In the sitting room she squelched her bare feet into her shoes and gathered up her coat and bag. The dry jeans and sweater he’d brought her still lay neatly folded on the sofa, and the towel he’d used to dry her hair lay crumpled on the floor. She picked it up and held its soft nap against her cheek, imagining that it smelled faintly of shaving soap. With exaggerated care she folded it and placed it beside the clothes, then let herself quietly out of the flat.
When Gemma reached the street door, she found the rain still coming down in relentless sheets, a solid wall of water. She stood for a moment, watching it. In her traitorous mind she imagined running back up the stairs and into the flat, shedding her clothes and climbing back into bed beside his sleeping form.
She pushed open the door, stepped slowly out into the rain and crossed the road, making no effort to shield herself. The dim outline of the Escort was familiar, comforting even. Scrabbling for the handle like one blind, she wrenched the door open and half fell into the driver’s seat. She wiped her streaming face with her hands and started the engine.
The radio blared into life and instead of hitting the off switch, she reflexively jammed a tape into the player. Caroline Stowe’s voice filled the car as Violetta sang her last aria, begging for life, for love, for the physical strength to match her courageous will.
Gemma put her head down against the steering wheel and wept.
After a moment she mopped her face with some tissues and put the car into gear, and when the music finished the only sound was the drumming of the rain against the roof.
The soft click of a door penetrated Kincaid’s consciousness. He struggled toward the surface of sleep, but it clung to him tenaciously, dragging him down again into its cotton-wool depths. His body felt boneless, warmly lethargic, and his eyelids seemed to have acquired surplus weight. Rousing himself enough to tuck his exposed arm under the covers, he felt the sheet cool and empty beside him. He blinked. Gemma. She must have gone to the loo-women always had to go to the loo-or perhaps to the kitchen for a glass of water.
He smiled a little at his own stupidity. What he wanted, needed, had been right under his nose all along and he’d been too blind to see it. Now he felt as if his life had come round full circle, complete, and he imagined the pattern of their days together. Work, then home, and at day’s end he would find sanctuary beside her, entangling himself in the curtain of her coppery hair.
Kincaid stretched his arm across her pillow, ready to enfold her when she returned. The rain beat steadily against the windowpane, counterpoint to the warmth of the room. With a sigh of contentment, he drifted once again into sleep.
Deborah Crombie
