A Leap of Faith

by Trisha Ashley

  ‘It’s worth it,’ I said shortly, wondering suddenly if he might have lobbed the rock, since I’m certainly not his favourite person and it would be a way of getting back at me. ‘You’d better get back to The Hacienda. Miranda’s been looking for you, because the wine ran out, and someone spiked the punch, so most of your guests are incapable of driving home. The local taxi’s doing shifts but you could be up for quite a while.’

  ‘Then perhaps I could persuade Nye to come back with me?’ he suggested. ‘Night’s still young, Nye?’

  ‘The night may be, but I’m not,’ Nye said. ‘No, thanks.’

  Chris shrugged, said, ‘Goodnight, then,’ and walked off, but Nye showed no sign of following suit. Instead he trailed us back into the cottage.

  ‘Well, so much for my favourite dress,’ Mu said as the light fell on to the bloodstained green silk. ‘And what have you been doing to yours? It’s got even more stains than mine, and . . .’

  She petered out as she got her first full sight of Nye under the kitchen light: he was even more dishevelled than I was. His hair was all over the place, and we were wearing His and Hers matching streaks of mossy green.

  ‘It’s a nasty night for a walk,’ I said lamely. ‘And I owe you a new dress – it’s my cat.’

  ‘Yes, but I foisted her on to you; you didn’t want her really. I’ll go and put this dress in cold water and see what happens.’

  ‘It will shrink, but the stains won’t. Let’s face it: it’s had it, and so has mine.’

  ‘It’s worth a try. Go and take yours off, and I’ll put them in together.’

  ‘Does anyone want me to take my clothes off too, or shall I go home?’ Nye asked hopefully.

  ‘I’ve no objections,’ Mu said, grinning. ‘But you’ve been great, getting the vet and everything – why don’t you stay and have a hot drink before you go? We’ll be down as soon as we’ve changed.’

  Nye looked at me, but I avoided his eyes. I was so tired things had started taking on a surreal air, especially the brightly lit kitchen. It was still white, and the glittery green Formica table was mind-boggling. A Magritte steam train chugging out of the fireplace would have added a homely touch.

  ‘Sorry about the decor,’ I said wearily. ‘Go through to the living room – it’s more comfortable.’

  ‘I’ll put the kettle on first – you two go and change.’

  When I came back down, clean and wearing my thobe, Mu had already put the dresses into a bucket of cold water, and made hot cocoa.

  I felt better without the green slime, and the sheep droppings wedged between my toes.

  The living room was cosy with the fire turned on, especially once I added a good slug of dark rum to my cocoa.

  Mu had bagged the lounger and lay stretched out like a guest at a Roman orgy, leaving me the choice of the camel stool, the basket chair, or one end of the sofa.

  The sofa was the best option, even with Nye occupying the other end. He looked as immediately at home as the cat, and in a different way just as unsettling.

  ‘Did you really go out of the kitchen window?’ Mu asked sleepily. ‘Lili said you’d abducted Nye. That was after Dave lost interest in her and started rampaging about looking for you.’

  ‘She did,’ Nye said.

  I opened my eyes. ‘I did not – you insisted on following me because you were scared of Lili, and then you wouldn’t go away.’

  ‘I couldn’t just leave you walking off across the moors in the dark.’

  ‘She does it all the time,’ Mu said.

  ‘And it wasn’t any of your business,’ I added. ‘I’m big enough to take care of myself!’

  ‘You’re big – I’m bigger,’ he said, smiling enigmatically.

  ‘I could take you with one hand tied behind my back!’ I said incautiously.

  ‘I thought you already had?’

  Mu sat up a bit and looked at him with some interest, and admittedly he is worth looking at if you like that sort of thing, but he also has the kind of pale skin that looks bruised under the eyes when he’s tired.

  ‘I didn’t touch him,’ I said hastily as she turned an accusing gaze on me.

  I’ll qualify that: I didn’t hit him, though if he didn’t stop smiling like that I still might.

  ‘Did you tell him why you went out of the window?’ she asked. ‘To escape your mad ex-boyfriend, who stalks you?’

  ‘Mmm – though I still don’t think he’s dotty enough to stone Sphinx.’

  ‘He’s capable of more than you think when he’s in one of his jealous rages.’

