Shadow Over Sea And Sky

by K H Middlemass

  “I don’t do this much anymore,” she said, voice harshened by the smoke. “I save it for special occasions.”

  Emily smiled warmly. “Where do you get it from?”

  Simone tensed slightly for a second, but it did not escape Emily’s eye. “You don’t have to tell me. It’s ok.”

  Simone wrinkled her nose and shook her head. She offered the joint to Emily, who hesitantly took it after another paranoid check over her shoulder. “My dad.”

  Emily blinked, saying nothing. Simone was looking fixedly out at the water, mouth a hard line and brow furrowed. She looked back at Emily askance, something in her look clearly compelling her to keep going.

  “Oh, I always got it from him. It’s his way of making a little extra cash. I don’t ask and he doesn’t tell.”

  Emily took a careful drag. She hadn’t had anything like this in a long time now and was probably hugely out of practice. Predictably the smoke made her head swim and she forced back the choking cough brewing in her chest, thinking about what she’d just been told. Simone’s father worked part time at a garage, or at least he did when they were kids, so it didn’t seem out of the realm of possibility that he would be doing something illicit on the side. Having a drug dealer for a father, even if it was just cannabis… she couldn’t imagine what it would be like. But then here she was, smoking the very stuff he peddled. Who was she to judge? She decided to shrug it off, to show Simone that she didn’t need to worry. It seemed like the right thing to do.

  “So your father’s the don of Caldmar’s criminal underbelly,” she said light-heartedly. The smoke poured from her mouth with each word as she felt a warm tingling spread through her body, from the top of her head all the way down to her toes. “I don’t think you have anything to worry about.”

  Simone’s mouth perked back up into a smile. “You know, it’s so nice to be around a non-judgemental person again. I’d almost forgotten what that’s like.”

  Emily gave her a gentle nudge with her shoulder. She was feeling lighter than air, happiness bubbling in her blood. “You and me both, Si.”

  They sat for a while in comfortable silence, passing the joint back and forth as it burned slowly down to the roach. Gulls called faintly from a distance. Everything was still.

  “This is nice,” Simone said quietly. “Like old times.”

  “Like old times,” Emily repeated in agreement.

  “Let’s not forget about each other so quickly next time, okay?” Simone stubbed the last of the joint out on the slightly damp wood of the pier and hooked an arm around Emily’s shoulder, giving her an affable squeeze. “I think we need to stick by each other, you and me.”

  Emily, woozy and only half awake by now, rested her head against the cool leather of Simone’s jacket. They sat with their heads together, blonde hair mingling with red and they looked out at the grey, churning water.

  “Okay,” Emily agreed happily.

  They stayed like that for a while longer. Emily’s chest was swelling with contentment, proud of herself for throwing away her insignificant concerns. The light was changing almost imperceptibly before their eyes, swathes of a pale, pinkish orange creeping along the skyline.

  “I’ll have to go soon,” Emily said, and then sighed heavily. “Suddenly I’m not feeling so good about the whole thing.”

  To the right of them, the curve of the cliffs stretched on into the distance, buried in a thin crescent of dark golden sand. The manor could be seen from almost anywhere in the town, but from the end of the pier it seemed somehow closer, more imposing; a monolithic presence that, when Emily looked upon it, made her skin prickle. She tried to imagine herself walking back up there and knocking on the huge wooden door again, but it all seemed unreal to her still. And Volkov… what of him, exactly? Emily was afraid she would make a further fool of herself, but then she was afraid of a lot of things that concerned the new master of Fairbanks Manor. Things she wasn’t even able to articulate to herself yet.

  “He can’t be that weird,” Simone said. “Can he?”

  Emily shrugged. She didn’t feel like talking about him anymore and ‘weird’ seemed like such an inappropriate word for a man like Volkov. He wasn’t weird, he was something completely different, something that the English language was unable to define. She decided to change tack. “It’s not that, really. It’s more that my drawings suck.”

  “Your drawings do not suck!” Simone admonished, punching Emily on the arm as punishment. “I remember that picture you drew of me when you went to university. I wish I’d gotten the damn thing framed.”

  “It’s just that when I try to draw him…” Emily’s voice died away. She stared fixedly out at the water and shook her head. “It just doesn’t work. I don’t know why.”

  Simone pushed herself up onto her feet and stretched. Her t-shirt rode up a little, exposing her flat stomach; her belly button stud glinted in the light. Her leather jacket creaked with her movements. Emily stood up too, only to start wobbling from an unexpected head rush. She leant woozily on Simone for support, who slung an arm around her shoulders.

  “God, you’re such a lightweight,” she laughed.

  “I’m out of practice,” Emily replied, suddenly feeling very warm and unsteady. “In everything, apparently.”

  “Listen, sweet thing,” Simone said. “Just relax and take it as it comes and you’ll be fine. You’re a good artist, probably the best that I know.”

  Emily smiled. “I’m the only artist you know.”

  “Exactly. That’s why you’re the best.”

