Morgan's Child. Anne Mather
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was getting angry now, and Fliss supposed that she couldn’t blame him. It wasn’t his fault that her mind had slipped out of gear. Well, it was his fault, but there were obviously mitigating circumstances. If Graham were here, he’d know how to deal with it. He always knew what to do in a crisis.
‘Fliss, I know you’re there,’ James declared at last, a trace of desperation in his voice, and she guessed he had detected her quickened breathing. ‘You should have had a letter,’ he added, somewhat flatly. ‘When I rang the Foreign Office earlier today, they confirmed that you’d been contacted, too.’
Fliss shook her head again, wondering if she was the only sane person amongst them. ‘James, it’s not true,’ she said firmly, trying not to get impatient. ‘Whatever you’ve heard, Morgan is dead.’ She licked her lips. ‘You saw the pictures of that car, just as I did. No one could have survived—’ She broke off. ‘And now, if you don’t mind, I don’t want to talk about it any more.’
‘Oh, hell!’ James swore. ‘Look, my dear, I know this has come as a shock to you, and I’m sorry you’ve had to hear the news so baldly. But it is true. Morgan’s alive. He’s presently in a hospital in Kantanga. Some kind of stomach infection, I believe.’
‘No—’
‘Yes.’ James sighed. ‘You will forgive Celia, won’t you? She was so excited, she couldn’t wait to talk to you.’
Fliss couldn’t breathe. ‘No,’ she said again, seemingly incapable of saying anything else, and Morgan’s father groaned.
‘Yes,’ he insisted. ‘Look, we’ll come down and see you. Not tonight, of course, but we’ll be with you first thing in the morning.’
Fliss didn’t answer him. There was a buzzing in her head, and although she knew the lamps in the room were lit she could sense a darkness at the comers of her eyes. She slid numbly off the arm of the sofa, bouncing briefly on the chintz-covered cushions before slipping almost nervelessly onto the floor. The phone dropped from her fingers, but she didn’t notice. As the blackness engulfed her, she heard Morgan’s father saying her name over and over again...
She recovered consciousness to the sound of someone hammering at the door.
For a moment, she didn’t know where she was, and even the realisation that she was lying on the rug in front of the stone hearth didn’t immediately supply an explanation. Had she tripped and fallen? Had she hit her head? She couldn’t remember ever having fainted, but it seemed obvious that she wouldn’t have just lain down in front of an unlit fire.
Her head was throbbing quite badly and whoever was attacking her door wasn’t improving it. If only they would stop banging quite so loudly, she might find the wherewithal to think.
‘Fliss!’ The letterbox rattled and someone shouted her name through the opening. ‘Fliss, can’t you answer me? Where are you? Are you all right?’
It was Graham, she realised as the pause in the knocking allowed her brain to function again. Graham was at her door, and she couldn’t understand why he sounded so worried. She distinctly remembered him telling her that he was giving a bible class this evening. He should have been at the vicarage, not hammering on her door.
She shook her head, and then wished she hadn’t when the room spun dizzily about her. Obviously, she had fainted, she thought incredulously. But how had Graham known that she needed his help?
She struggled up onto her elbows. She’d always believed she wasn’t the type to suffer sudden losses of consciousness. She’d thought she was made of stronger stuff and it was disconcerting to discover she’d been wrong. Why, even when she’d heard the news that Morgan had been murdered by the rebels—
Morgan!
The searing recollection of what she was doing on the floor hit her with lightning force. For a second, she was half afraid she was going to lose consciousness again, but Graham chose that moment to renew his assault on the door. Oh, God, Morgan, she thought sickly; Morgan’s alive. And, struggling groggily to her feet, she saw the phone receiver dangling from its cord.
‘Fliss!’ The letterbox rattled again. ‘Oh, Fliss, darling, can’t yon open the door? Can you hear me, Fliss? Oh, dear, I’m going to have to break a window. I’ve got to see that you’re all right.’
Graham!
Rubbing a dazed hand across her damp forehead, Fliss managed to regain her balance. I‘m—here. I’m all right,’ she called in a thin, wavery voice. Replacing the receiver and using the furniture for support, she started across the room. ‘Just give me a minute. I can’t seem to find the key.’
‘It’s on the floor,’ said Graham, bending to speak through the letterbox again. ‘Thank God you’re all right. I’ve been so worried. I managed to push your key out, but you’ve dropped the dead bolt so I couldn’t use my key.’
Fliss allowed her tongue to moisten lips that were as dry as parchment and bent to gather up the key. Of course, she thought, making sense of what he was saying, as this cottage still belonged to the church, it was feasible that Graham should have a key. The fact that she had had dead bolts fitted along with the existing locks had been an added security precaution on her part. She was used to living in London, where excessive personal protection was the norm.
It took a few moments for her trembling fingers to fit the key into its hole and deal with the other locks, but at last she got the door open. And, as if his patience had been stretched to breaking point, the Reverend Graham Bland—her fiancé—burst into the room, grasping her by the shoulders and pulling her into his arms.
‘Fliss!’
His voice was thick with emotion, and she wondered why her phone being off the hook should have caused him such concern. How long had she been unconscious, for heaven’s sake? He was behaving as if he knew something was wrong.
‘Should—shouldn’t you be at bible class?’ she ventured at last, when he drew back far enough to stare into her pale face. His expression gave her an anxious feeling. Did she look as numb as she felt?
‘At bible class?’ he said, shaking his head. ‘My dear, I came as quickly as I could. When the Rikers phoned me, I was—shattered. Finishing the bible lesson was the least of my concerns.’
‘The Rikers phoned you?’ Fliss felt a momentary twinge of the dizziness that had overwhelmed her before. ‘So—so you know what they—what they were ringing me about?’
‘Well, yes.’ Graham cupped her face in his large hands now, and smoothed her cold cheeks with tender fingers. ‘Oh, my dear, I can imagine what a shock this has been for you. The Rikers were frantic when you went off the phone.’
Fliss nodded, but although she was trying hard to behave rationally she couldn’t seem to stop shaking. Hearing that the Rikers had told Graham the same thing they had told her made it more official somehow. Her fears—her doubts that maybe she had been hallucinating—were all swept away by Graham’s assertion. He wouldn’t have said it if it wasn’t so. By some miracle, Morgan was alive. In a few days—weeks?—he’d be coming home.
HOME...
Fliss shivered, staring up into Graham’s kind, familiar features with a growing sense of panic. This wasn’t Morgan’s home, she realised numbly. It never had been. The home she’d shared with Morgan had had to be sold when she couldn’t afford to go on paying the mortgage.
Besides, she remembered dully, she hadn’t wanted to go on living in the house she’d shared with her husband when he was alive. There’d been too many ghosts; too many memories. When Aunt Sophie had told her about the teaching job that was going at the village school, she’d practically jumped at the chance to get away from London. Whittersley was her home now. She had eventually succeeded in putting the past to rest.
Because