The Woman on the Cliff

by JANICE FROST

  Moira opposed the setting up of rules but went along with it for the sake of keeping the peace. Poor Lucy proved to be a persistent offender. She was untidy and forgetful, though she tried hard to conform.

  I suspected that Lucy spent a lot of time trying too hard to be the person she thought other people wanted her to be. I always felt slightly protective of her because it was so easy for people to take advantage of her. As Moira — and Elspeth — found out quickly enough.

  Elspeth’s behaviour towards others could be calculating and manipulative, traits it turned out that she shared with Moira. Both treated Lucy shabbily at times, exploiting her eagerness to please for their own benefit. They’d send her out on errands, persuade her to cook the odd meal for them. Each of them berated the other for treating Lucy this way, seemingly blind to their own guilt.

  “Sometimes I think they’re too alike to get on,” Shona once confided. “But Moira lacks Elspeth’s mean streak.” Her gaze had lingered on me challengingly when she said this. Out of loyalty to the friend who had rescued me from loneliness or something worse, I made no comment.

  Elspeth was insanely jealous of Moira. Everything jarred, from her popularity with men to her natural academic ability. Elspeth was clever, but she had to work hard to obtain good results. It maddened her to see Moira achieve top marks for essays without seeming to put the hours in. Above all else, she was jealous of Moira’s relationship with Andrew Kelso.

  One night, not long after we moved into the house on North Street, I woke at around two in the morning with a headache. I crept downstairs to fetch a glass of water and an aspirin. As I passed the living room, I overheard a series of low moans, and looking inside, I saw Moira astride a bearded older man, whom I recognised instantly as Andrew Kelso.

  I was twenty years old at the time, but I’d only had sex a couple of times. The first was with a boy I met at the students’ union disco. We’d both been drunk, and I couldn’t swear that we’d actually done it, but the next morning I heard him boasting about it to one of his flatmates and made up my mind that I was no longer a virgin. I’d been desperate to lose that label for ages. My other sexual experiences had been similarly disappointing.

  Seeing Moira with Andrew was a revelation. I knew I should look away but I stood, transfixed, unable to take my eyes off them. I had to admit there was something magnificent about Moira at that moment. I thought of the clumsy fumbling around with the boy from the disco, me crushed under his weight, eager for it to be over. I had no idea sex could be as exciting as this.

  I crept back upstairs, minus the water and the aspirin, and straight into Elspeth’s room where I shook her awake. “I’ve just seen Moira and Andrew Kelso shagging on the sofa,” I whispered. Elspeth squinted at me, disbelieving.

  “What?” she said, groggily. I grinned at her, savouring the moment. “Who gives a shit,” she said, sourly.

  “You’re jealous.” I bounced on the edge of Elspeth’s bed, irritated with her for pretending she didn’t care.

  “Crap. I wouldn’t shag him if . . .” Elspeth’s voice trailed off. She was looking across at her bedroom door, which was standing open. I followed her gaze. Moira was standing in the doorway, her hair dishevelled, Andrew Kelso’s shirt wrapped loosely about her.

  “Enjoy the show?” she asked, looking straight at me with faint amusement. She swivelled on one foot and walked away in the direction of the bathroom.

  My hand covered my mouth. “She saw me watching,” I said, appalled.

  Elspeth gave an unkind laugh. “Teach you not to be a peeping Tom.”

  “How could I avoid it when they were doing it in plain sight?” I protested. “I went down for a glass of water.” But I had lingered longer than was necessary. There was no denying it. Elspeth knew it too.

  “So, is he just as fit without his clothes on?” she said, rubbing sleep from her eyes.

  I gave a nervous giggle. “Couldn’t really tell. Moira was on top.”

  “Oh!” Elspeth’s exclamation of surprise told me she was not as sexually experienced as she would have the rest of us believe. I had long suspected that the boyfriend in Edinburgh, whom she claimed to have been ‘copulating like crazy with’ on visits home, was a myth. The only time she mentioned him was when the topic of sex came up. Then it was ‘Gav this’ and ‘Gav that.’ You’d have thought there wasn’t a single position in the Kama Sutra that Elspeth and Gav hadn’t mastered.

  But the legendary Gav hadn’t visited Elspeth once since her return to St Andrews, and Elspeth hadn’t been home more than a handful of times. The last time I’d asked about him, she’d shrugged and said that she thought they didn’t have much in common any more.

  “So, does everyone know about their affair now?” I asked. Moira had sworn us all to secrecy.

  “Not that I’m aware of.”

  “Well, they weren’t being exactly discreet just now,” I said with a giggle. I went to bed, obsessing slightly over what I’d seen.

  There was an awkward moment in the morning when I met Moira coming out of the bathroom. I wasn’t sure who should be apologising to whom. Moira spoke first. “Sorry about last night. I wasn’t expecting anyone to come downstairs. I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again.” She seemed a bit edgy, and I realised that she was probably afraid that I might gossip, and that word of her affair with Andrew would get back to his wife. I mumbled something about their secret being safe with me.

