Singled Out (8 page)

Daily Telegraph

At some time during the night, whilst I was pleasantly engaged in causing poor Keturah to pass out with terror as something unspeakable grabs her in the graveyard, only to find when she wakes up that—

No. I’ll stop there because I’m not going to tell you what Keturah sees when she wakes up: buy the book and boost my sales.

In any case I am digressing from the point, which is that at some time between Jason’s final assault on the doorbell and the first squawk of Birdsong, Jack Craig pushed a key through my letterbox.

Not just any key:
the
key. Large, sturdy, old-fashioned, and the sort of thing that would open Drac’s castle or the House on Haunted Hill. Which is pretty close, actually, since it was the key to Kedge Hall that I’d spent so much time trying to borrow.

It came wrapped in a piece of paper that said, thrillingly: ‘Tonight!’, and included a map of the drive, and the little path under the arch at the side of the house that would take me to the kitchen door, all very Enid Blyton. All it needed was Timmy the dog. Or maybe Jason would do?

The thick plottens.

While delighted that Jack had at last capitulated it
was
odd of him to deliver the key in such a mysterious manner, when he might slip it into my hand down at the pub most nights.

And why tonight? Though of course I will go, because it would be just like him to demand the key back tomorrow, and it’s been such amazingly hard work to get the thing at all.

Jack’s appearance is clearly against him, for you wouldn’t think from looking at him that he had any principles. Indeed, I often wonder how he got the job of caretaker at all, except, I suppose, that Craigs have always occupied the lodge, and he was simply the Last Man Standing.

It’s amazing how everything happens at once, isn’t it? But having finally worn him down into agreeing, I’ll have to seize the moment.

Miss Kedge was a very reclusive old lady who never even bothered answering my letters pleading for a quick look round, and I have no reason to think the new owner, if he ever appears, will be any different. Apart from the haunted bit, Kedge Hall is one of the nicest small manor houses in the country, so you’d think the heir would hotfoot it back if only to put the house on the market, wouldn’t you?

Rumour has it that he is – or has been – some kind of foreign correspondent, and is currently abroad somewhere; but other than that no one seems to know anything much about him, or has ever seen him here apart from Jack Craig on that one brief visit months ago.

Dawn was breaking and Birdie was squawking, but instead of going to bed for a couple of hours (with earplugs) like I usually do, I listened to Jane’s message again, writing down Max’s phone number. And this time I actually registered the end of her message, the scary bit, where she’d added: ‘Clear out the spare bedroom, I might just want to come and stay with you soon.’

Stay with me? With
me?
Does she want to get excommunicated from the parental nest too?

Or was it just a Jane thing to put me on edge?

After that I dithered about with Max’s number in one hand and the strangely reassuring weight of the Hall key in the other, while I tried to summon up the courage to call him.

When I finally did, it rang for such an awfully long time before it was picked up that I’d started to think Jane had got the wrong number.

Even then, there was silence from the other end, except for the faint seashell whisper of someone breathing.

‘Max, is that you? Are you there? It’s me, Cass.’

‘
Cassy?
’ He sounded more stunned than pleased. ‘How on earth did you get this number? And do you know what time it is over here?’

‘No, of course I don’t. I don’t know what time it is here, either – what does it matter? Max, Jane told me about Rosemary, and she got your number for me.’

‘Jane knows already? My God! Then I suppose everyone knows?’

‘Everyone except me! Why didn’t you phone, Max? It was so horrible finding out from Jane, not you. And – I’m really sorry about Rosemary,’ I added, rather awkwardly. ‘I mean, I know you were still fond of her, and—’

‘Yes, it’s been quite a shock,’ he interrupted brusquely. ‘I haven’t been thinking straight. Sorry, Cassy, I did mean to call, but it’s all been so difficult. I knew you’d understand, darling.’

‘Yeah, just take me for granted as usual, faithful old Cass,’ I thought disloyally, and then felt immediately guilty. Guilt on guilt: I have more layers of the stuff than an onion has skins. (And I
wish
he wouldn’t call me Cassy, it’s
so
Jane Austen!)

