‘Yeah. Returning your call?’
‘Okay.’ I explained my – or rather, Guy’s – predicament. ‘So if you’re still willing to put your place forward, I’d like to come and take a look at it.’
There was a pause. Right, so he’d changed his mind, fine, that happened all the time. People thought it would be glamorous to see their house on TV, until they read through all the forms and disclaimers and waivers which practically ensured that the crew could burn down your home, disembowel your children, run over your dog and wave a cheery, and unsue-able, goodbye at the end of the day.
‘Don’t worry about it. I’ll go scouting, there’ll be somewhere.’
‘No, no, just thinking. I’m not at home at the moment. I could be back tonight but you won’t want to come here in the dark, so how about tomorrow? Fourish?’
He gave me directions. Later, when I traced them onto the Ordnance Survey map, I found his cottage was on the opposite side of Barndale Woods to Vivienne’s, their houses lying either end of a connecting track. Barndale Woods was a sprawling mass of ancient forest, although the map made it look an innocent green blob, and I knew that some bits were quite inaccessible. If the track wasn’t driveable, at least it meant Kai’s place was close enough to Vivienne’s not to condemn me to getting embarrassingly lost on foot. I could go straight from his place to meet up with Megan, for our cosy-in. Well, maybe not straight there; I’d quite like to get tanked on vodka before I had to meet up with the Earnest Sisters again.
I shook my head over the map. What the hell did they all think they were playing at? A bunch of grown women making wishes? I let my eyes trace the contours of the local hills. Sensible lines, practical lines, nothing whimsical or fanciful about them, nice and plain and solid; unchanging. If only all of life could be that impassive and sensible, that rooted in reality … and it hadn’t escaped my attention that all the women’s wishes were a bit man-centric. Isobel, wanting to be someone’s whole world; Megan, wanting to be a goddess; Vivienne and her, quite frankly, scary desires for her ex. Even the outwardly sensible Eve. What the hell was it with them? I mean, yeah, okay, men were fine in their place, and I’d had a good time with quite a few over the years. They could be good company for an evening, over a meal, and then later they were entertaining for a while in bed, but anything else? Not for me. Oh, not that I’m a slapper or anything – I mean they’ve all known the score – but, nah, I don’t regret any of it. Fun, that’s what it was for, all it was ever meant to be. Fun while it lasted.
I’d realised a long time ago that the manacle round the third finger, left hand was not for me. I wasn’t meant to be tied down and restricted; liked my own space too much. My lovely triangular house with its double-fronting onto the main Malton road, which tapered in an unlikely fashion to the world’s only Isosceles kitchen at the back. My office, my sunny bedroom, all untainted by scattered copies of Top Gear magazine and skiddy underpants. I spent long enough clearing up Nicky’s messes – in his kitchen, even the mice had mice – and, what with keeping his laundry up to date and making sure he had regular meals, coming home to do it all again would be enough to make Kirstie Allsopp run for the hills. So, since I had no desire to have children, could acquire a casual shag whenever I wanted or needed one, what on earth would I want a man for?
Besides, I travelled so much. I’d worry about who was exercising him when I was away.
I shut down the laptop and went into town to meet up with Nicholas. Since I’d done all his housework yesterday, today our designated venue was the big park down near the river. Open-air meetings suited Nick: he could run around the trees if he was having an ‘up’ day, or sit brooding on a bench, blurting out all the random stuff that seemed to poison his mind without disturbing other people, on one of his down days. Today he was lounging on the grass, despite the damp, eating a packet of peanuts. I spotted him from the path and tried to assess his mood before I reached him. With Nicholas it was best to know what you were facing before you actually faced it, so you could prepare, and the slouched posture could have meant almost anything, although the fact he was eating meant that this was probably one of the better days – he’d been known to go two weeks without food when his mood took a downward slide, and I’d have to tempt him to eat with treats, like a sickly cat.
‘Hey!’ The simple syllable told me all I needed. Or rather, the inflection. On a bad day, Nick could put a depressive tilt on ‘I won the lottery’. ‘How’s the witching business?’
