What The Cat Dragged In (The Celtic Witch Mysteries Book 1)
Page 19
***
Everyone was there.
Even Adam. His panda car was parked in a prominent spot right at the entrance to the sports centre, and it was currently overrun with small children who were trying to get the lights to flash. There was a certain way you had to press buttons, apparently, to prevent people accidentally setting off the sirens. Adam stood to one side and smiled benignly. He was bare-headed. His hat was being worn by a snot-nosed toddler who was posing for about a million photos being taken by every member of its very large extended family.
“Wait till I send Davey this,” one woman was commenting. “He’ll think it’s well funny.”
“Isn’t he the one in prison?”
“Yeah, yeah, he is.”
Dilys elbowed her way to the front of the crowd that was gathering around all the local dignitaries standing in the entrance. Someone had dug up some small bay trees and put them in pots either side of the door. A ribbon was stretched across the entrance. Various well-fed councillors were milling around and congratulating one another with broad smiles.
And there was Rachel Harris in a dark blue skirt-suit. Everything looked so sharply ironed that I would be scared to touch her in case I cut myself a crease. Her hair was hairsprayed into a helmet of perfection, and her smile was frighteningly fixed as she smooched her way around the great-and-good.
There was one person who looked incredibly harassed. They had a clipboard and a walkie-talkie and a general air of competence. They dashed around, pushing people into place, and getting generally flustered.
Maddie and I let Dilys go forward but we stayed to one side, waiting. I felt a presence join me. I recognised the fleeting touch of ice on the back of my neck.
“Hey, Mr Cameron,” I said. “Robert.” I was still never fully comfortable in calling him “Robert.” Did ghosts even still care about politeness? I thought I heard him laugh.
He had persisted in lingering. I had almost grown used to his presence. But today, that was all to end. And I knew he was looking forward to it, too. He hadn’t spoken to me since the dramatic night two weeks ago, but he’d been around.
I had sent a hamper of the very nicest food I could find over to Iolo Pritchard in his rest home. I had had no acknowledgment but I hadn’t expected one.
Horatio had pumped me for information. Over an unexpected glass of brandy, which tasted fiery and gave me a killer head, I had told him everything. I knew he believed me, and I also knew he didn’t want to believe me. We hadn’t discussed it. I’d spoken, he’d listened, and then he’d thanked me and we had sat in silence for a little while. A comfortable silence, I must add.
The rottie had been rehomed after a week of searching for his previous owners. I had certain doubts about his former home anyway – he was too thin and too scared – and no microchip had been found. He had settled already and I had good hopes for him.
This was the first time I’d seen Rachel Harris since that night. My clothes had never been returned to me. I assumed she had destroyed them.
The flustered man with the clipboard finally herded everyone into the positions he wanted them. He called for silence and attention. The press lined up with their cameras. Well, there was just the one camera – the press consisted of a solitary junior reporter who was rushing between a million other jobs in the vast area they covered for the regional paper.
The mayor stepped up to a microphone which he didn’t need. He began to talk about community and health and wellness and, inexplicably, the decline of sea fishing. While he was trying to forge some tenuous narrative link between catching a conger eel and the state of the local economy, Rachel Harris’s gaze landed on me.
Oh good heavens, I thought. That is not a look of gratitude.
I could see the wolf behind her eyes. She glared at me with anger and hunger. Her body was taut, like she was having to hold herself back with great effort.
“Uh, so, Rachel doesn’t look so happy,” Maddie whispered.
“No. I saved her life, after she tried to take mine!” I whispered back. “I am not expecting a medal or anything, but it would be nice if she didn’t look at me like I’d just been sick in her shoe.”
“Well, I guess there’s your problem,” Maddie said. “Having someone save your life is an incredible burden.”
“I don’t get it.”
“She owes you and she owes you big time. How hard must that be for her?”
“I suppose so.”
I had to break eye contact with her. She was not going to let this one die, I realised.
But someone – something, perhaps – had to die, today.
It was nearly time for the acknowledgment.
The manager of the sports centre stepped forward. She began to speak about the history and the background of the place. Then she said,
“There is one person, above all, whose contribution to this centre has been overlooked for too long.”
Everyone in the crowd looked at Rachel.
But we knew it was not her.
“He worked tirelessly to raise interest and then funds,” the manager went on. “But, tragically, he never lived to see the fruit of his labours. Today, marking the new phase in the improvements we’re planning, we are proud to announce the renaming of the Robert Cameron Sports Centre!”
“The who…?” was a refrain we heard rippling around the crowd. “That bloke in the paper what died?” and “Oh, didn’t he play football or something?” Though, once one person started to clap, it was taken up by the whole audience out of a general politeness. The mayor pulled a cord next to a red curtain that had been set up and the fabric parted to reveal a brass plaque screwed to the wall next to the door.
“Mine…” breathed the ghost next to me, and suddenly, with an inaudible pop that made my ears throb, he was gone.
Maddie looked at me. “I thought I heard something?”
“He’s left. He’s at rest. That was what he wanted.”
Maddie nodded. She jerked her head towards the dignitaries, and I knew she meant Rachel. “And her?”
“It wasn’t what she was so scared about, in the end.”
Maddie shook her head. “Poor woman. It was never about Barry or Robert, was it?”
I chewed my lip. Maddie had tried to make me understand the pressures so many women faced regarding getting older, but I was so far removed from it all that it was just a theory, to me. Still, Rachel’s whole being was tied up in how she presented herself as a young, capable, strong woman in her prime. If people knew that Robert had been her father, and they knew when he had died, then all her competitions and awards and prizes were false and fraudulent.
I didn’t intend on revealing her secret to anyone. She couldn’t stay young forever, could she? She had to age at some point.
“She doesn’t look like she’s gonna leave it alone, though,” Maddie said.
“I know,” I said, ruefully. “I still don’t get why not. Not the ageing thing. I mean, she shouldn’t have to continue her argument with me. It’s not logical.”
“I guess it’s because you know things about her, now. Things that no one else knows. That makes you her prime enemy because you have so much power over her.”
“Oh, that’s pathetic,” I said. “Why would I even want power over another person?”
“You don’t? You don’t want money, you don’t want fame. What do you want, Bron?”
“A quiet life,” I said crossly. “And a nice cake. Shall we go to Caffi Cwtch?”
“You know,” Maddie remarked as we turned away and pushed through the already-dispersing crowd. “I never did work out what cwtch meant.”
“Stop,” I said.
“Why?” She stopped and turned to me, slight anxiety clouding her face.
“This is a cwtch,” I told her, and enfolded her in a great big hug. “There. Consider yourself educated.”
She grinned at me. “And they told me the British were uptight.”
“What did they tell you about the Welsh?”
>
She pursed her lips. “Here be dragons.”
“They’re right about that.” I linked my arm in hers and we went on in search of cake, and cwtch, and dragons, and faeries, and – in my case – a quiet life.
For now.
The End
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