If I live forever, can I live now?

1

The dunes of Maspalomas looked like a theatre set. They were too perfectly defined to be real; too soft, too golden.

"This is the place." I said to David, pointing at my laptop screen. "Let's go to Gran Canaria. Can you imagine us, getting lost in these dunes? It would be so heavenly."

He lifted his hazel eyes from the case he was studying and moved closer to me in the leather sofa.

"I don't really have to travel that far to find paradise." He whispered in my ear, and a shiver run down my back.

I couldn't believe we had already been together for six months. Partly, it seemed like I had known him forever, but, at the same time, whenever he got close to me, my senses awakened as if he had never touched me before. His tan skin and perfect features never ceased to impress me.

"I know that..." I said, in the same low, sensual tone that he had used. "But I would love to go on holiday with you. England is just too..."

Stressing. Repetitive. Tied to painful memories.

"... cloudy." He said, and the fact that he had finished the sentence for me made me feel relieved.

The part of me that had lived in a world where sentences weren't finished, out of fear or out of disorientation, seemed long gone. Since David and I had moved into the sunny, elegant house that I had bought at The Boltons, the light of Kensington had managed to reach every corner of my wounded soul, wiping the dust off my most censured memories.

I only got back that incapacity to sound certain when I resumed my plans to escape. I didn't want to go on holiday just for David and I to rediscover our bodies under palm trees. I did find that idea appealing, but what I needed the trip for was to test how I would function in another atmosphere, to prove to myself that my phantoms wouldn't chase me to brand-new places, to warm places in which there were no retreats conquered by trauma.

"So, what do you say?" I asked him, pointing at my laptop screen once again, and, trying to imitate the most ridiculous travel agency advertisements, I added: "Beautiful sunsets and clear waters... Sink in pleasure!"

David cracked up, and his refulgent smile dazzled me.

"How could I say no?"

"Yes! We'll book everything tonight." I said, satisfied, and I gave him a quick kiss before I stood up.

"Hey!" he said, holding onto my leg, and caressing it in such a soft way that almost made me sit back down and jump over him. "Where are you going? I thought you didn't have meetings today. It's Sunday."

I didn't want to lie to him, but I knew he wouldn't like the truth.

"I don't, I'm just... visiting someone."

His gaze darkened.

"And I am guessing it's not Africa."

I sighed.

"It's Abbey."

His broad jaw fell, and he stood there, frozen, with his mouth wide open, facing me, while my pulse quickened. I finally understood that the persistent, uneasy silence was his way of asking me why the hell I was going to visit my enemy, so I tried to explain it to him.

"The way you've been trying to bond with your mother..." I swallowed. " It has inspired me. It has made me understand that we can put hatred and treason beyond us..."

David shook his head fervently.

"It's so freaking different, Tess; she's my mother! She loves me, and she is worthy of my efforts to forgive her. What is Abbey to you?"