Chapter Fifteen
Patrick lifted the spoon to his lips and tasted the rich red wine gravy. He narrowed his eyes thoughtfully and then reached over the sink to the windowsill. He plucked several leaves from one of the many small pots and crushed them between his fingertips before adding to the huge cauldron, then he picked up a pepper mill and twisted it several times over the pan. He stirred again gently to avoid breaking up the deliciously tender meat and then he tasted the thick concoction again. This time he smiled widely.
He left the pot simmering on the huge cooker while he quickly rolled herbed dumpling balls and dropped them on the top of the meat mixture then he heaved up the gigantic pot and returned it to the vast oven.
“I don’t know how you even lift that thing.” Ellen rested her chin on his wide shoulder as he closed the oven door.
He stood up straight again and turned to take is wife in his arms. He pulled her in close and kissed her tenderly before he spoke.
“Neither do I sometimes. It weighs a ton what with about ten pounds of meat and all the trimmings in it but it’s going to be perfect by the time everyone arrives back here. They’ll need it. They are all going to be exhausted after mucking about on that zip wire all afternoon.”
Ellen laughed and snuggled in against her husband.
“I can’t believe that David is so thrilled by the thing even now. After eight years, you would think he’d be fed up with it. I mean the novelty of it has to have worn off surely.”
Patrick pulled her even closer. He gazed into his wife’s beautiful eyes. Even after all this time he couldn’t get over her loving him. He thanked every omnipotent being in his universe a hundred times every single day of his life for the night she had become lost in the estate forest. And then he thanked them a hundred times more.
“The novelty of some things never wears off,” his husky voice made his meaning plain and Ellen melted into his arms, winding her arms around his neck as he whispered all the novel things he wanted to do to her later that evening.
She pulled back at last and gave a soft laugh.
“Yes, well as soon as we put Rose to bed and feed the hungry hoard about to descend upon us, you can test out all those new ideas but unfortunately that isn’t going to be right now.” Ellen turned to the kitchen door as she listened to a stampede of noisy feet in the hall above them. “I think they are all back.”
Patrick glanced up at the clock on the wall and sighed.
“That means I have about half an hour to get everything else prepped. Thank goodness army guys are not fussy eaters. So long as there’s plenty of it they’ll eat just about anything.” He let go of Ellen’s waist regretfully and turned back to the stove. He lifted the lid of a vast pan of boiled potatoes and then took it to the sink to drain. Five minutes of pounding later, the potatoes along with crushed cloves of garlic, black pepper and lashings of butter were in the oven for browning.
He boiled the kettle before taking a terrine dish from the fridge and then poured the hot water around the base of it. He placed a plate over the top and tipped it upside down. A satisfying plop sounded and he slipped the terracotta dish away from the homemade mushroom pâté.
Ellen gave an appreciative sniff.
“Mmm, smells delicious. I see you made melba toast too. Shall I send it up?”
Patrick nodded and then unpotted another terrine. This time the scent of fresh trout wafted around the kitchen.
There was another longer sniff at the kitchen door and they both turned around to see David coming towards them, his hair still damp from his recent shower. He poked his finger towards the delicious smelling smoked trout pate and pulled a face as Patrick whipped it away with a tea towel.
David nursed his stinging finger.
“Oi! I was only going to test it before you give it to our guests. I wouldn’t want them suffering because of a simple ingredient error.” He grinned at his friend who rolled his eyes.
“Yes, I am likely to forget smoked trout, butter, salt and pepper.” Patrick put the plates of starters in the dumb waiter and sent it up to the dining room.
David pulled another face.
“I hope you warned Geraldine you were serving that tonight. She’s right off fish at the moment. She’s likely to vomit over it if she’s not prepared.”
Ellen laughed a little shakily and her face paled slightly at the thought of Geraldine being ill.
