The String Diaries (30 page)

C
HAPTER
23

Aquitaine region, France

Now

Hannah discovered the note while she was preparing Leah’s breakfast.

She had woken when the first pale light of morning slipped between the slats of the shutters in her daughter’s room. The girl was asleep beside her, warm and at peace, and it took all Hannah’s will to force herself up from the bed and down the stairs to the kitchen.

She had, for too long, allowed her grief to consume her. It had been an unforgivable dereliction of the girl. The knowledge of her failure was like a steady drip of poison in her veins, and while she would force herself to bury the agony of Nate’s death for now – stifle it, smother it, drown it – she would not forgive herself for the three days she had abandoned Leah to her loss.

He makes monsters of us all.

No.

Too easy, Hannah. That failure had nothing to do with Jakab. That was your weakness alone.

Nate’s passing, she knew, had destroyed something in her that could never be healed. That life was over, its echoes already faint, and now that she had emerged from her paralysis into this cold new existence, she found she had only one goal. Last night she had extracted a promise from Sebastien to find Leah a loving home should she not survive a final encounter with Jakab. She had asked him because she felt the conclusion of their struggle lay near, and because she planned to kill him at whatever cost to herself.

The prospect of death did not raise in her the slightest fear. Perhaps, she thought, it was the one advantage she had over the creature that stalked them. She no longer placed any value on her life.

On the kitchen worktop she found two baguettes from the day before, still soft beneath their crusts. The fridge yielded a box of soft cheese, a paper bag of sausages, a ham, six eggs, apples, a jar of plum jam, orange juice and milk. In one of the cupboards, she found tea bags and coffee. She discovered the note, written on a single sheet of watermarked paper, propped on the windowsill between pots of basil and tarragon. The handwriting was a graceful looping of ink.

Hannah, I’ll be down at the river. My people are coming. Gabriel.

She turned the note over in her hands. The experience they had shared the previous evening had filled her with wonder at first, although it had quickly been overtaken by fear. Perhaps she shouldn’t have been surprised by that: despite her inclination to trust Gabriel, he was still
hosszú élet
, inextricably linked to the nightmare that had claimed her for so much of her life. Oddly, though, the experience seemed to have shaken him too. For whatever reason, the sadness she had glimpsed in him during their ride up Cadair Idris had surfaced once more; she had caught an aching loneliness in his eyes.

My people are coming
.

Hearing the creak of floorboards from Leah’s room and the soft thump as her daughter descended the stairs, Hannah poured juice, filled a kettle and began to lay the table.

Leah slouched into the room, bare feet scuffing along the floor, and pulled up a chair. The girl’s face was puffy and flushed. She yawned and squinted up at her mother.

‘Want some breakfast, kiddo?’ Hannah asked, forcing a brightness into her voice.

Leah blinked, nodded.

‘That’s my girl.’

After they had breakfasted on bread, cheese and ham, washing it down with tall glasses of orange juice, she rinsed the dishes, dressed them both and took Leah outside. Hannah had not left the house since they had arrived. She wanted to see how the place had changed since her last visit – wanted to assess its privacy, its security.

‘Is this going to be our new home?’ Leah asked.

‘Yes, it is. Do you like it?’

‘Does it have a name?’

‘Le Moulin Bellerose.’

‘French.’

‘That’s right.’

‘Can you speak French?’

Hannah smiled, slinging her arm around her daughter. ‘Yes, I can. And so will you.’ She had owned Le Moulin Bellerose for nearly nine years. No one but Nate knew of her connection to it. After her mother’s death, Charles had liquidated his investments. He used the funds to purchase a couple of inexpensive properties in remote locations – he liked to call them his safe-houses – which they could use as a temporary refuge should Jakab ever find them. When Leah was born, and Charles became even more fearful for their safety, he gifted Hannah a sum of money.

Buy a place, somewhere far from here. Somewhere you can all go, in anonymity, should the worst happen. Don’t tell me where it is. I don’t want to know. Less chance of me betraying you that way
.

Hannah had found the farm during a family trip through France when Leah was six months old. She only needed half the money her father had given her to buy it, and with good reason. The roof of the honeyed-limestone farmhouse had collapsed. It had no heating, no electricity, no water. A tree grew in one of the rooms.

