Daisy couldn’t understand why he hadn’t heard the conversation. ‘I’m talking to the lady in my drawing.’
‘I see.’ Wryly smiling, he looked away. After a moment he peered into the mirror again. Daisy was shrouded in darkness.
‘Did you see the man, Daisy?’ The voice was soft, lilting. ‘The man upstairs. Did you see him?’
‘Yes. He was very sad.’
‘Did he see your dress? Did he see the colour, Daisy? Did he touch it?’
‘Yes. He liked my drawing too. But it made him cry.’
The stranger was silent. There was a feeling of desolation, but then she sighed, her eyes shining, ‘So. Now he knows.’ Closing her eyes, she raised her head and, making a sound like a sob, spoke again. ‘At long last he knows, and soon they won’t be able to keep us apart.’ When she looked at Daisy, her eyes were smiling, incredibly beautiful. ‘Thank you, Daisy,’ she murmured. ‘You can’t know what you’ve done, but it was a wonderful thing.’ She touched Daisy on the hand. It was like the gentle brush of feathers. ‘It isn’t over yet,’ she said. ‘There is more to do yet. But it’s all possible now. Thank you, Daisy.’
‘When I went into the house, Daddy was very angry.’
‘He doesn’t understand. He will, soon.’
‘Do you think Miss Ledell will be angry when I tell her?’
‘Oh no.’ A look of love crossed her features. ‘She would never be angry with you.’
Daisy was glad about that. ‘Miss Ledell teaches me to play the piano.’ Raising the drawing from her lap, she pointed at the young woman there. ‘Don’t you think she’s beautiful?’ Suddenly a thought occurred to Daisy. ‘That’s funny.’ Raising her gaze, she found herself looking straight into the stranger’s dark, mesmerising eyes. ‘You both look like Miss Ledell!’
‘Cliona.’
‘Pardon?’
‘Miss Ledell. Her name is Cliona.’
Daisy would have asked how she knew the old lady, but in that moment Dave swung the car into the drive. When Daisy turned to the stranger, she was gone.
Libby was watching through the window. Seeing the car arrive, she rushed out to meet them. ‘I thought you were never coming home,’ she said, accepting Dave’s kiss. ‘Jamie’s in bed. That’s where you should be, my girl.’
In the kitchen she made them both a hot drink. ‘Then it’s upstairs for a wash and straight into bed,’ she told Daisy. ‘As for you, Dave Walters, you’ve got some explaining to do.’ But there was a twinkle in her eye. May had speculated that Dave had gone out to bring her back a surprise. At first she had rejected the idea, but during the course of the evening she had come round to May’s thinking.
Daisy took off her coat. ‘My arms hurt,’ she said, tenderly fingering the deep scores down both her arms. ‘The kitten scratched me.’
Dave sprang out of his chair. ‘Good God, Daisy! Why didn’t you tell me at the restaurant?’
Libby stared at him with suspicion. ‘What restaurant?’ Visions of Larry Fellowes and that awful place rushed through her mind, as did the reason for Dave’s ‘little errand’. ‘I told you not to bother about the scarf!’ She was angry. Frightened. ‘You know I didn’t want you going back there.’
While Dave tried to explain that he’d gone out there without thinking, ‘a spur of the moment thing’, and anyway he’d got the scarf now, so wasn’t she pleased, Libby slammed about at the sink. After filling a small bowl with a measure of hot water from the kettle, she tempered it with a flow from the cold tap. ‘Look at Daisy!’ she shouted. ‘What happened, Dave? Why weren’t you watching her?’
Daisy took it on herself to explain. The words tumbled over each other as she launched into a breathless account of the evening’s events. She began by outlining how Miss Ledell had given her the drawing and ‘Daddy said we were going to surprise you, and we went to this place’. Then she explained how there’d been a fire and the restaurant was closed. ‘The man took Daddy into the kitchen. It was horrible, all black and burned, so I played with the kitten and then the kitten ran away.’ Pausing for breath, she winced when Libby dabbed at the scratch marks. ‘Daddy told me not to go away, but I chased the kitten and we found this poor old man in bed. He liked the drawing, but it made him cry, and that made the kitten scratch me because he wanted to get down, and then the awful woman came in, the one who stared at me through the window when Daddy went searching the lane.’
