Midnight is a Lonely Place (22 page)

Her face doused in cold water and a mug of strong coffee at her elbow she poured some muesli into a bowl and reached into the fridge for some milk. She was a first class prize idiot with a powerful five-star imagination – how else could she be a successful writer – and a bad dose of nervous collywobbles. All she needed was food, coffee – both being attended to – and then a bracing walk in the rain to clear her head. Then in the cold light of day, probably with more coffee, she would switch on the computer again and get back to young George and his mother.

The knock on the front door took her completely by surprise. Greg stood outside, his collar pulled up around his ears, rain pouring off his Barbour jacket. His hands were firmly pushed into his pockets.

‘You see. No key. I had to knock,’ he said grimly. The wind snatched the words from his lips and whirled them away with the rain. ‘May I come in, or am I too dangerous to allow over the threshold?’

‘Of course you can come in!’ Kate stood back to let him pass and then forced the door closed behind him. ‘Why the sarcasm?’

‘The sarcasm, as you call it, was perhaps engendered by two hours of questioning by the police last night who seem under the impression that you still think I robbed the cottage.’ He pulled off his jacket and hanging it on the knob at the bottom of the bannisters, shook himself like a dog. ‘I just thought I would come and thank you in person for your vote of confidence and, incidentally, collect one or two of my things which I would rather not leave here any longer.’

Kate could feel her antagonism rising to match his. ‘I assure you, I didn’t tell the police it was you. If they thought so they must have got the idea somewhere else,’ she said furiously. ‘And I must say, I wonder if they aren’t right. It seems the sort of half-baked stupid thing you would do to try and get me out. That was the idea, I take it? To get me out.’

‘It would be wonderful to get you out.’ He folded his arms. ‘As it happens, I think the wind and the weather will do it for me. Now, if you don’t mind, I should like to collect my property and then I shall leave you to your triumph behind your locked doors.’

‘What property exactly have you left behind?’ They were facing each other in the hall like a couple of cats squaring up for a fight. ‘It seems to me you cleared everything out on Wednesday night.’

‘The torn paintings, yes. There are two more here. On the walls.’ He strode past her into the living room. There in the corner, hanging near the window, was a small portrait sketch of a woman. Kate had hardly noticed it. He took it down and laid it on the table. ‘There is another upstairs. If you will permit me.’ Still unsmiling, he turned away and ran up the stairs two at a time.

Kate shrugged. How petty could you get! In spite of herself she walked across to the picture and looked down at it. It was the woman whose portrait she had seen over and over again in the study at Redall Farmhouse, but in this version her figure was full length, her garment clearly drawn.

He had come back into the room again in time to hear her gasp. ‘What is it?’

She looked up at him, her face white. ‘You’ve seen her. You’ve see her here.’ She was accusing, taut with shock.

‘Who?’ In his hand he held the small picture of the bluebells which had been hanging in her bedroom. She glanced at it regretfully. It was so unlike his usual style. She had really rather liked that one.

‘The woman in the picture. I saw her. Last night.’

He frowned. ‘You can’t have. I made her up. She came out of my head. She’s a pastiche of styles – something I was doing for fun. A doodle.’ A doodle of a face which had come without his bidding and which had tormented him.

‘A doodle of so much importance that you can’t leave her here with me.’ Kate spoke so softly he had to strain to hear.

‘That’s right,’ he said. His voice was aggressive. ‘What do you mean you saw her last night? You had a visitor, did you? Are you sure she wasn’t a burglar or a vandal?’

‘She was a ghost.’

She said it so flatly that he wasn’t sure he had heard her correctly. For a moment he stared at her. He was the one who was supposed to be doing the frightening; the one who had decided to use ghosts to scare her away, and yet, with that one small sentence she had sent a shiver down his spine, a shiver which had raised the hairs on the back of his neck.

A moment later he shook his head. She was trying to play him at his own game. Fine, if that was the way she wanted it. ‘Where did you see her?’

‘There. Almost where you are standing. Your sketch is monochrome, but her dress was blue, like the other pictures you’ve done of her, the ribbons and combs in her hair were black.’