The following summer, Nate spent a fortnight sawing timber and hammering joists, re-laying all the old roof tiles that had survived, and replacing those that hadn’t. The summer after that, he connected a water supply and added an oil tank and furnace. Between them they made Le Moulin Bellerose their secret retreat. Not just their bolt-hole, but their idyll.

At the front of the property stood two wheat fields, separated by a tree-lined track that stretched away to the main road. Their land was encircled by a forest of oak, sweet chestnut and walnut. Among the trees they saw roe deer, red squirrel, bright yellow Cleopatra butterflies. During the day they listened to the song of mistle thrush and goldfinch, and in the evening to the reedy call of tawny owls and the looping music of nightingales.

The farmhouse kitchen faced south. It opened on to a small plum orchard, neglected and overgrown when they bought the farm, but flourishing since. Below the orchard, a track led through woodland to the north bank of the Vézère River, one of the tributaries of the Dordogne to the southwest. The farm, and its land, was cupped in a horseshoe bend of the river. Early in the last century a mill race had been cut to syphon water from the river to a watermill that still stood on the property’s western border.

Like the farmhouse, the mill had been in ruins when they first arrived, home to a colony of pipistrelle bats that hung from its rafters like a rippling fur coat. Nate had repaired the roof and reglazed all but one of its broken windows, allowing the bats to continue their tenure. He had talked of converting the mill to produce their own electricity. His sketched plans still lay in the drawer of the living-room bureau.

Le Moulin Bellerose was a place of beauty, the backdrop to a thousand precious memories, and as Hannah walked outside with Leah and smelled the familiar sweetness of the plums that had split open on the ground, the warmth of those memories – now so fragile, already so distant – made the ache of her loss flare into bright new pain.

She picked a plum from the nearest tree and handed it to Leah. ‘Here, try one of these while you can. We’re at the end of the season.’

The girl took a bite, smiled. ‘It’s sweet.’

‘I watched your dad eat so many plums one summer he had stomach-ache for two whole days.’

At the mention of her father Leah’s face tightened. ‘Where are we going?’

Hannah saw the sparkle of tears welling in the girl’s eyes. Knowing that Leah did not want her to see, she took her hand and pointed down the path. ‘This takes us to the river. Do you want to have a look?’

Leah nodded, took another bite of the plum.

They followed the trail through a patch of woodland, crunching over dead leaves. The morning sun was low and the sky was pale and clear. In the deep shade of the trees off to their left, two carrion crows pecked at something red and wet in the undergrowth. One of the birds looked up and screamed at them as they passed.

The path meandered through the trees until it arrived at the Vézère’s northern bank. The river was wide and slow at this stage of its journey, olive-coloured and speckled with the crisp carcasses of dead leaves. A swarm of midges hovered above the water, offering themselves as food to the birds that swooped from the trees.

Upstream, the river curved away from them. Downstream, it ran straight for a while before curving back behind them. The opposite bank was steep, thick with forest.

Gabriel stood at the edge of the water, hands stuffed into the pockets of his jacket. He turned at their approach, and Hannah thought he looked older this morning. Melancholy. ‘Wish I had a fishing rod,’ he said.

‘There’s one at the house. Nate used to come down here all the time and catch our dinner. Pike, trout, all sorts.’

He nodded, and then his eyes found Leah and his face brightened. ‘Little miss! Now, I bet I can guess what you’ve been eating.’

‘Plums.’

Gabriel slapped his head. ‘How am I supposed to guess if you tell me the answer, eh? What sort of game is that?’

Leah almost found a smile for him. ‘A game I won.’

‘Oh, you did, did you?’ He laughed. ‘Do you like the river, little miss? You see that log, half submerged, over by the far bank? I saw a kingfisher perched there a minute ago. If you watch, he might come back. Beautiful bird, the kingfisher. A real treat to see one.’

Leah’s eyes moved between Gabriel and where he pointed, as if deciding whether he was teasing her. Appearing to rule in his favour, she approached the bank and crouched down. Chewing her lip, she stared intently at the log.

Hannah went to Gabriel’s side. ‘Your note said your people were coming.’

