Fractured (19 page)

There was a snap, as the fragile breadstick broke at that precise moment into two pieces. I didn’t dare look at Jimmy to see his reaction. He’d spent the whole of the evening patiently pointing out that I was not, in fact, insane, and I had a feeling that my own theory of what had occurred was going to get him doubting me all over again.

‘Split in two?’ I couldn’t tell from his tone if he was incredulous or horrified at the idea.

‘Yes, you know, as though my life, all our lives, had somehow… fractured… at the moment of the accident.’

‘Fractured?’

‘Uh-huh. And in one life we were all OK, and everything continued as it should have. But in the other… it was the exact opposite. I was maimed, and everything was ruined from that moment on. And you, well, you…’

‘Died.’

That one word gave it away. I looked up and saw the agony he had been in to suppress his hilarity at my theory. I threw both the breadstick pieces at him as he burst out in laughter so hearty that half the other diners turned to look at us in amazement.

‘Shut up,’ I hissed, acutely embarrassed at the attention he was drawing upon us. ‘It was only a theory.’

Eventually, when the tears had stopped rolling down his cheeks, he managed to control himself long enough to say, as though in dire warning: ‘And
that’s
what happens when you spend your entire youth reading nothing but Stephen King novels!’

There was a tension in the car that couldn’t be ignored. It sat between us like a third passenger all the way from London to Great Bishopsford. In the end we both abandoned conversation, preferring instead to pretend that the silence we were travelling in was companionable, rather than strained and awkward. But we were just fooling ourselves. For the first time in… well, actually in for ever… I couldn’t speak freely or easily with Jimmy. If I’d have known that my actions would tear so deeply into our friendship I would never have done or said anything. But that wisdom only came with the benefit of hindsight.

And it had all been going so well. How did everything get ruined in such a short period of time?

We’d left the restaurant in good spirits, surprisingly so, considering the emotional traumas of the day. It had just started to snow as we began the short walk back to the hotel, and the soft white sprinkling falling around us, combined with the twinkling Christmas lights laced in the avenue of trees, made everything look somehow magical.

The pavements were already becoming icy and Jimmy took my arm without comment after the second near-slip, which threatened to leave me in a crumpled heap beside the road.

‘It’s these shoes,’ I protested, as his arm reached out with lightning speed, catching and steadying me before I managed to totally embarrass myself. ‘My
other
wardrobe was much more sensible.’

Jimmy chose not to remind me that my ‘other wardrobe’ was in fact, imaginary, but commented instead, ‘It’s not the shoes. It’s you. You’re a liability – you need constant looking after.’

‘Well, isn’t that what policemen are supposed to do? Isn’t that your motto: “protect and serve”?’

Jimmy laughed. ‘I think you’ll find that’s just the American police.’

‘I stand corrected,’ I murmured at the precise moment that I once again lost my footing and almost fell.

‘Really? From what I can see, it looks like you can hardly stand at all!’

We were both still laughing when we entered the warm and brightly lit hotel foyer.

We parted company in the hallway outside our adjacent rooms, but before saying goodnight, I reached up to hug him tightly.

‘Thank you for being with me today,’ I whispered in his ear. ‘I was wrong, I couldn’t have done this by myself. I’m so glad you came with me.’

His response was the gentlest of smiles, then he bent down and kissed me softly upon the lips. I drew back slightly, a little surprised, but while there was immeasurable warmth in his eyes, there was no fire. It was a kiss which said
you’re welcome; don’t mention it; anytime.
It was wholly appropriate and completely innocent. So why was it that, when we slid our respective pass cards into the locks and entered our rooms, I was left feeling as though I had wanted that kiss to say something else entirely?

I thought it would take me ages to fall asleep. I thought I would be replaying the day and all its outcomes over and over in my mind on an endless spool. But the combination of the wine we had drunk with dinner and sheer nervous exhaustion must have overtaken me, for I drifted off into oblivion within minutes of my head nestling onto the pillow. And for several hours I slept soundly, deeply and untroubled.

