Fractured (25 page)

In a flash of inspiration I pulled a blank piece of paper from my bag and pretended to consult it as though it was confirming my validity to be there at that time. If I just walked past the security man with confidence, perhaps I could pull this off. Luckily, the telephone on the reception desk rang at that moment, and as he busied himself in answering the call, I seized my opportunity. Keeping my eyes firmly fixed on the bank of lifts at the rear of the foyer, I strode purposefully past the desk. I was quick, but not quick enough.

‘Excuse me.’

I ignored the voice. Walk with purpose, as though you have every right to be here, I told myself, not allowing my stride to falter.

‘Miss, excuse me.’ His voice was louder that time, and despite myself I hesitated. There was no one else in the foyer. His comment was clearly directed at me. I considered proceeding regardless but it was impossible to ignore the sudden unwanted image of me being frogmarched from the building between two burly security guards. I turned towards the desk with what I hoped was an innocent-looking smile. A second security guard, who I hadn’t even noticed until then, looked up with interest from the pile of paperwork that was before him: the forthcoming interlude clearly promising to be more diverting than his current task.

The first man, the one who had hailed me, made a small beckoning motion with his finger for me to approach the desk. Oh, this was beyond embarrassing. I gave a quick glance towards the entranceway, still being securely guarded by doorman number three. The possibility of making a run for it was clearly not an option. Feeling guilty, and hoping I looked anything but that, I tried to keep smiling as I walked towards the reception desk on legs that felt like jelly. As I got closer I could see that what I had taken for an angry glower was actually a fairly pleasant smile.

‘Yes?’ I enquired, hoping no one but me could hear the wobble in my voice.

‘Have you forgotten something?’ the man prompted.

I blinked back at him stupidly. Forgotten what exactly? Forgotten to report to reception? Forgotten that I don’t live in this building? Hell, I could do way better than that: I’d actually forgotten the last five years.

‘Your key?’ the man continued, as though coaxing the answer out of a child in class.

‘Um, oh, of course, my key,’ I replied, and opened my bag to pretend to look for a key I didn’t have.

The guard’s smile widened a little as he reached across the desk and handed me a front door key, attached to which was a large silver fob. His voice was kindly as he continued, ‘You always ask us to keep your key to Mr Randall’s apartment for you at reception, Miss Wiltshire,’ he explained, in a gentle paternal tone. ‘You say it saves you having to carry it around with you all the time.’

I reached out to take the proffered key, noting thankfully there was a number engraved in the silver-plated fob.

The guard hesitated as though unsure as to whether his next comment was entirely appropriate. ‘We all hope you’re feeling better now, Miss Wiltshire. We’ve missed seeing you around here recently.’

‘Umm, thank you. That’s very kind of you.’

My fingers fastened around the key and I smiled at both men, realising for the first time that the younger of the two appeared somewhat agitated. His eyes kept darting from me to the key and then back towards his older colleague. Something was bothering him about letting me have the key but I didn’t intend to hang around long enough for him to voice his concern.

I turned and began to head back towards the lifts once more, hearing as I did some hurriedly whispered comment and responding exclamation from the men at the desk.

I pressed the call button on the lift.

More urgent whispering; they were clearly in a quandary about something. An instruction was given, followed swiftly by the sound of a telephone keypad being sharply punched. Another exclamation and a quickly heated muttering between the two.

Where was the damn lift? I heard them try the phone again at the precise moment that the carriage pinged to announce its arrival. I just caught the words ‘still engaged’ as the doors slid open and I entered the lift.

‘Miss Wiltshire,’ hailed the older man, getting up from his seat and beginning to leave his desk. But he wasn’t fast enough and the doors glided to a close before he was even halfway across the foyer.

Matt’s flat turned out to be on the top floor, and I could only hope that his phone line had remained engaged throughout the time it took me to reach his doorway. I think I knew by then what had been worrying the security men in reception and why they had not wanted me to reach his flat without alerting him first.

Luck was clearly with me, for when I reached the front door there was no sign that my visit had been announced. From within the apartment I could hear the vague strains of music, but no voices at all in conversation.

