“Mmm,” he said in his sleep. Just as she went to move away, his arm came up around her waist, pulling her firmly against him. She tried to lift his hand, to slip out of his embrace without waking him, but he was leaning into her, his body too heavy to move.
She felt his hand move to cup her breast, his thumb teasing her nipple. She felt a thrill pass through her. “Jake,” she whispered. “Let me up.”
His leg anchored hers against the bed, and for a moment she thought he would proceed to make love to her without waking, just like that scene in Barbra Streisand’s film, The Way We Were and she held her breath. But his hand moved away as he slipped into a deeper sleep.
Was she a little sorry? She wanted to make love to him, but not like this. Managing to pull the bed cover partly over them, she rested her head against his shoulder, and lay there running his words through her mind. She’d wait until he moved, she told herself. Feeling warm and safe, she closed her eyes.
* * * *
The sound of the door opening woke Caitlin as Sally came in. “Oh,” she said, looking at Caitlin and Jake. She grinned. “I doubt anyone slept in their own bed last night.”
Jake had turned on his side during the night, but she hadn’t woken, sleeping deeper than she had for ages. She climbed out of bed. “Would you mind giving me a few minutes, Sally?” she whispered. “Please.”
Sally nodded and slipped out, closing the door.
Caitlin mussed up the other bed then shook Jake’s arm. He turned over, opening his eyes. “Where the devil…?” He sat up and looked around, his eyes widening as realization dawned. “Caitlin, I’m so sorry. Did I put you out of your bed?”
“It doesn’t matter, Jake. Sally spent the night elsewhere. You were a little under the weather.”
He went to get up, then groaned and leaned back on the pillow. Rising more slowly he sat on the edge of the bed and held his head in his hands. “I haven’t felt like this since I was twenty.” He looked up and his eyes met hers. “I do apologize for disturbing your rest.”
She laughed, wondering if she’d ever be able to tell him that they’d spent the night in each other’s arms. “You were a perfect gentleman. You just came to see if the children were okay.”
“Did I? I’m acutely embarrassed.” He looked over at the other bed. “I hope you slept okay.” He looked at her again and tilted his head, grinning. “Well, you look as fresh as a daisy.”
“Don’t worry about me. I slept like a log.”
He stood and stretched. “Breakfast is the best cure for a hangover as I remember. Let’s get the kids. We’ll make an early start.”
As they left the house, she searched uneasily for Conor, but couldn’t see him among the crowd of people breakfasting on the verandah or crowded around the movie star by the swimming pool.
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* * *
Chapter Eleven
Back on the road heading inland, Jake gave into Elizabeth’s pleas and put on a CD of kiddie pop. Caitlin leaned back and began to think about what Conor had told her. Where was Max? As if on cue, the trembling returned as she unwillingly relived those awful last weeks in Ireland.
The Saturday after she broke off with Max, he turned up at her door with flowers and two tickets to a concert.
The sight of him standing there caused a wave of guilt and frustration to flood through her.
As usual, he was immaculately dressed, with a new bright tie, but his face looked almost greenish in the evening light. “I’ve missed you, Caitlin.”
“Max, I haven’t changed my mind.”
He frowned. “Can I come in for a moment?”
“I’m sorry. I don’t think that’s a good idea. I’m just going out.”
She didn’t want to tell him that Blaine Tremlow, from the school where she worked, was giving her a lift to the school concert. An entirely innocent arrangement, but she felt uneasy about it. He was still there when Blaine arrived. Only after she introduced them and climbed into Blaine’s car, did he turn to go.
