When next I woke it was daylight. The room was cold, the fire a blackened pile of charred strips of wood and white ash. I was alone on the rug. Someone, Craig, must have pulled an old-fashioned woollen blanket over my body, tucking it around my legs, my arms. I rolled over, staring at the pattern of light and shadows playing on the ceiling plasterwork; filtered by the wooden shutters at the window, they reminded me of ripples dancing on the water, fluid and repeating, soothing. I imagined a paintbrush in my hand, sweeping water across the page, colour blotting the paper one shade after another, each subtle hue merging with the next until I was appeased.
I could smell coffee and toast. I felt hunger drive me into wakefulness. I rolled onto my stomach, the strands of the rug tickling my skin. I stretched out my legs and arms as if I were swimming, wriggling back down into the blanket, relishing in its rough comfort. Then I sat up, eager to get dressed, to follow the smell of breakfast across the hall. I felt a small tug of pleasure to think that we had just violated the sanctity of Elizabeth’s pristine floral Laura Ashley sitting room.
I felt this was how the house should be lived in. By the two of us, Craig and me. I wondered if I was foolish to feel like that, but I couldn’t help myself. As the day wore on, it was strange how easily I abandoned my work and daily routine to be with Craig. Patsy sat in a corner on her doggy bed, content to lay her head upon her paws and snooze as Craig and I chatted and kissed, lying close, reluctant to be apart for even a few moments. Time became meaningless and we ate and made love when we were hungry.
Over the next few days, I couldn’t get enough of him. Craig did eventually go back to his cottage, but he came and went as if the house had become his second home. It was like I’d never been in love before, had never felt loved, full stop. I was excited, bewitched, every inch of my skin singing for his touch, eager – like an eager puppy. Was that pathetic? No, it was amazing.
It had never felt like this with Paul, even at the beginning. All thoughts of my troubles, Danny and my memories of the house had gone, supplanted by the sheer joy of being with Craig. Even the house seemed more at ease – gone were the creaks and groans and there were no more power cuts or disturbing noises in the night. Or perhaps I was just too distracted and happy to notice.
I hadn’t heard from Steph for over a week. I swallowed my sense of guilt. Had I stirred up her own bad memories? I didn’t want to think about Steph, or Danny or Elizabeth or Paul. About anyone else for that matter. Why should I think about any of them? I was defiant. Funny how with the presence of someone else, someone meaningful, all those ghosts and ghouls in the corner of the attic and the back of my mind were chased away.
So the days went by quickly, a second week, it was a blur. I couldn’t stop thinking about Craig. Eventually I did have to work. I got an email from David, my agent, reminding me of the deadline.
In fact, David wrote, the client is saying if you could possibly complete by the end of January they would be really pleased.
It brought me up – I’d been expecting to submit mid to late February. A deadline always focuses the mind.
‘It’s alright,’ said Craig. ‘We’ve both got work and clients.’
He pulled me close and kissed me a little more forcefully than normal, as if the threat of work intruding on our fragile bubble of new love made him angry.
So now Craig went home to his workshop and I returned to my painting. But when he wasn’t at the house, I was waiting for him to arrive. If I was lying in my bed alone, or sitting at the kitchen table working, I was waiting for him to ring. He didn’t use Skype. My feet jumped the moment the mobile beeped and my eyes were drawn constantly to the front windows, watching to see if a figure was coming up the drive.
It was intoxicating. I felt liberated, free to be myself, to express myself in a way I’d never done before. I put music on and the paintings for the commission flowed. Each image was filled with colour and movement, each scene enhanced with mischievous detail. A forest where the trees were all entangled lovers. A pair of frantic snails etched into a stained-glass window. Two serpents, each consuming the other, wound in a translucent figure of eight.
But somewhere in my brain, it nagged at me, buried deep, as if I were avoiding it. The boy in the garden, Danny, my brother, and that blank wall. Why couldn’t I see beyond it? Did I want to see beyond it?
CHAPTER 23
‘Happy Christmas!’
‘Happy Christmas, Steph!’ I sat down in front of the computer.