Before either Dave or Libby could get a word in, she continued, ‘It’s been a real adventure, Mum. On the way home I sat in the back because I was tired, but I didn’t go to sleep because I was talking to the woman in the drawing. She said I’d done a wonderful thing. She said there was a lot more to be done yet, and that Daddy would know soon enough.’ She was about to reveal how the young woman had told her Miss Ledell’s name was Cliona when Libby put a stop to it.
‘That’s enough.’ Mentally dismissing part of Daisy’s story as the product of a child’s imagination, she still needed Dave’s reassurance. ‘Go to bed now. Your daddy and I need to talk.’
Kissing them both goodnight, Daisy took herself to bed. Downstairs, Dave enlightened Libby on the more worrying facets of Daisy’s story. ‘So you see, all’s well that ends well.’
Calmer now, Libby snuggled up to him on the sofa. ‘I still wish you hadn’t gone,’ she said. ‘Promise you won’t go there again.’
‘Don’t worry. I’ve no intention of going there again.’ He kissed her long and tenderly, and all was right between them.
A short time later they went to bed. But they didn’t make love, and for some reason they were too restless for sleep. For a long time they lay in each other’s arms, until Dave drifted into uneasy slumber. After a while, Libby got out of bed and stood by the window, staring out at the night. The sky was fired with splashes of silver and gold where the moonshine spilled through the clouds, infiltrating the darkness below and highlighting nature’s wintry colours. There was no breeze. No night creatures called.
It was a strange, magnificent night, and normally Libby would have taken pleasure in it. But not tonight. Tonight she was troubled.
She felt as though something, or someone, was threatening her happiness.
The old man was quiet now. Worn and broken, he had sobbed himself to sleep. The sedative in his blood took control and now, to the onlooker, he seemed peaceful enough. Inside, though, his mind was in turmoil. He had seen the girl in the red dress, and he had touched her face. For a lifetime he had carried her in his heart and now, at long last, she had come to see him. He should rest now, but he couldn’t. Ida gave him no peace. She would not let him go. Her voice, her hands, her very presence kept him here, enduring the pain and the suffering she imposed on him.
She was a devilish creature, her wickedness cloaked in kindness to hide it from the world. They believed she cared for him, that she loved him, but the old man knew better. His bones ached where she had tortured him. Her voice invaded his dreams, and he felt her hatred in every fibre of his being.
He cried out for release from this world, from the agony of meaningless days and nightmares that never ended. His soul craved the freedom that he had been cheated of so long ago. Was there a reason? he wondered. Had he been so bad? Yes, he must have been. Somewhere in his life he must have committed a terrible wrong, or why was he now held prisoner in his own feeble body? His son was weak and the woman was powerful. Her hatred controlled and humiliated him, and only he could see. Yet he was not able to understand.
In the rare moments when his thoughts were lucid, he wondered about her. He felt he knew her from somewhere before. Either her, or someone like her. A child maybe? A woman he had known? Sometimes when he opened his eyes and she was there, his heart turned somersaults. The turn of her face; that certain way she looked at him.
He knew her from before, of that he was certain. But who was she? And why had she been sent to torment him?
Downstairs, the argument continued.
‘What were you thinking of to lea
ve him like that?’ Larry Fellowes was beside himself. ‘You know how strong he can be when he takes a mind to it.’ Rocking backwards and forwards on the edge of the chair, he looked like a man defeated. ‘Maybe we’re wrong, Ida. How can we be so sure she means to harm him? Why can’t we leave him alone, let him die in peace?’
Ida seemed not to hear. Instead she continued to pace the floor, her face a study in calculation. Suddenly she stopped and rounded on him. ‘You know I’m right,’ she snapped. ‘She’s getting closer. We have to be more vigilant.’
‘I don’t know. I’m not so sure. What if you’re wrong? What if the thing that haunts the lanes is nothing to do with what happened all those years ago? What if my father isn’t the reason for her being here? Maybe she doesn’t mean to harm him.’