“No, it’s okay. Lucy is laying up the tables tonight. Geraldine and Amy haven’t finished shopping yet. I expect they have lost track of time.” She turned to the counter top and picked up a dish of butter to hide her expression.
David touched her arm, all joviality gone from his face.
“What do you mean, she’s not back yet? It’s nearly seven. They’ve been gone hours,” his voice was full of concern.
Patrick glanced at Ellen before he turned to face his friend.
“It’s not late Dave. If there had been any problems, Amy would have rung and there have been no calls. You know how women are. Ellen’s right. They are just having a great time being out of here. Geraldine hasn’t left here for weeks except to go to the hospital or the doctors. I expect she’s going berserk with your credit card.”
David nodded but a deep line still creased his forehead.
“Yes, you’re probably right. Just me being an old woman. Come on, let’s get this lot upstairs fed. They’ve had a great time at the ravine but now they’re all absolutely starving.” He picked up the baskets of toast and headed up towards the dining room.
Patrick glanced up at Ellen again. She was staring right back at him.
“You don’t believe Geraldine and Amy are still shopping any more than I do. Have you tried calling them?” He asked quickly.
Ellen shook her head.
“To be honest I didn’t realize that it was so late. Geraldine will be exhausted by now if she had been shopping for this long and I know that Amy wouldn’t let her do anything more than she should. She was worried about Geraldine even serving dinner the other night. I’ll give her a call and see where they both are.” She pulled her phone from her pocket and tapped in some numbers. It was a few seconds before she looked up at Patrick again. “Her phone line is dead. It goes straight through to voice mail. I’ll try Amy.” She began tapping more numbers but her face paled even more as she had the same result.
Patrick strode forwards to his computer. He closed his recipe tabs and opened another with the name of the tile manufacturer. He rattled off some numbers to Ellen and she dialled quickly. It only took a few moments to discover that the women had collected the golden tiles just before lunchtime.
“Shit!” Patrick swore under his breath. He grabbed the phone from Ellen’s hands and began dialling the hospital. He paced up and down the kitchen as he waited for a response and then he slammed down the phone after speaking for a few moments in rapid French. He stared at Ellen. “She hasn’t been admitted at Morlaix. Where else would they go? Somewhere Geraldine normally goes. What about the hairdressers or her mother? Or her brothers maybe?”
Ellen shook her head.
“Rebecca did her hair here last week so I doubt she went anywhere else so soon but I had better check with her mother before we tell David. He’s going to go mental. You know how badly flustered he gets.” She flicked through her phone book and began dialling. Ten minutes later they still had no idea where the women could be.
Patrick was about to leave the kitchen when there was some shouting along the corridor outside and the door banged open. Paul stormed into the kitchen.
“Ellen? Where’s Ellen?” He reached out desperately as he walked unsteadily into the room. He stumbled over a chair and his thigh hit the corner of the big kitchen table. Ellen rushed towards him, grabbing his hands, letting him know that she was there.
“What on earth is the matter? Are you okay Paul?”
The big man turned towards her voice. His face was a mask of pain.
“She’s gone home. Amy’s left m
e.” His knees looked as if they were about to buckle. Patrick leapt forwards and quickly steered the drooping man to the nearest chair.
Ellen sat down beside him and took his trembling hand.
“What on earth makes you think that? She’s just out shopping with Geraldine.” She tried to sound positive but Paul just thrust his mobile phone at her. She frowned as he tapped the speaker to full volume and listened to the voicemail.
Amy’s voice crackled around the kitchen.
‘Paul, I’m going home tonight. I’m taking the five o’clock flight from Brest. I know that you will be upset but I need to do this as soon as possible. I thought it best if I go while you are busy at work. If I hang around to see you, you will try to persuade me to change my mind and I can’t. It’s going to take me some time to get over…’ The phone beeped as the time ran out on the messaging service before she had finished speaking.
Ellen glanced worriedly up at Patrick.
