A Christmas Night to Remember

She didn’t hesitate. Grabbing a pair of socks from her case, which she still hadn’t unpacked, she walked silently into the sitting room and found her coat, hat and scarf, pulling on her boots which were still damp from the snowman exercise. Her gloves she left. They were so sodden she was better off without them.

Slipping the key to the suite in her handbag, she opened the door to the corridor outside and made her way to the lift. When the doors glided open at Reception her heart was thudding. She didn’t know what she was going to say to Michael or the receptionist. But as luck would have it Michael was nowhere to be seen and the receptionist was on the phone. She walked quickly across the tiled floor and out of the main doors, giving a sigh of relief when she was in the street.

The cold took her breath away after she had warmed up so nicely, but she walked on. The snow banked either side of the pavement so there was a path in the middle, and she had no trouble reaching the main thoroughfare. She hadn’t expected any traffic, it being Christmas Day, but already the city had awoken and yawned life into its inhabitants, and there was the odd person walking here and there, and cars on the roads.

Melody walked with no clear idea of where she was going, taking care to tread carefully. In spite of everything a little frisson of exhilaration curled down her spine. This was the first time she had been out under her own steam—properly out—since the accident, and the independence was heady. It felt good to be part of the human race again.

Although it was still dark, the streetlights combined with the effect of the snow lit up her surroundings perfectly well. She pulled her hat farther down over her ears—it really was bitterly cold—and marched on, wondering why she didn’t feel tired. She had felt exhausted yesterday afternoon, and again in the taxi coming back from the theatre, but now she felt as though she could walk for miles.

In spite of coming outside to consider her position with Zeke and what she was going to do, she didn’t think as she walked along. She merely breathed in the icy air, luxuriating in the way her face was tingling and the feel of the morning on her skin.

She was alive. She hadn’t died under the wheels of that lorry and she wasn’t paralysed or confined to a wheelchair. She was lucky. She was so, so lucky. Zeke had been right, and Mr Price too, when they’d said she was better off than lots of the other patients at the hospital.

It was possibly only half an hour later when she realised she needed to sit awhile. Walking in the thick, crunchy snow was more difficult than on clear pavements, and now that the first flush of elation had dwindled exhaustion was paramount. Mr Price had warned her against doing too much initially, she thought ruefully. It would seem he knew her better than she knew herself—which wasn’t difficult.

Hyde Park stretched out to the left of her, the trees a vision of Christmas beauty with their mantle of glittering white, but, deciding it was sensible to stay on the main road, she resisted the impulse to wander in. Instead she brushed the snow off a bench on the pavement overlooking the park and sat down.

A young couple meandered by, wrapped in each other’s arms, the girl’s ponytail tied with bright red tinsel, a thick strand of which was looped round her boyfriend’s neck like a scarf. They smiled at Melody, the girl calling, ‘Happy Christmas!’ before they ambled on, giggling as they stumbled in the snow.

They probably hadn’t gone home yet from some Christmas Eve party or other they’d attended, Melody thought, watching the pair walk on. She suddenly felt aeons old, their carefree faces emphasising her staidness.

She’d never really gone to parties—not until she had met Zeke, that was. Her grandmother hadn’t approved of what she’d classified ‘aimless frivolity’, and even at dance school and in the years following she had preferred to spend any free time practising her dance moves rather than anything else.

No, that wasn’t exactly true. Melody frowned as the thought hit. She had always felt guilty if she considered going to parties or get-togethers, knowing the sacrifices her grandmother had undoubtedly made to provide the money for her to follow her chosen career. Add that to the fact that she’d invariably felt like a fish out of water, and had tried to hide herself away in a corner on the rare occasion she’d been persuaded to accompany one of her friends to a shindig, it was no wonder she hadn’t been asked much. She’d never felt quite able to let her hair down.

And then Zeke had swept into her life, turning it upside down and challenging all the rules she’d lived by. Her heart thudded, panic uppermost, but she wasn’t sure if it was the thought of walking away from him that caused the churning or the fact of how stupid she had been in not making the most of these past few hours when she could still touch and caress him. Why was she sitting on a bench in the middle of a London street when she could be in his arms? Time was so short.

Her toes clenched in her boots but she remained sitting where she was and gradually the panic subsided. She was here because she needed to think. She had been thinking non-stop since the accident, but not coolly or unemotionally. Anything but. She had been jolted to her core and every single thing in her life had been shaken.

It might have been better if she’d been allowed to cry, to sob and howl the frustration and pain at what the accident had taken away from her out of her system, but she had learnt early on that crying unsettled and disturbed the nursing staff. She supposed it had disempowered them in some way, made them feel they weren’t doing their job, and because they had all been wonderful to her she’d repressed her grief and got on with the process of building her body. It had satisfied them at least.

A gust of wind feathered the snow on a tree inside the park, missing the ones on either side. She stared at the cascade of white as the cold chilled her skin.

How many times had she asked herself, why her? Why had she had this happen to her? Why had the one thing in her life she was any good at been taken from her? But it was useless thinking like that—as useless as that tree complaining to the wind. And it wasn’t even true. She was beginning to see that.

Melody was getting cold, but she still sat

, her thoughts buzzing. Dancing had been her whole life from as long as she could remember, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t be good at something else if she tried. She just never had. Although she might not be able to dance any more, she could teach. At the back of her mind she had always imagined herself doing that one day, just not so soon. She’d thought she would ease herself into it, not have it presented as a fait accompli. But why fight it? The accident had happened. End of story.

And Zeke? Could Zeke possibly fit into this new life?

It was as though a separate part of herself was speaking, forcing her to confront the real issue.

It was one thing to decide their marriage was over in the clinical unreal surroundings of the hospital, where life was measured in the regimented hours of an institution, quite another when she was presented by Zeke himself. Dancing had been a vital part of her life, but Zeke—Zeke had been her world. From the first date they’d enjoyed each other’s company more than anyone else’s, and the intimate side of their relationship had been everything she could have wanted and more. He’d been affectionate and tactile on a day-to-day basis too, often sending her texts out of the blue to say he was thinking of her, and meeting her out of work for lunch or in the evening when she wasn’t expecting it.

Her mind grappled with the memories pouring in now she had allowed the floodgates to open. Making love till dawn. Walking on the beach at midnight at the villa in Madeira. Zeke at the stove, cooking breakfast as naked as the day he was born. The list was endless, and after keeping such a tight rein on her mind for the past months she was now powerless to stop the tide. She simply sat, her head spinning and her thoughts bringing a spiralling vortex of emotion that made it difficult to breathe as the sky lightened and dawn began to break.

A new day was dawning, but Melody was anchored to the past, and in spite of her brave thoughts about the future she simply couldn’t see a way forward which included Zeke. Their life had been in the spotlight, and because of who he was and the business he’d built up so painstakingly it would continue to be. And something fundamental had changed in her.

Could they function together as a couple, with Zeke living his life and her living a completely different one? Separate not just in their work but in their social life too? She didn’t think so. It was a recipe for disaster, however you looked at it.

And so she continued to sit under a pearly white sky, a small figure all alone, huddled up on her bench.

CHAPTER TEN

‘NOW, I could be wrong, but something tells me you could do with a nice cup of tea, dear. You look frozen to death.’

For a moment Melody couldn’t focus on the small plump woman who had sat down beside her on the bench, an equally small and plump dog flopping at his owner’s feet. She stared into the rosy face vacantly. ‘I’m sorry?’ she murmured.