The dunes of Maspalomas looked like a theatre set. They were too perfectly defined to be real; too soft, too golden.

"This is the place." I said to David, pointing at my laptop screen. "Let's go to Gran Canaria. Can you imagine us, getting lost in these dunes? It would be so heavenly."

He lifted his hazel eyes from the case he was studying and moved closer to me in the leather sofa.

"I don't really have to travel that far to find paradise." He whispered in my ear, and a shiver run down my back.

I couldn't believe we had already been together for six months. Partly, it seemed like I had known him forever, but, at the same time, whenever he got close to me, my senses awakened as if he had never touched me before. His tan skin and perfect features never ceased to impress me.

"I know that..." I said, in the same low, sensual tone that he had used. "But I would love to go on holiday with you. England is just too..."

Stressing. Repetitive. Tied to painful memories.

"... cloudy." He said, and the fact that he had finished the sentence for me made me feel relieved.

The part of me that had lived in a world where sentences weren't finished, out of fear or out of disorientation, seemed long gone. Since David and I had moved into the sunny, elegant house that I had bought at The Boltons, the light of Kensington had managed to reach every corner of my wounded soul, wiping the dust off my most censured memories.

I only got back that incapacity to sound certain when I resumed my plans to escape. I didn't want to go on holiday just for David and I to rediscover our bodies under palm trees. I did find that idea appealing, but what I needed the trip for was to test how I would function in another atmosphere, to prove to myself that my phantoms wouldn't chase me to brand-new places, to warm places in which there were no retreats conquered by trauma.

"So, what do you say?" I asked him, pointing at my laptop screen once again, and, trying to imitate the most ridiculous travel agency advertisements, I added: "Beautiful sunsets and clear waters... Sink in pleasure!"

David cracked up, and his refulgent smile dazzled me.

"How could I say no?"

"Yes! We'll book everything tonight." I said, satisfied, and I gave him a quick kiss before I stood up.

"Hey!" he said, holding onto my leg, and caressing it in such a soft way that almost made me sit back down and jump over him. "Where are you going? I thought you didn't have meetings today. It's Sunday."

I didn't want to lie to him, but I knew he wouldn't like the truth.

"I don't, I'm just... visiting someone."

His gaze darkened.

"And I am guessing it's not Africa."

I sighed.

"It's Abbey."

His broad jaw fell, and he stood there, frozen, with his mouth wide open, facing me, while my pulse quickened. I finally understood that the persistent, uneasy silence was his way of asking me why the hell I was going to visit my enemy, so I tried to explain it to him.

"The way you've been trying to bond with your mother..." I swallowed. " It has inspired me. It has made me understand that we can put hatred and treason beyond us..."

David shook his head fervently.

"It's so freaking different, Tess; she's my mother! She loves me, and she is worthy of my efforts to forgive her. What is Abbey to you?"

I had never seen him so mad at me. He walked to the white wooden table by the huge dinning room window that led to the terrace, and slammed his hand against it. I gasped. The sun shone high at the other side of the window. Birds flew from our red geraniums to the gardens at the other side of the road.

"I need to understand why Abbey did that to me."

"You already know that, Tessa: He wanted my mother to fall for him again."

"And doesn't the fact that he did it for love make it slightly better? You love your mum, and he does too."

"Don't even go there, Tessa. Don't make the fact that you've decided to torture yourself about me. Don't make it about me at all."

Those words made me understand where his anger came from. He had been there for me, with me, during my reconstruction. After my free fall ended and Abbey went to jail, he had caressed every thorny remnant of my soul until it was smooth again. He had made me smile, and sing, and scream his name while he sent me to heaven. I was aware that just implying that my need to go back to places, or people, that had caused me the deep, impious wounds that he had had to repair made him crazy.

But I needed to fix my injuries on my own. That was the only way in which they would definitely heal. And, in order to do that, I needed to face and forgive the phantoms of my past. Although I had endless time ahead of me to erase every memory of them, I thought that not even eternity would be capable of blurring out unfinished business.

I walked to David and hugged him from behind. He was rigid, but he started to relax as I buried my head in his firm back and caressed his chest slowly. His athletic body felt solid and hot against mine.

"I'm not going back there, David. I'm not going to sink in sorrow again. This is just a way to say goodbye to that part of my life, for good. Abbey was greatly linked to the part of me that I am trying to leave behind, that's why I need to see him, and..."

He turned around brusquely.

"And what? He will not be the only one? Do you intend to see more people that are greatly linked to that part of your life?" he said, mocking me.

I couldn't understand why he was behaving like that. It was so unlike him to be disdainful. And then it hit me.

"Is this about Luke?" I asked, shaking my arms to show how astonishingly ridiculous that idea seemed to me.

He swallowed hard, and then moved his hands through his hair. It didn't seem ridiculous to him.

"Oh, God... David..." I said, and I couldn't help to giggle. I tried hard to hold laughter back, because I knew how embarrassed being jealous made him feel. "I haven't seen him since that night in Paris."

"Yeah, I remember that night very clearly." he said, as he paced to the bar table and poured himself some whiskey.

I blushed. I knew that the fact that I had unwillingly said goodbye to Luke, under the sparkling Eiffel Tower, right after he and I had slept together for the first time had opened a crack in his solid ego. He loved his integrity and his well-constructed, polished personality more than he loved anything else. More than he loved... me. Therefore, even though he had never blamed me for having agreed to see Luke, every time he remembered that night, I felt how he subconsciously drifted away from me for a while, because he did blame me for having broken his shiny shell.

