Letters to the Lost (48 page)

Above everyone’s heads Jess’s eyes sought Will. He was sitting at a table right at the back of the marquee, uninterested in the spectacle of the bride and groom and the charade of their first dance. His gaze was fixed on her, his face, in the light of the candle in front of him, full of something that looked like wonder.

The words were beautiful. She forgot the bride and groom and she sang them purely for him.

She was a goddess.

Song after song, the dance floor was full, the applause at the end surprisingly unrestrained from people whose usual definition of enthusiasm was cracking half a smile. Will was perfectly ready to accept that he was biased, but she seemed to bring something magical to the music. Warmth as well as technical skill. A sweetness of tone in addition to power. Hell, he knew nothing about music, but even his parents were enjoying it – dancing together with misty smiles on their faces, applauding heartily at the end of every song – and that had to be saying something.

He drained half his glass of champagne without tasting it. The only downside to her being up on the stage singing was that it meant he couldn’t dance with her. He wasn’t the best of dancers, but music like this meant he could have held her and breathed in her scent. He finished the rest of the champagne and acknowledged that the time had passed for being careful. It was too late. He’d fallen in love with her. Ages ago probably, as she lay on the bed in the hospital and he’d glimpsed the fragile bones of her spine like pearls beneath her skin and known that he’d do anything to protect her.

The band struck up a new song – the last one of the evening, she announced to a chorus of muted disappointment. She bent to the microphone and for a moment the dancers stilled and the evening hung suspended as she opened her mouth to sing the first note.

‘
I–I–I’m—
’ She sought him out with her eyes. Staring straight at him from beneath her lashes, her delicious mouth curved into a wicked invitation of a smile. ‘
Mad . . . about the boy . . .
’

Oh Christ.

Thank God he hadn’t taken those stupid pills.

Darkness had fallen while she’d been singing, creating an enclosed world beneath the softly lit dome of the marquee. As everyone drifted away from the dance floor and the babble of conversation rose again, Jess high-fived the pianist and accepted a brief, sweaty hug from the guy – Paul – on trumpet.

‘Nice work, kid,’ he said, reaching into the breast pocket of his dinner jacket and holding out an envelope. ‘That’s your cut. You’ve earned every penny.’

She shook her head. ‘I couldn’t, honestly. I was here anyway and . . . well, I enjoyed it. Thanks for having me.’

Paul looked doubtful. ‘Well, if you’re sure? But if you fancy a regular job we might just have one going – Suzy’s unreliability is getting to be an issue. We’d have you like a shot. Let us know.’

‘I might just do that . . .’

She turned round. Will was standing on the empty dance floor in front of the stage. He had his hands in his pockets and a look she couldn’t read on his face. He shook his head, as if lost for words, and then took a step forward and held out his hands.

She took them and jumped down from the stage, stumbling slightly in her too big shoes. He caught her, steadied her, opened his mouth to speak, but whatever he had intended to say was lost as somehow their lips came together.

Oh God, the strength of him. Her legs, already shaky, virtually gave way beneath her but she gripped his shoulders, anchoring herself against him as the world dissolved away.

In the corner the DJ who would take the party into the small hours was setting up, and a sudden burst of music made them jump apart. ‘I was going to save this one until the end of the night,’ he murmured into the microphone, over the opening bars of the cheesiest slow dance song in the history of disco, ‘but if you guys are ready for it now . . .’

They laughed, but it didn’t extinguish the incandescent lust that glowed between them. His eyes were dark, the want in them impossible to misinterpret. He took her hand, slowly raising it to his lips and pressing a kiss into the centre of her palm.

‘Shall we go?’

‘Yes.’

He pulled her off the dance floor. She stopped at the edge of the marquee to take off the red shoes, and then they were running across the grass, holding hands and laughing breathlessly, a little dazed by the urgency of their need. As the damp earth soaked her tights she remembered how she’d run away from Dodge, in fear and desperation, and she wanted to shout back over her shoulder at the girl she had been that she was doing the right thing. That she wasn’t just running away, she was running towards something. A better future.

A better man.

Hand in hand, they slipped through the legions of staff in the clattering, brightly lit kitchen and up the narrow staircase to his attic room. Kicking the door shut he reached for her, taking her face between his hands as he kissed her again.

