He did not stir.
‘Adam! Let me in.’
The kitchen door was unlocked and she walked in. Pausing to glance round she went on through into the study.
‘Adam!’
He was snoring.
‘Adam, for goodness’ sake, wake up.’ She shook his shoulder hard. He groaned and shrugged her off and went back to sleep.
While he slept she rounded up the empty bottles. He must have moved back into the bedroom he had shared with Jane and slept in her bed the night before. Wrinkling her nose, Liza extricated the small flat whisky bottle from beneath the pillow, threw it into the corner with the others and stripped the sheets. At least when he woke up he would find the room clean and ordered and the rest of the house hoovered and neat as Jane would have kept it. She left the spare room – the room Adam had shared with Brid – till last. Taking a deep breath she flung open the door and looked inside. The room was a wreck. The bedclothes and curtains had been shredded, the wallpaper was hanging off in strips and one of the panes in the window had been broken. Staring round, she shook her head in despair.
‘So, what do you think?’ Adam, awake at last, had come upstairs behind her and was standing looking over her shoulder. He smelled stale and unwashed.
‘I don’t know what to think.’ She turned and looked at him. ‘Beyond the fact that you need a bath and a change of clothes and then probably a square meal. Drinking like this doesn’t help, Adam, you know that.’
‘Don’t you want to know what happened?’ His eyes were red and swollen.
‘If you want to tell me.’
He walked past her and stood in the doorway looking round. ‘I told her to go.’
‘Brid?’
‘Who else?’
‘And has she?’
He shrugged. ‘I suppose so.’
‘After she wrecked this room?’
‘As you see.’ He went over and sat on the bed with a groan. ‘She killed her.’ Tears were pouring down his face. He made no attempt to stem them.
Liza walked across and sat down beside him. ‘Brid killed Jane?’
He nodded. ‘I wanted to finish it. I wanted to give Janie some happiness at last. She deserved it. She still loved me, Liza, after all I had done to her. She still loved me. She stuck by me.’ He paused.
Liza waited for him to go on. He struggled for a moment with his words then, taking a deep breath he continued: ‘She wouldn’t listen. She – she – just sort of pushed Janie down the stairs!’ He wiped his nose on the sleeve of his sweater. ‘She landed so awkwardly. I knew she couldn’t be alive, but I talked to her. I begged her to stay with me. I begged …’ He hauled the torn pillow into his arms and stifled his tears in it. ‘The cross. The little cross you gave her. It had kept her safe. She gave it to me and I threw it back at her. It fell to pieces. She gave it to me to keep me safe and I destroyed it!’
Liza gripped his shoulder.
He sniffed. ‘I told Brid to go back to whatever hell she came from. She’s mad. She’s got no feelings. She’s some kind of fiend!’
‘What did you tell the police?’
‘What could I say? That I had been sleeping with a woman who had escaped from a mental home and who knifed people all over the place and who I had allowed to kill my wife?’ He hurled the pillow across the room suddenly. ‘What could I say? That I was as mad as she was? That she had bewitched me so that I couldn’t break free of her? That she still looked as if she were eighteen even though I had known her most of my life? That every time I set eyes on her I couldn’t stop myself from wanting her so much?’
He turned and looked at Liza through bleary eyes. ‘Jane stood by me through all that. When I think how much I hurt her. When I think what I did to her! I can’t live with myself, Liza. I can’t!’
‘You have to, Adam.’ Liza’s voice was very gentle. ‘That, I’m afraid will be your hell.’ She sighed, then she repeated her question. ‘What did you tell the police?’
‘That she fell. It was true. Robert sorted it all out.’
‘And has Brid gone for good?’
He shrugged.
She bit her lip thoughtfully. ‘Come on, Adam. Please, go and have a bath. You’ll feel better. I’ll go and rustle something up for supper. Then when you’ve had something to eat we’d better decide what to do.’ She put her hand on his shoulder again. ‘What about the funeral?’ she asked gently.
He shrugged. ‘There has to be an inquest. Robert is looking after it all.’
‘Robert?’
