Someone to Watch Over Me (31 page)

‘Is this what you want, Carrie?' he asked gently, his eyes wide with desire, his breathing ragged. Although the last of his control was ebbing away he was nevertheless troubled by her sudden urgency and the speed with which they had got here. Her reply was to crush her mouth against his again and this time there was no stopping either of them. There was the inevitable negotiating of clothes, the awkwardness of being on a sofa that was too small to hold both of them, the not knowing which way their bodies fitted best, the giggling struggle out of jeans and fastenings, but above all that was the strength of the desire that ran through them, carrying them along as they moved together.

Afterwards, Oliver held Carrie as she cried and told him about Charlie's last words. He stroked her hair and then took her upstairs and wrapped her in his bed where they both slept a little and then woke to each other again, going slower this time and trying to find those places that made them melt, or cry out, or forget again what it was they had been thinking. Much later, Oliver put on a comedy underwear apron and she was relieved to see there was at least something in his house that was as naff as she had expected it to be. He cooked her bacon and baked beans and fried bread and brought it to her on a large tray.

‘You really are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen,' said Oliver leaning back in the bed and watching her eat the food as if she had never eaten before. He loved the fact she was sitting unselfconsciously bare breasted, the light from the bedside lamp shining on her skin and the curve of her neck.

‘And you are as handsome as you think you are,' said Carrie tartly. She wasn't going to tell him that no man had the right to look as good as he did whilst wearing nothing but his slippers and an unsavoury apron. After scraping her plate clean, she took his apron off and he pretended to explore her body for crumbs and they fell asleep again with their legs twisted together under the sheet.

Carrie woke the second time with the same unease that she had felt the day before when she had first heard Simon's most recent message from Charlie. A memory of Max's face came to her with his sweet, grave eyes. ‘Charlie is my friend,' he'd said. Oliver was still asleep, so she slipped quietly out of the bed without waking him and went back across the road to her own house. She tried not to visualise the other women she had seen treading this same path from his house. It was her turn to get to the shop early so she only had time to splash water on her face and brush her teeth before getting on her bike. Despite repeated attempts to get it fixed, the wretched thing was permanently stuck in third gear and so by the time she arrived she was panting with the effort of getting over the railway bridge.

She unlocked the door and turned off the alarm and then set about giving the place a vigorous sweep and polish. She wanted to keep as busy as possible so that she didn't have a chance to think too much about what she was feeling. Half an hour later the shop was gleaming, she had been out to buy milk and get change for the till but she still felt no respite from her thoughts. Charlie had liked Max, had felt a sense of kinship. What was it the other boy had disliked? Bats? Charlie had fluctuated between repugnance and fascination for the creatures, once even making her take his book with pictures of a bat colony outside the house and hide it where he couldn't find it. On impulse, Carrie went behind the till counter and pulled out a pile of paper that she had stowed there. She found the card that Molly had left at the shop with her contact details, and rang the number. The phone rang for ten rings and then went to voicemail. Feeling slightly foolish, Carrie left a message.

‘It's Carrie Hudson here. From the shop … I'm ringing about your paintings. Wanted a quick chat. Could you ring me back as soon as you can? Thanks.'

Just then the door banged open, startling Carrie, and Jen burst in over the threshold in her usual noisy way. She slung her coat over the counter and started to unwrap what might possibly have been part of a hessian sack from around her neck. She fixed Carrie with one of her beady looks.

‘You've slept with him. Haven't you?' said Jen. She had a disconcerting sixth sense for sex, although Carrie probably thought the evidence of lack of sleep around her eyes and a certain dishevelment in her attire were probably pretty big clues.

‘I may have done,' said Carrie and went into the back to put the kettle on and to get away from Jen's scrutiny. Jen followed her out.

‘I hope you know what you're doing,' she said sounding genuinely worried. ‘I don't think you are particularly strong at the moment and I'm not sure Oliver is what you need.'

‘I don't know what I need,' said Carrie. ‘I just want to stop feeling this way all the time.'

She told Jen about her last visit to Simon's flat while her friend made them both tea.

‘What do you think I should do about it?' asked Carrie. ‘If I believe it is Charlie speaking to me, which I do, then I have to believe that what he is trying to tell me is the truth. He wants me to help.'

‘What about going to the police?' said Jen.

