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He didn’t move and he didn’t respond immediately. He folded his arms and leant back against a cupboard, and then he didn’t respond directly. ‘How did you get here?’
She shrugged. ‘Train, taxi, Shanks’s pony. I tried the penthouse first, but you weren’t in residence.’
‘Why were you worried?’
Alex recalled that once before she’d thought she’d never seen him with his emotions so controlled but, if anything, they were even more locked down now. His face might have been carved in stone and his eyes were giving nothing away.
‘Because I can sense something’s wrong.’
‘Yesterday …’ he said and hesitated.
‘Yesterday …’ she paused and lifted her slim shoulders ‘.yesterday—it seemed important to prove to you that I was fine and I’m not here to—to reverse that. I know there’s no future for us, I’ve accepted that. I just thought—maybe there was some way I could help?’
‘Help?’ he repeated.
‘It probably sounds silly.’ Her eyes were dark with anxiety.
‘If only you knew.’ His tone was clipped and harsh.
Alex froze as she was transported back to the night of the dinner dance and their encounter on the staircase, so relatively close by, when he’d said to her that she’d be the last person he’d tell if he knew what was wrong with him … with the same cadence.
She lost her nerve completely. She whirled on her heel and ran to the door. She wrenched it open and ran out into the garden, uncaring of the rain, uncaring of anything but the fact that she was not proof against this kind of hurt.
He caught her as she’d almost made it around the side of the house towards the road.
‘Alex, don’t—what the hell are you doing?’ he rasped as she slipped through his fingers. He made another lunge at her and fastened his hands around her waist, but at the same time she heard him give a gasp of what sounded like pain.
She froze again and turned to look at him.
His face was white and his teeth were set, and the rain poured down on them. It was so heavy it was like a grey curtain around them obliterating the landscape.
‘What?’ she asked huskily. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘It’s my back—it’s my whole bloody life.’
‘Your b-back? What’s happened to it?’ she stammered.
‘Will you come in out of the rain and let me explain?’
‘But I thought you were angry!’ she protested as raindrops beaded her eyelashes and streamed down her fresh cheeks. ‘I still think so—’ her voice was raw with emotion ‘—and—’
‘Alex,’ he interrupted, ‘no, and we’re now soaked to the skin, it’s thundering and lightning above us—we need to go inside.’
‘Mrs Mills will kill us if we make puddles everywhere!’
‘We’ll go through the laundry, towel off, then go upstairs and change,’ he said practically and took her hand.
‘But I don’t have anything to change into.’
‘Yes, you do.’ He led her towards the laundry door. ‘Your clothes are still here.’
Alex stopped. ‘I thought you’d have given them to someone.’
He shook his head. ‘No chance of that.’
She was still trying to work out that remark as she showered and changed in her old bedroom. She’d looked through the inter-leading door to see Nicky’s room was much as she’d left it: toys, games, clothes—two sets of everything to make travelling between his mother and father easier, she guessed.
There was one thing that was new, however: a framed photo of the three of them—rather the four of them. Max, Cathy, Nicky and Nemo. It was a happy photo; Nicky looked carefree and excited, whereas his parents were looking at him with smiles on their faces.
