The Night Book

by Richard Madeley

  Mad, mad, mad. The moment she returned to Cathedral Crag, she was going to burn it. A first step. The first of many.

  Seb was frowning with disgust. ‘What a vile man. You can’t go back there.’

  She shook her head. ‘I have to, Seb. Cameron and I must have it out. I have no idea what I’m going to tell him about where I’ve been tonight, but that doesn’t matter, I’ll come up with something.

  ‘The main thing is, I think I’ve decided what I’m going to do. I’m going to insist on some kind of trial separation. That way we can hopefully keep it all low-key, to begin with at least. There’s no point running headlong into the whole publicity thing I was telling you about. I want to put that off as long as possible. I’m dreading it.’

  Seb snorted. ‘And there’s another vile man – your prick of an agent. He should be coming up with ideas of how to handle the fallout when you and Cameron separate, not exploiting your anxieties and making them worse. He just doesn’t want his precious boat rocked, the selfish bastard.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Meriel, this, this, oh, what’s his name, Dick Weir, Dan Weir?’

  ‘David Weir.’

  ‘Hmm, right first time, then. This dick’s got it all completely wrong – and so have you.’

  Seb took both of Meriel’s hands in his own.

  ‘Look. People won’t hold you in contempt for trying to keep a shockingly bad marriage together, for God’s sake. Most will respect you for it. They’ll sympathise and some will identify. So what if you did your level best to put a brave face on things? It never lessened the value of your advice, did it? Just think how many of your listeners and readers have told you how you’ve changed their lives immeasurably, for the better.’

  Meriel began to speak but he shook his head impatiently.

  ‘Wait. I’m not finished. I sneaked a look at some of the fan letters on your office wall when you were off sick. The ones from women you’ve helped. They adore you and they’ll forever be grateful to you, can’t you see that? I wouldn’t be surprised if they formed a “she helped us, now it’s our turn to help her” Meriel Kidd support group! I’m not joking.’

  She stared at him.

  ‘I never thought of it like that before.’

  ‘That’s because you’ve had to deal with this entirely on your own. Well, apart from your poisonous agent’s so-called advice. You’ve got everything wildly out of proportion. I feel so sorry for you. What a frightening time you must have had of it.’

  He saw tears beginning to form in her eyes and drew her closer.

  ‘Well, it’s all coming to an end. You’ve got me and you’re going to get a new life. It’s started already. There’s no going back now.’

  She hugged him tightly. ‘I can’t believe how much better you’re making me feel. I’ve been so unhappy and afraid.’

  He kissed the top of her head. ‘It’s exactly as I told you yesterday – our lives have changed. It is yesterday now, by the way; we’ve been talking for hours. I think it’s actually beginning to get light out there.’

  ‘Then it really is time I got up.’ Meriel sat up, dabbing her eyes with a corner of the sheet. ‘I’m going to take a quick shower and go straight home to talk to Cameron. The sooner I get started, the better.’

  She looked at Seb, her face flushed with determination.

  ‘I’ve got a lot to do.’

  She would start by destroying The Night Book.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  He’d almost given up. He’d gone through every single one of her cupboards and drawers. He’d taken all her handbags out of their wardrobe and opened every compartment in each of them. He’d even slipped his hands deep inside her shoes and boots, in case there was something secreted in them.

  He was in her en-suite bathroom now, where he had just finished rifling through the used towels she’d thrown in the wicker laundry basket. He looked under the basket, and even felt inside the cotton lining of its lid.

  There was nothing. Nothing to suggest that she was seeing someone else, or flirting with someone else, or even thinking about doing either.

  His eyes fell on a large blue and white china jug sitting in a matching bowl on her washstand. He’d never thought to look in there before, and his pulse quickened with expectation. He went over and peered into it, before lifting it out to see if anything was concealed underneath. He checked the bottom of the bowl, too.

  Nothing.