It was quiet up here. The DJ started up in the marquee below, but the music was muted. Moonlight silvered the walls and threw precisely defined shadows across the bed and the floor. The molten excitement pulsing through her veins cooled a little, and she felt a shiver of doubt as old memories resurfaced. Memories of Dodge. Pain. Humiliation.

As if sensing her hesitation he pulled away.

‘You. Are.
Incredible
,’ he whispered. ‘And there is nothing I want more than to take you to bed right now and make love to you for about the next twelve hours.’ He kissed her lips, very lightly. ‘But if it’s too soon, or if it’s not what you want, that’s OK. To be perfectly honest, I’m not sure I can manage twelve hours anyway.’

His face was grave in the bluish light, his eyes dark and liquid. Looking into them was like stepping, naked, into a warm summer downpour; delicious, exciting, good. Her misgivings melted and she reached up to touch his lips.

‘It is what I want,’ she breathed. And then, moving away from him she peeled off her dress and walked across the moon-splashed floor to the bed.

The disco finished. Voices drifted up, shouting goodbyes. Car doors banged and engines started. And then, gradually, the quiet crept back in.

It was the familiar quiet of his childhood years, punctuated occasionally by the secretive call of an owl from the wood behind the house, but tonight Will listened to it with an unfamiliar feeling expanding in his chest.

Total contentment.

Jess lay curled around him, one leg thrown over his, her head on his arm and her hand resting on his chest. He couldn’t see her face, but the soft, slow sigh of her breathing told him that she was deeply asleep.

She’d slipped into sleep quickly, tears still shimmering on her eyelashes, as if the intensity of her orgasm had exhausted her as much as it had taken her by surprise. Will couldn’t stop himself from smiling like a fool as he went over it again. Not trusting himself to stay the distance he’d crushed down his own rampaging desire and focused on her first, stroking and kissing and licking until she was rigid and quivering. As she came she’d cried out with such rawness that for a second he thought he’d hurt her, but as he tried to move his hand away she’d seized it and pulled it back, then levered herself up and on top of him. He’d barely had time to tear the condom (ribbed, strawberry flavoured, and dating from the time when he’d thought such things the height of sexual sophistication) from its packet and roll it onto his throbbing erection before he was inside her. He’d only managed to last four earth-shattering thrusts.

Afterwards, when his heartbeat had almost returned to normal and she’d stopped trembling in his arms, she’d told him that she finally understood what all the fuss was about. ‘I never got it before. I never . . . believed it could be like that.’ Just thinking about it made him want to leap out of bed and do a naked victory dance, and stick two fingers up at Milla whose withering boredom in bed had been as much to blame as the pills for his inability to perform. It felt like the shadowy beast that had stalked him for five long years had finally been slain.

Her shoulder gleamed like pearl in the moonlight. He circled his finger around it, his stomach clenching with helpless love. He remembered the song she’d sung earlier –
The Way You Look Tonight
– and hummed it drowsily into the warm silk of her hair. She stirred, sighed, and sank back against him, her knee a little higher on his thigh. Too high for comfort, or relaxation. Bugger. He was never going to be able to sleep now.

The bags he’d brought up from the car were on the floor beside his desk, and from where he lay he could see the brown envelope sticking out of the top of hers. Very gently he disentangled himself and went over to get the certificates and took them back to bed. Propping himself right on the edge so he didn’t disturb her, he tilted the paper up to catch the moonlight and began to read.

‘Breakfast.’

Jess closed her eyes as he came in, to make it look like she’d still been asleep. Opening them a fraction she watched through her eyelashes as he set a tray down on the desk, acclimatizing herself gradually to how gorgeous he was so she didn’t blush like a teenager when she looked at him properly. While he’d been downstairs she’d been looking at the photographs that lined the walls, mostly showing a younger, skinnier Will in a variety of settings – at parties, on white-sanded beaches, playing rugby – in all of them looking handsome and privileged and glamorous, and completely out of her league.

‘There’s coffee, and croissants. They’re not warm, I’m afraid, but I wanted to escape as quickly as possible. Downstairs they’re doing the whole silver cutlery and linen napkins in the dining room thing, but I thought I’d spare you that.’

