A Leap of Faith

by Trisha Ashley

  After all, there really was no need to get rattled, just because Dave was a tiny bit unbalanced. Once he saw I was blatantly uninterested he’d probably come to his senses.

  Passing behind the disconsolate Lili, I murmured, ‘Dave Devlyn – in the other room.’

  ‘What? Really? Why didn’t someone say?’ she exclaimed, perking up, and made off like a heat-seeking missile.

  I moved on to the helpfully labelled non-alcoholic fruit punch, and Gil hove up beside me towing a small red-faced Scot, whom he introduced as Rory McCrory, a thriller writer so Scottish he sounded bogus. Why do I attract this type of small man?

  It’s not as if he didn’t have a certain charm either, but by then it was all fairly awash. Gil had taken my arm while introducing me and was still holding it in a vaguely proprietorial way, his fingers tightening as Rory issued a series of invitations to me, ranging rapidly downwards from dinner to five minutes in the garden, none of which I took seriously.

  A few moments later I heard him repeating the same offers to Mu, who had been ousted from her love seat by other admirers, and I’d have joined them if Gil hadn’t still been doing limpet impersonations.

  ‘Can Mrs Graythorpe’s name really be Mu, I wonder?’ he said, smiling. ‘Perhaps – Muriel?’

  ‘She’s always called Mu,’ I assured him enigmatically, having been sworn to secrecy years ago on the subject of Mu’s name. ‘Something to do with her mania for cats.’

  ‘My wife likes cats,’ he said pensively, and sighed.

  ‘Does she?’ A human touch. I wondered if Dorinda had just run off or had gone through that great Cat Flap in the Sky – and if so, whether Gil helped her there. Or the potty potter.

  ‘Yes, her cat – poor Muff – she misses her so much. She would never have left her.’

  ‘Muff? What an original name!’

  ‘She was – is – a very original woman. We were very close. Whatever happened, she had no intention of leaving . . . it must be amnesia.’

  For one horrible minute I thought his brimming eyes were going to overflow, and I patted his hand consolingly as he fought back the tears with a manly snivel.

  ‘I know she’ll return one day, and she’ll find everything just as she left it. I dust her computer daily,’ he added inconsequentially. ‘When she comes home you must meet – I’m sure she’ll get to like you, and all that business with the cottage will be forgotten.’

  ‘Why, thank you, Gil.’

  ‘Yes, she doesn’t like modern manners, of course, but I’m sure once she knew you she’d overlook all that.’

  All what? I wondered. I wasn’t sure whether to be insulted or not.

  ‘Perhaps,’ he added, ‘you’d like to come to tea tomorrow and meet Muff?’

  ‘Well, that’s very tempting, Gil, but—’

  I broke off, for suddenly I felt, rather than saw, a dark brooding gaze fixed on me. I’d almost managed to forget my problem for a few minutes there, but if Dave had seen me fending off Rory, and chatting so confidentially with Gil . . .?

  Poor harmless Gil didn’t deserve the jealous anger he was likely to be on the receiving end of. I smiled quickly at him and said, ‘That would be lovely – but in a day or two when Mu’s gone back? Can I give you a ring? Excuse me.’

  I seized the moment and sidled off behind the nearest knot of people into the hall, ready to escape, only to find my exit blocked: Chris was standing in front of the door with his back to me talking with someone.

  I did a quick reverse through the door behind me, which turned out to be the kitchen, but no sooner was I in than I remembered there was no back door out of it.

  But I could at least keep watch and pop out when the coast was clear, snatch my cape and go home.

  I’d had enough, and as Jane Austen once said, the sooner every party breaks up the better.

  Chapter 21

  Punch Drunk

  Shutting the door behind me I leaned against it and closed my eyes, feeling like a hunted creature. Something big: an elk, perhaps?

  But as I patted the top of my head to check for antlers it crossed my mind that maybe I’d had a smidgeon too much to drink on an almost empty stomach. Though actually, I carry my drink well and I had only two glasses of wine before I changed to non-alcoholic punch.

  ‘Tired . . . but I’ll be fine, absolutely fine . . .’ I murmured – and that was all right, because elks don’t talk.