‘There isn’t anyone else, Liza.’ He turned his back on her and walked out of the room. ‘I have no family. I have no friends. And now I have no wife.’
Adam bathed and put on clean clothes as she heated some soup from the freezer, then he came down to the kitchen and made himself some instant coffee while she cut up the bread. He looked at her sheepishly. ‘I don’t deserve your kindness, Liza.’
‘Of course you do. We’re old friends, remember?’ She put the plate on the table and, walking over, gave him a hug. He smelled a great deal better. ‘Some soup will make you feel stronger, then we’ll decide what to do. I think after the funeral you should come home with me to Wales for a bit. You do have family, Adam. Beth and I are your family.’
On the way to the house she had stopped off and bought a bunch of freesias in a small shop on the corner. She lifted them from the counter and going over to the sink, ran some water into a glass. Putting the flowers into it she set it on the middle of the kitchen table; their scent seemed to fill the room.
‘You can get through this, Adam,’ she said slowly as she began to stir the soup again. ‘It will take courage, but you’ve got plenty of that.’
‘Have I?’ He sat down, nursing the mug of coffee between his hands.
‘We both know you have.’
‘I don’t want to come to Wales.’ He looked up at her suddenly. ‘I don’t want to know Beth. She’s better off without me in her life, and so are you.’
‘Don’t be silly, Adam.’
‘No. I’ve thought about this, Liza, in my more sane moments.’ He gave a sheepish half-grin. ‘I should like very much for you to stay for the funeral, then I want you to go back to Wales and forget I ever existed. Brid is a vicious, murderous, amoral parasite. She hasn’t gone; she’s biding her time. I have a feeling that she will follow me wherever I go for the rest of my days. I shall fight her, if I have the strength, but I don’t want to think, ever, that I have brought her with me, to hunt you or that child down. Let me do this last thing for you, Liza. Keep Beth safe. Forget me.’
‘I will never forget you, Adam.’
He smiled sadly. ‘Perhaps not, but you can damp down the memories.’ He looked up again. ‘Did Brid kill Phil?’ It was the first time he had ever asked her about the accident.
She hesitated. ‘I will never know for sure. He skidded off the mountain road.’
There was a long silence.
‘Don’t put Beth at risk too, Liza. You’ve seen what the bitch can do.’
Liza sighed. ‘We’ll see. Perhaps she’ll never come back.’
‘Perhaps.’
He drank some soup and ate a piece of bread, then he went back into his study. When Liza glanced in later he was sitting, staring at the wall.
Twice in the night she looked in on him, asleep in Jane’s bed. He seemed peaceful enough, though she found herself wondering if, in his dreams, he was somewhere far away on the Scottish mountainside.
Liza begged Adam to allow Jane to be buried in Wales beside Calum and Julie and Phil, but he was adamant. There would be no burial. There would be no country grave. And Beth was not to come. The funeral was pitiful. Although there were quite a lot of people there for the church service, only Robert Harding, Adam and Liza went with the coffin to the crematorium. Patricia, in the Surrey old people’s home where she had spent the last year, was too frail and too confused to take in what had happened. She sent flowers, and then only days later rang up and asked to speak
to Jane.
Once the coffin had disappeared, with the full inexorable horror, behind the curtain in the crematorium chapel, Adam turned away and walked steadfastly out of the door. He stood for a moment in the rain looking up at the sky, his face set, then he headed towards the car. They had travelled together in Robert Harding’s Volvo and he stopped beside it, his expression closed, looking neither to left nor right as the other two, with exchanged glances, hurried after him.
‘I hope you are going to come home with me for tea,’ Robert said firmly. ‘I know you said there was to be no official get together, and everyone else has respected that and gone, but you can’t go back to an empty house on your own. I want you and Liza to come back at least for a while.’
Adam did not answer. He seemed to have withdrawn within himself as he climbed into the front seat beside Robert, his collar pulled up around his ears, the cold rain still dripping from his hair.
‘Thank you.’ Liza answered for him. ‘We should like that very much.’ She glanced at Adam’s profile and was not reassured. His expression was shuttered and bleak.
