by Emlyn Rees
Stephanie frowned and looked at Ben and then back at Kellie as if she couldn’t see the relevance at all.
‘I didn’t know you knew my brother.’
‘I . . . I don’t . . . I –’
‘David talked to us last night,’ Ben explained.
Kellie could feel herself blushing furiously. She remembered the pub, her and Ben and David . . .
‘I just remembered David talking and . . . I hope everything . . .’ She trailed off, not trusting herself to speak. Ben must have got Stephanie to come to the pub. This must be Michael’s room. She couldn’t believe she was meeting Stephanie like this. She was supposed to be meeting Stephanie as an equal. She was supposed to be impressing Stephanie as someone who was going to make her brother’s future happy. She wasn’t supposed to be caked in blood, lying in a bed.
‘All you need now is some rest. I think David’s got a lot to answer for, getting you so drunk, but I suppose it could have been so much worse. You’re very lucky,’ Stephanie said.
Was she? Kellie thought. From where she was lying, this was disastrous. She couldn’t help staring at Stephanie. She was so different from how Kellie had pictured her. In her mind’s eye, Stephanie had been much older than Elliot, maybe with her hair in a bun. Somebody serious and frumpy and old. Kellie remembered what David had said last night about his argument with Stephanie, but none of the inner turmoil Stephanie must be feeling showed at all. Instead, she seemed steady and efficient and strong, and very, very sober.
‘I’m fine, honestly,’ Kellie said, throwing back the covers. ‘I really shouldn’t bother you any more.’
‘No,’ Stephanie said. ‘You’re not going anywhere just yet.’
‘Please, I –’
‘No. Doctor’s orders. I don’t want you to go rushing off.’
‘I’m so glad you’re OK,’ Ben said, before stifling a yawn. ‘Sorry.’
‘You should go and get some rest too,’ Stephanie said to him. ‘We’ll all keep an eye on Kellie. You look shattered.’
‘OK. If you’re sure, I’ll pop back to the village.’
‘The village? What do you mean?’ Kellie said.
‘It’s not far. I’m just going back to the pub. Remember?’ Ben said.
‘But we’re in the pub.’
‘No, no,’ Stephanie said. ‘Ben and David brought you here last night. This is my father’s house.’
Kellie thought she was going to throw up.
‘Mum? Can I come in yet?’
Kellie looked up to see a young boy pushing open the door.
‘This is my son, Simon,’ Stephanie said.
Simon didn’t smile. He stared at Kellie. ‘When can I have my room back?’ he said pointedly.
‘I’m sorry,’ Kellie said. ‘Ben, wait. I’ll come with you.’
‘How are we doing in here?’ A small, pretty blonde woman was pushing open the door with her foot and entering with a tray. ‘Hey! You’re awake. That’s great.’
She had an American accent.
She had an American accent.
Kellie stared at her, already knowing exactly who she was as Stephanie said, ‘This is Isabelle, my sister-in-law.’
‘Hi,’ Isabelle said.
She was gorgeous. More than that. She was perfect. Everything about her. She was wearing tightly fitting designer jeans and had a baby-blue cashmere jumper casually knotted around her shoulders, like an airbrushed Tommy Hilfiger model.
‘It’s getting a bit crowded in here, isn’t it,’ Stephanie said. ‘Come on Simon.’
‘Thanks,’ Kellie managed, unable to take her eyes off Isabelle, as she put the tray down on the empty chair by the bed.
‘I’ve brought you some breakfast, if you fancy it,’ Isabelle said.
‘Well, I’ll leave you to it,’ Stephanie said.
‘I’ll stay with you, if you like.’ Ben had clearly sensed Kellie’s panic.
‘No, you get some rest,’ Stephanie said. ‘Come on. Let’s give Kellie some space. You take your time,’ she said to Kellie. ‘I’m sure Isabelle won’t mind running you a bath.’
‘I’ll see you later,’ Ben said as Stephanie ushered him out with Simon. Kellie wanted to yell out at him to stop, to beg him to take her with him, for him to do anything but leave her alone with Isabelle, but she was mute with shock.