  Opening my suddenly heavy eyelids I found myself looking down into a pair of strangely pale, horribly familiar eyes. ‘Silver pennies,’ I muttered. ‘Who pays the ferryman?’

  The potter, who was sitting at the table, regarded me with the wariness of the hunted.

  ‘Why worry?’ I asked him. ‘I’m the elk.’

  ‘What?’

  Detaching myself from the door I pulled up a chair, and sat down opposite him. ‘What’re you doing?’ I said, picking up the scraps of paper spread in front of him. They had names on – women’s names, and phone numbers.

  He leaned over and took them out of my hands. ‘Emptying my pockets – I don’t notice half of these going in. Women sometimes just push them into my hand, or my pocket – or under my studio door when I’m working. I—’

  ‘Like to sit about gloating over them?’ I suggested.

  ‘No, I don’t!’

  ‘It used to happen to my ex-boyfriend too, and he loved it – kept them all. He’s out there now.’ I nodded at the door. ‘Why don’t you go and compare notes?’

  There were some open bottles of wine on the table and fresh glasses, so I poured myself out a large glass of red.

  Dragonslayer’s face glowered across at me, just the way I’d imagined it: high cheekbones, narrow, long-lashed eyes with a suspicion of a slant and the colour-changing abilities of a chameleon, a quirky mouth and the platinum hair. The pale irises of his strange eyes had smudgy dark edges, and the lashes were interestingly darker at the roots, like badger hair . . .

  ‘Bright Lucifer,’ I toasted him.

  The glower turned to a look of resignation. ‘Have you had too much to drink?’

  ‘I know who I am,’ I said with some satisfaction. ‘I know who you are too.’

  He removed the bottle and filled his own glass. ‘I suppose you followed me in here?’

  ‘Listen, Narcissus, I had no idea you were in here, and even if I were looking for a man, which I’m not, I don’t like blonds, especially pretty ones.’

  He curled his lip. ‘I suppose you prefer women.’

  I stared at him. ‘For goodness’ sake! Can’t a woman simply not find you attractive without that old “she doesn’t fancy me so she must be a lesbian” line? What’s your problem? I only came in here to get away from an old boyfriend!’

  He looked down, shuffling his bits of paper and crushing them into a ball. ‘Sorry – you must think I’m totally conceited,’ he muttered.

  ‘That’s right – I do.’

  He shot me a leaden, brooding glance from those changeable eyes and I shrugged. ‘Well, it’s your problem.’

  The door burst open and a small, beaming drunken man galloped in like an inebriated whirlwind. ‘Sappho, my bonny lassie!’

  I relaxed with a sigh. ‘Oh, it’s only you, Rory.’

  The arm he draped across my shoulders was as much to steady himself as anything more amorous. He stared belligerently at Nye. ‘And is yon long streak of nothing what’s keeping ye from the friends that love ye?’

  He struck his breast, reeled back coughing, and cast his red eyes up in anguish.

  ‘That gesture could only be really effective when you’re wearing a kilt, Rory,’ I advised kindly.

  ‘Lassie, ye’re breaking my heart.’

  ‘Liquid doesn’t break, it just runs somewhere else.’

  He gloomed soulfully at me. ‘From the moment I set eyes on ye, I knew ye were the one, ye big Amazon beauty!’

  ‘Now look here, Rory!’ Nye half rose to his feet as Rory made an inept attempt to embrace me, which I field
ed without any trouble.

  Rory reeled back, a look of comprehension on his face. ‘It’s like that, is it? I can see when I’m not wanted!’ And out he staggered again, collecting a full bottle of wine in passing.

  I sighed, drained my glass, and then refilled it. ‘Why do I always attract small drunken men?’

  ‘Who can tell the source of our mystical allure?’ Nye said sarkily, and I relaxed and smiled at him.

  ‘My turn to sound conceited?’

  When I got up my legs seemed to belong to some other person – or possibly two people going in different directions – but it didn’t matter because my head was quite, quite clear. I opened the kitchen door a crack and peered out.

  Dave was in sight, with Lili trying to train herself up his side like ivy, so I quietly closed it again, jammed a chair under the handle, and looked around for an alternative exit. A scene seemed imminent, and I’d definitely had enough for one night.

