Eggshell Days (26 page)

Instead, he followed a brown tourist sign off the main road which he had seen and failed to follow until now, and ended up at a low, thatched, elongated, whitewashed cottage on a creek. It didn't look much like his kind of pub from the outside, and he knew the menu would be more extensive than the beer cellar, but at least it would be totally and utterly anonymous.

The sky was a tie-dye affair of light and dark gray, confirming the forecast of rain. Boats bobbing on the churned and muddy water looked as if they'd had enough of the unsettled week. Across the creek, expensive bungalows with gardens running to the water's edge stared snootily down as if they had enough of looking at the boats, doubly offended to be forced to gaze upon a place that served al fresco chips in plastic baskets.

The wooden picnic tables along the jetty were slimy with the wet, as was the decking underfoot, but a rope prevented access anyway. An unhappy dog was tied to one of the bench legs, and jumped to its feet eagerly when Niall walked by. He patted it and it looked grateful.

The doorway to the Ferry Gate was a foot shorter than he was, and as he lifted the latch, he caught sight of the four-letter word—
Duck
—just in time. A wood and glass partition between the flagstone hall and the snug channeled him straight toward the bar.

The big car park had been practically empty so he was surprised to see how many people there were, until he realized they were the sailing fraternity and their expensive transport was moored outside.

The Gore-Tex gaggle looked up momentarily, but they could tell by his gray urban clothes that he had no interest in boats, so none of them bothered to acknowledge him as they might have done if he'd been wearing something stormproof in a primary color. Terracotta dishes and napkins littered their tables, and they all laughed loudly at each other's jokes.

The woman with bad highlights behind the bar looked relieved to see him, though.

“You a sailor, too?” she asked tentatively. She had on a low-cut long-sleeved white T-shirt and her breasts merged with the rolls of her tummy. Niall noticed a gold belt peeping out from among it all.

“No, why? Do you have to be to drink here?”

“Feels like that sometimes.”

“Well, I hate boats. I felt a bit sick just walking in here from the car park, actually. I couldn't work out if it was the boats bobbin' up and down, or me, or the ground or what.”

“You're all right, then. What can I get you?”

“Pint of Guinness, please.”

She dropped her voice and glanced at the sailing crowd. “They're a noisy bunch, this lot.”

“Don't worry about me.”

“They're rude, too. I don't think one of them has said please or thank you yet.”

“That's bad.”

“I think they think the Cornish are thick.”

“I bet you say that to all the Irishmen you get in here.”

She smiled and gave him his Guinness, and because he sat at a stool against the counter she assumed he wanted to carry on talking. He looked like a man acquainted with the unspoken rules of country pubs. If you wanted to be left alone, you retreated to a table. If you wanted company, you sat at the bar.

“So what brings you here then? On holiday?”

“No, I live here. We moved down a month ago.”

“And who is ‘we'?” She picked up a beer towel and began to wipe between the pumps.

“Well, that is the golden question,” Niall said mysteriously. “That is the golden question.”

*   *   *

Emmy picked up Niall's mobile phone, which was charging on the Welsh dresser and pressed the Menu button. Information. Phone Book. Messages. She pressed OK.

I'm going to do this. I really am. Call Voicemail. Received Messages. Select. Even as she typed in the text, she didn't believe she would send it. She thought she was going to remain immobilized forever by fear. “
PLEASE DO NOT SEND ANYMORE LETTERS AND PLEASE DO NOT COME TO CORNWALL. EMMY
.”

Enter number. She tapped it in from the piece of paper she had pulled out of her pocket. She could still scrub it. Send message. Would she? She pressed OK. Message failed. Resend? OK. Message failed. Another breath. Resend? OK. Message sent.

Oh my God. Her decision to make contact was now irretrievable. She put the phone back on the dresser as if it was about to explode, and her legs turned to jelly. The little green light flashed back at her. She stared at it, waiting. Nothing happened. She stared some more. Still nothing happened.

Five minutes passed and the world had not fallen in. She boiled a kettle and shook some coffee into a mug because she was too lazy to find a clean teaspoon. She drank the coffee, even though it was too strong, and then forced herself to go and find Maya and apologize.