I drew in a deep breath to steady my nerves, momentarily deafened by the loud beating of my heart, and slid the key into the lock. The door opened onto a vast, wooden-floored loft-style apartment, elegantly decorated in black and white leather. The source of the music lay to my left; the slow seductive strains of jazz emitting from an expensive hi-fi system.

On a large, low, rectangular glass table stood an open bottle of wine, beside which were two half-empty glasses. To one side of the huge leather settee was the telephone, lying off the hook beside its base.
Good luck with making that warning call, guys
, I thought wryly, surprised at the bitter taste suddenly in my throat. The room was empty of all occupants.

For several moments I stood rooted to the spot, then from far away at the rear of the apartment I heard a voice, followed by what sounded like a soft peel of laughter. I didn’t move. I knew the answer to the question now. Knew it from the evidence before me in the room. Had known it, if I were being completely honest, even before I left the café and hailed the cab. Did I really need to pursue it further to its inevitable and ugly conclusion?

My feet began to take me in the direction of the voices. Apparently I did.

The door was open, well, why wouldn’t it be? They thought they had the place to themselves. I entered the room silently, seeing more than I wanted to of their entwined bodies, before some latent sense alerted them both to my presence. Their reactions were completely different: Matt jerked back as though electrocuted, immediately disengaging his hold on the woman in his arms. Cathy, on the other hand, moved with precise deliberation, her eyes unreadable as she slowly reached down to pull up a sheet to cover her naked breasts.

We remained motionless in that way for what could only have been a second or two, but it felt like an eternity, frozen in a hideously tawdry tableau.

I had thought I would say something but all speech was momentarily stolen from me. It was, surprisingly, Cathy who was first to break the silence.

‘Well, this is all horribly familiar.’

Matt shot her an angry look before reaching for the trousers he had obviously carelessly discarded beside the bed. His eyes were locked to mine as he fumbled to struggle into the garment. I’d seen enough, quite literally, in every sense of the word.

I turned away from the bedroom then and quickly began to cross the large living space. I was moving fast but everything appeared strangely dream-like, as though it were all happening in slow motion. From behind me I could hear Cathy say something, which was followed swiftly by some angry barked retort from Matt. I was almost at the door before I heard him cry out.

‘Rachel, wait! Please wait!’

Walking even faster, I got to the door and hurriedly opened it. His next words were silenced by the shutting,
not slamming
, of the front door.

In the corridor once more, with the dreadful pathetic scene shut firmly away in the flat behind me, I finally drew breath. I hadn’t even realised I’d forgotten to inhale from the moment I’d interrupted my fiancé in bed with another woman. The dizzy feeling that had begun to blur my senses was instantly washed away on a tide of oxygen, and with it too came the pain, and even worse than that, the humiliation. In fact, the only emotion that didn’t assault me was surprise. Wasn’t this, after all, exactly what I’d been expecting to see?

I didn’t wait for the lift but followed the signs for the emergency stairs, only just slipping through the fire door as Matt burst into the corridor, hastily buttoning a shirt over a torso still glistening with sweat from his activities.

Unfortunately he either heard the door, or guessed where I had headed, for he wasted no time in summoning the lift and ran instead down the hallway towards the staircase. I heard the click of the door opening and the call of my name ricocheting down the concrete stairwell. His flat was on the fifth floor: that meant ten half-flights of stairs. I still had a head start. I could do it, if I ran.

He caught up with me before I was even halfway down, my progress slowed by the height of my heels and my blurred vision. Strangely I hadn’t even realised I’d been crying until then. Even so, he must have all but flown down the concrete stairs, his bare feet pounding each tread to catch up with me so quickly. His hand reached out to stop me, with such force that I almost fell, only his quick reactions pulling me back against him preventing me from plummeting down the remainder of the flight. I felt the heat and damp from his body through the thin material of his shirt and recoiled in disgust. It was the heat from her.

‘Rachel, please, for God’s sake slow down before you fall.’

I turned on him then, my anger thankfully hot enough to have dried the tears in an instant. ‘Like you care! As if that wouldn’t be the perfect solution!’

