by Jodi Taylor
I shook my head. ‘I just can’t believe it’s all over. When I think what the last eighteen months have been like …’
He shrugged. ‘We both heard what he said. He doesn’t need you any longer.’
‘Mm,’ I said, still not sure how happy I was about that.
‘What are your plans?’ he asked.
‘I … don’t know. After Ted died I just wanted a fresh start in a fresh place.’
‘Well,’ he said, shouldering his pack. ‘Now you have it. Don’t just stand there.’
‘I know,’ I said, ‘but …’ I trailed away, not really sure what I wanted to say and definitely not sure of what I wanted to do with my life now that I so unexpectedly had it back again.
‘I’ll call in whenever I’m passing,’ he said, opening the front door.
‘I’m sure that won’t be necessary,’ I said gloomily.
‘As a friend. And to catch up on episodes of Olympian Heights, of course.’
‘Of course,’ I said gravely. ‘Are you going back to the woods?’
He was evasive. ‘Not sure.’
‘Please give my best wishes to Melek’.
‘I shall. See you around, Elizabeth Cage.’
He heaved his pack over his shoulder and strode off jauntily, whistling to himself, and I turned back into my suddenly empty house.
Once it was all I had ever asked for. Just to live quietly, letting the gentle routine of my days lengthen into weeks, then months, with no more excitement, no more peculiar happenings, and especially no more sinister threats from Sorensen. But that meant no more Michael Jones either. And now, no more Iblis. I had everything I thought I’d wanted.
I stared out of the window. It was a beautiful day. The sun flooded in through the window, making patterns of light and shade on the wooden floor. I stood for a long while, looking out at the castle opposite, the willow trees, the children feeding the swans, everyone streaming past on their way to somewhere else. Everyone had something to do. Or somewhere to go. Or someone to be with. Only I stood apart and alone. I’d had no close friends at school – I suspected they referred to me as ‘the weirdo’. I’d been pleasant at work – but I’d made no friends there. A few had come to my wedding but I’d never seen them since. I looked around. Was this what the rest of my life was going to be like?
I shook myself. It wasn’t like me to have these thoughts. My life didn’t have to be like that. I’d been happy enough before – I could be happy enough again. There would be my comforting daily routine. Daily shopping because I couldn’t carry more than one bag up the hill. There was the lovely café on the corner to have Sunday croissants and read the papers. I would pursue a ferocious course of reading. There was the Local History Society. The art class at the library. There was an autumn exhibition of local artists at the Guildhall. I could take up yoga. Or do a course in creative writing. I should count my blessings. I had no need to work. I had a lovely house in a lovely part of town. I had my health. I should pull myself together and start to enjoy the life I thought I’d always wanted.
I did my best. I honestly did my best, but my life, far from following the serene and sunlit path I’d mapped out for it, seemed determined to toss me into the nearest bed of nettles. Absolutely everything went wrong. It wasn’t disaster piled upon catastrophe or anything like that, but just a continual series of low-grade incidents that depressed my spirits even further. And I missed the company. Well, all right, I missed Michael Jones. He hadn’t been around a lot, but until recently I’d always thought he was at the end of the phone, never more than an email away, and now there was silence. I knew it was for his own good – and mine – but I missed him. God help me, I even missed Iblis, glued to my TV with all the enjoyment of a small child.
In those days after Iblis’s departure, nothing went right for me and for the first time since just after Ted’s death, I was unhappy and I didn’t know why. I slept badly, continually roused by dark dreams I could barely remember afterwards and, possibly because of this, I just couldn’t throw off this awful feeling of lethargy and disinterest in everything. And then, perhaps because of the weather, which turned blustery and rainy, I suffered a nasty cold and a minor tummy upset that left me drained and exhausted and disinclined even to leave the house. Obviously I had to, otherwise I’d have starved to death, but I found the hill increasingly difficult to cope with especially with a still painful foot, and, one day, pausing to rest just outside the archway, I found myself regretting my choice in coming to live up here. I struggled the rest of the way home, set down my shopping without even bothering to unpack it, sat down on the sofa and cried my eyes out.
