by Peter James
On top of that she had the new worry about the colposcopy tomorrow.
God, she thought, just when life was going so well it always seemed to find a way to trip you up and dump on you. Yep, well, this time it wasn’t going to win. Roger was going to pull through, he’d be fine. And Kath was not going to find any damned cancer.
She stood in silence, listening, staring down the length of the corridor. It was lit dimly by weak bulbs in tasselled pink lamps arranged in pairs, in sconces all the way along. Good that the place was having a major makeover – it was long overdue. As it was, it would be a pretty dismal place for anyone to come for a holiday. Roger had joked, just a few days ago, that they should spend the first night after their wedding here.
Over my dead body, she’d retorted.
How was he now – was he still asleep, she wondered? Perhaps having a better night than last? Or was he awake and lonely, listening to the racket of monitor alarms? She put down the kettlebell and tugged her phone out of her pocket, to make sure she hadn’t set it by mistake to silent, in case the hospital called. It wasn’t and, to her relief, there was nothing showing on the display.
Have a good night, my darling. Please start getting stronger tomorrow.
She replaced the phone, picked up the kettlebell and carried on, passing closed door after closed door, stopping every few yards to check behind her, her earlier surge of confidence rapidly deserting her.
To her left, she passed by the closed doors to rooms until she reached room 45.
This place felt so damned eerie.
Putting the kettlebell down again, she unlocked the door, then hesitated. She heard a distinct creak, like someone stepping on a floorboard, on the other side of the door.
She stood, listening. She could feel the hairs rising on the nape of her neck.
Nothing.
She waited for several minutes, listening intently. But heard no further sound. All the same, she was tempted just to lock the door again and move on. But she had a job to do and the hotel creaked constantly. She picked up the weight again, ready to swing it at anything that moved, braced herself, then pushed the door hard with her foot, flashing her torch beam around the room as it swung open.
It was empty. She found the master light switch and pressed it. The ceiling light, a larger version of the pink lampshades in the corridor, came on, along with two matching bedside lamps.
She stared at the wardrobe doors.
Was someone standing inside?
She shuddered, keeping a wary eye on the doors for any movement, and pushed open the en-suite bathroom door. All was normal.
There was no sign of a break-in here.
Then she heard a sound behind her.
The creak of another floorboard.
She spun round, shivers rippling down inside her skin. Stood still. Listening. Listening. Staring at the wardrobe.
Silence.
Brandishing the kettlebell as high as possible, she tiptoed slowly over to the doorway, her heart thrashing. Then, yelling, ‘Who’s that?’ she stepped out into the hall, looking in both directions.
There was nothing there.
She stayed rooted to the spot for several minutes, listening, scared as hell.
Had she imagined it? Could it have been the old building creaking in the wind?
Yes, that’s all. She calmed down a little, then cautiously checked each of the other rooms in the zone, which were all identical.
Next, she dutifully entered the cold dining room. All the chairs were upended and placed on top of the tables. To her left, through the windows, she could see the necklace of lights around St Aubin’s Bay and the blackness of the sea beyond. She crossed the drearily carpeted room, pushed open the fire door at the far end and reached the start of another long corridor. She checked it out with her torch before stepping into it and switching on the wall lights.
After a short distance she passed a lift and reached a junction, with arrows and room numbers, pointing to the right, left, straight on and upwards.
Then froze as, ahead, she heard the sound of a door closing.
Prickles ran up her spine.
Shit, shit, shit.
Had she imagined this, too?
She stood still. Listening.
She heard the sound again.
Just the wind?
Then a loud, sharp ping made her jump in shock. She almost cried out, her heart hammering, her eyes hunting in every direction.
Before she realized.
Stupid!
It was an alert for an incoming email.
She looked at her phone. It was from eBay.
You won with a £125 bid plus £7.75 postage! The next step is to pay. VintageStuff(570) can’t post the item until you pay for it, so please don’t delay. Once you’ve paid we’ll tell VintageStuff(570) to post your item.
Roger’s flying jacket, she realized, her spirits rising. Yay! This was a good sign. All was going to be fine! Truly it was, she thought, closing the door and heading back towards the alarm cupboard.
SYSTEM RESET was still flashing red.
She read the emergency number of the engineer off the panel and dialled it. After a few rings it was answered by a friendly male voice. She felt a lot better having human contact, and explained the situation.
He told her what to press to reset the system, and not to worry if it happened again. He would make a note in the log and someone would contact her in the morning to come over and check the sensors. She followed his instructions and the light changed to green. She thanked him, closed the lid of the box, then made her way back along the corridor, past the kitchens, to the gym.
But as she entered, something felt wrong.
She stopped in her tracks, suddenly afraid again.
Stared around at the machines.
There was no sign of anyone. Nothing moved. But something very definitely felt wrong. What?
She carried the kettlebell over to the rack and placed it back alongside the others. Then, as she turned around, something caught her attention. Something moving.
Green sand was trickling down through the neck of two of the three egg timers.
59
Wednesday 16 January
Frozen in terror, Georgie stared at the egg timers. The top of one-minute timer was empty. The three-minute one was nearly empty. The five-minute one was approximately half full.
