Robert Goddard - Borrowed Time

“Maybe. But I doubt our reasons were the same.”

“Really? I’d have said they were identical. You’ve never believed the official account of Louise’s death. And you were hoping Seymour might be able to cast enough doubt on it to make others share your disbelief. So you decided to give him a little help. That’s all.”

“Are you saying… that’s why you…”

“Of course. If I’d known you thought the same way-”

“But I don’t. I don’t think the same way at all.”

“Yes you do. You must do. Otherwise you wouldn’t have given Seymour an interview.”

“No. You’re wrong. That’s not why I did it.”

She leant close to me across the arm of the sofa, lowering her voice as if to whisper a secret. “I’m glad we’re on the same side, Robin. I reckon we both need an ally. A friend we can turn to. I was very much afraid you were in on it. I can’t tell you what a relief it is to know you weren’t.”

“In on what?”

“I can see now I made too much of your… economy with the facts. But there was always a simpler explanation for that, wasn’t there? Some girlfriend you wanted to protect. Some fiancée, perhaps. Has she fallen by the wayside since? Is that why you’ve risked putting your head above the parapet?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yes you do. But have it your own way. I don’t want to force you to admit anything.” She reached slowly out and traced a circle with her index finger on the back of my hand where it rested on the arm of the chair. “Or to do anything. Unless you want to. Unless we both want to.”

I looked into her eyes and realized with a shock of sudden desire that we both wanted what was still-but only just-avertible. The reasons were sick and wrong. There’d be a third party to anything that happened. A rival. A substitute. A silent observer. And yet-

“Louise is gone, Robin. But you don’t need to let go of her completely. People always said how alike we were.” I believed her. Even more than I wanted to believe her. The ghost I was chasing made flesh. Warm and close. The hem of the dress sliding up her thigh as she leant forward. The white lace bra glimpsed through its buttons. As once before. Pursuit, denial and temptation. Joined. “In so many ways.”

She kissed me slowly and deliberately, giving me ample time to recoil, but sensing I wouldn’t. Her eyes were closed at first. When they opened, I looked into them and knew we both meant to play this game to the end. From cool formality to burning intimacy. From lust to consummation.

And so we did. With eager abandon as she stretched like a cat beneath me across the hearthrug. And later, in the bed she led me to, again and again, with measured delight, as the sunlight mellowed and lengthened and passion curdled towards excess. As the afternoon faded towards evening and her urgings became my desires. I found her out in all her ways and wiles; her pains and her pleasures. What she wanted and how she wanted it, explored and refined with the heightened sense only long denial can breed. Mine and hers. From brutality to tenderness. And back again. Some of the way. But not quite all.

“What are you thinking, Robin?” she asked when the frenzy was finally spent and we lay motionless together, drained by what we’d done. “Are you shocked? That a middle-aged married woman should be capable of such depravity?”

“No,” I murmured in reply. And it was true. Sophie hadn’t shocked me. Nor had the things she’d let me do to her. Our shared and savoured spasms meant nothing. Compared with the dangerous fantasies that had coiled themselves around every moment of release-and all the moments after.

“My husband is my husband in name only, you know,” she went on, heedless of the ambiguity of my denial. “We haven’t made love in years. And even when we did…”

“Is there somebody else?”

“No. Nobody else. Not any more, anyway. Just as there isn’t for you, is there? Nobody. Not a single person who can replace her.”

“I don’t understand you.” It wasn’t quite true, of course. I seemed to understand her only too well. As she did me. And there was the rub. She shouldn’t have been able to. She shouldn’t have been capable of prying so deeply and accurately into my thoughts. And yet she was. “What do you mean, Sophie? What do you think you know about me and Louise?”

“We were each other’s oldest friend, Robin. We were bound to share our secrets, even if we didn’t intend to. Call it intuition if you like, though it was far more than that. She as good as told me who you were.”

“Told you? About me? You’re crazy. How could she? She was dead within hours of our only meeting.”

Sophie chuckled. “You can drop the pretence with me. After what we’ve done, I think you should, don’t you? Louise meant to leave Keith. I know she did. I heard it from her own lips a few weeks before she died. She was going to leave him that summer. Quite possibly that very day. She was going to meet you in Kington, wasn’t she? And you were going to carry her off.” She must have seen the stupefaction in my face. But what she read it as I can’t imagine. “What went wrong? Did you argue? Did you have second thoughts? You may as well tell me. Why didn’t she leave with you?”

“Because we’d never met before. Because we were strangers.”

“Come on. She confessed to me. She talked to me about the man in her life. The one she’d met on Hergest Ridge that spring. Mid-March, wasn’t it? Just after Oscar’s exhibition in Cambridge. So she said, anyway. And perhaps you know what else she said. Is that why you said you were strangers? Did she call you that to your face?”

“Call me what?” The grotesque fallacy at the heart of Sophie’s reasoning no longer mattered as much as the need to hear it through to the end.

“‘My perfect stranger.’ Her exact words. Her description. Of you.”

A long moment of silence followed in which time and my own thoughts seemed to stand still. It wasn’t possible. It made no sense. It was pure madness to leave the idea unrefuted even for a second. Yet I did. And, for as long as that, I almost believed it myself.

“Don’t worry. Nobody else knows. Only me.”

“Sophie-”

“Don’t deny it. Don’t underestimate me to the extent of thinking you can deny it.”

“But I have to. It isn’t true.”

“She couldn’t have made it up. The coincidence would have been too great. The man she met on Hergest Ridge and fell in love with was you. She never named you, of course. I wouldn’t have expected her to. But what she did tell me was enough for me to suspect you the very first time we met. And after your interview with Seymour… I was certain.”

“You’re wrong.”

“No. Why else should you still be trying to avenge her? Why-unless you loved her?”

“I didn’t love her. I never had the chance.”

“That’s not what Louise said.”

“What did she say, then? Tell me. Precisely.”

“All right. If that’s what it’ll take to convince you. I’ve nothing to hide. Louise and I went to a health farm near Malvern for a few days in the middle of June that year. It was a place we’d often used before. Somewhere we could relax and get into shape. Sarah’s graduation ceremony was coming up and Louise wanted to look her best for it. Well, that was her story. But there was a glint in her eye I knew had nothing to do with her daughter’s academic achievements. The last night we were there, she admitted she had a lover. A man she’d met by chance on Hergest Ridge. She’d gone to Kington to return some of Oscar’s pictures after the exhibition in Cambridge. Oscar wasn’t in. So she left the pictures in his studio and drove up to Hergest Ridge for a walk. The weather was unusually warm for March. She wanted a breath of fresh air. You were there for the same reason. I suppose.”