We spread our rug up against the foot of the cliffs and she peeled off shirt and trousers. I huddled into mine, reluctant, for the moment, to undress. Kate’s long legs seemed to go on for ever in her brief swimsuit. Her shadow, even longer legged, flickered up the cliff face behind us.
She sat down beside me and lit a cigarette. ‘Don’t you get bored to tears down here?’ she asked, lifting her head and blowing a cloud of smoke into the air.
‘I’ve only been here two weeks.’
‘Two days is usually enough for me!’
‘But you were here longer, surely? I mean –’
‘When Matthew and I were together? I used to drag him up to London on the slightest pretext. He hated it. When I had to stay here, I invited friends down to liven things up. That caused more rows than anything.’ She sat forward hugging her knees and gazing out to sea, her eyes narrowed against the cigarette smoke.
‘I started spending the weeks in town and coming here only at weekends. It couldn’t go on like that, and it didn’t. That’s all there was to it. I never dreamt Matthew meant to keep me down here all the time. It’s not only that the place has been in the family so long – he actually seems to like it!’
I smiled in spite of myself. ‘And that was two years ago?’
‘Yes. Since then he’s just had Sarah and Tammy for company, though I sometimes wondered about that blonde secretary of his.’
I moistened dry lips. ‘Why?’ The word was almost a croak.
Kate shrugged. ‘No particular reason, except they were cooped up together all day.’
I said unwisely, ‘Mike thinks he wants you back.’
She swung her head towards me with a look of almost idiotic surprise.
‘What?’
I knew there was no need to repeat it, so I merely nodded confirmation. A slow smile broke over her face.
‘Honestly? Well, that really is rich!’
There was a sudden, tinkling sound above us, and a tiny pebble landed on my lap. I looked up, and my whole body became an arch of terror. How I bunched my frozen muscles I don’t know, but I leapt at Kate and knocked her sideways. Clutching hold of her, I rolled with her over the sand, the force of impact carrying us several yards, first one uppermost, then the other.
It seemed hours but could have been only thirty seconds from the pebble landing on my lap to the deafening crash that echoed through the rocks. I felt Kate’s fingers dig convulsively into my shoulders.
There was a choking, blinding cloud of dust and sand. When it cleared, we saw that an enormous boulder, with dust already settling on it, lay squarely in the middle of our rug.
‘God,’ said Kate whitely, ‘I think I’m going to be sick.’
‘I’ll be back in a minute!’ Acting on blind impulse I jumped up and ran for the steps. I had not stopped to search for my sandals – they were probably under the boulder anyway – and the sharp flint knifed my feet. I hardly noticed it. Choking, gasping, legs on fire, I forced myself to run up the twisting, winding steps to the grass track, where I stopped, heart pounding, drawing in huge lungsful of air. There on the path, where I had dropped my sunglasses twenty minutes earlier, lay a ground-out cigarette. It had not been there before.
The fact reverberated round my head like crashing cymbals and the blood drummed sickeningly in my ears. My legs felt as though they might give way any minute, but I stepped carefully over the cigarette and started along the track, hardly knowing what I was doing, until, immediately below me, I could see the shattered boulder.
I inched forward. There was a depression in the grass where someone had been crouching. In the face of the cliff just below the track, exposed stone gaped rawly. The cavity where the boulder had lain was dank and ranksmelling. Little grey insects, suddenly exposed to the daylight, scurried obscenely in all directions.
It must have taken a very hard shove to dislodge it. I accepted the thought on a superficial level, refusing to examine it. Then a gull screamed discordantly, shattering my false calm, and I started to shake.
I must go back to Kate. For which of us had that gruesome death been planned?
I stumbled back the way I had come, head bent, eyes intent on the track, and cannoned into someone coming down the path. I heard myself scream and the sound went on ringing in my head.
Matthew’s voice vibrated with shock. ‘Emily, in God’s name what is it?’ His hands gripped me like iron clamps.
I couldn’t answer him. I shook my head helplessly, seeming only to stand because he held me.
‘Emily – speak to me! What happened.?
