Fractured (20 page)

I scrambled under the blankets, the coverage they provided being even more welcome than their warmth. To my surprise Jimmy didn’t appear to be in any hurry to return to his own room and settled himself down to sit on top of the covers beside me on the bed.

‘So what was this nightmare about then, the one that made you decide to trash the room like a rock star?’

I gave a small smile. ‘Oh, nothing really.’

‘It didn’t sound like nothing to me. You really scared me, you know.’

I looked into his face and knew he was telling the truth. He might not precisely share my feelings, but there was no doubting that he
did
care for me.

‘Sorry,’ I apologised, not really knowing if I was saying it for worrying him; for what happened in the bathroom; or for any and all future transgressions. ‘The dream was the usual one. Usual for me, that is. I was dreaming about the night of the car accident.’

‘Does that happen a lot?’

I nodded sadly.

‘Ever since the accident?’

‘Ever since you died,’ I corrected.

We were both silent then, temporarily lost for words at the improbability of my statement.

‘But why are you still dreaming it now?’ Jimmy asked suddenly, turning on his side, the better to see my face. ‘Why now, when you know it didn’t really happen like that?’

I shook my head miserably. ‘I don’t know.’

But then a thought occurred to me, a really obvious one. For the thing I didn’t know, what I was
really
in the dark about, was what had
actually
happened on that fateful night. Because that was when reality had split into two different realms for me. Perhaps when I understood what had actually transpired, the imaginary second life would lose all substance and disappear like the mirage everyone said that it was.

‘Tell me everything. Tell me what you remember about that night, from the moment we sat down at that table.’

Jimmy read the need to know in my voice and, as though to protect me from the truth, should it turn out to be painful, he put an arm around my shoulders before beginning.

His story was just as I remembered it being. Even the air of camaraderie and friendship came to life again at his recollections. I didn’t interrupt at all until he mentioned the penny he had given me.

‘I kept that!’ I cried out involuntarily, before correcting myself. ‘Or rather, in my other life I did. I kept it in my jewellery box. I couldn’t throw it away, it seemed like my last link with you.’

He smiled, but said nothing. And then another thought occurred to me.

‘And we’d made arrangements for the following day. I remember that now. You’d asked me to go round the next day to see you and you’d sounded really mysterious about it. I wondered about that for years. What had you wanted to talk about?’

Was it the light, or had his cheeks really deepened in colour at my question?

‘Oh I don’t know. I can’t remember after all this time.’

I let it go without comment, not wanting to divert him from his tale. But I couldn’t help wonder why he had just lied to me.

The story continued true to my memories until we reached the point when we had all begun the frantic dash from the table to escape the oncoming car.

‘… and we all managed to get clear of the window before the guy drove into it.’

‘But I was stuck. I couldn’t get free, a chair was blocking me in. Didn’t it happen that way?’

He was silent for a moment, seeming to almost weigh up what to tell me.

‘It all happened so quickly, it’s hard to say. Perhaps you
were
the last to get clear.’

There was something he was glossing over here and I wasn’t about to let it rest.

‘No. I wasn’t the last. My dad said that you got hurt, so obviously you were still near the window when the car crashed through. What happened?’

I realised then what he was reluctant to tell me.

‘It
is
as I remember it, isn’t it? You came back for me. You pulled me clear.’

He looked strangely embarrassed to admit it.

‘We all kind of helped each other get away.’

I shook my head. I could still see it so clearly: everyone had moved back, everyone had been safe, everyone but me. But one of them had come back to rescue me.

‘You saved my life.’

For a moment it looked like he was going to continue to deny it, but then he heard the certainty in my voice and went instead for humour.

‘I couldn’t let you die and take my lucky penny with you.’

But I wasn’t going to let him divert me.

‘You saved my life.’

His answer this time lost all flippancy, and with desperate honesty he replied, ‘How could I do anything else?’

I didn’t know what to say. There are no words to cover that sort of gratitude; to repay that kind of debt.

