by Jessica Hart
‘Of course,’ said Mallory brightly. Too brightly.
‘You could come with me if you’d rather,’ he said, but to Mallory’s sensitive ears his offer sounded reluctant, and she put up her chin.
‘No, thanks. I’ve got things I’d like to do here,’ she said. ‘I’d be glad of some time on my own, to be honest. And it’s not as if I’ll be on my own for long. Dougal and the other roofers will be here all day.’
‘That’s true,’ said Torr, clearly relieved at the thought. He finished his coffee and put the mug in the sink. ‘I’d better get on my way, then.’
But he hesitated at the door and looked back at Mallory. ‘Are you sure you don’t mind?’
‘Look, I’m perfectly capable of managing by myself,’ snapped Mallory, afraid that if he carried on like that she would end up admitting that she did mind and begging him to take her with him. ‘I ran a successful business all alone for several years. I don’t need you to get me through the day!’
‘I’m aware of that,’ said Torr evenly. ‘But I’ll be back tonight in any case.’
‘As I said, you can stay the night if you want.’ Mallory’s carefully cool detachment slipped a little as a trace of pettishness crept into her voice. Hunching a shoulder, she busied herself wiping down the worktop so she didn’t have to look at him. ‘I don’t care.’
‘I’m aware of that too,’ he said.
Mallory didn’t see him go out, or close the door quietly behind him, but she was aware of the moment he had gone. Something had gone from the air with his presence, a warmth, a reverberation that left a flatness behind it, and for some reason tears pricked behind her eyes.
She blinked them fiercely away. What on earth was she crying for? Torr had only gone to Inverness for the day. It wasn’t as if they had just said goodbye for ever.
She hadn’t said goodbye at all.
On an impulse, she ran out along the corridor and through the cavernous great hall, but when she burst, panting, through the huge wooden door, the car was already disappearing round the bend in the track, and she couldn’t be sure that Torr had seen her wave.
Deflated, Mallory turned back inside. She wished she had said goodbye.
Kincaillie felt very empty all day. She worked off her feelings with a strenuous digging session in the kitchen garden. It was a bright morning, at least, but a strong wind was picking up, and by afternoon it had blown in rafts of rain clouds. The roofers knocked off early.
‘Looks like a storm’s blowing up,’ said Dougal, eying the sky. ‘Will you be all right now?’
‘I’ll be fine,’ said Mallory, who had been too busy imagining Torr and Sheena together to care much about the weather. ‘Torr will be back later.’
But Torr didn’t come back. The wind grew wilder, splattering rain against the windows and thrashing the trees beyond the kitchen garden wall as the hands on the kitchen clock inched round. Mallory made supper, but still he didn’t come.
Had he thought she meant it when she said she didn’t care if he came home or not? Surely he would have rung, though? He had said he would be back, and Torr always did what he said he would do.
Heedless of the storm outside, Mallory fretted all evening. Perhaps he had stayed to have dinner with Sheena? But then why not ring? And even if he had left at eight, he should have been back by eleven.
Unless he had decided to spend the night there?
The thought made Mallory go cold. Why hadn’t she been nicer to him that morning?
She could ring his mobile, she realised. Neither of their phones worked at Kincaillie, but Torr might have his with him in Inverness. She could call and see where he was. But what if he was with Sheena? What would he think if she started chasing him up like a jealous wife?
No, she definitely couldn’t ring.
Then she had another, worse, thought. What if Torr had been in an accident? He might not have been able to ring. Oh, God, what if he were lying in hospital right now? Mallory wrung her hands and paced up and down the kitchen. Perhaps she should ring the police?
What could she say, though? I argued with my husband and now he’s gone off for the night and hasn’t come home, and, yes, he might be with another woman.
No, she couldn’t ring the police. Not yet.
Round and round Mallory’s thoughts churned, feverishly inventing ever more disastrous scenarios, until eventually she had worked herself into such a state that she was ready to risk the humiliation of calling Torr’s mobile. Too bad if she woke him up. At least she would know that he was alive.
