‘Like the tattoo you’ve had removed from your wrist. It was a snake with a green and purple pattern.’
Whereas he had seemed curious, even amused before, his eyes now glowed with anger.
‘I don’t know what you think you’re doing, Ellie, but I’ve had enough. Stop this please.’
There was a shout. A fight had broken out further down the beach. Ellie glanced behind her and saw that Tom and Louise had got up to go and see what was going on. At least no one was focusing on them.
‘Maybe the school governors will be interested to know your real name.’
She might be going too far, but couldn’t stop herself. The frustration of his refusal to admit what she believed to be true built to a crescendo.
Did you ever forget the feel of a lover, the scent of their skin?
Harry took a step towards her. Fear flared through her mind and she stepped backwards, poised to run. No man was going to hurt her physically ever again.
‘Look, Ellie, I don’t know what you think you know, or what bearing it has on my job as headmaster. Why would you want to cause trouble for me? This is a new start, a promotion. I’m having difficulty understanding what you want from me.’
‘Borteen is a fresh start for me too. I’ve just begun to make it work and then you turn up with a new look and a new name. You’re supposed to be dead. I cried at your funeral for heaven’s sake.’
‘Hey, hey. Stop it, Ellie. I’m confused about who you think I am or what I’m meant to have done, but surely there’s room for both of us here?’ A pleading tone had crept into his voice, but his features were calm.
‘I’m not sure about that. You’re about to pull the wool over the eyes of this community, a community I’ve come to care about. My son goes to Borteen High for goodness’ sake. Don’t you think I should be concerned if a person I believe has a false identity is taking up the post of headmaster at my son’s school? A son I’ve had to protect and keep safe from harm, a son who’s been damaged enough by things that have happened in his past.’
Her words sounded, in some ways, hypocritical. After all, she’d reinvented herself too, but that was different, wasn’t it?
‘I still don’t understand what you’re talking about, but I tell you now, I’ll fight for my job and for my reputation. For the record, I like your son very much and would never do anything to harm him. I like you too. I thought we could be friends, maybe even more, but it seems I was mistaken.’
This time, he did walk off and rapidly disappeared into the growing darkness.
Heart thudding, Harry lurched across the sand. It felt as if Ellie had blasted a hole in his stomach. He fingered the mole two inches below his belly button through the fabric of his shirt. How did Ellie know such an intimate thing? Surely, he would remember a woman who had been that close to him?
He searched his memory banks again, but could find no trace of Ellie from the past, but then he did have that big black hole. What a nightmare. For the umpteenth time, he wondered if he should back out of the new job and move on. Was all the meticulous preparation for nothing? Could Ellie Golden, artist, pose a real threat to him?
It was years since he’d had his tattoo removed. He still missed it. The days of being a long-haired, blond, care-free guy with a snake tattooed on his wrist and a surfboard on top of his campervan seemed a long way off, but of course all of that had been an illusion too. In reality, it had just been a job, but it was so easy to remember only the good bits with hindsight.
Those were the days, before the nightmare began. Before he had to be aware of his every word and action, always watching his back for lurking potential danger. With the passage of years, he’d maybe relaxed too much. Forgotten … lost his edge.
He walked to the end of the beach, where the rocks reared up to form a cliff. Pent-up anger and swirling emotions made him want to thump something, but he knew that violence rarely achieved anything. He settled for kicking over an abandoned sandcastle. The action didn’t make him feel any better. He was angry with himself mostly. Angry that he had allowed himself to be lulled by the moment, danced with Ellie and imagined it could be all right between them, despite her suspicions.
He’d enjoyed their dance. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d swayed to music with a lovely woman in his arms, bathed in the shadow of the warmth of her, the scent of her skin, not just the scent she had applied to her skin. She was the right height to dance with and her closeness had aroused his senses and his body. He could easily have taken it further. Wanted to take it further.
He liked Ellie Golden.
Liked her very much.
Harry tried to imagine himself in her position. If roles were reversed and he suspected she was someone other than she portrayed, wouldn’t he be like a dog with a bone until he discovered the truth? Wouldn’t he want to solve the mystery? Of course he would.
Where did that thought process leave him? Did he make that phone call and find himself displaced and homeless once more, or did he stick this out and try to make the best of things?
As far as he knew, Ellie couldn’t prove anything, not beyond reasonable doubt, not without discrediting herself in the process. If only he could remember her, place her in time; be aware of what their relationship might or might not have been in the past.
When he reached his flat, it appeared emptier than ever. The fragile shell of relaxation he’d begun to build was gone and his mind was unsettled, even here. He needed to buy more furniture, but what was the point, if he was in danger of having to move on again?
How could a woman he liked, who he had imagined he could spend time with as a friend, maybe even a lover, be such a threat?
He stood in front of Ellie’s painting. If the figure running near the sea had been modelled on him, what was she thinking as she painted? He was the running man, forever running, belonging nowhere.
He asked himself a question and realised that if he didn’t know the answer, there was little hope of happiness here or anywhere else.
Who is Harry Dixon?
Chapter Ten
Ellie couldn’t believe what had just happened. She smoothed her dress and made her way back along the beach, being careful not to fall into any holes dug in the sand during the day.
