Singled Out (24 page)

‘Just a couple of hours to help you with your book?’ I asked suspiciously.

‘That’s all. I don’t know any other authors or I wouldn’t ask you. Just how to set it out, that sort of thing. I don’t really need a Ghost Writer, just a ghost writer.’

‘Was that a joke?’ I peered at him, but the moon was a little obscured and it was hard to tell. Mind you, with that face it would be hard to tell anyway.

‘I suppose I could,’ I conceded reluctantly, since I have this hideous, innate sense of fair play, which is unfortunate since life doesn’t.

‘And maybe while you’re at the Hall you can tell that mad brother of yours to Keep his clothes on, keep out of my woods, and keep away from my sister!’ he said acerbically.

‘I think it’s love,’ I said idiotically. ‘It’s such a pleasure to see two people so happy!’

‘Love? He’s not even inhabiting the same space-time continuum half the bloody time! How can she have a relationship with someone like that?’

‘Why don’t you ask her, not me?’ I snapped, and walked away, leaving him there, although the effect of my sudden departure was rather ruined by my having to stop and disentangle my cloak from an encroaching briar.

*   *   *

As I was passing under Mrs Bridge’s window something netlike dropped silently over my head. It was a very Gladiator moment until I heard her giggle like a girl and whisper conspiratorially ‘Heaven’s cobwebs!’ before slamming down the sash.

You know, it’s very comforting to have someone even stranger than me living next door. She’s worth her weight in three-ply.

I poured a glass of red wine and sat down at my desk to work, but instead ended up turning over all the things Dante had said, especially the ones about using him as some kind of stud, and the more I thought the madder I got.

Eventually I phoned Jason (waking him up), and told him bluntly that I would have his baby, although declining his sleepy but enthusiastic offer to start right away.

Then I spent a sleepless couple of hours before phoning him again at dawn when sanity had returned, together with the hellish sound of Birdsong’s screaming, to tell him I couldn’t possibly after all.

I think the inside of my telephone has melted.

I can’t blame him for being mad, but I was quite glad not to have to face him in one of his rages because he can be quite awesome, although he usually simmers down pretty quickly.

After that I’d have tried to catch a couple of hours sleep if the great She-beast herself didn’t phone me up at last, sounding fraught and breathless, which is unusual for Jane.

‘Cass? Is that you? You’ve got to help me!’

‘I thought I already was, Jane: Pa and Gerald have both been on the phone wanting you, and neither were pleased that you wouldn’t come and speak to them. Pa’s flipped and sent you a biblical rant, and Gerald’s written you an absolutely pathetic letter.’

‘You read it?’ she demanded, sounding more like her old self.

‘Gerald sent all your mail on and I read the lot,’ I said. ‘You read all mine when you were here, after all: fair’s fair.’

‘Well, never mind that now!’ she said, ‘Listen, Cass, you’ve got to help me get out of here! It’s dreadful: Clint lives in a big
tent.
’

‘I’m told yurts are very comfortable, Jane. And weren’t you after a bit of the old back-to-nature?’

‘Not this natural! There’s a whole field of these yurts, and they live there like a lot of gypsies. And there’s nowhere to recharge my phone, and no proper toilet, and everything’s muddy. Now my Jimmy Choo’s have got dung on them – and Clint’s turned so jealous he won’t let me out of his sight!’ She paused, breathless.

It sounded to me like the excremental Choo’s were the last straw.

‘So he’s there now?’ I asked.

‘No, of course not! I’m at the pub – and I had to borrow the landlord’s own phone, because Clint’s hidden my bag with all my money and my credit cards, and I don’t know how to get away!’

She sounded desperate, but I expect the landlord was eating out of her hand.

‘So where is Clint at the moment?’

‘He’s gone to Penzance to sell some paintings. His friend Baz’s supposed to be keeping me company until he gets back, but he’s taken something,’ she said primly, ‘and he didn’t even blink when I got up and left.’

‘Get on the train and come here then, while the going’s good.’

‘Without money? And my suitcase, my clothes, and—’

‘Gerald – and possibly Pa, if the spirit moves him – are liable to come to Westery in person at any minute, and insist you talk to them,’ I told her, which had the effect of a dash of icy water to the face.

