Half A Rainbow

Chapter 3

CHAPTER THREE

Leah felt tired. Not just the tiredness that came from lack of sleep, though she had certainly been suffering from that. No, this was a deep, bone-aching weariness, a general malaise. Each morning when she woke up, she prayed to have a clear head and a body full of energy, but so far it hadn’t happened and she didn’t think her exhaustion was completely the result of the decorating she’d been doing, stripping off peach-coloured woodchip and painting walls and woodwork. She wondered if it was purely physical – she had suffered a health trauma a few months back, after all – or if it had a psychological component, too. Perhaps the two were connected. Maybe she was suffering from depression. It wouldn’t be surprising if she was.

She sighed heavily and balanced her paint brush on top of the pot of ‘white with a hint of lemon’ vinyl silk emulsion. She rubbed her arms, trying to force some vitality into them. Coffee; that would help.

Sitting down with her hot drink and a plain chocolate Hobnob, she felt herself droop and took another deep breath. Suddenly, events of the last few months seemed to fly through her mind, like they said happened when you were drowning… on your last gasp, fingers clawing at water, desperately seeking something to hold onto to save your life. She saw her old London apartment, her flatmates, their faces receding as if she were flashing past them in a speeding train. Cassidy, her best friend, her polar opposite, her dark sister. Her office. The hospital ward – no, no, don’t want to remember that. Go away! She felt her throat tighten as if invisible hands had squeezed her neck and she coughed and reached out a trembling hand towards her coffee mug, which was standing on a table that seemed to be moving away from her as she leant across it.

The rushing motion suddenly jolted to a stop and there was Stephen Clyde, in the suit he had been wearing the day she had met him. She blinked hard, trying to drive his image out of her mind’s eye, but it wouldn’t go. It was as if it had been etched onto her retinas.

When she had first set eyes on him at a business meeting, he had seemed the type of man who belonged on the cover of a Mills & Boon novel. Tall, lean, with gleaming dark hair, smoky grey eyes and a smile that made her toes curl and her breath catch in her throat, he had had such an effect on her that afterwards, she couldn’t remember anything that had been discussed at the meeting, she could think of his neat eyebrows, his white teeth, his clear, deep voice; his eyes, like dove-grey silk, like still water. When he had had asked her out, she hadn’t thought twice about accepting. Yes, there was the little matter of his being married to a French woman, but all the world knew it was over. Tales of her dalliances with much younger men had been splattered all over the gossip magazines.

Stephen was a politician, the son of a property millionaire; intelligent, well-read, witty, used to having people follow his orders. He was friendly with the type of people she had only read about in gossip columns and glossy magazines. Every day, she had looked in the mirror and wondered what a man like him was doing with Leah Mason, struggling artist.

She could see now that she had been completely spellbound, unable to see him for the ordinary, flawed human being he really was. He told her that he was separated and awaiting a divorce and that while the terms were being thrashed out by their respective lawyers, he would have to keep their romance a secret. The way their affair was conducted had made Leah feel like the leading lady in a spy thriller. He had a chauffeur who would ferry them to restaurants and clubs, where he would have booked a private room in advance and they would sneak in through a back entrance, giggling like naughty school children rather than a woman of twenty-six and a man of nearly forty.

He bought her gifts – jewellery, perfume; shoes with vertiginous heels that were impossible to walk in but fine for swanning around in a limo; a cashmere sweater, a designer dress. He promised her holidays in the Maldives, Necker Island, Cannes. He had made her feel special, pampered, adored.

“Once the divorce is through, we can be together properly. No more skulking around,” he had promised. The thought had thrilled her. She didn’t care about his position and the glamour attached to it, though she knew Cassidy would have revelled in it. All she had wanted was to be with the man she loved and be free to tell people about him; introduce him to her family, her friends. She knew he had two children who lived in France with his wife. He had hinted that perhaps he would like more some day. That, more than anything, was why, when things ended the way they did, she had found it hard to accept. Surely he hadn’t meant to be so cruel? It was all to do with the lawyers and his ex wife, wasn’t it?

“No, it wasn’t.” She spoke her thoughts out loud. No one who really loved her could have thrown her out of his life the way he had, as if she had been a sack of rubbish. How could she have been so naïve? She had made a huge mistake in trusting him… in loving him.

She decided to write the rest of the day off and lay on the sofa watching old black and white movies from the days when cads were cads and heroes had neat hair and wore sharp suits like Stephen’s and saved the heroine from being shot, run over or cheated out of their inheritance. The films always seemed to end with confetti and wedding bells. It gave her a bitter taste in her mouth and she switched the set off and went to bed, determined to wake the next day feeling a bit more like her old self; her pre-Stephen self.

And she did. In fact, she felt energetic enough to give a ‘Leap With Lindsey’ dancercise class a try, Lindsey being the name of the tinsel-haired girl who had been one of the procession of callers during her first week in Trenown Close.

Back in London, before it happened, she used to go to water aerobics as well as jog three times a week, but since she had been in St Jofra, the only form of exercise she’d had was decorating. She still had her old gym clothes, though and was surprised to find the stretchy leggings had gone baggy. Or had she lost weight?

She had seen Lindsey around the village a few times. She was regarded as a bit of a local eccentric as she was often seen in sparkly clothes with a pair of sequinned wings strapped to her back and Nat told her that she was known to most people by her nickname, Fairy. Leah had even spotted her wearing a glittery plastic tiara, the sort they sold in packets at the local Costcutter for five-year-olds’ birthday parties. She wasn’t quite sure what name to use when she met her today, but as she called herself Lindsey on her leaflet, Leah made up her mind to call her that. After all, it wasn’t as if they were likely to get on ‘Fairy’ terms. It looked as if Lindsey might be into Cosplay and Leah certainly wasn’t.

Besides, she didn’t need a friend, did she? She’d had one, a very close one and, thanks to Stephen, she’d been forced to break off the friendship and every day she beat herself up about it. She was managing perfectly well on her own and if she needed to chat, she only had to go next door and have a cup of tea with Nat. Despite an age-gap of almost fifty years, she felt the two of them were kindred spirits.

At the doorway of the village hall, she found herself in a dither. Did she really want to go in? Oh, come on, she chided herself. Even Stephen couldn’t expect her to hide away for the rest of her life, never speaking to another soul, never having friends and going out. She just had to be careful not to reveal too much about her past.

She sighed and pushed open the hall’s creaking door. A bit of dancing, a bit of music. That was what she needed. Once she lost herself in that, it would all go away. Well, for an hour, at least. She paused in the entrance hall, opened the bag she was carrying and prepared to swap her sandals for trainers. Then, squaring her shoulders, she strode in.