Dark Fever

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Excerpt

Dear Reader

Title Page

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

Copyright

He’s a nice man,

she thought with a pang. He’s kind and thoughtful. But I’m going home in two weeks and we’ll never meet again—and I’m too old for a holiday romance. I probably always was! I was never the type to throw myself into a brief affair, even before I married Rob. I’m far too conservative

and cautious….

Dear Reader,

The Seven Deadly Sins are those sins that most of us are in danger of committing every day: very ordinary failings, very human weaknesses, which can sometimes cause pain to both ourselves and others. Over the ages they have been defined as: Anger, Covetousness, Envy, Greed, Lust, Pride and Sloth.

In this book, I deal with the sin of Lust. We can all become driven by desire, especially when we fall in love; it is a natural human instinct, and can be beautiful—but lust can also have an ugly face and express the very opposite of love. Sometimes lust is born of hatred and a desire to destroy.

Charlotte Lamb

This is the fifth story in Charlotte Lamb’s gripping seven-part series, SINS.

Dark Fever

Charlotte Lamb

CHAPTER ONE

BIANCA FRASER woke up on a cold, raw February morning and remembered with a sinking heart that it was her fortieth birthday. Outside, it was raining; inside, it was cold, because the central heating hadn’t yet automatically switched itself on; it was set to come on at seven; and it was dark because it was only half-past six and the sun hadn’t yet risen.

She didn’t have to get up yet; her alarm was set for seven-thirty because this was just another working day. She had to shower and dress, get breakfast, drive Tom to school and Vicky to work and then get to work herself by nine. The day stretched out bleakly in front of her, heavy with responsibilities and chores, and she did not feel like getting up.

Turning over in the warmth of the bed, she found herself reaching out towards the accustomed hollow in the centre, but it was empty, as it had been now for over three years.

Closing her eyes on a wave of misery, she pressed her hand down into the mattress where Rob’s body had lain beside her for twenty years. They had gone so fast, those years; it only seemed like yesterday that they had met, fallen in love, married. Time flashed past her closed eyes, under her lids, images vanishing into oblivion.

‘Oh, Rob,’ she groaned, remembering the feel of his body close beside her all night.

She missed him most of all when she was in this bed, alone. Her body ached for his; she quivered and groaned at the memory of his touch, his passionate mouth, his body coming down on her. It was so real; she put her arms out to hold him and felt his warm, naked skin under her hands.

‘Oh, Rob!’ she whispered in pleasure as he moved against her. Running her fingers through his hair, she looked up at him with passion, needing what he was doing so badly that it was almost unbearable.

But it wasn’t Rob. A strange face looked down at her; it was a stranger’s body on top of her.

A scream choked in her throat and she began to fight him off, writhing and kicking until she rolled right off the bed.

As her body hit the floor her eyes flew open. The room was no longer dark; grey morning light filled it. Trembling in shock, Bianca struggled up and looked dazedly at the bed.

It was empty.

Breathing thickly, her heart beating so fast it deafened her, she looked hurriedly around the bedroom. That was empty, too. There was nobody here but her. A second later, her alarm clock began to ring, the noise shockingly loud in the silence.

That was when it dawned on her. She had gone back to sleep; she had been dreaming.

Scarlet, then white, she jumped up, staggering a little, turned off her alarm and rushed to the bathroom. In the room next to hers she heard Vicky’s alarm endlessly jangling until there was a loud moan, the sound of someone heavily turning in bed and the alarm stopped dead.

Bianca used the lavatory, turned on the shower, stripped off her nightdress, all without thinking what she was doing. Her mind was on automatic pilot. She was in shock. The dream was still playing in her head; she was remembering her passionate response as some total stranger did that to her…

Shame made her skin burn. How could she have felt like that? Responded to a stranger? It if had been Rob…but it hadn’t been! I thought it was! she defended herself hurriedly. At first I thought it was, until I saw his face.

But dreams don’t come out of nowhere; you dreamt what you wanted to dream.

No, that’s not true! she thought angrily. She could not accept that. She hadn’t wanted to dream about some strange man making love to her; she had never even thought of such a thing, not in her waking moments.

