Precious Time (46 page)

A slow smile appeared on his face. ‘You’re not mixing your medication, are you?’ he asked.

She grinned back at him, but then began to feel that something was wrong with the dream. It was too real. Too three-dimensional.

She focused on the vase of flowers and realised she could smell them - could even identify the particular scent of carnations. Was that possible? Did things really smell in dreams? She decided not, and raising herself into a sitting position, she dragged her sluggish brain into a more alert state and registered that he was assessing her a little too intently for her liking, as if trying to decide if she was a candidate for Care in the Community. ‘Did I just say something silly?’ she asked.

‘Very silly. But it’s my fault, I shouldn’t have disturbed you.’

She cringed. ‘Sorry about that. I keep having these awful dreams that don’t make any sense. I thought I was still dreaming when you came in.’

‘Ah, well, that would explain the romantic cutie bit,’ he said playfully. ‘These are for you, by the way. Where would you like them? And no worries about me eating them, I’m not hungry.’

She groaned. ‘Oh, go right ahead, why don’t you? Make fun of a girl when she’s too weak to defend herself. If you put them on the window-ledge, the breeze will waft the scent in my direction. And before you think I’ve lost my manners completely, thank you, they’re beautiful.’ She watched him put the vase on the ledge, noting that he did everything with carefully considered movements, just as he had yesterday when he had set out the items from the chemist on the dressing-table: there was nothing slap-dash about him. With his back to her as he looked out of the window, she said, ‘School finished for the day?’

He turned, the sunlight shining from behind him and making his hair glow with a coppery warmth. ‘Yes. And for the next week. It’s half-term now.’

‘Goodness, you’re always on holiday when we meet.’

‘Not quite.’ He came back towards the bed. ‘Are you up for a chat?’

‘Sure.’

He settled in the chair next to her, stretched out his legs in front of him, and smoothed the wrinkles in his jeans with long, straight fingers. ‘Where are Dad and Ned?’ he asked.

‘The last I heard they were going into Deaconsbridge to get my prescription made up.’ She checked her watch. ‘That was more than two hours ago.’

‘You’ve seen a doctor?’

‘Yes. Your father insisted on calling one out. A boy not much older than Ned diagnosed I had flu.’

He smiled. ‘He’s very fond of you, isn’t he?’

‘Who? The pubescent doctor or my son?’

‘My father.’

‘This may surprise you, but I’m quite fond of the old devil myself.’

She coughed, then coughed again, and once she’d started, she couldn’t stop. She held a tissue to her mouth while her chest crackled and her ribs ached, and as she struggled to catch her breath, he stood up and rubbed her back. Within seconds the spluttering convulsion passed and she flopped exhausted against the pillows. ‘Sorry about that,’ she wheezed.

‘Can I get you anything?’

‘A new body would be nice, I’m tired of this one, but I’ll make do with some cough mixture and a cup of tea, if it’s not too much trouble.’

‘Your wish is my command. You see to the cough mixture and I’ll organise the tea.’

He soon returned with a tray on which he’d placed two mugs of tea, a segmented orange, and a plate of chocolate biscuits. ‘Vitamin C and something to give you energy. If the crumbs are too painful to swallow, you can make do with licking off the chocolate.’

He made himself comfortable in the chair again, and after he had persuaded her to take a biscuit, he said, ‘I thought you might like to know that I took your advice last night.’

She dunked the biscuit in her tea. ‘I’m having trouble remembering my name, never mind what I said last night. What did you do?’

‘I got Dad to talk to me.’

She looked at him blankly. ‘Did I tell you to do that?’

‘Yes. You told me to seize the moment.’

She thought about this. There was a vaguely familiar ring to the words, but she couldn’t be sure they had been hers. ‘I think I may have been delirious when I said that. Was it good advice?’

He nodded. ‘Excellent advice. I have a lot to thank you for.’

It seemed an age since she and Ned had found Gabriel on his knees in the copse, and Clara wondered just how honest he had been with Jonah. ‘He’s had a lot to come to terms with recently, hasn’t he?’ she said, prompting Jonah into expanding on what he had just said.

He ran a hand through his thick wavy hair - an elegant movement that momentarily caught and held her attention. ‘That’s putting it mildly. I just wish he could have opened up years ago.’ He raised his eyes to hers. ‘Dad told me about you finding him in the copse.’ For a long moment his words, and what they implied, hung between them.

