I never thought that a breeze-block 1950s garage would come as a relief to look at, but this one did. ‘Hop in.’ Kai unlocked the big Jeep and his legs were so long that he could step up into the driver’s seat. ‘Where to?’
I pointed along the track. ‘Out on the road.’
He pulled a face. ‘Mind if we go the long way round? There’s someone I’m keeping an eye on in the woods. I’d like to check he’s not lurking around anywhere too close to the house.’
‘He wouldn’t be a big ginge dressed like Mellors, without the sex appeal?’
For that I got a sideways look. It gave me the chance to notice that Kai had long, dark eyelashes to match his long, dark hair, and really rather nice cheekbones under some seriously journalistic stubble. ‘Yeah,’ he said slowly. ‘You know him?’
‘We’ve met. But anyone who carries a gun into woodland with a footpath running through it and in rapidly dwindling light is not a guy I want to encounter again, so if we see him, I shall be hiding behind the seat.’
We roiled and bounced out onto the track, heading deeper into the forest, with the headlights slicing the dark into shreds. Kai didn’t speak again, except to swear briefly when a fox trotted across our path and made him brake suddenly. In the end I felt obliged to say something. ‘Have you got any names yet?’
‘Names?’
‘For the twins. Your wife was saying it’s one of each, and they’re due next month? You’ll really have your work cut out to get the place ready, won’t you?’
‘Cerys isn’t my wife.’
‘Partner then, if you’re going to get all trendy about it.’
‘She’s my daughter.’
My jaw clicked as it fell. He’d got a broad grin on his face, even though he wasn’t looking at me. ‘But how the hell …?’ I turned to stare at him. ‘I mean, you’re …’
‘Flattered, actually. I’m thirty-six. Cerys is twenty.’ Now he turned to look at me. ‘Cerys’s mum and I were at school together. I don’t know if you’ve ever been in North Wales on a wet Sunday, but there’s not a lot to do, and nothing is open. Particularly the chemists’. When Merion got pregnant, we got married, disaster, of course, at sixteen. But we stayed friends, she moved to Peterborough and married Mike, brought Cerys up there. Cerys is staying with me for a bit while her bastard boyfriend comes to his senses regarding two lots of child support. So.’ He lifted his foot and the Jeep slowed to walking speed. ‘There you go, that’s me.’ He still looked amused, but now there was something more intense about his expression. ‘What’s your story?’
‘Boring. Born in York, moved to Malton. Worked in London for a while for a production company, went into location scouting. When Ma and Dad moved to Scotland to be near Auntie Mairi, I moved back.’
‘For Nicholas.’ The Jeep bucked and a large branch cracked beneath the wheels. For a second I thought we’d been shot at.
‘Well, not entirely. But partly.’
‘What’s his diagnosis?’
It always felt disloyal, discussing my brother with anyone outside the medical profession. ‘He’s got a few problems, there’s nothing definitive. But he’s coping, the new medication is great and he’s started going out a bit more. I mean, I still have to keep an eye on him, pop round most mornings before I start work, that kind of thing, but … yes, he’s definitely improving.’
There was a few seconds of quiet as the track evened out before us. Then Kai spoke, his voice very low. ‘It must be hard for you.’
‘And you must be a bloody good interviewer. There’s the road, you can let me out here.’
‘We’re on the far side of the dale. I’ll drive you back.’
‘No, it’s okay, I’m meeting some people here.’ I could see the lights from Vivienne’s cottage breaking through the trees. A swathed figure was going towards the front door; I thought it might be Isobel. ‘Someone will give me a lift to the car.’
Kai stopped the Jeep and peered out at the darkness. ‘Who the hell are you meeting, the three bears?’ He tapped his thumb ring against the steering wheel. ‘Nobody law abiding hangs out in these woods.’
‘And you should know.’ I opened the door before he could protest again, misjudged the distance from the ground and landed on my hands and knees in a fine tilth of mud and leaf mulch. It had been such a good exit line up till then.
‘You all right?’ Twin-beam eyes blazed down at me from the warm, well-lit Jeep.
