Chapter 22

By the time John had got to his road, he was drenched to the skin, and was preoccupied with feeling wet, shivering and wretched when he opened the gate to his house. Then he saw that on his doorstep there crouched a figure in a coat with its hood up, arms round knees. He could see it was a woman, and then she raised her head on hearing the gate.

“Carol?” he exclaimed as he approached.

She stood and waited for him to come near. He saw how soaked she was.

“John,” she said dully. “I need to see you. I’ve got everything wrong again.”

He extracted his key and she stood aside while he opened the front door and cancelled the alarm.

“Come in!” he said. “You’re soaking wet.”

“So are you,” she replied.

“Comes of going to the pub in December without a coat. It’s been so mild the last couple of days and I thought today’s rain was finished for the night. Come through to the kitchen: it’ll be warmer there.”

They entered the kitchen.

“Take your coat off,” John said, as he put the kettle to boil. “Tea or Coffee?”

“Tea please.”

She took off her sodden coat and it revealed that her sweater and slacks were also soaked through.

“Look at you,” he said, concerned. “Come upstairs to the bathroom. I’ll find you a bathrobe and towels. We can dry your clothes in the tumble drier. Have a shower if you want, you look really cold. It’ll warm you up. Tracy left some shower gel and other stuff when she went.”

He gave her a bathrobe and a couple of bath towels and pointed her to the bathroom on the landing.

“Put your wet things on the landing. I’ll take them down with my own when I’ve dried off.”

So saying he left her standing and went to his room, where he stripped, towelled himself off and dressed in a tee shirt and boxer shorts, over which he donned a dressing gown. Then he collected the pile of her clothes and took them down to the tumble drier. He saw how flimsy and sexy her bra and knickers were and wondered if she had put them on to come to him, or whether they were for her new boyfriend.

He hung her coat over the drier but realised it would never dry before she needed to go home. He wondered what of his would fit her. He made the tea and waited in the kitchen for her to re-appear.

He heard the shower running and sat down to wait a while longer.

Needless to say, he wondered what she had come for, but did not try to hazard any guesses any more. He liked the feeling she was in his house and was using his shower. He had a fleeting vision of her naked under the flowing water, and felt a twitch below. She had said little or nothing about her purpose, only that she had got everything wrong. Again.

The surprise of finding her huddled on the doorstep, and the discovery of her sodden condition had evaporated any vestiges of the anger and distress that he had felt leaving her place; now he was simply curious and caring.

Meanwhile Carol had gone into the bathroom. It was the first time she had seen it and she was impressed. She stripped off everything, and even though the bathroom was warm, she was still shivering. She found shampoo and shower gel, and decided to take up his offer. Naked, she put her clothes outside the bathroom door as instructed and tarried a little, but he was nowhere in evidence to see her. She felt disappointed somehow.

The perfume of the gel and shampoo were not those she normally used, but she liked the gentle aroma, Tracy had taste, she thought. Then she followed it with the thought that if Tracy had had a casual thing with John, that proved her good taste as well. It didn’t stop her feeling jealous.

As she washed, she laughed to herself. Who would have thought that within hours of seeing John again after so long, and the shouting match they had had at her door, she would be naked in his house! She relished the word naked, it felt so naughty, so sexy.

Then she sobered. What could she say to him? What might he say to her? This might be the final conclusion to their relationship. She got a flashback of their lives together and how blissfully happy she had been. How badly she wanted that life back again! What could she say to him to convince him to try again?

It was with much less optimism she towelled her hair and body. She could not delay any further, so put on the bathrobe and left the steamy bathroom, making her way down the stairs.

He looked up as she entered the kitchen. He took in her red face and her straggly damp hair, her slim calves and bare feet, and realised afresh how beautiful she was, and how appealing in her dishevelled state. He shook himself mentally.

“Let’s go into the living room,” he said. “Easier on your feet.”

He offered her a mug of tea and led her to that room, where he sat in an armchair and she took the sofa. She sipped the hot liquid and smiled shyly at him.

“Thank you,” she said. “I feel much better now.”

“You’re welcome,” he said with an answering smile.

There was now a silence until she put down her mug.

“I’m sorry I shouted at you when you came earlier,” she said. “I was caught unawares and reacted badly. I was sure you were with Tracy now, and I had only just started dating Martin. It was our third date tonight, and we were just getting serious, but after you’d been...”

She hesitated, not wanting to admit what might have transpired, and then changed the subject. “I called Sue and she put me right about Tracy. She’d told me before that you two weren’t an item, but I was sure you were.”

“You were partly right,” John interrupted. “When I thought you had found someone from your past life – and I thought that until Tracy put me right yesterday – we were lovers. We had been lovers in London and we get on very well together, but she was never serious about me, nor I about her; we made love as part of a comforting no strings friendship. That stopped as soon as I learned about Dermott. But I interrupted you,” he said, sitting back and relaxing.

She looked relieved but there was a little jealousy there as well.

“Where was I?” she wondered. “Ah, yes. As soon as I realised you’d been under a misapprehension even as late as yesterday, as well as mine about Tracy, I sent Martin home. I felt so despondent, thinking you would have nothing more to do with me, but Sue shouted at me that I should come and explain.

“So she drove me here because I’d had wine with the meal. I saw your car, so I sent her away, thinking you were in, but you weren’t.”

“I went to the pub with Tom and Ann. Drowning my sorrows.” He grinned at her.