It was only then that she discovered that the line was dead.
Mallory felt sick. With no phone and no car, how would she find out what had happened to Torr? The roofers wouldn’t be back until Monday. He could be lying in hospital, thinking that she didn’t care. Or perhaps he was unconscious. What if even now some nurse was desperately trying to get hold of his next of kin? She would rather he was having an affair with Sheena than think of him dead or badly injured.
At three o’clock, for want of anything better to do, she went to bed. But she was too tense to sleep. She lay staring at the ceiling instead, gripped by a fear greater than she had ever known, and wishing desperately that she could rewind time so that she could have told Torr how she felt about him, while a single thought circled endlessly and dully round her brain.
She hadn’t even said goodbye.
CHAPTER TEN
T HE PHONE was still dead the next morning. Mallory had fallen into a restless doze eventually, but she woke very early, with a sick sense of premonition.
For a few moments she let herself hold onto the hope that Torr had magically arrived when she was asleep. She saw herself walking into the kitchen and finding him slumped in a chair. He would tell her that he hadn’t wanted to wake her, that he been very quiet so that she could sleep.
Almost eagerly, Mallory threw back the duvet and hurried into the kitchen, but the room was cold and empty. There was no Torr, no Charlie. Never had she felt more alone.
Panic scrabbled at the edge of her mind, but she made herself stay calm. There was no point in getting hysterical. She had to find out what had happened to him, that was all.
In the bathroom, she splashed water on her face and grimaced at her reflection in the mirror. She looked ghastly. Her face was white and pasty, her hair lank, and there were dark bags under her eyes.
Mallory’s whole body was buzzing with tiredness and tension, but that was too bad. Somehow she was going to have to find the energy to walk to Carraig and find a phone. It was a good twenty miles, but not impossible, and she had to do something.
So she put on the walking shoes that she hadn’t used since Charlie had died, and zipped up her old dog-walking jacket. Some time in the night the gale had subsided, but a stiff wind still blew off the steely-grey sea and heavy clouds jostled over the hilltops. It was hard to believe that it was June already. In Ellsborough she would have expected sunshine at the least, but here she was just glad that it wasn’t raining.
Worry and exhaustion had created a tight band behind her eyes, and her head throbbed, but Mallory kept her head down and concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other. She made bargains with herself. If Torr’s all right, I’ll never complain about anything again.
I won’t say a word when I see him, she promised herself. I won’t tell him how worried I was. I’ll be sweet and understanding and make him glad that I’m there to take him home. I’ll do anything as long as I find him.
On she plodded, with the wind whipping her hair about her face, and dark forebodings circling endlessly and uselessly around her brain. It took her over an hour to get to the end of the Kincaillie track and onto the single-track road that wound through the hills. Surely someone would come along and give her a lift now?
But she had walked a good mile or so before a glint in the distance caught her attention. A car was bowling along the road from Carraig, its metalwork flashing as the sun came out from behind a cloud for one bri
ef, dazzling moment before it was swallowed up behind the greyness once more.
Mallory’s heart leapt with hope. It was coming from the wrong direction, but that didn’t matter. This was the Highlands, not Ellsborough. The driver would stop when he saw her and take her back to Carraig, or at least on to the nearest phone. The road was very narrow, but she went on to the next passing place and stopped to wait impatiently.
It seemed to take a very long time for the car to reach her, and she began to be afraid that it had turned off when the sound of an engine made her straighten and begin waving frantically as it came round the bend.
So convinced was Mallory by then that Torr had been in an accident, that it took a few moments for her to recognise the vehicle that braked hastily at the sight of her.
It stopped right in front of her and the driver wound down the window and leant out. ‘Mallory?’ said Torr in astonishment. ‘What on earth are you doing out here?’
Torr . Torr, with his dark blue eyes and his austere mouth and his dark brows contracted in a frown. Not being cut out of his car, or in a hospital bed, but whole and healthy, making the hills recede with the immediacy of his presence.
