The House on the Cliff

by Charlotte Williams

“A wheel?” His brow furrowed. He seemed genuinely puzzled. “Why would there be a wheel?”

  I shrugged and looked away. “Just wondering, that’s all.”

  There was an awkward silence, and then he went over to the table, sat down, and waved me over.

  I sat down opposite him. I tried to stop my legs from touching his under the table, but it was awkward because the space beneath was so small.

  “It must be difficult for you, this situation. What with Bob defending me, and so on.”

  “Not really,” I lied. “We don’t talk to each other much about work.” Or about anything else at the moment, I could have added, but I didn’t.

  He could see that I wanted to change the subject, so he obliged.

  “You remember we talked about Ernest Jones last time we met?”

  I nodded.

  “Well, I was intrigued by our brief chat. You inspired me to find out more. Take a look at this.”

  He pushed the laptop over toward me. I twisted my legs to one side, rather awkwardly, and peered at the screen. On it was a sepia-toned picture of a young woman with soft brown eyes and full lips, standing by a tree. She was wearing some kind of loose white garment, and her long, dark hair hung in a disheveled plait over her shoulder, tied with a drooping bow. I wondered who she was.

  “Morfydd Owen,” Evan said, as if reading my thoughts. “Ernest Jones’s first wife. They were only married a year. She died tragically young.”

  “She’s beautiful,” I said.

  “She was one of the few female composers of the time,” he went on. “A singer, as well. Really gifted.”

  He leaned over, closed the screen, and brought up another image, of a brown-eyed man with carefully parted hair and a large moustache, wearing a stiff white collar and a spotted tie.

  “Here he is. Ernest Jones. Freud’s Mister Fix-It.”

  The man had bright eyes and, underneath the moustache, a small mouth with moist, shiny lips. He wasn’t bad-looking, but there was something curiously unprepossessing about him.

  Evan leaned back from the laptop. “You know, the more I find out about him, the more fascinated I am.”

  I nodded, remembering what he’d said at our first meeting.

  “Are you serious about making a film of his life story?”

  “I don’t know. I still have to find the right angle on it. But it’s certainly a possibility. I’ve got access to funding, at any rate. . . .”

  His enthusiasm was infectious. I thought momentarily of Bob’s admiration for him and wondered whether he might perhaps be right after all. And then I thought of the way he had treated his wife, and felt a familiar anger bubble up inside me.

  “I mean, once all this fuss is out of the way,” he went on. He swallowed nervously, picked up his glass, and took a sip. As he set it down, I noticed his hand was still shaking.

  But anger for who, I asked myself, as I began to calm down again. Was I angry on Arianrhod’s behalf, or was I perhaps projecting my anger with Bob onto Evan?

  “Of course, I’ve got a lot of other stuff on the go at the moment,” Evan said, flipping the image off the screen and closing the laptop.

  It would have been a good opportunity to quiz him about Bob’s role in defending him, but I decided not to take it. I was still hoping that Bob would decide to back down, in deference to me, and that we’d have a chance to resolve the situation between the two of us, without any interference from outside.

  “What I really need is someone who could research this for me,” he went on. “Take the idea a little further. Someone with some specialist knowledge of the subject.” He hesitated. “You wouldn’t be interested, would you?”

  I was taken aback. “Me? No, no. I’m not a film researcher. I’ve never done anything like that in my life. Besides, I’ve got a busy practice to run. I wouldn’t have time. . . .”

  I was giving him all the negatives, but even as I spoke, I couldn’t help feeling pleased that he’d asked me. And excited at the idea of such an unexpected, albeit unrealistic, prospect.

  “You’d be well paid, of course. Enough to take a sabbatical.” He paused. “It’d involve some travel. To the places Jones visited during his life. Toronto. Vienna. New York. Paris. London. And West Wales, of course.”

  I didn’t reply, but I felt a thrill of excitement run through me.

  “I don’t think so.” I glanced away.

  “Give it some thought, at least.” He leaned toward me. “I’d like to work with you. You’re smart. And . . .”

  He let the sentence trail off. I should have left it there, but something stopped me. I wanted to know what he was going to say next. I wanted to be flattered.

