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‘Or I you. Though I tried damned hard. I avoided all girls who looked even remotely like you. Yet at the same time I was obviously looking for the kind of relationship you’d promised. When I first met Helen, she cleverly worked out what I wanted in a woman and played the part to the hilt. She convinced me that she wanted nothing but to be my wife and the mother of my children.
‘It was all an act, of course. She came from a family who’d had money once but whose fortunes had declined after the property market crashed in the eighties. She married me for my money, and my money is all she got.
‘I must take some blame for her subsequent behaviour, because it must have quickly become obvious to her that I loved her no more than she loved me. I did my best to make a go of the marriage but it was doomed from the start. After a few months of Helen refusing to sleep with me I hired that private detective, and put the final denouement into motion.’
‘And it was during this time that you slept with someone else?’ she asked carefully, needing to know the answer. ‘Or were there a lot of women, Lance?’
‘No, only one. Believe me when I tell you it meant nothing, Angie—either to me or to her. She was a hard-nosed career-woman in her mid-thirties. We met through business and she made it perfectly obvious that she was available. She used sex to destress her life, she said. I didn’t much care what her motives were as long as she gave me what I wanted.
‘That week, after Helen left, I finally took stock of my life. I looked at myself in the mirror and decided I did not like what I saw. Then I looked at something else, and I’m not ashamed to admit it, Angie—I cried.’
Angie’s heart went out to him. ‘What did you look at, Lance?’
‘This, Angie...’
She sat, intrigued, as he drew his wallet out of his back pocket and extracted a folded and rather battered piece of paper. With careful and oddly tender movements he unfolded it and handed it over to her. Angie’s breath caught as she realised what it was, the printed words leaping out at her from the page.
‘It’s my poem,’ she choked out, her eyes blurring. ‘The one I gave you that night...’ She looked up at him through wet lashes. ‘You kept it... all these years?’
‘How could I ever throw it away? No one had ever loved me like that, Angie, or written me anything so beautiful. When I read it again that morning I couldn’t contain my despair. But then slowly, over the next few days, my despair gradually turned to determination. I decided if there was even the slimmest chance for us I would take it.
‘I knew you weren’t married. I hoped and prayed you still felt something for me. It took me a few days to screw up the courage to actually act—Bud’s birthday being the catalyst. I knew Bud’s habit of always having a party, and I knew you’d be there.’
‘So when you came to Bud’s party... you really were coming for me at long last?’
‘Yes,’ he confessed, and Angie’s heart swelled with happiness. ‘One part of my mind kept telling me I was being an optimistic fool to pursue you after all these years. But once the idea took hold, I couldn’t seem to rid myself of it.’
He smiled a drily amused smile. ‘Of course, I still had a rather old picture of you in my mind. You’ve no idea of the shock I got when you answered the door that night. You rather dashed my hopelessly arrogant hopes in one fell swoop. This ravishing creature, I immediately realised, had not been waiting for yours truly to arrive on her doorstep. She certainly hadn’t been pining for some old lost love in any way, shape or form.’
‘But I had, Lance,’ she cried, clasping the poem to her chest and looking at him with all the love in her heart. ‘Truly.’
‘Yes, I know, my love, and that’s why I’ve done what I’ve done. I would move heaven and earth to make your dream come true, Angie, because it’s my dream as well. I only hope it’s enough.’
‘What? What have you done?’
‘Three things. I’ve resigned my position as acting managing director of Sterling Industries. I’ve put my house in Melbourne on the market, and I’m going into business with Bud up here in Sydney.’