He was all right. That was all Mallory could think at first. She stared at him as if hardly daring to believe her eyes, only to find that the dizzying rush of relief was swiftly succeeded by white-hot anger.
‘Where have you been?’ she demanded, the desperate bargains she had made with herself utterly forgotten.
‘In Carraig.’
‘Carraig? Carraig?’ She glared at him. ‘What were you doing there?’
‘I spent the night at the pub-’ Torr started to explain, before she cut him off.
‘Do you mean to tell me that I’ve wasted all night worrying about you, and all the time you were in Carraig?’ Mallory was spluttering, practically gibbering with fury. ‘I suppose it was too much trouble to drive the last twenty miles!’
Torr drew an exasperated breath. ‘It wasn’t-’
‘Why would you bother, after all?’ She ignored him. ‘It was just me waiting for you. Just stupid old Mallory, who can’t climb mountains and isn’t any use for anything. Just your wife. What do I matter?’
‘I couldn’t get through.’ Torr had to raise his voice to interrupt her. ‘I’ve been trying to tell you. The storm blew down a couple of trees and the Carraig road was completely blocked, so I went back to the pub inn and spent the night there. I did try to phone you, but the lines were down too. There was nothing I could do.’
‘You could have walked,’ said Mallory, incandescent at the thought that she had been tossing and turning all night while Torr had been comfortably tucked up in bed at the pub, and no doubt sleeping soundly. He had probably been enjoying a good breakfast too, while she was trudging through the hills in search of him!
Torr stared at her. Her hair was wind-blown, her eyes dark and furious as she glared back at him.
‘Walked?’ he echoed incredulously. ‘You wanted me to walk twenty miles through a storm in the dark, and then back again this morning to collect the car with all your shopping in it? You don’t think you’re being a touch unreasonable?’
‘Unreasonable! I’ll give you unreasonable!’ Mallory was beside herself by now, beyond thinking clearly. ‘You drag me up to the back of beyond to live in a ruin, and then abandon me so that you can spend a little quality time with your precious Sheena! That’s unreasonable! I’ve had a hellish night,’ she told him, her voice shaking. ‘I was stuck in the set of some horror movie on my own, with no phone and no way of getting help, but I was prepared to walk twenty miles!’
‘What for?’
‘To find out what had happened to you, of course! Did it never occur to you that I might be worried?’
‘Well, no,’ said Torr. ‘You made it fairly clear yesterday morning that you didn’t care whether I stayed away or not.’
‘I don’t care!’ shouted Mallory, the fear that she was about to humiliate herself completely by bursting into tears only making her angrier. ‘Not about you, anyway. I just needed you to come back with the car so I could leave this godforsaken place!’
There was an unpleasant silence, while the hills around them seemed to ring with her last furious words, then Torr let out an abrupt breath.
‘You’d better get in,’ he said, reaching across to open the passenger door. ‘Unless you want to carry on walking, of course,’ he added sarcastically, when Mallory hesitated.
After a moment, Mallory went round the front of the car and climbed in. There was no point in walking to Carraig for the sake of it, and she was too tired to walk back to Kincaillie just to make a point.
It was only when she slumped into her seat that Mallory realised just how tired she was, but she closed her eyes against the tears that threatened. There was no way she was going to start blubbing in front of Torr now.
He glanced at her as he put the car into gear. ‘Why are you so angry?’ he asked.
Wearily, Mallory opened her eyes, but averted her face. ‘I’m angry at this whole stupid situation,’ she said as she stared unseeingly at the heather-covered hillsides. ‘I never wanted to come to Kincaillie, and we both know that it’s only blackmail that keeps me here until I’ve paid off the money I owe you. In the meantime, I’ve got to live in a filthy, crumbling dump of a castle and work my guts out doing hard labour to pay off my debts!
‘As if that’s not enough, you swan off to Inverness and leave me all on my own in a nightmare,’ she finished sulkily. ‘You wanted to punish me by bringing me up here, didn’t you? Well, congratulations, you’ve succeeded! You couldn’t have thought of a better punishment than last night if you’d tried!’
