Why Don’t You Come for Me (17 page)

The rain had painted the tree trunks black. Everything was damp and dripping, the wet canopy of leaves creating an unnatural gloom under the leaden sky. ‘Come out,’ she shouted. ‘Come out and let me see who you are.’

She stopped running and stood still. She must be within a few feet of where the figure had been, and anyone trying to escape must surely make some kind of noise and give themselves away. She waited and listened, her breath coming in quick short gasps, but the wood was alive with nothing but the sound of water. A branch directly above her head chose that moment to deposit a shower of raindrops on her head. Great damp splotches appeared on her shirt. She looked around for some sign that this had been the place – any indication that someone had been standing there just a moment before, but there was nothing.

Looking back, she could see the kitchen window surrounded by a frame of pale green leaves. It looked a long way away, and panic rose abruptly within her. There was no one inside the house, and even if there had been, they would not hear her if she shouted. She turned back the way she had come, tripping over bramble cables and catching her hand on a stinging nettle in her hurry. Whatever had possessed her to come racing out here, without so much as her mobile phone to summon help? It came to her that she was making so much noise in her headlong flight that it would mask any sound of pursuit if there was one, but stopping to listen was the last thing she intended to do.
This is bad
, she thought.
I’m within sight of my own home and I’m afraid.

She regained the kitchen door and all but fell inside, locking it behind her. She considered calling the police, but reason intercepted her. There was no one to be seen now, and the prowler had been within twenty-five yards of a right of way. She returned to the kitchen window, standing well back into the room, where she thought she could not be seen from any distance, but then she saw that it had begun to rain again, falling in hard straight lines, blanking out everything beyond the edge of the garden. She transferred her attention inside: her hands, hair, shoes and clothing were all wet to some degree.

As she climbed the stairs to change, it occurred to her for the first time how vulnerable she was when Marcus was away. In the past she had never been afraid of staying by herself at The Hideaway, but that was before she had acquired an intermittent feeling of being watched. She could hardly count on Sean to defend her, even when he was here. Apart from the fact that he was only a kid, by the time he had finished arguing with her about whether or not he intended to come out of his room, she would probably be dead already.

She knew it would be useless to try telling Marcus about the figure in the wood. He would only say that she had imagined it. Now that she was upstairs, she decided to pack for the trip she was due to lead in Yorkshire. Focusing on her packing would give her something else to think about.

Jo was two days into the From Herriot to Heartbeat tour when she picked up a text to say that Melissa was unwell, so could she take charge of Mary Queen of Scots in the Lowlands after all. When she called Marcus later, he explained that Melissa had a nasty cold, and that since Jo had previously been keen to conduct the tours back to back, they assumed she would be willing to cover.

Jo had never liked the Herriot to Heartbeat tour. It was an itinerary they had inherited from Flights of Fantasy, and although it was theoretically themed to books and authors, in reality it was just a trip around the various television locations which had been used in the two long-running series – a distinctly lowbrow excursion, which attracted a very different kind of customer to their regular clientele. She always did her best to raise the level, but it was hard to see this turn of duty as much more than babysitting a group of gossipy old ladies. As a result, Jo was not in the best of spirits when she took the call from Marcus, and felt sorely tempted to remind him that it was one thing to do back-to-back tours when you had prepared for them in advance, and quite another to be washing your underwear in the hotel handbasin as you went along. She half wondered if Melissa was behind the suggestion that she take over, hoping to make it look as if she made a fuss when she was taken off the tour, then another fuss when she was reinstated. Well, if that was the game, it would not work. She would rise above it. Far worse things had happened: clients with suspected heart attacks; getting stuck in a motorway jam for three hours; a mismatched hotel booking which temporarily left a party with nowhere to lay their heads. Coping with the unexpected was all part of the job.

At least the group bound for Scotland were likely to be an improvement on the current lot, who chattered and fidgeted and fussed about loo stops like a group of schoolkids. The Mary Queen of Scots tour invariably attracted knowledgeable enthusiasts, the kind of people who listened attentively when called to order, not just a bunch of old ladies looking for a convivial coach trip. Moreover, she always looked forward to staying at Borthwick Castle, which was their first overnight stop. The candlelit dinners at Borthwick were superb, and afterwards the group would be taken on a guided tour of the building, before hearing the usual ghost stories over a wee dram in front of the roaring fire. It always made for a great start, and the prospect cheered her.