I couldn’t resist grinning at Steph’s face on the screen as I waved a Christmas cracker in one hand and a glass of Elizabeth’s sherry in the other. I’d been impressed that Craig had managed to rustle up a pair of Christmas crackers, given there was still so much snow. They were left over from last year, he’d said. The whole country had ground to a halt for its first proper white Christmas in years. Craig leaned in over me, his image alongside mine suddenly in view.
‘You look happy, Caro!’ Steph’s face was pinched and she didn’t seem very pleased. Was she thinking of something else?
‘Oh, I am! Steph, meet Craig; Craig, meet Steph, my sister!’
Craig was bare-chested, his jeans respectably held up by a leather belt, except the buckle was still undone. He peered over my shoulder at the screen unabashed, his face in the camera looming large with an apparently squished nose.
‘Hello, Steph, Caro’s sister!’ he said, waving his hand cheerfully. ‘Happy Christmas!’
‘You remember Craig,’ I said.
As if Steph hadn’t remembered Craig, my neighbour from the cottage. Funny, I thought, she really doesn’t look too thrilled, you’d think she’d be pleased for me. I remembered our last conversation, but in my semi-alcoholic loved-up daze, I really didn’t care. I didn’t want to think about the past or the future. Only now. And she was in New York and I bet she had some athletic Wall Street banker tucked under her blankets. Hadn’t she mentioned someone back in November, after the funeral?
‘Hello, Craig.’ Steph pushed her laptop further away and her face veered almost out of screenshot.
‘You still got snow?’ I asked, raising my voice.
‘Yes, but it’s under control and they’ve got the transport system working again.’
‘Well, that’s good then?’
It was a question, warning Steph that I’d picked up on her mood. She ignored me.
‘I haven’t posted you a gift, Caro, since we’re meeting up soon. I thought you might let me take you shopping like we said, and you could choose something.’
‘That sounds lovely, thank you. I’ll have something for you too. I’ll bring it with me when we meet up.’
My painting for Steph – I still hadn’t decided what to paint for her, and what with Craig and my new deadline, it hadn’t been at the forefront of my mind. I bit my lip. It was important, this gift – our first exchange of presents for many years. Far too long.
Steph nodded and I took a slug of sherry. Offscreen, Craig was doing his best to distract me with his toes and I struggled to keep a straight face.
‘Okay, then,’ she said. ‘Look, I can see you’ve got company. I wanted to wish you a Happy Christmas and all that. Enjoy the rest of your day!’
Steph gave a wave and the screen shrank with a soft pop and she was gone.
Not a very successful Christmas call, I thought with a stab of guilt. I gave Craig a friendly shove.
‘That wasn’t very tactful, you know!’
‘What, letting your sister know you’d got company?’
‘You know what I mean – half naked, all over me. It’s a bit much, isn’t it?’
‘Depends; most sisters would be pleased for you, wouldn’t they? If they knew you had a “friend”.’ He gave the word ‘friend’ a little emphasis.
I lowered my eyes. Why would he want to have a little dig at my sister? But now he was reaching out and pulling me into his arms and it was a while before we spoke again.
Boxing Day came and went, and the day after. T
he temperature outside was rising and the snow had begun to melt. The farmer’s tractor had been up the lane and Craig had made it through the road on foot down to the village. He’d left Patsy with a friend. He didn’t say who and I didn’t ask – all I wanted to know was that he was free to stay with me uninterrupted.
He’d come back with a top-up of food supplies, and at night the house glowed with candles on every surface, the kitchen littered with our coffee cups, wine glasses and plates. Craig and I spent our time together feeding each other titbits, snoozing in between sex and cooking in the kitchen. Work on the house clearance and commission had stopped and with it all thoughts of the past. I couldn’t stop smiling.
The next day, I woke alone in my bed. Craig had left a note – Had to go and fetch Patsy.
I dragged myself from the bed to stand at the window. The sun was bright outside, warm enough to create small pits in the snow. I could hear the chink, chink of water flowing from the drainpipes around the house. I was reminded of my deadline for the commission. I got dressed, skipped downstairs and brewed myself a cup of tea. Sitting at the kitchen table, I thumbed through the pages to a story headed Eostre.