What was she thinking? What happened to keeping things low key until she was sure? Or even forgetting her suspicions altogether? She glanced warily about her. People were beginning to gather their belongings to go home. Had anyone overheard the heated conversation between herself and Harry? She hoped that the fight further down the beach had distracted people, but she couldn’t be sure.
She’d enjoyed dancing with Harry. Her skin tingled with the feel and warmth of him and her hope that he might kiss her had somehow made her outburst seem even worse. Why couldn’t she just accept that Ben was gone and move on? Harry must think her touched by madness. Yet in the midst of all of this, she still had an inner belief that she was right and, when she thought about it, Harry hadn’t denied anything.
Where did their argument leave them? She’d threatened to contact the school governors, but what could she say to them that she could actually prove? Wouldn’t she create trouble and uncertainty for herself and Tom if she made unsubstantiated accusations about the new headmaster? Harry must have the right credentials and references or he would never have been appointed.
If Harry was Ben reincarnated, renamed or whatever, why? She tried to imagine what could have happened to him. Of all people, surely she should understand the need to get away from a situation, to leave the past behind.
What if she was wrong? Harry had appeared genuinely perplexed and hadn’t admitted or denied anything. What was she hoping to achieve by badgering him?
Right now, she wished the sand would open up and swallow her whole.
She scanned the people on the beach, hazily outlined by the promenade street lamps. Mandy was draped over one of the tourists she had been chatting to earlier. Tom wasn’t sitting by the sea wall. A familiar anxiety
rose in her chest. Where was he?
Just when she had, in her mind anyway, alerted the emergency services and begun to head up a huge manhunt, her son appeared at her side. His grin was unstoppable and, uncharacteristically in public, he hugged her.
‘Mum, you’ll never guess. I’ve got a girlfriend.’
Ellie managed to smile and say appropriate things on the way home. She showed an interest in Tom’s news, exclaiming when he told her about Louise, as if she hadn’t seen them sitting against the sea wall talking all evening.
Tom was happier than she’d known him in a long time and seemed oblivious to the fact that Ellie was faking a brightness she didn’t feel.
As soon as her son had gone up to bed, she went down to the shed at the bottom of the garden, which doubled as her home art studio.
Her mood always fed her artwork.
Still clad in the pink mini-dress, only pausing to wrap a scarf around her hair and remove her sandals, she shivered in the post-midnight air, as she daubed canvas after canvas with bright confused colours and shapes.
She would later recognise these paintings as some of her more inspired work, even if in the depths of the night, she acted totally unconsciously. Wave after wave of bewilderment and despair surfaced to be translated into desperate painting.
Replaying her encounters with Ben in Cornwall and the intricate details of that fateful night, she tried to put herself in Harry’s shoes. She knew the feeling of wanting to disappear and start again. What was she trying to achieve by challenging this man, whoever he was? She recalled the nightmares when she’d felt responsible for Ben’s death, for leaving him on the beach. Was that what this was all about, her own guilt?
By dawn, she had filled five large canvases and was exhausted. Her mini-dress was pink no longer; instead, it echoed the confusion of the canvases and would never be worn again.
The waves crashed against him again and again. He’d always taken pride in his mastery of the surf. The bruising, uncontrolled tumble was hurting more than his ego.
He knew his life was in danger, as the breath in his lungs was replaced with salty water. His surf board trailed behind him on its retaining cord, flailing ineffectually and occasionally bashing painfully against his legs and feet. What surprised him most was the name his mind was silently calling over and over again, as he tumbled on and on to oblivion – Ellie.
Ellie’s mane of curly hair and her blue eyes seemed to be with him on this journey, as if he held her in a tight embrace in the sea. Then, the surfboard connected in a bone-shattering thump with his head and darkness took over accompanied by searing pain.
He came to awareness with a jerk of his limbs and choked. Green bile covered the patch of sand beneath his face. He rolled away from the mess and lay stunned, looking up into the azure blue sky. Seagulls circled overhead, reminiscent of vultures. How was he still alive?
His body was bruised and bleeding. In a rush, the water left his ears and his hearing returned. Somehow amplified, the sounds of the ocean and the birds stunned him, replacing the name he had been silently screaming. How could he have survived such an ordeal? How different to his usual landing on the beach, the jubilant whoop, after he had ridden a wave, balancing on his board, straining his muscles and enjoying the thrill. His proficiency in the water was why he had been chosen for the job.
The sea had thrown him up, like a piece of drift wood and he knew he ought to move, before the ocean claimed him again. The men in the darkness kept punching him, bruising his body beyond tolerance, kicking him, biting him. One had a knife.
He could hear someone shouting his name above the sound of the wind and sea.
‘Harry, Harry … Ben?’
Ellie’s face came into view. She gently tested his limbs for fractures, mopped at his face with a towel. Her tears flowed down her face, were caught by the wind and shone like jewels in her curls.
He felt himself lift from the ground, looked down to see a slender girl leaning over a man on the beach, before he zoomed towards the sun, screaming ‘No’ to the sky as the light went out yet again.
