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His expression changed. Hardened like steel.
‘Madeline Walters never experienced anything like that! She was never going to starve in the gutter! Never going to go to bed hungry! She took to prostitution because it was easy money! That’s all! She mocked me because I’d worked hard and long for what I’d saved! Mocked me for working non-stop at back-breaking work in bloody awful conditions when she could earn a thousand pounds a night on her back in a luxury hotel room! She chose to sell her body for sex! She wanted to do it! She wanted to make money fast—any way she could! And she wasn’t fussy about how she did it! That’s why I despise her. Condemn her. And I would condemn any woman who made the same choice—chasing easy money by whoring herself out!’
He fell silent. Celeste hadn’t moved. Not a muscle. Then, with a little jerk, she lifted her mug to her lips and took a mouthful. The tea was too hot still, and scalded her mouth. But she did not feel the pain.
There was too much in the rest of her body.
Consuming her.
Slowly, she set aside her mug. Slowly, she got to her feet. Slowly, she looked back to Rafael. The time had come. The moment was here. The moment when she destroyed the happiness she had so briefly glimpsed.
I thought I was free to be happy! But I can never be free—never!
The slicing knives cut into her heart—her soul. Because the past had not gone. It had never gone. Could never be gone. It had become the very future that was now rushing in on her, forcing her throat to work, her words to be shaped, her mouth to open and her voice to sound.
Any woman, he had said... He would condemn and despise any woman.
Say it—say what you must! What you cannot keep silent on any longer!
She had thought she could keep silent. Thought she could silence the past—silence all that she had done. But to do so now was impossible.
She made herself speak. Forced herself.
‘I have to tell you something,’ she said. Her voice was as thin as a reed.
He was looking at her. Such a short distance away, but separated from her by a gulf so large it could never be bridged. Into her mind came a memory—a memory of standing on the lawns at that Oxfordshire mansion, gazing at the Milky Way. Of Rafael coming to her, telling her about the Chinese legend of lovers separated on either side of the galaxy.
It was us all along...those lovers parted by an ocean of stars.
Pain pierced her as the knives in her heart sliced again.
His face had changed expression. There was concern in it again, tenderness. The pain came again.
‘I’ve upset you,’ he said, ‘and I’m sorry. I know it must be difficult for you—painful, even—to hear about women like Madeline. Women who choose to exploit their sexuality as she did! To use it to make money.’ His mouth twisted in angry contempt. ‘Easy money.’
He took a breath, his eyes holding hers.
‘Celeste, I know you’ve had some trauma in your past. Some ugly experience that traumatised you—made you lock yourself away in a prison of celibacy because of what had been done to you! I’ve never asked—never probed. But I saw how you reacted to Karl Reiner when he said those foul words to you—and how you reacted to what he was intending for Louise. I’ve always thought that you must have been through something similar—and that there was no one to save you from it! So I can understand—I truly can—how distressing it must be to you when someone like Madeline flaunts what she’s done and makes a calculated decision to use the likes of Karl Reiner for commercial gain. I know,’ he said, and his voice was resonant, ‘that whatever happened to you, you never intended it to happen! You never chose it! You are nothing, nothing like Madeline!’
A sound came from her. A sound like something breaking. Her face was stretched like brittle plastic over steel mesh beneath. Her eyes seared him to the bone. Her voice tore like talons.
