‘No,’ she told him remorselessly. ‘But I do know what it did to Annie when she was knocked down in the street and left in a coma, when she came round and it was discovered that she couldn’t remember large chunks of her life…’
‘When…when did it happen…the accident…?’ Dominic asked her harshly.
As she witnessed his reaction to her comments Helena found herself relenting a little towards Dominic.
‘Tuesday the twenty-eighth of September, just before midday, according to the witnesses,’ she informed him. ‘The date and the time are engraved on my memory—after all, I heard them often enough when I sat through the court case with Annie. She had to go to court to get proper compensation for her injuries,’ she explained.
Dominic’s face had gone pale.
‘My flight left Heathrow later that afternoon,’ he informed her, adding grimly, ‘It’s a date and time that are engraved on my memory as well. Right up until the flight was called I was still hoping that she would appear…explain…She’d been missing for ten days by then,’ he added curtly. ‘You say she has no memory at all of…of our marriage…of me…?’
Helena could see how hard it was for him to say the words, and she could guess how much it would hurt his pride to hear her answer.
‘No, she hasn’t,’ she told him quietly.
‘She recognised me, though,’ Dominic persisted stubbornly.
‘Yes,’ Helena was forced to concede. ‘In one sense that’s true; she did. But not as a real person. Not as…’
‘…her husband,’ Dominic interjected for her. ‘Is her memory ever likely to return? Can anything be done to…?’
‘It may return. No one can say conclusively whether it will or not. And as for what can be done…Do you really think if there was anything…anything that Annie could do to remember, she wouldn’t?’ she asked him, shaking her head.
‘When we were talking about what had happened, and about you, she told me that she would give anything, do anything, to be able to remember. I can appreciate how much of a shock this must be to you, but try, if you can, to imagine how it must be for Annie. Not only has she had to spend the last five years wondering, worrying about what the missing period of her life might contain, she now has to contend with the added trauma of discovering that she has a husband she can’t remember, who she left without knowing why. I can assure you, Dr Carlyle, that Annie is simply not the sort of person to walk out on a commitment she would consider as important as the commitment of marriage without having a very, very good reason.
‘Perhaps you know more about that reason than you are prepared to say,’ Helena probed, holding her breath as she saw the way Dominic’s expression changed from one of intent concentration to one of inimical anger.
‘I have no knowledge of any kind—secret or otherwise—as to why Annie left. We had had a quarrel, yes, a ridiculous, silly argument about whether we should or should not, at some future stage in our marriage, have children.’
Helena raised an eyebrow.
‘You consider the issue of fathering children trivial?’ she asked him wryly.
‘No, I don’t,’ Dominic immediately defended himself grimly. ‘Quite the opposite. My own childhood taught me the depth of a child’s need to know it is loved and wanted by its parents. This was just a quarrel, a row. Caused, I believe, more by the fact that we were soon to part than any real disagreement between us about children.
‘How is Annie?’ he asked Helena abruptly, totally disarming her. ‘I overreacted a little to…to certain aspects of…of her behaviour towards me, not knowing about the accident…’
‘She’s very shocked,’ Helena informed him truthfully. ‘But she also has a good deal of inner strength. She has needed to have it, otherwise she would never have survived.’
She glanced at her watch. It was time for her to leave.
‘Annie needs your understanding, not your antagonism,’ she told Dominic forthrightly. She hesitated. ‘I haven’t mentioned this to Annie because I don’t want to raise her hopes, but it may be that your reappearance might just trigger something that could make her remember.’
Dominic had been in the middle of working on a very complex report when Helena had arrived, but after she had gone he knew there was no way he could go back to it. Although he had tried his best to hide it from Helena, her revelations had shocked him to such an extent that he still wasn’t fully able to totally comprehend everything she had told him.
The thought of Annie being hurt, lying in hospital alone, afraid…in pain, close to death…filled him with such anger and pain that he simply couldn’t keep still, pacing the floor of his sitting room. Why hadn’t she said something to him? Told him herself? Why hadn’t she explained to him that she was suffering from amnesia? Then he might have understood when she had kept going on about knowing him—about fate. Then he might…
He might have what? It was too late for him to have regrets now, to wish that he hadn’t…
That he hadn’t what? Taken her to bed? Taken advantage of her? In the light of what Helena had told him his own behaviour was little short of sheer outright cruelty.
But he hadn’t known, he reminded himself. He had thought, believed, that she was simply acting…playing him along…Had she really meant what she had said to him? Had she really felt—been reliving—the happiness, the love, they had once shared? Had she really believed that he was her soul mate…that they were fated to meet…that she loved him?
Well, if she had believed that she must be thoroughly disabused of that belief now. Nothing could alter his own belief that in leaving him the way she had she had deliberately destroyed the love they had shared, but that did not excuse his own behaviour. He would have to go and see her, Dominic decided. He owed her an apology for the present, even if she was either unprepared or unable to furnish him with one for the past.
Wearily he recognised that he was in danger of reactivating within himself emotions he had already decided were no longer valid or necessary. But just to think of Annie, his Annie, helpless and hurt, made him feel…made him ache…Made him want…But she wasn’t his Annie any more, he reminded himself savagely. She hadn’t been his Annie from the moment she walked away from him.
Despondently Annie unpegged the washing from the line, checking automatically that it was dry. She had spent the last hours following Helena’s visit in an orgy of cleaning—a displacement activity to stop herself from thinking about Dominic, from worrying and forcing herself unsuccessfully to try to remember.
She knew that she must have loved Dominic—her dreams alone were proof of that—and presumably he must have loved her, although there had been little evidence of that love when…But, no, she must not think about that. She might have loved him but she had still obviously felt she had to leave him—and then, having done, so had recreated via her dreams an image of him as her perfect lover.
She knew better now, of course, but what she still did not know was why she should have dreamed of Dominic in the way she had, as her hero, her saviour, her special one and only person, when the reality was so very different.
‘You walked out on me. You left me,’ Dominic had told her, and she had no defence against this accusation because she had no memory of the events he had described.
Gathering up her dried washing, she hurried towards the house, trying to suppress the feeling of panic that was spreading through her.
By keeping herself physically occupied she might somehow be able to keep her anxiety at a safe distance, or so she tried to reason. She dared not stop, dared not allow herself even to think about the appalling and unbelievable nature of the situation she was in. She was a married woman. She was married to Dominic Carlyle—a stranger!
A fit of shudders ran through her body as her stressed nervous system went into revolt. Putting down the washing, she decided to make herself a cup of coffee. She had just filled the kettle and switched it on when she heard her doorbell. Assuming that her visitor must be Helena, returning to re
mind her of her invitation for Annie to return home with her, she went to open the door.
The sight of Dominic standing outside on her doorstep was so unexpected that she physically reeled with shock, only her own gritty determination keeping her body rigid as she refused to give in to the wave of sickening panic that swept her.
‘What…what do you want?’ she challenged him, dry-mouthed.
‘I would like to talk to you,’ Dominic responded politely, but Annie wasn’t deceived. She knew now how deceptive that politeness actually was.
‘Well, I don’t want to talk to you,’ she told him proudly, her chin tilting as she clung to the half-open door.
A couple of doors away one of her neighbours was walking down her garden path, and out of the corner of her eye Annie could see the interest they were attracting.
Instinctively she wanted to hide herself away from her neighbour’s curiosity, and as though he sensed what she was feeling Dominic told her softly, ‘I think you’d better let me in, Annie, unless you want other people to hear…’
He was leaving her no alternative other than to give in, Annie recognised.