‘I feel I’ve let him down,’ he continued, ‘that he reached such an awful point and—’

‘Don’t, Jonah. There’s been enough self-recrimination going on in this family already. You tried your best with someone who wasn’t ready to be helped. Just be glad that the two of you are reconciled.

And remember, it wasn’t your fault that he kept his feelings under house arrest all that time.’

He smiled that soft hesitant smile of his and passed her another biscuit. ‘Yes, ma’am.’

She waved the plate away.

‘Feeling tired again?’

‘Yes.’

‘Anything I can get you before you slip away on another of your hallucinogenic trips?’

She thought about this. ‘Actually, yes, there is. I need some clean things to wear. Take Ned with you to the van when he gets back with your father, and he’ll show you where everything’s kept. The keys are in my handbag.’

‘Is that all?’

‘Mm … something to read would be good. Though not the copy of Wuthering Heights in the rack above the table. My brain will crash completely if I attempt that. Pick me something else. Something light and comforting.’

‘Something romantic?’

She closed her eyes, all her energy now spent. ‘No. A nice gory murder would suit me better.’

Caspar’s day wasn’t going as smoothly as he had wanted it to. A snarl-up on the motorway had added an extra hour and a half to his journey, and now it was taking him for ever to find Rosewood Manor. He’d gone round in circles, doubling back on himself again and again along roads that cleaved through windswept moors and all looked the same. It was a wild inhospitable place of craggy bleakness with few houses, and in places it reminded him of Hollow Edge Moor. He had left Manchester in the sun earlier that morning, but up here, in this godforsaken land where the rain was pouring and the wind gusting, it wasn’t difficult to picture the tribes of marauding savages from the north that the Romans had been so keen to keep out by building Hadrian’s Wall.

Whatever had possessed Damson to settle here?

Eventually he stopped to risk lunch at a pub, where the copper topped tables were sticky with beer and scarred with cigarette burns; the padded stools were so filthy he thought twice about sitting down.

His order was taken by a charmless old hag who was more interested in watching the wide-screen television hanging from the wall at the far end of the overheated room than serving anyone. There were few other punters: a wizened man with his nose dipping into his pint, and a group of youths lolling around a pool table.

He planned to stay just long enough to satisfy his growling stomach and to ask the whereabouts of Rosewood Manor Healing Centre.

Nobody had heard of it, but he was informed that Blydale Village wasn’t a village as such. ‘Nothing more than a sprawling place that’s got above itself,’ the hag said, with a disapproving sniff when he handed over a ten-pound note for a plate of artificially pink microwaved gammon steak and a glass of unspeakably rough

brandy.

Just because the Romans had departed aeons ago, it didn’t mean the natives had gone soft on tribalism, Caspar observed, as he slipped back into the refined comfort of his Maserati. He knew the sensible thing to do was phone Rosewood Manor and ask for directions, but he’d be damned before he was reduced to doing that. Getting that nerdy wimp Roland Hall on the phone and asking him for help was out of the question.

He drove on determinedly, back towards Blydale. Ten minutes later, luck shone on him when he saw the remains of a wooden sign he hadn’t noticed before, although he had driven up and down this stretch of road several times. He stopped the car, got out and, with the rain pelting down on him, poked around in the long, sodden grass with his foot. Flipping the rotten piece of wood over, he saw the words ‘Rosewood Manor Healing Centre’ carved in a pretentiously curlicued script. Hallelujah! Now, at long last, he was getting somewhere.

Back in the car, he took the next left, as the sign had originally indicated. The road dipped and narrowed, twisted and climbed and all but disappeared up its own access before it brought him to the brow of a hill and a T-junction. There were no helpful signs, but in the distance, submerged in the misty gloom of a verdant coniferous plantation, he saw a large house.

He drove on hopefully. At the approach to the house, a metal gate barred his way. Attached to it was a sign that read, ‘Private Property’

and ‘Keep Out’ in red. A brick built postbox stood to the left of the gate, but there was nothing, other than a strong feeling in his guts, to suggest that this was where he would find Damson. He made a lightning dash to the gate, swung it open, then dived back into the car. Driving on, he left the gate swinging in the wind.