Greg had to fight very hard the urge to move to another part of the room. ‘Supposing I admit that I have seen her.’ In his dreams; in his head; even in his heart. ‘Doesn’t it frighten you, sharing the house with a ghost?’

For a moment she paused, as if she were considering. She looked him in the eye. ‘I suppose, if I’m honest it does, yes.’

‘But you’re going to stay, just to spite me.’

‘If you don’t mind my saying so, you have a very inflated idea of the importance you hold for me,’ she said seriously. ‘I’m staying because I came here to write a book; because this is my home for the next few months and because –’ she hadn’t meant to add this, but it came out anyway ‘– I have nowhere else to go. I can’t afford London rents at the moment.’ None of his business why.

‘So, you’re staying.’

‘So, I’m staying.’ She glanced at the painting under his arm. ‘I’m sorry you’re taking that. I liked it.’ The remark was a concession.

He did not rise to it. It was a trifle, a pretty sketch of which he was not proud. ‘I am sure you can buy yourself a print if you need bluebells on your walls.’

She narrowed her eyes. ‘I don’t think I’ll bother,’ she said dryly. ‘Now, if there is nothing else, I would like to get back to work and I expect you have to report to a police station somewhere.’ She smiled sweetly and was rewarded with a scowl.

‘No, I am sorry to disappoint you but they did not arrest me. Nor any of my friends.’

‘I’m sure it is only a matter of time.’ She stepped past him and went towards the front door.

The wind had changed slightly and as she opened the door, rain swept into the hall, icy, harsh, cruel. She stood back and he walked out without a backward glance. By the time he had climbed up into the Land Rover she had closed the door and walked back into the kitchen.

She was thoughtful. Every shred of intuition told her that he was not lying; that the break-in had had nothing to do with him. But the picture? What did the picture of the woman mean?

She waited until he was safely out of sight before donning her weatherproof jacket and her scarf. Her enthusiasm had gone but she was determined to go out anyway, to clear her head, to get rid of the terrible throbbing behind her temples and, dragging her mind back to the book, to straighten out her thoughts about the next chapter. Somehow she had to rid herself of the images of the last few days. The cottage had ceased to be an impersonal place to work and think. It had become tied up with personalities: with Greg and Alison; with Roger and Diana – and, God help her, with Marcus and the lady in a blue gown.

The grass clung wetly to her legs above her boots, soaking her trousers. Then she was on the short turf and then the sand. The tide was on the ebb, but the angry white-topped waves still lashed the beach, sucking at the stranded weed, filling the air with the sharp, cold smell of far-off ice.

Turning her back doggedly on the dig Kate walked into the wind, her hands pushed firmly to the bottom of her pockets. The cold was so fierce it stung her face, it hurt to breathe. She clamped her lips tight across her teeth and, head down, walked firmly forward, scarcely aware of the beauty of the sea beyond the beach where the air was crystalline, the colour of mother-of-pearl, and the heaving mass of water had the solid shine of polished pewter. Somewhere nearby a gull screamed. She looked up and saw it weaving and circling effortlessly on the wind, part of the fearsome force of it.

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods

There is a rapture on the lonely shore,

There is a society, where none intrudes,

By the deep sea and music in its roar …

It was elemental; wonderful. As always, Byron had the words to convey the power of the scene; if only she in her turn could bring his images into her book …

The sand whirled around her feet in eddies, loosened by the sleet. Ahead she could see the body of another gull, one which had lost the battle with the elements, lying wet and bedraggled on a patch of wet shingle. A tangle of weed lay near it, and it was not until she was close, staring down sadly as she compared it with the beautiful wild beauty of its colleague above her head that she saw the cruel pull of nylon fishing line around its legs. Overwhelmed by anger at the thoughtless, careless arrogance of man she stooped to touch the mottled grey brown feathers. It wasn’t even an adult bird. This must have been its first winter, its first joyous tussle with the elements. The bird’s body was cold and hard, the feathers clamped scalelike against its body. Shivering, she straightened and walked on.