  The window over the kitchen sink was one of those modern ones that opens like a door if you twist the handle the right way and say ‘Open sesame’.

  I took off my sandals and tossed them out first before hitching up my cherished amber lace and getting one knee on the sink.

  Goldilocks enquired mildly, ‘Don’t think me nosy, but what are you doing?’

  ‘Climbing out of the window. What did you think I was doing, taking a sponge bath in the sink?’

  ‘There’s no need to be sarcastic, it’s just a bit unusual for a guest to leave by the window halfway through a party. More of my old-fashioned prejudices, I suppose. Do you make a habit of it, or is that a stupid question, too?’

  ‘I discovered a long time ago that a sudden departure from the nearest window is worth a thousand explanations,’ I said, not really paying him much attention, being more concerned with wishing Miranda had installed one of those trendy Belfast sinks, strong enough for me to stand in.

  He set a kitchen chair down next to me and patted the seat enticingly. ‘Wouldn’t it be easier if you stood on this?’

  ‘Thank you, but I’m quite capable of getting out of a window on my own,’ I snapped ungraciously, but since the chair was there anyway I climbed on to it and stepped across on to the sill.

  ‘Are you avoiding someone?’

  ‘No.’ I clung to the window frame and added, over my shoulder: ‘Well, not in the sense of being afraid to go out of the door, more in the sense of having had enough of conceited, loopy men for one night.’

  The kitchen door gave a sudden rattle and the chair I’d jammed under the handle moved a fraction, startling me so that I sat back on the mixer taps. This is not something I’d recommend for fun.

  ‘Nye?’ cooed Lili’s voice seductively. ‘The door seems to have stuck.’

  Damn! She must have failed with Dave, too. Perhaps she really is losing her charms.

  ‘I’m coming with you,’ Nye announced suddenly.

  I looked at him, eyebrows raised, and he added: ‘In the sense of being scared shitless to go out of the door.’

  ‘Please yourself.’ Who knew, if we both vanished, Lili and Dave might get it together out of sheer frustration.

  Out I jumped, landing up to the ankles in a cool, moist, freshly dug border, and had time to spot one sandal in the light from the window before the blond bombshell launched himself out of it.

  He landed gracefully on something that scrunched, and promptly fell over. ‘Oh bugger,’ he said, ‘I landed on a—’

  ‘Sandal,’ I said bitterly, snatching the crushed remains from under him, limp as a boned herring.

  I tossed it away again without bothering to look for the other and set off barefoot. It had stopped raining, fortunately for my amber lace, and everything had that dark, rich, fruitcake smell.

  It was a night for walking. I could walk for miles and miles, just inhaling that lovely cool, dark aroma . . . preferably without a spectral follower.

  ‘I’m sorry about the sandal,’ he offered tentatively from just behind me.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said tersely, but actually it did: when your feet are size eight it’s not easy finding something fragile and glitzy for those over-the-top occasions. I loved those sandals. I may have to go back and give them a ritual burial the next day.

  Still, it was good to be out here. I inhaled the night air with satisfaction and strode out briskly through the village. ‘Why do I go to parties?’ I said rhetorically.

  ‘I don’t know, why do you go to parties?’ Nye said, falling into step with me, uninvited.

  ‘Aren’t you going to ask me why I went out of the window?’

  ‘To avoid someone, you told me. And not Rory, whom you dealt with effectively, or poor old Gil, who I noticed trying to corner you earlier. Now, Gil might bore you to death but otherwise he’s harmless enough.’

  ‘Allegedly. What about the Mystery of the Vanishing Wife? Could it be Dead Dorinda?’

  I mean, I do sincerely hope not, since I had it in mind to pair Gil and Miranda off together for mutual support if their respective spouses could be disposed of tidily.

  ‘Come to that, weren’t you Murder Suspect Number Two? Do you murder anything other than expensive sandals? Should I be walking in dark lanes with a murder suspect? In fact, why am I walking down dark lanes with you? Why don’t you go away?’

  ‘If I killed every irritating woman who crossed my path I’d be a mass murderer by now,’ he said evenly. ‘And I’m seeing you home.’

  ‘I’m not going home. Do you think Gil might—’

  ‘I’ve only known him a couple of years, but I think he’s genuinely lost without his wife, however bossy she was. And what do you mean, you’re not going home?’