As she was on her way out of the kitchen, feeling for the first time in more than a week that she might have brought a small amount of control back into her life, the phone shrieked. Three sharp tones which pierced the silence.

She dived back to it. Message. Read Now? She didn't know about that. A door banged somewhere in the house and it shook her into realizing she had no choice. OK. His message flashed up. (1—New) “
AM ON MY WAY. I COME IN PEACE. CATHAL
.” View Options? Delete Message? It was Niall's phone and it would be a cruel way for him to find out the truth of something he didn't even doubt. Select? OK.

Then she forgot about finding Maya and instead went straight to her bathroom, locked the door and threw up, holding onto the cold enamel rim of the lavatory as if her life depended on it.

*   *   *

“Thought of the answer yet?” the barmaid asked Niall. “Three pints of Guinness should be enough to lubricate even an Irish brain.”

“Yes, but I've forgotten the question.”

“It was the golden one.”

“Oh, that one. I remember. It's either 3.4 or Val Doonican.”

She laughed and was summonsed by an angry ring of the brass bell at the other end of the bar. “See what I mean?”

Niall nodded and went back to the thought he'd been having before she'd interrupted him.

The tape of Elvis Costello playing in the background had triggered it. He and Emmy had seen him at the Glastonbury Festival once, years ago, before she'd got pregnant, before the mud.

He could remember them parking the bike in a dusty summer field and, as the thump of airborne music from a faraway stage pumped through him and she had humped her sleeping bag over her shoulder and walked through a swirl of tiny glittering particles of hay, he'd thought he could never love anyone more. They had slept in a one-man tent and one night they had built a fire near the pyramid stage and curled up in their bags like padded silkworms, stoned and happy, and fallen asleep to the sound of some now-forgotten band. So far, he hadn't been proved wrong.

He put his empty glass down on a brass drip tray, waved to the barmaid and walked out. He did know who he wanted to live with. He'd always known. And this morning Kat had given him the perfect opportunity to make it all a lot clearer.

15

As she sat on the edge of her bed waiting for the very first glimpse of the hood of Cathal's car, Emmy realized at last the significance of her recurring dream. She'd had it for almost as long as her daughter had been able to talk, but in it Maya had always been as she was now, long-haired and long-limbed, freckled and complete.

It came as a dream within a dream. The empty room always appeared first, coming into sharper and sharper focus, and then, when the detail was really clear, Maya would walk in. She was always alone, calmly looking for something as if she knew she would find it eventually. She was never in a hurry and would wander through room after identical room in a peaceful trance.

At the very end of the last room there was an old tower with a winding staircase, and Maya would mount it without hesitating. At the top of the stairs, she would open a narrow door into a little room and, as she disappeared, she would look back and smile at someone in a way that Emmy didn't recognize. Then the door would shut behind her. It was Maya's smile that always woke Emmy up.

She hated that dream, but at least she knew now what it was all about. Cathal was her Rumpelstiltskin. He was the thirteenth fairy at the Sleeping Beauty's christening, hiding in the tower with the poisoned needle, ready to inject the spell of separation. He was a Brothers Grimm goblin of the twenty-first century. And she was like the mother in “Tom Thumb” who by some stroke of magic had found herself with the child she never thought she'd have, or the sad barren wife in “The Gingerbread Man” who is so desperate to have something to love that she bakes herself a baby.

Emmy actually shouted out loud when the first unknown car came into view. She had no desire to be this story's pathetic victim, the one who waits all her life for one good thing to happen to her and then lets it go because someone else has other plans for it.

“Leave us alone!”

Her hands, inadvertently in a praying position, were tucked between her thighs and she pressed them down even farther, digging through her clothes into her flesh. On the floor, an old carpet bag gaped open. In it were toothbrushes, nightclothes, underwear and credit cards, ready for her and Maya to flee at a moment's notice. And this was surely the moment at which the notice should be posted. Except there was no getaway car. Sita was at work and Jonathan had disappeared.

