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It was only when she had driven over halfway to Lewis’s that she allowed herself to admit that she could probably more easily have discussed what had happened with him over the telephone.
Some things had to be said face to face, she told herself defensively, ignoring the tiny inner voice that taunted her that she was just using Ian’s phone call as an excuse to go running after Lewis…that it wasn’t so much her shock at discovering that Ian believed they were getting married that was motivating her, but her longing to see Lewis…to be with him.
Guiltily trying to banish such potentially disruptive thoughts, she concentrated on her driving.
It was a beautiful early summer evening, the countryside lush and green. Envy and nostalgia ached inside her as she passed a young couple walking together hand in hand, gazing into one another’s eyes, their love for one another so plain, so obvious that it brought a lump to her throat.
Once she and Lewis had been like that. Once…
When she arrived at the house and turned into the drive, without Lewis’s presence and its effect on her to distract her, she was acutely conscious of the house’s air of forlorness.
Lewis and his home both shared an aloneness, she recognised as she parked her car and got out.
When she knocked on the door there was no reply, and neither was there any sign of Lewis’s car. See what you get for behaving so impetuously and stupidly? she derided herself. You come rushing over here, totally unnecessarily, and it serves you right that Lewis isn’t in.
And yet, instead of getting straight back in her car, turning it round and driving home, she wandered round the side of the house and into the rear garden, reluctant to listen to the voice of common sense and restraint, wanting rather to stay where she was as though in some way being here in Lewis’s home brought her closer to him.
Fool, she told herself as she walked across the lawn, but her emotions, her senses refused to respond to her taunts.
Lewis. How stupid it was of her to still love him like this…yearning for him, aching for him as though her physical and emotional growth had been halted when he had left her, as though she were still that same girl who had thought he loved her as deeply and permanently as she loved him.
The roses cloaking the summer-house blurred and trembled, but it wasn’t until she blinked that Lacey realised it was because she had started to cry.
Why, after nearly twenty years of firmly controlling her emotions, was she now behaving like this—bursting into tears without warning, suffering all the emotional upheaval and agony of a woman deeply in love?
Perhaps because she was a woman deeply in love. A woman hopelessly in love.
She covered her face with her hands, weeping silently, her body convulsing as she gave in to the deep welling tide of emotion destroying her self-control.
Lewis. She loved him so much.
Somewhere in the distance she heard the sound of a car, but the noise barely registered, unable to penetrate the intensity of her grief.
Lewis. Too late now to wish that fate had never seen fit to bring him back into her life. Into Jessica’s life.
The first thing Lewis had seen when he turned into his drive was Lacey’s car, and as he parked his own and unfastened his seatbelt his face was creased with sharp anxiety.
Something was wrong. Something had to be wrong to bring Lacey here to see him.
His heart started to pound, fear twisting his guts. It was Jessica. Something had happened. The tests.
As he rounded the corner of the house and saw Lacey standing motionless with her back to him, his fears were confirmed.
As he sprinted across the lawn towards her, calling her name, she turned her head.
In the sunlight he could see quite clearly the traces of her tears, and the pain in her eyes.
Without even thinking about what he was doing, he caught hold of her, holding her, cradling her against him, his hand in her hair, stroking it, smoothing it, while his own body was trembling almost as much as hers.
‘Lacey. Don’t…please don’t. Don’t cry, my darling. Just tell me what’s wrong…Jessica…it’s Jessica, isn’t it…?’
CHAPTER NINE
JESSICA!
Lac
ey tensed, lifting her head from Lewis’s chest.
