Beyond All Reason

by Cathy Williams

  She had to remind herself that he was a free man and if he had found comfort with Alice, then why should she begrudge him that? She had to tell herself that it was better for him to move on than to stand still, hoping for their relationship to get back off the ground. Nevertheless, she doubted that she would ever see Alice in the same uncomplicated light.

  She slept heavily that night, and awoke early the following morning to a sky that was leaden grey. Overnight the temperature had dropped still further, but she didn’t care very much. She would be safely cocooned in a train, then in a rented car which she had arranged to meet her at the station, so she would not be obliged to face the fierce cold for any length of time.

  She was about to leave when the telephone rang. It was Ross. She heard the deep timbre of his voice with muted panic.

  ‘You can’t go to the Lakes,’ he told her, without bothering to go through the preliminaries of Hello, or How are you? or even Thanks for the letters.

  ‘The train leaves in thirty minutes,’ she informed him by way of answer, ‘I was just on my way out.’

  ‘They expect severe snow there by tomorrow evening. You’ll be snowed in.’

  And unable to return to work, she thought with cynicism. Was that the reason behind the warning? That she might find herself trapped for a few days and go over her allotted leave? There was a high-powered meeting scheduled for the day after she was due to arrive back in London. He would be furious if she was unable to attend. He had become accustomed to the way she worked, and because of that they functioned well together. He depended on her being able to make notes of the important issues, ignoring the dross which clung to most business meetings like useless seaweed. There was, she reflected, a ruthless streak in Ross that would have stunned her if she hadn’t become so accustomed to it over the months that she had worked for him.

  ‘I’ll make sure that the cottage is well stocked,’ she said. She had packed a few things, and would have time, just, to make it to the corner shop for a few more.

  ‘This isn’t a laughing matter,’ Ross said grimly down the line. ‘If the snow is anywhere as bad as they predict, then you could find yourself stuck up there for more than a few days.’

  ‘Thanks for the warning,’ Abigail said, ‘but I really must be on my way now or I’ll miss the train. I’ll see you when I get back, Mr Anderson.’ She replaced the receiver and felt a vicarious thrill at having been the first to end a conversation between them. She could imagine him cursing softly under his breath, and half pitied the next human being to walk through the office door.

  She wasn’t unduly worried by the prospect of snow. In fact, she rather liked the thought of it. It would be comforting to be cocooned in a cosy little cottage while the weather outside ranted and raged. Emily had told her that the place was always well supplied with food, because it was heavily used, and the log shed would be stocked to the ceiling with logs. She doubted that there was any basis for Ross’s fears that she would be snowed in indefinitely. She had never actually been to the Lake District, but this was England, after all, not Iceland, and snowstorms tended to be short lived.

  The train left exactly on time and she spent the journey staring out of the window at the passing scenery and reading her book. It was relaxing. All her worries seemed to diminish in direct proportion to the amount of distance between herself and London. She wondered idly whether she would forget them completely if she vanished out of England altogether and found a job in some remote part of the world. Doing something wildly different like teaching English to the Eskimos. Or was English their native tongue? The question amused her until she felt herself getting tired, and the next time she opened her eyes was when the train jerked to a stop at her station.

  Train, she mused, on time, car, she found, awaiting her at the station, as duly promised by the rental company, sky, she noticed, not looking ominous. Life, she decided, definitely taking a turn for the better. She hadn’t thought of Martin once, and Ross—well, she had managed to keep his image resolutely to the background and every time it had threatened to intrude on her well-being she diverted her thoughts to something else.

  The cottage, admittedly, took some time getting to and she was exhausted by the time she finally arrived, driving very slowly because it was pitch black. Also, she didn’t like night driving. She was unaccustomed to driving at all, because she had no car in London, where it would have been more of a liability than an asset, and when she did borrow her mother’s car, most of her driving was done during the day.

  For the first time she wondered what she would do if it started to snow, and the prospect of that, miles away from civilisation, didn’t seem quite so adventurous as it had done several hours earlier in the busy warmth of the train.

  The cottage, she found, was small, but exceedingly comfortable, with the sort of homely atmosphere of a second home that was very well used and maintained.

  Emily had told her that it was on regular loan to any number of friends who fancied a weekend away, and during the summer months it was as busy as any hotel.

  ‘All spongers,’ she had laughed, ‘ought to be charged rent, but most of them have been taking advantage for so long that they would collapse on the spot if money was suggested.’

  They all, she had said, paid by way of leaving some present behind, and, as Abigail browsed through, it wasn’t difficult to find the presents. Several boxes of biscuits and chocolates, an extremely well stocked supply of drink and lots of little ornaments which differed wildly in taste.

  Ranged along the fireplace were dainty porcelain figurines which nudged alongside garish, souvenir ceramic ornaments, and an assortment of umbrellas stood in a massive colourful pot, clearly forgotten by their owners.

  The furniture, a three-piece suite, was worn but pleasant and the faded floral pattern was just right for the place. It lent it a warm glow.