‘Are you willing to take that chance?’ Her heart was alive with malice but the eyes were masked with kindness.
Weary, he stared at the floor. ‘All I know is this. Sometimes my father is in terrible pain. He can’t talk or do for himself any more. He’s little more than a cabbage and it’s wicked, I tell you. What we’re doing is wicked! Even the doctor says it’s only your dedication and determination that has kept him alive all this time.’
‘Have you forgotten why I won’t let him die?’ She had become a master at deception. Sometimes the weight of it all was too much to bear. But she had made a promise and, whatever the consequences, she must keep it.
Ashamed, he shook his head. ‘No, I haven’t forgotten. You believe she’s waiting to take his soul, to punish him in a way no mortal can understand.’
‘You must never underestimate the lengths she will go to.’
‘Like that other young man, you mean?’
‘That’s right. He looked like your father as a young man, and he paid the price. Remember what she did to him, Larry! She used him, and when she couldn’t get to your father through him, she haunted the poor creature until he leaped to his death.’
‘I know.’
‘She’ll do the same to the young man who came here tonight.’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you really want her to get near your father?’
He was like putty in her hands. ‘You won’t let her hurt him, will you?’
‘I’m his guardian. She knows that. She will never get to him through me.’ Not until she herself had finished with him, she thought triumphantly. Keeping those two apart was the worst torture imaginable. Yet she had no compassion. Only memories that wouldn’t leave her be.
‘Maybe we’re more evil than she is.’
‘What?’ Fear shot through her.
‘We must be evil not to warn that man. He has a family.’
Seeing his weakness, she played on his love for his father. ‘Think, Larry. Think what you’re saying. That young man is only a distraction, to keep her from taking your father. We’re buying time, that’s all. She went away the last time. Maybe she’ll go away this time and never come back. Isn’t that what you want?’
‘I just want my father to be at rest. I don’t want him kept alive by drugs and artificial means. He’s old. He deserves some dignity.’ He shook with emotion. ‘Oh, Ida! All these years. I can’t begin to imagine what he’s been through.’
She took a moment to enjoy his misery; the way his shoulders stooped and the outspread hands clutched at his temples. She saw how he had changed since she had come to his house, and it pleased her. Outside these four walls he was hard and ruthless, aloof to staff and customers alike, charming but unsure, a man of talents, an accomplished businessman. Inside, he was just a frightened child.
Sensing her gaze, he looked up. ‘I don’t know what I’d do without you,’ he muttered. ‘You’re stronger than I am. You see things I don’t.’
She smiled, pretending as always. ‘You’re not sorry you married me then?’ She came and knelt at his feet, gazing up with adoring eyes.
‘No, I’m not sorry.’ Taking hold of her hands, he clung to her. ‘At thirty-two years of age, I was too set in my ways to think of marriage. And there was my father. He was getting worse, the illness was slowly eroding his mind.’ He looked down, unable to go on.
‘Don’t be sad,’ she murmured. ‘I’ll look after him for as long as he needs me.’
Life was cruelly unpredictable. For years she had searched for Tony Fellowes, and then, just as she began to give up hope of ever finding him, Fate delivered him into her hands. The only way she could be near the father was to marry the son. It was another small sacrifice.
‘I’ll go to him now,’ she said. ‘That girl. She really upset him.’ Her face relaxed into a smile. ‘No doubt she’ll pay for it, as they all will.’
He looked up, sometimes loving her, sometimes fearing her. ‘Where will it all end?’ he groaned, wiping his hands over his face. ‘What would Father say if he knew? He’s never been an unkind man.’
Incensed, she opened her mouth to reply, but the words choked in her throat. She thought of the woman she had loved above all others; a woman who had suffered unspeakable cruelties; a miserable existence. And all because of that fiend lying upstairs.
‘You’d better go,’ she said, thinking that if he didn’t, she might be tempted to kill him with her bare hands.
Straightening his shoulders, he went to the door. ‘You’re right,’ he conceded. ‘I’d better see what they’re up to.’