"David. Listen to me." I whispered, walking to him. I put his whiskey glass aside so that he wouldn't drink anymore. It wasn't like him to drink while the sun was up. "I love you."

He turned to me, but kept looking at the floor.

"I know that."

"You have to trust me on this."

"You know I always do." he said, shrugging, and he finally lifted his gaze to meet mine.

I smiled weakly, and he responded in the same way. I knew he was right. He had confided in me, and followed me blindly, too many times. I wondered what would have happened if we had done things his way; if I hadn't started to treat people clandestinely, if we had followed the right path and had kept searching for legal mistakes, as he wished to do. I was aware that he thought his method would have saved me a great deal of suffering, but I still believed strongly that mine had saved us all a great deal of time. And that had been both the premise and the ultimate goal, all along.

Three months before, I had finally been made head of the Coordinating Immortality Committee, and everything had started to run much more smoothly. Smooth was always David's goal, so he had subsequently started to feel comfortable with my way of managing the immortality treatments. I was very happy to know that, at last, it didn't make him uneasy to support my decisions, but, at the times when he hadn't agreed with me, I hadn't made the slightest effort to change my approach to please him. The fact that I didn't adjust myself to him in the way he did with me made me feel guilty quite often.

"You can go now." he said, and he kissed my forehead.

"Are you sure you are okay?" I asked, even though I already knew the answer to that question.

I wanted him to lie to me.

He shrugged and started to walk towards the bedroom.

"I'm just tired, Tessa." he answered, without turning around.

He had lied, and I smiled to myself, guiltily satisfied. That was yet another example of how he always adapted himself to my needs and wishes.

There was no point in carrying on with the argument. I put a tweed jacket on, picked up my purse and walked to the door.

The orange afternoon sunlight blinded me, and led me to wondering whether I was still blinded, in any way, by Luke.

I had barely thought of him during those last months of transition, of newfound hope. He belonged with the part of me that fantasized with his full lips during sleepless nights at Worcester College. It was difficult, and almost painful, to retrieve my memories of him in a place where sleep was always deep, and healing, and preceded by tea and kisses at a terrace that overlooked what had to be the most beautiful trees in London.

However, I had learnt by then that David was usually the mirror, or the crystal ball, of my feelings. He seemed to understand them and predict them better than I did. He entered my heart with his dreamy, hazel eyes and dived in there cautiously, in the midst of my most ambiguous dilemmas, willing to save me, to set me free. Therefore, if he had sensed that a part of myself was still breathlessly running after Luke, it was probably true.

There was no reason for me to want him back. He was reckless, and slow, and a conformist. That last aspect was the one that put me off him the most. I wasn't a conformist. I never settled. I was addicted to change, I needed it constantly. Perhaps that was precisely the reason why I was wondering about absurd possibilities right then, instead of focusing on feeling the heat of the shy English sun and smelling the lavender in our neighbours' garden.

I didn't feel like getting under the world I had turned around, so, instead of getting into the Tube, I called a taxi.

"To Brixton Prison, please."

On the way, I wondered what the driver was thinking. Since I had received Fleming&Florey's compensation, I had gotten very used to taking taxis. However, it still struck me to find a strange person on the driver's seat, instead of Africa's comforting stare. Those silent drives made me feel lonely and cold, and I ached for Africa's random cogitations and her Pink Floyd records. I promised myself I would call her that evening.

It was cloudy when we arrived at the prison, almost raining, and I immediately understood that the sky was warning me I was about to soak in my darkest memories. I swallowed and stepped out of the taxi. A police officer spotted me staring at the tall brick walls, and he shouted something from the entrance door.

David had beenI right; I was a masochist. I cursed the moment when I had let him walk off to the bedroom, and I ached for his embrace and his calm gaze. I wasn't ready to face Abbey on my own. Alone.

I blinked, and I gasped when I realized that the police officer was standing really close to me by then.

"Miss. Sorry... Did I scare you?"

I looked at him for the first time. He seemed to nice, too helpful, to belong in a place like that, to welcoming to be part of such a decrepit scenery.

"Did you get lost?" he asked me, and genuine concern showed in his face.

I certainly did.

I wanted to run, back to David, back to my peaceful life. I wanted to rewind. But what did I intend to do after? I knew that doubts about Abbey, that loose ends in the most maddening, and yet most fascinating part of my life were bound to haunt me again, and that they would lead me to that very moment, again.

So I cleared my throat, and I answered:

"No, I didn't. Actually, I have been on my way here for several months."

The police officer frowned, so I decided to leave the metaphors aside.

" I am here to see a prisoner, Timothy Abbey."

"Of course. I will help you, Miss."

The corridors were grey,and scary, and dead, but they didn't consume in the way I had predicted they would. I was too surprised by how I had managed to make up my mind into entering the building so quickly. Fear didn't seem to freeze me anymore.

That thought almost made me smile, but my lips stopped arching when my eyes met those of a seventy year old man that I didn't know I remembered so precisely.

My jaw fell open, but he didn't seem surprised to see me, at all:

"This is incredible. She told me you would come, and I didn't believe her. But here you are, Tessa Blake."

What did you think of this chapter? Do you think that Tessa still has feelings for Luke? Who do you think the person that Abbey is talking about is? Let me know in the comments! 

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The following chapter will be up on October 15th! 

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