Deep Water, Thin Ice
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Authors: Kathy Shuker
Deep Water, Thin Ice
Kathy Shuker
Published by Shuker Publishing
Copyright © Kathy Shuker 2014
The moral right of Kathy Shuker to be identified as
the author of this work has been asserted in accordance
with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may
be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted
in any form or by any means without the prior permission
in writing of the copyright owner.
All the characters in this book are fictitious and any
resemblance to actual persons living or dead is purely
coincidental.
ISBN: 978-0-9928327-0-4
Kathy Shuker was born in Wigan, England. After training and working as a physiotherapist, she studied design and went on to work as a freelance artist in oils and watercolours. Now writing full-time, she lives in Devon with her husband.
To find out more about Kathy and her other novels, please visit:
For David, without whose whole-hearted love and support
this book would never have been written.
When her husband, Simon – a flamboyant conductor – kills himself, Alex is mortified that she failed to see it coming. Confused, guilt-ridden and grieving, she escapes to Hillen Hall, an old house by the coast in Devon, abandoning her classical singing career and distancing herself from everyone but her sister Erica.
Hillen Hall, inherited by Simon from his mother and once a fine manor house, is now creaking and unloved. When Theo Hellyon, Simon’s cousin, turns up at her door, offering to help with its renovation, Alex is perplexed and intrigued, previously unaware that Simon even had a cousin. And Theo is charming and attentive and reminds her strikingly of Simon so, despite Erica’s warnings, it is impossible for Alex not to want him in her life.
But the old Hall has a tortured history which Alex cannot even begin to suspect and Theo is not remotely what he seems. So how long will it be before Alex realises she is making a fatal mistake?
Prologue
He found he was on Regent Street but couldn’t actually remember getting there. He must have been walking for ten minutes already since leaving the restaurant, maybe longer; he’d lost track of time. Twice he’d looked round, with the flesh-creeping feeling that he was being followed, but he’d seen nothing to confirm his suspicions. It was autumn but the day was surprisingly warm and sunny, sultry even, the streets of London choked and sweaty with the multilingual cosmopolitan crush of tourists and shoppers: women in sleeveless tops and cotton dresses, men in t-shirts and cropped trousers, and office workers on late lunch breaks, their jackets abandoned and formal collars loosened. There were children too. Maybe it was half-term; he couldn’t remember. But everyone, it seemed, wanted to make the most of this unwonted last farewell to summer.
Simon felt himself carried along by the press of people, unable to pin his thoughts down any more than he felt he could control where his feet led him. He moved with the flow of bodies - like a stick tossed into a river, he thought. The image brought back a rush of memories he’d tried hard to forget and he pushed them away. They wouldn’t have come to mind in the first place if he hadn’t had to meet that man for lunch and he was angry suddenly that they had been thrust back at him after all these years. Damn the man. Damn him to hell. Why did he have to surface now? Though if he were honest Simon knew he’d been waiting for it, that it had always only been a matter of time. And yet there was nothing he could do about it now. All the regrets in the world wouldn’t change anything. The anger dissipated to be replaced by the stealthy heaviness which had become so familiar to him of late. Regrets. So many regrets. These last weeks had been a struggle. His life was starting to unravel and he felt as if he’d lost control.
He reached a large junction and stopped, hesitating a moment and trying to clear his mind, but someone collided with him from the rear and he felt himself moved forward and was swept along and then down, descending the steps into Oxford Circus tube station. Yes, he would get on a train and get away from the bustle of town. He’d purposely left the afternoon free; maybe he would go home, listen to some music, calm himself down and try to put it all away from him again. He queued for a ticket, passed through the barrier and headed for the platform, not really registering what he was doing. He knew the way well enough though he rarely used the tube these days, preferring to walk or take a cab.
The platform was surprisingly quiet; a train must just have left. Simon moved on. The crowd built up steadily behind him and he kept to the front – he’d never been the sort of person to hang back. Again he had the uncomfortable sensation of being watched and glanced round nervously, only to find himself looking into the indignant and challenging eyes of a young woman. He quickly looked away.
A snatch of a tune had come into his mind and he began to hum it. It wasn’t his usual sort of music and he struggled to identify it. Then he realised what it was: ‘Moon River’
from
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
. That was it.
Alex had been singing it while she was packing just before she went away. Alex. She often sang it; it was one of her favourites. She’d sung it to him on their honeymoon he remembered now. How could he have forgotten that? His throat thickened with long suppressed emotion.
The rumble of the next train echoed distantly down the tunnel and he felt the first whisper of cold air flicking his hair. Everyone shuffled a little forward as more bodies weighed onto the platform and the rumble grew and swelled. Simon found himself looking down at the tracks, mesmerised by them as the sound echoed in his ears and the wind whipped against his face. His eyes swam with tears though he never cried. The tracks looked so close; all he had to do was step out and it would be done. Over with. Just like that. No more regrets. No more half truths and covering up and trying to forget.
‘Moon River’
drifted into his head again
.
Alex.