Eostre was the daughter of the Sun and the Moon …
A footnote announced that this was a Romany tale.
A goddess, her parents said, does not fall in love with the wrong type.
But unfortunately for Eostre, she did. She was so in love, poor thing, her eyes shining, her face beaming, her feet dancing across the floor.
‘Who is it?’ her mother asked. But Eostre was too excited to say.
‘You must tell us,’ said her father. ‘We want to welcome this new god!’
Eostre calmed herself. Rubbing her palms against her dress, she took a deep breath. ‘I have fallen in love with Earth!’
There was silence. The Sun looked at the Moon and the Moon looked back. The Earth was not a god. They spoke in unison, ‘We forbid it!’
Eostre was in shock. The Earth was so warm and loving, so vibrant with colour and life. How could her parents not approve? But all the pleading and persuasion would not win them round. She fled the hall, seeking the one god she thought might be sympathetic, the one who had created the animals of the world.
‘Can you help me?’ she said.
‘Yes, I can change you so that your wishes will be so, but once it is done, there will be no changing back.’
‘I don’t care. I want to lie in my lover’s arms. I want to sleep against his body, to feel his breath upon my skin.’
Her friend smiled. He changed her there and then. Eostre looked down upon soft brown fur and a body that crouched low. Her nose twitched and her ears reached up. She sat on her haunches and smelt her lover’s scent.
‘Thank you,’ she whispered.
She went a little mad with the joy of it, Eostre the hare. Leaping and bounding across the fields, pausing to listen for her lover. That night she slept in his arms, as her friend had promised. She hid amongst the tall grasses and laid her cheeks against the rich black soil. And when she listened with her long ears, she heard the rumble of his voice, the moans and groans of a thousand voices, the tiny creatures that lived within his flesh, the red rivers that pumped through his veins, the deep, dark core of him beating out a rhythm.
I put the papers down, unwilling to read any more. It was a story of love and happiness, but somehow tinged with regret. Love, it seemed, came at a price.
CHAPTER 24
Overnight, the snow had reduced considerably, though the great drifts that had blown down from the fields still clung to the hedges like a giant had strode across the hillside and spat on them. Water bounced and tumbled down the road, draining off the fields, and birds cheeped. The world outside was slowly coming back to life; there was even the distant growl of a car going by on the road, signalling our return to normality.
Now that Patsy was back with him, Craig seemed reluctant to be around more than a few hours at a time. He would stay late, sure enough, long into the night, but by the early hours he’d say he had to go home, that he didn’t want to leave Patsy too long. It didn’t make sense, he’d brought her with him before and it annoyed me, waking up on my own. I said we could go to his, but he just shrugged and laughed.
‘It’s a tip at my place, all dirty laundry and smelly socks. It’s much nicer at yours.’
I wasn’t sure about that. But perhaps it was too soon for him, to show me his home. I had to be patient. But I wanted to see more of him, not less, to hold onto that feeling of being cuddled up to, to wake in his arms with no rush to get dressed, no obligation to do anything at all, all day.
‘What about tomorrow?’ I said. ‘It’s New Year’s Eve. Surely you can bring Patsy here for that?’
It was mid-morning. I still hadn’t got up. I rolled onto my front on the bed, talking into the phone, remembering how the moonlight looked on Craig’s neck.
‘Oh no, I don’t think she’d like that.’
‘But that’s nonsense. She lived here when Elizabeth was alive.’
‘Of course, but that’s exactly it – Elizabeth’s not here any more and Patsy’s been missing her. It’ll be even worse with all the fireworks in the village for New Year, she’ll be even more jittery.’
I didn’t get it – Patsy adored Craig, and she’d been fine before. Could she still be pining for Elizabeth after all this time? But then I realised, Craig needed his own space, of course he did. The dog was an excuse to have a bit of a break.
‘Okay,’ I said, trying not to dwell on it.
Craig hung up, promising to come in time for dinner the next day.
