Someone to Watch Over Me (29 page)

‘Why don't we just get up together. We'll get you home and into a lovely warm bed. Get you a lovely hot drink. Put all of this behind us …'

She managed to get her hand into the top of the pocket of his coat and her fingers fastened around the cold metal of the key. If she could just pull her hand out in one smooth gesture she might be able to get the key without him even noticing that it had gone.

All of a sudden she was aware of a savage grip on her wrist and then a blow across her face that knocked her sideways. In an instant he was up. All sign of weakness was gone and had been replaced by that unnatural strength, that gleam she had seen in him before.

‘D'you think I didn't know what you were doing, you stupid bitch?'

Rupert paced up and down the floor in front of her. She could feel the spittle from his mouth as he spoke.

‘I might have let you out. I was going to let you out. Then you try to trick me and so you've only got yourself to blame. You're forcing me to keep you in here.'

‘Can I have a coat for Max? Please give me something to keep him warm,' Molly begged. She tried to stop herself from crying, because she knew it would upset Max, but she was so very tired. All the bones in her body felt soft and her head ached. Rupert walked to the door, unlocked it and went out and slammed it shut. They listened as the key turned once more in the lock.

The day was bright and clear but as they drove past the wide fields traced with lines of green like balding corduroy, tatty corrugated iron edifices and the occasional ranch-style building that wouldn't have looked out of place in Texas, Carrie thought that even the blue sky did little to give this landscape any beauty. It had nothing of the soft or picturesque. It was all serviceable, practical lines with nothing extra to requirements apart from one punch of colour supplied by an abandoned, deflating Santa, bent double as if in pain on the roof top of a glowering bungalow.

Although he was skilled and clearly very familiar with the road, Carrie felt that Oliver was an over-confident driver, given to one-handed and reckless overtaking. When he suddenly swerved out beyond a tractor to assess the road ahead, Carrie clutched the sides of her seat. She may also have made an involuntary noise although she hoped she hadn't. She didn't want him to think she was feeble spirited.

‘Don't worry. You're in safe hands,' he said, smiling at her. She wished he would keep his eyes on the road and his mind on what was a busy and tricky dual carriageway. She was very aware of his close proximity in the car and of his hands, the wrists strong and flexible, his fingers just resting on the leather of the steering wheel. She couldn't help a glance sideways to assess his legs encased in dark denim. Neither of them had made any allusion to what had happened at the end of their evening out together, but Carrie was determined that she wouldn't make the same mistake twice. She wouldn't have made it the first time if she hadn't drunk so much wine.

They arrived in a small empty car park and after walking a little distance across a field of sedge and past some willow trees, their odd pronged branches emerging from thick trunks, they came to a series of raised boardwalks that had been constructed to access the watery terrain. Ditches and patches of black water were surrounded by dry reeds, pale and bleached of colour at this time of the year. Standing on a small bridge, Carrie could see both the reflection of the reeds on the trembling, wind-agitated surface, and then clear through to the place where they grew out of the dark ground in their secret underwater bed. Being on the walkway gave the illusion of floating above the surface of the land, separated from what teemed below in amongst the reeds and the water. In an adjacent field two Highland cattle lay under a tree and breathed out great gusts of white air.

Oliver explained that he had spent the last three years ensuring that there was a flourishing reed bed and a good supply of the right-sized eels populating the waterways, and at the last count he thought there were at least nine bitterns now making this patch their home.

‘They are really hard to spot because they are very well camouflaged by their surroundings and they are pretty secretive. In the mating season they make a weird booming noise and that gives us a clue as to where they are, but at this time of the year the only way to count them is in the couple of hours before dusk, when they fly in to roost,' said Oliver, leading her into a small wooden hide.