Her throat tightened again, a Pavlovian reaction to the thought of Cathal and her mind started to scramble around for alternative scenarios. It might not be him. The car was a white four-wheel-drive Japanese monster. It was definitely not the organic vegetable delivery or the plumber, but she couldn't see the driver's face.

Mind over matter, she willed herself. She stared at its double set of headlights, pushing them into reverse with her eyes. But the car loomed closer and closer. It parked and someone got out. She shut her eyes and waited for the sound of the door pull. Then she opened them again.

A bundle of For Sale signs pressed against the back windscreen of the car. Culworthy-King and Simpson. Chartered Surveyors. Auctioneers. Valuers.

“Mr. Culworthy-King?” she heard Niall say beneath her window. “We weren't sure what time you had arranged with Jonathan. He's, er, he's tied up elsewhere for the moment.”

It was the bloody real estate agent. Emmy took her hands out from between her thighs and held them to her face, pushing the ball of her little fingers into the corner of her eyes. The man who was going to search for the perfect buyer for Bodinnick was almost welcome in comparison. She breathed again and steadied herself, buying a little more time.

She watched Niall and the agent walk across the circular patch of grass in front of the house and stand by the birdbath to admire the façade. Then she watched them walk back and disappear into Bodinnick's beautiful bowels. But the visit neither interested nor disappointed her, only prompted her to resume her position on the edge of the bed. Her hands clasped tight again and she waited for Cathal.

When the right car finally came, it was Italian, not Japanese, and front- not four-wheel drive. It was blue, with a throaty exhaust note she knew he would find appealing, and as soon as she saw the vague outline of the driver's head she knew it was him and that this was the instant she had been dreading all Maya's life.

She heard the thump of his music, recognizing the rhythm but not able to place it. Then suddenly both the engine and the music stopped.

She listened for the door. Open.
Slam. Crunch.
Any minute now, he would be in the house. In her house, looking for her daughter. My God! What was she doing, just sitting there?

“Maya!” she screamed down the stairwell, remembering nothing of the journey from the bed to the landing. “Maya? Maya!”

There was still time. She ran down the stairs two at once as Jay always did, her hand sweeping along the polished wood of the banister, her feet barely touching the ground. As she faced the challenge of the hall, she heard him try the antiquated bell.
Clang clang.
It was a death knell.

Passageway, kitchen, back door, another passageway, courtyard. Fresh air. She gulped it.

Jay was there, fixing a puncture on his upturned bike, seething with hatred for Culworthy-King.

“Have you seen Maya?” she puffed.

“No. Who's that man with Niall?”

“Will you help me find her?”

“Is he a real estate agent?”

“If you see her, tell her to go straight to her room.”

“Is he going to sell Bodinnick?”

But Emmy had already gone. Garden, shrubbery, path, arched gate.

“Maya? Maya? Maya.” The name drifted out of her mouth like a gentle song. She didn't know whether to scream or whisper.

“Mum?” Maya's face appeared from a hole in a rhododendron bush. Asha's appeared a second later.

“Oh God, Maya.”

“What's happened?”

“Oh,” Emmy panted. “Nothing. I've been looking for you, that's all.”

“What for?”

“Er, I need … I need to measure you.”

“Not now,” Maya moaned. “Do you have to? We're playing a really good game.”

“Yes, yes, I do. It's important.”

“This is our spy headquarters and we're the secret agents and if that man Niall is talking to—”

“Please.”

Emmy pulled her daughter out and dragged her along by the hand. Asha followed, grabbing Emmy's free hand, just in case. Arched gate, path, shrubbery, garden, courtyard.

“Stay with Jay, Asha,” Emmy ordered, flinging the child at her brother.

“Who's that man, Emmy?” Jay shouted after her.

“Mum!” screamed Maya. “Mum, you're hurting me. What's the big rush?”

Passageway, kitchen, passageway. And then … hall.

“Oh!”

Cathal was standing in the middle of the tiled floor, his bag at his feet. He didn't look much like an evil fairy in his blue canvas trousers and gray polo shirt.