‘Oh God, what if they come before I get back? And what if Clint comes back and finds me here? I’ll never get away, and—’

‘You can go to London. One of your letters was from George. He’s got to go abroad next week, and he wants you to keep Phily out of trouble until her case comes up. What, by the way, is Phily’s old trouble?’

‘Shoplifting, only she can’t help it. It’s kleptomania.’

‘Of course, the nobility do
not
shoplift.’

‘George wanted me to go down?’

I could practically hear her weasely little brain whirring.

‘Yes – and if I do that, he will have to promise to say I’ve been there all week. And London’s closer than you are, especially if I catch the Express. But what do I do for money?’

‘Put the landlord on,’ I said resignedly, and when she did I gave him my bank card details and he advanced enough to my pathetic sister to get her to London, including a taxi to the station.

‘I want it back the minute you get your stuff,’ I warned. ‘Leave a message with the landlord for Clint, telling him to forward your belongings to London, or you’ll set the police on his doped-up friends.’

‘Thank you, Cass,’ she said, the unaccustomed words coming with creaking reluctance. But she said them.

‘Get moving before he comes back,’ I advised her. ‘I’ll tell George to expect you.’

… at last he slept, coffined in marble, and she took the key from its hiding place and turned it slowly and carefully in the huge lock.

It grated slightly, and behind her in the darkness he stirred and began to wake as she frantically turned the handle and pulled open the heavy door.

She felt rather than heard him spring out and reach for her, but by then the first rays of sunshine barred the way between them.

She was free – until darkness fell once more.

Chapter 16: The Definitive Delilah

Popular Horror Writer Satan’s Mouthpiece! says Bishop …

Daily Mail

I walked up to the Hall in the afternoon, though I’m not sure what drove me. Rampant curiosity? Over-active conscience? Or maybe the prospect of another invigorating little exchange of opinions, for there is no denying that my encounters with Dante do wonders for the adrenalin.

And had he really been offering his services at one point last night, or had I totally misread what he was saying?

Not that it matters now my mind is made up … almost. On my way home I would stop by Emlyn’s and buy a copy of
Best Dog
magazine and enough pizzas to mean I don’t have to go to the pub and face an angry Jason for at least a couple of days.

Call me a coward.

Coward.

A white van marked ‘Gardeners To Go’ was parked halfway up the drive and a team of men were certainly going hard at weeding the drive and tidying the nearer aspects of the grounds, which seemed to have run riot in the months since Miss Kedge died.

Gardening can’t be terribly exciting because they all stopped and watched me walk past, so I gave them a cheery wave and called hello, then crunched on up the gravel to the front door.

No tradesman’s entrance for me this time.

Eddie answered the doorbell, holding a large screwdriver. His flaxen dreadlocks were held back by a red spotted scarf and he wore bib and brace overalls over, apparently, nothing.

He didn’t seem at all surprised to see me, just smiled as I walked past him and then went back to whatever it was he was fixing.

The Hall looked much more welcoming by daylight. Rosetta and two vaguely familiar local women were polishing the furniture with something that smelled beeswaxy, and she looked glad to stop for a minute and talk.

‘Hi, Rosetta, I’ve come to see Dante. About his book,’ I added airily, in case she suspected this might be the start of something big.

‘He’s expecting you – he’s in his study in the west wing. I’ll show you, shall I?’

With a lingering look over her shoulder at Eddie, who was halfway up a ladder tinkering with something, she led the way through a side door, along a passage that went up and down and up again and round and … well, you get the idea. It started to feel like one of those Escher pictures of endless staircases.

‘It’s easier to get into from upstairs,’ Rosetta said. ‘Just one passage and a door. Dante’s been looking at the house plans, and he says there was an easier way in from downstairs, too, but it’s been blocked off for some reason.’

‘Yes, I know.’

… there was only one door to the west wing, locked and barred, the keys held by the heir alone, generation after generation. But the door kept people out, not in, for the creature that dwelt there knew no bars to his freedom other than that which came with every dawn …

Rosetta gave me a strange look, but didn’t question my omniscience, which was just as well since this was just another example of my two overlapping realities.