‘Don’t start.’ I sat beside him, trying not to catch my boot-heels in the mud. ‘Is that jacket new?’ Wow, this was a turn up, Nicholas actually buying clothes. If I didn’t make him change, he’d stay in his favourite outfit all the time. Seriously. All the time. It’s cute when a five-year-old wears his wellies to bed, but when a thirty-two-year-old refuses to take off his parka, it really isn’t. It was some kind of security thing, apparently.
‘Yeah, well, newish.’ He looked at the blazer-style grey wool. ‘Makes me look a bit like a teacher though, doesn’t it?’
He actually looked fragile, with his blond hair and pale eyes and even paler skin. The jacket was slightly too big for his skinny shoulders and too bulky for his frame, it made him look like Paddington Bear without the hat. ‘Nah. It’s cool.’ I took a proffered peanut. ‘So, what’s the excuse for the new wardrobe?’
A shake of the head. I watched two girls, students in their Ugg boots and tight jeans, pass, turn to look over their shoulders at Nick, then nudge each other, giggling. ‘Are they laughing at me?’
‘No, Nicholas, they are checking you out, you daft bugger. Damn but good looks run in our family.’
‘I should have got married.’
Conversational shifts were something I took for granted with my brother. ‘Why?’
‘Because I’m thirty-two. By now Ma and Dad should be grandparents. You should be an auntie and we should have had a big family wedding with cousins everywhere and everyone dancing to La Vida Loca with their elbows.’
I sighed and hugged his arm; padded by the grey wool, it was like hugging a lagged pipe. ‘Plenty of time. You’ll meet the right girl one day. What about that dark-haired lass you used to hang around with when you were just out of hospital? You went to support group together, didn’t you? Whatever happened to her?’
‘She was a jumper.’
‘Woolly and a bit thick?’
‘No.’ And he mimed someone diving from the top of something high. The splat bit was very effective. ‘So, I was thinking … when you’re doing your witchy stuff, can you do a spell for me? To help me find someone?’
‘What is this? You’ve never believed in stuff like this before – apart from that time when you thought the squirrels were talking to you. And suddenly witchcraft does it for you?’
He pulled back sharply, like a horse tugging at a rope, with his head coming up in alarm and sending his hair tumbling backwards, leaving his face exposed and little-boyish. ‘Why are you angry, Holl?’
‘I’m not,’ I said, locking down on the sarcasm. If I got angry, Nick got scared. I’d learned to be careful about showing my emotions in front of him. ‘Honestly, I’m not. I’m just confused that so many otherwise sensible people have come over all credulous and naïve all of a sudden. Is there something in the water?’
He gave me one of his sudden grins, all signs of panic gone. ‘But I’ve never been sensible though, have I? Go on, Holl. Do a spell for me.’
‘But I …’ Useless. Pointless, even, pleading with a guy whose brain works on an alternative-sanity clause. Absolutely no good telling him that I was only going along to keep Megan out of mischief. ‘Yeah, all right. I’ll do a spell for you.’
‘Great.’ He threw a peanut up and caught it between his teeth. ‘Make it a good one. I mean, no eye of newt stuff – I want a girlfriend not an amphibian.’
‘Yes, Nicholas.’
‘And not ugly. She doesn’t have to be gorgeous but I’d like her to at least be pretty.’
‘And if she could have enormous …’
‘You don’t need witchcraft, you need a mail-order catalogue. Shut up about women, will you?’
‘Okay. Can we go to the café now, I’m hungry.’
Yeah. Why the hell would I ever want kids when I had Nicky to look after?
I parked at the end of the road that led into Barndale Woods. I looked at the state of the forestry track ahead from a professional point of view. The lorries and catering trucks would be able to manage it, no trouble, but crew with little cars like mine would have to park out on the road and walk in. As long as it wasn’t too far, I thought; most of them came up from London and had to be cappuccino’d every five yards or their legs fell off. Pulling my wellies on and setting out, I looked at the track from my point of view. No way did I feel like walking to Vivienne’s through this squicky muck in anything less than a diving suit. Better off coming back for the car and driving the long way round.
