And Then She Ran

by Karen Clarke

  ‘A man has got to eat.’ His grin revealed crooked front teeth. ‘The dog enjoyed the bones.’

  ‘Where is the dog?’ I looked around as though he might be cowering in a corner.

  ‘You’d better not have hurt him.’ Morag spoke through gritted teeth.

  ‘He’s fine. A good boy.’

  ‘Where is he?’ I repeated, trying to hold Lily’s car seat behind me, desperate for him not to see her, for her to not look at him and have his face imprinted on her brain.

  ‘Not far,’ he said dismissively. ‘I’ll set him free when I leave.’

  ‘Why are you doing this?’

  He switched his gaze back to Morag. ‘It is a great game, don’t you think?’ His grin was terrifying. ‘Yes, I left a message up there for you to find—’

  ‘Oh my God, and the baby hair.’

  ‘Baby hair?’ Morag sounded bewildered.

  His eyes swivelled back to me. ‘Yes, and the baby hair.’ He tipped his head towards the stairs. ‘I didn’t know she was sleeping down here.’ His smile didn’t touch his eyes. ‘Your aunt never used to be so generous.’

  ‘Don’t talk about her like that.’ There was a bite in my voice. ‘You don’t know her.’

  ‘You’re wrong. I know her well. You are very like her.’ He cocked his head in Lily’s direction. ‘Except that you kept your child.’ His eyes froze over again. ‘Unlike her.’

  ‘I did what was best for him.’ The words sounded ripped from somewhere deep inside Morag. ‘I didn’t want him knowing who his father was. I wanted him to have a good life, to be with good people who would raise him to be a good person.’

  ‘Good, good, good,’ he mocked. ‘What do you know about goodness?’

  ‘A damn sight more than you.’

  ‘He is waiting for me to report back.’ Bernhard rocked on his heels, chin raised, a spark of something mischievous in his expression that made me see, suddenly, what might have charmed Morag once: a confidence, a swagger, maybe even a kind of charisma she couldn’t resist. ‘He’ll be sad to hear his mama died.’

  Fear tore through me. I felt breathless with panic. ‘You can’t believe you’ll get away with it. You’ll go back to prison.’

  ‘I barely exist anymore.’ His face was hard, as if cut from stone. ‘No one knows where I am. I will not be found and your word will mean nothing.’ He was wearing latex gloves. I looked at them with a feeling of detachment, as if I was floating away, watching the scene from above happening to somebody else. ‘It is quite annoying that you turned up, though it was fun to mess with you a little—’

  ‘You tried to push me off the platform at the station.’

  ‘You pushed her?’ Morag whipped round. ‘Grace, why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘I hoped that she would.’ Bernhard gave a crooked smile. ‘Maybe she didn’t want you to think it was him, her companion.’

  Knowing he’d been there, watching Declan and me, waiting to hurt me to punish Morag … it made my stomach turn over.

  ‘Anyway, maybe another body won’t matter in the scheme of things.’ His tone was frighteningly casual. ‘A burglary that went terribly wrong. Those boys, they have been up here before. They heard your aunt had a lot of money stashed away. They came to look for it while you were out and found this.’ He raised the rifle, shaking his head. ‘There was a scuffle, it went off, they panicked. These things happen. A local tragedy.’

  ‘I don’t have any money here and everyone knows it.’ Morag took a step towards him. ‘Please, Bernhard, you don’t have to do this. Go back to whatever life you were living before Isaac found you.’

  Isaac. My cousin. Morag’s son.

  As Bernhard focused his attention on her once more, I edged closer to the bathroom door, hand flailing behind me. When my fingers made contact with the wood, I pushed. Turning, I placed Lily’s car seat inside. A cold blast of air hit me, the window flapping open. That was how he’d got in. I tucked Lily’s blanket around her and shut the door, praying she wouldn’t start crying until Bernhard was gone. Because he had to go. He couldn’t be serious about killing us.

  ‘When I have done what I came to do, I will go back and be with my son.’ Bernhard’s tone was gloating. ‘I will be the father he has always wanted.’

  My heart dropped through my stomach.