I was lonely. Until this moment, I’d never really had the time to mourn Ted. After his death it was just one thing after another, but now I remembered him sitting by the fire reading his paper. Digging his garden. Enjoying a quiet pint in front of the TV. And now he’d gone and I was all alone.
I still wasn’t sure that Sorenson’s backing off was a good thing. Someone – I couldn’t remember who – once said, ‘Keep your friends close and your enemies closer still.’ I didn’t have any friends and now even my enemies didn’t seem to want to have anything to do with me. I spent each day wrapped in a lonely bubble of sadness from which I couldn’t find the strength to emerge.
Whether this general lethargy led to carelessness or what, I don’t know, but nothing went right for me. The microwave blew up and took all my fuses with it. I locked myself out and tried Michael Jones’s trick with the credit card, and not only did it not work but I wrecked my card as well and had to order a new one, and there was a problem and I had to limp down to the bank and sign a ton of paperwork. And I couldn’t find my keys anywhere and had to get new locks which cost me a fortune. The weather continued wet and windy. The bathroom window leaked and I began to fear for my roof. There was no reason to – I’d had the house surveyed when I bought it and the surveyor had assured me the roof was perfectly sound, but once the thought was in my head I couldn’t get it out again. I would get up in the night and prowl around the house, listening for the ominous sound of dripping water and searching for damp patches on the ceilings. I wasn’t sleeping anyway, so it didn’t matter too much, but I did begin to wonder if I was turning into one of those dotty spinsters who would one day be eaten by her own cats. Although I’d have to go out and buy some first.
When I did go outside, the weather was wild. The trees swayed in unseasonal gales. I was convinced their branches were reaching for me. I saw threatening shapes everywhere and was convinced they were out to get me. Whether because Sorensen had dismissed my fears about the yew tree – the one that had swallowed little Keira Swanson – or the Tree Protection Order people had prevailed, I don’t know, but no one had taken any action about the malevolent old tree. Without thinking, I’d muttered something to Iblis one day when he was staying with me and, a few days later, the old yew had gone up in flames and been completely destroyed. I’d deliberately not asked a smoke-smelling Iblis about that and, as far as I was concerned, the matter was closed, but in my more unbalanced moments I did wonder if all trees everywhere knew what I’d done and were seeking to avenge themselves.
And as if that wasn’t enough, when I eventually dragged myself over to the Local History meeting, it was to discover that things weren’t right there either. Neither Mrs Painswick nor young Alyson had been to any recent meetings. As Colonel Barton confided to me over tea and a not very nice shop-bought cake, he was worried. None of them had seen the family for some time and they were all concerned about them.
Of course, there could be a perfectly normal explanation. The family might simply have gone away for a while. I nodded politely and tried to stifle the fear that it was me. That I was spreading bad luck to those around me.
‘They might simply have gone to visit relatives,’ I said.
‘Exactly.’ He paused. ‘But I wonder…’
‘Yes, I think perhaps we should call round. Shall we go after the meeting? Young Alyson
should be home from school by then.’
‘An excellent idea.’
I looked around the room. There seemed to be fewer of us these days.
‘Mark’s not here,’ he said. ‘Now that Alyson has stopped attending, so has he.’ His face creased with worry.
‘I’m sure it’s nothing,’ I said. ‘They might not have been well. There’s a lot going around at the moment and I seem to have gone down with most of it. Perhaps they have as well.’
He nodded, we put down our plates and continued with the history of Rushford Castle.
The Painswicks lived on the other side of the river in a new housing estate built out along the Whittington road. It still wasn’t far though. Rushford is not a large town.
We walked slowly and our pace slowed even more as we approached.
They lived in a neat little bungalow. The front garden was immaculate, with a traditional square lawn bordered by flower beds – except that the lawn needed cutting and the plants in the tubs by the front door were wilting through lack of water. The windows were all closed and the curtains part drawn.
