‘Daniel, where are the sleeping tablets?’
Daniel stopped in his tracks, He looked up, expecting to see her hanging over the banister, but she was not there, her voice, disembodied, echoing between the walls on the landing. He knew immediately what this was about, understood that, despite its casual delivery, the question was anything but innocent. He frowned, unsure whether to feel angry at the intrusion and its implication or touched by her concern. Sadly, in most matters, he had ceased being moved by his wife’s concern weeks ago. Which, even more sadly, left him only one response.
‘The tablets? Oh, I uh . . . I swallowed them. The whole lot.’
That did it. In a flash she was there, peering frantically over the banister, her light-brown shoulder-length hair falling forward from her face so that he could barely see the desperation in her eyes.
‘Just kidding.’
‘Daniel!’
‘Well honestly, Lisanne... what did you think?’
‘I was just -’
‘They’re in the bin,’ he interrupted curtly. ‘I threw them out. They just give me headaches. Okay?’
Lisanne wasn’t sure whether to smile or scream. The knowledge that Daniel might have died in the accident still made her feel sick. That he might attempt to take his own life made her feel even worse. So it was with desperate irony that she had to concede there were times when she could, quite frankly, kill him.
Lisanne had first met Daniel at a dinner party, hosted by mutual friends with the express intention of introducing this mismatched pair of workaholics to each other. As the hosts would have happily admitted, it was a shot in the dark. Although they were both fine people in their own right with many virtues to recommend them, neither Lisanne nor Daniel was, at that time, a particularly sociable individual. “Difficult” was the word that most readily sprang to mind when any attempt was made to explain why two such interesting, intelligent and attractive people were incapable of sustaining relationships with individuals of the opposite sex for longer than about three weeks.
In Lisanne’s case this was more to do with her work than any personality problem. Since graduating from university she had been immersed in the world of books and literature, caught up in the commercial side of a business that was notorious for taking over one’s life. By the age of thirty she was running her own literary agency and had since had a significant measure of commercial success, particularly in the notoriously fickle arena of fiction.
Under her guidance and direction, two complete unknowns - writers who had come to her in her early days with dog-eared well-thumbed manuscripts of first novels - had reached the best-seller lists. Such was the financial success of these two protégés that since then she had not looked back. Others - less féted perhaps but still successful in real terms - had followed in their wake and before long the Lisanne Cokely Literary Agency had established a reputation in the business as a small but promising firm that could sniff out good, easy-on-the-intellect fiction for the mass market. Her established best-sellers had ensured that she could afford a holiday each year in the Caribbean and have a comfortable home to return to when, at the end of her increasingly long hours, she finally decided to quit for the day.
This, of course, had been her biggest problem; Lisanne was wedded to her work. She loved words, loved books, loved the ins and outs of contracts and negotiations, felt duty bound always to get the best deals for her authors and, as a result, had not established the sort of boundaries that all self-employed individuals must draw if they are ever to live lives of their own.
Friends had tried to talk to her about it but Lisanne had proved stubborn, and it soon became clear that the only thing that would shake her out of her rather extreme lifestyle was if she fell in love. This was where the problems started, for Lisanne was such a severe, headstrong individual tint only someone equally extreme could possibly have any effect on her.
After several attempts to pair her with perfectly charming and eligible men had failed dismally, two of her dearest friends, John and Antonia, finally hit on the perverse idea of introducing her to a similarly difficult, headstrong and uncompromising character.
They had known Daniel since university, and agreed that someone of his peculiar psychological profile might just be able to shake Lisanne from her own preoccupations. After all, there was no reason why they should not be attracted to each other. Lisanne was lively and attractive and, once away from work, as relaxed and charming a companion as one could hope to meet. Could it work? they wondered that evening, as they brought these two lumbering beasts with their twisted psyches together for the first time.
They did not have to wait long to find out. Whatever chemistry was at work that evening - physical, emotional, intellectual - there was no question in the minds of those looking on that their two most complex and complicated friends had found a common bond.
Conversation at the dinner table that evening buzzed and crackled like an electric storm, with the two protagonists pitting their wits against each other to sparkling effect. Daniel had just returned from the north-eastern provinces of India, where he had been sent by National Geographic to capture the fading remnants of tribal civilisations that had only recently emerged from the Stone Age. He had come back laden with the sort of stories that usualy graced the pages of adventure magazines, and held them all captive that evening with tales of danger and derring-do and of adrenalin-rush exploits reminiscent of the Indiana Jones films.
These stories, with their excitement, vivid descriptions and strong narrative drive, were like a drug to Lisanne, who thrived on such material. She interrupted and interposed at pertinent moments and, in her own clever yet subtle way, managed to shape the stories as they emerged from his lips, as a good editor might shape words upon a page.
Daniel was aware of and impressed by this unusual ability, and warmed to her immediately. With Lisanne there he felt both completely at ease - as if he were telling his stories to a close friend - and oddly excited, as if such tales were part of some sophisticated mating ritual, the outcome of which would determine his future. She had a potent effect on him and as the evening progressed he became more and more entranced by her.
Lisanne too was transfixed. Here was someone with passions as strong as hers, who lived life on the edge, barely impinging upon normal, everyday society. Combined with his energy and acceptable good looks, she found the mix very appealing. So it came as no surprise to their mutual friends when they discovered, two weeks later, that Lisanne and Daniel had been seen out together several times and that there was even talk of the two of them moving in together.