Harry woke bathed in sweat. He gulped lungfuls of air to fight off the panic. The nightmare had been so real. Similar haunted dreams had recurred many times since that night in Cornwall. However, this particular one had been different. Was the addition of Ellie a reaction to their argument? She’d said last night that she’d cried at his funeral.
He was shaken by the dream and didn’t go for his habitual early morning run. He needed to make that phone call and he was putting it off. He snuggled underneath the duvet. He was too hot, but the thought of relinquishing his sanctuary was not appealing.
Even before the nightmare, he had argued with himself that Ellie could have found out about his mole through one of his sporting activities, but knowledge of his tattoo, since it hadn’t been on his wrist for many, many years, was a different matter. Ellie had described it as if she was remembering the colours of it, as if she had traced her fingers around the curl of the snake on his skin.
He emerged from his hibernation to sit cross-legged on the floor in front of Ellie’s painting. If he closed his eyes, he could feel her hair tickling his cheek and remember the desire to run his hands through her curls and onwards down her body. How would she have responded if he had? Would she have reacted in the same way if he’d taken things further? Was she just annoyed that he’d walked away?
If his call resulted in him being told to pack and leave, he’d have to abandon the painting; it was too big to take with him and that knowledge made him doubly reluctant to pick up the phone.
Chapter Eleven
Ellie craved activity to take her mind off her confrontation with Harry; it had been whirring round and round in her head for a week now. She always needed new ideas for painting and pottery and, as there were several fruit farms in the countryside around Borteen, she decided to visit a couple to get inspiration for a series of orchard-themed paintings.
By the time she had driven to two farms, coaxing her ancient Mini that didn’t get much use along the narrow lanes, buying juicy plums, raspberries and strawberries, her fingers were eager to get working with both cookery and art. The only shadow over a happy morning had been an irrational feeling that she was being followed. She reasoned with herself that the occupants of the blue van she had seen behind her several times were probably visiting fruit farms too. After all, who could resist fresh local fruit?
Her reaction to the lines of fruit trees and bushes surprised her, with the sight taking her artistic spark in a totally different direction to that which she had imagined that morning when she’d been planning her trip.
As soon as she’d stowed away her purchases at home, she headed down the hill to the gallery. Leaving the closed sign in place, she set the pottery wheel in motion. Fashioning a tall wide pot, she attached tree shapes cut from slabs of clay to the outside using liquid clay as glue. She set several of the trunks higher than the others to give the impression of an orchard of trees. Details of foliage, branches and trunk were added with a modelling tool, not too many as they would shrink during the firing process.
In her mind, she could already see the glazes she would apply to the pots to ensure the trees stood out in relief. Looking at the first pot, she was so pleased with the result that she made another and another. She loaded the resulting orchard of pots – that thought made her giggle – onto her drying shelves, where they would dry a little before being loaded into the kiln for their first firing. She could already visualise the finished results displayed in the gallery.
The attempt to distract herself from the turmoil of her thoughts about Harry was sort of working, wasn’t it? But then, if she was thinking his name right now, he was still on her mind.
She replayed the night of the barbecue on a never-ending loop, particularly dancing with Harry and the delicious feelings it had evoked in her body, but then she would remember the things she’d said to him afterwards. She almost wished he was a drinker, because, by t
hat time in the evening, he might have been drunk enough to forget some of their conversation. However, stone-cold sober, he would recall every word, including the bit about her crying at Ben Rivers’ funeral.
She had to convince herself that Ben had been just an infatuation, a flirtation and one-night stand that she had not been able to leave behind, an event that had been amplified because the man she’d admired from afar for so long had died and by the circumstances she shortly found herself in; married to a man who was not her son’s father and someone who wasn’t always kind.
She was annoyed that she was thinking about her marriage as if it was something that had happened to her, rather than something she had agreed to and co-created. Okay, she’d felt desperate and was pregnant, but she’d said yes. It had been in many ways a marriage of convenience, but convenient for her as well as Rushton at the time. She just hadn’t imagined it would become such a huge, painful compromise over the years.
Her fantasies about Ben and might-have-beens about their relationship had become a sanctuary from the nightmare her life back then had become. Now, she recognised that for her sanity and so she could continue to live in Borteen, she had to consign Ben to the past. He had to stay in his grave. Harry was real, rather than a fantasy embroidered over time. She had to accept him as Harry Dixon, headmaster, draw a line under the past and move on. She could do that, couldn’t she? It was a pity she hadn’t been able to do it before she opened her mouth after the beach barbecue. Would Harry ever be able to forgive her for hounding him? Would he even speak to her again?
Although she felt she had got things straighter in her head, Ellie realised that she hadn’t seen anything of Harry since that night. Subtle questioning, when Tom was eating his tea, confirmed that Harry wasn’t around. The summer sports sessions were being run by another teacher from the school. Her son complained that it wasn’t as much fun when Mr Dixon wasn’t involved.
Ellie wondered if she had scared Harry away from Borteen and the headmaster’s job. Part of her felt sad, but the other part relieved. Uncomfortable truths from the past could remain dormant and not touch the world she had built up around herself and her son.
The Girl on the Beach Page 7
