Voice of the Heart

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER THIRTY (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE (#litres_trial_promo)

In the Wings 1979 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER FORTY (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE (#litres_trial_promo)

Act Two Downstage Left 1963-1967 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX (#litres_trial_promo)

Act Three Centre Stage 1979 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER FIFTY (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE (#litres_trial_promo)

Finale April 1979 (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

By the same author (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

Overture 1978 (#ulink_729ba0a0-2ad3-5e93-8049-b824112ff999)

‘How like the prodigal doth she return.’

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_00988f00-3ad5-5440-935a-b109c29461fb)

I came back because I wanted to, of my own free will. No one forced me to return. But now that I am here I want to take flight, to hide again in obscurity, to put this vast ocean between myself and this place. It bodes me no good.

As these thoughts finally took shape, assumed troubling proportions and jostled for prominence in her mind, the woman’s fine hands, lying inertly in her lap, came together in a clench so forceful that the knuckles protruded sharply through the transparent skin. But there was no other outward display of emotion. She sat as rigid as stone on the seat. Her face, pale and somewhat drawn in the murky morning light, was impassive as a mask and her gaze was fixed with unwavering intensity on the Pacific.

The sea was implacable and the colour of chalcedony on this bleak and sunless day, one that was unnaturally chilly for Southern California, even though it was December when the weather was so often inclement. The woman shivered. The dampness was beginning to seep through her trench-coat into her bones. She felt icy, and yet there was a light film of moisture on her forehead and neck and between her breasts. On an impulse she rose from the seat, her movements abrupt, and with her head bent against the wind and her hands pushed deep into her pockets she walked the length of the Santa Monica pier, which was now so entirely deserted it looked desolate, even forbidding, in its emptiness.

When she arrived at the farthermost tip where the turbulent waves lashed at the exposed underpinnings, she paused and leaned against the railing. Once again her eyes were riveted on the ocean curling out towards the dim horizon. There, on that far indistinct rim, where sea and sky merged in a smudge of limitless grey, a great liner bobbed along like a child’s toy, had been turned into an object of insignificance by the vastness of nature.

We are all like that ship, the woman said inwardly, so fragile, so inconsequential in the overall scheme of things. Although do any of us truly believe that, blinded as we are by our self-importance? In our arrogance we all think we are unique, invincible, immune to mortality and above the law of nature. But we are not, and that is the only law, inexorable and unchanging.

She blinked, as if to rid herself of these thoughts. The winter sky, curdled and ominous, was uttered with ragged ashy clouds which were slowly turning black and extinguishing the meagre light trickling along their outer edges. A storm was imminent. She ought to return to the waiting limousine and make her way back to the Bel-Air Hotel, before the rain started. But to her amazement she discovered she was unable to move. She did not want to move, for it seemed to her that only out here on this lonely pier was she able to think with a degree of clarity, to pull together her scattered and disturbing thoughts, to make sense out of the chaos in her mind.