Time's Echo (41 page)

‘I would have believed you were frightened,’ said Drew. He stopped and rubbed his eyes behind his glasses in frustration. Taking a breath, he dropped his hands and looked at me.
‘Look, I don’t know what happened on Saturday,’ he said. ‘I don’t know how to explain it. All I know is that I love you, and you won’t let me close enough to
help you.’

There it was, out at last. I stared at him, frozen in my chair, blindsided by how casually he had said it.
I love you
. The words were huge, crowding in on me, suffocating me.

‘Drew, I . . . ’

He let out a long sigh. ‘Don’t look like that, Grace,’ he said. ‘You don’t need to say anything. I know you don’t love me.’

‘It’s not that I don’t . . . ’ I stumbled into incoherent speech, only to lose my way as soon as I’d started. ‘I
can’t
,’ I said at
last.

‘Can’t what?’ he said with a level look, and I pushed myself out of the chair.

‘Oh, I
knew
this would happen!’ I hugged my arms together furiously. ‘I meet someone and we get on well, but then it’s all about getting close and needing each
other and talking about your feelings, and I don’t want to do it!’

Too late I heard the shrill tension in my voice and I stopped, horrified to find myself on the verge of tears.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said miserably.

Drew swore, came over and pulled me to him, holding me tight. I resisted at first, rigid as a board, but he didn’t let me go, and after a moment I let myself relax against him. He felt
wonderful.

‘I’m the one who’s sorry,’ he said into my hair. ‘I shouldn’t have pushed you. I’m just worried about you – and don’t bother telling me
you’re fine, because I know you’re not.’

‘I wish I could let you in,’ I muttered, wrapping my arms around his waist, hanging onto him as if he were the only safe, certain thing in my world. ‘But I can’t. I just
can’t.’

‘Just for the sake of argument, what’s the worst thing that could happen if you did tell me how you feel?’

‘I’m afraid I might hurt you,’ I said, muffled against him. ‘I’m afraid I might not be the person you think I am.’

It was out before I could stop it. Hearing my own words, I tensed and made to draw back, but Drew held me firmly in place.

‘Okay, so now we’re getting somewhere. What kind of person do you think I think you are?’

‘I don’t know. Snippy? Stubborn?’

‘You’re that,’ he agreed, ‘but you’re also quirky and funny, and you’re bright and you’re brave.’

‘I’m
not
brave!’ I wrenched myself out of his hold at that. ‘I’m
not
, Drew. That’s exactly what I mean. You think I’m one thing, but
if you really got to know me, you’d find out that I’m not that at all. I’d let you down,’ I said wretchedly. ‘I can’t bear to do that.’

Drew’s eyes narrowed. ‘Who have you ever let down?’

‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

‘Come on, Grace, we’re not leaving this here.’ He pulled me over to the sofa and made me sit down beside him. ‘Tell me.’

I yanked my hands from his, all my bristles erect. ‘Look, Drew, I’ve had a busy day being exorcized and all. Could we leave this for now?’

‘No. No, we can’t.’ He didn’t try to take my hands back, but sat at the other end of the sofa, not touching me. ‘I want to know why you’re so afraid of being
needed. So come on, tell me who you’ve failed.’

I turned my face away, defeated. All these years I had kept the great, black, wriggling mass locked away inside me, and now it was bumping at the lid, poking tendrils out, writhing its way free.
Sarah had been right about that. I was afraid of it. I didn’t want to look at it. Just thinking about thinking about it had guilt setting its fingers around my throat and squeezing, so that
my voice came out all thin.

‘Lucas. His name was Lucas.’

The name rolled right out of my mouth and lay in the middle of the room, taunting me.

‘Tell me about him,’ said Drew quietly.

‘He was just a little boy. I didn’t know him at all. I only know his name because his parents used to call him, and he’d ignore them. They were Swedish, I think. They used to
sit on the beach near us.’

‘The beach?’

‘At Khao Lak.’ Drew didn’t even know that I was talking about Thailand, I realized. ‘Matt and I went there for Christmas when we were working in Bangkok. I told you about
that.’

‘You told me about the tsunami. You didn’t tell me about Lucas.’