‘Yep, I’m fine, thanks.’ I peeled myself off the forest floor and tried to look indifferent, as though falling was how normal-heighted people always got out of cars. ‘Thanks for the lift.’
I strode nonchalantly towards the cottage for a couple of yards, then realised that I’d got huge sycamore leaves stuck to both my knees, which were flapping as I walked. I chanced a quick look over my shoulder and, sure enough, Kai was still sitting there, watching me go.
I pulled the leaves off with as much insouciance as I could manage, wiped my muddy hands down my coat and straightened my back. The headlights remained stubbornly stationary. He was going to watch me walk every inch of the way, which, I had to admit, was gentlemanly. Or maybe he had a taste for slapstick humour, I thought, as I bounced gently off the trunk of an invisible birch tree, catching my coat on a branch and ripping it all down one shoulder.
‘You sure you’re okay?’
I didn’t turn to answer, just waved one slimy hand and tried not to break my ankle in any of the ruts. When I heard the door of the Jeep bang open I tried to hurry, but only managed to lurch into a large puddle.
‘Here.’ A large metal object was pushed into my hand, there was a click and sudden, blessed light. I looked down to see he’d given me a huge flashlight which was currently illuminating my immersed foot. ‘Bring it back when you’ve done with it,’ he called. I heard the door slam and this time he started the Jeep, pulled it round in a big circle, and roared away back down the track, obviously reassured that he’d done his civic duty.
God, I felt such a prune.
Vivienne opened the door to me, then stood staring. ‘Holly? What happened, were you attacked?’
In the advanced lighting situation of her front doorstep I could see myself better. The flashlight had only illuminated sections of me and carrying it had meant I’d only had one hand at a time free for remedial activities, so I’d not been able to clean myself as well as I’d hoped. Or, it appeared, in the 100-watt brilliance, at all.
‘The woods. The woods attacked me,’ I said, with dignity, and passed Vivienne to walk into the living room where everyone was already assembled.
They stopped talking and looked shocked. ‘Holl?’ Megan came over. ‘Are you all right?’
One of my knees was slightly grazed and oozing blood through my thick tights, my skirt had leaves all over it, and not in a pleasant-pattern way, my maroon wool jacket was flopping at one shoulder seam and my wellies squelched on one side as I walked.
‘If you’d said you didn’t have your car you could have got a lift with me.’ Megan looked me up and down.
‘I got a lift.’
‘Or I could have lent you a torch.’
I held up the enormous flashlight. ‘Got one.’
‘So you were driven here, and you have a torch, and you still managed to get covered in mud?’
I glared at Megan. ‘Apparently.’
Vivienne bustled in carrying blankets. ‘We’ll take these. It can be chilly in the woods at night.’
Isobel peered at her from round her handkerchief. The cats were in evidence again. ‘We aren’t going to be, you know, naked or anything, are we?’
Vivienne beamed at her. It made her thin mouth pouch out at the sides so that she looked as though she was attempting to swallow a leek. ‘We are practising my own branch of the craft, Isobel. There is no need to go sky-clad for that.’
‘So there’s no kissing the devil’s bum or anything like that?’
I looked approvingly at Eve. She clearly had a streak of cynicism in
her which was nearly as wide as mine.
‘Of course not! We are practising earth-magic, not devil worship!’ Vivienne almost dropped the blankets. ‘Now, come, follow me. Tread only in my footsteps, for there are things which should not be disturbed abroad in the woods.’
‘She’s a broad in the woods all right,’ I muttered to Megan as everyone filed out, following Vivienne down the garden, through a narrow gate and out into a broad ride which swept through the woodland, heading uphill.
We marched in single file, up the trackway to the brow of the hill, where the trees fell away and left the crown a bare, grassy mound. ‘The only wood to suffer from male pattern baldness,’ I whispered to Megan, but she shushed me, biting her lip with earnest concentration, eyes firmly fixed on Vivienne’s skinny back broaching the darkness ahead of us. At the very top we all stopped and laid the blankets down over the grass-skinned mud and, following Vivienne’s lead, sat cross-legged on them beneath the overcast skies. I looked out into the leaden night and wondered if I’d be able to see the lights of the Old Lodge from up here and how I’d recognise them if I could. Maybe, given all that occult carving, they’d strobe.