  “And what?”

  “Well, you’ve got both, haven’t you—the brains and the looks.” He paused. “You could do anything you wanted, you know you could.”

  I took another sip of my drink. I had to admit, I was intrigued by his proposition. And by his evident attraction toward me. Whatever his faults, there was no denying that he was a dynamic person, wholly engaged in—and engaging about—his work. There was a generosity about his enthusiasm that was thoroughly invigorating. I hadn’t really factored that in before. And, unlike my relationship to his son, ours was one of grown-ups, of equals. I wondered what it would be like to work with him. If he was proved innocent of the murder, as I was beginning to suspect he would be, who could tell what might happen between us in the future. . . . And yet, with his reputation . . .

  I stopped myself short. There was something destructive in my attraction toward him, I knew that. An impulse to break Bob’s trust, to betray him, in the way he had betrayed me. With Evan Morgan, too, a man he liked and admired. Whatever was impelling me, it was like looking over the edge of a cliff and feeling the urge to jump.

  “I really ought to be getting home now,” I glanced down at my watch.

  “Listen,” he said, taking no notice of my attempt to leave. “Why don’t I take you out to lunch sometime? We can go somewhere quiet and talk some more about all this.”

  I thought once more of raising the question of Bob, and the hearing, and his defense, but once more I couldn’t find the words.

  “I’m not sure. I’ll phone you.” I got up, picked up my bag, and began to zip up my jacket.

  He got up, too, and stood beside me, watching me.

  “This doesn’t change anything, you know,” I said as I turned to go. “I’m still thinking of making that statement.”

  “Of course.” A troubled look came over his face. He seemed, for a moment, to be considering saying more, but then thought better of it.

  “Good-bye. I hope we’ll meet again. Soon.”

  “Good-bye.”

  I turned, walked over to the door, and let myself out. The last I saw of him, he was standing in the cabin, under the light, gazing after me.

  I walked quickly down the quayside, back to the car. The only sounds were the quiet lapping of the water and the tinkling of the boat masts. As I reached the spot where I’d parked the car, the moon went behind a cloud. I shivered as I put my key in the lock and opened the door. Then I heard a voice behind me.

  “Don’t move.”

  A pair of arms reached around my body from behind, pinning me down. I looked down and saw a hand holding a gun, its snout pointing toward my chin.

  For a moment I thought I was going to faint. Then my stomach seemed to turn over and I could feel the length of my gut constrict inside my belly, as if it was being squeezed, and opening again, in a painful spasm.

  “Get inside the car.” It was a man’s voice, low and guttural.

  I did as I was told. Keep calm, I told myself, as I opened the door and sat down in the driver’s seat. I was tensing my whole body and willing myself not to let go. For some reason, losing control of my bowels seemed more terrifying to me, at that point, than being abducted by a stranger.

  The man slammed the door and walked round to the other side of the car. I still had no idea who it was. I coul
d only see his torso in front of the windscreen. I fumbled with my key, aware that if I was quick, I could put it into the ignition and take off before he had time to get into the passenger seat. But my fingers seemed to have turned to jelly, and I dropped the key into my lap.

  The passenger door opened and the man got in beside me. As he bent his head to enter, I realized with a shock who it was: Emyr Griffiths.

  “You fucking bitch,” he said. He grabbed me by my jacket and twisted it up to my chin, pulling my hair. “Scared, are you?”

  I nodded vigorously, clenching my buttocks. I was shaking with fear, yet determined not to respond to the contractions pulsing in my lower belly.

  “Good.” He laughed, then let go of me, pushing me onto the steering wheel, which dug into my ribs.

  “Drive,” he said.

  Somehow I managed to get the key into the ignition, turn on the lights, and start the car. I didn’t dare look directly at him, but as I glanced in the rearview mirror to back the car, I saw that his hair was unkempt and that he was unshaven. There was a smell of stale sweat coming from him, and I also caught a whiff of alcohol on his breath.

  As we drove away from the harbor, past the pub, I wondered whether I could somehow stop the car, raise the alarm, get help. Evan Morgan was still on his boat, I knew. If only I could wind down the window, call out to him. But Emyr was holding the gun in his lap. It was large and black, with some kind of sighting device attached to it, such as you’d use for hunting. Outdoorsy, Boy Scout–type that he was, I imagined he’d know very well how to use it.

