No More Lonely Nights (16 page)

He frowned. ‘Don’t worry about your car.’

‘I do worry about it. You may be able to afford to run any number of cars, but I just have one and it costs me the earth just to keep it full of petrol and have it serviced regularly. Repair bills could cripple me, but I meant what I said! You’re paying, and you’d better report the accident to the police, too.’

His face was sombre. ‘There’s no need to involve them. I’ll pay all the bills.’

Sian gave him a contemptuous smile, her green eyes icy. ‘I had a suspicion you wouldn’t want the police informed. Very well. Keep them out of it, but you’d better see to it that I get back my car in tip-top condition.’ She sat up gingerly and Cass moved to help. She pushed him away. ‘I can manage!’

‘I’ll carry you!’

‘You won’t. I can walk.’ She put her feet down on the floor and stood up. She still felt a little shaky, but the room wasn’t going round and round. Cass hovered, much too close, and she eyed him sideways. ‘I’m fine now.’

The doctor stepped nearer and offered his arm. ‘Then we’ll go down to my car, shall we?’

Cass followed and over her shoulder as they negotiated the stairs Sian said remotely, ‘There’s no need for you to come to the hospital.’

They moved slowly through a high-vaulted hallway: oak-panelled and fragrant with lavender furniture-polish and summer flowers in great earthenware bowls. Sian was concentrating on walking without that betraying little tremble, but she noted Mrs Cassidy in the background, looking pale and worried. Somewhere there was someone crying; Sian heard that too, although she wondered if she was imagining it. Cass went to speak to his aunt while the doctor helped Sian down the stone steps from the front door. He put her into a comfortable red estate car and she leaned back, closing her eyes briefly, because her head hurt and she still felt weak. The doctor paused before getting behind the wheel; she heard him talking to Cass and felt Cass watching her, but didn’t look that way.

Sitting up, she stared ahead of her while the doctor came round the back of the car and got into the seat next to her. The engine came to life and the car drove off with a grate of tyres on gravel. Cass was standing outside the house on the steps, staring after them. She saw him in the wing mirror; his blue striped shirt emphasizing the pallor of his skin and his dark hair blowing around in the wind until he raked it down with one hand in an impatient gesture.

Sian looked away, dry-mouthed and miserable. He wasn’t the man she had thought he was. Disillusionment ached inside her as the doctor headed for the black ironwork gates.

‘You’re a reporter, I gather,’ he said, and she started, looking round at him.

‘Yes.’

He gave her a brief, wry smile. ‘And Magda tells me you’re the one who first broke the story about Cass being left at the altar?’

‘That’s right.’ Her voice was defiant; she wasn’t apologising for that. She would never feel guilty about Cass again; he had deserved everything that happened to him.

The doctor fell silent, and after a few moments it was Sian who re-started the conversation.

‘You’re a family friend, not their doctor?’

‘I’m both, I hope.’ He smiled again, with more warmth.

‘I suppose you’re Mrs Cassidy’s doctor, then?’

He nodded. ‘I’m one of the local GPs—we have four at the health care centre a couple of miles away. I’m Piers Brand, by the way—please call me Piers.’

‘I’m Sian,’ she said, and he smiled.

‘I know.’

‘How far is it to the hospital?’ she asked, and he soothingly told her it was just another five minutes’ drive. Sian fell silent and neither spoke until he was pulling in to the casualty department parking bay, when he asked if she felt up to walking into the hospital or should he get a porter with a wheelchair. Sian said she was quite capable of walking, and he smiled that wry little smile again.

‘There’s no need to feel you’re being asked to prove anything! Nobody will think the less of you if you feel too shaky to walk.’

‘But I don’t,’ she said, and got out of the car without his help, made it into the casualty waiting-room unaided, where she sat while he went off to talk to the nurse on duty at the desk.

Sian was taken off to X-ray, and then saw another doctor who questioned her along much the same lines as the other had; she had lights shone in her eyes, was tested for some fifteen minutes, and then she was told she needn’t stay overnight. There seemed to be nothing wrong apart from superficial cuts and bruises; the X-ray had shown no trace of damage.

She wasn’t sure if Dr Brand had gone or whether he was waiting for her, but if he wasn’t she could always get a taxi. Where to, though? Should she go back to Mrs Cassidy’s house? She was reluctant to see Cass again; she was still too angry and shocked by his hit-and-run driving. Yet if she didn’t go back there it might cause just as much trouble, because undoubtedly they would come looking for her if she left the hospital and went back to London.

She walked into the casualty waiting-room, but Dr Brand wasn’t there. Sian’s heart constricted, seeing Cass get to his feet, a newspaper clenched in one hand.

‘They let you go?’

‘Were you hoping they’d lock me up for days and give you a chance to get your clever London lawyers on the case?’ The biting tone of her voice made him frown.

‘Piers has gone. I’ll drive you back,’ was all he said, and that made her angrier.

‘I suppose you think that if you get me alone you can talk me into withdrawing the allegation!’ she threw at him, and he took hold of her arm and hustled her towards the main door of the hospital so fast that she almost skidded on the highly polished floor. ‘Are you trying to kill me?’ she muttered, and some nurses going off to supper turned to stare at them.