  They laughed happily, Simone’s husky cackle mingling with Emily’s girlish giggles, and began to walk down the pier together.

  ***

  When Emily returned home, the sun was beginning its descent in the sky, sinking slowly towards the horizon of the ocean. Her lungs felt singed and tender, head still swimming from the illicit joint she had shared with Simone on the pier. It was riding on the back of her blood cells and through the tunnels of her veins, warming the tips of her fingers and toes. Her stomach was rumbling quietly, and she realised she had barely eaten a thing all day. She hadn’t felt this good in a long, long time. Her muscles were aching slightly from her laughter, but they ached in a way that made her feel alive, almost accomplished, like a real person again.

  Simone had promised to call her soon; she wanted her to meet Nick the next time he visited. Emily had agreed, finding that she very much wanted to meet this elusive boyfriend. As she walked home with the sun at her back, she wondered what he would be like and what he would think of her. Simone must have mentioned her erstwhile best friend at least in passing, though she imagined that what she did have to say was less than positive. Emily could hardly blame her if that turned out to be the case. She fumbled clumsily with her keys, fingers too numb to be controlled properly, and was amazed how quickly happiness could flood back into a person’s life, how little it took to feel something whole and complete when at the beginning of the day she had felt more lost than ever.

  She slipped the key into the lock and went to turn it only to have the door opened for her from the other side. Emily was confronted with a bedraggled looking Victoria, who was wrapped up in a fluffy dressing gown with the phone clamped firmly to her ear. She ushered Emily in and quickly shut the door behind her.

  “Yes… I see…” She said. “Now, listen to me… Howard, darling, I need you to calm down for a moment…”

  Victoria fell silent again at the garbled words on the other end of the line. Emily frowned quizzically at her mother, but Victoria was staring fixedly at the floor and didn’t notice. Howard was Sarah Wilson’s husband; he worked as a Greengrocer down in the town. Emily had spoken to him a few times, but their relationship extended as far as him selling her the occasional apple and asking after her parents. The sound of his frantic speech filled the air, the words unclear to her but the desperation more than obvious.

  “Have you spoken to the police?” Victoria continued. A thin sheen of swea
t was beading on her white forehead. She looked more drained than her voice would let on.

  “Christopher will be home soon… yes, I’ll let him know as soon as he puts his foot through the door,” Victoria said, voice taking on a softness that Emily assumed was supposed to be reassuring. “And Howard, do call the police, all right?”

  A few more moments passed, the hum of Howard’s voice the only sound.

  “If you think that’s best. Call me as soon as you hear anything, all right? Goodbye, Howard.”

  Victoria put the phone back on the receiver, where it landed with a heavy click. She sat heavily upon the bottom step, the way Emily had earlier that morning when talking to Simone, and put her head in her hands. Emily placed a gentle hand on her back.

  “Mum, what is it? Why was Howard calling?”

  Victoria looked up at Emily; her eyes, to her surprise, were rimmed with red. She suddenly looked old and very, very tired.

  “It’s Sarah,” she said. “She’s gone missing.”

  7

  The next hour or so was a blur. Emily remembered little of what happened other than that she forced her mother back to bed and promised to tell her father what had happened the moment he returned home. Victoria was exhausted, and despite weakly protesting that she was needed when she could barely stay on her feet, once she was back beneath the covers she immediately fell into a deep sleep. Before that, though, she had told Emily what little she knew. Sarah had gone out, she said, to look for work. When she did not come home, her husband frantically called everyone he and his wife knew, from close friends to passing acquaintances, in the hope that someone had seen her or had any idea of where she might have gone. Before Howard had hung up, he had told Victoria that he and a few others were forming a search party for her. If the search turned up nothing, then they would go to the police.

  Emily waited impatiently for her father to come home, pacing the house like a caged animal, glancing at the clock every thirty seconds and growing frustrated at how slowly one minute seemed to move to the next. She made cups of tea and failed to drink them, letting them grow cold on the countertop. Eventually her rumbling hunger brought her out of her daze, or at least enough to make a sandwich and eat it without really tasting it. Her meeting with Volkov was growing closer, but she couldn’t go now, could she? Not with Sarah missing. The idea that Caldmar could somehow be an unsafe place was almost laughable to her; it wasn’t the sort of place where bad things happened. At most, some teenager might get a caution for petty theft, but crime was more of a concept than an actuality.

  After checking in on her mother and finding her still sleeping, she decided to leave a note. Her father didn’t know where she was going and her mother was so exhausted she doubted she would wake to tell him, but as she wrote down the words she found herself constructing a lie regardless; she would be with Simone for the rest of the night, keeping her company while her father was out. Emily had tried not to make a habit out of lying to her mother and father, but sometimes she had to for the sake of her own sanity and she realised that if she was going to lie, then she needed Simone to cover for her. She had done it before, of course, but that was when they were teenagers and sick to the back teeth of rules that, now they were in their twenties, no longer existed. Emily pulled the phone as far away from the stairs as she could and dialled the number, hoping that Simone would be home by now.