There was an inauspicious beginning at Newcastle Airport, where some of the luggage went temporarily astray, and it took all Jo’s charm and tact to keep everyone reasonably happy while the problem was sorted out. The subsequent journey north was marred by rain, but this had eased away by the time they reached Crichton and left the coach to undertake the short walk to the castle. Jo had already memorized names and matched them with faces – it was always important to make clients feel that you recognized each of them personally from the outset. Mr Radley fell into step with her and began to explain in detail why his wife had wanted them to come on the tour. He himself was not interested in ‘the Scottish queen’, being an aficionado of model railways, but ‘the wife comes with me, and I go with her … you see, the thing about being married …’ Jo recognized a familiar type in Mr Radley: someone not interested in the subject matter, who would none the less enjoy monopolizing the guide given half a chance. She managed to extricate herself with one of her brightest smiles, on the pretext of making sure that Mrs Van Halsen, who had begun to lag behind, was doing OK. Mrs Van Halsen greeted her with a complaint. Had she realized walking was involved on this first day, she would have travelled in different shoes. Jo coupled sympathy with an assurance that it was not much further. No matter that the full itinerary had been provided, together with advice about suitable footwear in bold, there was always someone who had not read it properly.

A first glimpse of Borthwick from the coach windows drew the usual appreciative gasps, but when the party gathered for pre-dinner drinks in the great hall, it soon became clear that not everyone was happy. Mrs Van Halsen grumbled that there were too many stairs to get to and from her room. Jo tried to lighten the mood with a quip about medieval architects not providing elevators, but another member of the party joined in to say that they regretted not asking for a room on a lower floor. Discontent spreads quickly. Someone else noted that it had begun to rain again, and Jo had to come up with something quickly before the entire party fell into moaning mode. Dinner should have cheered them up, but just as it seemed that even Mrs Van Halsen was thawing, Mrs Barber, who had earlier jumped on the too-many-stairs bandwagon, now sent back her beef, claiming that it was inedible. Since the food at Borthwick Castle was inevitably wonderful, Jo strongly suspected that it was simply a case of the meat not being cooked to Mrs Barber’s liking, but Mrs Barber’s prolonged dissatisfaction about the ‘inedible beef’ cast a pall over the entire meal. When the post-dinner tour of the castle was offered, there were uncharacteristic numbers of queries about how many stairs would be involved.

Once the party had broken up just after eleven, Jo slipped outside the main door, switched on her mobile, managed to get a signal and phoned home. She was surprised when Sean answered.

‘Dad’s not here.’

‘Well, where is he?’ She expected Sean to say, ‘in the bath’, ‘out in the garage’, or something of that sort, so ‘Manchester’ took her aback.

‘You’re not there on your own, are you?’

‘Yes, but he said he won’t be late.’

‘It’s eleven o’clock.’

‘So?’ asked Sean, insolently.

‘We don’t normally leave you alone overnight.’

‘He won’t be gone overnight.’

‘Is your grandmother very poorly?’

‘She’s always poorly.’

‘I mean, is she worse?’

‘I don’t know.’

They had reached an impasse. After a moment’s silence, Sean said, ‘Can I go now?’

‘Yes – OK. Tell him I rang.’

She wasn’t sure if Sean had heard the last bit or not. The phone went dead while she was still speaking; possibly they had lost the signal, or maybe Sean had rung off.

She felt exhausted as she began the long climb back to her bedroom in the north tower, which seemed double the distance she remembered from previous visits. For once she found herself in sympathy with the claims that there were too many stairs. She knew that she should have ended her conversation with Sean on a better note, perhaps with some expression of affection; at the very least a little gesture in the direction of the motherly: ‘Take care of yourself,’ or ‘Don’t answer the door to anyone.’ Not that there ever were any unexpected callers after dark. Easter Bridge was too far off the beaten track for door-to-door salesmen or even carol singers at Christmas – although someone had come to leave the shell. It was never far from her thoughts, that shell – all three of them, in fact – at least two too many to have blown there by accident.