  We drove in silence, up the road leading away from the marina. Then he told me to take a right turn off it, into a narrow lane that led into a cul-de-sac. As we drove slowly up the bumpy strip of tarmac, the streetlights grew sparser, until they disappeared altogether. At the end of the lane we reached a row of storage units, surrounded by empty scrubland.

  “Get out,” he said. “Don’t try anything.”

  I eyed my bag, on the floor by his feet. It had my mobile phone in it. I wished I’d kept it in my pocket.

  I did as he asked, switching off the engine and the lights. But instead of taking the key out of the ignition, I left it in. He didn’t notice.

  He got out of the car, came round to my side, and pulled me out roughly. Then he marched me toward one of the lock-ups, pointing the gun into the small of my back. I didn’t resist. With one hand he took out a bunch of keys from his pocket, unlocked the metal door and opened it. He pulled it up, pushed me through, and pulled it back down again. It clanged shut with a bang.

  Inside, he switched on the light, and I saw a small, cramped room stuffed with musical equipment of various kinds—amplifiers, keyboard racks, microphone stands held together with gaffer tape. In one corner was a mixing desk, with a large pair of speakers hung above it, and a mass of wires emanating from the back of it. A nasty smell of mold pervaded the air.

  “D’you want to hear the track I recorded with Nella?” he asked, walking over to the mixing desk. He was still holding the gun, but he’d stopped pointing it at me.

  “Yes, of course.” I dreaded hearing the sound of her voice in this cold, claustrophobic little room, but I was frightened to demur.

  He switched on the mixing desk, booted up a computer screen, fiddled with a few knobs, and her voice came over the speakers, loud and clear.

  “Please. Turn it off.” I tried to stop myself from speaking, but I couldn’t help it.

  Emyr came toward me. A sheen of sweat coated his forehead.

  “You see what you’ve done?” He was close up to me, breathing in my face. The smell of his breath was sour, acrid. “You’ve ruined my life. Lost me my job. This . . .” He waved the gun at the mixing desk. “This was my last hope . . .”

  “I’m sorry, Emyr.” I tried to keep the quaver out of my voice. “I didn’t mean to . . .”

  “Yes, you did.” He began to shout. “Jazz Quest was my big break. Nella’s big break. You turned her against me. . . .”

  “You must understand, I have nothing personal against you.” I was surprised at how calm I sounded. “But I needed to keep my daughter safe. I’m her mother—”

  “That’s enough!” He shouted me down, but I knew that something in what I said had struck a chord with him. “She was safe with me. Perfectly safe. I was like a father to her. . . .”

  This time, I said nothing. I simply looked him in the eye.

  “Stop staring at me!” he screamed. He pointed the gun at my head. I forced myself not to turn away, keeping my gaze steady.

  I watched from the corner of my eye as he lowered the gun. Then, to my alarm, he turned it on himself.

  The gun went off, and I jumped. I felt something warm and wet slide out of my body. Then, nothing. No blood. No screams of agony. Nothing. Emyr had shot himself and nothing had happened.

  I walked toward him, gently took the gun from his hand and put my arm around his shoulder.

  “It’s all right, Emyr. It’s all over now. . . .”

  He began to cry, shaking with sobs, his whole frame slumped against me. I glanced down at the gun, turning it in my hand. On the side of it, in small letters, was printed: EXCEL X83 .68-CALIBER PAINTBALL PISTOL. Since he’d shot himself at close range and there was no sign of bruising on his neck, I realized that he hadn’t even loaded it with a marker.

  I heaved a sigh of relief, which came out as a groan. Then I put the gun in my jacket pocket.

  “Stay here,” I said. “I’m going to get help.”

  I turned, pulled up the door of the lock-up, and went out to the car. I opened the door, reached inside for my bag on the floor, got out my phone, and punched in a number that was on my contacts list.

  “Hello? Barbara, it’s me, Jessica Mayhew. I’m sorry to trouble you. I’ve got an emergency here.” Inside my trousers, the liquid was spreading down my legs, but I ignored it. I’d deal with it later, when I got home.