After a couple of minutes walking, the conifer belt gave way to much older woodland, dark-barked birches and squat oaks. The trees hid the sky, underfoot the track was squashy with their discarded leaves and their vast trunks muffled sound. Ahead of me a heavy-bodied pheasant clucked its way up into the branches like a panicked housewife trying to get airborne, making me jump, and I hunched deeper into my coat as I kicked my way through the drifts. ‘It’s about a quarter of a mile,’ Kai Rhys had said. ‘You can’t miss it if you go straight on.’
But surely I’d gone further than a quarter of a mile by now. Had the path branched and I’d been concentrating too hard on not getting my boots sucked off to notice? I stopped walking. The bleak strip of sky visible between the skeletal tree-fingers was darkening alarmingly. Somewhere, with impeccable timing, an owl hooted and I wrinkled my nose. These woods were almost self-consciously atmospheric; I suspected that any minute now a little dormouse would run over my foot and twitch its whiskers cutely at me.
‘Lost?’ The voice out of nowhere made me leap forward. Was I inheriting something from Nicholas and hearing the trees talk?
‘Hello?’ I managed.
‘What are you doing walking around out here?’ The voice was no-nonsense, clipped. ‘Have you lost your dog?’
‘What? No.’ Reassured – after all, if the trees were going to go all animate on me they’d hardly sound like a bossy upper-class twit, would they? – I turned around. ‘I’m trying to get to the Old Lodge.’
‘I see.’ The shadowy figure came closer. He was stocky, dressed in gamekeeper-green, reddish hair poking from his head like flames. Under one arm he carried a shotgun, properly broken and everything, but the way he held it left me in no doubt that he could flip it shut and fire without thinking twice. ‘It’s down the track there. Between the trees.’
‘Okay, thanks.’ I waited for him to move off, but he stayed, still half in the shade of the trees.
‘You want to be careful, being in these woods, girlie.’ The light made his figure look ethereal, his green clothing camouflaging his body so that his ginger hair appeared to float above the leaf mulch. ‘Dangerous. Make sure you keep to the footpaths.’
‘I’ll be fine.’ As long as no one shoots me in the back, I wanted to add, but you don’t mess with an armed guy with no noticeable sense of humour and a distinct problem with women. ‘Thanks.’ I added.
‘Well. All right then.’ He turned away, there were a few moments of crackling footsteps, and then I heard the engine of a Land Rover cough into reluctant life somewhere behind the trees. I hadn’t heard it arrive, which meant he’d been standing there watching me for a while before he spoke. Sinister.
A few yards further on, the track suddenly widened out and branched off. I followed the right hand branch and the Old Lodge came into full view. I stopped and stared.
It had clearly been designed by an architect who was a full-on fan of the Transylvanian school of civil engineering. Not one spare brick was undecorated, unfestooned or ungargoyled and if there were as many fireplaces as there were chimneys then this was conflagration central. It was perfect, and I fired off a couple of quick pictures.
I went up to the front door and rapped, using the enormous wrought iron dragon-shaped knocker. After a moment the door swung open with a wheeze and a sucking sound, as though the hallway was pressurised.
‘Hey, you found us.’ Kai Rhys stood backlit on the threshold. He looked even taller than I remembered and, in his half-illuminated state, slightly spectral. ‘What do you think? Told you it was gothic, didn’t I?’
‘This is gothic plus. Supergothic. Hypergoth.’ I followed him into the hall and stared around. ‘Oh wow, it’s the same indoors.’ If this building had been a person it would have been wearing six-inch eyeliner, a Buffy T-shirt and quoting Leonard Cohen lyrics.
‘Come through.’ Kai ushered me into a double-height, beamed sitting room, which smelled oddly impersonal, of new carpet and fresh paintwork. A fire burned picturesquely in an enormous iron grate and two sofas faced one another in front of it, but apart from those and two towering bookcases crammed with paperbacks, the room was bare of furniture. A number of large crates were dotted around the floor, one had the lid half off and polystyrene packing material hanging out.
‘Are those bodies in there?’
‘I’m a journalist not a serial killer. Still moving in, hence—’ he swept an arm around to indicate the largely empty room. ‘So, what do you think?’
‘Fantastic. Guy will love it. I’ve taken a few shots outside for him, but could I take some in here, just for me?’ I brandished my digital camera. ‘I love that fireplace.’