She felt her heart racing as the bedroom door closed with a soft click.
‘He’s a real find, isn’t he? You lucky girl,’ Isabelle said. ‘David’s told me all about him. Ben’s sat by your side all night. Said he wouldn’t forgive himself if you weren’t OK.’
Kellie couldn’t say anything. If she did, she might cry.
‘Why don’t you sit up and you can have some of this?’ Isabelle picked up the tray and slid it on to the bed. There were a few slices of toast, a glass of orange juice and a cup of tea.
Where was the nightmare bitch-from-hell who made Elliot’s life a misery? Where was the stuck-up captain of industry who was too busy to be civil to anybody? Certainly not here. Kellie could only think how normal Isabelle was.
‘You are being so nice to me.’ She wanted to crawl out of her skin, like the snake she was.
‘You’ve done us all a favour. At least David is back now.’ Isabelle looked at Kellie and flapped her hand. ‘It doesn’t matter. You’re not interested in all that. It’s just family stuff.’
‘Oh.’
‘So you’re having quite a Christmas, I gather?’
Kellie felt her throat close up. Her nose tingled with tears.
‘You could say that.’ What did she know? What had Ben told her? About the fact that she’d come to the island on her own?
‘Hey, I brought you some clothes. We’re probably about the same size. I guess you could do with changing,’ Isabelle said, pointing to a pile of clothes on the chest of drawers. They’d been folded so neatly, they looked like new.
‘Thanks. You’re very kind.’
Isabelle leant over Kellie to get the glass of water on the bedside table, and there, right in front of her face, Kellie saw the heart-shaped pendant dangling around Isabelle’s flawless neck.
‘Your necklace . . . ?’
‘Isn’t it lovely?’ Isabelle smiled and fondled the pendant as she stood up straight. ‘My husband gave it to me for Christmas. He’s so romantic. I’m so lucky. You know, Ben mentioned that you’re a lawyer. I know law circles are very small in London. My husband is Elliot Thorne. He’s a partner at WDG & Partners. You must know him. Or at least know of him. Anyway, you’ll meet him when you come downstairs.’
Chapter 24
Taylor was like a cobra watching a mouse, waiting for the optimum moment to strike.
Proof. That’s what she wanted. She wanted proof of her suspicion that something was going on between her father and Kellie. Michael wanted proof, too: proof that she was wrong, because the more Taylor obsessed about this idea of hers, the less she focused on him. He wanted her attention back. All of it.
Taylor had called round for Michael at the pub at eight that morning. ‘That bitch,’ had been the first two words out of her mouth. ‘That bitch is staying at our house.’
Nothing Michael had been able to say had convinced her that Kellie’s transferral to the Thorne house had been anything other than deliberate and insidious. Taylor didn’t care about the storm or the injury. She only knew that Kellie had taken yet another intrusive step, deeper into her life.
‘It makes me sick,’ Taylor had said, ‘knowing that she’s there. In our house. Near my mum. Near my family and me. He’s nearly old enough to be her dad.’
Now Michael and Taylor were in the Thornes’ sitting room, feigning playing poker at the table, though the truth was that neither of them had so much as glanced at the cards which Taylor had steadily and monotonously dealt.
Kellie was sitting side-on to them, next to old Mr Thorne in front of the fire. She had a small square white dressing taped to the back of her neck. Stephanie had come in ten minutes before to
give her a painkiller and to check that she was OK. Kellie had said she wanted to go back to the village, but Stephanie had been insistent: she wanted to keep her here under observation, just for a few hours longer, just to be safe.
Observation: it was an idea to which Taylor had subscribed as well. Although, in her case, surveillance, or even spying, might have been a more accurate description. She hadn’t taken her eyes off Kellie, not since the interloper had first appeared, dressed in ‘my mother’s fucking clothes’, and had joined Stephanie and Gerald for coffee in the kitchen.
Using Michael as her stooge, Taylor had trailed Kellie from kitchen to hallway to TV room, and finally into here, the sitting room. Throughout this whole time, she had barely acknowledged Kellie’s existence. Even when Stephanie had attempted to introduce Taylor and Michael to Kellie, all Taylor had said was, ‘We’ve already met.’
