Remember Me (11 page)

That
was the last time she saw Ben in the apartment. When Catlin woke the next day
she briefly forgot all that had occurred the evening before and expected to
find Ben sleeping at her side as usual. Then the cold truth hit and with great
reluctance she forced her eyes to open and take in the sight which would
shatter the dream-like illusion of their love. Ben was gone – there wasn’t so
much as a dent in the pillow to show he’d been there despite his having lain
beside her as she slept. It came back to her that it maybe none of it had been
real, she had conjured up Ben, perfect in every way, out of loneliness,
desperation or sheer madness. Then she saw the ring, the ring he had given her
as a token of his love. His two most precious possessions in the world,
together. No, she had not imagined it. Those weeks of love, passion and soul
saving happiness were as real as the bed she lay on. The bed they had shared
and which now seemed dreadfully empty without him.

Catlin
began to cry quietly and she drew the hand bearing the ring in towards her
heart as if it were somehow connected to or a part of him. She had hoped
somehow her love would have been enough to rescue him, to keep him there with
her, and she wished that rather than him having been able to come through to
her, she had been able to go back in time to the night he lost all hope. She
would have found a way to save him, to give him back the life he was deprived
of. Why had there been no choice? Catlin would have exchanged places willingly
to give him back his life. Sure, she would have had no part in it, but that
didn’t matter. He would have been alive. He was the far better person in every
sense, way, thought and deed. It was wrong that he should die while she lived
on. As it was, such powers were beyond her as she played it over in her mind
the desire to go after him and did not give a damn about the consequences of
doing so, it would be worth it to feel his arms around her once again but she
had to keep her promise to him. She was his hope, his lifeline and had to find
a way to live, if not for herself then for him. That alone would be her excuse
for going on with life. She was going to do it for both of them.

It
was not easy getting used to coming home to an apartment without Ben being
there to greet her, not that his presence fully left it or her. There was
always something there to remind Catlin she was not as alone as she felt. After
a hard day at work and things looked their bleakest, the moment she entered the
apartment she was welcomed back by the sensation of a warm and comforting
embrace. Once in a while as she worked at her desk and a recollection from
their days together popped into her mind, bringing both happiness and sorrow to
her, she’d catch the faint scent of his hair being carried towards her on an
otherwise unnoticed breeze and sometimes, by the bookcase which held many of
Ben’s favourite works, as she ran her fingers across their spines she swore,
for the briefest of instances, his hand came to rest on hers.

It
took months of distance for Catlin to be able to cope with being in the same
room as Maria, forgiveness coming slowly where the woman who had destroyed her
life and been the author of so much tragedy was concerned, but eventually
Catlin found a way to bring herself to talk to her again, but never about Ben.
Catlin had so little of him to hold onto that she greedily wanted to keep it
for her own, not daring to share the tiniest memory of him with anyone in case
it should somehow weaken the link between them, and noticed the older woman
looking at the ring he had given her with some envy from time to time. Maria
shared some of anecdotes of their youth as well as giving her the details of
where Ben had been buried, but this was of no interest to Catlin. She did not
want to go stand at a graveside, for she knew Ben was not to be found there, in
a hole in the ground, covered by earth and grass. He was in the songs of the
birds as they greeted the dawn, the bright glow of the stars, the voice of the
wind as it rushed through the leaves of the trees, and he was with her, kept
forever alive because she held him safe and secure in her heart.

“Did
you enjoy your break back home?” Catlin, sat in the back of the car, gratefully
took the chance to put the manuscript she had been working on down. She had
spent three weeks back with her family, celebrating her sister’s marriage.
Enjoy was not the word she’d have chosen to describe that particular jaunt. As
bad as the people in the city were when it came to being two-faced they had
nothing on the hypocrites in her home town. All the people who had made her
life Hell, who thought her worthless and declared confidently that she would
amount to nothing had suddenly crawled out from under their various stones and had
been fawning over her. Strange that they didn’t have five minutes to spare for
her when she had been plain cleaner Catlin Manners but now she was Catlin
Manners, super-rich author and friend to the stars they’d sacrifice their right
leg to get near her!

