LITMIR.BIZ

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at the bedside clock, I saw that it was almost six. I couldn’t believe I’d been asleep for over four hours. Slipping off the bed I went and looked out of the big bay window.

      The beautiful Paris sky of earlier was cloud-filled now and darkening rapidly, the sunny blue entirely obscured. Rain threatened. Perhaps there would be a storm. I turned on the lamp which stood on the bureau plat, and sudden bright light flooded across the photograph of Tony in its silver frame. It had been taken by Jake last year when we had been on vacation together in southern France. I stared down at it for a long moment, and then I turned away, filled with sadness.

      Sometimes I couldn’t bear to look at it. He was so full of life in this particular shot, his hair blowing in the wind, his teeth very white and gleaming in his tanned face, those merry black eyes narrowed against the sunlight as he squinted back at the camera.

      Tony stood on the deck of the sloop on which we were sailing that vacation, the white sails above him billowing out in the breeze. How carefree he looked, bare-chested in his white tennis shorts. A man in his prime, obviously loving that he was so virile. You could see this just by looking at the expression on his face, the wide, confident smile on his mouth.

      I sighed under my breath and reached out to steady myself against the desk, and then I moved slowly across the floor, retreating from the window area.

      His son Rory had taken possession of Tony’s body once it had arrived in England, and the boy had taken it on to Ireland. To County Wicklow. There Tony had been buried next to his parents.

      Rory would be at the memorial service, wouldn’t he?

      That question hovered around in my head for a moment. Of course he would. And so perhaps I would finally get to meet the son Tony had had such pride in and loved so much.

      I lay down on the bed again, and curled up in a ball, thoughts of Tony uppermost once more. Absently I twisted his ring on my finger, then glanced down at it. A wide gold band, Grecian in design, set with aquamarines.

      ‘The colour of your eyes,’ he’d said the day he’d chosen it, not so long ago. ‘They’re not blue, not grey, not green, but pale, pale turquoise. You have sea eyes, Val, eyes the colour of the sea.’

      Pushing my face in the pillow, I forced back the tears which were welling suddenly.

      ‘Mavourneen mine,’ I heard him whisper against my cheek, and I sighed again as I felt his hand touching my face, my neck, and then smoothing down over my breast…

      Snapping my eyes wide open, I sat up with a jolt, got off the bed and hurried into the bathroom. Pressing my face against the glass wall of the shower stall, I told myself I must pull myself together, must stop thinking about him in that way…stop thinking about him sexually. I’ve got to get over him, he’s not coming back. He’s dead. And buried. Gone from this life. But I knew I couldn’t help myself. I knew that his memory would be always loitering in my mind, lingering in my heart. Haunting me.

      III

      I took off my dressing gown and the rest of my clothes and stepped into the shower, let the hot water sluice down over my body, and then I dumped loads of shampoo on top of my head and thoroughly washed my hair.

      After stepping out of the shower and towelling myself dry, I wrapped a smaller towel in a turban around my head. And then I examined my wound. I did this every day. There was a funny puckering around it, but that would go away eventually; that’s what my doctor here in Paris had told me.

      I’d been very fortunate, he’d explained when I’d first gone to see him, in that the bullet had missed muscle and bone, and gone right through flesh. Where it had exited, it had left a gaping hole originally, and the main problem for the doctors in Belgrade had been picking out the bits of cloth from my clothes which had been blown into the open wound. They had apparently done an excellent job, according to Dr Bitoun, and I had healed well.

      There was no question about it in my mind, luck had been running with me that day. Just as it had with Jake. The two of us had somehow been protected.

      IV

      The storm broke as I finished dressing.

      Thunder and lightning rampaged across the sky, and I turned on additional lights in my bedroom before going through into the living room.

      A master switch controlled all of the lamps in there, and a second after I’d hit it with my finger the room was bathed in a lambent glow. I glanced around, my eyes taking in everything.

      Although I knew this room so well, it always gave me pleasure whenever I looked at it. My grandfather had put it together, had created the decorative scheme, and his choices in furniture, all gifts from him to me, had been superb. Even the lamps and paintings had been his selections, and the room had a cohesion and a quiet beauty that was very special.

      Janine, the wonderfully efficient and motherly Frenchwoman who looked after the apartment, and me when I was in it, had been very visible all day yesterday. She had cleaned and polished and fussed around in general, and had even arrived bearing a lovely gift…the masses of pink roses which she had arranged in various bowls around the living room.

      And tonight the room literally shone from her efforts. The antique wood pieces were warm and mellow in the lamplight, gleamed like dark ripe fruit; how beautifully they stood out against the rose-coloured walls, while the silk-shaded porcelain lamps threw pools of soft light onto their glistening surfaces.

      Like the rest of the apartment, the floor in the living room was of a dark, highly polished wood, and left bare as the floors in the other rooms were. The latter were decorated more simply, since I’d done them myself; it was Grandfather’s room, as I called it, which looked the best.

      After admiring it from the doorway for a moment longer I then stepped inside, went over and straightened a few cushions on the deep rose linen-covered sofa near the fireplace, before bending over to sniff Janine’s roses. For once they had a perfume, actually smelled of roses, which was unusual these days. Most bought flowers had no scent at all.

      I went into the kitchen, checked that there were bottles of white wine in the refrigerator, and returned to my bedroom. For a minute or two I studied myself in the long mirror on a side wall, thinking that I looked much better than I had for days. Healthy, in fact. But that was merely an illusion, one very cleverly created by my artifice with cosmetics; a golden-tinted foundation camouflaged my deathly pallor, hid the dark smudges under my eyes. The latter I’d enhanced with a touch of eye shadow and mascara; while a hint of pink blush and pink lipstick helped to bring a little additional life to my wan face.

      The real truth was that I’d looked quite ill for the past week, haggard, white-faced, and red-eyed from crying, and I hadn’t wanted Jake to see me looking that way tonight. He worried enough about me as it was.

      I wasn’t sure where we were going to dinner, so I’d chosen one of my basic outfits – black gabardine trousers, a white silk shirt and a black blazer. My blonde-streaked hair was pulled back in a pony tail, and, as I regarded myself objectively, I thought: Plain Jane and then some.

      Turning around, I went to the desk, opened the drawer and took out a pair of small pearl earrings. I was putting them on when the doorbell rang.

      I hurried through into the hall, anxious to see Jake who had been gone for the past week.

      ‘Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes,’ he drawled when I flung open the door to let him in.

      ‘Likewise,’ I answered, and we stood there staring at each other.

      Then he reached out eagerly and pulled me into his arms, enveloping me in a tight bear hug. And he held me so close to him I was momentarily startled.

      V

      When Jake finally let go of me he gave me an odd little smile that seemed a bit self-conscious to me. Then he

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