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‘Yes, you could.’ Her voice was quiet, expressionless again. ‘It’s what you would have done. I told myself that.’
Lucas choked. She’d turned him into some kind of hero, someone to follow and look up to. And in reality he was the worst kind of villain. ‘Dear God, Thea…’
She pulled away from him so that she could see his face. ‘Isn’t it what you would have done?’
Lucas let go of his pride. Without as much as a wave goodbye. ‘I don’t know. It’s easy to say what’s right and wrong now, but in that situation, under that kind of pressure, no one knows what they’d do. All I know is that you did what I would have wanted myself to do. Something that I’d have been proud to have done.’
She stiffened suddenly, pushing him away. ‘No, you wouldn’t. You don’t understand.’
It all seemed shockingly clear in his head. He’d driven her away, and she’d paid the price for it. He should tell her that. Find some way to apologise, even if words were never going to be enough.
Lucas hesitated, and in that moment everything was lost. She slipped away from him, almost running for the front door, tearing at the lock and wrenching it open. Her car was only a few steps across the gravel. She got in, yanking the door closed, and started the engine.
* * *
All Thea wanted to do was to get away from him. If she was alone, she could get everything back under control again. Stop the feelings that threatened to engulf her.
She switched the headlights on and saw him, blinded by the light, standing right in her path. She’d backed the car into the shade of a tree when she’d arrived that morning, and her only way out was forward.
‘Get out of the way, Lucas.’ She muttered the words, smacking her hand on the horn. When he didn’t move, desperation began to claw at her and she wound the window down. ‘I’ll run you down if you don’t move.’
‘Go on, then.’
Perhaps he thought she wouldn’t. She let go of the handbrake and the car slid forward a couple of inches before she slammed her foot on the brake. Perhaps he was right.
He fell to his knees. Not the smartest of things to do, in the path of a car driven by someone frantic with remembered grief and anger and who had nowhere else to run. She pulled the handbrake up as tight as it would go and switched the engine off.
He didn’t move so she got out of the car, the gravel from the drive digging painfully into her bare feet. Walked over to him with as much dignity as she could manage. ‘Lucas, this is crazy.’
‘No. It’s not. I know there’s more. You have to tell someone. And I need to know.’
‘Why?’
He didn’t answer for a moment and she turned away from him. Suddenly he was on his feet.
‘Because it was my fault. I lied to you. I always meant to go to Bangladesh on my own. When you told me that I thought that I had to trash my ideals in order to love someone, you were right. I chose my ideals over you. I never thought you’d put your own career on hold and come with me.’
She’d always wondered. Now that Lucas had said it, it almost came as a relief. ‘You thought wrong, then.’
‘Yes, I did. It’s not your fault that you ended up in that cell. It’s mine.’
‘You’re overestimating yourself, Lucas. You can’t assume that you’re responsible for everything I did since you left. I do have some hand in my own life.’ Hadn’t she been thinking the same as him all along? That if Lucas had been there it would have been different? She wouldn’t have got herself into that mess, or, if she had, he would have been there and helped her out of it.
He didn’t seem to be listening. ‘I won’t let you go this time, Thea. We’re going to go inside and you’ll tell the rest of it. I know there’s more.’
‘It’s of no consequence. Let it go.’
She didn’t really want him to let it go. Didn’t want him to let her go. When he took her hand, she let him lead her into the house. He shut the door on the darkness outside and walked behind her into the sitting room. Then he waited.
It was as if someone else was speaking. Someone who loved and trusted the man sitting beside her. ‘The other workers at the clinic got me a lawyer from Dhaka, a really good man. He found someone to back up my story that Ayesha had run away, and he got me out. Then it started.’ Thea felt herself start to tremble uncontrollably.
‘Okay, sweetheart. Take a breath. Take it slowly.’
He held her hand, counting out the breaths for her. Finally her heart began to stop thumping in her chest.
‘Everyone knew what had happened. The local press were waiting outside the police station, and when I wouldn’t answer any questions they shouted at me. They called me…’ The words stuck in her throat and she started to panic again.
‘Okay. I’ve got the picture. What happened then?’