Vivienne’s voice droned out, talking us through relaxation exercises and visualisation skills. It was all similar stuff to some of the things I’d sat through with Nicholas in the early days, when the doctors had tried to manage his problems with behavioural training. Only the November wind, making nippy little sorties through my damp clothes, stopped me from dropping into a light doze, as Vivienne had us all expanding our consciousnesses to encompass the trees, the earth and even the invisible moon. My consciousness remained determinedly human-sized, but I was feeling surprisingly peaceful, concentrating on my breathing, in out in out, my shoulders dropping from what I now realised was an almost permanent tense hunch. My neck relaxed and even my fingers uncurled and I was about as close as I would ever come to feeling one with nature, when Isobel let out a shriek.
‘There’s someone watching us!’
Instantly all of us were scrambling to our feet. ‘Where? Did you see them?’ First up, I walked out beyond the circle of blankets, scanning the treeline for movement.
‘I felt it! You know, eyes boring into the back of my neck.’ Isobel gave a half-sob. ‘They must have been over there, behind us. Maybe they’re hiding in the trees …’ She was clutching her knitted coat closely around her body, as though some kind of assault had been attempted. ‘It was a presence,’ she whispered. ‘You know, evil.’ Her eyes were huge with panic.
‘I think we ought to go back to the cottage.’
‘That’s not necessary, Holly. Isobel was probably visualising some past event. She’s clearly more sensitive than …’ She’d been going to say ‘you’, but the expression on my face made her change to ‘… most people.’
I didn’t want to scare the group by telling them that I’d already seen one armed bloke loose in the woods tonight, and I wouldn’t have put it past Kai to be wandering around in the dark trying to find out what I was doing, meeting people in the middle of nowhere. ‘She’s probably just spooked herself. There’s no sign of anyone around now. Even if there had been, screaming out like that, she’d have scared them off.’ I began to roll up my blanket; the others followed suit. ‘But anyway, better safe than sorry, don’t you think?’
‘I suppose so. But, what a shame, we were so close to opening a gateway.’
I rolled my eyes and led the way off Comb-over Hill.
Megan dropped me back at my car and I drove home, Kai’s flashlight bouncing around on the back seat. I knew I’d have to return it, no one was ever going to call me a flashlight thief, but I was in absolutely no hurry to go anywhere near him again. Rather gorgeous-looking though he might be, I thought, but only to myself. I would die rather than admit to finding a man attractive, after all that Girl Power I’d been talking. Wouldn’t have kicked him out of bed, mind you, but fancy him? Nah. And anyway, he might be attached. Besides, I could always FedEx the flashlight over, when I sent all the paperwork for him to sign to exempt Guy from any responsibility from the premature labour Cerys was going to go into when she saw the lorries arrive.
Chapter Six
I never told you this, did I? Or maybe I did, one of my earlier ‘letters’ might have it in but, to be honest, I can’t be arsed to go back through and look. Anyway. Yeah. Point is – women like me. And I like them back, but that’s as far as it goes, liking. Intellectually I know there’s this one step further that I’d need to take to make it anything real, one more level of engagement, one last barrier dropped, and that’s where it all gets complicated. Messy. And I can’t quite do it, can’t quite let them in that last inch. And, you know what? None of them even fucking notice. They think they’ve got me because there I am, in their beds night after night, drinking their wine and sitting on their couches discussing the state of the economy, and they think that’s me. They really don’t understand that it might as well be a robot lounging around their carefully interior-designed rooms, some kind of gigolo in their beds, because it’s not who I am. Not inside. Because really I’m …
Stupid. Yeah, just stupid, whistling in the dark … Did I say whistling? More like pissing, pouring it all out into nothingness to help me feel better for a while. Anyway, fact is, I keep mobile where the girls are concerned. Give them a look, give them a taste of the ‘me’ they all think I am. The me they think they’re getting to know. And then, when they’re in deep and falling hard – that’s it, I’m out, not what I signed up for. And I don’t go clean, you know that. No ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ for this guy, oh no. When I go I leave a bad taste that will keep them from trusting for a long time.
