Leaving George

by Diane M Dickson

  Once the food was ready she carried it through to the living room and turned on the table lamps and the jazz she had been listening to the night before. With a contented sigh she settled back on the sofa with a plate of bubbling cheese on toast and leaned over to place the glass on the side table.

  The food was delicious, exactly what she needed after the upheaval of the day and she closed her eyes to enjoy the moment…

  She leaned to put the empty plate beside her and her fingers found a small scrap of paper. She idly picked it up and unfolded it.

  Gull’s Rest

  Porthelland

  Jim and Dolly Teague

  07864 342281 mobile

  She folded the paper again and dropped it back where she had found it. Laying her head back she lost herself in the music.

  The concern at the back of her mind grew slowly. She put down her glass and picked up the post-it note. Pink with a daisy in the top right hand corner. The same as the ones she had kept on her desk in the house in The Dales.

  Her throat threatened to close. She hadn’t put this paper here. Dolly had cleaned the room and there had been no bits and pieces left about. Both herself and the cottage owner were tidy and neat. She had used this table for her morning coffee cup and it was clean and empty.

  She knew it was her paper and it was her writing – there was no doubt – but she certainly hadn’t put it in this room.

  Where had she last had it? She had been so very careful to keep all her information on her Macbook, the one that George didn’t know she had, the one that stayed hidden in the old suitcase in the wardrobe.

  She had written the address down just once. Sitting at her desk ready to leave and then thinking ahead to when she would arrive in Cornwall. She had scribbled it down at the last minute in case she needed to call.

  She tried to calm herself. Just like the man in the garden this would have a simple explanation.

  Closing her eyes she replayed her departure and remembered. She had slipped this into her jacket pocket and as she began the walk had pushed her jacket into the bag: the jacket that she no longer had because it was lying in a ditch at the side of the road.

  Wasn’t it?

  Chapter 17

  She held the little square of paper in her hands, folding and unfolding it. It must be that she had brought it into this room and put it on the table. Or maybe, it had been on the floor and Dolly had picked it up and put it here for her to find. Yes, that’s what had happened.

  But it wasn’t.

  Pauline knew. This piece of paper had been in her jacket pocket. The ambulance people told her to keep the unconscious man in the ditch warm and sent her running for her bag and dragging out the jacket. She had wrapped it around his shoulders and chest and felt the shivering ease.

  She had been so scared that he would die. It was frustrating that she didn’t know what else to do but to sit beside him and hold his hand and so then she had wrapped him in her coat.

  So; had the paper fallen out into the road or in her bag? Maybe it had been in her bag and had become tangled in the other clothes. Yes, yes, and then she hadn’t noticed it when it fell out and Dolly had found it. That was it, that’s what had happened.

  Why then did it have a water stain in the corner and a strange brown smear across one side?

  She screwed the thing up and took it with her into the kitchen. She didn’t need it now and it wasn’t important and so it was dropped into the bin. The accident had been horrible. It wasn’t something she wanted to think about now or ever but it would have been nice to know how he had fared, the broken and unconscious rider.

  Why was it that every time she moved forward something seemed to pop up to take her one step back and mar her pleasure? Damn it, the paper was nothing, just a strange little mystery and not worthy of a moment’s thought.

  She poured another glass of wine and settled back on the settee to lose herself in the rich sounds of saxophone and piano.

  Too much wine, too much emotion and it was time for bed. She checked the doors and dragged herself upstairs. Tomorrow was forecast to be bright and sunny and so she would go to the beach and remind herself that she was supposed to be on holiday. Time was running out and she must make the most of these last few days.

  The waxing moon peeped through the tree tops and so she left the curtains open. The morning sun would waken her but that was fine as she wanted to fill her day with pleasure.

  When the puzzles and memories tried to push in she cast them aside. She went on her mental journey to the desert island. Walking on white sand under swaying palms beside an azure ocean. The gentle rush of waves on the beach both real and virtual lulled her to sleep…

  It was fear that woke her although it took a while to register. Music played somewhere softly in the darkness.