I couldn’t face the commission that afternoon. I couldn’t concentrate. I decided to finish going through the bills from the bureau.
It was illuminating, looking through Elizabeth’s credit card receipts, seeing how she’d spent her money. She had a fondness for farm-shop home delivery and a weekly flower display from a florist in Ashbourne. She’d had expensive tastes. I scanned the statements. There was at least a year’s worth. Last December’s bill was high. Several department store charges, a wine merchant and two Ashbourne boutiques. Was that all for herself? The most recent statement didn’t appear to have been paid and I placed it on the ‘For Briscoe’ pile. There were more prosaic bills, a delivery of domestic oil, household insurance, a car service … the papers fluttered to the ground one after the other, her life laid bare for me. I was sure she’d have hated the idea of me going through her stuff.
The service bill was interesting. She’d had a BMW X5, smart and eminently practical for the countryside, but where was it? There’d been no sign of a car outside. I could have done with one of those in this weather. I placed it in a new pile, before picking up the next bill.
‘Hulland Ward Log Supplies’.
It was an invoice for firewood, dated 4th October, two weeks before Elizabeth’s death. £150. It wasn’t marked as paid as most of the others were. I fingered the paper thoughtfully, then reached for my phone and tapped out the numbers from the header. It was a long shot but they might be open.
‘Ian Stokes here. At Hulland Ward Log Supplies. I’m sorry, but we’re closed for the Christmas holidays, please leave a message after the tone.’
Not a very helpful answer machine message since it didn’t bother to say when they were re-opening. I left a reply.
‘Hi, this is Elizabeth Crowther’s stepdaughter.’ There wasn’t much point in giving my own name. ‘Could someone please ring me when you’re back in?’
I gave my number and hung up. I tucked the bill into my pocket and made a mental note to try them again later next week. I looked at the logs piled up beside the fire. Why would Elizabeth have ordered wood for delivery so close to another order of logs from Craig?
The next day, I was working when Craig arrived earlier than expected. The afternoon sun was shining across the kitchen table and I’d had to pull one of the shutters over the window. He came through the back door and slid his arms around me, pressing
his lips to the side of my neck.
‘Your nose is freezing!’ I said.
‘You’d better warm me up, then,’ he said.
After a moment, I pushed gently away.
‘I need to do some shopping. I thought you were coming later,’ I said. ‘I promised you something nice to eat for tonight and the snow’s almost gone.’
Craig laughed. ‘Shopping is not what I had in mind!’
I felt myself lean in towards him, one hand reaching for his chest. But I shook my head. I really did need to get some supplies. If we didn’t go soon the shops would be closing early for the New Year.
‘Later,’ I said warmly. ‘Come shopping with me.’
Craig’s fingers tangled in mine, but I could hear it in his voice, the hesitation.
‘Sure,’ he said.
We drove in my car and I parked by the green. The butcher’s shop was still open. As we walked past, the assistant and her customer looked up. I took a sharp intake of breath. The customer was Angus McCready, the man who’d been so unpleasant to me in Ashbourne. He was wearing a leather jacket, his yellow hair brushed back. He grinned in a nasty, derisive kind of way and I glared back. Craig hadn’t seemed to notice.
I was jittery inside the Co-op, convinced that Angus was going to come in too, that I would have to face another confrontation. The look he’d flashed towards me was definitely indicative of his recognition and scorn. Horrible man, I thought, trying to dismiss it. I filled a small trolley as fast as I could and Craig followed me, picking out a bottle of wine.
‘Morning, Craig!’ A middle-aged woman stopped next to us. ‘Did you have a good Christmas?’
‘Yes, indeed, Miriam. And you?’
‘Oh, pretty hectic, you know – the boys are all home and we’ve got my sister and her husband here as well.’
Miriam cast a brief glance at me but carried on addressing Craig. I tried to catch her eye, to include myself, but she kept her head focused on Craig. After a few more pleasantries, she walked to the till. I watched Craig’s face but it was expressionless. My fingers clenched around my handbag and I reached out for a loaf of bread.
The Stranger in Our Home Page 15