Oddly, a truly stricken look contorted his face.

‘Of course I care. How can you even say that?’

Venom, dark and poisonous flooded through me.

‘Well, I don’t know, let me think… Could it be the fact that less than five minutes ago you were busy screwing someone else?’

His face spasmed at my words and he reached out for me, but I backed away repulsed.

‘Please, Rachel, let me—’

I cut him off. ‘What, Matt? What is it you want to do? Explain? Is that the word? Because don’t bother. I saw enough of your dirty little movie that no explanations are necessary at all. I understand
perfectly
what’s going on!’

‘Nothing is
going on
!’ he cried.

‘Really?’ I snapped. ‘That’s not what it looked like from where I was standing! And remember, I just got a ringside seat. I might have amnesia but even
I
can remember that what you and Cathy were up to is definitely not
nothing
!’

He ran his hand through his hair in frustration. ‘No, I didn’t mean that. What I meant is that it means nothing to me.
She
means nothing to me. It was just sex. That’s all it was.’

I feigned a look of enlightenment before rounding on him angrily like a tiger. ‘And that’s supposed to make me feel
better
?’ He looked helpless, struggling for words and I took advantage of the moment. ‘You know what, Matt? I don’t care.’

‘No, Rachel, don’t say that. You have to let me explain. You have to let me make this right.’

It was hard not to lash out then, not at his words, but at his failure to understand exactly what he had done.

‘There is no “making this right”, Matt. Don’t you get that? Whatever your reason was, it doesn’t matter. Nothing can make this right again.’

‘You can’t mean that,’ he pleaded, and there was genuine anguish in his voice. Not that I’d have weakened then, but his next words sealed his fate completely. ‘And then, last week, when you locked your door on me—’

He never got to finish. Fury like molten lava flowed through my veins. ‘What? Is that it? It’s been like three weeks since my accident so that justifies you in sleeping with someone else? Is that what you’re saying to me? Well, is it?’

He looked worried then, knowing of all things that should never have been voiced, that was possibly the worst thing he could ever have said.

And that’s when Cathy’s words came back to me. The words she’d spoken when I first came upon them.

‘And what did Cathy mean up there, when she said this was “horribly familiar”?’ A slow red flush suffused his cheeks, while conversely I felt the blood drain from mine. ‘What? This has happened before? Have you been having an affair with her behind my back? Is that it?’

‘No, no. Of course not. I told you, this thing today, it was a one-off. It just… happened.’

There was more going on here than he was admitting to, I could feel it.

‘But you’ve been with her before, haven’t you?’

I saw the dull look of confession in his eyes.

Inspiration dawned then, as the nasty little puzzle pieces all came together. ‘Oh my God! I found you with her once before, didn’t I? When we were at uni?’

For one insane moment he actually looked pleased that I’d got my memory back. ‘You
remember
that?’

‘Not entirely,’ I hissed. ‘But that
is
what happened, isn’t it? I found her with you and we broke up?’

He nodded miserably. ‘But then you forgave me.’

And I saw then the entreaty in his eyes. I killed that hope before it could even draw breath, crushing and grinding it underfoot to extinguish all life.

‘But not this time, Matt. You don’t get any more chances to do this to me. Not ever again.’

I walked for a long time; walked until the boiling rage had cooled and the humiliation only stung instead of seared through me like a lance. Unfortunately, however far I went I couldn’t seem to erase the image that had greeted me in Matt’s room; of their two perfect bodies enmeshed together like some exotic piece of art. I didn’t think anything was going to spare me from having that vision stencilled on my memory for a long time to come. Ironic really, that that would be sticking with me when so much of my life these days was all about the forgetting.

Eventually the cold and sheer exhaustion stopped my restless feet. I looked up at the corner of a busy junction, read a street name I’d never heard of, and realised I had absolutely no idea where I was. I’d been walking mindlessly for several hours and, for the first time since bolting out of Matt’s building and into the street, I made myself stop to consider what I was going to do next. The answer came surprisingly easily.