He pressed the accelerator, increasing the speed taking him away from her. Back to all that was left to him now.
His hands tightened on the steering wheel. Alexa was lost to him—he could not have her on any terms. She had shown him that in a square of canvas.
So now a heaviness settled over him, a weariness. All he could do was continue on the course he had resolved on. Ahead of him waited the girl he had said he would marry. He would do what he could for her.
What else was there for him to do? With Alexa gone—nothing.
Only Louisa
.
CHAPTER EIGHT
SPRING came. The days lengthened, the tender shoots of new growth peered between the blasted stalks of last year’s vegetation. In the garden and in the hedgerows primroses pushed their way out of the dark, confining earth, new leaves unfurled on bared branches. Life returned.
And Alexa returned to London.
But not to live. Only to pause, then pack again, and head to Heathrow. She’d booked a desert safari—a tough one. Bumping across endless dunes in a Jeep, sleeping in a bedroll underneath the stars which burned through the floor of heaven, revealing blisters of brightness, cracks showing the existence of a realm impossible to reach.
By day the sun burned down, hazing the horizon so that it was impossible to know if the Jeep were making progress or not. Yet each day they were a little further on. Each day a little further from their starting point.
They reached their goal—old ruins of an ancient city that had once been filled with living, breathing people, each one of them with their own life, their own aspirations, hopes and dreams, their own dreads and losses. Now only the desert dust blew through their emptied houses, along their deserted streets.
Alexa stopped and stared out over the desolation. Lines, bleak and spare, tolled in her head.
‘“For the world…hath really neither joy, nor love…nor peace, nor help for pain…”’
No, there was no help for pain, she knew. But the cruel-lest lines of the poem she could not say: ‘Ah, love, let us be true to one another…’
Could not even think them. Could only envy the poet who’d had someone to be true to, someone true to him.
Beyond the city’s ruins, the bare and boundless desert sands stretched far away, and she stood looking out over their loneliness, encircled in isolation, filled with a quiet despair.
And a new resolution. This could not go on—this endless desolation. It could not. Or it would destroy her. Somehow she had to find the strength to get past it. She had done it once before, when her parents had been killed, and she had found the strength to renew her life. Whatever it took, she had to do it again now.
So, at the end of the safari, when the Jeep returned to base, she did not head for the airport with the others. She found a small pension, simple but respectable, and stayed there awhile, going out every day with paints and inks and sketchbook, her body shrouded to keep attention from her, her head covered against both the sun and male eyes. The locals thought her mad but let her be, unmolested and unchallenged, and she was grateful.
Each day she worked, depicting in starkest lines the empty vastness of the lifeless desert, and each day, in the dry, relentless heat, little by little the endless pain in her desiccated a little more, a little more.
Until she could feel it no longer.
Had it gone completely? She couldn’t tell. Only knew, with a deep, sure certainty, that the work she had done was good. Spare, stark, bare. But good.
Then and only then did she pack up her work and head for home. The six-month lease of her tenants had expired, and they had moved out. She was wary, deeply so, of returning to London, lest it plunge her back into the vortex of memory again. Above all she knew that she would not—could not—simply return to the life she had had. She would put the flat on the market, move away, right out of London, for good. Find a future in her work.
It was hard to walk into her flat. Hard to see its familiar contours. Hard to block out the memories that went with it. But block them she did. Not bothering to unpack, she left her suitcase in the bedroom, with her newly created portfolio of desert art, and took a quick shower to refresh herself after her long flight. Then she changed into a pair of well-cut grey trousers and an ice-blue jersey top, knotted her hair into its usual neat chignon, took up her handbag and went back downstairs.
She needed to go to the shops to refill the fridge. On the way back she would look in at the estate agents—not the agency that Guy had so arrogantly bought!—and talk about marketing her flat for immediate sale. In the evening she would go through all her finances to see what her options for the future would be. At some point, too, she knew she would have tell Imogen she was back—but not until she had a good idea of what her plans were going to be. Her mind busy, determinedly so, she stepped out of the front door and headed down the short flight of steps to the pavement.
‘Miss Harcourt—’
A car had pulled up in front of her at the kerb, and a man was getting out. The car was nondescript, and so was the man accosting her. In broad daylight, on a busy pavement, her only emotion was puzzlement.
‘Yes?’ she said.
‘I work for a security firm,’ the man said. He handed her a business card, with an upmarket-looking name on it that even she had vaguely heard of. ‘My client has requested a meeting with you.’
‘What client?’ said Alexa. Warning bells were ringing now.