My unconscious…she thought, biting her lip. But she knew it wasn’t that simple; she couldn’t dismiss it as something conjured up without her knowing anything about it. It had been her who was dreaming about a stranger making love to her.

And who was he, anyway, that stranger who had shown up so mysteriously in her dream? Who had she substituted for Rob?

She tried to remember something about him—anything—but his face was blank, she couldn’t recall a thing about him, except that it had not been Rob. There had been no sense of recognition, or familiarity—she must have conjured him up out of her imagination, an admission that made her blush.

Oh, for heaven’s sake! Dreams didn’t mean a thing, anyway! When you were asleep your mind ran haywire, conjuring up a cinema show made up of memories, imagination, fantasy.

She looked at herself in the mirror, a woman of forty, with long, loose black hair hanging down her back, widely set apart blue eyes with pale lids, fine black brows, her face really still quite smooth considering she was now officially middle-aged. No wrinkles anyway—unles you counted a few laughter-lines around the eyes and mouth, a faint sadness in the eyes, too, because grief carved its impact on the face as much as laughter did.

She pulled a face at herself angrily. At your age you should have stopped fantasising. That’s for kids. You’re not a kid any more. Forty today! I can’t believe it. Where did the time go? Is that a grey hair? She peered at it closer, decided it was just the way the light fell, but it would come soon, of course. Age was a juggernaut rolling down on you; you couldn’t get out of its way. Before she knew it she would find herself with grey hair, lined skin. how long before she had false teeth? Oh, shut up! she told herself and turned to step under the shower, pushing away the depression creeping up on her.

Mornings were closely timed in this house; there was a lot to do before they could all start their day and she needed to concentrate.

When she was dressed, had put on light make-up and combed her hair up into a smooth chignon at the back of her head, she knocked on Tom’s door and got a sleepy groan from him.

‘Get up, Tom! It’s a quarter to eight!’ He had an alarm clock, which would have gone off by now, but it never seemed to wake him up. Fifteen and healthily active from morning till night, when he did go to bed and stop running and jumping around, Tom could sleep on a washing-line and would probably sleep through an earthquake. She had to bang on his door every morning before he woke up.

Vicky came out of her room without prompting, yawning, brushing her short, curly fair hair. Although her mother found it very hard to believe, Vicky was now nineteen, and for two years had been working in a large department store which insisted on its staff wearing what amounted to a uniform—a black skirt, white shirt and black cardigan. Staff could buy them in the store at a generous discount, and could wear any style they chose, so long as they kept the overall colour scheme. Black and white suited most women; on Vicky they looked exceptionally good because of her blonde colouring. She wore her clothes with panache, moving gracefully on high black heels. Her skin had a warm pink glow, her eyes were large and bright and her pink mouth a cupid’s bow. Vicky was pretty and was enjoying her life so far, although she had recently begun to put on a bored expression and talk with what she believed to be sophisticated cynicism.

‘God, what horrible weather. Raining again,’ she said, and her mother smiled to herself at the drawling tone.

‘Yes, it’s going to be another wet day.’

Downstairs, Vicky put on the kettle for tea or instant coffee while Bianca made porridge for breakfast; Vicky looked at it with horror. ‘No, thanks—all those calories!’ She poured herself orange juice, had her usual tiny slice of thin toast. She was barely five feet two and was terrified of putting on weight, which, admittedly, she did easily.

Tom rushed in, having apparently dragged on his school uniform anyhow before splashing cold water on his pink face but not bothering to put a comb through his straight dark hair.

Bianca was pouring his tea. She looked at him and made a face. ‘Oh, Tom! You look as if you’ve slept in your clothes!’

He grinned, a large envelope in one hand, a brightly gift-wrapped parcel in the other. ‘Happy Birthday, Mum!’ He bent over the table to kiss her on the top of her head.

‘Oh, thank you, darling,’ she said, smiling up at him. She had begun to wonder if they had forgotten—usually their father had reminded them.