“It
was – memorable,” she answered tactfully. They chatted a bit more about the
latest news and what had been going on in her absence, but with Guy eagerly
awaiting the newest alterations and having a meeting booked with him the
following day, Catlin soon returned to her work.

They
had driven a few miles further when, without warning, Catlin was hit by a
powerful and swift realisation, which cut through all others.

“Ben,”
she mumbled to herself. There hadn’t been a single day in the three since
they’d parted that he had not been in her thoughts, but she had not been
visited by so strong an impression of his being there for a long time. It was so
vivid that had she turned to find him sat in the seat next to hers she would
not have been surprised, he felt so close. Catlin lifted her head from the pile
of paper she had on her lap and saw the car was passing through the hills and
country where they used to walk. Could he be there? A mad urge to check, futile
as it might be, swamped her senses.

“Hey,
stop the car. Here, Right here!” The driver looked petrified, wondering what he
had done or if an important part of the car had fallen off unbeknown to him, as
he screeched the car to a standstill and his passenger sprang out of the rear
door.

The
car had stopped a short distance passed the entrance to the car park below the
trail Catlin and Ben had wandered along too many times to recall and she peeked
in truly believing she would find Ben there, waiting for her as he used to.
There was no-one, not even a car to be seen. She listened. The air was
unnaturally still, oppressive, like the menacing peace which comes before a
terrible storm, but there was nothing. The feeling which had so assuredly
dragged her from the car was diminishing also, and Catlin, with her spirits
crushed, began to make her way back to the car.

“Sorry
about that,” she called to the driver, who was waiting by his vehicle, “I had
an idea that an old friend of mine might have been here.”

There
wasn’t time for Catlin to decide which registered first or if they all did so
at once which was why she had no way of telling the order in which they
happened. Was it the expression of horror on the driver’s face, or the roar of
the engine of the approaching car as it hurtled closer? It might have been the
sound of rubber skidding on tarmac or even the impact of something hard
striking her legs, but whatever it happened to be, it was of no concern to Catlin
for as soon as one or all of those struck her, the world went dark and she
remembered no more.

“Cate!
Cate, can you hear me?” Catlin opened her eyes and threw her arms around the
man bending over her.

“Ben!”
she cried, clutching him thankfully to her. “I thought you said you’d never
come to me again.” Ben pulled away. He was crying. Was he really so sad to be
with her again?

“I
didn’t come to you.
You
came to me.” Catlin did not understand until she
saw him looking, horrified, over her shoulder. She followed his stare, puzzled
by the scene which awaited her. She saw her driver on the phone, shouting for
someone to hurry up. There was another man, white as a sheet, throwing up at
the roadside next to his car and there was a woman lying immobile on the ground
between them, her body twisted unnaturally with blood matting the lengths of
near black hair as it seeped through the tiny capillaries of the road surface,
her green eyes open but seeing nothing. It took a few more glances for Catlin
to realise she was looking at herself. The car had done its job most
efficiently. She was dead and hadn’t known a thing about it.

Ben
placed his hand on her cheek, still torn between his sorrow at her death and
his joy of their being together again.

“Bloody
stupid little fool,” he cried, pulling her into him.  “What were you doing – running
about in the middle of the road?”

“I
was searching for you.”

Ben
held her tighter than ever.

“Well,
you’ve found me and nothing will part come between us again.” His kissed her
long and hard. This was all that mattered. Not life or death or all the silly
things which came in the middle of them and seemed important but really
weren’t. Love was all that counted in the end. Helping her to her feet, Ben and
Catlin took hold of each other’s hand and with barely a sideways look back at
the drama of the life she was no longer a part of, they walked off into the
hills where they had spent so many hours dreaming, at peace in the knowledge that
there was nothing, not life, death or even time, that could part them again.

The
End.