Someone to Watch Over Me (22 page)

‘I've missed you, my darling, have you missed me?'

Molly made an acquiescing noise and got into the bed beside him.

‘I expect you're tired,' she said hopefully, lying as far away from him as possible. She thought that she would not be able to contain her revulsion if her feet were to touch his.

‘Not too tired to show my appreciation for being back home,' he said, and it was all she could do not to cry out when he bent over her, his breath winey and hot against her face.

‘I'm not sure I want this just yet, Rupert,' she said, pushing against his chest. It was as if she hadn't spoken. His fingers unfastened the buttons on her pyjamas and he took her nipple into his mouth and bit hard on it. She cried out, she wanted to fight him, but she knew that it was safer to let this happen. He would sleep afterwards and Max and she would be able to get away. Rupert pulled her pyjama bottoms down and forced himself into her quickly. She felt her whole body convulse. He thrust twice, shuddered and lay on top of her for a while, heavy and still, before rolling off. She pulled her pyjamas up and turned her face away from him so that he didn't see that she was crying. She could feel his semen trickling out of her and she desperately wanted to rub herself clean, but she didn't want to do anything that would keep him awake any longer than necessary. She lay rigid, listening to his breathing, which slowed and then finally changed tone, becoming resonant.

After lying still for at least fifteen minutes, she was sure that Rupert was in a deep sleep. She inched herself slowly to the edge of the bed and got up without a sound. She stood for a few moments holding her breath watching his face for any signs of change, but he was completely still, his arms above his head, his mouth slightly open, so she crept out of the room. Max was already awake and fully dressed, with his torch clasped in his small hand. Her heart burned at the sight of his determined face, hair sticking up on one side, trainers on the wrong feet. Molly retrieved the bag from the cupboard and they crept down the stairs, wincing at every creak. Molly put on her coat and boots, dressed Max in his anorak and hat and scarf, and slowly pulled back the sliding lock on the front door. Outside, the sky was studded with stars but it was dark and it felt as if they were stepping out into the unknown. Molly took hold of Max's hand and they started walking.

Carrie spent the next three days in bed, gripped by some sort of flu-like fever. For whole sections of the day she slipped in and out of consciousness, only vaguely aware of the people around her. Pam became a surprisingly assiduous nurse, hovering almost continuously by her bedside, offering her sips of water or sprinkling eau de cologne on cool flannels and placing them across her forehead. She persisted in doing this even when Carrie irritably told her to stop. During her fever, Carrie seemed to be tossed by agonising hallucinations. Pam could make no sense of her ravings and became very alarmed when she came into Carrie's room to find her sitting up in bed apparently conscious, but completely incoherent. When she finally came out of the fever she was so weak that she could barely lift her head. She didn't even have the strength to tell Pam to stop fiddling with curtains and blankets and drinks. Jen had been nobly managing the shop single handed, helped occasionally by Tom and her brother Paul.

As she got better, Carrie lay on her bed and tried not to think about Charlie and Simon and what it all meant. She knew that if she allowed herself to dwell on it too much she would lose her bearings. She felt that she might even lose her mind. She tried to explain to Jen who had come round after work, bearing glad tidings of amazing sales and six cupcakes sprinkled with glitter, how she felt.

‘I don't know what to think about Simon Foster. I can't believe he can do what he claims to be able to do. But there is something about him … he seems so sure. Part of me can't bear to hear what he says about Charlie, the other part of me feels broken hearted to turn my back on it,' she said as Jen stroked her hand. ‘If this is what I can have of him now, shouldn't I take every little bit of it? Does it really matter how it comes to me? Does it even matter if it's true? And even if the man is a fraud, shouldn't we keep talking to him to see if we can find out anything about what happened to Charlie? Damian just refuses to involve himself at all. It's like he has pulled the shutter down on the possibility of it. What if we are rejecting Charlie by doing that?'