‘Sure. You’ll excuse me? I just got back in from Glasgow and I’ve a story to file.’ He didn’t wait for my answer but left the room. I heard him call something but didn’t hear what. I was too busy taking shots of the warring demons over the mantelpiece and the arched ceiling beams.
When I straightened up eventually, a young, blonde, and very pregnant girl had come into the room and was arranging something on the window ledge. She smiled when she saw me. ‘Hey. I think it’s a bit much for a house though, don’t you? I mean, what’s acceptable in your average chateau doesn’t go down too well when you try to stuff it into a thousand square feet.’ She straightened up with one hand in the small of her back. ‘Phoo. Come on babes, shift over. We’re nearly done.’ Her accent was not Welsh, more lower Midlands.
Outside the window I could see the night had crept up on me. Damn. It would be too dark to do any more outside shots now. Oh well, Guy would have to make do with what I’d done already. After all, how many angles did he need? The place was the architectural equivalent of Marilyn Manson lyrics. ‘Well, I’d better let you get on with it. Thanks for letting me see round the place, and say thanks to Kai too, would you?’
‘No worries. Where did you leave your car?’
‘At the top of the lane, at the pull-in to your track.’
She pulled a face. ‘God, it’s dark out there now, you can’t walk back through the woods. I’ll get Kai to give you a lift back to get it.’
‘No, it’s fine,’ I tried to protest but I have to admit my heart wasn’t in it. The thought that the fiery-headed bloke with the gun might still be lurking away in the undergrowth kept forcing its way to the front of my mind.
‘It’s okay. He could do with a break anyhow. And some socialisation exercises. Works too much on his own, that one. Kai!’ she called through the doorway, ‘Can you fire up the Jeep?’
A distant voice yelled back. ‘Give me a couple of minutes.’
The girl grinned. ‘See? Told you he’d be keen for a break.’ She winced and put a hand to her bump. ‘God, next month can’t come soon enough.’
I felt obliged to make conversation, although I would rather have waited alone and taken another look at the place, maybe had a poke into cupboards, all the kind of stuff I felt a bit inhibited about doing with her in front of me. ‘Do you know if you’re having a boy or a girl?�
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‘One of each. Yeah, I know, twins are going to be hard work, but I didn’t really get much of a say in the matter. Anyhow, they can’t be much harder out than in, quite frankly.’ She rubbed her bump.
‘Why do you want the Jeep, Cerys?’ Kai appeared at the top of the stairs. In contrast to everywhere else in the place, the staircase was plain wood, the newel post crying out for a series of skulls and demons and he stood out as the most decorative thing about it. ‘It’s not the babies, is it?’
‘A lift to the main road for this lady.’ Cerys smiled up at him. ‘It’s okay, they’re staying put for a bit.’
‘Good.’ He put a lot of feeling into the word and I smirked a bit to myself. Typical bloke, doesn’t mind doing the impregnating, but gets all huffy at the thought of his life being disrupted by kids. He came down the stairs towards us and I was taken aback again by the sunset-gold of his eyes. And his height.
‘Aw, shut up you fat-faced scour-bum.’ The words were severe but the tone was mild. ‘Go take …’
‘Holly,’ he supplied.
‘… Holly back to her car. I’ll carry on with the unpacking.’ She gave me a final beaming smile and, rubbing her back again, headed off down the hallway towards regions unknown.
‘Okay. I know when I’m being sent away.’ Kai pulled the battered leather jacket he’d worn in the pub off a peg behind the door and rummaged in a pocket. ‘Come on.’ He led the way out of the door and I noticed that even the steps leading down were ornamented with little incised gothic-type patterns.
‘Whoever designed this place would not have been popular with the builders,’ I said, following him round the (equally ornamented) back of the cottage. ‘He must have watched their every move, to make sure they didn’t try slipping in some plain stonework, for a rest. There’s so much ornamentation going on that it can only be hope that’s stopping the place falling apart. It must be like living in a brick doily.’
‘Apparently it was designed by a warlock,’ Kai said conversationally. ‘There’s some kind of occult meaning to the symbols. Although there’s even gargoyles in the bathroom, and anyone who wants to get occult while they’re having a piss has gone a step beyond the merely supernaturally-inclined, if you ask me.’
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