  ‘You’re insane.’ Morag’s face was bone-white. ‘This is a game to you, just like being a soldier was. You enjoy killing. How many others?’ Without warning, she lunged towards Bernhard and pushed him hard in the chest. Taken off-guard he stumbled back, staggering over one of the sofa cushions on the floor. As he shot out a hand to save himself, the rifle slid from his grasp. I hurtled forward, snatching up the gun as he twisted to reach for it. Jamming the butt against my shoulder, I pointed the barrel at him, hooking my finger around the cold, smooth trigger. ‘Get out of here, now.’ I swung the gun at the open door, then back to his chest. ‘Run, or I’ll shoot.’ My voice had steadied, a calmness descending. I hadn’t come all the way here with my daughter to wind up dead at the hands of a madman. ‘I know how to use it.’ I was aware of Morag breathing harshly.

  ‘Grace …’ Her voice was a growl. ‘Don’t do this.’

  Bernhard held up his hands in supplication. He was on his knees, looking at me from under his lashes, the orange glow from the fire giving his face a devilish appearance.

  ‘You won’t do it.’ His tone was arrogant. ‘You are not a killer, any more than she is.’ He jerked his head at Morag.

  ‘Grace, put the gun down …’ She stopped as the light changed, blue and red swirling across the room in a bizarre disco kaleidoscope.

  The police.

  Seeing it too, Bernhard’s head swung in the direction of the door, perhaps calculating how long he had to get out. His gaze returned to me. Everything seemed to speed up. He rose like a cobra, pushing fast in my direction. Morag shouted ‘No, no!’ the words mingling with the siren sound of Lily’s cry and an unearthly roar from Bernhard.

  I shut my eyes and squeezed the trigger, jerking backwards as agonising pain seared through my shoulder. As I landed heavily, my daughter’s wails seemed to reach me from a long way off and all I could think was: I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.

  Chapter 35

  News travelled fast. Annie was outside the police station when we emerged an hour later, a coat thrown over her flannel pyjamas, to offer us a room at the pub.

  ‘You can’t go back home tonight,’ she said, throwing an arm around Morag’s shoulders. ‘Ifan called to tell us what happened.’

  She waited patiently while I made a quick call to Ana, to tell her that I was safe, running through the bare bones of what had happened.

  ‘Christ, Grace, you could have been killed. Thank God you know how to handle a gun, which is not something I thought I’d ever say.’ She sounded on the verge of tears. ‘So, it was nothing to do with Patrick after all?’

  ‘No.’ It still hadn’t sunk in.

  ‘But what about the man in the photo you sent? Who is he?’

  I promised her an update soon and rang off. I couldn’t think about Declan right then.

  I hadn’t killed Bernhard. The pellet had penetrated his shoulder, deep enough to cause him pain and to give us a few precious minutes to escape – if the police hadn’t turned up.

  Ana had called them from New York. Worried about my message, and the fact I hadn’t phoned when I said I would, she tried ringing the cottage. When she realised the line was dead, she got a bad feeling and phoned the police with a garbled story about me being in serious danger. It turned out Ifan had called them too. When he turned up to take Skip out, he was concerned the dog was acting oddly, running towards the woods and barking as if someone was there. He took him away for a walk and brought him back, then decided to drive up later to see if we were home. He had a look round and left, but couldn’t shake the suspicion that something wasn’t right. PC Thomas, worried the gang of teenagers were involved, drove out with a colleague to find B
ernhard howling with pain outside the door, me crawling about inside among a sea of china, and Morag in the bathroom consoling a howling Lily.

  ‘Ifan knows a bit about what happened to me back then,’ Morag confessed, once Annie had left us alone in a guest room at the end of the landing, extracting promises to let her know if we needed anything. ‘He knew I had a son.’ She perched on the edge of the narrow bed, while I rested against the headboard on the other. Lily was peaceful after a feed, warm and sleepy in my arms, seemingly none the worse for our ordeal, but my throbbing shoulder was a painful reminder of what had happened.

  ‘He was talking about missing his wife, how you learnt to work around the grief, and I found myself telling him I understood, that I lost someone too, but it was a choice I made so I didn’t deserve to grieve.’