  Cameron sighed. His hands felt damp and sticky – his palms were perspiring freely – and he rinsed them under the hot tap in the wash basin. He looked around for a towel, but the heated rail was empty. Meriel must have forgotten to replace the ones she’d dropped in the basket.

  He went back out onto the landing and found the airing cupboard that served the part of the house his wife had been using since Christmas. He supposed he ought to have searched in here too, but somehow he didn’t think she’d hide anything outside her own bedroom or bathroom. Anyway, he couldn’t explore every bloody nook and cranny in the rambling rectory; he’d be at it for weeks.

  The airing cupboard had a sliding door on railings. Cameron rolled it open. The fresh towels were piled immediately at the front of the shelf, but when he took a couple from the top of the heap he saw there were some more shoved all the way towards the back. They looked old and thin and had a fairly revolting orange and purple pattern, nothing like the fluffy white towels he and Meriel used. They must have been there for years. Someone should have chucked them out a long time ago.

  He reached further inside to retrieve them.

  As soon as his fingers touched them, he could feel that they had been carefully wrapped around something.

  Something flat and hard.

  Cameron froze.

  He knew, with cold certainty, that he had just found what he was looking for.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Meriel had no clear idea what to expect when she finally reached Cathedral Crag and pulled up next to her husband’s car. Cameron’s vintage Bentley was still parked in exactly the same position as it had been when she fled the house yesterday. That meant he had not been out and her apprehension grew. He must have been sitting in the house all alone, stewing over the row they’d had and then, surely, wondering where she’d spent the night. God knows what state he’d be in by now.

  She glanced at her watch. Just past eight. She’d been gone for almost twenty hours.

  Mentally, she braced herself. This was going to be rough.

  Cameron heard the distant thud of his wife’s car door slamming and, a few moments later, the sound of her key in the door. He was sitting in the little breakfast room that overlooked the lake. Croissants sat squat on a hotplate on the sideboard, and he’d poured out two glasses of orange juice the moment he heard the Mercedes’ tyres scrunching on the gravel outside.

  Coffee was ready in an electrically heated pot. He’d placed Meriel’s favourite Sunday paper to one side of her place setting.

  He’d been here, ready and waiting, for over an hour. He would have sat there all morning if necessary.

  He reviewed his plan one last time. It was important to behave as calmly as possible; maintain the element of surprise. He’d contrived everything down to the last detail: wherever she’d been, whatever she’d done, was supremely irrelevant to him now. To his surprise, he found he genuinely didn’t care.

  Not now. Not after what he’d discovered, and the power it had given him.

  For the time being, this was going to be a Sunday just like any other.

  Until the moment was exactly right.

  Then he’d move faster than a striking cobra.

  ‘Cameron?’

  ‘In here.’

  Meriel hung her handbag by its strap from the bottom banister before taking a deep breath and walking across the hall to the breakfast room.

  She was acutely conscious of being in the same clothes she had worn to the party the day before, and that her hair was still damp and tangled from
the shower (the room at the String of Horses had boasted no hairdryer). But she lifted her chin and crossed the threshold. She was ready for almost anything.

  But not for what happened next.

  As soon as she entered the room, Cameron rose to his feet and tossed the newspaper he’d been pretending to read to the floor.

  ‘Don’t say anything, Meriel. Please let me speak first.’ He raised one palm almost pleadingly as she opened her mouth. ‘No, please, Meriel, really . . . there’s something I must say to you right away.’

  She studied him warily before nodding. ‘All right.’

  ‘Thank you.’ He picked up the coffee pot and filled the china cup opposite his own. ‘Here. Come sit down and have some of this. Let me get you a croissant.’

  Meriel didn’t move.

  ‘Just say what it is you want to say to me.’

  ‘Of course. I’m a little nervous, that’s all . . . well . . . Here’s the thing, Meriel . . . I . . .’

  He gestured helplessly towards her. ‘The thing is . . . I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Meriel. For spitting at you like that. For saying the things I did. You were right: I must have been mad. I don’t know what came over me. I’m thoroughly ashamed of myself and I can promise you, here and now, nothing like it will ever happen again.’