The dream began pleasantly enough. I was lying somewhere warm and relaxing, on a beach, I thought, and although I couldn’t quite make out his words, I could hear my father talking nearby. In my dream I kept meaning to say something, to ask him something, but I was so overcome by a delicious lassitude that to stir, even an inch, from the warm enveloping sand was all too much of an effort.

And then it all abruptly changed, in that bizarre way that dreams do. The beach was gone, and so too was my father. I was back in time, back to the night of the car accident, only this time it wasn’t Matt who had seen the approaching car heading towards us, it was me.

I knew what I had to do but when I opened my mouth to shout out a warning, no words came out, no sound at all. Frantically I tried to get everyone’s attention, but each one of them was deeply engrossed in conversation with someone else at the table, and despite my hysterical gesticulations, still no one but me was aware of the imminent danger. The waiters were laying our plates of food before us, refilling our wine glasses, while death hurtled towards us at around sixty miles an hour.

And it was then I saw that, incongruously, on the wall behind me was a large bright red emergency button. I slammed my hand down hard upon it and the responding beep of the alarm filled the air. Yet still no one moved. I struggled to get out of my chair but I was every bit as much imprisoned by the table as I had been on that actual night. Why couldn’t they hear the alarm? To me, the continual piercing bleep was so loud it was almost a deafening klaxon, but my friends remained oblivious as they sat at the table and waited for death to join them.

As the approaching car hurtled towards us, I relived the moment that had haunted so many of my dreams over the past five years, and then, finally, I found my voice. I screamed, not once but several times, and only stopped when the sound of breaking glass exploded all around me.

Only it wasn’t glass, it was the china base of the bedside lamp which my thrashing arm had knocked from the nightstand.

I sat up, hearing the thunderous pounding of my heart, waiting for it to slow down. Only the pounding wasn’t slowing down at all; if anything it was getting louder, and as I swam to the surface of full consciousness I could hear my name being called out urgently from Jimmy as he all but took the door off its hinges with his frenzied hammering.

Still not entirely awake, I swung my legs off the bed and stood up, only to sit sharply back down again as the sole of my foot encountered one of the broken shards of china. I swore loudly at the shock and pain and clambered over the bed to reach the door before Jimmy succeeded in waking up every other occupant of the floor.

We would have been a peculiar sight to any onlooker who happened to be passing down the corridor at two o’clock in the morning. Fortunately there was no one around to see Jimmy, with his hair awry, standing semi-dressed on the threshold to my room. He had at least taken the time to pull on a pair of jeans, but I noticed that, like me, he too was barefooted.

He strode purposely into my room.

‘Are you all right? I heard you screaming.’ His eyes raked the room, looking for the cause of my terrified cries, and there was no disguising the alarm in his tone, which struck me as odd, for aren’t policeman trained to stay cool in an emergency?

‘Nightmare,’ I said succinctly, hopping over to the room’s only armchair to avoid standing on my damaged foot.

His sigh of relief seemed to empty his body of the tension that had obviously been coursing through it.

‘Oh God, is that all? I thought you were being murdered in here. And then when I heard that crashing sound…’

‘I had a little argument with the bedside lamp.’

It was then that he noticed the way I was cradling my left foot in my hand, while a slow but persistent trickle of blood oozed from the deep cut on the sole.

‘Rachel you’re hurt! What happened?’

Not for the first time I wondered if he was really in the right line of work. His powers of deduction seemed flawed, to say the least.

‘I stood on one of the broken bits of lamp in my hurry to get to the door before you broke it down.’

I knew that I must have sounded a little ungrateful but the nightmare still had me in its thrall and my foot was actually very sore. Instantly he was by my chair, gently prising my hands away from my injured foot.

‘Here, let me take a look.’

Gingerly, I laid my left foot in his outstretched hand, already preparing to wince at his touch, but he was infinitely gentle as he supported my heel in his palm, examining the wound which was still bleeding quite profusely.

‘Let’s get this cleaned up,’ he announced getting to his feet. ‘I don’t think there is anything in the cut, but we need better light than in here to be sure.’