  She sank into the nearest chair and closed her eyes, relishing the peace and quiet. She could never retire to the countryside, she had lived too long in a city to find solitude appealing, but sitting here she could understand the allure.

  There had been no need to light the fire because there was central heating, which she had switched on as soon as she had arrived, but tomorrow, she thought, tomorrow she would be highly industrious and get the logs going.

  Over the next two days, life drifted into an easy, comfortable pattern of breakfast, followed by a walk, then lunch, much reading and not too much thinking, and in the evening she lit the fire and after supper was content to simply lie on the sofa with her feet up and set her mind to the strenuous task of dozing and reading.

  Three more days of this, she thought, and she would return to London fortified against anything. Fortified, particularly, against her silly preoccupation with Ross, which, in the solitude of a cottage miles away from anything, now appeared laughable and a little crazy.

  Abigail stuck her book on her stomach and grimaced. Silly, she told herself. Silly and crazy.

  She closed her eyes, fell asleep, and woke up the following morning with a stiff neck and a back that felt as though it had been twisted into several contradictory directions.

  Automatically she went across to the window, yawning and flexing her arms, and then stopped.

  No snow, no indication of it at all since she had arrived. She had blithely assumed that the forecasters, as usual, had been up to their old tricks of exaggeration.

  Outside the sky was a heavy, leaden colour and light flakes were drifting down, nothing too terrible but not exactly heart-warming either.

  She had a quick breakfast of cereal, and then changed into her jeans, with several layers of clothes over them and her waterproof coat.

  Outside the sudden drop in temperature was noticeable. She stuck her hands into her pockets and within minutes of walking she could feel her face beginning to go numb with cold. I am, she laughed out loud, Scott of the Antarctic.

  She knew not the first thing about meteorology but she peered up at the sky anyway, and
dubiously decided that things didn’t look too bad. It must have started snowing only shortly before she woke up with the stiff neck and the dodgy back, because there was no build-up on the ground. That was good news. Less good was the fact that, although the fall was slight, it was persistent, and it was cold enough to ensure that what fell stayed.

  She spent another half-hour walking, and then made her way back to the cottage.

  She tried her routine of lazily doing nothing much, but she couldn’t manage it because by three o’clock, with darkness already beginning to throw its mantle over the ground, she was now worriedly assessing the situation and feeling no humorous comparison to Scott of the Antarctic whatsoever.

  Her original conclusion that things didn’t seem too bad was starting to wear thin at the edges. The snow was getting thicker. It wasn’t so thick that you couldn’t see between the flakes, but it was whirring down steadily and the branches of the trees were already white and covered.

  She had an early supper, at six, and drew the curtains. No point gazing out and contemplating the worst, was there? She had earlier made sure that the supply of logs by the fire was restocked from the shed at the back, and the cupboards, thank heavens, had enough food to feed the starving thousands for quite some time. Visitors had generously supplied grateful leaving gifts of tins of salmon, pate, tuna, in additional to the usual dried foods.

  She had never actually been snowed in, anywhere, in her entire life. It had always been the sort of thing that she had read about in books, something that sounded exciting and vaguely romantic.

  She had a bath, then changed into her pyjamas and drifted back down into the small sitting-room, curling into one corner of the sofa and resisting the temptation to do a spot check on the weather.

  It was a bit of a shame that there was no telephone in the place. Emily had said that her parents had never thought it right to have one installed, just as there was no television set. They had liked to have that total feeling of getting away from it all.

  With snow outside, Abigail wryly thought that a link to the outside world, however pointless, would have been welcome. Right now she felt a bit like the last remaining survivor on planet Earth.

  It was terribly comfortable in the sitting-room. With the log fire burning, she felt warm and cosy. She could quite happily drift off, but the memory of the aches and pains which had accompanied her last lapse the night before were too vivid in her mind for that mistake to recur.

  When she felt her eyelids beginning to droop, she went upstairs and promptly fell asleep.

  She didn’t know whether it was the need to go to the bathroom that awakened her, or else the deep cold that had managed to wriggle under the blankets and clamp itself over her body. She shivered and reached to switch on the bedside light and felt a sudden, stiffening jolt of panic when nothing happened. No warm glow, nothing.

  She threw back the blankets, sprang out of the bed and tried the switch by the door. Nothing.

  Oh, God, she thought, don’t tell me the electricity’s gone. No electricity equalled no lights, equalled no heating, apart from the fire in the sitting-room.

  She fumbled her way down the stairs with her arms clasped around her, thankful that she had at least had the sense to pack her warmest pyjamas, and hopelessly tried the remaining light switches, even though she knew that she would find the same irritating, unrewarding click.

  The log fire had died, and after what seemed like hours rooting around in the dark while her eyes acclimatised to the blackness, she managed to get it going again.

  Then she sat down in front of it with her feet tucked under her and thought.

  Snowed in and freezing wasn’t a winning combination. Her mind threw up a lot of very graphic images of what could happen and none of them was very pleasant.