‘And you got hurt.’

I raised my hand and lifted the hair away from his forehead, revealing a small white jagged scar that ran down from his hairline to the level of his eye.

‘It’s so like mine,’ I breathed in wonder. ‘The one I thought I had,’ I corrected. ‘Except mine was deeper, longer.’ I let my finger trace the line of his scar. ‘Mine went down here,’ my finger ran over his cheek, catching slightly on the roughness of bristle, ‘and then went to here.’ My finger continued to etch the blueprint of the remembered scar, but instead of stilling where my disfigurement had ended, I continued to trace a pathway to his mouth, coming to rest upon his slightly parted lips.

Electricity crackled between us. The moment in the bathroom suddenly paled into insignificance compared to the potently charged atmosphere.

Gently, oh so gently, he drew the tips of my fingers in between his parted lips, flicking against the sensitive pads with his tongue. My entire body shuddered with a frisson of excitement.

And then I was in his arms. I truly cannot say who made the first move, it could have been either of us. All I knew was the force of the passion in his kiss and the feel of his long hard body pressed against mine.

Time became suspended as our kisses deepened; the heat of our passion welding my body to his with an intensity that astounded me. His hand trembled slightly as he slid the nightgown from my shoulders, but he had no need to be hesitant. I wanted this to happen just as much as he did, maybe even more. And in a sobering revelation of clarity, I finally acknowledged that I had been waiting for and wanting this very moment for years but had been too blind to see it.

As his lips and hands travelled over my exposed flesh I heard a low throaty murmur of pleasure escape me. I couldn’t believe how wantonly and readily I was responding to his touch. It was like nothing I had ever experienced before.

The bed covers were kicked aside and I felt no embarrassment to be naked in front of him. Given our long friendship I would have expected this to feel wrong, maybe even vaguely incestuous, but nothing before had ever felt so right. Our ragged breathing tore into the silence of the room and the trembling that coursed through Jimmy’s body as he covered mine shook me with its intensity.

I don’t remember when he first began to pull back. One minute we were fused together, our mouths and hands exploring and delighting and then, all at once, it was just me. The hands that held my shoulders, arching me closer to him were now gently, but insistently, pushing me away.

Embarrassingly it took me several moments to realise what was occurring. My fumbling fingers were still struggling with the buckle of his jeans when his hand came down to encircle my wrist and move it away. The red mist of passion began to lift enough for me to see his face. The fire was almost gone and had been replaced by a darkly determined steely strength. Stupidly I refused to acknowledge what he doing and reached up to kiss him once again, opening my lips against his, sure I could elicit his response and reignite the flame.

But it was gone. Doused in sanity, where surely no sanity should belong. I didn’t care what his reasons were in stopping, I only knew I didn’t want to.

‘Oh God, don’t stop, please don’t stop,’ I begged, all pride abandoned. I kept my eyes riveted to his and actually caught the moment when the last ember of desire was extinguished in their blue depths.

He lifted himself off me in a quick and decisive move, half turning away to sit upon the edge of the bed.

‘I have to, Rachel. Don’t you see that?’

Clearly I did not see, and still refusing to acknowledge his withdrawal I shamelessly reached out to try to pull him back to me, but he was like a rock: cold, hard and totally immovable.

Without turning to look at me he picked up my discarded nightdress and tossed it back in my direction.

‘Cover yourself up.’

And those three words finally sliced through my desire, carving into my very core. I grasped the cotton garment and quickly struggled into it, feeling humiliated and strangely dirty at the same time. I had thrown myself at him, there was no other way to describe it; I had virtually begged him to take me and he had rejected me. How much clearer did he have to make it? Oh sure, he had responded at first, but I realised now that had just been a natural male response to a woman so obviously trying to seduce him. A physical knee-jerk reaction, nothing more.

But even physical desire hadn’t been sufficient to allow him to follow through. It was a cold and undeniable fact: Jimmy had never wanted me in that way; neither in the past nor now, and I had just made the biggest idiot of myself by launching myself at him like some third-rate seductress in a tacky novel.