There’s not been anyone since Imogen. Think I wrote to you about her too, didn’t I? When it all went shit-shaped and hit the fan like a hurricane in a slurry tank, when she found out what lies underneath the jacket and jewellery image. Yes, the real me turned up to the party eventually … Yeah. Not proud of it. Another one of those things about myself that I’m not proud of, along with my upbringing and my mistakes.
And yeah, so. Reason I’m writing this? I’ve seen the look on another girl. Sizing me up, checking it out, the leather, the earring. Measuring me up with her eyes to see if I come up to whatever expectations it is that she has for a man, raising one eyebrow at me like she’s asking some question I’m supposed to have heard in some hormone-to-hormone communication that’s gone on underneath all the polite chat. She’s hot. That dark red hair that looks like the sun shining through a copper beech at evening, fine, pale skin. And single too, I’ve checked her out with her brother – in a purely conversational way, I mean, hey, I’ve got finesse, I’ve got class. Although … their relationship, it’s not right. She’s more like … I was going to say ‘like his mother’ but I’m no expert on that one now, am I? But Nicholas – nice guy, all kinds of shit kicking off in his head and some kind of issue with his sister – he reckons she prefers being single. Doesn’t fall in love, doesn’t get attached.
My kind of woman.
Chapter Seven
Next day I had to go to Scotland. There was a shoot underway on the North East coast, a location I’d booked sometime earlier in the year, but a problem had arisen with the owners of the site, and Aiden the director wanted me to ‘interface’.
Nicholas came along to keep me company, and after I’d interfaced – which was mostly a diplomatic exercise – I dropped him and his carrier-bag of belongings off at Ma and Dad’s. Sometimes a change was good for Nicky, and I’d been a bit worried about his new-found desire for a girlfriend. If I wasn’t careful and quick, and if things didn’t go the way he’d got planned in his head, he might spiral into full-blown psychosis. Again. Still, the new medication – which I had triple-checked was in his bag, maybe paranoia does run in the family – was doing great things at present, and I left him waving cheerfully from their driveway, looking relaxed and happy to be there.
Then I detoured back to the shoot. Something abo
ut the intensity of Nicholas, hot on the heels of Vivienne and her home-made religion, made me want to tear all my clothes off and enter into some screaming, uncomplicated orgiastic activity. Aiden and I had met when I’d been working in London, we’d dated a few times but we’d both agreed that ‘a relationship’ wasn’t what we wanted, not what we were about. Fuck-buddies, however, was a different matter, and his pleasurable version of the full-body workout was exactly what I needed right now. We spent two days ‘interfacing’, and I got back to Malton mid-afternoon, to an empty fridge. Because I’d known I was going to Scotland I hadn’t been shopping, but now, when the post-sex hunger had only been sated by a Service Station bacon butty and a packet of Wotsits, it had become an urgent requirement.
I drove into town, shopped, and was on my way back to the car with a full trolley when I met Cerys. She was sitting perched on a bollard in the supermarket car park, looking rotund and very fed up, but her eyes brightened when she saw me.
‘Holly, isn’t it? Hey.’
I stopped, even though this meant that the trolley swung a complete arc around me and nearly mowed me down. ‘Hello.’ I didn’t mean to but I couldn’t help myself, and looked around. ‘Kai not with you?’
‘He’s somewhere. I had to get some fresh air, hence …’
‘Well, tell him Guy loves the look of the Old Lodge. He wants some more external shots, so I’ll come over some time soon. No hurry, and Kai doesn’t need to be there, I can just walk around and fire off some pics by myself. As long as he knows I’m going to do it and doesn’t think I’m sneaking around trying to catch sight of him getting out of the bath or something!’
‘Well, it’s a thought.’
The voice came over my shoulder. I widened my eyes at Cerys. ‘He’s behind me, isn’t he?’
‘Yep.’
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