She sat close to Harry in the back of the car, Tom on her other side. Harry slipped his hand into hers and squeezed gently.
Chapter Twenty
They still hadn’t found Rushton. There had been a report of a bloodied man being picked up by a van, but so far the police hadn’t found the van or her ex-husband.
By the time the taxi dropped them near the gallery later on, Harry’s eye had swollen badly.
‘You look terrible,’ said Ellie, guilt once more flooding through her.
Harry gingerly explored the swelling with a finger. ‘Thanks. I’m going to look a sight in assembly on Monday morning. I can already predict all the gossip that’s going to be doing the rounds. Tom, we’re going to have to discuss what you can and can’t say before Monday. Guess the eye is too bad to pretend I walked into a door?’
‘Erm, yes, I’m afraid so. Thanks for saving me, Harry. It could have been a very different story if you hadn’t dived in.’ He gripped her hand for a second. It was the firm grasp of someone wanting to reassure another human being.
‘Are you going to feel safe at your house tonight? I mean, I could sleep on your sofa if it would help.’
She laughed. Would Harry on her sofa help her to sleep? Er, no, but it was lovely of him to offer.
‘That’s very kind, but I can’t let Rushton intimidate me. I’m hopeful the police will find him.’ Her words sounded much braver than she felt. ‘But, I’m being selfish. Will you be all right on your own? I mean you’ve been in quite a fight.’
‘I’ll be fine. I was checked over again at the police station. It’s only bruising.’ Harry had been interviewed separately to Ellie and Tom, presumably so they couldn’t discuss what had happened and their evidence wasn’t contaminated by each other’s opinions. ‘At least let me walk you home.’
‘Before that, I need to check on the gallery. Make sure the windows are boarded up and the door locked. Although, I can’t face the carnage till tomorrow.’
The gallery was secured and a note was taped to the locked door. It told her that the key to the gallery had been left with the bakery owner on the corner of the entrance to the alley. The bakery was shut until Monday and her spare keys were at home, but Ellie knew it was probably a blessing she couldn’t get inside right now. It would be too upsetting to see the extent of damaged and broken artwork and she couldn’t face the questions of the bakery staff yet either.
Harry insisted that he see them safely home. It was late afternoon already, as everything seemed to have taken so long.
‘Why don’t we collect a take-away on the way up the hill?’ suggested Ellie. ‘I’ll pay, by way of a thank you for today. Hopefully, we can all calm down and decide what we want to tell others about what happened this morning.’
Despite her brave words, her heart was in her mouth as they walked down her road, white plastic bags swinging in their hands. She saw Rushton in every bush and felt her whole body tense when she unlocked the front door, in case he was lurking inside. From Harry’s tense body, as she pushed open the door, she guessed he was thinking along the same lines.
They fell on the Chinese take-away like a pack of hungry wolves. Ellie hadn’t been able to face the sandwich lunch they’d been offered in Sowden and she hadn’t realised how ravenous she was until the hot food was in front of her.
There was something intimate about watching how Harry ate his food. She hoped he didn’t see her observing him so closely. Tom and Harry talked about football teams. It was almost as if there was a common understanding not to discuss the events of the day until they’d eaten.
As soon as the meal was finished, however, Tom fell silent. He followed Ellie around the house like a slouching spectre, even if she only went into the kitchen. His replies to any questions were monosyllabic and Ellie knew she would have to tackle the attack and its aftermath, as it hung between them unspoken in the air. He was more than likely suffering from shock.
Harry looked very tired and battered. Guilt surfaced again because she was the cause of his disfigurement, even though she hadn’t launched the blows. There were, thankfully, no injuries to his face deep enough to scar, but he would carry the signs of the fight for a good few weeks to come.
The doorbell sounded. All three of them jumped. Ellie, flanked by both Harry and Tom walked down the hall and Ellie put the security chain across the door before opening it a mere crack.