‘They want to meet you.’

‘Why?’

‘A few reasons. Not least because of what you’ve suffered at the hands of one of our own.’

‘I suppose their desire to find Jakab doesn’t rank highly in that decision.’

‘I hoped you’d consider us a more compassionate people than that, Hannah.’

‘Would you? In my shoes?’

He bowed his head. ‘I suppose not. No.’

If he had argued or rebuked her instead of accepting her words, she knew he would have provoked her to anger. Instead, his lack of defence unbalanced her and she felt a twinge of guilt.

‘We may have our own reasons for wanting to find Jakab,’ he continued, ‘but that doesn’t preclude us from agonising over the devastation he’s wrought on you.’

‘What
are
those reasons, Gabriel?’

‘You’ll find out very soon,’ he said. ‘From someone who can explain far better than I.’ Gabriel lifted his head and looked upstream to where the river curved into the forest.

‘Who are you meeting here?’

He smiled distractedly, his eyes fixed on the far bank.

‘I don’t like surprises, Gabriel,’ she murmured.

Hannah didn’t have to wait long. She heard the quiet chugging of an outboard engine, and soon the bow of an open-topped wooden boat slid into view around the bend, cutting the water before it. As more of the vessel emerged, she was reminded of the sleek lines of a Venetian gondola. The boat motored towards them, its varnished woodwork glimmering in the sunlight.

Hannah counted four figures within. At the bow knelt a tall man with pale skin, and auburn hair scraped into a ponytail. Dark glasses hid his eyes, and he wore a black zippered gilet over a cream polo neck. His mouth was a tight line; Hannah felt his eyes behind their glasses measuring her as she stood on the bank.

Two other men sat at the stern. They wore the same guarded expressions, and studied her just as stonily. One rested his hand on the tiller while the other had his fingers steepled together. All three looked solemn, strong, alert. But it was the tall presence in the centre of the boat, dressed in a loose ivory suit, that captured and held Hannah’s attention.

A silk cowl, the fabric flowing like liquid copper, covered its head and obscured its face in shadow. Hannah felt her heart begin to thump in her chest, and she wondered what prompted such a rush of expectation. She clenched her fists, fingernails cutting into her palms. Her leg muscles twitched.

The stranger sat motionless, hands folded beneath the trailing fabric of the cowl. Hannah felt a hand slide into hers, and she glanced down to see that Leah had moved to her side.

As the grim-faced skipper swung the craft towards them and killed the engine, the man in the bow tossed a coil of rope to Gabriel. He caught the end of it and reeled in the boat. When its gunwales bumped against the bank, he secured the line around a tree root. ‘Welcome,’ he said.

The figure in the middle of the boat raised its hands and lifted the cowl away from its face. Hannah felt as if the breath had been sucked from her lungs. Seated before her was the most coldly beautiful woman she had ever seen. Slender-limbed, with fair hair that fell to her shoulders and a face carved from the sharpest contours of bone, the woman’s skin was as pale and smooth as a magnolia petal. Her years were impossible to guess. Lavender eyes, clear and sharp like a predator’s, studied Hannah with such intensity that she retreated from the bank. A frightening power radiated from the woman. Hannah felt Leah’s hand tighten around her own.

‘Greetings, Hannah Wilde,’ the woman said. When her lips lifted into a smile, that cold countenance melted into an expression of empathy so pure and so genuine that it closed Hannah’s throat. Not knowing what to do or say, she bowed her head, pulling Leah even closer to her side.

Assisted by the sombre man with the ponytail, the stranger stepped on to the bank. She went first to Gabriel. After kissing him on both cheeks, she embraced him. ‘How do you fare?’

‘Better for seeing you.’

‘You still have that brogue.’

‘You’re the one who sent me to Ireland.’

‘It’s a beautiful accent.’

‘I think it’s here to stay.’

She smiled and turned to her companion. ‘You can leave me now, Illes. Thank you for getting me here safely.’

The man frowned. ‘I’d prefer to stay at your side.’

‘You can see I am in safe hands.’

‘But
Főnök—
’

‘Illes, do you question me?’

He dropped his head, dismayed. ‘No, of course not.’