The telephone calls started almost immediately afterwards. When she answered, there was only the sound of breathing. She had to resort to leaving the receiver off the hook, then had the phone cut off and bought a mobile. A few weeks later when she came home after a night out at the movies, she stood in her sitting room feeling prickles travel up her spine, somehow positive that someone had been there. Telling herself she was being absurd, she opened cupboard doors and checked for the smallest bit of evidence to verify that someone had been there. It didn’t help when she found it. Her makeup drawer in the bathroom had been opened and a little powder that she never used was spilled across the vanity top. She stood staring down at it for a long time, her heart feeling as if a hand had reached in and was squeezing it tightly. Then she remembered she’d given a key to Max and he hadn’t given it back. She took deep breaths to slow her racing thoughts as a cold chill ran up and down her spine.
She dragged a heavy chair against the front door then went to bed, knowing she wouldn’t sleep a wink. Tomorrow, she planned to call a locksmith.
A few days later, she sensed she was being followed. It was completely irrational, because she never saw anyone, and wondered if she was becoming paranoid. When she returned from a night out with friends, she’d open the door to her apartment cautiously, as the fear that her space had been violated took her over. Then she discovered her window had been jimmied open, and closed again. Her potted violet had been moved. She called the locksmith again and had new locks put on the windows. She deliberated going to the Garda station, but she had no proof it was Max. She lost her appetite and couldn’t sleep and when she was in the shower, she panicked, feeling vulnerable and alone.
Caitlin began to live in an airless cocoon, never opening the windows. It didn’t help to accuse herself of an overactive imagination, nothing could shake the sense that someone had been there, moving her things around, ever so slightly.
The night she went to the theatre, it was just to get out of the apartment and try to get life back to normal. She and Blaine shared a desire to see a Noel Coward play. They enjoyed it, and parted after coffee.
Caitlin went to find a cab, but after waiting ten minutes, she began walking home. About a block on, she heard footsteps and felt that sensation again—positive this time that someone was following her. Looking back, her eyes tried to penetrate the darkness, but she couldn’t see anyone in the shadowy street. She realized that in this leafy district, the big houses were set so far off the road, no one would hear a cry for help. She was just three blocks from home, but that suddenly seemed a long way away. As she broke into a run, she heard the sound of running behind her. She ran full tilt about a block before she was forced to stop, her breath rasping in her throat. Bent double with a painful stitch in her side, she strained for sounds behind her, but heard just the light breeze rustling the leaves. She pushed on through the pain, half bent over and stumbling. She deliberated on running into one of the houses and pleading for help, but to do that meant negotiating their dark gardens. It was late and so far, she hadn’t seen a light on anywhere.
Just when she thought she was safe, that it had all been in her imagination, the footsteps started up again as if someone was cruelly tormenting her. Trying to get her breath, she turned a corner and peered back from behind a tree. There he was! At the far end of the street, she could just make out a man’s tall, slim outline illuminated briefly by the streetlight, before he melted back into the shadows. Confirmation that she was right only made her more terrified, and ignoring the pain of her protesting muscles, she ran full pelt for the last block and a half.
Her apartment block came into view on the opposite corner. She was half way across the road when a car came roaring around the corner, coming straight for her. She threw herself onto the footpath, falling flat, grazing her knees, as it sped past in a silver blur. It happened so fast she didn’t see what make of car it was, or who was at the wheel. She picked herself up and pushed throu
gh the gate, struggling to push the last ounce of her strength to the reach door of her apartment building.
Caitlin’s heart seemed to be jumping out of her chest. Sweat trickled down the back of her knees and between her breasts as she fumbled in her bag for the key. She tried to unlock the door. She seemed to be moving in slow motion as she forced her clumsy, shaking fingers to work. At last, the door opened and she almost fell into her hallway, slamming it shut behind her.
She slept very little that night, rising heavy-eyed and exhausted. She arrived at school just as the bell rang. As she hurried in, she found one of her co-workers, Fiona O’Reilly waiting at the door of her classroom. Fiona looked shocked and there were tears in her eyes as she took Caitlin’s arm. “Have you heard the news, Caitlin?”
Caitlin caught her breath, “No. What’s happened?”
“Blaine Tremlow was killed last night.”