  She stared at him. It was years since Cameron had apologised to her. For anything. This was the last thing she’d been expecting. Didn’t he want to know where she’d been all night?

  As if reading her thoughts, he spoke again, quickly.

  ‘I’m not surprised you stayed away last night. I expect you went to some hotel or other, but I have no right to know anything you don’t want to tell me. I put myself beyond the pale yesterday.’

  Meriel breathed a little easier. ‘Yes. I stayed at a hotel on the other side of Penrith. After going to the party, that is.’ She hesitated. ‘Cameron . . .’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I think things have gone rather beyond apologies, don’t you? You and I need to talk. About everything. About us. What we should do next.’

  He nodded at once. ‘I’ve been thinking the same thing. Look, let’s get out of the house, shall we? After you’ve had some breakfast, I mean, and got yourself straight. Changed, and all that.’ He offered her a crooked smile.

  ‘Sundays are still one of our better days, aren’t they, Meriel? Out on the boat together? Why don’t we do that now? There’s a farm food market in Keswick today – I can go and get us something nice for a picnic lunch out on the water. We’ll take some champagne, and we’ll talk. Sort things out. Decide what’s for the best. Yes?’

  He saw her hesitate, and quietly played his best card.

  ‘It’s all right, Meriel. Really. I know exactly what you think of me, and I think we are agreed – we can’t go on like this. I quite see that. No more arguing. Just a quiet afternoon on the lake, sorting things out like civilised grown-ups. I believe we can manage that, don’t you?’

  She nodded, at last. Perhaps this was going to be easier than she’d thought.

  ‘Yes, Cameron. I do. I think we can manage that.’

  ‘Good. You get some coffee and croissants inside you. I’ll go and sniff us out some lunch.’

  A few minutes later, the moment she was sure Cameron’s Bentley had swept out of the drive and turned towards Keswick, she was in the hall, dialling Seb’s number.

  ‘He’s up to something.’

  ‘I don’t know, Seb . . . He seems to have had an extraordinary change of heart. Some sort of epiphany.’

  ‘Did he actually mention separating? Divorce?’

  Meriel shook her head. ‘No. Not exactly. But something’s happened. It’s very odd. He doesn’t seem in the remotest bit curious about where I . . . what I . . . well, you know, what might have happened last night. He just seems resigned to the fact that the marriage is over. Perhaps he’s had some kind of long, dark night of the soul.’

  Seb was silent.

  ‘Anyway,’ Meriel went on, ‘it should make what I have to say to him a lot easier. And he’s right – for some reason we communicate better out there on the boat. We always have done. Seb? Say something.’

  She heard him sigh before his voice crackled into her ear again. ‘Of course, Meriel. I’m sure you’re right. But be on your guard. I mean, this time yesterday the man was spitting in your face. You’ve been gone all night and now he wants to take you on a picnic. Something’s not hanging right. What time do you think you’ll be back from the lake?’

  She thought for a moment. ‘Around four, probably. Why?’

  ‘Call me. Make some excuse or other. Say you need petrol or something. Just get to a phone box to let me know you’re all right.’

  ‘Of course I’ll be all right. Cameron would never do anything to hurt me – not physically. Not now. Honestly, Seb, he’s full of contrition.’

  ‘He’s full of something, all right. I tell you, Meriel, he’s up to no good. I can smell it. Make sure you call me.’

  ‘I know exactly what you think of me.’

  Cameron’s words echoed in her mind as Meriel changed into denim shorts and a pale-blue cheesecloth shirt. She pulled her hair back into a ponytail and looked thoughtfully at her reflection in the bedroom mirror.

  It had been an odd thing for him to say. For some months now she had managed to avoid telling her husband exactly how much she loathed him. She had found a way to disengage from him when he was being at his most repulsive. It helped that they now routinely slept in separate parts of the house.