‘They’re not here,’ I said, halting on the pavement.
‘Doesn’t look like it, does it?’
They weren’t. We rang the bell several times and the colonel plied the knocker but there wasn’t a sound from within.
We hooded our eyes and peered through the windows. Everything was in perfect order. There were no signs of violence and a hasty departure, which was what I’d been looking for and dreading.
The side gate was unlocked and we went around the back. Again, the garden was beginning to show signs of neglect, but the bins had been emptied. The garage was empty. As was the kitchen. The draining board was clear and dry.
I closed my eyes and let my mind drift … there was … something … but … no, I couldn’t grasp it. I opened my eyes and let it go.
‘They’ve gone away,’ said the colonel. ‘A summer holiday.’
I nodded. ‘So it would seem.’
‘And yet …’ he said.
I agreed. If it had been anyone other than Mrs Painswick and little Alyson … I remembered Mrs Painswick’s bruises and the way she never let Alyson out of her sight.
The colonel had followed my reasoning. ‘What can we do? If we go to the police what would we say? That a family appears to have gone away for the holidays. With no signs of a hasty departure. No signs of violence. Nothing suspicious in any way.’
I nodded.
‘And,’ he continued, ‘if we make a fuss and they return at the weekend to find the police waiting for them … well …’ He tailed off and I couldn’t help but agree.
‘Perhaps,’ I said, ‘we should give it until the end of the month, which isn’t too far off now. The schools will start again soon and if Alyson isn’t there then they might know where she’s gone. And if they don’t … if they’re expecting her back and she hasn’t shown up, then, I think, we have a legitimate cause for concern. ‘
‘Agreed,’ he said.
‘If they’ve finally plucked up the courage to run away then we shouldn’t interfere.’
He looked around. ‘And we’d better go before someone reports us to the police.’
Life continued, although it didn’t seem that way.
The misfortunes continued. Mrs Barton had a nasty fall. They got an ambulance up as far as they could and carried her down to it. The colonel was beside himself with worry and spent most of his time at the hospital.
Our Local History meetings were cancelled for the foreseeable future. It would seem it wasn’t just me whose life had taken a turn for the worst. Everyone I knew seemed to be having a rough time.
Ted’s pension company rang to say there was a problem. They were very nice about it, but there seemed to be some sort of issue which they were sure would soon be resolved. I put the phone down with a feeling of unease. Financially it wasn’t a huge glitch, but if something went wrong with Ted’s pension then it soon might be. A week ago, I would have wondered if it was Sorensen, applying financial pressure to make me work for him, but that didn’t seem to be an ambition of his any longer so I put it down to just one of my many problems.
I had far too much time on my hands. Too much time to think. I sat on the sofa, too exhausted and dispirited even to put on the TV and I wondered how Iblis was doing without his daily dose of Olympian Heights. I wondered if he was still living in the woods and how he was getting on in this weather. I saw his little tent blown to shreds and him shivering, soaking wet, huddled under dripping beech trees.
Which turned my mind to Iblis properly. Because whatever my problems were – and they weren’t insurmountable because the electrics had been fixed, I’d nearly killed myself getting a new microwave oven up the hill, my latest cold had cleared up and I could breathe properly again, and the problem with Ted’s pension would be resolved, I was sure of it – none of that could hold a candle to the tragedy that was Iblis’s life.
I made myself a coffee, closed my mind to the wild weather outside, and settled back to think. I ran through everything he’d told me. It had been the truth, I was sure of it. I’d seen his pain in the way his colour flew around him, comforting and consoling, responding to the torrent of emotions within him. What courage must it take for him to face each day, knowing what he’d done and that the consequences could be deadly, not only to him but to the woman he loved.