Her throat dried up. “Blaine! How?”
“Hit and run, apparently.”
“I was with him last night. We went to the theatre together.” Caitlin pulled her coat on again. “I have to speak to the Garda.”
“I’ll get someone to cover for you,” Fiona called, as Caitlin rushed down the hall.
She trembled as she sat in the local Garda station. A Detective Cummins asked her questions and filled in the gaps. Blaine had been walking home as she had, only a few blocks away. He’d been callously knocked down and left for dead on the road.
Poor Blaine, Caitlin couldn’t get her head around the thought that he’d been killed just because he knew her. She was sure Max was behind it. The policeman listened quietly as she told him how something similar had happened to her.
“And you believe your ex-boyfriend, Maxwell Haughton, might have run down Blaine Tremlow?”
“Yes. I’m positive. Don’t just sit here talking to me, you have to find him.”
The policeman observed her calmly. “You believe that he tried to kill you too?”
“Not kill, no. He swerved to avoid me. He’s toying with me, like a cat with a mouse.”
“What makes you think that?”
“He told me weeks ago that if I saw other men there’d be trouble,” Caitlin said.
The detective wrote something down. “Has he ever been violent towards you?”
“No, but—”
He tapped a pen against the desk. “How can you be sure that the two events are connected?”
“He’s been following me, I tell you. Breaking into my apartment. Ringing my phone and not answering. It’s Maxwell Haughton, I’m positive.”
He leaned forward. “When do you think he last followed you?”
Caitlin felt deadening exhaustion sweep over her. “Last night. I saw a man—”
“What sort of car does Haughton drive?”
“An old Austin Healey sports car,” she said, as he wrote it down. “But—”
“Didn’t you say the car that almost ran you down was a silver sedan?”
“I’m trying to tell you, Max’s family keep several cars in Dublin.”
“At their home address?”
She shook her head miserably. “They own more than one property. Garaging somewhere.”
He threw down his pen and stood up. “We’ll contact him.” He gazed down at her. “I hope you’re wrong about Haughton, Miz Fitzgerald, or the day might come when he’ll stop playing with you. Be careful. Mice are eaten in the end.”
A week later, the detective contacted her. Max had caught the ferry to Wales and disappeared. They needed more evidence to take it further and she couldn’t supply it. If only she’d been able to identify him as the driver of the car.
He’d slipped away to England. Did that mean she was safe? She didn’t feel safe.
Caitlin continued to sleep badly. She had trouble with her breathing every time she left the flat. One night, when she was alone in a train, her heart began to hammer and sweat ran down her neck. She panted, feeling as if all the oxygen had been sucked out of the carriage by some malevolent force. Frightened, she consulted a doctor who told her she’d suffered a panic attack. He wrote her a subscription for sleeping pills and sedatives. She refused to take the sedatives, feeling she needed her wits about her, but took the sleeping pills every night. It was the only thing that stopped her lying awake, peering into the darkness. She would wake feeling doped but it helped to shut out the worry for a few hours.
Caitlin knew this couldn’t go on. The Garda wouldn’t get Max. He was too smart. Her depression grew as her life in Dublin turned into a nightmare.
On the way home from work one afternoon, she walked into a job centre. They didn’t have any teaching jobs on their books far enough away. England, Scotland and Wales were out of the question. On the notice board, she saw a position for a governess in the Australia Outback It wasn’t what she planned for her career, but she applied for it. Surely Max couldn’t reach her at a cattle station in the middle of nowhere.
But now, after seeing Conor at Springbroke, she wasn’t so sure. When she got back to Tall Trees, she planned to ring the Detective in Dublin and tell him to look into the death of Mary Delaney.
The CD ended. The children began to quarrel about whose turn it was to choose the music. “That’s enough, kids. Please,” Jake said. “There’s not going to be any more music.” He glanced at her. “You’ve been very quiet, Caitlin.”
“Just a bit tired,” she said, studying his profile.