  ‘You’re Welsh, aren’t you?’ I asked, diverted by the faintest lilt in his voice.

  ‘My father was, hence the Nye – Aneurin – but I was brought up in Manchester. I went to college in Wales, though, where I seem to have acquired a touch of the accent.’

  ‘It adds to your considerable personal charm,’ I said bitchily.

  ‘How would you like a dip in a cold muddy ditch?’

  ‘Huh, you and who else?’ I retorted inelegantly, and he laughed. ‘And haven’t you got a home to go to?’

  ‘I told you – I’m seeing you home first.’

  ‘And I told you – I’m not going home, I’m going for a walk.’

  He stopped dead, pulling me to a stop with him. ‘You mean, we’re not heading for wherever you live?’

  ‘No, I just said: I’m going for a walk.’ I firmly removed his hand from my arm. ‘Goodnight, Nye.’

  ‘Goodnight nothing!’ he said as I turned away. ‘You’re heading out of the village, and I’m not letting you wander alone around the moors at night.’

  ‘I’m a big girl now, and I often walk around here at night if I’ve been working all day. Up the lane to the cromlech, then across the track to the road down to my cottage.’

  ‘In bare feet?’

  ‘Frequently. Why not?’

  There was a small, irritated silence. My bare feet were silent on the pavement, but he was amazingly quiet for such a big man.

  ‘Shouldn’t you go home and throw pots or something?’

  ‘In the middle of the night?’

  ‘Perhaps not. What do you make, Nye? Plates and stuff?’

  ‘Didn’t you go round the craft centre when you were helping Miranda set up her flower business in Lavender’s workshop?’

  ‘No,’ I said shortly. I wasn’t going to linger somewhere where I might have to talk to one of my characters, especially when he’d already lost his temper before. He’d have thought I was one of his drooling admirers.

  ‘You should come and look round.’

  ‘The last time I bumped into someone unpleasant.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to be unpleasant . . . I was just thinking about the piece I was working on. I have strong feelings about my work,’ he muttered. ‘That’s what Eloise said – I could only get passionate about my work.�
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  That struck a chord. ‘Me too,’ I said sympathetically. ‘Eloise is this ex-girlfriend Lili’s been going on about?’

  ‘I suppose she’s told everybody!’ he snapped. ‘Do you know what it feels like when your girlfriend of half a bloody lifetime ditches you for a woman?’

  ‘Obviously not, though I would have thought it was the ditching bit that mattered.’

  ‘I’m not anti-gay, if that’s what you mean, it was just that I’d had no idea until the moment she said she was leaving me and why,’ he said. ‘I must have been blind, because she told me she’d always had affairs with other women and she didn’t count it as infidelity – and then she’d fallen in love.’

  ‘But Lili said she tried to come back?’ I stopped and looked at him in the moonlight, all silvered and a bit spooky.

  ‘She came here one weekend and pretended she wanted us to get back together, but it was in the hope of getting pregnant because she and Lou – her partner – wanted a baby.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Because when I wasn’t that glad to see her, she lost her temper and told me.’

  ‘Oh?’ I turned and plodded on, thinking about it. Wasn’t that a little the way I’d been planning to use some hapless male without telling him? Mind you, most men don’t seem to care about ethics so much as getting their end away.

  ‘I’d have liked children, but it was never the right time for her,’ he said moodily. ‘She wouldn’t marry me, either.’

  ‘Probably that bad temper.’

  ‘I haven’t got a bad temper!’

  ‘No, and it never snows in Iceland,’ I said. ‘Try asking Lili: she’ll marry you in a flash.’

  ‘I’m staying single from now on, and even if I weren’t, Lili is a man-eater – in more ways than one. She jumped out at me and tried to bite my neck the other day!’

  ‘She always spits the bits out afterwards, though,’ I said helpfully.

  ‘So who was this old boyfriend you were running from?’ he asked.

  ‘I was not running, merely avoiding.’

  ‘Who were you avoiding, then?’

  ‘Did you meet Dave Devlyn? He’s here to photograph the Gower’s artistic riff-raff for a book. Tall, dark and handsome?’