Vicky looked guilty. ‘Yes, Happy Birthday, Mum. I’m getting your present later today; I’ll give it to you tonight.’

Over her head Tom mouthed something at his sister; Bianca suspected it was rude from the glare Vicky gave him. They argued all the time; sometimes she wondered if they always had, or if it was only since their father died; she didn’t remember them being so ratty with each other when Rob was there—or was it simply that they had changed since they began growing up?

Grief gnawed inside her again. Rob would have loved to be there to watch Tom play for his school, score the goal that won a match…

She looked at the birthday card blankly for a second, then made herself look properly. It was funny—a cartoon with a joke message; she laughed and handed it to Vicky to read.

‘Oh, ha ha,’ Vicky said disagreeably, dropping it on the table.

‘Don’t you get porridge on my card!’ Tom said, snatching it up again.

Bianca unwrapped the parcel, which turned out to hold a tiny bottle of French perfume; she unstoppered it with some difficulty and almost reeled from the musky scent. She always wore light floral perfumes, and could not imagine herself wearing this, but she smiled at her son who was watching her eagerly.

‘Mmm…gorgeous…Thank you, Tom. I love it.’

‘Put some on, then!’ he urged.

She cautiously dabbed a little behind each ear and Tom leaned over to inhale the smell.

‘Great,’ he said in satisfaction.

Bianca caught Vicky’s eye and silently warned her not to make one of her tart comments. Looking at the clock on the kitchen wall, she said, ‘Time’s getting on. Sit down Tom, and eat your porridge. We’ll have to go soon.’

He threw himself into his chair and picked up his spoon. ‘This is a porridge sort of morning, isn’t it? Listen to that rain. Are we going out to dinner tonight, for your birthday? We always used to when…’

He stopped and looked at her and Bianca swallowed, a bitter pang of sadness hitting her.

‘Yes, Dad always took us out on my birthday—I think that’s a great idea,’ she said gently.

She had told them to talk about Rob whenever they felt like it, she wanted to keep him alive for them, but these spiky little moments were always happening; they would start a sentence then remember, and look at her guiltily. Were they over their grief but aware that she wasn’t? Bianca felt that sadness again, shadowed by a sense of guilt towards her children—it was quite normal, after all, for people to get over a death; she didn’t blame them for that. After Rob died she had determined to be both mother and father to them—she hadn’t wanted to make them feel they must never mention their father in case they hurt her. She wanted to set them free to enjoy their lives—not make them anxious and uncertain.

‘Let’s eat Chinese!’ Vicky suggested.

‘Oh, yeah! Terrific,’ said Tom.

‘OK, I’d like that,’ Bianca said, picking up her cup and draining the last of her coffee. ‘I’m going to get the car out of the garage—hurry up, you two! Don’t forget your briefcase, Tom—and your games kit.’

The rain fell in the same relentless way as Bianca drove to work later, having dropped off her children. It was still raining later when she was dressing the window of Zodiac Fashions, the little boutique she and a friend ran.

‘We did much better with the January sales than I’d dared hope, and I’m really pleased with the new spring styles. I. Are you listening? What’s the matter with you?’ Judy Turner suddenly realised that Bianca had stopped work and was just standing in the window, gloomily gazing out into the almost empty, rain-washed street.

One hand absently tucking stray strands into the otherwise immaculate chignon in which she habitually wore her black hair, Bianca turned round, sighing. ‘Apart from this weather, the fact that I am now forty, and that I’m utterly fed up, you mean?’

Judy put down the account books she had been working on behind the counter. ‘I’ll make the coffee, you watch the shop, then you can tell me all about it.’

‘I just did!’ Bianca called after her departing back, then got on with the window-dressing, easing a bright yellow dress on to a haughty-looking model whose arm kept getting stuck in one position.

Bianca normally enjoyed this job; it gave her a chance to indulge her creative streak, finding accessories to go with a garment or a season, making the window look so attractive that women hurrying by simply had to stop to look at it. Today she wanted an air of spring; she had put a line of little yellow fluffy chicks along the front, sprays of pink apple blossom were pinned on the sides and the models would be carrying spring flowers—all artificial, of course, but they were surprisingly reallooking and had cost far more than real flowers would have done. You could use them again and again, however, which made them cost-efficient.