“She never said a thing to me but then I didn’t see her this morning. Paul and I went to Roscoff to go over the plans. And she’s gone out with Geraldine anyway. Maybe Geraldine dropped her off at the airport and that’s why she’s late back.”
Patrick shook his head.
“I don’t think so. Amy isn’t the sort to leave a heavily pregnant woman driving on her own. She would have come back and asked one of us to take her or organized a taxi at the very least.”
Paul pushed out of the chair and stood up quickly. The pain was gone from his face, replaced with a furious scowl.
“I knew it was too good to be true. I should have trusted my instincts. She couldn’t even face me to tell me she was going. She’s just been stringing me along for this last week. Everything she said was a lie. Maybe she got a kick out of having sex with a blind man,” the bitterness in his tone was obvious.
Ellen turned desperately to Patrick.
“Did you see them leave this morning? Lucy didn’t say anything about her room being cleared out. I swear she would have mentioned it if she thought there was anything amiss. If Amy’s gone, why has she left her things?”
Paul fisted his hands as he answered.
“That’s obvious. You can only take a tiny bag on those cheap airlines unless you pay a fortune for extra baggage. She had a huge suitcase when she arrived here. I expect she’ll want it freighted back,” he could barely speak for the pain in his heart. He lifted his chin as his throat closed up even further. He couldn’t chance saying another word for fear that his voice would crack and reveal his broken heart.
Patrick looked at his friend and knew exactly what he was thinking. He saw the walls going up, protecting the most vulnerable part of him even as he stood there.
“You have this all wrong I swear. I’ve seen the look on her face Paul. She’s in love with you and there’s no way that she would have left you without saying something. If we just knew where Geraldine is then we would probably have an answer for you. That phone message cut off before she could explain. She didn’t finish what she was saying so I don’t think you should take that as it sounded. At the very least we can call the airline and see if she caught the flight. That will tell us a bit more about where Geraldine may be anyway,” he began tapping another search into his computer but Paul wasn’t listening to any explanation.
She was gone. She had strung him along for a week and then just gone. He pushed back the chair and stumbled away from the table and before Patrick or Ellen could stop him he walked out through the kitchen door and into the garden.
Ellen skirted the table as if to follow him but Patrick caught hold of her arm.
“Let him go. Until we can clear up this mess and find out what’s going on he’ll never listen to reason. You know what he’s like. Stubborn as a mule.”
Ellen wasn’t happy but she nodded and looked at the internet page with her husband. She put her finger on the five o’clock flight from Brest to Luton airport.
“Well, it left on time according to this so Geraldine won’t have been delayed there. Even if she did drop Amy off Brest is not that far, she still would have been home by now.
Patrick agreed and then he took Ellen’s phone again and dialled the advice number. A few seconds later his face paled and he put the phone back down again.
“She was booked but missed the flight. She didn’t even turn up late. They have her down as a ‘no show’.”
It was Ellen’s turn to slump into the chair.
“Well, that’s something I suppose. At least we know that they didn’t even get that far. Now can I go after the mule out there and try and get him to come back here and help us find them before he falls in the river or even worse off the edge of the ravine?”
Patrick nodded as he looked out of the back door. He could see his kitchen herb garden and the high stone wall around the outside. Paul knew that area pretty well but the gate at the end of the garden was open and still swinging where an angry, disappointed man had shoved his way through.
“He won’t have gone far Ellen. Even he’s not stupid enough to wander too far into the forest. He’s probably walked straight into a tree and knocked himself out anyway. Give me a shout if you need any help or you can’t find him and I’ll send out a search party.”
Amy fought her way out of the dream. She could hear her own heartbeat and her own wild breathing as she tried to dispel the sudden fear that clutched at her. Dreams like this didn’t affect her often and she hadn’t had one for several months but this one was bad. She felt the nausea rise in her throat and she bit it back.