I sat back and remembered back to that evening. How he’d looked. What he’d said. Trying to identify that precise moment when I’d felt something wasn’t right. I let my mind drift, trying to see events through his eyes. Seeing what he saw – feeling what he felt – because there was something wrong … I just couldn’t quite put my finger on it … I closed my eyes and just let my mind float free, putting myself into his mind. I’d never done anything like that before and it was like trying to grasp smoke but I stuck at it, just letting my mind wander, because there was something and if I could just home in…
And then suddenly, shrilly, shattering my concentration – the telephone rang.
Chapter Twenty-Four
I’d been so far away inside my own head that the sudden ringing made me jump and I spilled coffee everywhere. I jolted back into this world, scrubbing at the damp patches and cursing.
‘Hello?’
It was Jerry and his first words pushed all thoughts of Iblis straight out of my head.
‘There’s been an accident.’
A terrible fear shot through me. My head swam and I had to clutch the sofa for support. It took me a while to say, ‘Oh God. Was it bad? What happened?’
‘Nothing too serious. Someone sideswiped us at a junction. Not much damage to the car.’
I forgot we weren’t supposed to be using names. ‘What about Jones? Is he badly hurt? Will he die? And you, of course. Are you both all right?’
I thought I heard amusement in his voice. ‘Car’s fine. I’m fine. Banged my elbow a bit but nothing a strip of Band Aid won’t put right.’
‘And Jones? How is he?’
‘Twisted his leg somehow. He can walk but not very far and not very fast. Otherwise he’s fine. Well, still a bit groggy, but that’s not a bad thing. Keeps him sitting still, anyway. Listen, I’m ringing ‘cos I have to go somewhere – prior appointment that I can’t get out of – and I can’t take him with me and I can’t leave him here alone because he’s a bit of a wanderer. He keeps walking into walls. It’s the drugs. He’s a bit of a cocktail at the minute.’
‘He was that before they drugged him,’ I said darkly, which seemed to cause him some amusement.
‘Anyway, can you come here for a few days? What about that Sorensen bloke?’
‘He seems to have lost interest in me so that might not be a problem, but I don’t have a passport.’
‘Don’t need one. We’re only just up the road.’
I tried not to sound judgemental. ‘Oh. You didn’t get very far.’
‘Well, no, like I said, we had an accident.’
/>
‘When?’
He was deliberately vague. ‘’Bout a week ago. Something like that.’
I swallowed down the knowledge they hadn’t told me.
‘So where exactly are you?’
‘Just up the coast. Rushby.’
‘Oh. OK. Yes, I can get there.’
‘Train at two thirty this afternoon from Rushford. Gets in at three fifteen. I’ll meet you.’
‘Um … OK.’
But he’d gone.
My lethargy had disappeared. I looked at the clock, cursed, and ran upstairs. Grabbing my case from under the bed I rammed in a change of clothes. And then another change of clothes. Nightwear. Toiletries. I pulled a coat from my wardrobe and threw it on the bed. I zipped the case shut and then thought – underwear. And a spare pair of shoes. And my hairbrush. And then reminded myself that I wasn’t travelling to the other side of the world and anything forgotten could easily be purchased.
I was running back down the stairs again when I had a thought. I’d be leaving my house unattended. I know Sorensen had backed off but even so … for one moment I even considered whether all this was just an elaborate trap. I really must do something to bring my paranoia back down to an acceptable level.
And then I had an idea. All I had to do was call, he’d said. I sat down on the stairs, emptied my mind, and thought of Iblis. I pictured his long blond hair streaming behind him. I pictured him striding up the hill towards me. And then I thrust the thought outwards, as hard as I could.
And then I felt really silly. It’s a very good job I live alone.
I only just had enough time to catch the train so I didn’t bother ringing for a taxi, hurrying down the hill into town.
Iblis met me half way up. I was surprised and not surprised, all at the same time. But mostly, I was overwhelmingly grateful.
He eyed my suitcase. ‘Are you leaving me, Elizabeth Cage? Is it the mountain Michael Jones again?’
I nodded. ‘I must go, Iblis. This is very important.’
‘Of course. Where are we going?’