Someone had been in here. Less than five minutes ago.
Where were they now?
She stared wildly around. She had locked the outside door when she came in. The door to the office was shut. As was the door to the changing room.
Was someone behind one of them? Or out in the darkness beyond the windows?
She grabbed the kettlebell again, holding it up, and with her free hand, shaking wildly, she thumbed 999 on her phone.
‘Emergency, which service please?’
‘Police. I have an intruder,’ she said loudly in a trembling voice, loudly enough for anyone to hear.
Seconds later she heard a female voice.
‘Police, what is your emergency, caller?’
Blinking away tears, she said, terrified, ‘I’m in the gym of the Bel Royal Hotel. There’s an intruder in here. Please come quickly. Please.’
‘Bel Royal Hotel?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you in a safe place?’
‘No.’
‘I’m dispatching a unit to you right away. What’s your name?’
‘Georgina – Maclean.’
‘I’ll stay on the line, Georgina.’
‘Thank you.’ She began sobbing.
‘There’ll be a car with you in under three minutes.’
‘I’m pregnant and frightened,’ she sobbed. Staring wildly around. Did the office door just move?
‘Is there a safe place you can go to, Georgina?’
‘No – not really, no.’
‘They’re on their way. I’m showing under two minutes.’
Her eyes darted
to the changing-room door. The office door. The corridor behind her. She gripped the kettlebell so tightly her fist hurt. The operator spoke to her, but she couldn’t absorb any of the words through the haze of fear. The minutes felt like hours. She’d been mad to come here alone, worn out by her anxiety about Roger, not thinking straight.
Then the faint sound of a siren. Growing rapidly louder. Nearer.
Please God.
‘I can hear them,’ Georgie said loudly for the benefit of whoever might be behind one of the doors. ‘I can hear the siren. Please tell them to stop at the rear entrance by the gym.’
‘They’re in the hotel driveway now, Georgina. Are you OK?’
‘Yes, thank you, yes.’
Strobing blue light skittered across the windowpanes. An instant later she saw the glare of headlights and heard the roar of an engine.
Relief flooding through her, she ran to the door, key in hand, to unlock it. But as she inserted the key she realized it was, impossibly, already unlocked.
60
Wednesday 16 January
As Marcus came back into the house from his run, Claire was still awake, still reading, the television still on. Her bare, slender legs still on top of the duvet, stretched out invitingly from beneath her dressing gown.
Now, after all, he was feeling horny as hell. Wired! Rampant!
‘Good run?’
‘Great,’ he said, kissing her. ‘Terrific! My best time yet!’
My best run ever. Oh yes, oh yes.
So exciting. Georgie – like putty in his hands. I love you, Georgie!
‘You must be hungry – your meal’s still in the oven. Might be a bit dried out.’
He hovered over her. ‘I’m hungry for you.’
‘Are you indeed?’ she responded, playfully.
‘I’ll just go and shower.’
She reached out and put her arms around his midriff. ‘Come closer, I like you when you’re all sweaty.’
He grinned. ‘You animal!’
‘You used to call me that, remember?’
And he did remember. Back in those distant days. Those pre-baby days. But for now, temporarily at least, that was forgotten. He stared at those long legs; at her large breasts loose inside the top of that gown.
This evening’s antics had fired him up like nothing, ever, before.
He needed sex.
She was already untying and then pulling down his tracksuit bottoms. Then his underpants, pulling him closer and taking him in her mouth. He fantasized about the touch being Georgie’s mouth. He pictured the curve of her lips. Imagining what they would feel like, their soft, sensuous grip.
After a short while Claire released him. ‘Maybe take your shoes off, Mr Big!’
He sat on the edge of the bed and untied his shoelaces, almost crazed with desire, kicked his trainers off, unzipped his tracksuit top and then peeled off his T-shirt and tossed it onto the carpet.
Then he began to untie and slip off her dressing gown, whilst she gripped him hard.
All the time he was thinking about Georgie.
Staring at Claire and thinking of Georgie’s face.
This was what it was going to be like with Georgie. Only times ten. Times a hundred. Times—
Claire was naked now and he was on top of her. She was holding him, guiding him into her.
Georgie. Holding his hardness. Pulling him in. Whispering.
Oh my God, Marcus, this is incredible!
But it was Claire’s face.
Suddenly, to his dismay, he felt his hardness going. Turning flaccid.
No.
He looked down at Claire’s breasts. At her thighs, her legs that had so turned him on.
Trying desperately to arouse himself again.
An image from childhood wormed through him. A memory that shamed him. When he’d been a small boy – he couldn’t remember how old, exactly, maybe seven or eight – he was in the bath and his mother had come in, drunk, and started flicking the bathwater and staring at his penis. Then she flicked that, too, laughing. ‘A little prawn,’ she said. ‘A tiny, silly little prawn. Like father, like son. Oh dear,’ she had sighed. ‘You’re never going to satisfy a woman with a tiddly little prawn like that. Poor you. Poor Marcus.’