My tongue moved awkwardly in my dry mouth. At the second attempt the words came. ‘A boulder – crashed down – on the rug – where we were sitting.’ I couldn’t look at his face.
‘Kate?’ The tone was urgent.
‘She’s all right.’
‘Thank God!’
‘Thank Emily would be more to the point!’ We both turned. Kate, ashen-faced and shivering in her emerald swimsuit, stood just below us on the path, if she hadn’t pushed me clear, it would have been curtains for Kate Hardacre.’
‘I can’t believe it!’ Matthew said. His eyes were like coals in his white face. He slipped off his jacket and draped it round Kate’s bare shoulders. Then he took each of us by the arm, and we started back to the house.
Our return to Touchstone was nothing if not dramatic. Matthew flung open the front door and called, ‘Tammy! Mrs Johnson! Rugs and hot-water bottles – quickly!’
I have a confused memory of their white, staring faces. Then Kate and I were firmly settled by the now-welcome fire in the passage, wrapped in rugs and sipping hot sweet tea.
Matthew moved about distractedly, staring from one of us to the other. After a while Kate stopped shuddering and raised her head from her cup to ask, ‘Emily, why did you dash up the path like that?’
I’d been dreading the question. ‘I – I thought I saw something.’
‘And did you?’ Matthew asked. His eyes were on me, dark, unfathomable, and waiting.
‘No,’ I said, then, since it seemed further explanation was needed, I added the first thing that came into my head, it must have been all the heavy rain that loosened it.’
There was a sudden crash as the front door swung open and banged against the wall.
‘Emily? Emily, are you there?’
Matthew, his eyes on me, called, ‘She’s all right, Mike.’
‘What in God’s name happened?’ Mike, as white as the rest of us, came quickly round the corner, stopping short as he saw Kate and me swathed in our rugs like a pair of old Indians.
‘How did you know anything had?’ Matthew asked, quietly.
Mike answered automatically. ‘I came to look for them – here at the house first, because Emily said she wasn’t going to the beach. There was no one in so I thought she must have changed her mind, and went home for my swimming gear. But when I got to the beach, there was a bloody great slab plum in the middle of the rug and Emily’s sunglasses beside it. I thought – I didn’t know what to think.’
Swiftly he came over, knelt in front of me and took my hands in his. I gripped them tightly. ‘You really are all right, honey?’
‘Yes, really Mike.’ I could feel his heart hammering against my knees. He bent his head for a moment to my rug-swathed knees. There was a pulse beating in his temple and his forehead was sticky with sweat.
He raised his head again and gave me a one-sided smile. ‘I wouldn’t like to live through that again!’
‘Nor would I!’ said Kate violently.
Mike looked over at her, still gripping my hands.
‘But what happened?’
‘The “bloody great slab” as you put it landed where we’d been lying half a minute before. If it hadn’t been for Emily’s quick thinking, that would most definitely have been it.’ Kate spread her hands expressively and then clutched at the rug as it slipped from her shoulders.
‘And where were you, Matthew?’ Although Mike spok
e pleasantly enough, the hint of accusation hung on the air. My hands fluttered protestingly in his, but he stilled them with a tighter grip.
‘On my way back from the golf club,’ Matthew answered levelly. ‘I bumped into Emily on the path – she told me what had happened.’
Mike frowned. ‘On the path?’
‘I – wanted to see what had loosened it,’ I stammered, repeating stupidly, ‘it must have been all that rain.’
Mike released my hands at last and stood up. ‘Are you both feeling better now?’
Kate nodded and uncurled her legs. ‘A really hot bath and all will be well.’
‘I could do with a cold one,’ Mike said. I saw that his shirt was plastered against him. He must have come up that path as though the Furies were at his heels – and all because he was afraid for me. There had been a look in his eyes that I hadn’t seen before. Oh Mike, I thought despairingly, please don’t fall in love with me.
The front door again opened and closed, and Sarah appeared at the end of the passage, halting as she saw our incongruous group. ‘Mummy, I thought you were going to the beach!’