  ‘Sappho didn’t tell me much, anyway,’ Nye said. ‘We were . . . sidetracked.’

  ‘Let me give you a brief scenario,’ Mu offered.

  ‘He doesn’t need one – it’s nothing to do with him,’ I objected.

  She ignored me and with admirable conciseness (she can’t have touched the punch) gave him a potted version of my situation with Dave, what Chris had been doing to unbalance Miranda, and what we thought had happened to Spike.

  Then she added, ‘But at least now we know that you didn’t have anything to do with Gil’s wife vanishing.’

  I’d almost nodded off, but I jerked awake at this. ‘Do we?’

  ‘Of course we do.’ She smiled at Nye. Another conquest.

  ‘And now I’ve met Gil, I don’t think he did it, either, so . . .’

  But by now I was half-dozing to the gentle rise and fall of the conversation, and when I drifted back to the surface she was saying: ‘. . . put butter on her paws.’

  ‘What?’ I’d slumped against Nye’s shoulder, and his arm was around me. ‘Has Nye got a cat?’

  ‘Not yet, but he’s thinking about it.’ Mu was grinning, for some reason – perhaps I’d been snoring. ‘I thought you’d gone to sleep.’

  I sat up straight. How did I finish up on this end of the sofa? And I’d never put my head on a man’s shoulder before without getting a crick in my neck: Nye had novelty value, if nothing else.

  ‘What were we talking about?’

  ‘How you came to live here – Dave – the books – Miranda – everything,’ he said casually, and I gave Mu an aggrieved look, which she returned innocently.

  ‘Just putting him in the picture. After all, if Dave is going to be around for a few weeks you might need some help when I’ve gone.’

  ‘Why should I need help? I can cope – I always have.’

  ‘It’s a bit isolated here.’

  ‘Not after some of the places I’ve lived in.’

  Mu swung her legs off the lounger and stood up muzzily.

  ‘I’ve had it – I’m going to bed. Goodnight, Nye – maybe I’ll see you again before I go home on Monday?’

  She wouldn’t blink an eyelid if he were here at breakfast, but he wasn’t going to be.

  ‘I’ll be off, too,’ he said, seeming to read my mind, ‘unless you’d like me to stay and protect you?’

  Too late, the wolf has been in the sheep fold already.

  ‘No, I don’t. I don’t need you,’ I snapped ungraciously.

  ‘Don’t you, Sappho?’ he said softly, then added with total inconsequence: ‘Your eyes are sherry-coloured, like your hair.’

  ‘Just boring old brown,’ I stammered, going all hot – probably a pre-menopausal symptom common to thirty-nine-year-olds.

  He got up rather stiffly, stretched (which was quite pleasant to look at), and put his somewhat mired leather jacket on.

  Something – I think it was compunction – made me say, ‘Nye, watch out for Dave, won’t you? He can get irrationally jealous, and if he thinks . . . Well, just watch out, that’s all.’

  ‘Don’t worry about me,’ he said. ‘Look, Sappho, tomorrow I’ll be working at the studio, so why don’t you come down? Bring Mu, if you want to, but come?’

  ‘I always work in the mornings,’ I said stiffly. Well, it’s true, isn’t it?

  ‘Then come in the afternoon, and tell me what’s happening on Planet Vengeane.’
r />   I started. ‘How did you know that?’

  ‘From Miranda – I asked her about you.’ He patted the zipped inside pocket of his jacket. ‘She loaned me your last novel.’

  Traitor! And no wonder I seemed to be coming out in bruises in strange places . . .

  ‘You won’t like it,’ I assured him. ‘Anyway, if you do read them you ought to read the first one,’ I babbled. ‘Give me that one, and I’ll lend you the first book and—’

  ‘No, I think I’ll read this one and work back.’

  ‘It won’t make sense.’

  I was fighting in the last ditch, did he but know it, but he just smiled and turned to go. ‘Lock up carefully, and I’ll see you tomorrow.’

  I didn’t deign a reply to this, and he added, ‘Bedd was never this interesting without you, Sappho Jones!’

  He has a very beguiling smile when he pleases.

  It didn’t please: I pushed him out and locked the door after him. After a moment I heard his footsteps going away across the cobbles.