  ‘Morag, that’s not true.’ I was shocked that she believed it. ‘You obviously loved your baby.’ I was still struggling to absorb the fact that my aunt was also a mother.

  ‘Like I said at the station, I think I always knew Bernhard would come for me one day. I didn’t want Isaac to grow up knowing his father was a murderer, that we might have to keep moving around once he was released from prison. It was easier to do it on my own, knowing my son was safe with a family who would care for him.’

  ‘Mum would have cared for him, if you’d told her. Even your mum and dad.’

  ‘Your father wouldn’t have allowed it and my parents were too old. I didn’t want to involve my family, maybe even put them in danger.’

  She talked quietly, face shadowed by the bedside lamp, hands twisting in her lap. Exhaustion rolled off her in waves. ‘I’d never planned to spend my life with Bernhard,’ she said. ‘He was a sergeant, leading a team of soldiers in Baghdad. I met him in a bar and I suppose there was something about him.’ She pushed out a bitter laugh. ‘Same old story,’ she said. ‘I broke my own rules by getting involved, even though I knew it would be short-lived, a fling. Everything out there was so bloody awful.’ She broke off, face twisting with remembrance as I registered dimly the similarities of our stories. ‘When he shot that civilian, I didn’t even know it was him. I happened across the scene by chance, a soldier standing over a man who was pleading for his life. I took a photo as he fired the shot, another as he turned and saw me. That’s when I knew.’ She covered her face with her hands. I thought of the picture of Bernhard I’d found, the letter she’d kept, and knew she’d been in love with him. The shock of what he’d done must have been hard to bear. ‘I knew I had to report him,’ she said, letting her hands drop. ‘There was something about how calm he was that made me think it wasn’t the first time he’d done it. He liked the power.’ My mind flew to Patrick, an image of him in a courtroom, holding someone’s future in his hands. The difference was, he was on the right side of the law. ‘My photographs helped convict Bernhard and, of course, he never forgave me.’

  ‘I don’t remember it being on the news,’ I said. ‘Mum never mentioned it.’

  ‘I didn’t tell her any of it. I couldn’t.’ Morag pushed at the skin around her thumbnail. ‘The case was kept quiet because of his position, and because of the damage it would do to the army’s reputation if what he’d done became public knowledge. He was sent to a military prison after a short trial.’

  She tipped her head back, as if seeing it all play out across the ceiling. I tried to imagine her abroad, dealing with it all on her own. I hoped she’d had the support of her colleagues, of friends, but maybe she wasn’t supposed to talk about it to anyone.

  ‘When I found out I was pregnant, I … I thought maybe I could keep the baby, live a different life, but it wasn’t me.’ When her gaze landed on mine, it was filled with shame. ‘It wasn’t just about him. I was thinking of myself, too. I wasn’t ready to be a mother and yet, ever since, I’ve regretted letting him go. I often wondered how it might have been if I’d kept him with me.’

  The urge to reassure her was stronger than almost anything. Of all of us – Morag, Mum, me – she was the better person, her actions purer. ‘You mustn’t think like that.’ I knew it was asking the impossible but said it anyway. ‘By letting him go, you might have saved his life.’

  She nodded reluctantly, as if needing to hear it but not quite believing the sentiment. I held Lily a little tighter. ‘And it’s not too late. He wants to meet you.’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She shifted, stood up and paced the room, less sure of herself than I’d ever seen her, no doubt still in shock. ‘He’s told him terrible things about me.’

  ‘There’ll be work to do,’ I acknowledged. ‘But you’re his mother, Morag. He needs you. Just tell him the truth.’ The truth. I’d never tell Lily the truth about Patrick. Not the whole truth, anyway. ‘He’s your son and there’s no reason now why you can’t get to know him.’ She stopped then and I watched the reality of it sinking through her, hope sparking a light in her eyes. ‘Bernhard will go to prison and probably won’t come out,’ I said. ‘Even if he did, he wouldn’t dare come after you again.’ She dropped back down on the bed, her face working. ‘Is this why you stayed away so long? Why you never came to visit or stayed in touch? Because of what happened with him?’

