For the next few days, Kay suffered the agonizing keenness of a knife wound which has been re-entered at the same spot. Oh what ill-luck to have bumped into Graham just when she was beginning to get over the awfulness of the past weeks. Better if they had never met and she had gone on believing he had merely tired of her, thrown her over without a qualm. But to know that he still retained some vestiges of that ‘loving passion’ as he had so aptly described it at the start of their affair, and yet still continued to deny her, made it all harder to bear.
Grimly, she kept going thinking that each day the awful nagging pain in her heart must lessen. But there seemed no end to it. It accompanied her everywhere like a dully aching tooth that is only awaiting night-time to spring into violent throbbing action. Which it did whenever she was on her own, for being alone was the night-time of her heart’s tooth.
‘Kay, are you sick?’ Florrie enquired anxiously, finding her weeping in her room.
Earlier, Sally had telephoned bubbling over with the news that she had got a Malaga overnight and giving extracts from Eulogio’s last letter, complete with passionate quotes. Unable to bear any more raptures, Kay had cut her short with a promise to ring her next day and gone upstairs to throw herself sobbing on the bed where Florrie now found her.
‘He’s going away,’ Kay moaned, unable to keep it to herself any longer.
‘Who is?’ Florrie asked bewildered. Surely Kay couldn’t mean Dan Tully. She couldn’t imagine him occasioning such grief.
‘Graham!’ Kay turned her face into the pillow and wept. ‘Captain Pender!’
Florrie was amazed, having really believed that Kay was getting over him at last. Who else but the love of her life, she thought, putting a gentle hand on her friend’s shoulder, her blue eyes concerned. She hadn’t forgotten how supportive Kay had been when her father was dying and she ached now for her unhappiness.
At her touch, Kay sat up. ‘Oh Florrie,’ she cried, ‘I met him in New York a few days ago. I’m sure he still cares for me but I know now he’ll never leave his wife. He’s too afraid of losing his precious sons if he does. Oh it’s all so hopeless. I wish I could die.’
‘Kay, don’t talk like that.’ Florrie begged, disturbed by the frantic look on her friend’s face. ‘In time you’ll forget him. You will, I know you will.’ But she sounded surer than she felt. There was a desperate, self-annihilating quality about Kay’s love for Captain Pender and always had been. ‘You must forget him. It’s the only way.’
‘I can’t. I’ll never forget him,’ Kay said brokenly.
She knew she never would. Not till the day she died. Oh if only that could be right this minute.
‘But you could begin to try,’ Florrie pleaded with her. ‘Like you did after Spain, remember,’ She tried to joke, ‘You were making a good job of it too, with Desperate Dan’s help.’
‘I can’t... not yet.’ Kay said defeatedly, her tears beginning to flow again. ‘Not till I know he’s definitely gone away.’
The trouble was she didn’t know exactly what day it would be, only that it would be sometime in the next fortnight.