‘Not any more,’ said Kate grimly. ‘There was a – a landslide – we just missed a nasty accident. You mustn’t go to that bay again, Sarah, it’s not safe.’ She stood up. ‘Matthew, if I could make use of your bathroom, Emily can have the other.’
‘Of course.’
Mike helped me to my feet. I was still unsteady on them. He slipped an arm round my waist and gave me a squeeze. ‘Come on, old crock, I’ll take you to the top of the stairs.’ We set off as slowly as a pair of invalids, Matthew following with Kate. The cavalcade wound slowly up the stairs and came to a halt outside my room.
Mike said, ‘Since our afternoon on the beach was a write-off, may I come round this evening, long-lost cousin?’
Out of the corner of my eye I caught Matthew’s involuntary movement of protest. But Kate was saying, ‘Of course, darling, that would be lovely.’
‘See you!’ Mike said. He bent forward and kissed my cheek, raised a hand in farewell, and ran back down the stairs.
I went into my room, a lot of half-formed queries jostling in my head. Last night had been, in Mike’s opinion, ‘one hell of an evening’, so why did he want a repeat? And, overriding everything else, whose cigarette lay ground into the grass by the clifftop?
I came out of my room en route for the bathroom. Matthew’s door stood open, as did that of his en suite bathroom. As I closed the main bathroom door I heard Kate come out of the guest room, tap lightly on his door, and say with a laugh in her voice, ‘This is just like old times!’
I slid the bolt with suppressed violence and turned the taps on full.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The wind was getting up by the time Mike returned, and I was alone in the sitting-room. There had been no sign of either Matthew or Kate. He came over to the fire.
How do you feel, sweetheart?’ he asked.
‘All right, really.’
‘The more I think about what happened, the more horrendous it seems. You could both have been killed.’
‘We very nearly were.’
‘Is Kate OK?’
‘I haven’t seen her since you left.’
‘Did she say any more about the family secret she’s supposed to have unearthed?’
I shook my head.
‘Matthew would loathe anything detrimental getting into the press. Noblesse oblige, and all that. There have been Haigs at Touchstone for a hundred years and they think they own the whole county.’
The door opened and Matthew and Kate came in together. She was still pale, a fact that her make-up could not disguise, and her eyes were feverishly bright.
‘Pour me a drink, darling,’ she said to Matthew, ‘If ever I needed one, it’s now!’
Matthew went in silence to the cabinet. ‘Sherry for Emily, vodka for Kate, beer for Mike?’
‘Correct.’ Mike answered for the three of us. I saw that Matthew poured himself a tot of neat whisky. Mike pulled up a chair for Kate, and while they were talking together, Matthew brought me my glass.
‘Emily.’ He spoke quietly and his voice had an undercurrent of urgency, ‘I’ve been along to examine the cliff. Several of the boulders are loose – the whole face is unsafe. I’m roping off the bay altogether until we can get it blasted properly. I wanted you to know – I had the impression that you thought – that you felt it might not have been an accident.’
My heart jerked, but I met his eyes in silence. He went on, ‘It was, though. That’s just the way landslides start.’
‘Yes,’ I said through parched lips.
He looked at me oddly. ‘I just wanted to set your mind at rest.’
He paused, then turned away to see to the other drinks. I hoped fervently that he was right. But what of the cigarette stub and the tell-tale crushed grass beside the path?
‘Come and join us, Emily,’ Kate called from across the room. ‘I promise not to monopolise Mike tonight!’ She laughed feverishly. ‘I must say, this is the most exciting weekend I’ve ever had at Touchstone!’
‘The kind of excitement we could do without,’ Matthew returned drily.
‘Oh, I don’t know; anything’s better than that unending monotony! Oh, Matt!’ She reached up and caught his hand and I saw his eyes flicker at the obviously once-familiar name. ‘I didn’t mean that the way it sounded, darling! I’m going to try very hard not to annoy you tonight!’
Matthew’s mouth twitched. ‘You never “annoy” me, Kate, just as you never bored me. A pity you can’t return the compliment.’