  “Hello?” Emily felt relief grip her heart when she heard Simone pick up. She sounded out of breath.

  “Simone?” Emily whispered, “It’s Emily again.”

  “Bloody hell, girl, I’ve only just gotten through the door.” Simone sighed, breath rasping. “What on earth are you whispering for?”

  “Mum’s asleep and I don’t want to wake her up.”

  “Ok, so what do you want?” Emily heard the sound of the door slamming shut. “Or did you just want to hear the sultry sound of my voice again?”

  “Simone, I’m not joking,”

  “No, you’re not joking. You’re not joking because you never do,” Simone exhaled sharply through her nose.

  “Listen, do you remember when I said I was going up to the manor tonight?”

  “Yes Em, I remember what you told me less than an hour ago.”

  “Well, I need you to do me a favour.”

  A brief pause on the other end of the line. “Go on.”

  Emily pressed the phone to her cheek tighter; she held a bunch of the coiled wire in her fist.

  “If my dad calls you or anything,” she began carefully, “Would you just tell him that… that I’ve been with you all night and that I’ve fallen asleep on your couch or something?”

  Another pause, followed by another heavy exhalation that rattled through the receiver. “Emily.”

  “What?”

  “You are a twenty-five-year-old woman.”

  “I’m aware of that.”

  “A twenty-five-year-old woman who is lying to her parents.”

  Emily closed her eyes to her own embarrassment. “Yes.”

  “Why exactly are you lying to your parents and why do I need to be a part of such sordid goings on?”

  “Well…”

  “Don’t your parents know that you got this job anyway?” Simone cut her off, voice swiftly picking up in speed and volume.

  “Mum knows. Dad…”

  “It just seems like something that we’re supposed to have grown out of by now…”

  “Simone!” Emily cried in a voice much louder than she originally intended. She flinched and inwardly prayed that her mother would remain undisturbed. “Could you just let me explain?”

  A cluck of disapproval rang in her ear, a surprisingly old sound for Simone. “Proceed.”

  “Okay, when I got home mum was on the phone to Howard Wilson…”

  “Howard Wilson? The grocer bloke?”

  “The very same.”

  “I remember him now. We used to buy our snacks from his place after school and we were his favourites because we never tried to steal anything from him. Nice man, really.”

  “Right…” Emily said, trying not to get too exasperated. She glanced at the clock in the kitchen and realised that she was going to be late. “But his wife’s gone missing.”

  There was a pause that went on for a few seconds too long.

  “Shit,” Simone said, sounding genuinely surprised by this. “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “What happened?”

  Emily explained hastily about Sarah losing her job at the Fairbanks house, whispering every detail that came to mind and all the while watching the arm on the clock tick around the face with each passing second.

  “If mum was awake right now she’d probably be barring the door with her body like a human shield,” she concluded. “Anything to prevent her precious daughter from going out after dark when there’s a killer on the loose.”

  “A killer in Caldmar bay,” Simone mused. “Improbable, but not improbable enough to override the overbearing motherliness of Victoria Van Buren methinks.”

  “It doesn’t help that Volkov’s not been here for very long, either,” Emily replied. “It makes him an easy target for suspicion. And she’s been kind of… I don’t know, weird about him.”

  “Well, I think that might be a story for another time,” Simone said. “But Cinderella must go to the ball. I’ll cover for you if anyone calls.”

  “You will?”

  Simone sighed, but it wasn’t a genuine expression of annoyance or disappointment. “Call me crazy, but the solidarity of youth remains.”

  After Emily hung up the phone, reassured in her deception, she padded quietly up the stairs and packed her supplies into an old canvas bag before grabbing her camera from its resting place on the top of her bookshelf. She stopped for a moment to look at it; a fine layer of dust had settled over the top, the smudgy imprints of her fingers smeared across the surface. It was a simple enough make and all that Emily had really needed. She liked to take photographs of he
r subjects so that she could have a frame of reference, a source that she could practice from and perfect. She kept some of her favourites pasted into a scrapbook: a single blossom clinging to the branch of a dead tree, a landscape of the city at night with all the buildings twinkling like diamonds, a thunderstorm over Caldmar. There were not many human faces to be found between those pages.

  Emily stuffed the camera into the bag and headed for the door, only to have the sight of her reflection in the corner of her eye made her halt again. She turned to the mirror, approached it, and stared at herself. The whites of her eyes were webbed with faint red veins, rimmed with dark shadows, and her skin appeared dull in the poor light. She fluffed her hair out and watched it fall back uselessly against her skull. On an impulse, she grabbed a tube of lipstick from the dresser drawer; though she rarely wore make-up, her deft painter’s hands expertly coated her lips, gliding across the fullness of her bottom lip with ease. When she looked at herself again, she was surprised to see her face suddenly transformed. Her mouth was a scarlet kiss that, somehow, made her skin appear healthier and her green eyes seem brighter. She smiled in spite of herself, and hurriedly left the room before anything else could distract her.

  Emily left the lying note on the kitchen table and left the house as quietly as possible, shutting the door as quietly as she could.