We finished up in a big bright room with newly whitewashed walls above dark panelling, and a diamond-paned window looking out over what was once the park.

It was set out like a cross between a study and a sitting room, with an individual stamp that told me that Dante had made it like this, plundering the house for furniture to suit his needs.

There was a big old trestle table along one wall heaped with papers, photographs, and a rather elderly looking laptop computer. At the window end of the room were some ancient and comfortable-looking leather armchairs, one occupied by a far from ancient but comfortable-looking Dante.

He got up when we came in and said: ‘Ah, there you are,’ as though he was expecting me and I was running late, though I’m sure I didn’t
promise
to turn up today – or, indeed, any other day.

Looking serious (as is his wont), he helped me out of my long black, rather military velvet coat with its frogging and silver buttons, then glanced down at my moccasin boots.

The corner of his mouth twitched, which I am slowly coming to realise is a sign of secret amusement rather than a nervous tic, though I do not see what is funny about my boots. I mean, wearing four-inch stiletto heels like Orla is funny-peculiar, not my practical footwear.

Colour-wise we were pretty well matched, since he was wearing a black shirt (open at the neck, but swash most definitely buckled) and ancient-looking black leather trousers, well moulded around his finer assets. (He has fine assets.)

How come he didn’t squeak when he got off the leather chair?

While he gravely folded my coat over a chairback and I had interesting thoughts about Leather Food, Rosetta said reproachfully: ‘Oh Dante, you haven’t eaten any of those lovely sandwiches I made for you!’

‘I was waiting for Cass – we’ll share them,’ he said guiltily.

Clearly the urge to fatten Dante up is endemic in the female of the species. I was just surprised she hadn’t also felt the urge to sneak in while he slept and do a definitive Delilah to that shaggy mane with the kitchen scissors, because I certainly wanted to.

Rosetta cast us a dubious look before leaving that plainly said: ‘Now, don’t argue, children!’

But I for one had no intention of arguing, especially after I stopped thinking about various kinds of hides and really started to take in what Dante had begun to tell me about his book.

It was evident that he really
did
need my advice, but wasn’t going to find it easy to talk about what had happened to him.

‘I know all about the hostage thing and how your wife died,’ I told him helpfully. ‘Orla got it all off the internet – all the newspaper articles and stuff.’

‘Right,’ he said, rather bitterly. ‘Well, that’s the part that my publishers are particularly interested in, obviously, but I want the book to be more than just another hostage story. I want it to be a celebration of Paul – my friend’s – life, too. And I’ve got all this stuff I’ve written down, and I don’t know where to go from here.’

He ran his hands though his black hair, which didn’t do much for it since it sprang back into dishevelled waves as soon as it was released. ‘I don’t want to go over it all again – reliving it – but I think that somehow I’ll feel better when I’ve done it.’

Clearly writing it was a painful pilgrimage into a past that he would like to forget but could not; and he might achieve some kind of catharsis through setting it all down. And the more he talked about his experiences, the more I felt that he was telling me something he hadn’t been able to share with anyone else, opening himself up to me in a way that made him appealingly vulnerable.

‘I did write an article about it soon after I was released, but I wasn’t really very fit, mentally or physically. And coming home and dealing with the loss of Emma, and having to go through those seances and stuff her mother insisted on – well, it was pretty well the last straw.’

‘I should think it was!’ I agreed.

‘And then I really needed to go and see Paul’s widow, who’d gone back to her family in Alaska, although I’d already passed on all the messages Paul had sent in case I made it and he didn’t … But I felt guilty somehow that I’d survived and he hadn’t, and I just spent months travelling around the States, making notes for the book, and putting the trip off.’

‘You were travelling in America for nearly a year, weren’t you?’

‘Yes, thinking about things, sleeping in anonymous motel rooms, slowly going north towards Alaska. Somehow I was afraid to face Paul’s widow, Kathy. But then finally I drove up through Canada to Prince Rupert, and took a seaplane to Ketchican, where she lives.’