Before I realised his intention, he had bent and scooped me into his arms and was carrying me towards the bathroom.

‘I can walk,’ I protested. ‘Or hop.’

He ignored my comments and kicked the bathroom door ajar with his foot and flicked on the light. As he looked around for somewhere to deposit me, I was acutely aware of the unfamiliar, although not unpleasant, sensation of being held against his naked chest. Less agreeable was the realisation that my nightdress was incredibly short and, as a result of my nightmare, was clinging revealingly to my sweat-dampened body. I tried to pull down on the hem but only succeeded in displaying even more of my cleavage by doing so. Fortunately, Jimmy’s attention was all on my foot.

He lowered me onto the edge of the bath and used the shower attachment to slowly cascade water over my foot and ankle. It stung a little at first, but I didn’t dare fidget too much, trying as I was to maintain what little modesty I had left with one leg lifted over the edge of the tub. Never before had I felt in such desperate need of underwear.

Under the soothing rivulets of water and the fluorescent bathroom lighting, Jimmy took careful stock of the wound and when he had determined that it was clean of foreign objects, he pressed firmly down on the cut to staunch the flow of blood. The bathroom was tiny, no doubt designed for single occupancy only, so we were by necessity very close together. So close that I could hear when his breathing, instead of slowing down now the initial panic was over, began to increase in pace. I knew then that it wasn’t just me who was aware of the intimacy of the moment. With his thumb still covering the cut, his fingers were moving in slow almost imperceptible circles upon my ankle. I didn’t know if he realised what he was doing, whether the caress was intentional or not, but his actions weren’t helping my heart to resume its normal rhythm.

Something new was happening here, and the very air in the small enclosed room seemed to pulsate with a heady and unfathomable emotion. Jimmy looked up and there was something in his eyes I had never seen before; he would have recognised it though, for it was reflected back at him on my own face. The moment seemed endless and we remained locked within its intensity, neither daring to speak or move for fear of breaking the fragile cocoon around us.

‘Jimmy,’ I breathed uncertainly, reaching out a hand to touch his chest. My fingertips rested there only a moment, just long enough to feel the strong pulse of his heartbeat reverberating against them and then, with a determined shake of his head, as though denying what was happening, he got roughly to his feet. He took several moments longer than necessary to return the shower to its stand and shut off the water, but when he turned to look at me once more there was nothing in his face to betray his emotions. The fragile interlude between us might never have been.

‘I think it’s stopped bleeding now but you should probably put a plaster on it, if you have one.’

‘Uh-huh.’ Switching from intimacy to practicality in a matter of seconds had done nothing to improve my ability to articulate.

He left me then to dry my foot and dress the wound, while he returned to the bedroom and busied himself methodically clearing the carpet of broken china.

I watched him in silence from the bathroom doorway, fascinated by the display of his muscled arms and back as he bent to his task. I knew then that my feelings for him had strayed off the path of friendship, and I wanted so badly to reach out to him that it felt like a physical ache. But every bit as clearly, I could see that Jimmy did not reciprocate those feelings. Whatever territory we had almost ventured into a few minutes ago, was clearly somewhere Jimmy didn’t want to go. If I pushed it, I could lose him for ever and I couldn’t cope with that again.

‘There,’ he said, straightening to his feet. ‘I think I’ve got it all, just watch where you walk.’

‘Thank you.’ My voice was a little subdued but I don’t know if he noticed. What he did notice, however, was my sudden involuntary shiver in the coolness of the bedroom. He came over and put an arm around my shoulders.

‘God, Rachel, you’re freezing. Have you got a dressing gown or something?’

I shook my head. I’d only packed the bare essentials and I certainly hadn’t been expecting company in the middle of the night.

‘Well let’s get you back into bed before you catch a cold.’

He bent as though to carry me again but I ducked from his grip and hobbled the short distance over to the bed. He gave a small laugh at what he thought was my stubbornness, and I was happy to let him believe it was that. Far better to have him think I was being pig-headed than for him to realise the effect his proximity was suddenly having on me.