A Christmas Night to Remember(46)
She couldn’t change her mind now. She opened her eyes, beginning to pace the room. She couldn’t—didn’t dare—let herself imagine anything different, because where would she be then? This way she knew what she was taking on and there was a strange comfort in that, somehow. She’d survive.
She stopped abruptly, feeling as though the walls of the room were pressing in on her. She had always hated small spaces. That had been part of the nightmare of staying in hospital—the feeling of absolute confinement. She needed to get out and walk. It was the only way she could think.
She didn’t hesitate. Grabbing a pair of socks from her case, which she still hadn’t unpacked, she walked silently into the sitting room and found her coat, hat and scarf, pulling on her boots which were still damp from the snowman exercise. Her gloves she left. They were so sodden she was better off without them.
Slipping the key to the suite in her handbag, she opened the door to the corridor outside and made her way to the lift. When the doors glided open at Reception her heart was thudding. She didn’t know what she was going to say to Michael or the receptionist. But as luck would have it Michael was nowhere to be seen and the receptionist was on the phone. She walked quickly across the tiled floor and out of the main doors, giving a sigh of relief when she was in the street.
The cold took her breath away after she had warmed up so nicely, but she walked on. The snow banked either side of the pavement so there was a path in the middle, and she had no trouble reaching the main thoroughfare. She hadn’t expected any traffic, it being Christmas Day, but already the city had awoken and yawned life into its inhabitants, and there was the odd person walking here and there, and cars on the roads.
Melody walked with no clear idea of where she was going, taking care to tread carefully. In spite of everything a little frisson of exhilaration curled down her spine. This was the first time she had been out under her own steam—properly out—since the accident, and the independence was heady. It felt good to be part of the human race again.
Although it was still dark, the streetlights combined with the effect of the snow lit up her surroundings perfectly well. She pulled her hat farther down over her ears—it really was bitterly cold—and marched on, wondering why she didn’t feel tired. She had felt exhausted yesterday afternoon, and again in the taxi coming back from the theatre, but now she felt as though she could walk for miles.
In spite of coming outside to consider her position with Zeke and what she was going to do, she didn’t think as she walked along. She merely breathed in the icy air, luxuriating in the way her face was tingling and the feel of the morning on her skin.
She was alive. She hadn’t died under the wheels of that lorry and she wasn’t paralysed or confined to a wheelchair. She was lucky. She was so, so lucky. Zeke had been right, and Mr Price too, when they’d said she was better off than lots of the other patients at the hospital.
It was possibly only half an hour later when she realised she needed to sit awhile. Walking in the thick, crunchy snow was more difficult than on clear pavements, and now that the first flush of elation had dwindled exhaustion was paramount. Mr Price had warned her against doing too much initially, she thought ruefully. It would seem he knew her better than she knew herself—which wasn’t difficult.
Hyde Park stretched out to the left of her, the trees a vision of Christmas beauty with their mantle of glittering white, but, deciding it was sensible to stay on the main road, she resisted the impulse to wander in. Instead she brushed the snow off a bench on the pavement overlooking the park and sat down.
A young couple meandered by, wrapped in each other’s arms, the girl’s ponytail tied with bright red tinsel, a thick strand of which was looped round her boyfriend’s neck like a scarf. They smiled at Melody, the girl calling, ‘Happy Christmas!’ before they ambled on, giggling as they stumbled in the snow.
They probably hadn’t gone home yet from some Christmas Eve party or other they’d attended, Melody thought, watching the pair walk on. She suddenly felt aeons old, their carefree faces emphasising her staidness.
She’d never really gone to parties—not until she had met Zeke, that was. Her grandmother hadn’t approved of what she’d classified ‘aimless frivolity’, and even at dance school and in the years following she had preferred to spend any free time practising her dance moves rather than anything else.
No, that wasn’t exactly true. Melody frowned as the thought hit. She had always felt guilty if she considered going to parties or get-togethers, knowing the sacrifices her grandmother had undoubtedly made to provide the money for her to follow her chosen career. Add that to the fact that she’d invariably felt like a fish out of water, and had tried to hide herself away in a corner on the rare occasion she’d been persuaded to accompany one of her friends to a shindig, it was no wonder she hadn’t been asked much. She’d never felt quite able to let her hair down.