The house was as he had visualised it: Victorian and unrelentingly grim. It had probably been used as a school, or even a remand home, at some time: it had that institutionalised look about it. Ugly and over-extended, it was a solid mass of brickwork with staring windows. With a shudder of revulsion, Caspar thought of the elegant flat in Bath Damson had given up in favour of this remote, heartless monstrosity. What had she been thinking of when she came here this time last year?

He parked the car as near to the front door as he could, bolted across the gravel towards the shelter offered by the porch, and yanked on the metal bell pull. Getting no response, he thumped on the door loudly and waited. Was it his imagination, or could he detect the whiff of institutional cabbage?

Predictably it was some time before someone eventually deigned to open the door. A scrawny barefooted individual with a shiny bald head stood before Caspar, placed his palms together, and bowed from the middle. ‘Welcome to Rosewood Manor Healing Centre. My name is Jed, how may I help you?’ His gormless face was insufferably beatific and made Caspar want to ram a fist into it.

‘Oh, save it for someone who cares. I’ve had the devil of a day so don’t waste any more of my time. I’m Damson’s brother, so take me to your leader and then do me the kindness of scarpering.’

Not a flicker passed across the man’s face. He bowed again, stepped aside to let Caspar in, then shut the door silently. Suddenly Caspar felt uneasy, as though he had entered a strange, eerie world and the only escape route had been closed off.

He was shown into a large room that had probably been built as an impressive drawing room for some Victorian industrialist. A hundred years on, it was cold and reminded Caspar of Mermaid House, except it was shabbier and a lot less inviting. A circle of assorted chairs dominated the oblong space; the floor was bare, and the walls had been painted an insipid shade of mint-green with the intricately carved cornice and ceiling rose picked out in a darker green. And where, presumably, pictures and mirrors had once adorned the walls, there were now rows of pin-boards. While he waited, he read some of the notices. The first was full of silly mantras:

Make the renewal of your soul your priority.

A hardened heart is an impoverished heart.

Know thyself and be at peace.

Self-esteem comes from confronting your insecurities.

It was nothing but the crazy psychobabble that every New Age hippie traded in these days, he thought. The next board revealed a series of rotas. There seemed to be one for almost every mundane domestic activity: cooking, cleaning, laundry, shopping, even scrubbing out the toilets. He noted that Damson’s name was absent from any of the lists. A separate piece of paper showed another range of activities, from cheese-making and bee-keeping to the construction of wooden toys and hammocks.

‘Mr Liberty?’

He turned. ‘Yes.’

Caspar recognised good-quality clothes when he saw them, and striding across the room, his hand outstretched, was a man of about his own age and height who clearly took pride in his appearance. He was wearing cream chinos and a Ralph Lauren striped shirt with a navy-blue cashmere sweater draped around his shoulders; a gold watch hung loosely from one of his wrists. With mounting

satisfaction, Caspar knew that he was face to face with the devious brain behind this whole scam. ‘And you are?’

‘Roland Hall. It’s good to meet you at last.’

Hiding his surprise, Caspar ignored the outstretched hand and gritted his teeth. It was time to get down to business. ‘Damson.

Where is she?’

‘Yes, of course, I quite understand your eagerness to see her. But perhaps a drink first? How was your journey? The weather must have slowed you considerably.’

The fraudulent act of smooth charm and slickly offered hospitality incensed Caspar. ‘My sister’s welfare is the only reason I’m here, so let’s dispense with the small-talk.’

The man’s expression remained impassive. ‘As you wish. But I feel it only right that I should warn you that your sister—’

Caspar held up a hand, jabbed a finger at the man’s face. ‘I’m not interested in what you have to say about Damson. Whatever comes out of your mouth is guaranteed to be one hundred per cent garbage.

The half-baked drop-outs you’re used to dealing with might be taken in by your cool, calm and collected manner, but I’m not. I know a man on the make when I see one.’

He was almost disappointed that Hall’s response was restricted to a noncommittal nod. ‘I’ll take you upstairs,’ was all he said. There was something annoyingly self-possessed about the man. He led the way out to the entrance hall where, at the foot of the stairs, a small group had gathered. There looked to be equal numbers of men and women, and they all turned and smiled when they saw Hall