  ‘I was ashamed.’ Her voice shook. ‘I couldn’t face my family knowing I’d judged your mother when I was no better, worse in fact, because I’d given my baby away. They would never have forgiven me.’

  ‘I think they would.’

  ‘Maybe I couldn’t forgive myself.’

  ‘You should talk to Mum. Tell her,’ I said. ‘She’ll understand.’ More than you know.

  After sitting in silence for a while, Morag climbed into bed fully dressed and fell instantly asleep while I lay wide-eyed in the darkness, reliving it all, fitting the pieces together as Lily slept on beside me. Images blurred in my mind; Bernhard’s arrogant features morphing into my mother’s expression earlier that day as she cradled her granddaughter for the first time, knowing she’d looked at me with the same expression once. I cried silent tears, because she’d missed the chance to look at her nephew that way, didn’t even know he existed, and because Morag had missed it all too, because of him. No man should come between a mother and her child, especially a man like Bernhard. I didn’t regret firing the rifle. I only wished the pellet had pierced his heart.

  The following morning, I looked at Morag across the table downstairs in the bar. Her face was pale but calm, the lightness I’d glimpsed in her gaze still there. Despite everything, I felt a burst of happiness for her. At least Bernhard had brought her son back into her life. I had a feeling she wouldn’t shirk meeting him now.

  ‘I still have the lock of hair he left,’ I told her. ‘It’s in the drawer in the dressing table.’

  Ifan turned up as we ate breakfast – taking it in turns to hold Lily – to say he’d found Skip tied up in the woods near where Bernhard had been camping out. The dog greeted us as if he hadn’t seen us for years, seeming unaffected to have been tied up outside all night.

  ‘Traitor,’ Morag muttered, slipping him some bacon. ‘Making friends with strangers.’ Ifan was reluctant to leave her, I noticed, but Annie chivvied him out with Skip. ‘Meet her back here in an hour,’ she said. ‘Give her a chance to eat and have a shower, then we’ll all help clear up at the cottage.’ Annie didn’t know the full story and hadn’t probed, but I knew it was only a matter of time before it all came out – the story of an ex-soldier on a revenge mission, staking out his former girlfriend, shot in the shoulder by the woman’s niece. It would keep the locals gossiping for years, yet I knew they would be protective of Morag.

  ‘Good for you,’ Annie had said briskly, hearing about my part in the drama. ‘You’re allowed to shoot someone if they break into your property. He got what he deserved.’

  As I sat across from Morag, empty breakfast plates in front of us, early sunshine streaming through the window, my mind turned to Declan. My throat grew tight. It was such a relief to know he wasn’t the man in the woods, that he hadn’t left the
warning note and baby hair, stolen the rabbit or attacked me in the dark – but it didn’t alter the fact that he hadn’t been honest. He knew Patrick. He’d followed me here from New York. Worse, I didn’t know what his plan was.

  I dug out my phone, which was almost out of battery. My head felt as if it was being squeezed in a vice and my shoulder twinged whenever I moved. I felt dizzy with tiredness and delayed shock, but I couldn’t put it off any longer. I had to talk to Declan.

  I brought up his number and texted: Hey, it’s me. It was hard to know what tone to strike. Thanks again for the train ride! Are you free tomorrow? Pub lunch at the Carpenter’s Arms midday? X

  Was the kiss too much? I deleted it, then added it back. We’d left things with the understanding that we were at the start of something. One kiss came across as friendly. For all he knew, I added kisses to all my messages. I wondered how much he did know about me. I supposed I would find out tomorrow.

  He replied immediately, as if he’d been staring at his phone, waiting to hear from me. You promised to call! X

  I could call him. Would it be better to ask him outright over the phone, rather than face to face? No. I had to look him in the eye. I wanted him to hear me out – to see my face and know I was telling the truth – but I wanted to do it somewhere public. After last night, I wasn’t taking any chances. Busy with Lily right now. She didn’t have a good night. We’ll be catching up on some sleep today X

  At least that was true.

  Everything OK?

  Just tired X

  When he didn’t reply, I felt a ripple of unease. Then: It’s a date. See you tomorrow X