Inside, the hide was surprisingly cosy with a wooden bench across the length of it, and an aperture that looked out across a stretch of water surrounded by the startlingly white trunks and branches of silver birch trees. Carrie was amazed by the sudden sound that assailed her. Whereas outside the hide, all had been relatively quiet, here in this sheltered spot, well serviced with a variety of feeders, the place was suddenly loud with the song of birds. Yellowhammers and bluetits and chaffinches jostled for space amongst a gang of pushy squirrels and a solitary muntjack deer that had wandered into the enclosure, drawn by the prospect of food.

It felt to Carrie that life was vivid and teeming around her in a way that she had not expected in this desolate place. She sat with her head resting on her hands, elbows propped up on the sill watching the action outside. Oliver saw her face in profile, her hair tied back from her lovely face, and had to control the impulse to reach out and touch the dark curl that rested against her ear.

‘Have you seen the medium again? Heard anything more about your boy?' he asked, wanting to say something intimate. Wanting to make her look at him.

‘Yes. I've talked to him on the phone since I saw you last. It freaked me out this time actually. Charlie's messages were different. He seemed to be trying to tell me something …'

‘You must make sure seeing him isn't going to upset you,' said Oliver.

‘I can't stop now. I can't leave him alone again,' said Carrie.

‘You don't blame yourself for what happened do you?' asked Oliver.

‘I fell asleep. It
was
my fault, I wasn't watching him.'

‘You can't watch children every single minute of the day.'

‘It was my job,' said Carrie stubbornly.

Oliver looked at her and he saw that she would never give in to what was easiest for her. Her mouth was set tight, her hand brushing her forehead in that endearing way she had as if her thoughts were a nuisance to her, not worth having.

‘I lost someone too,' said Oliver. ‘It was a long time ago.'

‘Who was it?' asked Carrie.

‘My brother,' said Oliver, wondering why he was telling this woman he barely knew something he had not spoken about for years.

‘What happened?' asked Carrie, unconsciously moving closer towards him.

‘We were racing our bikes. There was this hill near where we used to live when we were kids. It was really steep. We would stand at the top and then launch ourselves down. We did it all the time. He was younger than me, but a real daredevil. He wasn't ever scared of anything and he really wanted to beat me, even though his bike wheels were smaller. I was egging him on, I suppose.' Oliver broke off and looked out across the water. Carrie could see that he was finding it difficult to tell her his story.

‘There was this bend at the end of the road, you could almost see round it but not quite, so we always used to veer off at the last minute into the side of the road onto a grassy bank before we got to the end. It gave you just enough time to brake. For some reason George didn't that one time. He was beating me. He said he had put some oil on his chain or something … he just kept going. There was a car coming the other way. There was no way the driver could stop. George just went hurtling into him.'

‘Oh how terrible,' said Carrie, thinking that she would never have imagined that he could look as sad as he did, his fists clenched, his voice just barely under control.

‘My parents never blamed me, but I was the older brother. The one meant to be in charge. Afterwards there was always a George-shaped gap, however many holidays we took, however many parties my parents threw to avoid it. Leaving home was a relief because I thought I could leave the gap behind, although you never do, of course …'

Oliver stood up as if his words had provoked a desire for flight. Carrie got up too and put out a hand to him, wanting to console him. He looked intently at her and then slowly bent his face, his mouth meeting hers, gently at first, and then harder. Carrie felt a jolt of shock go through her and pulled back, but then felt herself responding to the sensation of his lips, silky and warm against hers. He put his fingers through her hair and held the back of her head steady. Her hands wandered down his back. She could feel herself beating against him. The clamour outside receded. There was only the two of them in the wide, open world. Outside, the muntjack deer skittered off, startled by a sudden noise.

Carrie couldn't remember the last time she had so thoroughly lost herself in someone. Possibly not since the far-off days when a half bottle of cider and a slippery-floored church hall had made her wanton with Saturday night lust. It certainly felt like adolescent behaviour. On the way back to the car, Oliver suddenly stopped and pointed at two bitterns flying together, large winged and ungainly against what was left of the pale light.