‘I think you should leave now,’ I said in a quiet voice that trembled enough for me to realise that tears were only moments away. The speed with which he complied told me the truth: he couldn’t get out of there fast enough. He paused just once at the door, turning to give me a long hard look.

‘I’m so sorry, Rachel, please forgive me.’ His voice sounded truly tortured, but before I could even think of a response he had opened the door and left.

Sorry?
He
was sorry? What in hell’s name did he have to be sorry about? I was the one who should have apologised. I was the one who was apparently incapable of controlling her emotions and had to be told that what she was doing was completely out of order.

What was Jimmy guilty of? Nothing, except of not wanting me. And I could hardly blame him for that; for at that moment I felt like the most loathsome and disgusting creature that had ever walked the face of the earth.

Another night of crying myself to sleep. It was almost becoming a habit. If Jimmy noticed my red-rimmed eyes the following morning, he was too polite to comment on them. I had to admit that he didn’t look so great himself when we met in the corridor at the time that we’d arranged the night before. Of course, that had been during the civilised portion of the evening; before the madness had overtaken me in the middle of the night, when I had acted in such a way that I’d probably killed our friendship for ever.

On waking I had even harboured the pathetic hope that I had dreamt the entire episode, that none of it had really happened and that nothing had been irretrievably broken or damaged. But when I’d turned my head I could see the remains of the broken lamp and knew it was as irrevocably damaged as my relationship with Jimmy.

When I saw him waiting for me in the corridor I hesitated at the threshold of my room. I had no idea what to say. But fortunately it appeared that neither did he.

‘Do you want to stop for breakfast or just head back?’ were his opening words.

‘I’d just like to go back,’ I answered quickly.

Some response flickered in his eyes but he just nodded, as though this was what he had been expecting. He lifted the bag from my fingers and turned in the direction of the lifts.

‘Let’s go then.’

There may have been more uncomfortable car journeys in my life, but that one was right up there with the worst of them. The strain of not talking about the topic we both couldn’t avoid thinking about was monumental. And yet, as mile followed mile, neither of us dared to voice the subject and when finally we passed the sign that announced we were now in our home town there was, thankfully, no time left.

As we manoeuvred through the familiar side streets and turnings, I was itching to get out of the car, desperately hoping that by exiting the vehicle I could somehow leave behind the debris of last night. And then, just when I thought that the day couldn’t possibly get any worse, it just did.

We rounded the last bend and there, parked directly in front of my house, was a low sleek car.

‘Terrific,’ muttered Jimmy, pulling in to the kerb to park behind it.

I looked up in confusion at the unfamiliar vehicle and then my eye fell upon the registration plate: MR 10. Matt’s car.

Jimmy switched off the engine and turned to look at me, properly at me, for the first time since last night.

‘Rachel, I wanted to say… to explain…’

I shook my head. ‘Please, don’t say anything, it’s not necessary.’

He reached out and took my hand, and part of me wanted to jerk back from his touch and an even greater part wanted to hold him against me for ever. He saw my hand judder under his and misinterpreted the reaction.

‘I know you must hate me right now,’ he continued, ‘but please give me a chance to—’

I never heard what he wanted the chance to do or say, for at that moment the passenger door was swung widely open by a rather impatient-looking Matt.

He saw my hand in Jimmy’s, even though I had yanked it away as speedily as if it were caught in a flame. Forestalling any comment, I quickly scrambled out of the car.

‘Matt, what are you doing here? I thought you were in Germany for another three days?’

Matt drew me into an enveloping embrace, which I think was more for Jimmy’s benefit than mine. By the time I was released, Jimmy had also climbed out of the car.

‘I wound things up really quickly; thought you might need me more back here. But I see you managed to make… alternative arrangements.’

God, here it was again. That old revisited teenage rivalry that had so fascinated me in the hospital, only now it was just petty and irritating.