Torr’s expression was set. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said eventually. ‘I was late leaving Inverness. My business took longer than I expected, but I should have realised that you would be scared.’
Mallory opened her mouth to tell him that she hadn’t been the slightest bit scared, but stopped herself just in time. Torr might wonder why she was complaining so bitterly about his absence if she had been perfectly all right. If she had been less frantic with worry perhaps she might have been more nervous, but as it was she hadn’t spared a thought to any imaginary horrors. She had only cared about Torr.
Not that she had any intention of telling him that.
‘Of course I was scared!’ she snapped instead. ‘Any normal person would have been! I suppose you think it was perfectly reasonable to expect me to spend a night on my own in a creepy castle?’
‘No, I don’t think that,’ said Torr in a level voice. ‘I can see that it must have been difficult for you.’
‘It’s all difficult.’
Mallory was cross with him for ducking out of the full-blown argument she was longing to have to relieve her feelings. She didn’t want him to be understanding now. She wanted him to be arrogant and disagreeable and annoying, so that she could remember just why she was so angry.
‘There’s nothing easy about being married to a man you hardly know and then being dragged off to the wilds of Scotland to live in three grotty rooms with no friends around, nowhere to go and nothing to do, just work and look at the rain and hide from the midges! I wish I could just go back to Ellsborough and be normal again!’
Torr kept his eyes on the road ahead, but as she finished he let out a strange little sigh. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’ll take you back to Inverness this afternoon, and you can get a train home.’
‘What?’ Mallory swivelled round to face him blankly.
‘If you want to go, go,’ he said. ‘You’re right. It was unreasonable to expect you to cope with the conditions at Kincaillie, so let’s call it a day. Our marriage was a mistake from the start. There’s no point in carrying on any longer.’
For a long, long beat of silence Mallory couldn’t speak. Torr’s calm announcement had been like a fist driving into her belly, and she was still reeling with the shock of it. Had she heard him right?
‘What about the
money I owe you?’
‘You’ve worked hard,’ he said. ‘We’ll call it quits. You don’t have Charlie any more, so you can go and stay with your sister and make a fresh start, if that’s what you want.’
He seemed serious. Mallory turned back to stare through the windscreen, thrown into utter confusion by being suddenly granted the one thing she had wanted for so long.
‘Is it what you want?’ she asked.
Torr changed down to round a sharp bend. ‘Yes,’ he said, in a voice empty of all expression. ‘I think it will be better for both of us if you go.’
‘Well…fine.’ Mallory was feeling cold and rather sick. She had just been released from nine months of labouring. She ought to be feeling relieved, but she struggled to inject some enthusiasm into her voice. ‘Great.’
They drove the rest of the way in a silence that reverberated with unspoken words. He wanted her to go. That was all Mallory could think. He wanted her to go, and she had no excuse to stay.
Torr parked the car exactly where he had done the night they’d first arrived at Kincaillie and switched off the engine. They both stared through the windscreen at the great door without speaking or moving, while the silence yawned around them.
‘What now?’ asked Mallory at last. Her voice sounded thin and reedy.
‘Why don’t you go and pack?’
‘Now?’
‘If I’m going to take you to Inverness I’d rather do it straight away,’ he said. He reached for the door handle. ‘I’ll stretch my legs on the beach while you get your things together. I know you haven’t got much.’
It was true. There wasn’t much. Mallory found the one case that she had brought with her and began emptying the drawers that she had cleaned out so carefully when she’d first arrived. Her hands moved steadily, but inside she was shaking. How had this happened? One minute she’d been promising anything if only she could see Torr alive, the next she had been in the middle of a furious argument.
And now he wanted her to go.
Like a zombie, Mallory went over to the wardrobe and pulled out the skirt that she had worn to the ceilidh. Sitting down on the edge of the bed, she smoothed the skirt over her lap, remembering how it had felt swirling around her legs as she danced, how it had rucked up under Torr’s hands when he kissed her, how it had slithered to the floor as he undressed her.