  Chapter 24

  Impulses

  I woke up at my usual time next morning, but lying on the reclining chair rather than in bed, with an aching head and a throbbing body.

  But at least the throbbing body was my own, that was something to be thankful for.

  How could I, even under the influence of alcohol, have been so abandoned with Nye Thomas the previous night? Even when I was younger and had over-indulged in drink, it didn’t lead me to have wild sex on ancient tombs with disturbing strangers.

  So perhaps it was just my fate – like Nala? Except Dragonslayer seemed pretty smitten with her, whereas I was sure Nye wouldn’t give me another thought. Indeed, since I was finding the whole episode highly embarrassing in the light of day, I sincerely hoped he never gave me another thought.

  And I was not going to worry about pregnancy, either: a one-night stand at my age couldn’t be much of a risk. I mean, look at Mu – all these years of trying, and nothing, even with Sexy Simon . . .

  ‘Sappho!’ hissed Mu at that exact moment, sidling into the room bearing a pregnancy test at arm’s length before her, as though it might explode in her face. ‘Sappho, it’s positive: look!’

  Sitting up with more haste than care, I managed to tilt the whole chair mechanism, precipitating me into a neat backwards somersault that fetched me up against the sofa, to Mu’s astonishment.

  ‘It’s all right, it’s not something I make a habit of,’ I told her, picking myself up and going to take a look at the test, but without any great hopes. Mu had had a pregnancy testing kit in her luggage ever since her wedding day, and we’d had one or two false alarms before. But there were no two ways about this one – it was positive.

  ‘I sort of began to wonder because I’m usually like clockwork, and should have started yesterday . . . only I didn’t. And then I decided to get up early and do the test today and there it was! Oh, Sappho!’

  We stared at each other, and then it was hug and tears time until our brains started to tick, and she said what we were both thinking.

  ‘It must be Simon’s, mustn’t it? First time lucky?’ (There goes another theory.) ‘Only I have to convince myself that it’s Ambler’s.’

  ‘It still could be, there’s no way of telling, and goodness knows, it’s going to look like him, isn’t it?’

  I looked at the test again and swallowed hard, thinking of little alien-eyed cuckoos in nests . . . But of course I wouldn’t get pregnant first time. Coincidences like that don’t happen.

  I could even go and have the morning after pill thing just in case – or just leave it to the gods and wait and see? What if I was pregnant and got rid of it because Nye wasn’t the right father, and then I never got pregnant again?

  Wasn’t this more or less what I wanted – except with a well-vetted, dark-haired man, not some other-worldly near Schwarzenegger with a wicked grin, who just happened to be handy during the ten-minute window of opportunity when my body broke a lifetime’s habit of saying, ‘Not today, thanks,’ and instead screamed: ‘Yes, now!’

  It was a hormonal Last Chance Saloon, and not only were my hormones driving me, they had road rage.

  Can’t stop. Won’t stop.

  I didn’t even check for rocks when I jumped off: my flight was premature, I was slightly singed around the edges, but at least my wax hadn’t melted yet. I’d wing it.

  ‘You look sort of – strange,’ Mu said.

  Demented, I should think.

  I went and put my arms round her and gave her another hug. ‘Sorry, it’s a shock – I’m going to be Auntie Sappho at last! And it is, and always will be, Ambler’s baby.’

  ‘Yes,’ Mu agreed, bursting into tears. ‘And I’m so happy!’

  ‘You’ve waited so long for this moment and I never used to understand why you wanted it so much, but I do now – just when it may be too late for me.’ I shivered suddenly. ‘Or maybe not.’

  Mu sniffled back a happy tear and gave me a sharp look. ‘Sappho, you didn’t whisk Nye away last night in order to use him to try to get pregnant, did you? I mean, it was perfectly clear what you’d been up to, but tell me you took precautions. He’s not even your type!’

  ‘Of course he isn’t my type – it was just the spiked punch.’

  ‘But it’s so unlike you.’

  ‘I know, but he was an impulse buy while under the influence.’ I shrugged. ‘It was a leap in the dark. Well, a jump in the dark, actually.’

  ‘Sappho!’

  ‘I’m prepared to take the consequences of my actions, though statistically, there are extremely unlikely to be any.’