‘PC Saunders. We’ve found no sign of your assailant, Ms Golden, so we wanted to reassure you that there will be extra patrols in Borteen and on your road tonight. If you have any worries, please phone the number the sergeant gave you earlier.’
Ellie thanked him and shut the door. The whole thing felt unreal now.
‘I’m exhausted, Mum. I think I’m going to chill by playing some computer games in my room and then I’ll get an early night.’ Tom stood up.
Harry put a hand on his sleeve. ‘It’s probably best if you say as little as possible about what happened to your mates at school.’
‘No worries,’ said Tom.
‘What if we say I was being threatened by an intruder at the gallery and you came to my rescue?’ said Ellie. ‘It’s more or less the truth anyway. We don’t need to elaborate about who it was or why they were there.’
She glanced up at her son. He had that “whatever” teenage look.
For once, Ellie didn’t have to wince at the thundering of his feet on the staircase, as he trod so softly on his way up to his room that she couldn’t hear him at all.
Harry and Ellie cleared away the take-away cartons together. She moved to the door to take the carrier bags of rubbish to the wheelie bin.
‘Let me go outside.’
‘You can’t be here all of the time. I have to do this, or I’ll become a virtual prisoner of my fear, scared of my own shadow.’
He stood aside. ‘You’re right. It’s just …’
‘Just what?’
‘It was so horrible seeing that man with his hand on your throat. I … I’ve come to care about you, Ellie.’
‘It’s mutual.’
She smiled, squared her shoulders, went out of the back door and threw the rubbish in the bin. It made a loud bang that reverberated around the small garden. She paused, deliberately, to take a gulp of cool night air before returning to the kitchen. Even the bushes in the garden appeared to have eyes. Her heart thudded against her ribcage, but she wasn’t going to admit as much to Harry. She locked and bolted the door behind her.
Harry’s swollen eye was almost completely closed up. She wondered if he might try to continue the conversation about caring for her, so she spoke first to give herself time to think.
‘I’ll get a pack of frozen peas for that eye.’
‘I’ve no doubt I’ll be covered in bruises tomorrow, but thankfully nothing serious.’
‘Where else do you hurt?’
He laughed and then grimaced in pain. ‘Head, elbows, ribs, knees, stomach and eye. Your ex put up quite a fight. I’ve not been in a scrap like that since my college days and I was a lot younger then.’
He walked over to the driftwood he had helped Tom to finish for Ellie’s birthday. He caressed the wood and it reminded Ellie of the time he had played with her shoes on the beach. The movement of his fingers produced sensations in her body, just as if he was touching her.
‘Thank you for helping Tom sand and varnish my lovely driftwood sculpture.’
‘It’s a nice piece. I’m glad you like it.’
The moment grew in intensity as their eyes met across the room.
‘I’ll get those peas,’ stuttered Ellie, moving away to the freezer.
She handed him the frozen packet wrapped in a tea towel and he applied the cooling compress to his eye.
‘Ow.’
There was something endearing about his expression. Ellie felt herself wanting to smooth the hair back from his forehead and kiss his bruises. Why don’t you? She asked herself, but, inevitably, the old confusions and suspicions concerni
ng Harry rose up to stop her.
‘I can’t stress enough how grateful I am for what you did today, but if we are going to “care” for each other, can we finally drop the pretence?’
He took the peas away from his eye. ‘Pretence?’
‘Stop it, Harry. Will you finally admit I was right?’ Why was she determined to sabotage this relationship? Didn’t she feel she deserved another chance of happiness?
‘In what way?’
Ellie’s frustration with both herself and Harry gathered pace. ‘You were called Ben Rivers in Cornwall, weren’t you?’
‘Ellie, can’t we draw a line under this and deal with the here and now, please?’
‘I need to know. I just need to hear you say it.’
‘I can’t, Ellie. I can’t tell you something that isn’t true. Harry Dixon has never been to Cornwall apart from one holiday when he was ten.’
It was as if he was reciting a practised script and she guessed that was exactly what he was doing.
