Never Leave Me (35 page)

‘It's lovely, Greg,' she said truthfully. ‘Like something out of a fairy tale.'

‘Wait till you see the house,' Chrissie said, pleased that her beautiful French sister-in-law was impressed by their city. ‘Mom has supervised every detail of the decor for you. She says you can alter things around as much as you like, but she wanted it to look and feel like home for when you arrived.'

Lisette looked from her sister-in-law to her husband, not quite understanding. Greg squeezed her hand. ‘The bachelor apartment I lived in before I left for Europe wouldn't have been big enough for us. I asked Mom to arrange somewhere for us to come home to.'

‘You mean our own house?' she asked, her eyes widening. She had thought that they would be staying with his parents.

‘That's exactly what I mean,' he said.

‘If you don't like the way I've had everything done, just call in the decorators and have them do whatever you want. There'll be no hurt feelings,' Isobel Dering said with a wide smile.

They sped up a steep hillside through swathes of trees, turned sharply to the right between high wrought-iron gates and drew up outside a large Spanish style house. Lisette gasped. It was like being on top of a mountain. The bay and the town lay spread out before them, the Golden Gate bridge glittering in the brilliant sunlight.

‘Well, here we are,' Isobel Dering said, stepping from the chauffeur-driven limousine, Dominic still held tightly in her arms, ‘I hope you like it, Lisette. Chrissie and I just loved getting it ready for you.'

All the rooms looked out over the bay and the hills. The Mexican tiles in the kitchen were burnt orange and white, with exotic plants hanging from hooks in the rich wood ceiling. The living room was ivory-white, the sofas deep and comfortable, the low tables massed with flowers.

The dining-room was formal. The drapes a vibrant blue against the wood-lined walls, the elegant dining table and chairs early nineteenth-century mahogany. There were six bedrooms, six bathrooms. The sheets were trimmed lavishly with hand-made lace, the towels monogrammed. There were books in both French and English on the shelves, bowls of sweet-smelling pot pourri, Redoubté water colours on the walls. It had been furnished with love and care and Lisette felt her throat tighten as she turned towards her mother-in-law.

‘It's beautiful,' she said, her eyes shining. ‘Thank you so much.'

Isobel squeezed her hand. ‘It's my pleasure, my dear. I am not, though, going to allow you to enjoy it for too long today. A celebration lunch is waiting for us at Ocean View. From now on, Lisette, you have
two
homes. This one and the family one at Pacific Heights.'

Ocean View, the Dering family home, was palatial. They ate lunch in a dining-room that would have done credit to Versailles, and Lisette was introduced to Lobster clambake and zucchini and banana cream pie. In the evening friends and other members of the family – aunts and uncles and cousins – came to dinner to meet her. It had been a long day and by the time dinner was over, she was physically tired and emotionally drained.

So much had happened in so short a time. She was grateful for the interlude in Paris. A swift transition from war-torn Normandy to the glossy splendour of Pacific Heights would have disoriented her completely. Even now, she found it strange. It was as if the war had not touched the people sitting around the dinner table. There was no sign of suffering. None at all of hardship. She felt very alien from them all. She didn't come from their world and she knew that they would not be able to understand the world that she came from. The world of cycle rides across country with messages for Resistance leaders; the ever present fear of arrest and torture. The horror of finding herself in love with an enemy of her country. The listening in secret to the radio broadcasts from Great Britain. The desperate, daily longing for liberation. She was half a world away from home, and the happy, gregarious Americans seemed suddenly like creatures from another planet. With a stab of shock she realised that she had had far more in common with Dieter, even though he had been a German, than she had with these people. She and Dieter had both been Europeans. He had understood her culture, her history. She was suddenly overcome by longing for him. His face burned at the backs of her eyes. Strong and hard-boned. His shock of corn-gold hair cropped short. His black-lashed grey eyes fierce with love for her.

‘Tired, darling?' Greg asked, smiling down at her.