When Judy came back with the mid-morning coffee, the window was almost finished, and she went outside briefly to assess it, coming back with a smile. ‘It looks great! I love the chicks—pity we haven’t got a mother hen to go with them. You’ve got a real flair for window-dressing—didn’t you say you once went to art school?’

‘I started at college, taking an arts course, but then I met Rob and by the end of my second year—’ Bianca broke off, a little pink, laughed, and finished, ‘Well, I was pregnant, so I left without finishing the course.’

Judy laughed too. ‘The old, old story. But couldn’t you have gone on with your studies? Why did you have to leave college? Were your parents difficult?’

‘They weren’t too pleased at first, but they were very good about it. That wasn’t why I left college. I can’t blame anyone else for that. It was my decision. I simply wasn’t interested any more. I had this strong urge pushing me along—I wanted my baby, I wanted to be a wife and mother; I didn’t want college. Later on I wished I hadn’t been so stupid and I could have kicked myself for not finishing my course, but at the time all I knew was that I was obsessed with going along a different road.’

‘Did Rob feel the same?’

‘He was very keen to get married, too. He was much older than me and he wanted to start a family, have a home. So we got married in a hurry, my parents gave us some furniture, his parents gave us the deposit on a flat. Rob had a good job, of course, so we could manage without me going out to work. I stayed at home and looked after Vicky. I didn’t want to leave her with some stranger. I wanted to look after her myself.’

Bianca’s dark blue eyes were smilingly wistful as she sat down to drink her coffee. ‘I sometimes think those were the best years, those first years, we were so happy!’

‘You still miss him, don’t you?’

‘Every day.’

Judy gave her a look in which affection and concern mixed with faint impatience. ‘It has been three years, Bianca! You should be over it by now. I mean. I know you loved him and the two of you were very happy together, but you can’t go on grieving forever; it isn’t right. Life has to go on, and, after all, you’re still young.’

‘Forty isn’t young!’

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, forty isn’t old either—you’re in your prime! No wonder you’re fed up. I bet you haven’t had sex since he died.’

Suddenly scarlet as she remembered the vivid dream she had had a few hours ago, Bianca almost spilled her coffee.

‘Honestly, the things you say!’ she spluttered.

‘It isn’t just men who need sex, you know,’ snorted Judy. ‘Women have the same urges. We’re just not encouraged to face up to it. Have you even been out on a date yet?’

‘Mind your own business.’

‘Has anybody asked you out?’

‘Judy, stop it! What’s got into you?’

‘You give off stop signs,’ Judy told her bluntly. ‘Any man who looks at you gets that old “don’t even think about it” signal, so they back off fast. Men need encouragement. They need to be sure they won’t get their faces slapped if they so much as ask you out.’

‘I’m not looking for another man!’ Bianca told her fiercely. ‘I’m too old to start again with someone else. Anyway, I’ve got the children to think about.’

‘They aren’t going to be around all the rest of your life, Bianca. They’ll grow up and move out, get flats, get married—it’s only natural; they’ll soon be adults who need their own lives.’

‘Not for years yet. Tom is only fifteen!’

‘And when he’s twenty you’ll still only be forty-five. I bet Vicky gets married young. She’s so pretty, she’s going to be swamped with men. When they’re both gone, what will you do? You could live to be eighty—all on your own!’

A shiver ran down Bianca’s back.

Judy saw the change in her face and said coaxingly, ‘Do something about yourself—change your hairstyle, stop wearing those boring pale pink lipsticks, get some sexy clothes.’ She leaned over to sniff. ‘I like that scent, by the way—that’s more like it—something musky and mysterious, not that wishy-washy lavender or rosewater you’ve been using for years! You could have men dropping from the trees if you took some trouble.’

Bianca thought of that as she walked down the busy street to lunch at a small bistro later, leaving Judy to take care of the shop. As she passed under a barebranched poplar tree amusement lit her blue eyes at the idea of men floating down from it to land at her feet, like a Magritte painting.