He sighed and reapplied the peas to his eye. The eye socket was starting to go purple. He was right about school assembly on Monday. Everyone in Borteen would be talking about his black eye, speculating how he came by it and in what way that was connected to Ellie Golden. A wave of guilt passed through her, but her dogged determination to get to the bottom of the mystery wouldn’t go away.
‘You are Ben, aren’t you?’
‘Ellie, you said yourself, this man you call Ben Rivers died in a surfing accident on a beach in Cornwall.’
‘No. Unless you have an identical twin brother, you are Ben Rivers. I was there, remember?’
He shook his head.
She clenched her hands. She’d seen enough violence for one day, but she was so tempted to pummel his chest and keep going until he admitted the truth she wanted to hear.
‘Rushton knew you back then. I wonder if he recognised who he was fighting? He made a comment as he left the gallery, something about understanding everything now.’
‘Ellie, please, drop it. We were fighting at too close quarters to notice anything about each other.’
‘You don’t remember me at all, do you?’
He shook his head. ‘As far as I am aware, we’ve never met before I came to Borteen. I’m sorry if it seems cruel and it’s obviously not what you want me to say, but I have no recollection of our paths ever crossing before.’
Ellie went to the cabinet in the corner and rummaged around in a drawer. She pulled out a packet of photographs. Searching though the pile, she held one in front of Harry.
‘A picture of me in Cornwall.’
It was a faded photograph of a girl in a bikini top and shorts. She was on a beach, with windbreaks and surf boards in the background. Her hair was tied up, but was unmistakably her mop of hair. Ellie felt strangely detached from her younger self. She handed the snapshot to Harry. She could tell he didn’t want to take it, almost as if he feared he would recognise her after all.
She could see him comparing her face with the image in the photograph.
‘Ellie, what did Ben do to you back then? It must have been really bad. I like you a lot, and I think that, given half a chance, we could be good together, if only you’d let go of Ben.’
Chapter Twenty-One
Harry had a good look at the photograph and then put it onto the table in front of him. The girl in the photograph was recognizable as Ellie from her hair, but her nose and the set of her cheekbones was definitely different. One thing he did recognise from the picture was his surfboard. It was one of the ones in the background and had three unmistakable green stripes. He knew he couldn’t comment. This was dangerous ground.
He had no memory of the girl in the snapshot, but wondered again if Ellie’s hair was the cause of his preference for wild locks. The fight seemed to have gone out of Ellie and she just looked sad.
His head was beginning to ache, in fact, he felt rather exhausted. Ellie still wanted confirmation that he knew who she was, that he’d known her in the past, but he couldn’t give her what she wanted. He genuinely didn’t remember her. It was weird, as he definitely remembered Rushton Jacob and he had a horrid feeling that Rushton had recognised him today. It was when Harry was lying winded against the wall and Rushton had looked at him closely.
His future as head of Borteen High was once more in doubt. As soon as his contact discovered what had happened in the gallery and found out that he knew the man he’d been fighting, it was likely he would be spirited away and have to start again somewhere else. The thought filled him with dread, as he’d started to enjoy the possibilities of his life here.
He was suddenly overwhelmed with tiredness and wished he hadn’t eaten the Chinese.
‘Ellie, I might have to ask to sleep on your sofa after all. I’m not feeling too good. Or, you could just call me a taxi.’
‘Don’t be silly. After what you did for me today, you must stay so that I can keep an eye on you.’
Ellie was still suspicious of him and it seemed a terrible imposition to ask to stay the night in her house, but he didn’t think he could walk home, even if he wanted to. His body was beginning to protest at the punishment it had received in the fight.
He was surprised that Ellie didn’t raise any objections. She dutifully fetched a pillow and a fleece blanket and offered him painkillers, before making her excuses and going upstairs to bed.