Jen didn't know how to advise her friend. She had no experience of such matters and the whole subject gave her the creeps, but she sat with Carrie and let her talk and fed her bits of cake and hoped that one day her friend's heart would heal. She promised that as soon as Carrie was better she would go with her to the medium's house although she was very much of the opinion that the guy was probably a swindling arsehole and that she was going to fix him with a beady eye and then expose him for the charlatan he was. She had, after all, a bit of experience in destroying reputations. Just then the doorbell went and Jen discovered a diminutive Musical Prodigy at the door clutching a flute saying that his mother had heard that Carrie was unwell and had sent him over to provide some healing sounds. Jen sent him packing. Hadn't the poor woman suffered enough?

It took Carrie five days to feel strong enough to get out of bed. She wobbled her way on weakened legs through a shower and her first cup of coffee in several days. Her time out of action had given her the space to think and she had decided she was going to book a session with Simon Foster. She knew that Damian wouldn't be happy with her decision. He had rung her a couple of times over the last week, ostensibly to find out how she was but also to tell her about his progress in getting to the bottom of Simon Foster's perfidy. During their last conversation he had gone on so long about private detectives that the only way she had been able to stop him was to say she was too ill to talk and needed to get some rest.

She got through to Simon straight away and arranged to see him in the afternoon, then spent the rest of the morning trying to get the house straight. Pam may have been vigilant with the cold flannels, but she hadn't done the laundry and the kitchen floor was sticking to the soles of her feet. Carrie cycled to Simon Foster's flat, but she left herself plenty of time to get there, aware that she wasn't yet back to her full strength. This time he was expecting her and took her into the living room, which looked exactly as it had on the previous visit. He sat her on the sofa and offered her a cup of tea.

She thought that Simon looked rather ill himself; his skin was grey and the bruised-looking skin under his eyes was darker than usual. She wasn't sure how you were supposed to behave with a medium. What exactly was the etiquette? Was it like being at the doctor when you weren't supposed to ask them anything personal about themselves, especially when they were doing very personal investigations into you? Or was it like being with a hairdresser when an exchange of holiday information or titbits about your sex life was more than acceptable?

‘Have you had one of your headaches?' she asked.

‘Yes. A pretty bad one this time as it happens,' said Simon, handing her a mug of tea. ‘Seems to be an occupational hazard. The more clamour the voices make, the worse my migraines.'

Simon sat down on the chair next to her and she waited for him to speak.

‘I can't promise to hear who you want me to hear,' he said. ‘But I'll do my best. It helps if I can just sit in silence for a while and let whoever is out there come to me. My head sometimes feels like it is full of static and it can take me quite a long time to tune myself into the right frequency.'

Despite the fact that part of her still refused to believe him, Carrie felt her heart hammering in her chest. She was aware of feeling something that might have been hope. Exactly what she hoped for she wasn't sure. She hoped for an answer, certainly, but she also hoped that she might feel better, forgiven, healed. It was very quiet in the room. The door out onto the balcony was shut and through the glass Carrie could see the opaque green river disturbed every now and again by a passing rowing boat. Simon appeared to be meditating, his peculiar pale eyes seemingly looking inwards, and there it was again, that extraordinary disturbance of the flesh on his face, like feeling made visible in waves. He did that impatient shifting of his hands that she remembered from before.

‘I've got him,' said Simon at last in his peculiar monotone. ‘He's waiting so patiently to talk to you … He's saying something about how sorry he was he didn't wait. He knew he should have waited, but his daddy took so long … He wants you to stop being sad …'

Carrie felt her heart swell. She felt it might be a weakness to even listen to this. Just days ago, she had scorned it and now here she was letting it in.

‘He says he knows you won't believe it. He says you will have the face you used to have when he had told you he had washed his hands when he really hadn't … Now there is something about a story … a made-up boy and a dog called some funny name beginning with C and a kennel with cups and chairs …'

Carrie made a gasping sound as the realisation of what this must be hit her.