I picked up a cushion, hugged it to me. ‘I think he may have had Asperger’s, something like that. He didn’t like to make eye contact, and he didn’t interact with other
children. He was obsessed with this irrigation system that he was digging on the beach. It was really complex, and he liked his channels straight. He was a funny little kid,’ I remembered.
‘So determined and focused. I felt sorry for him, but I sort of liked him too. On Christmas Day he wanted to dig where Matt and I were sitting so that he could keep his channels all neat. I
made Matt move his lardy arse, and we both got out of the way.’

A faint smile touched the corners of Drew’s mouth. ‘What did Matt think about that?’

‘Oh, he grumbled a bit, but he didn’t really mind. Matt’s easy-going, that way. Anyway,’ I told Drew, ‘Lucas let me help him dig his channels. It’s funny, but
I was really fattered.’ I smiled, remembering. ‘We hardly said a word to each other, but I really enjoyed that afternoon.’

There was a pause. ‘What happened when you finished digging?’

‘Nothing. His parents took him away, and Matt and I went back to our room.’

‘So you didn’t let him down that day?’

‘No.’

I stopped. I really didn’t want to do this. My heart was slamming against my ribs. My fingers twisted in the chain of my pendant.

‘What happened the next day, Grace?’

‘I . . . well, I told you about the tsunami,’ I said with difficulty.

Drew nodded. ‘You said it seemed to come out of nowhere and swept you up.’

‘Because that’s what happened!’ I said, as if he had accused me of lying. ‘One minute I was walking along in the sunshine, and the next I was swallowed up by the water.
It was just . . . roaring . . . and power . . . ’

‘You said you managed to grab onto some railings,’ Drew prompted when I trailed off.

‘Yes.’

‘What happened then?’

‘Something bumped into me.’

I stopped again. I could feel the words rising up from my stomach, jamming together into a knot that stuck in my throat like dread. I’d never spoken them to anyone, not even Matt. I willed
Drew to break the silence, to ask something that would help me swallow them once more, but he didn’t, and in the end I couldn’t hold them back any more.

‘It was Lucas,’ I said. I couldn’t meet Drew’s eyes. I stared at the carpet. ‘It was a child. About his age. I don’t know for sure, but I think it was him.
All I saw was a face. He was terrified, I could see that. He was screaming. It all happened so fast, but I’m sure it was him.’

I took a breath, tried to slow down, but the words were tumbling out now. ‘I managed to grab his hand. The wave was so loud and so strong, but I did catch hold. I had the railings in one
hand and Lucas in the other. I know I did. I thought I was holding him tightly. I thought if I could just pull him closer we’d be okay – and then he was gone. I must have let him go. I
don’t remember. He was there, and then he wasn’t. I let him go.’

I brought my hands up to cover my face.

‘God, I let him go. I should have felt his fingers slipping from mine. I should have held on tighter. He was so scared, and I let him go. I tried.’ Lowering my hands, I made myself
look at Drew at last. ‘I did try. I
did
. I’m sure I did, but I just . . . I couldn’t save him.’

There was a long silence. Or it felt long. I imagined the truth hanging in the air like gobbets of phlegm. I waited for Drew to wipe them from his face with disgust.

‘You couldn’t have done anything about it,’ he said gently at last. ‘You know that, don’t you?’

‘I should have held him tighter,’ I said, my face averted. ‘I should have done something.’

‘You did what you could.’ Drew moved across the sofa and took my hand. His grasp was warm, firm. ‘It was a tsunami, Grace. A force of nature. You can’t fight against
that.’

‘But I was the only one!’ I burst out. ‘He looked in my eyes and he knew me. I should have saved him, and I didn’t.’ My voice rose and I pressed my hands over my
face to shut it out. ‘I didn’t! I looked for him afterwards, I looked everywhere, but I couldn’t find him.’

‘Grace.’ Drew gathered me against him, ignoring my resistance and the hands I still had clamped over my face. ‘You didn’t cause the earthquake. You didn’t make the
tsunami happen. You’re not responsible.’ His voice reverberated through me. ‘It was a terrible tragedy, and I’m so sorry about Lucas, but it wasn’t your
fault.’