Within a year they were married.
Despite the forebodings of those who thought neither of them capable of sustaining a long-term relationship, it turned out to be a good match. Daniel's presence gave Lisanne something other than words and books to preoccupy her. Love (and there was never any doubt that it was the real thing) helped curb her work-oriented obsessions and made her both more available and easier to deal with socially. This was seen all round as a good thing.
As for Daniel, Lisanne’s influence was notable, as her greater gentleness, tact and caring nature slowly began to smooth over Daniel’s more abrasive tendencies, making him an altogether more pleasant person.
These changes, pronounced though they were, seemed to act only for the good and in no way detracted from their personalities. Daniel and Lisanne remained as interesting - both individually and collectively - as they had always been, guaranteed to spice up the most lethargic of parties and never short of an opinion or two.
And there seemed no danger of their getting in each other’s way, as Daniel’s work still took him abroad every few weeks, thus guaranteeing the all-important ‘personal space’ they both needed. It worked perfectly. Five years on they were still together, still an item: still married.
But for how much longer?
In the bedroom, Lisanne slipped on her dressing gown and, determined not to let this latest contretemps boil over into something more unpleasant, went down to join him.
‘It’s still very early,’ she said as she entered the kitchen to find Daniel sitting at the table, head in hand. A fresh cup of tea sat on the table opposite him. She sat down and reached for the cup, keeping her eyes on him the whole time. There was something about him this morning, something about his pose, the way he sat, that disturbed her. She didn’t like it one bit.
‘Daniel?’
‘Hmm?’
‘I’m sorry... for being silly.’
Daniel looked up and attempted a smile, not very successfully. He reached out across the table and took Lisanne by the hand.
‘You don’t need to apologise to me. You have absolutely nothing to apologise for. We both know it’s me, we both know that I’m the one who is acting like a complete bastard, and if it wasn’t for the fact that I’ve had to say “I’m sorry” so many times in the last six months that I’m sick to death of the words, I would be apologising again.’
Lisanne squeezed his hand tightly. They had been through this same scene several times lately, repeated the same dialogue with minor variations, the same excuses and reasons. Sympathies had been exchanged, words of tenderness and understanding spoken, declarations made... and nothing had changed.
Six months previously while covering the Hindu/Muslim riots in northern India for a major news and current affairs magazine, Daniel had been involved in a serious road accident in which a colleague and friend, Alex, a very promising young journalist, was killed.
There was nothing Daniel could have done about the incident. He had not been responsible for the vehicle they were travelling in, for the vehicle’s driver, or for any of the series of small, individually insignificant events that conspired to turn a simple cross-town journey in an open jeep into a fiery maelstrom.
He was not Alex’s guardian or keeper, yet for reasons that neither Lisanne, Dr Fischer or the ‘knuckle-headed shrink’ Daniel had seen shortly after the accident had been able to divine, he held himself responsible for Alex’s death. It was such a sensitive issue that Lisanne could barely bring herself to talk about it these days.
Daniel’s own injuries were serious but not life-threatening; some severe burns, a few broken bones and - the legacy of this whole affair - chronic damage to his spine which meant that he was still unable to lift anything much heavier than a cup of tea and was certainly in no condition to travel around Asia wielding metal-bodied cameras, heavy glass lenses and a tripod which, thanks to its use of especially dense metals, was as sturdy as the Rock of Gibraltar.
But somehow even these injuries paled into insignificance when compared to the emotional damage the accident inflicted on Daniel’s troubled psyche. In six months he had been transformed from a young, energetic and slightly wild maverick to a sad, pathetic and purposeless sap, drifting without direction, apparently doomed to wallow in guilt and self-pity with little hope of escape. God knows they had tried everything; even the professionals had all but given up hope.
Only Dr Fischer, last of a dying breed, a product of the old school with his homilies and anachronistic methods - retained any faith that Daniel would, eventually, recover. However, even Lisanne, who was deeply fond of the doctor, had to admit that his prescribed remedy seemed to fall short of the mark. ‘Ah Lisanne,’ he would say to her when despair was starting to get the upper hand, ‘never forget; time heals.’ It was not much, by way of either therapy or comfort, but in the absence of any alternatives, she had tried to maintain faith in the old man’s prognosis.
To add the final insult to the list of injuries, at the back of her mind Lisanne could not but be a little suspicious about the circumstances of the accident, especially considering the devastating effect it had had on Daniel. Lisanne had never met Alex, but it was well known that, in addition to being fun, talented and adventurous, she had also been an exceptionally attractive young woman.
They drank the rest of their tea together in silence. After a few minutes Lisanne returned upstairs to ready herself for work. Daniel waited impatiently for her to complete her complicated preparations - showering, cleansing, deodorising, dressing, making-up - oddly anxious to get out of the house himself. He could not account for why he should be in such a hurry to see the outside world after all this time. It was a pleasant morning, admittedly, but no different from a dozen or so that had graced them that summer. Nevertheless, he felt a strong urge to be on the move, even if it was just on foot through the local neighbourhood.
‘See you later then,’ said Lisanne, leaning over the kitchen table to kiss him on the cheek.