LITMIR.BIZ

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wrong. You’re lying! He can’t be dead!’

      But Madame shook her head and wept, her whole body shaken with sobs, and Annie realised it must be true.

      ‘No…Dear God, no.’

      She looked outside and saw the gendarme talking to Monsieur Gaultier, both of them shaking their heads in dis-belief, and she ran out past them, up to the place where he’d taken her in his arms and made love to her with such passionate intensity just a few short hours before. Such exquisite joy—

      ‘Etienne, no. You can’t be dead,’ she wept, falling to the soft, sweet earth where she’d lain with him so recently. ‘No! It’s not true.’

      The sobs racked her body endlessly, the pain tearing her apart cell by cell, leaving her in tatters.

      Madame found her there, prostrate with grief, and helped her back to the house.

      ‘I have to go and see him,’ she said. ‘I can’t believe—’

      So Madame Chevallier called a taxi, and she went first to the village, but the gendarme wouldn’t talk to her. Then she went to the town where it had happened, where the hospital was and the morgue, but the information was even less forthcoming.

      The only thing she was sure of was that he was gone, but even his death she had to take on trust. She wanted to see his body, to say goodbye, but she was told his family had taken it already, and no, she couldn’t be given their details.

      ‘It is gone, mademoiselle. You cannot see him. You must go home.’

      Home. It was the only thing in her suddenly topsy-turvy world to make sense. She’d go home, to the only people who really cared about her. Liz and Roger would look after her. She went back, packed her things and set off. She should have phoned them, but she couldn’t bring herself to say the words, and so she made her way to Calais and took the first available crossing, caught the train from Dover and arrived back at ten that night, going straight to their house.

      Roger answered the door, his face haggard, and Annie, even through her grief, could see that something was terribly, horribly wrong.

      A shiver of dread ran down her spine. ‘Roger?’ she whispered. ‘What’s happened?’

      ‘It’s Liz,’ he said, and then he started to cry, dry, racking sobs that tore her apart.

      ‘Where is she?’

      ‘In bed. Don’t wake her. She’s got a headache. Annie, she’s dying—’

      A brain tumour. Roger told her the bare bones, but Liz filled her in on all the details in the morning, sitting at the kitchen table after the children had gone to school.

      ‘Inoperable?’ she echoed hollowly. ‘Are they sure?’

      ‘Oh, yes. I’ve had every kind of scan, believe me.’ Liz searched Annie’s eyes, and frowned. Even then, in the midst of such agony, she noticed that something was wrong. Her hand found Annie’s, gripping it hard. ‘Annie, what is it? What’s happened to you? You shouldn’t be home yet. What’s going on? You look awful, my love.’

      She swallowed the tears, not wanting to cry about something that must seem so remote to this very dear friend in the midst of her own grief, but unable to hold them back. ‘Etienne’s dead.’

      Liz’s face was shocked. ‘What? How? Why?’

      She shook her head. ‘I don’t know. All they’d tell me was he’d been mugged in an alley in the town. He was with another man, and he was killed, too. They were beaten to death—’

      ‘Who would do such a thing? Do they know who did it?’

      She shook her head. ‘I don’t think so. They wouldn’t tell me much. I just—Liz, I can’t believe it. First him, and now you—’

      And then the dam burst, and they held each other and wept the raw, bitter tears of grief…

      The gravel crunched under his tyres as he drew to a halt, cut the engine and got out, a lump in his throat. He was about to ring the doorbell when an elderly terrier trotted round the corner of the house and came up to him, sniffing.

      ‘Nipper?’

      The dog pricked his ears, whined and jumped up at him, his stubby little tail thrashing wildly in apparent recognition, and the lump in his throat just got bigger.

      ‘Nipper, it is you,’ he murmured. ‘I can’t believe it! What a good old boy!’ He crouched down, and the dog lashed his face with his tongue in greeting, all the time whining and wagging and wriggling furiously under his hands, unable to get enough of his old friend.

      ‘Nipper! Nipper, get down! Bad dog. I’m so sorry. Nipper!’

      He straightened slowly, taking in the changes that time had carved in his godmother’s face. The lump wedged itself in his throat, so that for a moment he couldn’t speak but could only stand there and let the homecoming fill his heart.

      ‘I’m so sorry about that. What can I do for you?’ she said, moving closer, and then suddenly she stopped, her hand flying to her mouth, the secateurs clattering unheeded to the ground at his feet. ‘Michael?’ she whispered sound-lessly, and then recovered herself. ‘I’m so sorry. For a moment there, I thought you were someone else—’

      ‘Oh, Peggy, I might have known I wouldn’t fool you,’ he said gruffly, and he felt his face contort into a smile as his arms opened to receive her…

      A river of tears later, they were sitting in the kitchen, his godmother on one side, his godfather on the other, catching up on nine very long years while the dog lay heavy on his feet, endlessly washing his ankle above the top of his sock as if he couldn’t believe his old friend had really returned.

      The dog wasn’t alone. Peggy kept touching his face, her fingers infinitely gentle and tentative, getting to know the new him.

      ‘It doesn’t hurt,’ he assured her quietly. Not much, at least. Not with the painkillers.

      ‘But it did. It must have done.’

      He nodded. ‘Yes. It did. I’m glad you didn’t see it.’

      She shook her head. ‘We should have been there for you.’

      ‘It wasn’t possible. It wasn’t safe. I’m sorry they had to tell you I was dead.’

      ‘I knew you weren’t,’ she told him. ‘The flowers on my birthday, the cards. They said you were dead, but I knew.’

      ‘I didn’t believe her,’ Malcolm said. ‘I thought she was imagining it. At one point I thought she had a secret admirer—someone from the local horticultural society.’

      ‘Silly man,’ Peggy said with a fond smile. ‘As if.’ She paused, then went on, ‘I don’t suppose you can tell us—’

      He gave a twisted smile. ‘You know better than to ask that. I’ve told you all I can. It’s all over the television, anyway—and all that really matters is that it’s over and I’m alive—even if I don’t really look like me any more.’

      His godfather nodded wordlessly. ‘If I may say so,’ he muttered gruffly, ‘the nose is better.’

      He chuckled. ‘I agree. The nose is a bonus. The headaches I could live without, and the teeth aren’t great. At least they don’t go in a glass at night, though, so I should be thankful for small mercies.’

      ‘So—I take it they gave you a new identity? Who’ve you been all this time?’

      ‘Michael Harding.’

      ‘Oh—like the thriller writer. How ironic. I’ve read all his books…love ‘em. Fancy you having the same name.’

      ‘I am the writer,’ he said diffidently, and shrugged. ‘I had to do something while I was marking time, and I thought I might as well put all that experience

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