He lay in the unfamiliar room on the sofa, which was too short for his long legs. He was grateful not to have to talk any more, not to justify his existence, his name, his job, his self-worth. The room was tidy and neat. The whole house had a pleasant floral scent, subtle, but not overpowering. Surprisingly, the walls didn’t have any of Ellie’s art on them; instead, framed prints of the work of famous painters hung from the old-fashioned picture hooks. The furniture was too large for the space. Ellie favoured heavy oak old furniture. It was a revelation to him. He hadn’t imagined an artist who painted such abstract, modern art would be a traditionalist, but then maybe this house was rented and didn’t reflect Ellie’s taste at all.
He wondered vaguely where the light switch was located, but couldn’t be bothered to get up and find it. His body ached all over and he was sure it wasn’t going to be helped by lying cramped on Ellie’s small settee. He closed his eyes. It felt right to be here tonight, despite the throbbing sensations in his body, rather than lying in his own bed wondering if Ellie and Tom were safe. Ellie under attack had brought out protective instincts he wasn’t aware he had. She must be getting under his skin more than he had admitted to himself. She was a very attractive woman, must be to make her way through the steel shutters he had erected over his heart. Yet could they have any sort of future unless he tackled her lingering doubts? He genuinely didn’t know the woman in the photograph, but back then, he’d been so focused on his job and had lived on a knife edge of danger.
He contemplated for a moment what it would be like to be allowed upstairs to sleep in Ellie’s bed and then he fell asleep.
Ellie crept down the stairs. She was hot in the pyjamas she had chosen simply because Harry was in the house, instead of her usual skimpy nightie. She always took a glass of water upstairs for her bedside, but in the haste to get away from the recumbent man on her sofa and the disconcerting emotions he caused, she had forgotten. At the bottom of the stairs, she peeped round the edge of the wall, telling herself it was ridiculous to be creeping around in her own home.
The light in the kitchen-diner was still on. Harry was breathing heavily, not quite snoring, but almost. His swollen eye was turning a deep purple with yellow highlights.
Ellie quietly scooped up the peas he had been using as a compress from where they had fallen on the floor. They were completely defrosted. Every movement she made seemed too loud, especially opening the freezer door to return the peas and turning on the tap to fill her glass that seemed determined to ding on every object. She came back through the room as silently as possible.
The blanket had slipped fro
m Harry’s shoulders. She put down her glass and pulled it over him, tucking it carefully around his body. She was holding her breath, hoping he didn’t wake and find her performing such an intimate, nurturing gesture. When he didn’t stir, she couldn’t resist studying his relaxed face. He appeared younger, despite his poor swollen eye. His lips were bruised too and she had fleeting fantasies about kissing his mouth gently enough not to hurt them. Butterfly kisses around his neck would come next and then she’d reach her hand under his T-shirt. Stop it, Ellie. How could her thoughts see-saw so wildly between suspicion and attraction? She picked up her glass and moved away. After a last glance at Harry’s sleeping form, she switched off the light and bolted up the stairs. She was breathless and flushed as she got into bed.
She couldn’t sleep of course. Her mind kept replaying the events of the day, a blow by blow account of her encounter with Rushton, the sound track of the fight between Rushton and Harry and the conversations she’d had with Harry during the evening. In the small hours, a vivid video played behind her eyelids of her time in Cornwall and Ben Rivers.
Ellie had been eighteen when she first spotted him. Ben was oblivious to her; despite the fact they had many mutual friends and went to some of the same events that summer. Ellie wondered why her girlfriends had no difficulty in attracting and dating guys. What was wrong with her and why didn’t Ben notice her at all?
He had a VW campervan, which was always parked on the beach road. Like so many others in a line at the side of the road, it had surf boards on the roof and his wetsuit hanging from the roof rack. The van was bright orange and a previous owner had adorned the paintwork with stickers. CND emblems vied with smiley faces and flowers.
It didn’t matter how many times Ellie walked past, how she wore her hair, how short her skirt or how skimpy her bikini, Ben appeared to look straight through her. She began to wonder if he preferred the male members of the group.
The Girl on the Beach Page 14