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It was the architect Louis Kahn who once said, “The sun never knew how wonderful it was until it fell on the wall of a building.” Your beauty and wonder eclipsed everything when you discovered yourself last night. I feel privileged to have been your wall.
I pausedto look around the damaged room. The light exposed the worst of it, but wherever shadows fell, only the charge of emotion remained.
A quote I’d committed to memory penetrated the lines.Were it not for the shadows, there would be no beauty.
I sat bolt upright. Every word in his letter – in fact, every word he had ever spoken to me – had the same tone as that of the boy in the bookshop.
The recollection hurtled back to me like a tidal wave. Over the years it had dimmed, taking on new, made-up forms. His eyes had become blue, his shoulders slightly more sloped, his mannerisms softer. But this time I was able to picture the exact boy, and he was freakishly familiar.
Dax Thorn was the bookshop boy.
You captured it the second it saw you and it’s held out for you ever since.
And he’d known all along.
The room began to spin.
How had he known? How had he found me? Had he thought about me the way I’d thought about him for the last four years? And if he had, why was he letting me go?
My eyes searched the room as more became visible. I could hardly go storming into his suite; I was already in it. Where would he be? I dropped my gaze back to the letter.
Take this money, Rose. Do it for me. Spend it on university and getting the education you deserve. It’s the least I can do in return for you giving me the most precious gift you could ever give. I didn’t receive it lightly. It will stay with me for the rest of my life.
A car will collect you at noon and take you to the helipad. You’ll be back in London before you know it and all this will be a distant memory. All I ask is that whenever you think of the time you lost yourvirginity, you remember how grateful I was (am) and how utterly, incomprehensibly, undeserving.
All my heart,
Dax
I glanced down at the envelope which trembled in my hands. The same cheque fell out, mocking me. The envelope itself was fast becoming drenched in my tears. How had I made such a mess of everything? If he really was that boy, where had he been and why had he held out until now? And if he truly felt this way, why was he running now he had me?
A clock somewhere in his suite that had miraculously survived the assault donged eleven times. A car would arrive in one hour and I’d be taken from the island forever.
I sprung out of bed and hopped at speed through the room, out of Dax’s suite, down the winding stairs and into my room. I splashed my face, brushed my teeth and changed into a pair of exceedingly expensive jeans and a loose vest. I wrapped my hair into a bun on the top of my head, grabbed a pair of trainers, and limped out of my room into the cavernous Blackcap Hall.
At the foot of the wide staircase, I collided with Harrod, Dax’s butler.
“Hello sir,” I gasped. “Have you seen Master Thorn?”
His eyes popped as he stared at me, ruffled by my obviously panicked and uncouth display of anxiety. “About an hour ago, miss. He was heading for the stables.”
Stables?
“And, um, would you mind telling me how to get to the stables?”
He snapped his feet together as though he was a member of the cavalry and tipped his chin upwards. “I wouldn’t mind at all,but if he has gone for a ride, you’ll have missed him. And I do believe a car will be here for you in… forty-five minutes.”
“Just… tell me,” I said, fighting exasperation.
He sighed like a petulant child. “Fine. Go out thebackdoors, take a diagonal right across the gardens, round the upper edge of Lady’s Paddock, to the double gates. Beyond that are the stables.”
“Thank you,” I gushed, then hobbled a few steps before spinning round again. “Um–“
“The back doors are that way.” Harrod pointed in the opposite direction to which I was heading.
“Thank you.”
His smile was more genuine and I took that as a total green light to pursue Master Dalziel Thorn.
