Free The Catalyst by Angela Jardine

realising she was now, physically and emotionally, totally alone.
    Jasper had not contacted her and she had found it hard to manage without him, often wondering where he was and what he was doing. She could not know she had dominated his thoughts for years, or that he did not dare let himself contact her for fear he weakened and returned to her. He knew she needed to find a love elsewhere, a proper fulfilling love with a husband and children, not this strange, otherworldly thing they had between them.
    Eventually she had succeeded in putting him on a back-burner in her mind, comforting herself with the thought that maybe he would return to her one day, sure that she would know if he was ever in need and unable to get to her.
    So her life had drooped along on boring and predictable lines via a succession of boring and predictable jobs and a succession of boring and predictable men until she had met and fallen for Jimmy Fisher.
    And Jimmy Fisher had been different, impossibly different.

 
    Chapter 6
     
    Now, as she thought of Jimmy, she wondered if some unseen force had returned Jasper to her in her time of trouble. She smiled ruefully at the fanciful notion just as Jasper brought the car to a halt outside the back door of the farmhouse.
    ‘What?’ he said, seeing her smile.
    She shook her head, it would keep. Right now she wanted to see how Jasper responded to his old home. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad although something told her that was unlikely. This was a house of ghosts and she suspected he would need all the support she could give him.
    The farmhouse door creaked as if it were auditioning for some B-list horror movie, jamming against old mail stuck damply to the bare brick floor of the kitchen. The air was chilly, rank with the smell of mould and fleetingly she had the superstitious fear that the shade of Jem Carne might be balefully watching them. She jumped at the sound of Jasper’s voice.
    ‘Both Dad and Jem died in hospital.’ He guessed her thoughts as he had always done. ‘I buried both of them in Dehwelyans cemetery.’
    She looked at him sharply and he read the shock in her face.
    ‘I’m sorry, Jen. I know I didn’t contact you to tell you I was around but there was just so much … stuff … going on in my head at the time. I was not in a good place in my mind and I didn’t think it would have been a good idea ... for either of us … to meet up.’
    She was silent, trying to work out how she felt about this explanation. Had he made a sensible decision or was it just another wound for her to bear?
    ‘Then why did you…?’
    ‘Why did I stop and talk to you outside Sacha’s today? Why didn’t I just drive on by?’ He shrugged, avoiding her eyes. ‘Ah well, telling myself it was for the best if we didn’t have any contact only worked if I didn’t actually see you.’
    She felt a little surge of some emotion then, something she could hardly identify, something that could have been triumph that she mattered to somebody. It was a heady feeling but, not sure she had identified it correctly, she turned away in case something showed in her face.
    Silently she took Jasper’s hand and they wandered through the gloomy rooms of the farm both of them dismayed by the devastation caused by leaking window frames and missing roof slates. When they got to the cold and tiny room tucked into the roof space where Jasper had slept she was aware of his grip unintentionally tightening on her hand.
    The old bond between them suddenly grew more tangible in the silence and she knew he was remembering the frightened boy huddled in the cold and dark, trying to be invisible, trying not to be there for the next beating. The memories still had the power to cast their spell over him and she was shocked at how easily she could feel his emotions in this room with its lingering air of misery. She became desperate to get him away from it.
    ‘Jasper, I think we should leave.’
    He didn’t answer but he allowed her to lead