  What if, for instance, the logs ran out and she couldn’t make her way to the shed because she couldn’t get out of the house? What if the matches ran out and there were no more packs in the house? She hadn’t thought to look when she had first arrived because there were sufficient on the mantelpiece and besides, there was always the central heating, but without matches or heating she would freeze to death.

  She laughed uneasily to herself. Her imagination was running away with her, for heaven’s sake. This was England. The electricity would be back within hours, most probably, and the snow wouldn’t stay on the ground for longer than a day, a couple at the outside. In the morning she would have a good laugh at herself.

  Her head began to droop down, and with some effort she made herself go back up to the bathroom, this time with some light from the fire to guide her. She would hunt down some candles when she got back downstairs. Everyone had candles in their house. Even she had candles in her little apartment, even though the electricity had never yet failed her.

  But she didn’t get around to it because when she returned downstairs, the first thing she did was to peer outside, and that was when she saw something moving. Out of the corner of her eye. The glimpse of a shadow which was gone even before it had had time to register on her consciousness.

  Then she began to feel real terror.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ABIGAIL didn’t know what to do. The easiest thing would have been to tell herself that she had imagined it all, but the sickening feeling in the pit of her stomach was telling her too strongly that that was no figment of her imagination. She had really seen something, and it hadn’t been some harmless animal seeking shelter.

  She thought quickly. The door at the back was bolted, a precaution that came as second nature to her from living in London where unlocked doors were open invitations to burglars.

  The front door was likewise bolted. That just left the windows which, for a man determined to enter, would provide very little by way of a barrier. All he would have to do would be to break the glass and open the window from the inside, and he wouldn’t even have to watch how much noise he made because he could make as much as he liked without fear of being heard by anyone.

  She tiptoed across to the window, cautiously drew back the curtain but only fractionally because she had no intention of drawing attention to her presence in the cottage, and looked outside, but everything was silent. The snow, climbing steadily up the trunks of the trees, was still falling and there was a stillness about the scene that now struck her as very eerie indeed.

  She frowned, wondering what to do, whether there was any useful weapon in the house apart from one of the logs by the fireside which would be too unwieldy to be of any use, when there was an almighty bang on the door and she jumped in shock.

  Then there was another bang, and she nervously made her way to the front door and looked at it as if searching for inspiration.

  The man, seven foot two in her imagination and bearing a strong resemblance to pictures of primitive caveman, was going to enter. He would either assume that no one was in if she didn’t answer, and then break in, or else, if she did answer, would immediately realise that she was alone and vulnerable and would break in. Either way he wasn’t going to leave politely the way he came.

  ‘Yes!’ In the quiet of the room, her voice bounced off the walls and startled her with its volume. ‘What do you want? My husband is asleep upstairs and I shall call him immediately if you don’t go away at once!’ By the way, she wanted to add, he’s a bodybuilder with a black belt in karate and can break bricks with his bare hand. ‘If you’re looking for shelter,’ she shouted, hoping the caveman wouldn’t sense that she was scared stiff, ‘use the log shed. You’ll be out of the snow.’

  ‘You damned woman!’ An answering voice roared back at her, slightly distorted through the thickness of the wooden door. ‘Open this door right now, or I’m bloody going to freeze to death out here!’

  ‘That’s it!’ she yelled back. ‘I’m going to fetch my husband this instant!’

  ‘You don’t have a husband!’

  He had been spying on her. Watching her. How else did he know that she was on her own? The thought of the ca
veman looking at her while she took her walks, peering into the cottage as she cooked her dinner and read her book, sent a chill through her.

  ‘You open this door now, Abigail Palmer, or I’ll throttle you the minute I get my hands on you!’

  The relief that washed over her was immense, and she fumbled with the bolt on the door, letting in a gust of freezing wind and snow, and also Ross Anderson, dressed in black from head to foot and not looking very happy.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she stuttered, her eyes wide, her mouth half open with delayed surprise.

  He didn’t answer. He slammed the door behind him and then strode across to the fire where he took off his gloves, flung them on the nearest chair, and began warming his hands, rubbing them together to get the blood circulation going again.

  Abigail watched him with a stunned expression and finally he turned to face her.

  ‘You took your bloody time opening that door,’ was all he said, and she glared at him with resentment, forgetting how terrified she had been less than fifteen minutes earlier.

  She had been having a fine time, she fumed, snow or no snow, electricity or no electricity, and now her peace had been invaded by the last person in the world she had any desire to see. To top it all, he was already acting as though she should be grateful to him for turning up here in the dead of night and scaring her half to death!

  He removed his coat, which joined the gloves on the chair, then raked his fingers through his hair.

  ‘That feels better,’ he said. ‘Would you like to get me a cup of coffee?’

  She remained where she was and folded her arms with a look of purpose on her face.

  ‘Would you like to tell me what brings you here?’ He might be her boss, but if he thought that she was going to run around behind him in her free time, fetching cups of coffee, then he was in for a sad shock. She was here to relax, and the sooner he took himself off, the better.