That night he drank a whole bottle of whisky and sank into oblivion on the sofa in front of the blank television screen. Liza covered him with a rug, threw away the empty bottle which had fallen from his hand onto the carpet, and turned off the light. Slowly, with a heavy heart, she made her way up the stairs.
The thought which was haunting her was that she had to stay, at least another few days.
Before supper she had rung Beth. It was like a breath of fresh air to speak to her, and to imagine her in the untidy kitchen at home, the house smelling of newly made bread – Beth’s latest craze – and spicy woodsmoke from the fire in the living room. Another of the old apple trees had fallen in the autumn gales and they were burning it slowly, branch by branch, savouring the wonderful rich smell which lingered in the old stone of the hearth.
‘You’re not lonely, darling?’ Liza had asked.
‘Of course not. I’m working on my sketches.’ Beth was bubbling with excitement. She had taken over Phil’s studio when she got the commission to illustrate Giles’s book and tactfully and with as little upset as possible she had gone about changing it so much Liza would never have recognised it. She was delighted. It kept the place alive and vibrant. There was no need to retain Phil’s studio as a mausoleum to keep him in her heart. He would always be there somewhere.
‘How are they going?’
‘Well.’ There was a small hesitation the other end of the line. ‘Actually Giles is coming up for a few days. We thought it might be easier to visit places together and discuss it all up here.’
‘I see.’ Liza took a deep breath. ‘Is his wife coming too?’
‘No.’ It was almost too pat. ‘You know very well she’s a town girl. She’s much too busy with her own affairs, according to Giles,’ there was a suppressed giggle the other end of the line, ‘and she hates the mountains. He says she would die if she moved more than a few hundred yards from Chelsea.’
‘And she doesn’t mind if her husband spends time in the mountains with a very attractive young lady like you?’
There was another giggle. ‘Actually, she was far more worried about my attractive sexy grandmother being here. She was relieved when she heard you were away! No, that’s not true. I don’t honestly think they get on. Truly. Oh, Liza!’ There was a quick horrified pause. ‘How awful of me to be laughing and everything. How was it? Was it grim? How is poor Grandfather coping?’
‘He’s okay.’ Liza did not elaborate. ‘I think I ought to stay a bit longer though, just to be here while he finds his feet. Can you manage on your own? Can I trust you with the beautiful Giles?’
There was a snort the other end of the line. ‘He and I have a working relationship, that’s all. And I would do nothing to jeopardise that, believe me!’
Later, in the bedroom which had been Calum’s, Liza took off her skirt with a sigh. She stood for a moment, staring at herself in the mirror. Attractive, sexy grandmother, eh! She had to admit she rather liked the description. She smoothed down her petticoat across her flat stomach and neat hips and smiled.
The sound behind her was so faint she hardly heard it. She tensed and turned, staring at the closed door. There it was again, a quiet scratching on the woodwork. She frowned. It sounded like a mouse. Reaching for her dressing gown she pulled it on and knotted it around her waist defensively then she tiptoed to the door and put her hand on the knob. Pulling the door open she peered out.
There was no one there. The landing was dark and the house silent. She listened for a second, then slowly she closed the door. Momentarily she stood there frowning, then she turned away to continue getting undressed.
When she went downstairs next morning she found the sofa empty. The French doors were open and the room was full of the scent of wet garden. She walked over to the doors and stood looking out. Adam was standing in the middle of the lawn in the rain, soaked to the skin. He caught sight of her and raised a hand in greeting. His face was pale and drawn and he looked a hundred years old, she thought with a sudden pang of compassion.
‘I thought the rain might cure my hangover.’ He walked towards her, and she realised his feet were bare, squelching on the wet grass.
She smiled. ‘And did it?’
‘It helped. I’ll go up and bath and shave, then I’ll feel better. I’m sorry about the whisky.’ He looked like a sheepish, small boy.
‘So am I.’ She reached up and kissed him on the cheek. ‘Go on, then, get dressed and I’ll make us some coffee.’
