Encounters Read Free

hoped that her voice sounded normal. ‘Mr Turner told us it had gone wild, but it seems very neat to me.’ A crescent of rose beds curved around the neatly mown lawn, brilliant with flowers; beyond them a herbaceous border stretched towards the cedar tree, a riot of lupins and gladioli and hollyhocks.
    The young man glanced at her and smiled. ‘A few of the chaps work on it when they’ve got the strength. I’m not much good. I can’t keep my balance without this damn thing.’ As he turned to step off the terrace onto the soft mossy lawn she saw he was using a stick.
    ‘You look as though you’ve really been in the wars,’ she said gently.
    He frowned. ‘Who hasn’t? But I’m lucky, I suppose. I made it back. Look. Look at the roses. God, they’re lovely.’ He stopped and stared at them with a strange intensity.
    There was a long silence. Victoria felt uncomfortable, as though she were in the way. He had withdrawn from her into some unfathomable pain. Glancing nervously back at the house, she remembered Robert suddenly and wondered where he was. She wished he would come. He had been there: through the fear and resentment; he knew how to cope with pain.
    The house on this side was smartly painted. She frowned. Several windows stood open and from somewhere she could hear the sound of music – a band playing on a scratchy record. Staring up at the windows, hoping to see Robert, she glimpsed a shimmer of white at a window. Her exclamation of surprise brought the young man’s attention back to her.
    ‘What’s wrong?’
    ‘I thought I saw someone up there. Someone in white.’
    He gave a strained smile. ‘Probably one of the nurses.’
    ‘One of the nurses?’ She stared at him. ‘Do you have nurses to look after you?’ Her eyes were wide with sympathy.
    ‘Of course.’ His eyes were clear grey, his face handsome, tanned. He glanced down at his arm ruefully. ‘They’re threatening to take this off.’ Just for a moment she could hear the fear in his voice.
    She didn’t know what to say.
    Visibly pulling himself together he stared at her. ‘You were right. We do know each other, don’t we?’
    ‘I thought so.’ She forced herself to smile.
    ‘Yes.’ He paused. ‘Yes,’ he repeated with conviction.
    She frowned. Her emotions were sending her conflicting signals. There was something achingly familiar about his eyes, his mouth, his hands; something so familiar that, she realised suddenly, she knew what it was like to have been held in his arms and yet he was a stranger. She turned away abruptly. ‘Perhaps we met when we were children or something.’
    ‘Perhaps.’ He smiled enigmatically. ‘Who did you come to visit? It obviously wasn’t me.’ There was a trace of wistfulness in his tone.
    ‘We came to look at the house.’
    ‘Oh?’ He stopped, gazing down at the grass. ‘Interested in history, are you? It must have been lovely here, before they moved us in.’
    Victoria smiled. ‘Your family have lived here for a long time, have they?’
    ‘My family?’ He looked at her in amusement. ‘No, my family don’t come from here.’ He stepped down onto the soft soil of the flower bed and picked a scarlet rose bud. ‘Here. For you. It goes with your dress.’ He held it out to her. As she took it their fingers touched and the electricity which passed between them left them both for a moment confused. She slipped it behind the pin of the brooch she was wearing.
    ‘Thank you.’
    He was frowning. ‘You’re wearing a wedding ring.’
    She looked down at her hand, startled. ‘Yes.’ She bit her lip. ‘My husband is here. He was looking round upstairs. I ought to go and join him, really.’ She hesitated. She couldn’t bear the anguish in his eyes. ‘He was injured too – in the Falklands. He’s out of the army now.’ There was another long silence. ‘I can’t remember your name,’ she said at last.
    ‘It’s Stephen.’ He said it almost absent-mindedly, ‘Stephen Cheney.’
    The