He released the wheel then gripped it tighter. Without taking his eyes from the road he said, “Hope that’s not my fault.”
“Not at all,” she said hastily. A nerve jumped in his left leg. He was growing tired. This road demanded a high level of concentration.
She turned around to check on the children who had suddenly grown quiet. The rhythmic bumping of the tires on the road had lulled them both to sleep.
In the quiet cocoon-like atmosphere, Caitlin’s eyes were drawn back to Jake. What was he thinking? Perhaps he was perplexed by his own behavior. She would have liked to talk about it, but wondered if that would be wise. It was easier to fantasize that he’d come to see her last night and not the children. Her fingers itched to soothe his twitching thigh and she suddenly grinned at how explosive that might prove to be.
“Something funny?” He sounded defensive.
She must have giggled. She was tired. Hang it all, she thought, this embarrassment needed to be smoothed over. They had to live together. “You snore a bit,” she said.
He laughed and his body relaxed back into the seat. “No one’s accused me of that before. Probably the alcohol.”
“Mmm.”
He glanced at her, still grinning. “You don’t believe me?”
“Snorers are always in denial.”
“Maybe you do too?” he said, laughter in his voice. “But I can’t accuse you of it, can I? You have me on the defensive.”
She laughed. “Yes, and I’m going to enjoy it while I can.”
The atmosphere lightened as he began to talk about a cook he once had whose snoring had rattled the rafters. How he’d had to come up with a far-fetched excuse to let him go after losing too much sleep. She leaned back, allowing his light, amusing conversation to wash over her, but she remembered his sweet words of gratitude before he fell asleep. Would he still feel that way if he knew her presence might bring a murderer to Tall Trees?
Elizabeth’s sleepy voice came from the rear seat. “Can I have a drink, Caitlin?”
“Yes, sweetheart.”
Doubts began to fill Caitlin’s mind. “Jake?” Caitlin began. Was she being melodramatic? After she spoke to Detective Cummins, she would tell him the whole story. In a quiet moment when the children weren’t around.
“Yes?”
“How long till we get there?”
“Are we there yet?” came Elizabeth’s echo from the back seat and they all laughed.
But not now.
* * * *
The next morning, Caitlin put in a call to Dete
ctive Michael Cummins of the Garda Siochána in Dublin. She was told he was on vacation. She was then switched from pillar to post as she tried to find the person handling the Blaine Tremlow case. She was told to either reveal any new information she had about the case, or wait until Detective Cummins returned.
She hung up.
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* * *
Chapter Twelve
Jake and Caitlin had been more at ease with each other since they’d returned from the gymkhana, and their drinks together after dinner continued. They seemed to laugh more and rib each other. She’d felt herself slipping further into a beguiling situation, blinding herself to the inevitable. And Max seemed to be a phantom, receding into the past.
Vanessa’s appearance brought her back to earth with a thump. Whatever she thought about Vanessa’s potential as a mother to two children Caitlin had come to love, she would never attempt to steal another woman’s man.
But Vanessa came with a bee in her bonnet about something. She quarreled with Jake until he barely spoke to her. Once, her raised voice halted mid-sentence when Caitlin came into the room. Jake looked furious and stomped out. The children appeared to get on Vanessa’s nerves and she no longer made much of an attempt to hide it.
Angela retreated to the garden to commune with her chickens. When Caitlin came out to find her she said, “There’s a battle of wills going on between those two and I doubt Vanessa will win it.” She threw feed around and made clucking noises. “She’s acting dumb. You don’t try to push a guy like Jake around without a very good reason. And you get on with his kids. That’s not too hard, surely.”
“Of course not. They’re great kids.” Caitlin helped her shut the gate. “Shall we go back?”
Angela grimaced. “If we must.”
Harry offered Caitlin another riding lesson. Glad to be back on a mates footing with him, she grabbed the opportunity eager for a few hours away from the house.
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