  ‘You’re an unknown quantity, not a statistic, Sappho. Once might be enough. You’d better think now what you’re doing before it’s too late.’

  ‘No, I’m in free fall. Nala and I are going to await our fate.’

  She looked at me doubtfully.

  ‘Cheer up, you should be ecstatic.’

  ‘I feel happy but sort of anti-climactic.’

  ‘We’ll go out later and celebrate; have an afternoon out.’

  ‘But aren’t you going to see Nye today?’

  I stared at her. ‘No, why should I?’

  She stared back. ‘Didn’t he ask you out?’

  ‘We’ve been out,’ (and in and out) ‘and that’s it – ships that pass in the night.’

  And suggesting I go down to the castle is not the same as asking me out. Not that I’d have gone anyway. And what’s he going to think if he reads that book? If I was a coward I’d be buying a ticket to Portugal to stay with Pops and Jaynie.

  The vet rang just then, saying that Sphinx was a lively little cat with a headache, and could be collected at ten, which was good news.

  Mu commandeered the phone after that, to arrange an early train back next day so she could tell Ambler the good news face to face. Then she spoke to Simon, and finally rang the unsuspecting Ambler, to tell him the time of her return.

  She popped her head back in to report that Simon seemed so pleased at his prowess that he was thinking of offering himself as a sperm donor, but by then I’d gone back to Raarg and the annoying Dragonslayer, whose physical attributes seemed to be occupying Nala rather a lot, so Mu went away again.

  Raarg only seemed like a reformed character, so however attractive he is, Nala couldn’t have him, and she was afraid of being overpowered by Dragonslayer and losing her powers, in more ways than one.

  The poor girl was between a rock and a hard place and no mistake, and I thought it was time both Raarg and Dragon-slayer suffered a bit.

  I disposed myself more comfortably on the black recliner, adjusted hair and robe, and clicked on the tape recorder.

  It emitted a soothing Pooh Bear hum and I felt the beginning of some horrible experience for Raarg sneaking up, and a bit of a comeuppance for Dragonslayer: so big, so powerful, so damn sure of himself.

  But some disturbing element in the room kept calling me back from Vengeane. Some distillation of Ny
e’s presence still remained: clean linen, freshly mown grass, and a shot of ozone would be about the nearest description I could manage. The air around where he sat last night still twanged.

  Damn.

  I pulled myself together and dealt with Raarg first: if Dave was responsible for last night’s stoning he deserved all Raarg was going to get . . .

  ‘Raarg felt the prickling of fear along his spine, and shivered uncontrollably – for something, some evil, was approaching . . . a retribution for his abusing of the Oracle’s gift . . .’

  One chapter later the door opened enough for a ruffled-looking Sphinx to stalk through and look up at me, mouthing silent insults. If gurning was an Olympic sport, this cat would be in with a gold-medal chance.

  For a minute I thought she was a ghost, then I bounced upright. ‘Oh God! Ten – and I forgot—’

  ‘Relax,’ Mu said, following the cat in. ‘I borrowed your car and collected her. Doesn’t she look sweet with that shaved bit over one eye?’

  ‘No, I don’t think I’d ever call her sweet, but she has a certain raffish charm. Thanks for fetching her – you should have called me.’

  ‘You may not thank me when you see the bill. Never mind. And guess what: I put both our party dresses in the washing machine on the very-delicate-you-shouldn’t-really-be-trying-to-wash-this-garment-are-you-mad cycle, and they’ve both come out unstained, unshrunk and uncreased.’

  ‘It’s a miracle,’ I said. ‘In fact, it’s a day of miracles. Do you think Sphinx would be OK alone if we went out somewhere?’

  ‘I’m sure she would – she needs to sleep it off. Where shall we go? How about the Castle Craft Centre, after all? Nye will probably still be there,’ she said slyly.

  ‘No, thanks.’

  ‘You can’t fool me into thinking you aren’t attracted to each other. The air crackled between you last night.’

  ‘Let it crackle. It’ll wear off. It was only a temporary lust-type thing; he’s so not my type. And I’m an old dog set in my ways.’

  ‘Bitch.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Old bitch set in her ways.’

  ‘Oh. What shall we do for lunch? How about Oxwich Bay, where we can eat at the hotel and then have a good blow along the beach? I feel I need my cobwebs removing.’