for her because he had to.
Olivia thought back to last night, to the disturbance that had haunted her dreams, waking her and refusing to let her sleep again. Instinct told her that it had been the same with him.
They might spend no more than a few fleeting hours in each other’s company, or they might travel a little distance along the road together. Neither could know. But they had to find out.
‘So you came out here to improve your Chinese?’ he asked in a tone that suggested there must be more to it.
‘Partly, but I needed to get away from England for a while.’
He nodded, understanding at once. ‘Was he a real louse?’
‘I thought so at the time, but I think now I had a lucky escape. He almost made me forget my prime directive. But when I discovered what a louse he really was, I realised that the prime directive had been right all the time.’
‘Prime directive,’ he mused, his eyes glinting with amusement. ‘Now, let me see—what would that be? “Only learning matters.” “Life can be reduced to graphs on a page.” How am I doing?’
‘You’re part of the way there, but only part. Beware people, beware relationships—’
‘Beware men!’
‘Hey, you guessed.’
‘It was obviously what you were building up to. Are we all condemned?’
‘It’s not that simple. I don’t just condemn men, I blame women, as well.’
‘Well, that seems to take care of the entire human race. Having disposed of the whole lot of them, let’s go on eating.’
His wryly mocking tone made her laugh.
‘My parents were both wild romantics,’ she went on, ‘and I can’t tell you what a misfortune that is.’
‘You don’t need to. Romance isn’t supposed to be for parents. Their job is to be severe and straight-laced so that their kids have a safety net for indulging in mad fantasies.’
‘Right!’ she said, relieved at his understanding. ‘According to Aunt Norah it was love at first sight, then a whirlwind romance—moon rhyming with June. All that stuff.’
Lang regarded her curiously. Something edgy in the way she’d said all that stuff had alerted him.
‘What happened?’
‘She was seventeen, he was eighteen. Nobody took it seriously at first, just kids fooling around. But then they wanted to get married. The parents said no. He had to go to college. So she got pregnant—on purpose, Norah thinks. They ended up making a runaway marriage.’
‘Wonderfully romantic,’ Lang supplied. ‘Until they came down to earth with a bump. He had to get a job, she found herself with a crying baby….’
‘Apparently I cried more than most—for no reason, according to my mother.’
‘But babies can sense things. You must have known instinctively that she was dissatisfied, wanting to go out and enjoy herself, and your father probably blamed her for his blighted careerprospects.’
She stared at him, awed by this insight.
‘That’s exactly how it was. At least, that’s how Norah says it was. I don’t remember, of course, except that I picked up the atmosphere without knowing why. There was lots of shouting and screaming.
‘It got worse because they both started having affairs. At last they divorced, and I found I didn’t really have a home. I stayed with her, or with him, but I always felt like a guest. If there was a new girlfriend or new boyfriend I’d be in the way and I’d stay with Norah. Then the romance would break up and my mother would cry on my shoulder.’
‘So you became her mother,’ Lang observed.
‘Yes, I suppose I did. And, if that was what romance did to you, I decided I didn’t want it.’
‘But wasn’t there anyone else in your family to show you a more encouraging view of love? What about Norah?’
‘She’s the opposite to them. Her fiancé died years ago. There’s been nobody else for her since, and she’s always told me that she’s perfectly content. She says once you’ve found the right man you can’t replace him with anyone else.’
‘Even when she’s lost him?’
‘But according to Norah she hasn’t lost him. He loved her to the end of his life, so she feels that they still belong to each other.’
‘And you disapprove?’ he asked, frowning a little.
‘It sounds charming, but it’s really only words. The reality is that it’s turned Norah’s life into a desert that’s lasted fifty years.’
‘Perhaps it hasn’t. Do you really know what’s inside her heart? Perhaps it’s given her a kind of fulfilment that we can’t understand.’
‘Of course you could be right, but if that’s fulfilment…’ She finished with a sigh. ‘I just want more from life than dreaming about a man who isn’t there any more. Or,’ she added wryly, ‘in my mother’s case, several men who aren’t there any more.’
‘But what about the louse? Didn’t he change your mind?’
For the first time he saw her disconcerted.
‘I kind of lost the plot there,’ she admitted. ‘But it sorted itself out. Never mind how. I’m wiser now.’
She spoke with a shrug and a cheerful smile, but she had the feeling that he wasn’t fooled. Some instinct was telling him the things she wouldn’t, couldn’t say.
She’d been dazzled by Andy from the first moment. Handsome, charming, intelligent, he’d singled her out, wooed her passionately and had overturned all the fixed ideas of her life. For once she’d understood Norah’s aching fidelity to a dead man. She’d even partly understood the way her mother fell in love so often.
Then, just when she’d been ready to abandon the prejudices of a lifetime, he’d announced that he was engaged to marry someone else. He’d said they’d had a wonderful few months together but it was time to be realistic, wasn’t it?
The lonely, anguished nights that had followed had served to convince her that she’d been right all the time. Love wasn’t for her, or for anyone in their right mind. She couldn’t speak of it, but there was no need. Lang’s sympathetic silence told her that he understood.
‘Tell me about you,’ she hastened to say. ‘You’re English too, aren’t you? What brought you out here?’
‘I’m three-quarters English. The other quarter is Chinese.’
‘Ah,’ she said slowly.
‘You guessed?’
‘Not exactly. You sound English, but your features suggest otherwise. I don’t know—there’s something else…’
She gave up trying to explain. The ‘something else’ in his face seemed to come and go. One moment it almost defined him, the next it barely existed. It intrigued and tempted her with its hint of another, mysterious world.
‘Something different—but it’s not a matter of looks,’ she finished, wishing she could find the right words.
He seemed satisfied and nodded.
‘I know. That “something different” is inside, and it has always haunted me,’ he said. ‘I was born in London, and I grew up there, but I knew I didn’t quite fit in with the others. My mother was English, my father was half-Chinese. He died soon after I was born. Later my mother married an Englishman with two children from a previous marriage.’
‘Wicked stepfather?’ Olivia enquired.
‘No,