He lifted his head, dragging his eyes away from the track. He should have talked to her, should have told her everything but he’d never found that sort of thing easy. And surely it was too late to do it now. He’d pushed her too far away. He thought of phoning her; he’d like to hear her voice. But what would he say on the phone? He had no idea. It was pointless.
He turned his head as the train roared into the station and suddenly he was falling forward, out into empty space. He heard the screeching of brakes, someone screaming, and then all was silent blackness.
Her sister was flirting again. Through a gap in the sea of bodies which straddled the room, Alex could see Erica talking to a young man of lean build and animated expression. The pose and mannerisms were unmistakeable and Alex inwardly smiled. It was a familiar and comforting sight in a world which now felt suddenly quite unreal.
She turned as a woman to her right remarked on what a lovely service it had been and expressed her sympathy. Alex immediately thanked her and tried to place the woman’s face but couldn’t. A lovely service. Was it? She couldn’t remember much about it, only the music.
‘You’d think that they’d have gone to more trouble with the music, wouldn’t you?’ Simon had once complained, as they’d left the funeral of an elderly musician friend. ‘I’m sure he’d have preferred to go out in a blaze of strings and brass. I know
I
would.’
‘I’ll bear that in mind,’ Alex had responded flippantly. ‘What would you like? Shostakovich? No, Beethoven? Or what about the 1812?’ She’d laughed at him then. They hadn’t long been married and she didn’t take the comment seriously. He was just thirty-one at the time and she was twenty-eight; she hadn’t yet reached the stage of considering their mortality. Simon was a talented conductor and a rising star in the classical music world; she had a successful singing career. The future looked bright. ‘Perhaps a little composition of your own?’ she teased.
‘Not a bad idea at that,’ he said, grinning. ‘If you can’t get your music played at your own funeral, when can you?’
Now, here she was, barely ten years on, listening to a small chamber orchestra - friends and colleagues scratched together at short notice - playing a selection of Simon’s pieces. She was standing in the function room of a large hotel in northwest London, still clasping the untouched plate of food Erica had pushed on her, feeling dislocated from the event as if she were trapped inside a transparent bubble.
‘Alexandra,’ said a booming voice to her left. She turned as a big man wearing a black bow-tie, his chin-length hair parted crisply down the centre of his scalp, put his arm round her shoulders. He was a violinist – pompous and difficult to work with, she remembered Simon saying - but she couldn’t bring his name to mind. ‘You poor girl,’ he continued. ‘What you must have been through. I’ve been reading the papers. Pure conjecture to sell copies. Don’t pay any attention to it, that’s my advice. I presume the police are happy that it was an accident?’
‘They said they haven’t closed the case yet. There’s going to be an inquest.’
‘Is there really? I suppose they have to. But of course it was an accident. He seemed happy enough to me. And he thought the world of you; always singing your praises – no pun intended of course. Speaking of singing though, I thought that last recording you made of those Bach cantatas was wonderful. Such vibrancy and yet such lightness of touch. So many sopranos make heavy weather of it. I suppose you’ll be wanting a break from singing for a while but don’t leave us for too long will you?’ He released her shoulder, picked up her free hand and ostentatiously kissed the back of it before moving off.
Alex watched him go, his comments still echoing round her head.
‘Mum says aren’t-you-going-to-eat-any-of-that-you-haven’t-eaten-anything-all-day,’ intoned a young voice, the words tumbling out all on one breath. Alex looked down into the intelligent eyes of an auburn-haired boy beside her and smiled. It was Erica’s ten-year-old son who looked not remotely like his mother.
‘I’m afraid I’m not hungry Ben,’ she said apologetically.
‘Mum said you’d say that. And I’m supposed to say…’ He paused and screwed his eyes up in concentration. ‘…It doesn’t matter whether you’re hungry or not; you should eat.’
Alex grinned in spite of herself.
‘I’ll bet she did.’
‘Please Aunt Alex,’ Ben pleaded in a resigned voice. ‘You know what mum’s like. You’d better eat something or we’ll both get into trouble.’ Alex sometimes thought Ben was old for his years. Living with Erica would do that to you.
She glanced across the room again but her sister had disappeared. Erica had been a rock ever since Simon’s accident. As Alex had frozen into numbed inactivity, Erica had taken charge, taken all the organisation on herself and done what she always did best: made herself indispensable. Alex had chosen the music and readings for the service and Erica had done everything else. It had been slick and grand. ‘It should be a statement,’ Erica had said. ‘A celebration of his life and achievements.’ Simon would have approved. Though often introspective at home, he was a natural performer; he liked occasions. Of course Erica had been right and Alex was immensely grateful to her sister for all the trouble she’d taken. But if she’d been free to organise it as she would have wanted, if Simon hadn’t seemed in some way to be public property, Alex would have gone for something more intimate and casual, maybe even one of those natural, woodland burials. There were too many people here she barely knew and she didn’t find polite conversation easy at the best of times. There again, if she’d had to do it herself, feeling as stupid as she did at the moment, the whole thing would probably have been a shambles.