She had not expected Marcus to be in Manchester. Perhaps his mother was finally dying and his sister had made the ‘come now’ phone call. It was strange, though, that he had not said something to Sean about it, even if only in preparation for the news he might be bringing home. She managed to get an intermittent signal beside the window in her bedroom, but when she tried Marcus’s mobile he did not answer – which he wouldn’t, not if he was driving. She left her own phone switched on, periodically climbing out of bed and holding it up to the window, but by midnight Marcus had not returned her call. She was torn between ringing home again – which might wake him up, if he had fallen straight into bed after a long journey – and not ringing, which made it look as if she did not care how his mother was. She sat with the tartan bedcover huddled up to her chin, her mind a whirlpool of uncertainty. He
might
have tried to ring her, but the phone reception was uncertain because of the thickness of the walls, and she didn’t like leaving her room at night to locate a better signal. The spiral staircases and cavernous rooms, although well lit, were unwelcoming at this hour. It took stout nerves to ramble around the castle on your own.

She fought against it, but another idea, darker than his mother’s death, was growing. Suppose Marcus had not gone to Manchester after all? How would Sean know where his father was headed, once the car had turned out of the drive and sped south across the bridge? She pictured Melissa’s sitting room with its soft lighting, a fire in the hearth and Melissa reclining among the scatter cushions. Red wine poured into a pair of lantern-sized goblets, Marcus offering her a tissue, making a joke about her so-called ‘cold’. It made her feel sick to think of it, but she couldn’t get rid of the thought. Marcus did not need to stay all night in Kirkby Lonsdale, so Sean need never suspect a thing. He knew that Borthwick was usually a late night, so he would not have expected her to phone.

When she finally fell asleep, it was to a dream of Melissa and Marcus, grappling naked on a huge bed, which was for some reason covered in red shiny plastic. Melissa kept scoring her painted nails into Marcus’s back, so hard that they left a pattern like Chinese characters scratched into his flesh. It must be hurting him, Jo thought, but he gave no sign of it; did not flinch or cry out. It was then that she noticed the tableau was silent, like watching television with the mute on.
That’s because it’s only a dream
, said a voice in her head.
It isn’t real – you only have to wake up and it will be all over.
But somehow she could not rouse herself. The two of them went on thrashing about, Marcus thrusting and thrusting and Melissa covering his back in hieroglyphics, while the plastic melted from the heat of their bodies and turned into a huge bath of scarlet emulsion paint, on which the pair of them floated effortlessly, unaware of anything except the act in which they were engaged.
You see
, said the voice,
it’s ridiculous; no one could float like that. It’s just a dream. If it was real they would be drowning in the paint by now.
That was it: of course. That was the other way of stopping it. If she couldn’t wake up, then maybe she could cross the room and push them under. Hold them down in the paint; that would do it.

One minute she was watching from a few feet away, and the next she was leaning right over them. She wasn’t entirely sure how she got there, but now that she was standing above them it was easy to press down on Marcus’s back so that they both disappeared into the paint. There was no more resistance than when she pushed her undies into a basin of water. Her hands and arms went in up to the elbow, but they didn’t feel cold or wet. Marcus and Melissa must have sunk to the bottom, because she couldn’t feel them either. The momentary relief at having stopped them was overtaken by the horror at what she had done. And in the bath of paint a face was reflected back at her – not her own, but her mother’s.

Her scream woke her. She lay there in a panic, wondering if she had really cried out, and if so, whether it had been loud enough for anyone to have heard her. The rooms were well spread around the building and the walls thick, and maybe the sound, which had been so loud in her own mind, had only been part of the dream. She was afraid to relax straight back into sleep lest the dream returned, and when she felt that it was safe to settle down again, sleep eluded her. She eventually fell into a fitful doze from which she awoke feeling jaded at around seven. Before breakfast, she took her phone out into the grounds to maximize the signal and managed to get through to Marcus. Her first question naturally concerned his mother.