  The moon washed the space with silver light. For a moment Pauline lay in the warm bed puzzled by the frizzle of nerves.

  The smoky note of a saxophone drifted into the room.

  As she slid her legs from under the duvet goose pimples prickled her bare arms. She realised that she was holding her breath and so gave herself a moment to breathe and to listen and assess.

  Slowly she crossed the carpet and reached a hand to the half-closed door. The music swelled and faded waves of it wafting up the stairs enticing, puzzling and drawing her onwards in spite of herself.

  She took the few steps across the landing and peered over the balustrade. The front door was closed, the living room door was open. There was the source of the sounds.

  She gulped, her throat had dried and her stomach quivered with nerves. She looked back, it would be wisest to return to the safety of the bedroom, lock the door and ring the police on her mobile. Yet fear of embarrassment, a disinclination to cause a fuss, maybe even some curiosity; whatever it was something carried her quietly down the wooden staircase.

  She crept along the hall and stood outside the lounge listening. The music still played, otherwise all was quiet save for the click of the hot water boiler which suddenly chimed in and caused her to gasp with shock.

  She pushed open the door and stepped into the room. A figure sat in the easy chair by the window, backlit by the faint glow from the lamp in the farm gateway. A dark silhouette; his hands on the arms of the chair his feet planted flat on the floor. A shadow statue.

  She took another step and his eyes opened and gleamed in the dimness. It wasn’t Jim and despite what she had come to assume this wasn’t George either.

  Chapter 18

  Shaking fingers clutched at her pyjama top, knuckles gleaming bone white. Tears of fear and panic swam in her eyes as Pauline hissed at the figure. Her voice hitched and caught as she struggled for control. “I’m not going back. I don’t care what he’s said, what he’s told you. I won’t go back. You can’t make me, he can’t make me.” She sobbed into the continuing silence.

  For long moments the dark shape didn’t move, he simply sat four square in the armchair and then she saw his fingers stretch and flex. She backed away towards the door. She must run.

  The voice stopped her. “Sit down. Sit down now.”

  “I’ve called the police. They’ll be here any minute.” In response to her desperate lie the man simply raised his hand and turned her little phone in his fingers. He pressed the button causing the tiny screen to light up and shook his head. He had been into her bedroom while she slept. He had stepped beside her bed and taken the phone from her cabinet.

  She couldn’t breathe.

  “No, you didn’t. Sit down there.” He pointed to the settee. She wouldn’t sit, wouldn’t be ordered around. Never again, she had left all that behind.

  “No. Get out. Tell him that I am not coming back no matter what and tell him to leave me alone.”

  He moved too quickly. Out of the chair, across the room. He reached the corner where she was backing into the hall. He leaned behind her and slammed the heavy wooden door, and in the same move grabbed her arm and dragged her to the settee. He half
threw, half pushed her into the soft cushions.

  A deep pain in her upper arm begged for relief. She rubbed at it as she drew her legs up curling defensively in the corner of the seat. “Please, don’t hurt me. There’s no need for you to hurt me. I don’t know what he told you but he’s a brute and a bully. I had to get away. Whatever he paid you I’ll give you double. Just leave me alone and tell him you couldn’t find me. Please, please!” The begging faded to a whimper as the tall man stood looking down at her. It was too dark to see his expression but his stance, the clenched fists and bunched shoulders quieted her.

  “Right. That’s better. Now listen to me. I will go away and you’ll never see me again. I will leave you alone and I won’t hurt you. All you have to do is give me them.”

  Pauline shook her head. “I don’t know what you mean. I haven’t got anything. I left everything. He can have it all I don’t want anything more than I have here. I didn’t take anything. I’m going to France…” The feeble final, desperate sentence died on her lips.

