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Into her head, hard on the heels of the reprimand, came a lingering response.
What a pity.
Impatiently she sat down on the bed and tugged off her boots, exchanging them for a pair of pumps more suited to being indoors. Time to stop mooning over a tall, dark stranger she’d seen for all of ninety seconds—if that—and remind herself that she was here for Ian’s sake, not anything else. Ian was the sole focus of her life and she had better remember that. She had so little time with him as it was, and every stolen moment together was precious. Speaking of which …
She checked the voicemail on the landline phone beside her bed. To her pleasure it was indicating a new message. She pressed ‘play’ eagerly, but as she listened to the message her face fell.
‘Marisa, I’m so, so sorry! I can’t make tonight. I’m really gutted. But a pile of work’s come my way—some deal that has to be signed off by ten tomorrow morning—and that means I’m going to have to burn the midnight oil, checking through everything. If all goes smoothly maybe—maybe—I can make lunch. I’ll text you late morning—’
Ian’s voice cut out, and she stared disconsolately at the handset. She hadn’t seen Ian for three days, and she’d been so hoping that tonight would be on. She’d filled the three days as she filled all her days now—’doing’ London. But what had seemed an exciting prospect when she’d first moved into this fabulous apartment a month ago was, she knew, beginning to pall.
She felt bad that she should feel that way. Up till a month ago, in her pre-Ian existence, she’d worked non-stop just to earn enough to stay in London. All the sights and entertainments of the capital had been far beyond her. Now, with the magic wand that Ian had waved over her life, she had both time and a lavish amount of money to see and do everything that London had to offer. For a girl raised in the wilds of Devon it was a cornucopia of wonders. Things she’d only ever seen on TV or read about were suddenly available to her.
At first it had been bliss. Armed with a miraculously full wallet—thanks to Ian’s generous largesse—she’d been able to wander delightedly around top department stores and fashion shops, putting together a wardrobe the like of which had only previously ever been in her fantasies. Ian had been delighted, and warmly encouraging, and she’d read approval in his eyes whenever they were able to meet.
It wasn’t only shopping that had beguiled her. London held so much more than shops, and she’d been able to do all the famous sights, take in the capital’s great cultural and historical heritage, immerse herself in its wonders—from a breathtaking trip on the London Eye to a wide-eyed tour of Buckingham Palace and everything in between. In the evenings she’d sampled London’s glittering theatre life, with tickets to musicals and plays, live performances with famous stars on stage, sitting not in the cheapest seats up in the gods but in plush, top-price seats in the stalls and dress circle, coming back to the flat afterwards not on crowded buses or tube trains but in comfortable taxis.
It had all been absolutely, totally wonderful!
But she had always been on her own …
Ian had never come with her. Never.
He’d felt bad, as had she. She knew that. He’d said so repeatedly.
‘I just wish I could take you out and about, but I can’t—I just can’t.’
His voice always sounded strained when he said it, and Marisa knew how much he wished it were otherwise. But it was impossible for them to be seen out together. It was risky enough just meeting as they did, and she knew she could not ask for more.
I mustn’t be greedy about him. I have to be glad for what I do have of him. He’s been so wonderful to me—and I’m so incredibly glad that we met.
She reprimanded herself sternly as she got up off the bed and headed towards the kitchen. She must not be doleful and depressed when he had to cancel their rare times of getting together. And as for feeling sorry for herself because she was so alone—well, that was just totally inexcusable.
Look at where I live now—what my life is now. How easy, how luxurious. And it’s all thanks to Ian!
Yet for all her adjuration to herself as she set the kettle to boil and popped the Danish pastry she’d bought into the microwave to warm, making herself appreciate for the millionth time how blissful it was to have a spanking new luxury kitchen to herself instead of the sparse, tatty kitchenette in her bedsit, or even the kitchen in the cottage, with its ancient stone sink and rickety wooden cupboards, she could feel bleakness edging around her insides.
Determined to shake it, she went through to the living room, made herself look around at the pale grey three-piece suite, the darker grey deep pile woollen carpet, the rich silvery drapes framing the window that looked out over the roadway. She gazed down over the scene two storeys below. The road was quiet, lined with trees that would bear blossom in the spring but which now were bare.
Cars—expensive ones, for this was, as her luxury apartment testified, an expensive part of London, where only the rich and highly affluent could afford to live—lined the kerbs. She was grateful that Ian had chosen a flat in such a quiet location, and so near to Holland Park itself, for despite the charms of London she was used to the quietness of deep countryside. The winter’s dusk was deepening, and few people were out and about. There was a chilly bleakness in the vista that seemed to reach tendrils around her.
She knew no one in London. Only Ian. The other women she’d worked with briefly had all been from abroad, and she had been an obvious outsider though they’d been perfectly pleasant to her. She’d known London was going to be a big, busy place, and that she would know no one to begin with, but she hadn’t realised just how big and busy a place it was. How incredibly alone one could feel in a crowd.
How lonely she still felt, despite the luxury in which she lived.
Angry at her own self-pity, she turned away sharply, drawing the curtains and lighting one of the elegant table lamps. A cup of tea, something to watch on the huge television set in the corner, and later on she would make herself something to eat and have an early night. She had nothing to complain about—nothing to feel sorry for herself about.
And I’m used to being lonely …
Living alone with her mother on the edge of Dartmoor, she had become used to her own company. This last year in Devon, having withdrawn into grief at the loss of her mother, days had passed without her seeing another living soul. It had taken well over a year to come to terms with her mother’s death, even though the end had come almost as a release. Since being knocked down by a car some four years earlier her mother had been confined to a wheelchair, and it had been torment for her. But the accident had weakened her heart, too, and the heart attack that had taken her eighteen months ago had at least ended that torment.
And though the devastation of her mother’s loss had been total, Marisa knew that it had given her a chance to leave home that her mother’s disability and emotional dependence on her daughter had not allowed her.
But it had not just been her practical and emotional one needs that had made her mother so fearful about her leaving home. Marisa was all too conscious of the cause of that deeper fear, and before she’d finally set off for the city she’d gone to pay a last anguished visit to her mother’s grave in the parish churchyard.
‘I’m going to London, Mum. I know you don’t want me to—know you will worry about me. But I promise you I won’t end up the way you did, with a broken heart and your hopes in ruins. I promise you.’
Then she’d packed her bag, bought her train ticket, and set off. Having no idea what would befall her.