He shrank even more. And slipped out of Claire.
Finally, he rolled over onto his side. Claire worked on him with her hands, then her mouth again. To no avail. She stopped. ‘Maybe you’re low on sugar, darling? When did you last eat?’
He didn’t reply for a moment. He was thinking of Georgie’s face. Of her body. ‘I had a sandwich at lunchtime.’
‘It’s late. You need food.’ She held up his limp penis. ‘He needs fuel!’
No, he thought. He doesn’t need fuel, he needs Georgie Maclean.
‘You’re going to have a hypo if you don’t eat something.’
She was right. He was feeling jittery and he was perspiring. Maybe if he ate something, he’d be OK. Be able to perform.
Lamely, he went to the bathroom and tested his sugars. 2.4. Seriously low. He hurried downstairs to the kitchen and removed the dried-up casserole from the oven, and the potato. He poured himself a glass of wine from the bottle in the fridge, then, seated naked at the breakfast bar, he began to eat. Upstairs, he heard Cormac crying. After a short while the crying stopped.
He started feeling a little better, the threat of the hypo receding. It was replaced by an ache in his groin and in his balls. He knew the cause – the frustrated attempt to have sex just now. Claire was right, he had needed the fuel. Another ten minutes or so and he’d be ready to go again. Close Claire out of his mind and just think about Georgie, about how sexy she was.
It didn’t work.
He finished his meal and the wine, went up to his den, sank down on the sofa and thought about her. Imagining what it would be like to slip off her clothes and hold her naked in his arms. He kept on picturing touching her and her touching him, until he was rock hard.
He slipped into the loo and closed the door. Then sat on the seat and masturbated.
After he had climaxed, he remained seated for some while, before going back into their bedroom.
To his relief, Claire was asleep.
61
Wednesday 16 January
It was close to midnight when Georgie arrived home, exhausted and wondering what on earth had just happened. There had been no message from the hospital, just a text from Lucy, saying she’d been out and asking if everything was OK. Georgie had been too tired to say anything more than it was all fine and she was going to sleep now. Her nerves were shredded, but hopefully no news from the hospital was a good sign. She wanted so much to tell Roger about what she’d just been through, about the police, how scary it had been, and just to hold him close. If he hadn’t been in hospital, she knew for sure he wouldn’t have let her go to the hotel on her own. She’d been stupid to think it would be all right.
Together with the two police officers who had attended, she had checked every door and just about every cupboard in the entire hotel. Now, as she let herself into the flat, she needed to sleep, but her brain was racing.
The trickling grains of green-dyed sand were still freaking her.
‘Some youngsters messing about,’ one of the officers had suggested. And that’s what she wanted to believe, and it was an easy answer to everything. But the gym door had been locked. All the external doors of the hotel had also been locked. And all the windows had been shut.
‘You know what kids are like,’ the other officer had said. ‘They get up to mischief. This is such a huge place, they might have found some way in that we don’t even know about – or at least can’t see in darkness.’
Georgie had nodded agreement. There was no sign of theft or vandalism anywhere. Kids had to be the most likely explanation. And yet, something didn’t sit easy with her about that. Why would they have gone to all the trouble of breaking in, just to reset egg timers in the gym? They’d have to have been around still when s
he arrived, so how come she never saw anyone, and how come the door was unlocked and not broken into? Where had they got in?
Unless, as she had fretted before, it was herself, unconsciously. Her baby brain. Eggs? Timers? Pregnancy was about eggs and timing, wasn’t it, at one level?
Am I going nuts from the strain?
From the look one of the police officers had given her, they clearly thought so.
She closed the outer front door behind her, almost too tired to climb the two flights of stairs to the flat, her brain too wired to let her sleep when she got there, she knew. She could do with a drink, a whisky, or even a brandy – that would normally have done the trick. But now she didn’t know what to take. Anything to help knock her out and sleep, she needed to be rested and strong in the morning. Was paracetamol safe to take? She googled paracetamol while pregnant, then remembered the pills Marcus had given her.
She had never liked taking medication, always worried about side-effects, and was even more wary of anything she took now that might harm her baby. But she took comfort in the knowledge that Valentine wouldn’t have given her anything that wasn’t one hundred per cent safe as he knew she was pregnant.
Entering the flat, she slung her coat on a sofa, kicked off her boots, removed the vial from her handbag, unscrewed the cap and swallowed one of the tiny white pills with a glass of water from the filter jug in the fridge.
Twenty minutes later, leaving her clothes strewn on the antique chaise longue, and on the floor beside it, she fell into bed and into a fitful sleep. A sleep disrupted by wildly disturbing dreams, in each of which Marcus Valentine was creepily present, his smiling face close up and personal to her, assuring her all was fine. She woke for a few minutes at 3 a.m., certain for a moment there was someone in the room. Roger? Had he discharged himself from hospital, she wondered wildly? She snapped on the light.
The room was empty.
She woke briefly again at 4.20 a.m. Finally, at 7.10 a.m., she swung her legs out of the bed and took a swig of water from her glass.
With a really bad feeling about Roger.