  He held out his hand palm upward as if to receive some gift. “Give me them now and I will go. This can be over very quickly. Now I know you’re a clever girl. Very clever. In fact, I’m impressed.” He gave a short nod. “I am very impressed you covered your tracks so well and you didn’t have a lot of time. A quick thinker, I like that and because I am so impressed I’m willing to finish this quickly. Now stop snivelling and just give me what’s mine.”

  “I… what’s yours? I don’t know what you mean!” She was shaking her head, tears streamed down her face. She wiped her nose on the back of her hand and choked on a sob. She was terrified and out of her depth.

  He crouched in front of her. One hand on the arm of the settee and the other on the seat close to her leg. She could feel his breath on her face and see the glimmer of moisture in his eyes. He leaned even closer as she pushed herself back into the cushions.

  “I am trying to make this easy for you girl. I’ve had quite a time finding you. Giving the police a fake phone number and a duff address was all very clever. Thinking on your feet, but it didn’t work. Oh they gave them to me alright when I begged.” He adopted a high pitched whining tone. “Oh officer you must tell me who she is. She’s my guardian angel! You must let me talk to her, I have to thank her. I want to send flowers and give her back her jacket. But then in the end it didn’t matter because you had left me that nice little note in your pocket hadn’t you?” Pauline drew in a gasp of air.

  “George didn’t send you?” The frown that ran across his forehead answered the question as clearly as any words. “Who are you?” Of course she knew who he was but none of it made any sense. If he was the motor cyclist, then why was he angry? “You’re the man from the road aren’t you? the accident. I thought you were in hospital?”

  “Oh I was for a few days. A nasty concussion and some knocks and bangs but they soon threw me out.”

  “The newspaper said you were seriously ill. I thought you might die.”

  “Yes, well sorry but here I am large as life and twice as ugly so now you need to just do as I say.”

  “But, I don’t understand you.”

  “Oh yes, I think you understand me very well indeed. You thought you could hide away didn’t you? But you’re an amateur. I’m one of the best and if we don’t settle this soon you’ll rue the day you decided to try and fool me.” He leaned and gripped her face in his big fingers squeezing till she felt warm blood in her mouth from where teeth punctured the inside of her cheeks.

  “Now, okay, you made a good run for it – well done but it’s over. I need my stuff back and I need it now. There are people waiting for the delivery and believe me they are not people you want to meet. Now it’s up to you; easy or hard.” With a rough gesture he flung her head away from him and stretched again to his full height towering over where she curled whimpering in the dark.

  “I haven’t got anything! Truly I haven’t!”

  “You went through my pockets. I know you did.”

  “Well I did, yes. I needed your phone, to call for help. I didn’t have mine.”

  “Yes, but my other pockets; you went through my other pockets and you lifted what you found there didn’t you? I bet you thought it was Christmas. Oh you thought, I can have a little trip to Cornwall, and then what? Oh yes, France! You thought you’d just pop across the channel. Well, I don’t think so Pauline. I don’t think so at all.”

  “Well, yes. I’m going to France, I am. But it was all planned already, before I left home. I was leaving home.”

  “Oh right, you were leaving home and going to France and just on the way having a stroll through The Dales and a trip to Cornwall.”

  “No, no, it isn’t like that… well yes, I suppose it is, but...” She drew in a shuddering breath. “I was leaving my husband and I found you. I tried to help you. I didn’t take anything.”

  “Right let’s just give him a call.”

  “What?”

  “Your husband. Let’s you and me give him a little call, see if he’s missed you. Do you think he has, this mystery husband? Do you think he’s missed his Pauline?”

  “No, no you can’t you mustn’t! He can’t know where I am! He’ll come and find me! Oh please don’t do this.”

  “Give me the bag you took from my pocket and I’ll leave you. I have to tell you though I am feeling a bit impatient now. You’re pushing me and you don’t want to do that.”

  “I haven’t got anything. I didn’t take anything.”