I shook my head against his shoulder. It wasn’t that I didn’t understand what he was saying, but I couldn’t accept that I wasn’t somehow responsible. My palms against my
cheeks were damp with memory. I could feel Lucas’s fingers – if it had been Lucas – as if imprinted against my skin, there and then gone.

‘You didn’t let Lucas down,’ said Drew. ‘There’s no reason to think you’ll let anyone else down.’

Pulling myself away from him, I drew a shuddering breath and let my hands fall from my face as I got to my feet. I felt shaky and hollow, but Sarah had been right about one thing. I had told
Drew everything and he hadn’t recoiled in disgust. He hadn’t demanded to know how I could have let a child die and yet lived myself. The world hadn’t fallen apart.

I bundled the guilt and the horror back in the box and squeezed the lid shut. I didn’t want to look at them again, but I’d done it, so I knew that I could. Maybe that was
something.

‘Are you okay?’ Drew had got up too and was watching me in concern.

I made myself smile at him. ‘You know what I’m going to say, don’t you?’

‘You’re fine?’

‘That’s the one.’ But actually I
was fine
, and when he came over and folded his arms around me, I let myself lean against him and breathe in the familiar smell of his
skin. ‘I’ve never talked about what happened before,’ I said. ‘I’m glad I did, and I’m glad it was with you, but it doesn’t change anything.’

‘Doesn’t it?’

‘I’m still leaving,’ I told him, my face hidden in his throat. ‘Now that there’s been a service of deliverance, I hope that’ll be the end of Hawise.
There’s no reason for me not to go as soon as I’ve exchanged contracts on the house.’ I took a breath. ‘I’m going to hand in my notice, Drew. I’ll be in Mexico
by Christmas. There’s no point in loving me.’

‘It’s too late to tell me that
now
,’ he said, and the grouchiness in his voice made me smile in spite of myself.

My mouth curved against his throat. ‘Then why don’t we make the most of the time we’ve got left?’ I suggested. ‘Why don’t we be lovers as well as
friends?’

Drew let out a long sigh, but he didn’t let go of me. ‘You know it will just make it harder to say goodbye when you go, if we do?’

‘It will make the next two months harder if we don’t.’ I kissed the pulse beneath his ear the way I had thought about doing for so long.

The way Hawise used to kiss Ned.

I shoved the thought away.

‘There’s that.’ Drew slid his hands up my arms, over my shoulders, to tip my face up to his. ‘All right,’ he said, and maybe it was against his better judgement,
but his touch was warm and sure and not at all reluctant. ‘Let’s worry about saying goodbye when the time comes.’

I refused to think about what saying goodbye would be like. I braced myself for Hawise to slip back into my head after the service of deliverance, but my mind stayed clear and,
after a while, I let myself believe that Richard Makepeace had succeeded in putting her to rest.

I felt lighter, although whether that was due to the service or to telling Drew about Lucas, it was hard to tell. I refused to think about the future and I refused to think about the past. I
just thought about the ordinary day-to-dayness of going to work, of coming home to Drew and of the bone-melting pleasure of the nights we spent together.

I never stayed the whole night. I waited until Drew was asleep and then I slipped back to Lucy’s house. Drew grumbled, but he accepted it, and I told myself I was being sensible, as if not
getting used to those last few hours together would really make it easier to go.

September drifted into October and I drifted with it, until one morning I woke up and it was autumn. I’d forgotten how suddenly the seasons could change. The air smelt different, of dark
nights and dampness and winter lurking behind the north wind, and the light was fainter, fuzzier. It wasn’t really that much colder than it had been, but all at once people were wearing boots
and jackets, and drawing their curtains against the night. The trees turned, and the gutters swirled with fallen leaves.

Still Hawise stayed away. I tried not to think about her, but every now and then I would catch a fragment of memory. Bess, hauling herself up against Hawise’s skirts, her triumphant
expression as she managed a wobbly stand. Ned, turning his head, smiling his quiet smile. Sometimes Francis, slowly, lasciviously, running his tongue over his lips. I hated that, but it was like
remembering a dream. I was there, and then I wasn’t, the way dreams are.