  “An ex-client,” I went on. “He’s not very well, I’m afraid. Could you send someone down here, please? Yes, police officer and social worker. Right away.”

  19

  The next day, and over the weekend, I got as much rest as I could, but by the time I returned to work I found myself unable to concentrate. The aftershocks of my encounter with Emyr Griffiths were still with me, but I was relieved that the situation had been resolved.

  He had been duly detained, and was now safely ensconced in Whitchurch Hospital, under the expert care of my colleague Barbara Brown. I’d decided not to press charges. Even though I’d been thoroughly shaken by the incident, I wasn’t severely traumatized. In fact, my ability to keep calm and defuse the violence of the situation had given me renewed confidence. At a moment of crisis, my training had proved invaluable; I’d been able to fall back on it, acting almost without thinking, like a soldier in battle. And now, it also ensured that I didn’t brood on the episode unduly.

  I’d briefly explained to Bob and Nella what had happened, giving only the barest of details, but I hadn’t seen any reason to tell them more. I was angry with Bob, especially after what Mari had told me about his past, and I was too proud to let him into my emotional life. Nella, I felt, had already learned her lesson. I was hopeful that, eventually, Emyr could begin to piece his life together again, and I felt reasonably confident that he wouldn’t be troubling us in the future. No, it wasn’t the issue of Emyr that was bothering me, but the continuing question of whether I should agree to give evidence on Gwydion’s behalf at the hearing, which had been provisionally scheduled for just under a month’s time.

  The worst of it was, I had no time to think. The usual stream of clients was passing through my consulting rooms, along with some new recruits, each of them with their own tale to tell and their own complex sets of emotional demands. But I was unable to give them my full attention. Instead, to my shame, I simply watched them impassively, wishing they’d go to hell and leave me in peace. Bryn’s furious tirades against me filled me with anger; I wanted to yel
l at him to grow up, stop blaming his mother—and me—for his own failures, and get a life. Maria the housewife’s unabating misery also failed to move me; when she began to sob silently, instead of feeling sympathy, I thought of her children, and felt sorry for them for having such a useless mother. And when Frank, my final client of the day, started to complain about his sex addiction and stare at my breasts, I had to muster all my self-control not to get up, take him by the lapels and frog-march him out of the room.

  When Frank left, I closed the door behind him, leaned back in my chair, stretched my arms, wriggled my aching shoulders, and gave a sigh of relief. At last I had a moment to myself. I looked out of the window, watching the last of the yellow leaves fluttering down from the tree outside, and found myself able to think once more.

  The question that was uppermost in my mind was whether Gwydion had been lying to me, albeit unwittingly, about his experience on the yacht all those years ago. He’d described seeing Evan and Elsa sitting together by the wheel of the boat—yet there was no wheel. The yacht was steered by a tiller, not a wheel—I’d seen it with my own eyes. It was only a tiny detail, and by itself insignificant, but it was enough to make me doubt the accuracy of his story entirely. Gwydion had reported a memory, apparently in good faith, but it seemed possible that he could be mistaken. Evan’s fate didn’t hang on my testimony alone—there would be plenty of evidence from others, of course, such as Gwydion, Arianrhod, and Solveig—but since I had a supporting role to play, it was important that I should be entirely sure of my facts before I offered to make a statement. If Evan was innocent, I didn’t want to add my voice to those who wanted to see him go down for murder; neither did I want to make a fool of myself and damage my reputation.

  I got up from my chair, went over to the bookcase at the back of the room, took down a file, and leafed through it until I found what I was looking for. It was an article entitled “The Formation of False Memories” by the American psychologist Elizabeth Loftus. I began to leaf through it.

  I remembered it now. This was her controversial “Shopping Mall” study about implanting false memories. She was arguing that, in many cases, our memory of an event is not reliable, but is distorted by what has happened before and after it. To try to prove this, she arranged an experiment in which subjects were repeatedly told by family members that they had been lost in a shopping mall as young children, even though no such event had ever taken place. The subjects later reported that they remembered this event clearly, even supplying details of the location, the person who had rescued them, and so on.