By one of those strange coincidences life threw at you, a second later she looked into a travel agent’s window and there was the same image again.

The window was dominated by a large poster advertising holidays in Spain; out of a bright blue sky floated men in bowler hats and dark suits, carrying umbrellas, coming down to land on a golden beach, a blue sea foaming up on the sand, with girls in revealing swimsuits sunbathing under striped umbrellas, and in the background were white hotels, black bulls, glasses of red white, a pair of flamenco dancers, the man all in black, with a tricorn hat, the girl in a bright red flared dress, her black high heels tapping out the rhythm of the dance.

It was so colourful and vivid, full of sunshine. Shivering in the cruel wind, Bianca pulled her warm coat closer and longed for the sun.

Maybe Judy was right. Perhaps it was time she did something about herself. Oh, she wasn’t looking for a man—but she must do something about the way she felt, shake herself out of this grey depression.

Was that what her dream had meant? She went red again and hurried into the travel agent’s.

That evening she didn’t get home until half-past six; she was tired and cold. As she parked her car she remembered that she had agreed to go out to dinner at the Chinese restaurant a couple of streets away, and was grateful that she wouldn’t have to cook dinner tonight as she did most other nights.

She stepped out of her wet boots and left them to drain in the porch. She was so sick of this endless winter. She had to get some sunshine soon or she would go crazy. She hung up her dark pink woollen coat before putting her head round the door of the lounge.

Her two children were watching a video and didn’t even look up. Bianca considered them wryly for a second. There was no family resemblance between them; a stranger would never guess they were brother and sister. Fifteen-year-old Tom, sprawled on a sofa, as relaxed as if he were boneless, his long, slim body limp, had changed out of his school uniform and was now wearing the inevitable jeans and a blue sweater, his hair the same colour as her own, his eyes the same widely spaced dark blue, and Vicky was sitting in an armchair carefully painting her nails a strange dark plum. She was far more like her father than her mother, with corn-coloured hair and hazel eyes, except that she had a petite, pocket Venus figure instead of Rob’s height.

‘Hello, Mum, have you had a good day? Isn’t it cold outside? You must be frozen; come and sit down by the fire and I’ll make you a lovely cup of coffee,’ Bianca said loudly.

Her son, Tom, did look round then, grinning as he tossed his untidy hair out of his eyes. ‘The little men in white coats will come for you if you keep talking to yourself.’

‘I have to. Nobody else around here will. Are you both ready to go out for this Chinese meal?’

‘Yes, Mum,’ Tom said, his attention riveted on the screen again. ‘Do you really want some coffee?’

‘Not if we’re going out at once. Are you ready, Vicky?’ Vicky stirred, blew on her fingers. ‘I’m ready, but I can’t go yet—it would ruin my nails and I only just painted them.’ She looked round, waving a plum-tipped hand at a small table on which lay a red-foil-wrapped box. ‘Oh, that’s your present there, Mum. Happy Birthday.’

Bianca unwrapped a box of Chanel make-up, her eyes widening. ‘Why, thank you, Vicky, that’s wonderful.’ She hoped Vicky hadn’t spent too much on the expensive cosmetics; it had been very generous of her.

‘I know you don’t usually wear those colours, but I think you should—you need an image change!’ Vicky said. ‘My friend Gaynor is on the Chanel counter; she picked out the colour scheme for you; she said they’d suit you.’

Bianca fingered them all in their matching packaging: a glossy dark red lipstick, eyeshadow boxes in a trio of shades, from light blue to brown, a cream foundation, and loose powder in a compact.

‘I can’t wait to try them.’ Somebody else trying to do an image change on her! she thought crossly. First Judy, now her own daughter…What was so wrong with the way she looked?

She opened her shopping bag and took out a holiday brochure, her blue eyes brightening. ‘How do you two feel about a winter holiday? Two weeks in Spain. sunshine, beach life, flamenco dancing?’

‘Great—when?’ asked Tom without looking round.

‘As soon as we can fix it!’