It felt odd in here to Michael, as if it was simultaneously hot and cold. The snow-frosted window lent the room a cold, pale light, as if they were in the middle of the Arctic wastes.
‘I’ve never understood why anyone born in Australia would ever want to visit here, let alone stay,’ Gerald was saying. ‘I once went to the Opera House in Sydney. With Emma. My wife. It was one of the best evenings out I ever had.’
Elliot came in and walked up to the bookcase. He made a show of looking for something to read.
‘Yes, a fantastic country,’ Gerald went on. ‘Did you know, Elliot, that your mother and I once considered emigrating to Australia? It was before you and Stephanie were born. Back when the Australian government were so desperate for new citizens that they’d pay your boat fare over.’
‘Imagine that,’ Elliot said, turning to Kellie with a smile.
‘You and I might have grown up as neighbours, Kellie. But then, I suppose we already are, in a way, what with us both now being Londoners.’
‘Yes,’ she said. She stared straight ahead of her as she spoke.
‘And both lawyers too . . .’ Gerald said. ‘What did you say your firm was called, Kellie?’
‘I didn’t,’ she answered. ‘That is,’ she said more mildly, ‘they’re very small. I doubt your son will have heard of them.’
‘Oh, he knows everyone. Don’t you, Elliot?’
‘Absolutely.’ Elliot smiled at her again. ‘No doubt we’ll bump into each other some time. It’s such a small world. We’ll probably find out that we’ve got absolutely stacks in common.’
He left the bookcase without choosing a book and walked casually in front of his father and Kellie to look out of the window, across the white landscape.
Taylor gripped Michael’s wrist, but there was no need. He’d seen it, too, even if old Mr Thorne had not. There, on the carpet by the fire, was a piece of paper, screwed up, tossed there so casually by Elliot only two seconds before, as if he’d meant it to land on the fire and disappear in smoke. Which he might have, Michael thought, because Taylor might still be wrong.
‘I’m taking Rufus out for a walk,’ Elliot announced to no one in particular.
He left and Kellie and Mr Thorne continued to talk.
Michael and Taylor’s eyes were fixed on the paper. Michael had to admit it: now that they were teetering on the verge of discovering just how right Taylor was, he was starting to get a sick kind of kick out of all this.
It had been like when he’d used to go hunting with his father. There were goats on the island, domestic ones which had long since escaped their fetters and bred and turned wild. They’d trash back gardens and vegetable patches, and from time to time Michael’s dad and the other islanders with guns used to organise a cull, and go out and decimate the goat population in a matter of days. Michael remembered the thrill of it all, of following tracks up through the woods, crossing over streams, until . . .
Well, that was where he and Taylor were now: at the moment of truth. Was their prey just around the corner? Had Kellie seen the piece of paper? Was it meant for her and was she really going to pick it up? They were about to find out.
Michael watched and waited. He counted his heartbeats . . . one . . . two . . . three . . . four . . . five . . .
And then Kellie pointed out a photograph on the mantelpiece.
‘Who’s that?’ she asked. ‘The woman in that photo . . .’
‘My wife,’ Gerald said, getting up to retrieve it. ‘Emma . . .’
There, in that moment, any doubt that Michael still had vanished because there and then, as Mr Thorne stood with his back to Kellie, she ducked quickly down and furtively snatched up the crumpled paper, before enfolding it in her fist.
A few moments later, she stood and bent over the fire, as if warming her hands. Michael saw her drop the paper on to the flames. It curled over on itself, like an autumnal leaf, then crumbled into ash.
Michael only half-caught the excuse Kellie made to Mr Thorne about having to fetch something from her room. Michael rose to follow her, but Taylor only gripped his wrist again. They listened to Kellie’s footsteps echoing in the hall outside, and then they both heard what they’d expected: the sound of the back door open, then close.
‘What did I tell you?’ Taylor hissed as they rushed down the hall after her. ‘And she’s a bloody lawyer. I bloody knew it.’
Taylor threw Michael his coat from the hall stand, then rifled through the other coats hanging there for her own. Putting it on, she pulled the door ajar and peered through the gap, before stepping outside.
