"Lottie happened to him. I should think that experience would be enough to give him nightmares for the rest of his life…"
"But he dealt with it. Very sensibly. He got himself to Mrs. Ishak. Took care of himself, gave the alarm. It's no good brooding about it, Edmund."
He said nothing to this. After a bit, he moved away from the fire and sank down at one end of the great sofa, his long legs, in their red-and-white tartan stockings and silver-buckled shoes, stretched out in front of him. The firelight winked on polished buttons and the jewelled hilt of his sporran.
She said, "You must be exhausted."
"Yes. It's been a long day." He rubbed his eyes. "But I think we have to talk."
"We can talk tomorrow."
"No. It has to be now. Before it's too late. I should have told you this evening, when 1 got back and you started telling me about Lottie. Lottie and her talk, her gossip. I said she was lying but that wasn't strictly true."
"You are going to tell me about Pandora." Virginia's voice was cool, resigned.
"It has to be done."
"You were in love with her."
"Yes."
"I'm frightened of her."
"Why?"
"Because she is so beautiful. Mysterious. Under that flood of chat, you never know what she's thinking. I can't begin to imagine what goes on inside her head. And because she knew you for ever, when 1 didn't know you, and that makes me feel left out and insecure. Why did she come back to Croy, Edmund? Do you know why she came?"
He shook his head. "No."
"I'm afraid of her still being in love with you. She still wants you.
"No."
"How can you be so sure?"
"Pandora's motives, whatever they are, have no importance. To me, all that matters is you. And Alexa. And Henry. You seem to have lost sight of that basic priority."
"You were married when you loved Pandora. You were married to Caroline. You had a baby. Was that so different?"
It was an accusation, and he accepted it.
"Yes. And I was unfaithful to both of them. But Caroline wasn't like you. If I tried to explain to you why I married her in the first place, I don't suppose you'd understand. It was something to do with the way things were at that time, the swinging sixties, and all of us young, and a certain restless materialism in the air. I was making my way, making money, making my mark on London society. She was part of my ambitions, part of what I wanted. Her parents were immensely wealthy and she was an only child, and I craved the security of being established, and the reflected dazzle of success."
"But you loved her?"
Edmund shook his head. "I don't know. 1 didn't think about it all that much. I only know that she was wonderful to look at, immensely elegant, the sort of woman that would always turn heads, excite a certain envy. I liked being seen around with her. I was very proud of her. The sexual, loving part of our relationship wasn't quite so smooth. I don't quite know when it all started to go wrong. I'm sure it was as much my fault as Caroline's, but she was a strange girl. She used sex as a weapon and frigidity as a punishment. Before the first year was over, I was sleeping as often as not in my dressing-room, and when she realized that she was pregnant with Alexa, there was no joy, only tears and recriminations. She didn't want a baby, because she was frightened of childbirth, and as things turned out, she had every reason to be afraid. Because after Alexa was bom, she went into a post-natal depression that lasted for months. She was in hospital for a long time, and when she was fit to travel, her mother took her off to Madeira to spend the winter there. In the early summer of that year, Archie and Isobel were married. He was my oldest, closest friend. I'd seen little of him after I went to London, but I knew that I had to be at his wedding. I took a week's leave and came home. I was twenty-nine. I came back to Strathcroy on my own. I stayed here, at Balnaid, with Vi, but Croy was filled with house guests and spinning like a three-ring circus, and on my first day home I went up to see Archie and become involved in all the fun.
"And Pandora was there. I hadn't seen her for five years. She was eighteen, finished with schools, finished with childhood. I'd known her for ever. She was part of my life, always there. A baby in a pram, a little girl tagging along with Archie and me, never missing a trick. Spoiled as hell, wayward, wicked, but utterly enchanting and endearing. I saw her again, and knew that she hadn't changed. All that had happened was that she had grown up. I saw her coming towards me across the hall at Croy, and I saw her eyes and her smile, and her long legs, and an aura of sexuality about her, so potent, almost visible. And she put her arms around my neck and kissed my mouth and said, "Edmund, you horrible man. Why didn't you wait for me?" And that was all she said. And I felt as though I was drowning, and the deep waters had already closed over the top of my head."
"You were lovers."
"I didn't seduce her. She was only eighteen, but somewhere along the line, she had already lost her virginity. It wasn't difficult to be together. There was so much going on, so many people in the house, that nobody missed us if we went off on our own."
"She was in love with you."
"She said. She said she always had been, ever since she was a small girl. The fact that I was married only made her more obdurate. She'd never been denied anything that she wanted, and when I tried to talk reason to her, she put her hands over her ears and closed her eyes and refused to listen. She couldn't believe that I would leave her. She couldn't believe that I wouldn't come back.
"The wedding was on a Saturday. I had to drive back to London on the Sunday afternoon. On the Sunday morning, Pandora and I walked up the hill, on the road to the loch. But we stopped at the Corrie and lay on the grass, with the sound of the burn trickling at our feet. And I finally convinced her that I had to go, and she wept and protested and clung to me, and finally, to quieten her, I promised that I would come back, that I would write, that I did love her. All the stupid bloody things you say when you haven't the courage to end something. When you haven't the courage to be strong. When you can't bring yourself to destroy another person's dream."
"Oh, Edmund."
"I made such a fucking cock-up of it all. I was such a bloody coward. I went back to London, and as the miles lengthened behind me, I started to hate myself for what I'd done to Caroline and Alexa, and for what I was doing to Pandora. By the time I got back to London, I determined I would write to Pandora and try to explain that the whole episode had been a sort of fantasy; stolen days that had no more substance, no more future, than a soap bubble. But I didn't write. Because the next morning I went into the office, and by that evening I was in an aeroplane with my chairman, flying to Hong Kong. A huge financial deal was on the stocks, and I'd been picked to handle it. I was away for three weeks. By the time I returned to London, that time at Croy had dissolved into a sort of distant unlikelihood, like days stolen from another person's life. I could scarcely believe that it had happened to me. I was my own hard-headed business man, not that indecisive romantic, swept off his feet by a fleeting sexual infatuation. And there was too much at stake. My job, I suppose. A way of life that I'd worked my guts out to achieve. Alexa. Losing Alexa did not bear thinking about. And Caroline. My wife, for better, for worse. Back from Madeira, suntanned, well, recovered. We'd gone through a bad time together, but we'd come out on the other side. We were together again, and it wasn't the right time to blow it all apart. We picked up the threads of life, the warp and woof of a convenient marriage."
"And Pandora?"
"Nothing. Finished. I never wrote that letter."