‘It's
Mister Dog
,' she said. ‘It's his favourite story. It's about a dog called Caspian who likes strawberries.' Carrie suddenly knew how it felt for all those people in church halls and theatre auditoriums. This was love and comfort and a line that you could hold on to for dear life.

Simon came out of his trance with a little shiver, as if he was cold.

‘He was there for you, Carrie,' he said.

‘I don't know what to feel and think,' said Carrie. ‘There seem to be too many things between me and being able to believe it. And if it is true, that means he's dead doesn't it?'

‘I can't make you believe it. It is something you have to come to or not for yourself. All I can do is tell you what I hear.'

‘It's just so strange,' said Carrie. ‘I know none of my friends and family do, but I still think he's alive.'

Simon got up and took her cup from her, signalling that their session was at an end. Carrie stood up too. For a minute the room swung around her and she thought she might faint. Simon saw her falter and put a hand out to help.

‘I'm alright, I've just been ill and I think all of this is getting to me,' she told him.

As he saw her to the door, Simon said, ‘Don't be worried by it, Carrie. It's not scary. It's just worlds overlapping.'

Molly knew that they only had about another fifteen minutes' walk before they got to Kate's house. She hoped to God her friend hadn't chosen this weekend to go away. Max was shining his torch up ahead, picking out the tops of bushes and once what might have been the eyes of a fox. He was beginning to shiver. The Fenland wind was particularly sharp, with nothing but low hedges to dispel its strength, and tonight it was blowing so hard it seemed to pass through their bodies as easily as it passed across the dark landscape. Molly wondered if the ghostly Fenland farmer was out there somewhere, crouched over his fields, cramming his mouth with lumps of frozen peat. She suddenly remembered Max as a smaller child stamping on an icy garden in his wellington boots, asking her why the ground was stale. She held his hand even more tightly. To the side of them the narrow stream of water glinted. There were very few roads in the area that were not lined with drainage channels. The fight between water and land seemed to be quite evenly matched, with only a few centimetres between the two adversaries. A few days of rain and the land softened easily, its edges blurring into marshland. She wondered if one day all of this would revert to water, making Ely an island as it had been in the Middle Ages. Sometime, maybe not too far in the future, this land under her feet would be hidden by the writhe of eels and the sway of dark reeds.

He appeared so suddenly that Molly barely had time to react. She felt Max's hand being wrenched from her own and heard his frightened gasp. His torch went up, the beam briefly illuminating Rupert's figure and the gleam of the knife he was holding against his son's throat. Then the torch fell out of Max's grasp and landed on the path, its light shining into the dark water. She instinctively moved towards them.

‘Don't …' said Molly. She was so terrified, she couldn't speak. Rupert sounded almost amused.

‘Where were you two off to then?'

‘Let him go. Rupert, let him go.' Molly could feel her voice rising in panic.

‘Bit late for a walk isn't it? Not really the weather for a midnight stroll …' Max tried to wriggle out of his arms, but his father's grip on him tightened, the knife moving closer to the white skin above the collar of his anorak.

‘Max, just stay still, darling. It'll be alright.' Rupert was fully dressed. He had even found the time to tie a scarf neatly around his neck. It was the sight of this that frightened her more than anything else. He had known all along that they were going to try and get away. All the time he had been pawing her, he had known that she was just lying there waiting for him to finish. Molly felt sick.

‘Why are you doing this? What do you want, Rupert?' She did move towards him now, her arms out for Max.

‘All I want is for us all to be together.' Rupert said the words in an aggrieved tone, like a small child who had been cheated of a treat. ‘I just want what's mine.'

‘OK,' she said soothingly. ‘We'll come back, just give me the knife.'

‘Do you promise?' he asked.

‘Yes. Yes. I promise.'

‘OK, I'll walk with Max, you walk next to us,' said Rupert, his face suddenly cunning. ‘And I'm keeping the knife. I'm taking no chances,' he said with a kind of strange giggle. ‘You two are as slippery as a pair of eels.'