Leaving the house, he made his way to the restaurant where he sat by the bar, his mind aimlessly wandering. He felt down at heart, driven into himself. He was a lonely man, a man who had it in him to be immensely cruel yet who had a core of softness deep inside where he hid in times of trouble.
He was hiding there now, cowering from the awesome powers that had been unleashed on them. If his father really was in jeopardy, then Ida was right and he was wrong. The signs were there – the accident, the sightings, the young man who was lured to his death. And what about the way his father stared out of the window, silent tears falling down his face, making unintelligible sounds as if calling to someone, or talking to something out there in the darkness? There was reason to be afraid, he was convinced. He himself had seen the ghostly apparition stalking the house, always staying at a distance as if kept there by an invisible wall. Never, until the day he died, would he believe the apparition was his own mother. The young woman had a magical beauty, but whenever she made her presence known, the air was charged with evil.
Only once had he felt that the evil was already here. It was on a storm-filled night, when the skies were raging and screaming, and the lightning cut through the night with long jagged blades. He woke to find Ida had gone. Drawn to the window, he saw her, out there in that devilish night, standing in the howling wind, shrouded in her nightgown. Only an arm’s reach away was the young woman. For a long, terrifying moment they stood facing each other with hard, cold eyes. Then, just as he was about to run down and drag Ida away, the young woman looked up at his father’s bedroom, then turned away dejected, to disappear into the woods beyond.
Triumphant, Ida returned to the house. He heard her climb the stairs. He heard her in the bathroom, and then, when she got into bed, he groaned and rolled, as if being woken from a deep sleep. He sensed that she was aching to boast about her experience. He felt her trembling with excitement but he kept his eyes closed and his face turned away. He couldn’t talk about it. He didn’t even want to think about what he had seen. He didn’t sleep. His mind was throbbing with what he had witnessed. A scene so thrilling, so powerful, it was burned in his brain for all time.
That was the only time when he had felt the evil as though it was part of himself, part of Ida. But that was impossible. It was her, not them. She brought the evil with her. She wanted his father. If Ida was to be believed, she wanted his soul, to punish him for ending her life. But it wasn’t his fault. She of all people should know that.
‘Are you all right, Mr Fellowes?’ Carter addressed him for the third time.
Absent-mindedly helping himself to a second glass of
whisky, Larry looked round, a bemused expression on his face. ‘Have you ever been haunted?’ His voice was slurred, his reason softened by the alcohol.
‘Haunted?’ Carter was taken aback. ‘Can’t say I have.’ This was the first time he’d seen the boss drinking. It was also the first time he’d addressed him man to man. It was a shock, even if the question was a bit odd.
‘You’re a liar then. One way or another, we’re all haunted.’
Thinking this might be a good time to take advantage, Carter remarked boldly, ‘I’ve finished the work. Is it all right if I go now?’
‘That girl found her way into the house… frightened my father.’
‘I heard.’
‘What else did you hear?’ He was suspicious. Always suspicious.
‘Just the commotion.’
‘You heard him crying?’
The other man nodded, embarrassed, afraid for his job. ‘I think so.’
‘In his youth, my father was a big, handsome man, did you know that?’
Carter shook his head. What did he know of the old man? Or of any of this family? He came to work, he was paid a wage, and then he went home. That was all he needed to know.
‘He’s a good man, my father.’ All the old memories came flooding back, making Larry smile. ‘When I was a boy, he was my hero. He talked to me as if I knew as much as he did. Mother would laugh and say he shouldn’t expect me to understand, but he refused to talk down to me. He taught me all about catering – ordering, taking stock, preparing accounts, keeping a ledger, that sort of thing. I owe it all to him.’ Flinging out his arms, he encompassed the room and everything in it. ‘This restaurant is the result of what he taught me.’
‘You’re a lucky man.’ Envy marbled Carter’s voice, but Larry was too engrossed in himself to hear it.
‘Sit down.’
‘Beg pardon?’
‘You’ve finished your work, you said.’ He took another gulp of whisky, burped and laughed out loud. ‘Unless you’ve got some big-busted woman waiting at home, you can keep me company.’
Seeker, The Page 10
