PART ONE
February 1986
ONE
I had a dream, which was not all a dream — Lord Byron
There was no forgetting her voice. After more than twelve years, it was Ella Innes.
"Ella! Oh, Ella! I know why you've called me. It's happening isn't it, it's all happening again!"
"Hold on Lee; it'll be OK. Listen, we've really got to talk."
"Yes. Only it's not OK Ella. I don't know if I'm awake or if I'm dreaming; or if we're even having this conversation."
"You're awake now. This is real. Remember how I used to wake you? This is just the same, remember."
Remember. It was a kind of code word. Remember. I remember it all. Your voice. Your scent. How I felt every time you came near me.
"Sure." But he sounded more than doubtful. "Let me just get my thoughts together will you? It's been a wicked night."
"I had to get in touch with you. I couldn't think of anything else." He heard her take a deep breath. "I want to come and see you. Today."
"Today? Where the hell are you anyway?" (Who the hell are you after all this time?)
"I'm living in Cumbria, by the sea. Nice scenery and nuclear seepage. What else do you want to know?"
"But that's over two hundred and fifty miles away, Ella."
"We live in a world of cars and motorways, Lee. It's incredible how easy it is to travel around."
"OK, no need to be funny with me." But that was Ella. He thought for a moment before giving her some muddled directions. "All right. I'll be waiting for you."
"Do it." That's how she always used to talk. Just do it.
"One thing before you go, Ella. How did you track me down? I mean it's been a long time."
"Not so difficult. I started at the university and followed a very orthodox career trail." Old note of criticism, not fair. "Lee? Are you afraid?"
"I had a terrible night, Ella. Yes, I am afraid."
He put down the phone. It had been twelve going on thirteen years since they had seen or spoken to each other. He stared at the wall, dumbly. His astonishment and dismay conflicted with the acute fear of waking up and finding himself back in bed, which he knew would stay with him all day.
Then he remembered the trick with the book. He took, at random, a paperback volume from the bookshelf. Letting it fall open naturally, he read the first few lines to present themselves:
But his dominion that exceeds in this Stretcheth as far as doth the mind of man: A sound magician is a demi-god.
Glancing away, he squeezed his eyes shut, then looked back at the open page. He was relieved to see that the lines were unchanged. He repeated the exercise. Hoping that it counted for something, he returned the book to the shelf.
When he checked back down the sequence of false awakenings, the most bizarre thing had been Ella's voice striking out of the past and talking to him as if they had spoken only yesterday. When they had parted in their youth it had not been on bad terms, or at least where there had been pain there had been no anger. Parting had happened by inevitable unspoken contract, for the simple reason that they had come to hold each other's company in a mutual despair which outweighed even their terror.
Lee inspected his face in the mirror and awarded himself a high slob rating. That man in the mirror, with the lantern jaw and the pouting bottom lip which girls had once found endearing, was now getting jowls. He could do with losing a few pounds. Would Ella be able to see the winsome, athletic, wise-alec twenty-year-old that he had once been?
It didn't occur to him that Ella herself would have aged. It wasn't as though he hadn't thought of her in the decade since she had fled the university, putting two thousand miles and an even greater psychic geography between them; but in his mind she had remained always the same. Unforgettable Ella; delicious, hypnotic, superior, erotic Ella; Ella undressed, Ella with her clothes on. There came, in equal measure, deep tormenting sentimental memories and sharp sexual reminiscences. Ella vibrant with arch cleverness and smouldering undergraduate sexuality.
Memories clung to him like the tentacles of a deep-sea creature; or perhaps that was him, sucking at memories that should have drifted free long ago. But the problem was his. All relationships post-Ella had been held up to her light by way of comparison, and inevitably in those dazzling rays they palled. Scratch the surface of Lee's feelings for any woman and you would find Ella, impossible to erase or surpass. What could others hope to do, when she ghosted the shores of his memory and seeded his dreams like that?
The only consolation to Lee, if consolation he was looking for, was that he knew that Ella could never get over him. They could live neither with nor without each other.
And now she had contacted him, after nearly thirteen years. He was going to meet her, and he was afraid, just as he knew she too would be afraid.
Ella Innes. Why did you have to come back?