In her explorations of St Albans she had found a wonderful coffee shop in the centre of the town and had them grind her some specially. The scent of it filled the house, and she hoped made it feel a little more welcoming. That and the flowers were really all she could do. The gap Jane had left was too big, too empty and too raw.
‘Liza!’ Adam was standing in the doorway. His face was ashen and there was a small object in his hand. ‘Did you put this on my bed?’
She felt her heart sink even before she stepped forward to see what he was holding. ‘No, Adam, I didn’t put anything on your bed,’ she said gently as she took it from him.
It was a small, exquisitely carved figure of a naked woman.
‘Is it ivory?’ She turned it over. It was ice cold.
He nodded. ‘I suppose so.’ He walked over to the window and stared out into the garden. A robin was standing on the brick parapet which bounded the small terrace.
‘I know what I would do with it,’ she said softly.
‘I’m going to burn it.’ He was decisive. ‘Is that what you think I should do?’
‘I was going to tell you to bury it,’ Liza said. She smiled. ‘Perhaps that is less final. But you are right. Burn it. That will show her.’
Their eyes met. ‘You always did think she was a witch, didn’t you?’ He took the figure from her and headed for the back door.
She followed him. ‘Something like that.’
She watched as he gathered some twigs and leaves which had blown into the garage where they had stayed dry. He managed to start a blaze with his cigarette lighter. For a while they watched it flare and spark, then when the fire was really hot he dropped the little figure on it. For a while she thought it wasn’t going to burn, then at last it blackened and disappeared.
She glanced up at his face, which was tight with pain. ‘I wondered if it was going to scream.’
He nodded. ‘I don’t suppose it will be the last message I get.’
‘Where do you suppose she is now?’
He shrugged. ‘Who knows? And who cares, as long as she stays there and doesn’t come near this house ever again.’
18
The bed was hard and cold. Brid stirred uncomfortably and groped for her pillow. She found coarse linen and the dry stems of heather which dug into her face.
‘So, you are awake.’ The language was familiar, lilting. ‘My little traveller returns. And where have you
been, little cat? Are you going to tell me?’
She clung to sleep. The voice was strange, threatening, from another time, another place.
Broichan …
Her eyes flew open and she sat up, dizzy with sleep.
A-dam …
Where was he? Why did he not want her any more? What had she done to make him angry?
She could smell the bitter-sweet scent of a fire, and on it cooking meat. Her mouth watered suddenly. How long had she been asleep? Or had she travelled through time as Broichan had taught her? Wherever she had been she was hungry and stiff. Trying to swing her legs over the side of the bed she stopped suddenly, fear coursing through her stomach. There were chains around her ankles. She stared round into the shadows of the room and saw him sitting by the door. He smiled at her, his eyes like quicksilver in the wrinkled face.
‘No!’ She shook her head pitifully.
‘You misused your powers, Brid. You did not honour your oath to let the sky fall and the waves rise up over your head if you betrayed the trust which was put in you.’ He stood up slowly. ‘I have put you under the geas and now you must pay the price of your betrayal.’
With a small cry of fear she threw herself back onto the bed and dragged the coarse pillow over her face, willing herself away. She did not have to look for the place where the veil was thin. It was thin wherever she looked. When Broichan reached her and stood staring down at the girl, lying on the bed, she was already gone, her body comatose, her eyes blank, her pupils dilated and still. He smiled. He would continue to keep her alive, causing her to be fed, dripping milk and wine and pulped meat juices down her throat, sponging her face and hands, turning her body to keep it supple and one day, before her soul returned so he could kill her and give her wholly to the gods, he would follow her into the other world, the world where A-dam lived, and see what it was that had captured her soul.
Liza sighed. She picked up yet another bottle, which was still a third full and, shaking her head at the waste, poured the rest of the whisky down the sink. Adam did not stir. Sometimes now his sleep was too deep for dreams, too deep even to snore. He lay as though dead, and all she could do was put a pillow under his head and cover him with a blanket.
On the Edge of Darkness Page 42