  Meriel frowned. The perfume she liked to wear during the day wasn’t on the little shelf on her dressing table; she was certain she’d left it there yesterday. Now it was in a quite different position on the main glass top beneath. The realisation crystallised a sense of disquiet that had been steadily growing from the moment she’d gone upstairs.

  She went back and reopened the wardrobe where she kept her casual clothes, including the shirt and shorts she was wearing now.

  Yes. It had definitely been disturbed. Now that she looked closely she could see that one of the breast pockets of a cotton blouse was turned almost inside out. On the floor beneath, her boots and shoes were in slight disarray, no longer in quite the neat pairings she invariably left them in.

  Cameron had been going through her things. There could be no other explanation. His jealous rage had swept him into this room, desperate to find proof to substantiate his mad fantasies.

  Not quite so mad now, though, she thought wryly to herself. As things had turned out, there’d been a predictive element to his suspicions.

  She closed the wardrobe again. It was unsettling to picture Cameron in here, rooting among her most intimate possessions. Thank God she didn’t keep the diary in here.

  ‘I know exactly what you think of me.’

  She froze.

  She ran back out onto the landing and down the passage leading to the airing cupboard. She yanked the door open and felt the first ripples of reassurance at the sight of the pile of fluffy new towels stacked along the front of the main shelf.

  She pushed them to one side. Yes, the ancient multi-coloured ones were there, neatly squared away right at the back of the cupboard. She reached out for them.

  Oh, the relief. The relief! They were still wrapped tightly around her diary, just as she always left them.

  With trembling fingers, Meriel slipped the leather-bound book from its ugly shroud and drew it out into the sunlight that streamed through the full-length window at the end of the passage.

  She realised it was the first time she could remember looking at the diary in natural light. It was a thing of the night, something she only confided in during the dead hours between sunset and sunrise.

  She couldn’t bear to open it now and read the detailed, twisted revenges she had composed over the years. Even the title she had recently inscribed in gold marker pen on both the cover and spine seemed, in the glorious Sunday sunshine, as close to insane as a sane person could get. She
grimaced. The Night Book indeed. Preposterous.

  Meriel glanced at her watch. It would be at least another hour before Cameron returned from Keswick. She had time enough.

  Less than five minutes later she was in the rectory’s vegetable patch, methodically ripping sheet after sheet from the diary and dropping them into the freshly lit garden brazier. The pages flared and burned brightly, helped by an occasional splash of paraffin oil she’d found in a little bottle in the shed nearby.

  No one would ever read them now. It would be as if the diary had never been. From this moment, it existed only in Meriel’s memory.

  And that, she reflected as the last pages were blackened by the flames, was sealed as securely as the mummy’s tomb. A secret known to her, and her alone.

  As she walked back towards the house, she shuddered slightly.

  Thank God Cameron had never found the bloody thing.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Cameron’s boat was moored at Glenridding, Ullswater’s most southerly point. As he and Meriel drove the short distance from Cathedral Crag, Lake District FM informed them that today was expected to be the hottest August Sunday in the Lakes on record.

  ‘Yup, it’s certainly one for the logbook,’ Cameron called to Meriel from the cabin as she followed him across the little gangplank and onto the deck. ‘Look at this – the thermometer’s nudging ninety-five already.’ He tapped the barometer mounted next to it. ‘And the pressure’s crazy-high, too. I bet old Ulfr never saw a day like this.’

  Ulfr was the Viking chieftain thought to have bestowed his name on the lake a thousand years ago, although Meriel sided with local historians who argued that because ulfr was also Norse for wolf, the true etymology of Ullswater was Wolf Lake. Perhaps a pack of the animals had once hunted beneath the frowning peak of Helvellyn that dominated the valley. The theory was a brisk antidote to Wordsworth’s sentimental poem ‘Daffodils’, inspired by the sight of the flowers growing on Ullswater’s shoreline as the poet walked to Grasmere on a blustery day, eight centuries after the Norsemen had sheathed their swords and drifted away.