She took a couple of deep breaths but she could still hear the ragged noise of her erratic breath. Her head pounded and she tried to open her eyes but they felt as though they were glued shut. It took her several seconds to realize that her eyes were actually open and that she was lying on hard ground in the pitch black.
More disorientated than she wanted to admit, she struggled to sit up but she tipped sideways as dizziness hit her. She breathed slowly for a moment. The vertigo evaporated and she slid her hand across the floor until it struck something warm and slightly damp. She pulled her hand back quickly and was about to crawl away when she heard a strained voice in the dark.
“Amy? It’s me, Geraldine. Please can you help me?” The woman’s frightened words rattled on shaky breath.
Amy shook her head in a vain attempt to clear her vision.
“My God! I’ve gone blind. I can’t see a thing,” she choked out in a shocked whisper.
Geraldine answered her quickly.
“No, I thought the same for a moment but it is just pitch black in here. I can’t find a door or even a window to let in any light.” She grit her teeth against another contraction.
Amy sat very still as she tried to analyse Geraldine’s words .
“What do you mean, you can’t find a door? Where are we?” She steadied herself as she reached out to Geraldine again. This time she recognized the shape of Geraldine’s shoulder. She could feel the woman perspiring through the cloth of her blouse. “My God Geraldine! You’re in full labour. How long between contractions?”
Geraldine fought to breathe.
“Not long enough. About every five minutes I would think. It’s hard to keep count and I don’t have a watch that I can see.” She relaxed back as the latest contraction passed.
Amy reached around the floor of the dark space to gather her bearings.
“We have to get out of here and find you some proper help.” She crawled on all fours around the perimeter of the room, feeling with her hands as she went for any sign of the exit. Then with mounting panic in her heart, she stood slowly and did the same thing in a standing position. “There’s no opening. No light switch or anything.” she could hear the shocked tone of her own voice.
Geraldine sucked in another agonized breath.
“I couldn’t either. The walls are just blank walls, all four of them. I could feel the joins in the strips of plasterboard but I can’t find a proper air gap. There must be one somewher
e or I swear that we would have run out by now. There must be a hole in the ceiling somewhere, maybe for a light fitting but I can’t reach that high and I can’t see anything anyway.” Her breathing hitched up a notch and Amy heard the woman’s teeth grinding together as she suppressed the next pain. Amy moved slowly, not wanting to tread on her friend as she squatted to the floor and reached about to find her again.
“So how long do you think we have been trapped in here?” She almost didn’t want to find out.
Geraldine caught hold of Amy’s hand and gripped it as the pain of the contraction swept through her. She released a long breath as it passed.
“I woke up some time ago but I cannot be sure how long has passed. I don’t have my bag and I couldn’t find a phone on you. I’ve been shouting for help but no one has come and I haven’t heard a thing outside the room. I haven’t heard a thing, even when I pressed my ear to the walls.”
Amy sat back on her heels.
“I never heard you. I didn’t hear you shout at all.”
Geraldine rested back on the floor and curled to her side.
“You were in a much deeper sleep than me I think. I didn’t drink so much of the tea as you before I felt sleepy but there was nothing I could do about it. It was far too late by then.”
Amy fought to remember what had happened before she had woken up in the dark. She remembered repressing a shudder at the workman’s awful blackened teeth then passing a mug of tea to Geraldine and sipping at her own. She couldn’t remember anything else. She narrowed her eyes in the blackness as she gripped Geraldine’s hand.
“He drugged the tea! The bastard! I’ll murder him when we get out of here.” Amy didn’t even try to subdue the savagery in her tone.
Geraldine coughed dryly.
“If we get out of here I’ll happily join you but at the moment I can’t see how to escape.” She clutched Amy’s hand and gulped in huge breaths of air as the next contraction hit hard.
“Have they left us anything in here at all? Any water? Any cloths?” Amy reached out across the rough floor again searching for anything that would help.
Scarred Horizon (Scarred Series Book 4) Page 16