Red-faced, Cass snarled, ‘Just shut up until we’re in the car!’

‘Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you?’ she seethed, trying to wrench her arm free. ‘What do you mean, anyway? Telling me to shut up! I won’t. I’ll shout the truth from the roof if you keep bullying me like this.’

He dragged her over to where his car was parked. ‘Bullying you? Who’s bullying you? I just don’t want to have this discussion in front of a horde of strangers!’

‘Witnesses, you mean!’ Sian sneered. He yanked the car door open and pushed her into the front passenger seat as if she were a rag doll. As she sprawled there, limp and shaking with rage, he slammed the door and strode round to get in beside her. ‘You don’t want witnesses, do you?’ she accused, and he stared fixedly at her. ‘Just as there were no witnesses when you forced my car off the road,’ Sian burst out, alarmed by his expression. Those bright, furious eyes were full of threat, but he started the engine and drove off without trying to answer her. She should, perhaps, have held her tongue then. It might have been wiser, not to say safer, but she was in a reckless mood and full of hurt resentment.

‘Why did you do it? I thought it was just bad driving at first; you didn’t care if I skidded off the road or not! But it was more than that, I think, wasn’t it? Otherwise you’d have stopped to make sure I wasn’t badly hurt, but you put your foot down and shot away before anyone could get your number. You meant to force me off the road.’ She was thinking aloud, rather than actually accusing him. The idea had only just occurred to her, and one part of her mind still didn’t believe it. Cass wasn’t the murderous type. Or was he?

‘You were trying to hurt me,’ she said slowly, going white. ‘My God, you were trying to kill me!’

‘You’re hysterical!’ said Cass curtly, his foot down on the accelerator and the car hurtling along at around eighty miles an hour now that they were outside the built-up area surrounding the hospital.

‘I’m nothing of the kind! I’m just furious!’ snapped Sian, a nervous eye on the speedometer. ‘And stop driving so damn fast!’

Hedges flashed by, green meadows were a blur of colour, she saw other drivers staring open-mouthed as they passed them, but Cass didn’t slow down for quite a few moments.

‘You can’t believe anyone tried to kill you! Why should they?’ he muttered, and there was something odd in his voice; his face was drawn and frowning. Sian hadn’t been talking rationally, she had been using her instincts, and she used them now, watching him and still incredulous over the idea that Cass might have been the driver who forced her off the road and then drove away without stopping.

‘Was it you?’ she asked huskily, wanting him to deny it, eager to believe him if he said it wasn’t true.

He didn’t answer, though. He shot her a look and then stared back at the road, brows knit.

Her stomach sank and she felt her eyes burning, as if she was about to cry, but she wouldn’t cry over him. She clenched her teeth and fixedly regarded the landscape through which they were driving. It was so calm and tranquil; Sian wished she felt like that, but her mood was stormy and she contrarily wished the weather matched it.

Cass suddenly turned off the road and parked in a leafy lay-by behind which ran a little wood of oak and beech and hazel trees.

Sian shrank back against the seat as he turned to face her. ‘Why have you stopped? Start the car. I want to get back.’

‘Not until we’ve talked this out!’

‘What is there to talk about? The only talking I should do is to the police!’ She gave him an angry smile. ‘Don’t look so worried—I’m not going to tell them, but I’ve a damn good mind to put the whole story in the paper!’

‘You’ll be risking a legal action if you do,’ he threatened, his brows black and menacing.

‘You wouldn’t dare! You know it happened, and if you take legal proceedings that will only prove I’m telling the truth.’

‘You think you are, you mean!’ he said in furious irony.

‘Oh, now you’re going to say I imagined it all, I suppose?’

‘No, but you’re imagining a hell of a lot! Sian, you’re intelligent…’

‘Thank you! Am I supposed to be flattered enough to forgive and forget?’

‘Will you let me finish?’ he suddenly shouted, and she jumped, nerves on edge, then glared resentfully at him.

‘Don’t you shout at me! Who do you think you are?’

‘Will you listen for one minute?’ He grabbed her shoulders and shook her, and she went into panic. Pulling free, she turned and opened the car door, almost falling out. She didn’t wait to see how Cass took that. She started to run, out of the lay-by, into the nearest cover, which happened to be the little wood whose trees crowded the roadside. Sian crashed through the close-set branches, leaves brushing her face, brambles clutching at her clothes, scratching her legs.

Behind her, she heard the slam of the driver’s door and the running thud of feet which meant Cass was pursuing her. She was in such a state of wild tension that she almost sobbed, her breathing thick and tortured. Running faster, she dived deeper into the shadowy woodland, through green ferns, the dappled light from above flickering all around her and making her head ache.

Cass caught up with her in a little hollow full of towering beech, the earth beneath them deep with leaf-mould from years of autumn falls. Sian felt his hands descend on her arms and struggled, shaking, until he spun her to face him, and as she looked up at him, breathlessly protesting, he bent his head and took her mouth with bruising force.