‘And tell them what? That my dead son has told me that someone he once saw on a beach is in danger?'

‘Hmm … yes. It's not exactly going to make them leap into action.'

‘I've got their address, the people on the beach. Remember they came in here with her paintings?' said Carrie.

‘Oh, yes,' said Jen, ‘I was actually going to get in touch with her today because I sold one of them. The one of the man in the field.'

‘Parson's Bridge, near Ely … don't think I know it, but I could Google it.'

‘You are not thinking of going to the house are you?' said Jen.

‘I might go this afternoon,' said Carrie.

‘Don't go on your own,' said Jen.

‘It'll be fine. They'll probably be there at the house, safe and sound. I'll feel stupid and have to make up a story about wanting to see more of her paintings or something, which if they are selling might be a good idea anyway.'

‘Promise me you won't go haring off across the Fens by yourself,' said Jen. ‘At least get that Oliver to go with you.'

After Rupert left, Max became hysterical about the eel. Cowering away, he demanded that Molly get rid of it. She tried to explain that there was nowhere to put it, no window she could get open to throw it out of, but then driven mad by his terrified entreaties, she hid it away as best she could under a loose stone, although she took the precaution of wrapping it up in a torn-off bit of plastic sheeting that she found under one of the drums. She thought that if they had to suffer another day of this, they might have to eat it. She knew Max was very hungry although he had stopped asking for food since last night.

Molly had wrapped the rest of the sheeting around Max and held him across her body all night, sharing as much of her warmth with him as she could, although she was chilled to the bone herself. At around dawn his cough became much worse and he started shivering and then claiming to be burning hot. He tried at one point to get out of the sheeting, but she held him fast, giving him the occasional drink from the bottle top, trickling it carefully through his dry lips. Pressing into her side was the rusty scythe that she had found under the sheeting and which she had attached around her waist under her shirt with a torn-off length of the plastic. There were a few other bits of old farming equipment, but nothing else that would serve as a weapon.

Her body ached. She had barely slept at all since the beginning of their imprisonment two days ago, and hadn't drunk any of the water in order to conserve as much as possible of it for Max. She strained her ears for any sound, but all she could hear was the sound of rain on a metal or plastic roof somewhere nearby. The noise reminded her of being in the caravan as a child. Her and her sister, endlessly playing cards while they holed up on some lay-by waiting for the rain to stop while her father fiddled with the radio trying to get a weather forecast and her mother made the best of things. She felt a sweep of longing so hard and childish that she cried out, causing Max to shift restlessly in his sleep. She would have given anything in that moment just to have her mother with her. She thought of the way she used to comb out her hair, teasing gently at the knots, endlessly patient with her wriggling complaints, and then brushing and brushing it until it shone.

‘It's not your crowning glory, Molly,' she said once. ‘You always say that about girls with nothing else special about them. But you have so many special things about you.'

She had been a bold girl, afraid of very little, keen to prove herself and to take on challenges. Once she had walked the whole length of a narrow log over a fast moving river just because her sister had told her sneeringly that she couldn't do it. She could still feel the sway of it under her feet and the dizzy rush of water and the taste of delight as she jumped clear onto the bank. She didn't know how she had become the person she was now. Couldn't remember any more when she had last felt that supple strength that used to come so naturally to her. She thought that maybe Rupert had seen that leaping self in her and had wanted to stop it in its tracks, to cut it off in case it jumped too high.

As she cycled back to her house, Carrie became more and more convinced that she was doing the right thing. The sense of unease and urgency that she had experienced earlier in the day had been replaced by resolve. She
had
to act on Charlie's words. He was frightened about something that was happening and she had to do all she could to take that fear away.

Through the clouded window of the swimming pool she could see strings of bunting and children lined up at the edge waiting to start a race. Fingers plucked the bottoms of their swimsuits, pale legs swung across the tiled floor. On Mill Road a crocodile of small children still unselfconscious enough to walk hand in hand meandered down the pavement, led by a stressed-looking young woman with a rucksack. She could still see his absence everywhere.

As she passed his house, Carrie saw Oliver moving around in his front room and so she stopped, rested her bike against his wall and knocked on the door. He came to the door quickly and she was obscurely pleased to see that he didn't look his usual groomed self. It was clear that their night together had made enough of an impact on him to stop him dwelling too much on his ravishing good looks.