  “Oh dear. I see you don’t really understand what you’ve got yourself into here. Those diamonds didn’t belong to me. That memory stick is important to my clients. They don’t want it falling into the wrong hands and you – well I’m afraid you are the wrong hands.”

  “Diamonds? memory stick? I haven’t got any diamonds.”

  “Oh come on now, that won’t wash. This is not going to end well for you if you insist on playing the innocent.”

  Then with an alarming burst of speed he leaned down and grabbed Pauline and hoisted her to her feet. He pulled both arms up behind her back and she screamed as hot flashes of pain seared her muscles.

  “Don’t! please! please don’t...”

  “You can stop this right now but I’m warning you I am not a patient man.” With the words of threat ringing in her ears the darkness came and took her as she sagged forward in his grasp.

  Chapter 19

  Someone was crying. As she fought her way to the surface Pauline clamped down on the pitiful sobs.

  Panic overwhelmed her, she couldn’t move, couldn’t see and she hurt, badly, everywhere. As reality dragged her back from the dark, each and every pain became more acute.

  Inside her mouth was raw, her arms screamed, her legs were a deep ache. Her thumbs were searing ice. Her stomach roiled and acid burned in her throat. She retched but managed to hold back the nausea. A hard edged leather strap gagged her mouth and made swallowing almost impossible. Drool slipped sickeningly across her cheek. Every movement was torment. She had suffered pain before, often, but this was on a different level to that which she had become accustomed to at the hands of her husband.

  It puzzled her that she was still in the little cottage. On the floor in the living room, in the dark. Her hands were awkward lumps beneath her and it was impossible to separate them. Her thumbs screamed their objection when she tried.

  She tried to swivel her head around to see him, to find where he was but even this small movement caused such agony that she soon gave up. She couldn’t sense his presence in the room. Hope bloomed; maybe he had gone? He had immobilised her in the most cruel way. Though she wasn’t actually fastened down something was around her thumbs and her big toes were tied together with a stiff narrow band cutting off the circulation and preventing any attempt to stand. Her legs were pulled into an unnatural bow, her ankles twisted. Every movement shot lightning bolts through her entire body. The music still played, the gentle sound of jazz, smooth and liquid, mocked this ni
ghtmare she had woken to.

  She felt the bump through the old building. He was still here then, upstairs perhaps or in the kitchen. Footsteps across the ceiling answered the question. He was thumping and banging in the bedroom. Searching for things she didn’t have.

  Her frame shook and juddered though she tried to ease the effect of the shivering on the damaged parts of her body. Her world was a flood of pain and despair swept in to overwhelm her. She didn’t think she wanted to live now. She wanted to be away from this, to fall back into the recent darkness and float away. Nobody could stand this, yet she shivered and breathed and cried salt tears which dribbled across her face and stung her ruined lips and the peace refused to take her back.

  The thud of feet on the stairs told her he was coming back. She closed her eyes and tried to still the shivering. It was impossible, her body was crying out for ease and could find it nowhere.

  He nudged her with the toe of his boot. “You awake now?” She screwed her eyes tight. “Aha, I see you are. Well now, we have a problem don’t we?” He crouched beside her and with the ball of his thumb prised open one eyelid. “Come on now, wakey wakey. You need to talk to me Pauline.

  “Are you going to be sensible now and tell me where you’ve hidden them? Oh I do hope you haven’t sold them. That would be a very bad situation indeed. He grabbed her face and forced her to look at him. “You haven’t sold my pretty diamonds have you?”

  She shook her head.

  “Good, well that’s good. So all you need to do now is tell me where you’ve put them and where you have my memory stick and then we can all be on our way.”

  She shook her head again, trying to make him believe her innocence, but he scowled at her and squeezed tightly with his fingers. She gasped with the fresh pain. “Oh now come on. You have to see this is really not going to work.” She shook her head desperately from side to side. He had to understand she couldn’t give him what she hadn’t got.