The Nightingale Girls - By Donna Douglas Page 0,168

to close up.

But neither of them wanted to leave, because they knew it was the last time they were going to be together.

‘I don’t understand,’ Charlie said again, his voice choked. ‘I thought you loved me?’

‘I do, more than anything.’ Helen had only begun to realise how much now she knew she was going to lose him.

‘Then why can’t we be together?’

Helen sighed. They’d talked about it endlessly, going round and round in agonising circles, both of them getting more and more upset and frustrated.

‘How can we stay together when I’m going to be in Scotland? I couldn’t expect you to wait for me.’

‘You know I’d wait for ever for you.’

Helen shook her head. ‘It wouldn’t be fair on you. You deserve to be free, to find someone else.’

‘How many more times do I have to tell you? I don’t want anyone but you!’ Charlie ran his hand through his hair, exasperated.

‘We have to make a clean break. It’s for the best,’ Helen said firmly.

In her heart she desperately wanted to ask him to wait for her. But she knew she couldn’t. Whatever Charlie might say, he was bound to find someone else while she was away. And painful as it might be now, she knew it would be a lot worse to have to find out in six months, or a year’s time that he’d stopped loving her.

Charlie stared down into his empty teacup. ‘It’s not fair,’ he said. ‘Why does it have to be Scotland? Why can’t your mum just let you carry on your training here?’

Because she wants to punish me, Helen thought bleakly. ‘She thinks it would be best.’

‘Is it because of me?’ he asked.

Helen looked into his blue eyes, so sad and desperate for reassurance. ‘It’s my fault,’ she said. ‘I shouldn’t have started seeing you behind her back. I should have known she’d find out, and that she’d be angry with me for lying to her.’

‘You hardly lied to her, did you?’ Charlie reasoned. ‘Not telling her something isn’t the same as telling her a downright lie.’

‘Not as far as my mother is concerned. She likes to know everything about my life.’

Charlie thought for a moment. ‘What if I was to talk to her?’ he said suddenly. ‘Perhaps if I was to meet her, let her see I was a decent sort of bloke, she’d change her mind and let you stay?’

‘You don’t know my mother.’ Helen shook her head. ‘She never changes her mind about anything. Once she’s decided something, that’s it.’

She wondered what her mother would make of Charlie anyway. To Helen, he was the most handsome, wonderful, loving man in the world. But no one would ever meet Constance Tremayne’s impossibly high standards.

‘It sounds as if you’ve already given up?’ he said. ‘Don’t you want us to be together?’

‘You know I do.’

‘Then fight!’ he urged, gripping her hand. ‘Helen, I’m ready to try anything, do anything, it takes to keep you. And all you’re doing is sighing and shaking your head and telling me it’s all useless, that it won’t work. Why don’t you stand up to your mother, tell her you won’t be pushed around any more?’ He sent her a hurt look. ‘Unless you really don’t care about me?’

‘That’s not fair!’ she protested. ‘Of course I care about you. I love you.’

‘But not enough to stand up to your mother?’

Helen swallowed hard. Charlie was right, she was being a coward.

Millie had told her much the same thing the day before.

‘You don’t really want to leave, do you?’ she had said, her big blue eyes swimming with tears.

‘Of course I don’t.’ A year ago, Helen might not have cared what happened to her. But over the past months she had made good friends at Nightingale’s, and now she knew she would be heartbroken to say goodbye.

‘Then tell her you’re not going,’ Millie shrugged, as if it was the easiest thing in the world. ‘She can’t make you do anything you don’t want to do.’

‘You don’t know my mother.’

‘I know that if I really wanted something, I wouldn’t let anyone stand in my way,’ Millie had said firmly.

It was easy for her, Helen thought. She hadn’t been brought up under an iron rule. The idea of making her own decisions was so strange to Helen, she wasn’t sure she would even be able to do so without Constance Tremayne’s approval.

They were both silent, lost in their own thoughts. Helen glanced up at the clock on the wall, ticking away the minutes