‘Where did you get to this morning?' he asked. ‘I was all prepared to get you fried breakfast number two.'

‘I'm sorry to have crept off like that,' said Carrie. ‘I had to get to the shop early and I didn't want to disturb you.'

‘You can disturb me any time you want,' said Oliver pulling her inside and kissing her. She felt herself responding to him straight away, feeling a flare of desire as soon as he touched her. He put his hand inside the neck of her shirt and rubbed her shoulder with his thumb, but Carrie pulled away.

‘I can't stay,' said Carrie. ‘There's something I've got to do, and I was wondering if you would help.' Carrie stopped because she noticed a pale-coloured silk slip hanging over the arm of the sofa, an item that definitely hadn't been there that morning. Looking around the room, she also saw a pair of black court shoes under one of the chairs.

‘Although, on second thoughts, it doesn't look as if it's terribly convenient,' snapped Carrie and turned and walked to the front door.

‘What was it you wanted me to do?' asked Oliver, surprised at the sudden sharpness of her tone.

‘It doesn't matter,' said Carrie. ‘I'm fine on my own,' and she opened the door and went out, shutting it firmly behind her. She knew that she shouldn't have allowed him to get as close as he had to her. The man was clearly incapable of keeping his dick in his trousers for longer than ten minutes. She was angry with herself for not trusting her first instincts about him. She didn't know what was wrong with him, but she didn't want to hang around to find out.

A quick search on her computer established the exact location of the house and she only tarried for as long as it took to swap her pumps for some boots and to put her anorak, the map and a torch in the boot of her car. Carrie got out of town as quickly as possible, and it was only when she was on the road to Ely that she allowed herself to think at all about what she was doing. She wasn't sure what it was she expected to find at Max and Molly's house, but it was the only lead she had and therefore the only thing she could do to try and work out what it was that Charlie was telling her. The sky was overcast and threatening rain and there was a strong wind picking up. Crows swirled over the fields or settled briefly in trees that had been shaped by their exposure to the elements into mean, hunched things. Her phone rang in her handbag, startling her, causing her to veer slightly into the side of the road and setting off an involuntary tingle up her arms. She passed the cathedral in the distance, its stately bulk anchored firmly to the horizon, and then turned right along a narrow road edged with hedging to one side and a channel of water on the other. She passed the odd house and some farm buildings and then, about four miles up the road, came to a cluster of houses. The area code for Molly and Max's house had indicated that it was just beyond this little hamlet, and so Carrie passed through Parson's Bridge and continued up a bumpy road for a further half a mile or so. She disliked driving this close to the ditch of water, and noted that since the light was already fading and with no lights other than her headlamps, she would need to be careful on her return journey.

She pulled up outside the house. It had to be this one, since there were no others near it. It was the time of day when lights would be on if there was anyone in. The house sat low in the landscape, its dark windows small, an overgrown yew tree partly blocking the front path. The place seemed deserted and Carrie felt a sudden jolt of dread. For the first time she wondered about the wisdom of coming here alone. Maybe she was too late. Maybe whatever dreadful thing Charlie said was going to happen, had already happened. She tried to remember exactly what it was he had said, but the words had been confused. She got out of the car, opened the boot and put on her anorak and took hold of her torch, which felt reassuringly heavy in her hand. She shivered as the wind cut through her, its strength allowed full rein in this unsheltered spot. She knew it was probably pointless, but she knocked on the door anyway and then pushed against it in case it had been left open. She peered in the front window, and by cupping her hands against the glass could see the living room with a fireplace that looked as if it had been used fairly recently, and some toys and books on the carpet. There didn't seem to be anything out of the ordinary. She went round to the back garden where there was some mouldy garden furniture and a balding Christmas tree leaning up against the wall. Carrie noticed that one of the windows had been left slightly ajar and, putting her hand inside to release the catch, Carrie opened it wide. She scrambled over the windowsill and the sink that was immediately below and landed hard on the floor. She shone the torch around the room, located the light switch and clicked it on to reveal a kitchen that had clearly been abandoned hastily. There were unwashed dishes on the side and some food in a pan on the cooker. The house felt cold and smelt musty, but it didn't feel as if it had been empty for any length of time. She went out into the hallway and, despite feeling foolish, felt compelled to call out.