She did not walk for very long. The opaque mist on the horizon was drawing closer; the wind strengthening. She could see a faint shadowing across the waves which was a shower of hail sweeping down the coast and towards Redall Bay. Turning, she walked briskly back, more comfortable now that the wind was behind her.

She had not intended to walk as far as the grave, but somehow she could not resist it. One glance, to see if it were still there. Each tide now was a threat. Each storm, each wind.

Her shoes sliding on the side of the dune she was nearly there when the first shower of hail hit her. Sharp, biting, the ice cut her hands and face, tearing at her scarf as she scrambled the last few feet and stood looking down into the hollow below the exposed face of the dune to find that she was not the first person there. Alison was kneeling on the sand, her hands ungloved, hanging at her sides, her eyes fixed on the exposed face of the working. One glance at the trail of wet weed and shells showed Kate that the early morning tide had come nowhere near the edge of the excavation this time. It was still safe.

She hesitated, unsure whether to creep away, not wanting to intrude and risk a mouthful of abuse. The girl was unmoving. Kate frowned. She took a step closer. There was no sign of any spades or trowels, no ghetto blaster, no tools of any kind. Still Alison had not moved. Her hair whipped wildly around her head; her jacket flapped, unzipped, around her body.

‘Alison?’ she called, uneasily. She paused, waiting for the girl to turn and swear at her for intruding upon her private thoughts, but Alison didn’t stir.

‘Alison!’ she called again, more sharply this time, and she began sliding down the side of the hollow. ‘Alison? Are you all right?’

Alison gave no sign that she had heard. She was staring at the sand and peat face of the dune.

‘Alison?’ Her voice rising in alarm Kate put her arm around the girl’s shoulders. ‘Alison, can you hear me?’ She shook her gently. The girl’s body was rigid and cold beneath the flapping parka, clad, beneath it, in only a tee shirt and thin sweater. ‘Alison, what’s the matter?’

Behind them another shower of hail swept in from the sea. The hailstones rattled against the wiry grass, shushing into the sand, battering their faces. To Kate’s horror she saw that Alison neither blinked nor moved as the hail hurled itself against her face and slid down her cheeks. ‘Oh God!’ She glanced round wildly, half hoping that there would be someone else around, someone who could help, but knowing already that there was no one on the beach at all. ‘Alison, you must listen to me!’ She grabbed the girl’s hand which was ice-cold and began to chafe it vigorously. ‘Alison, you’ve got to stand up. Come on. You can’t stay here. You’ll catch pneumonia. Come on. Stand up.’

Alison gave no sign of hearing her. She stayed totally rigid except for the hand which Kate was tugging which was limp and cold as death.

Kate stared round, her hair tangling across her eyes, her own face ice-cold with sleet. In only a few moments the sea had changed from pewter to the colour of black ink; opaque, thick, sinister in its uneasy movement. Far out there was no distinction now between sky and water. All were black and threatening.

‘Alison, come on. The weather is getting worse.’

Dropping the girl’s hand Kate moved in front of her. Alison’s face was frozen into immobility, the eyes staring straight ahead, not reacting when Kate brought her hand sharply towards them. ‘Right.’ Kate spoke with some force. ‘I’m sorry to have to do this.’ She pulled back her hand and gave Alison a sharp slap. The girl did not react. She did not even blink. Behind them another curtain of hail raced across the sea, embedding itself in the sand, turning the beach a glittering white.

Kate stared at her in despair, then dragging off her own jacket, she pulled it roughly around Alison’s shoulders. Without the padded, fleece-lined protection, the cold enveloped her like a curtain, wrapping itself around her, embedding itself in her lungs, clawing at her bones, but she ignored it. She pulled Alison’s arm around her neck and heaved at her, trying vainly to raise her off her knees. ‘Stand up, blast you. Stand up,’ she cried through gritted teeth. ‘You’ve got to move, Alison, or you’re going to die of cold.’ She struggled desperately against the dead weight of the girl. Alison was barely two inches shorter than she was, and although not plump she was solidly built. Nothing Kate could do seemed to shift her from her knees.