‘I’ll come over as soon as I can get a plane seat,’ I assured him. ‘You shouldn’t have to be alone at a time like this.’

‘No,’ he said sharply. ‘No, you can’t, Cassy! It wouldn’t look good at all if you came here.’

‘Of course I wouldn’t
stay
with you, Max: that would look a bit too “off with the old and on with the new”. (Or ‘off with the old, and on with the nearly as old’.) ‘Why shouldn’t a friend come to support you without anyone suspecting there’s anything between us? But I must see you and I ought to be with you at a time like this.’

‘No,’ he repeated with unflattering force. ‘You don’t understand at all, Cassy! There was a slight difficulty with the police over the accident. They didn’t think she was strong enough to get her chair out on to the sun deck like that, and then for it to go over the edge at the highest point, and they’ve been very awkward about it.’

‘But of course it was an accident,’ I cried. ‘I mean – wasn’t it?’

‘Of course, and they fully accept that now. Rosemary had great strength in her arms, especially since Kyra’s been working with her, and in any case, who would do such a thing on purpose to a helpless invalid?
I
was lecturing all that day, or with colleagues, of course,’ he added.

‘Yes, of course,’ I echoed, thinking the alibi came a bit pat.

‘But now it’s turned out that the braking mechanism on her chair was faulty, so she probably wheeled up to the low parapet too fast, couldn’t stop, and was tipped over.’

‘Oh, I see,’ I said, relieved. Not that I’d
really
thought Max would have had any hand in it, because he valued his venerable tanned and toned hide too much to do anything illegal.

‘So however much I’d like to see you, it’s better if you don’t come out just now. And there’s another thing, Cassy: Rosemary knew all about us.’

‘What do you mean? Of course she knew you were having a relationship with someone else, you had an understanding, didn’t you? You went off for weekends of “golf”, and she never asked any questions?’

‘She never asked me anything because she already knew the answers: among her papers are reports on us she’d had done. The police found them, and it made things sticky for a while, until they accepted that it wasn’t possible for me to have been there when the accident happened. But it means that you must keep away.’

I felt suddenly like someone had lifted my rock and left my conscience exposed and squirming.

‘Max, that’s horrible! That she should care enough – be jealous enough to find out about us. And you said when you told her you would never leave her, she more or less said she would turn a blind eye to … well to
me.
’

‘No, I could never leave her, she knew that,’ he said slowly.

‘Let me come out and be with you,’ I pleaded again, needing to see him face to face.

‘No, I’ve already said. Don’t you understand? Besides, I’m flying back with – flying back for the funeral. I’ll come down and see you after that, before I return here to finish my year. We’ll talk then.’

‘But Max, you do still—’

The phone went down with a click.

*   *   *

I don’t know what I did for the rest of that morning, except at some stage Pa phoned me again, with his usual message: ‘You’ll burn in hell, girl,’ he assured me with characteristic fervour and no preamble, although he did sound sober this time. I waited for him to put the phone down, but after a small pause he sighed deeply and added: ‘And your sister with you!’

Then
he put the phone down.

I stared at it like it might suddeniy wake up and explain that I’d just had an auditory hallucination, and not to worry, but it stayed mum.

The telephone stirred like a snake under Keturah’s hand, the cord rippling and flexing—

What had they found out about Jane? That she only looked like an angel? Well, that took long enough. The evidence has been there before and they’ve always managed to ignore it, just like all the other poor suckers.

Maybe they’ve finally discovered what she got up to as a student in Oxford, which was far more than
I
did at my university, before Max began his siege of my heart – and the rest of me.

Whatever it is, I expect Jane will manage to explain it all away to their complete satisfaction, since she seems to weave some hypnotic spell over the gullible so that they believe exactly what she wants them to.

How many years of evolution will it take, before mankind realises that the truth gene does not always go hand in hand with the ones for blonde hair and blue eyes?

But something has clearly cast a blip in her relations with Ma and Pa, and I wonder if this was what caused her to lay claim to the spare room? If so, by now I expect she has realised that staying with me (indeed, even admitting that we ever
see
each other) would not help her cause with the parents.