At first, as Michael joined her and silently shut the door behind them, it looked to him as though, even now, Taylor might still be wrong. Kellie was twenty yards away from them, tramping along the south side of the house, crunching over half-buried flowerbeds and beneath the row of cast iron arches where roses blossomed in the spring. She continued on towards the driveway which would lead her up to the road and, from there, back to the village – whereas Elliot was at the top of the garden with the dog and his back to them all, as if unaware of either their or Kellie’s existence. He was stationary, making a show of examining a beech tree which fanned out like a cobweb against the still white sky. The panes of glass in the long low greenhouse beside him sweated like so many car windscreens in a winter traffic jam.
Then Elliot moved. He reached the wooden fence at the top of the garden which, thanks to the snow which had drifted and settled there, now looked as if a great white wave had lapped up against it. He knelt down, letting Rufus off his lead, and the dog rushed on ahead, out of sight, barking, into the trees beyond. Three wood pigeons applauded themselves into flight. A buzzard wheeled across the sky in a perfect arc, like a paper kite taut on the end of a string.
‘This way,’ Taylor said, hurrying after Kellie the moment that Elliot disappeared into the trees. ‘We need to keep as far away from Rufus as possible, or he’ll sniff us out.’
She didn’t seem to care if Michael followed her or not, but he was committed now, whichever she wanted. The thrill of the hunt flowed through him. All he could hear was the crump-crump-crump of his boots in the snow. To him, it sounded out as loud as a drum.
‘The further back we stay, the better,’ he told her. ‘I promise I won’t let her give us the slip.’
Kellie stopped when she reached the end of the driveway and the beginning of the road. Michael and Taylor came to a halt, too, ducking in close beneath the low branches of a spruce. Snow showered them, slithering down Michael’s spine through the gap between his collar and his neck. Taylor didn’t even flinch.
They watched Kellie looking around, as if taking her bearings. Their prey then turned and stared. For a second Michael recoiled with horror as he thought she might have seen them, or might be about to turn back, in which case they’d be busted. Then she trudged on another ten yards along the road towards the village. And stopped. And waited.
One minute went past.
And then two.
And then Kellie confirmed why they were here. She doubled back on herself, walking swiftly past the end of the drive and on, up the foot
path which wound towards the same woods into which Elliot had walked the dog only five minutes before.
Michael and Taylor followed.
The ground around them grew thick with hellebores and ferns. Thick knots of brambles and thickets of holly thrust up through the snow. Icicles hung from branches high up the trees. There was a scent in the air which Michael didn’t recognise. It was heavy, pungent like a mushroom, but there was something bitter about it too which caught in his throat and made him want to gag.
They weren’t hard to find: Kellie, Elliot and the dog. They were in the woods, halfway up the slope, guarded by a clump of oaks. Rufus was tied to a tree.
The dog’s barks and whines, combined with the gentle breeze which rustled through the bushes and trees, provided Michael and Taylor with sporadic cover as they approached, but still they trod carefully, and slowly, too. The frozen leaves crunched beneath Michael’s boots like spilt crisps on the pub floor. His muscles grew tight. He felt like he had the day before, when he’d been staring down from the cave at the beach below. It was adrenaline, the possibility of freefall. It was the scent of danger, sharpening his mind.
Twenty yards away from Taylor’s dad and Kellie, Michael and Taylor switched from a crouch to a crawl, moving slowly forward on their hands and knees. Michael was the first to stop. The palms of his hands were livid from being pressed against the snow. His knees and ankles throbbed from the stabbing of sticks and stones.
Taylor must have been hurting, too, because she hunkered down beside him, in a jagged patch of ferns, the leaves rigid and webbed with translucent ice, like the fins of some exotic fish.
It was as if Michael and Taylor were frozen too, as they squatted there, listening. The dog barked, and snatches of conversation were relayed to them by the wind.
‘I never wanted it to –’ It was a woman’s voice, Kellie’s voice, raised, emotional, ‘– this wasn’t the way –’
Then Taylor’s dad was talking over her, they were talking over each other, and none of it made any sense.