She nodded. She hadn't felt so tired since the early days of her pregnancy. Her eyes widened. It was perfectly possible for her to be pregnant. Neither she nor Greg had taken any precautions to prevent a baby being conceived. If she gave Greg a baby that
was
his, surely her guilty would be eased? She felt suddenly light-headed and full of hope.

‘Let's go home, Greg,' she whispered softly, her hand sliding into his. ‘Let's make love.'

The spasm of alienation she had felt at the celebration dinner faded. Greg's family and friends were enchanted with her, going to enormous lengths to make her feel at home. There were trips to Lake Tahoe, to the Yosemite National Park, to Monterey. Greg loved America and he was eager that Lisette, too, should be in love with it.

Whenever he thought of Europe he had to suppress a shudder. The scenes of poverty that he had seen, of suffering, still haunted him. The mile after mile of weary refugees, their worldly possessions in bundles on their backs. The bomb-blasted ruins of Caen and Cherbourg. The smoke-blackened walls of Valmy. He thanked God he had been able to take her away from it all. He loved her deeply, and though he knew that she hadn't been in love with him when they had married, he was certain that she was in love with him now.

She had retained the Frenchness that so delighted him. The grace and femininity, the effortless chic. He was intensely proud of her. His personal life was good. His professional life was good. He was damned lucky and he knew it.

He had founded Dering Advertising before the war, helped by family wealth and his own, considerable talent. It had been flourishing nicely and was grossing over a million dollars a year when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. While he had been serving with the army, the agency had ticked over in the capable hands of a subordinate, but no exciting new accounts had been canvassed. Greg had returned to find the business in the doldrums, but he was unperturbed. He knew that the post-war world was ready and waiting for a dynamic new approach to advertising and within months of his return he was supplying it with zest.

He had been amused to discover that Luke Brandon had carved himself a niche with one of the largest of the London advertising agencies. When Greg had pitched for Chemico, an international account that would lift Dering Advertising from the small time into the big time, the account director of the London agency also chasing the account had been Luke.

‘Did you know Luke had opted for advertising as a profession?' he asked her as they sat with drinks by the poolside.

A slight flush touched the delicate line of her cheeks. ‘Yes. I thought I'd told you.'

Greg felt a twinge of unease and quelled it almost immediately. Brandon wrote to her regularly and she either showed him the letters when they arrived, or left them lying casually on her desk. But there had been at least one letter that he knew she had not mentioned to him. One letter that had not been left lying around quite so carelessly.

‘He spent a couple of months with a publishing company when he was first demobbed,' she said, her voice betraying none of the inner emotion that had suddenly flared up inside her. ‘Then Thomson's offered him a job and he leapt at it.' A smile touched her mouth. ‘He said publishing was a gentleman's profession and as such he didn't feel cut out for it!'

Greg grinned. ‘It may have been once,' he said drily. ‘I doubt that it will stay so much longer. The post-war world is going to be far different to the pre-war world.'

Her smile deepened but did not touch her eyes. She turned her head away from him, staring out over the still, turquoise-blue waters of the pool. Luke had told her about his switch of profession in the same letter that he'd asked her if she was happy with Greg. If she wasn't, he had asked that she join him immediately in London. He still loved her, he wrote. He still felt that fate had brought them together and had meant them to stay together. He had asked after Dominic. And he had pointed out that in deceiving Greg she would also have to deceive her son. He would never be able to know who his true father was. She would never, ever be able to talk to him about Dieter Meyer.

She had destroyed the letter immediately, her hands trembling. The thought of not being able to tell Dominic about his father was a prospect that was already tormenting her. But there was nothing that she could do about it. She was trapped by her own deceit and every day the burden of that deceit grew, slowly crippling her.

She died a little every time Greg proudly introduced Dominic as his son. Every time Isobel said what deep happiness having a grandson gave her. But she didn't tell Luke of her growing distress. She wrote him a terse letter in which she said that he was never to ask her to leave Greg again. That she was happy. That she hoped soon to be expecting another baby. That her home was with Greg and always would be.