At eight, the postman brought me a badly wrapped foreign package containing a pair of pink Chinese silk slippers, but no message. They were exquisite but tiny, and I fear it is now too late to have my feet bound.

Not that I don’t think I deserve the torture it would cause me, so perhaps I had better try it?

Certainly a punishment is overdue now the comforting bubble surrounding my long-standing affair has well and truly popped, exposing me to the cold blasts of self-doubt and guilt, status quo rocked.

And it’s not like I haven’t been through all this before, when I was struggling to resist Max. Being quietly pursued by a handsome professor may be flattering, but it is also scary to a young student, especially after I discovered that he was not only married, but his wife had been crippled in a skiing accident a couple of years before.

I am a habitual sinner, but if I hadn’t thought Rosemary accepted the situation I would never finally have agreed to it … and Max
definitely
let me think it wouldn’t be for long, I didn’t imagine that.

But I can’t blame Max for my sins, What on earth was I thinking of, waiting to step into a dead woman’s shoes?

And where
have
the years gone while I was doing that? I’m heading for middle age and I haven’t done anything. Well, maybe I have done things, but they were all the wrong things, and most of my life has been spent writing and waiting.

Waiting for Max, waiting for Rosemary to die, waiting for children, waiting for a damned bestseller. (Or even a Damned bestseller.).

Now I feel not so much mistress of the macabre, as macabre mistress.

*   *   *

At lunchtime (ham and pineapple pizza, large glass of Chilean Cabernet Sauvignon), a Jason hangdog and most strangely marked about the lower lip turned up to apologise.

‘That’s all right,’ I assured him. ‘At least when I bit you the fangs loosened, so they were quite easy to get out when I got home.’

By then I was so desperately in need of comfort that had he not been in Penitent Mode, the chances are that he could have had from me what he was so keen on having last night, because I would have been anyone’s for a good bear hug.

Just as well perhaps that he didn’t know that?

Still, we have resumed our friendship as before, the only flaw in our entente being Tom, who apparently wanted to pop round later and tell me how much he’d enjoyed my last book.

Over my blood-spattered mortal remains, he will.

… clutching The Book he stood over her blood-mired corpse, while flies admired themselves in the twin mirrors of her surprised eyes, and …

Jason seems unable to see what Tom is up to, and I seem unable to tell him, but at least I now know to check who’s at the door before I open it this afternoon. Tom is larger, stronger and younger than Jason, but without the cuddle factor. Thank goodness he’s going back to university tomorrow.

I gave Jason an edited version of Rosemary’s death, which depressed him still further, since he assumed it meant that Max and I would be marrying in the near future, even when I pointed out that we could hardly do so immediately after the funeral.

After Jason had gone I accidentally caught sight of myself in the mirror, and really it’s a miracle that
anyone
wants me! My face, naturally whiter than white, still had the remains of last night’s greenish make-up, my eye-liner was smeared into Alice Cooper streaks, and the crimson lipstick had rubbed off, leaving a ghastly stain. To add the
coup de grâce,
my usually straight, dark red hair now stuck up on one side like a yard brush.

Roll up, roll up, see Max’s mistress of the macabre. You saw it here first, folks!

*   *   *

I scrubbed the exterior of the Whited Sepulchre then went to bed for a couple of hours, for after all, I still had a haunted house to visit and a chapter to write that night.

Mental and physical exhaustion meant I fell asleep instantly, only to go straight into The Nightmare like somebody’d dropped me through a trapdoor into hell.

This time the somersaulting was so dizzyingly fast (and why
does
my forward motion always turn into back-flips?), and the cupboard door pulsed so ominously with greenish light, that I thought it would all be over and the door slammed behind me for ever in the time it usually took for the first backwards tumble.

But the pulsing quickly turned to throbbing and then a hard rattling tattoo that jarred me awake: someone was beating hell out of my front door.

I staggered down and threw it wide open, because at that moment I’d have welcomed even Tom for getting me out of that corridor. Could I perhaps survive for ever without sleep? (‘For ever’ being whatever miserly amount of years I’ve got left.)