was strange, because there were no clouds in the cerulean sky. Yet the haze was there, like a mist in her vision. She blinked, but it did not clear.

Only the wind stung her eyes, beading her lashes with a misty haze.

Thoughts crowded into her head. She could make no sense of them. They jumbled and jostled and each one cried for space. Then one—only one—stilled the others. Formed itself into words inside her head. She heard them, made herself hear them, even as she stood there, watching him walk away from her …

The words came again in her head. Athan’s words.

‘We make mistakes. Your mother made hers. I made mine … ‘

They came again, circling like a plane. Bringing more words in their wake.

What if I’m making my mistake now?

Her mother had ruined her life, giving her love to a man—a man who had proved utterly unworthy, totally deceitful and uncaring—instead of telling him to leave her alone, get out of her life before he could destroy it.