She sat up, clutching the duvet awkwardly to her chest and wondering whether he was embarrassed of her. One of the photographs showed him wearing a black suit and bow tie, with his arm around an exquisite blonde girl in a strapless dress. Had he taken her down to have breakfast with his family?

‘If you want to go down I don’t mind,’ she muttered, trying to arrange the pillows against her back without letting go of the duvet. ‘I’ll stay here.’

‘I’d rather have breakfast in the tiger enclosure at London zoo,’ he said, opening a drawer and pulling out a t-shirt. ‘Here – do you want to put this on?’

It was pale pink, with crossed oars and the words ‘Leander Rowing Club’ on the front. He turned away tactfully as she slipped it over her head. After the closeness they’d shared just a few hours ago – because of it, perhaps – it felt stilted and awkward. Last night she’d been utterly helpless with need; not just physically naked but emotionally too. As his hands and mouth had worked their magic she remembered crying out, and knew that the cry had come from the depths of her soul. Never before had she felt anything like what he’d made her feel, and it had changed her. In its aftermath she felt shaky and fragile, like she’d been broken apart and remade. Like the world had split open and she’d caught a glimpse of heaven.

He sat on the bed and passed her a mug of coffee. She took it without meeting his eye.

‘Thanks.’

‘You’re very welcome. I’m afraid I have a confession to make.’

She sipped, determined not to let her emotions show on her face. So this was it; the bit when he told her it had been great but he didn’t want a relationship. He was so nice, he was bound to add that they could still be friends, as if he hadn’t noticed that she was the only person he knew who’d been to a comprehensive school. As if there was a possibility of bumping into her in a posh wine bar sometime.

‘Last night I couldn’t sleep. I have no idea why – I mean, it’s not like I’m not used to having a fantastically beautiful and sexy girl in my bed or anything – and so I had a look at those certificates you brought. I know I should have waited and gone through them with you; I’m really sorry. Hey – I’m trying to apologize here. What’s so funny?’

‘Nothing.’ Jess pressed her lips together, swallowing back the laughter, but it rose inside her anyway. She could feel it warming her cheeks, glowing in her eyes. ‘There’s absolutely nothing funny about doing something so . . . terrible. Did you find anything interesting?’

‘Possibly. Stella’s daughter died in a hospital called Leyton Manor.’

‘That’s not unusual is it? I mean, lots of people must die in hospitals – that’s where you’d be if you were seriously ill.’

‘Ah, but this isn’t that kind of hospital.’ He got up and went over to the desk, switching on the computer. ‘I looked it up. It’s on the outskirts of London, about fifty miles from here. It changed its name to Leyton Manor sometime in the 1930s, but it was built in the Victorian age and originally called The Imbeciles Asylum.’

‘So it was like a psychiatric hospital or something?’

‘Not quite. Listen to this . . .’ He clicked on the screen and brought up a page of text. As he began to read, the expression on his face changed. The laughter of a moment ago evaporated and he looked troubled. Pained, almost. ‘“
The hospital was designed to accommodate one thousand, two hundred and fifty inmates in ten blocks, with separate laundries and workshops, a model farm and a kitchen garden. During the First World War its patients included those who had been removed from the front line suffering from ‘battle fatigue’ or shell shock. In the Second World War parts of the hospital were given over to civilian air-raid casualties and the treatment of venereal disease, though the majority of its patients were still those termed ‘mentally defective’ or ‘ineducable’. Many of these were children, given into the care of the hospital by families who were unable or unwilling to support them at a time when both mental illness and learning disability carried huge stigma.
”’

‘I don’t understand.’ Jess put her cup down, trying to assimilate this new information into her picture of Stella. ‘It sounds . . . horrible.’

‘Oh yes, you can bet it would have been.’ There was an edge to Will’s voice that she hadn’t heard before. ‘This article doesn’t go into detail, but it goes on to say that “. . .
conditions in the hospital were exposed by a campaign group made up of patients’ families in the 1970s and ’80s, and this led to gradual improvements being made. In 1990 it was finally closed, and the old, barrack-like Victorian blocks demolished to make way for small, modern units providing ‘family’ houses
”. That would have been too late for Daisy Thorne, though,’ he finished bitterly.