‘Well, whatever.’ She still held his hand, gazing up at him provocatively. ‘I promise to be on my best behaviour. How’s that?’
He stood looking down at her, then gently disengaged his hand. ‘Admirable, I should think,’ he said.
I wondered what she was up to, and whether this change of attitude resulted from my telling her Mike thought he wanted her back.
Whatever the reason, I didn’t like it. I didn’t trust Kate, or the effect she had on Matthew. If he really wanted her, would she come, or did she only want to tantalize him? I suspected the latter, and was disturbed. He had been hurt enough already.
Mike came and joined me on the sofa. ‘Cheer up, Emily, it might never happen!’
I looked at him sharply; his remark was altogether too apposite. He nodded towards Matthew and Kate. ‘Aren’t we pally tonight?’ he said in my ear. ‘To see them now, you’d never think –’ he broke off.
‘Think what?’
‘Nothing, my pet, nothing at all.’
As the evening wore on, I tried to concentrate on Kate’s laughing anecdotes, but gradually my head began to throb and by halfpast nine I had one of the worst headaches of my life.
‘Honey, what is it? You’re as white as a sheet.’ Mike had finally noticed my face.
‘Probably reaction. I’ve got a blinding headache. Would you mind if I went to bed?’
‘Of course not – we all need an early night tonight.’
Mike came into the hall with me and took my face gently between his hands. ‘Goodnight, love. See you tomorrow?’
I smiled and moved away from him. ‘Have you no work to do on that farm of yours?’
‘Simkins can manage without me. I’ll try to slip over during the afternoon.’
I nodded and started up the stairs. He watched me for a moment, then I heard him go back into the sitting-room.
I walked across my bedroom without putting on the light, opened the window, and leaned out into the wild night. The wind seized my hair and whipped it stingingly across my face. I snatched it to one side and held it with my hand, lifting my throbbing forehead to the blessedly cool caress.
Above me, tattered black clouds scuttered across a sky of polished steel and the moon seemed to rock crazily like a silver boat. Down in the garden the trees thrashed, frantic ballerinas flinging their branches from side to side in an anguish of supplication. Above the s
hrieking and moaning of the wind, the crash of the sea reached me. It would be full tide just about now. I imagined the churning, foam-topped waves sailing into the bay and washing over the murderous boulder that lay there. A spurt of rain spattered on my face like sudden tears. I breathed deeply, revelling in the earthy smell of the garden below me and the tang of seaweed in the salt-laden air.
When I finally closed the window, my hair was tangled and my head still ached, but I felt a little better. I undressed, washed, and lay down on the bed, listening to the sounds of the gale and thinking over the day’s happenings. In my mind’s eye the cigarette stub glowed luminously in the dark. Matthew had been very insistent that I should agree it was an accident. I shut my mind to that train of thought and saw again the vulnerable look in Mike’s eyes as he knelt at my feet. No, I didn’t want to think about that, either. Matthew and Kate, Matthew and Kate, ticked the clock beside my bed. There must be something I could bear to think about! Resolutely, I turned on my side and closed my eyes.
I was drifting in the limbo between wakefulness and sleep when directly below me I heard the front door slam. I leapt out of bed and over to the window. Mike was walking quickly to his car, head bent and coat collar turned up against the now heavy rain. The wind must have snatched the door out of his hand.
I watched him climb in and a moment later the headlights flowered in the streaming darkness. The car turned slowly, the great arc of lights sweeping prodigally over trees and drenched flower-beds, setting grotesque shadows leaping on the momentarily lit lawns. As the light swung towards the house, I pressed back lest my white face should be visible at the window. With a roar of exhaust the car leapt forward and turned right towards the main road. The rear lights shone like two evil eyes, then they too were gone.
Too late, I realised my foolishness in jumping out of bed. I was now wide awake. Perhaps a couple of aspirins would make me drowsy, I thought, turning to the dressing-table for my handbag. It was not there. I frowned trying to remember where I’d left it. It must be downstairs, but if I wanted any sleep at all tonight, I should have to go and find it.
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