She nodded, then continued. “Anyway, I sat and waited, and then it began to rain and hail. Did it ever rain! I nearly got to the point of walking home, I was so cold, but I knew that I had to see you tonight. I couldn’t let this go on any longer. I just longed for us to sort everything out. I’ve been in hell for so long, trying to get over the consequences of my own stupidity.”

She stopped and looked expectantly at him, how would he answer that? It was an admission of sorts that she wanted him back.

For his part. she was so exquisitely beautiful in her eagerness to hear his response that a calmness came over him, and he had to face it, he had a deep consuming desire for her. All the turmoil and negativity melted away, he wanted her so badly.

The question in his mind was: what was the purpose of this visit of hers, and more to the point, of his visit to her earlier? It was to put right a wrong, wasn’t it? To clear all the misunderstandings – didn’t she just say as much? But then what? Was there more?

His silence began to unnerve her and in her worry she began to fidget. He realised he had to say something.

“It was Tracy,” he said, allowing the words to come unconsidered. “She said it was about time we sorted out all the wrong information we were responding to. You do know, at that party I was coming to tell you how much I appreciated what you’d done for me with our friends, how grateful I was and that I wanted you to come back to me? As I drove there I was seeing a bright future for us together again. I was so optimistic and happy.”

Her spirits soared. He’d said it. A future together again. She felt like screaming, but he was still talking.

“You can imagine the shock when I thought you had left me behind. I was too late through my own stupid anger and the vengeful way I’d set you a seemingly impossible task when you had begged to come back. All my own fault.

“Of course I blamed you at first for being fickle, then later wiser counsels prevailed and I saw it must be someone you had been in love with before me. So all I could do was to set you free to follow your heart. Then, of course, I was on my way out of the country for months.”

She relished the thought of how much he loved her to think only of her happiness. He had set her free to follow her heart! She smiled lovingly at that, then sighed.

Now she felt free to confess her own feelings. “And it was all Liam’s doing: his lies and nastiness,” she said in response. “You know, I knew you were coming to the party, I’d asked Leo to remind you, and I longed to see you again. I was hoping against hope that you would want me again and we wouldn’t be saying goodbye that night. My phone’s battery was flat so I didn’t get your messages until it was too late, or I’d have rushed to you.”

A shadow crossed her face. “I had a really bad time when we found out it was Liam’s doing. I despaired of ever getting back with you, and when Tracy took up residence, that finished it for me. I thought you had moved on. I saw you with her in the Griffin, and you looked like a couple.

“John, I’ve not been truly happy since Liam fed me those photo’s, but it was made worse when I realised I’d thrown away an innocent man who loved me so much. I’ve realised I’ve loved you all along; it was always there deep down. I’ve wanted you back so badly.”

She stopped again, on edge and eager for his reply, hope in her eyes for his protestation of love. It did not come.

For indeed while John did know then with total clarity that he wanted what she wanted, he just as vividly realised he had a problem.

“Carol, I need to tell you what I’ve been doing over the past months. You’ll have heard some things, but I need to tell you it all.”

She was puzzled. This seemed to have nothing to do with what they were saying. She had been as certain as she could be that he was moving to the resolution for which she now hoped, and now? Where was he going with this?

“I don’t understand,” she stammered, “I thought we were–”

“This is important,” he interrupted her.

She shrugged. Was he now going to backtrack and say it was all over? Her face showed her distress.

He had to tell her, it would not wait. “No, Carol, just please listen. You need to understand something.”

“There’s someone else? Not Tracy, someone else?” she asked in desperation as her fear rose.

“No! There really isn’t anyone else. Please! I beg you, just listen.

“The first time I went abroad was to Holland. They had personnel problems and I had to sort it out. It took four weeks. No sooner had I returned home than Maurice Callaghan sent me on a hush-hush mission to the Philippines. There was fraud of immense dimensions involving millions of pounds with many people’s livelihoods dependent on the outcome, and I had to sort that out. Then I had to look for manufacturers there and in South Africa, so we aren’t dependent on just three main suppliers apart from our own British and South American factories.

“That job took me four months. I got back to London last week and back here yesterday–”

She was growing impatient; what was he getting at? “Yes I know,” she said urgently. “You got back yesterday–”

“Carol, I haven’t finished. I had to report to the board, and they were very impressed: I saved the company a lot of money and kept our reputation intact. Maurice then said I had leave coming thanks to the board, and I thought to take two months off immediately, then he mentioned that the deputy in charge of our Far East concerns had resigned.

“The thing is, he is also hinting about me moving back to London as a base and starting a new job. Add to that the fact that Tracy looks set to be the new Sales and Marketing Manager here and therefore Tom will be staying as Managing Director. It looks as if I won’t be coming back here.”

All her optimism was evaporating and she felt deep dread that he was telling her there was no possibility of their reuniting.

He saw her face fall, but carried on. “Now I connect what I’ve been doing over the past half year with this supposed new job, and I suspect that the board are going to ask me to be a trouble-shooter and general overseer of our home divisions, our foreign subsidiaries and our suppliers, and even to search for new suppliers in the emerging countries in Africa and South America, to say nothing of China, Vietnam, etc.

“I also suspect this globe-trotting job will last a lot longer than my leadership of the Northern Factory and Office did. I reckon at least five years.”

All hope gone, she stared at him stony faced. “So we’re finished? You’re leaving for good?”

He looked at her in surprise. “Whatever gave you that idea?”

Now she was completely non-plussed, utterly confused. “But–”

“Carol there’s nothing I want more than you and me back together again, but that means either you pack in your job and come with me, or...”

Or we say goodbye now, she thought, but could not say it. He would have to.

“Or what?” she asked.

“I have to resign and find another job round here.”