Bedded by Blackmail

Home after a journey that had taken her far further than the other side of the world. A journey from which there could be no return.

She was no longer the person she had been.

Diego Saez had seen to that.

She felt that sense of pressure build up inside her again—the one she had become so familiar with. It seemed to balloon through her body, pressing outward. It threatened to break through, to explode her into fragments.

She clenched her fingers on the hot surface of the mug, willing the pressure to subside.

Suddenly, on impulse, she set aside her tea and stood up abruptly. With jerky, urgent steps she headed for the door, hurrying down to the bathroom. She stripped off her clothes, letting them fall, and yanked back the door of the shower, stepping inside.

The water rushed down over her, cold first, then warm, then finally hot. She reached for the soap and started to wash herself.

But she could not get clean.

Her doorbell went.

For an instant Portia froze, her hands hovering over the keyboard in the middle of the difficult—impossible—letter she was writing to Hugh. Then, pushing her chair back from her desk, she went into the hall from the second bedroom of the flat, which she used as a study. She opened the door into the outer hallway, which she shared with her brother’s flat upstairs, and there was Tom, standing there, ready to ring again.

‘Portia!’

He walked in.

‘Where on earth have you been? You just about disappeared off the face of the earth?’ He sounded both exasperated and anxious.

She was prepared for this. She had known Tom would realise she was home at some point and come calling. Though they did not live in each other’s pockets, she did not usually vanish for such a long period merely on the strength of a brief message left on his voicemail.

‘I took a holiday,’ she said. ‘It was all rather short notice.’

She did not look at him, merely led the way into the sitting room. It was hard to see him—very, very hard.

He followed her in.

‘A holiday?’ He was staring at her. ‘Good God, sis, have you been ill? You look awful! Did you pick up one of those foreign bugs?’

She didn’t answer him.

‘Would you like a coffee? Or are you in a rush?’ she asked instead.

He shook his head.

‘I phoned Hugh to ask if he knew any more, and he said that all he’d got was a voicemail, same as you left me. Left late at night, too, like mine.’

‘Yes, well, like I said, it was short notice.’

Tom was looking at her. She wished he wouldn’t. There was concern in his eyes, worry.

‘Portia, are you OK?’

She tensed.

‘I’m fine,’ she said automatically. Her voice sounded too brittle. But then her whole body felt brittle.

But she was functioning; that was the main thing. She had got up this morning, had gone out shopping to replenish her stores. It was a drizzly day—very English for summer. Quite normal. Everything was normal, in fact. The houses, the streets, the supermarket, the red London buses, the hurrying people. Quite normal.

Except that everything was happening through a thick, impenetrable, transparent glass wall.

Tom was behind the glass wall as well. She could see him, but he was very far away.