When Carrie arrived at the shop at nine o'clock on Monday morning a large cast had already assembled. It seemed that
Trove
was developing into something of a drop-in centre, and glancing through the window as she locked up her bike, Carrie thought that it looked more like someone's living room than a business. Enif was breakfasting in style from a bone china bowl in the centre of the floor, wearing what looked like some sort of tartan waistcoat. Paul was reclining in the lilac velvet armchair that Carrie had bought despite its scary price tag because she thought it would look great in the corner under the window and would provide somewhere to sit for people while their companions were trying things on. She saw with alarm that he had balanced his takeaway coffee cup on one of its sleek arms. Most worryingly of all she could see Pam wearing a pair of extremely high heels standing on the top of the stepladder, making jabs at the ceiling with a giant pink feather duster. Closing the door firmly against Little Bo Creep who had crept up behind her and was using his crook to get access to the basket of silk, beribboned knickers that had been placed rather unwisely by the entrance, Carrie looked around and spotted Jen who was sitting on the floor by the till in the midst of a sea of pink and cream tissue paper.

‘Good morning, Carrie,' said Jen, ignoring Carrie's somewhat aggressive stare. ‘I'm working on a new window display. It's going to have a wedding theme.'

‘You might have consulted me. It's hardly the time of year for …' started Carrie crossly, but then seeing her friend's stricken face, she relented. ‘Well, since it's fast becoming your specialist subject … What are
you
doing here, Mum?'

Pam turned a bright face to her daughter and shook her feather duster, which moulted a cloud of feathers. ‘A spot of spring cleaning, darling,' she said, ‘this place is going to wrack and ruin.'

After Enif and Paul had been despatched to hunt rabbits and stars and Carrie had sent her reluctant mother upstairs to do a stock check, Carrie and Jen spent the morning making the shop window look like wedding heaven. Jen had found a vintage dress on eBay in a soft, champagne-coloured brocade with a boat neckline and sparkling rhinestones round a full skirt and although it was too small to wear herself, she had decided it would make the perfect focus for a display and a cheery antidote to midwinter blues. The gown was pulled onto Dolly, the long-suffering shop dummy, who had resigned herself to a life of being mistreated by Jen. Dolly's feet were encased in a pair of satin ballet pumps and she was dragged from the ground to stand in splendour on the raised platform. The floor around the dummy's feet was littered with the cream and pink paper roses that Jen had made and Carrie cut outsized confetti shapes from paper doilies and stuck them all over the window. While they worked Carrie told Jen a little of what had happened between her and Oliver.

‘You really like him. Don't you?' said Jen.

‘I think he's attractive. I'm just not sure he's relationship material. Maybe I don't really want a relationship. I don't know.'

‘I'd be careful if I were you,' said Jen. ‘You really need to look after yourself just now. After Damian and all this business with the medium and stuff, I'm just not sure you should be starting something with someone who lures people into sheds then seduces them.'

‘It was a hide, not a shed.'

‘Same difference,' said Jen, ‘sounds furtive to me.' And she stood on tiptoe to fix a little headpiece trimmed with a short net veil onto Dolly's improbably blonde hair.

The two women went outside to look at the finished product through the window.

‘Very pretty,' said Carrie. ‘The dress could do with straightening out a bit.'

Jen looked at her friend who was standing on one side of the window and then the other and squinting critically through the glass, and felt a warm rush of affection and admiration for her. Carrie was so beautiful and so stoical and Jen hoped that something good would happen for her soon. She herself felt so full of happiness and gratitude that she wanted her friend to be equally blessed.

‘What do you feel about what the medium said?' asked Jen. She still believed that Simon Foster had somehow found out the information he needed to make his story convincing and had used a potent mix of theatrics, intuition and a sophisticated understanding of behaviour to find the words that Carrie wanted to hear. It wouldn't have taken much, surely, for someone skilled in the mechanics of sadness to use the dropped clues, the small unconscious admissions to their own advantage. Nothing would convince her that Charlie could talk from beyond the grave, but she had supported Carrie throughout and would support her in this, even though she couldn't understand it.