(1998) Denial by Peter James Read Free Book Online

to get through life by avoiding confrontation. She just steered a course through the rocks and stuck rigidly to it. Few highs but few lows. Existence at its baldest. That was all far too many people had to hope for.
    She rarely expressed opinions to him, which made her remark now all the more surprising.
    ‘Really?’ he probed. ‘I didn’t think I’d done a very good job last night.’
    She hesitated. ‘It seemed as if you were speaking much more from the heart than usual. I – I don’t mean that you aren’t usually good, but there was definitely something different.’
    Amanda
? he wondered. He said, ‘Thanks. I’m not at all sure I’m going to continue doing it, though.’
    ‘You
should
, Dr Tennent,’ she said emphatically. ‘I think you help people.’
    ‘I’m not so sure.’ He paused. ‘Give me a couple of minutes, I have to make a call.’
    He replaced the receiver and stared at the framed photograph of Katy, a head and shoulders shot. Their last holiday together. They were on a boat going down the Nile, and she was leaning against a deck rail, grinning, looking at him with those trusting blue eyes. The wind had twisted her blonde hair around her neck, and strands of it lay across her pink cashmere jumper. She had a healthy tan and those three colours, the brown skin, the blonde hair, the pink jumper against the clear rich blue of the Nile sky seemed perfection. Exquisite.
    So why had he done what he had?
    Why?
    She
was
beautiful. An English rose. A princess. His brain was a kaleidoscope of memories. She could eat anything and she never put on weight. She loved food. Grilled Dover soles a yard long. Hunks of rare steak smothered in onions. Great big sticky doughnuts filled with custard cream. He remembered on their honeymoon when she’d rammed a massive doughnut into his mouth, then licked the sugar offhis lips, all the time laughing and scolding him as if he were a child.
    Dead.
    Trapped beside him in the wreckage of the car, broken and bleeding and inanimate. The airbag lying limp like some grotesque parody of a spent condom. The bloodied face of the dead man in the van that they had hit head on, staring accusingly out through the crazed glass of the windscreen, while the firemen sawed their way in and the crowd stood around gawping.
    yourfault . . . yourfault . . . yourfault
    Memories he did not want to have, but which he needed to confront.
    Every day, every night, his mind returned to that accident. A safe door had locked shut in his brain. Inside it were a few seconds of his life, twenty, maybe thirty, in which his whole world had changed. He could not get to them, could not find the key, or the combination, that would unlock that door.
    Once, when things had been good, they used to have those intense conversations lovers have over a bottle of wine or curled up in bed, and often they’d talk about death and how they’d cope if one of them lost the other. Katy always said it would make her sad to think that if she died he might never be happy again, and she’d made him promise faithfully that he would move on, find someone else, start a new life.
    Now that generosity of spirit was twisting him up inside as he looked at Amanda Capstick’s business card lying on his desk: 20-20 Vision Productions Ltd. Amanda Capstick. Producer.
    Then he looked again at the
Times
obituary. Gloria Lamark.
    An overdose of drugs
. . .
    He almost knew it by heart now.
    Gloria Lamark, movie actress, died from an overdose of drugs in London on 9 July, aged 69. She was born in Nottingham on 8 August, 1928.
    A leading actress in the 1950s, hailed by critics as Britain’s Brigitte Bardot, although in many respects a far more accomplished actress, her numerous roles included
The Arbuthnot File
, directed by Orson Welles,
Race of The Devils
, directed by Basil Reardon,
Storm Warning
, directed by Carol Reed, and her most successful film,
Wings of the Wild
opposite Ben Gazzara. Her first stage appearance was aged three at