A month later she had received an equally terse note in reply. He was marrying. Her name was Annabel Lacey. He had known her since before the war and had been dating her regularly since his return. He wasn't in love with her but she was in love with him. She came from a wealthy background and had money of her own. It was, he had written savagely, a marriage very similar to her own. That letter, too, she had destroyed.

‘His wife looks very pretty in the wedding photographs,' Greg was saying to her, and she dragged her eyes away from the pool, forcing a smile.

‘Yes, she does. They were married at St. Margaret's, Westminster. I believe it's terribly grand there. It seems strange to see Luke in a morning suit and not in uniform.'

Her hair fell softly to her shoulders as it had done when he had first me her. She looked very young, frighteningly fragile, and he reminded himself that she was still only nineteen years old. His unease deepened. She said she was happy. She said she loved him. But how could he be sure when sometimes, when she thought herself unobserved, her eyes clouded and her delicately winged brows drew together as if she were deeply troubled. Was it because of Luke Brandon? Was it the mention of Brandon's marriage that had so disturbed her a minute ago?

He remembered Brandon telling him that he was going to marry Lisette. He remembered also the naked suffering in Lisette's voice when she told him that the man she had loved had died and that she did not know how to begin to learn to love someone else. Later, after their marriage, she had told him that she had never been in love with Luke, but there were times when he was not so sure. She had certainly believed herself to be in love with him once. Perhaps her denials later had simply been for his benefit. After all, she was married to him by then. There could have been no going back for her to what might have been.

‘You haven't forgotten we're going to a cocktail party at the Warners at seven o'clock, have you?' he asked, wishing to God that he could lay the ghost of his ever recurring doubt.

‘No.' She glanced down at the slim gold watch on her wrist. ‘I'd better go in and shower and change now.'

He put down his drink and rose to his feet, his white silk shirt open at the throat, his jeans hugging his hips tightly. ‘We'll both go in,' he said, drawing her towards him. ‘There's time for a little more than a shower and a change of clothes.'

Their love-making was a constant delight to him. He loved every inch of her body. The graceful curve of her neck. The creamy-smooth perfection of her breasts. The hand-span narrowness of her waist. Even the long scar on her inner thigh did nothing to detract from her beauty. He had traced it gently with his finger the first time he had seen it and she had stiffened, as if freezing inside. Sensing her distress he told her that it wasn't unsightly, a mere silver line on her flesh, but he knew that she didn't believe him. The scar distressed her and he had learnt to say and do nothing that drew attention to it.

Thirty minutes later, in the cool dimness of their bedroom, she slipped reluctantly free of his embrace and rose from the bed, her body flushed from love-making.

‘We're going to be late, darling. It's six-thirty already.'

He raised himself up on one elbow, looking at her naked body appreciatively. ‘It was worth it,' he said with a grin, tousled curls tumbling low over his forehead.

At the expression in his eyes her heart somersaulted. She had thought that she would never love anyone else as she had loved Dieter and yet slowly, surely, she had begun to do so. And she realised with a shock that it was a much deeper love than the desperate passion she had shared with Dieter. She had never lived as Dieter's wife. Never shared each day with him as she did with Greg. Dieter had taught her how to love. It had been his gift to her, and because of it, both she and Greg were his debtors.

She stepped into the shower, wishing for the thousandth time that she could talk to Greg of Dieter. Tell him how brave a man he had been. How fearlessly he had schemed to remove Hitler from power. How much, if he had met him, he would have liked him.

She dusted herself with talcum powder and sprayed herself with cologne. She mustn't think of it. She must think only of the things that were possible: loving Greg; making him proud of her. She zipped herself into an ice-coloured blue dress that danced softly over her skin, slipping on ivory-kid pumps, sweeping her hair high, piercing the neat twist she created with long, jewelled pins.

‘You look sensational,' he said admiringly and a flare of happiness burst within her. She would think no more of Luke's letter. The past was the past and she would not allow it to darken the joy of the present. Twenty minutes later her good intentions were shot down in flames.