Chapter 56: Chapter 56

The client owned a number of exclusive boutiques all over the North of England and Oliver would have come himself had he not been tied up with the chairman of the London shops.

And so with the ground work completed and Mr. Kimkim definitely interested, Sharon left his house at a little after five o' clock'. At the gate, she pulled to a halt, undecided as to what she should do. The sky was dark and it was snowing and she knew that if she wanted to get home that night, she had to be heading towards the motorway.

A sudden loneliness griped her. Inside the warm cocoon of the car, she was safe from the world. She thought if Bryan, his hard face riding up in her mind's eye and felt like crying.

She was tired of being alone. She was tired of being unloved. Even her daughter needed the love of her father. For how long would she deny her that due to her own vengeful tendencies? Was it her fault that she was brought into the world? She knew that there were children of single parents who turn out well but they had their circumstances. Deborah had a father who might want to know her like David had kept telling her but her stubborn attitude would not allow her to consider that.

So what if he does not love her and what he wanted to do was just to humiliate her by showing her that he owned her heart and body and soul though he might just be interested in her body alone.

She could accept that and be satisfied with it or she could decided to go for someone who would love her. Afterall, Oliver would gladly have her any day and he was in love with her. She just had to get a closure for herself by introducing Deborah to her real father and then settling for the available live that she could get from Oliver though it was going to be hard being with while desiring and loving another and it would not be fair to him. He deserved better.

How had Bryan turned her life around and torn it apart this way? Would she ever be happy or make the right decisions without bias or prejudice?

At this moment, she needed someone to lean on, someone to talk to. She wanted a man's strong arms around her. She couldn't fool herself, she wanted Bryan, more than anyone else in the world, more than anyone else in her life, except for her daughter of course and she was still a part of him, she wanted Bryan.

Slamming the car into gear, she turned out of the driveway, her tyres squealing. She was angry with herself for being all kinds of fool. Bryan had never loved her. He never would and if she was not careful, she would spend the rest of her life longing for him, loving him so much that she would never be able to look at another man. It was a depressing prospect.

Reaching the motorway, she stopped the car. The snow was heavier now and she wasn't she she should drive on. She could drive back to Kendall and spend the night in a hotel. She didn't feel like driving back to London.

Her daughter was her only source of joy and she would forever be grateful that she had not taken the easy way out by erasing the evidence of her mis - endeavour but in her present mood, she knew she could not be a doting mother to her. Let her be with Gabriel for tonight at least.

She would have smoked had she been a smoker. She felt tears suddenly blurring her vision a d swallowed them trying to bring herself under some semblance of control. You are an idiot, she told herself. Some idiot you are.

Then on an impulse, she suddenly turned the car around and joined the motorway on the other carriageway, driving North towards the Lakes. By the time she got to Windermere, visibility was down to a few feet and she was forced to crawl along at ten miles per hour. She didn't examine her motives but knew exactly where she was going. It took her an hour to reach her former flat though it was just a few miles from town. She had left it since she ran away from the bank and from friends and goes when she decided she needed to find peace.

Since then though she had not been making use of it die to her desire to keep away from Bryan, she had neither leased it out nor done away with it. She had left it and didn't know the reason for that.

To that flat was where she went this night with so much snow on the ground and her reluctance to go back to the flat which she shared with Gabriel, her cousin and her daughter.

The car was skidding badly, the tyres could not grip the icy road and she would have been frightened to death if she hadn't been so determined to reach her destination.

In the end, she had to leave it and walk the rest quarter if a mile. By the time she reached the front door, she was soaked through, the snow driven into her face by a bitter wind. From the high white drifts, it was clear that heavy snow had fallen over the past few days and the temperature was much lower than in London.

The key was where it always was, under a plant pot under the door. As she opened the door, piles of snow fell in through the door. She scooped it out with her hands, a feeling of profound relief coming over her as the door shut behind her.

The flat smelt damp and unused and she stumbled in the darkness, searching for the light switch and nothing happened. She tried again. Nothing. She cursed. She searched in her bag and brought out a lighter she carried around with her in case of eventualities such as this.

She tried every switch she could find with same result. There was no electricity. The fuse box offered no answers. None of the fuses were blown and the main switch was turned on. She shivered. She shouldn't have come here. The flat being in that state would make it impossible for her to stay the night on comfort.

She walked back to the door, intending to drive back to Kendall. A blizzard of snow whirled in on her, her footprints already hidden. She was going nowhere.

Trying to make the best of it, she lit a fire from the neat pile of logs in the fireplace. She found a decanter of brandy and some candles in the carved oak sideboard. The spirit warmed her and made her realise how tired she was, sudden waves of exhaustion washing over her. She lay down on the sofa, her coat draped round her and stared into the fire, her eyelids drooping. It isn't so bad afterall, she thought with a smile. I'll get up in a minute and throw more logs into the fire. I could freeze to death if it goes out....

Then she recalled that it was in this same flat that she had had her bouts of flu and in one such occasion, Bryan had come and undressed her when her fever broke and cleaned her up and took care of her and she recalled how she had virtually begged him to make love to her in her delirium while she thought that she was hallucinating. And he had made a mockery of it by telling her to her face that she must have hectic dreams if she thought that it had only been a dream.

She was still thinking about it when she fell into a deep sleep,not recalling to add more log into the fire like she had planned.