  “It’s not you I’m worried about,” Moira said. “Elspeth doesn’t like me. I wouldn’t put it past her to shop us to Andrew’s wife. I told Shona it was a bad idea to tell you lot about Andrew and me. She thought it would help me get the room. But Elspeth can’t stand me being with Andrew, can she?”

  “I’ll have a word in her ear,” I said. I felt confident that Elspeth wouldn’t tell Andrew’s wife about Moira. She’d told me she enjoyed the sense of power over Moira that came from keeping her secret. “Maybe one day I’ll call in a favour for my continued silence. Should the need ever arise.”

  After that night, Andrew was often present in our house.

  Shona wasn’t keen on him. She was unfailingly polite to him, but never more than that. I was a bit in awe of him. Elspeth became even more obsessed with him, if that were possible, though she flatly denied it whenever I confronted her. As for Lucy, she admired Andrew from a distance. He wasn’t really her type. Lucy was attracted to male versions of herself.

  “You know she’s two-timing him, don’t you?” Elspeth whispered to me one evening when Moira and Andrew were upstairs engaging in a particularly noisy sex session. I looked at her in astonishment. “It’s true. She’s been seeing a local boy since the summer holidays.” Elspeth must have picked up on my annoyance, for she added quickly, “I only found out yesterday. Shona told me. I was going to tell you, but you’ve been living at the library.”

  It was true. I had an essay due in a couple of days and I’d been pulling some late nights.

  Elspeth’s tone was slightly disapproving when she talked about Moira’s behaviour. She was the daughter of a Presbyterian minister, after all. Though she’d grown up to be an atheist, like me, she was still sloughing off the encumbrances of her upbringing.

  Over the coming months, we grew accustomed to Moira’s complicated love life. Some of us even helped her juggle the two, so that neither Andrew Kelso nor the local boy, whose name was Stuart Brogan, ever met. At least, not in Moira’s bedroom.

  I remember one occasion when I kept Andrew talking in the kitchen while Lucy saw Stuart to the door. Moira appeared, unruffled, wrapped in a towel, purportedly straight from the shower, to show Andrew up to her room. She winked at me to show her thanks.

  Once, I asked Moira how she coped with her duplicitous lifestyle.

  “I never intended for it to happen,” she said. “I was single at the beginning of the holidays. Andrew had told me it was over between us. His wife was due to give birth in July and he’d decided he should try to be faithful. I didn’t take him serio
usly, of course. I knew he’d be back. But I thought, why shouldn’t I have a bit of fun with Stuart in the meantime?”

  I listened, enthralled, as Moira told me of her first meeting with Stuart Brogan.

  “It was one afternoon, after I’d finished early at the caravan site. I decided to walk into town to do some shopping. I arrived at the harbour just as the fishing boats were returning with their catches. A young fisherman winked and smiled at me from the deck of one of the boats, and I waited until his boat drew up alongside the harbour wall. I was captivated by a vision of sinewy, sunburned arms, and the roguish twinkle in his blue eyes, and by the strands of gold that burnished in his gingery fair hair,” Moira said with a flourish. “I sat down on a lobster pot while he helped unload the morning’s catch, and waited for him to finish.”

  “Go on,” I said, enjoying the tale.

  “It was love at first sight,” Moira said, then hastily corrected herself. “Well, I suppose lust would be more accurate, but who cares? Honestly, Ros, the air on that harbour-side was fairly fizzling with sexual tension. Everyone could sense it.”

  I laughed, but only lightly. To tell the truth, I was a little in awe.

  This boy, Moira claimed, made her realise that men, too, could be beautiful. When Stuart — she’d learned his name from the shouts of his father and the other men — stepped off the boat at last and stood, hesitant, in front of her, she’d kissed him, a long passionate kiss that drew calls and wolf whistles from the other fishermen.

  “Stuart’s dad said, ‘You didn’t tell me you had a lassie,’” Moira said. “He automatically assumed we were together, not that we’d only just met. Stuart went along with the pretence. He walked into town with me, reeking of fish. I told him to go home and have a wash and a change of clothes, then come and meet me. I waited for him in the grounds of the cathedral. I was lying on the grass, my face turned to the side, when a cloud passed over, or so I thought. I squinted up and there was Stuart’s beautiful face blotting out the sun. It was just like a scene from one of my mum’s Mills and Boon books.”

  By now, I was hanging onto Moira’s every word.

  “We kissed, and,” Moira lowered her voice, “would have gone all the way if we hadn’t been in a public place. Stuart was rock hard.”

  “Okay, that’s enough,” I said, contriving a laugh.

  “Stuart came back to the caravan that night and every other night he could manage for the rest of the summer. He was heartbroken when I told him I was going off travelling with Shona.”

  “So how come you started seeing Andrew again?”

  “It was the day before I was due to join Shona,” Moira said. “I saw Andrew and his wife, Annie, in St Andrews. She was pushing a pram. I caught Andrew’s eye as they drew near, and he looked so panicked I nearly laughed out loud. Surely it couldn’t do any harm for a student of his to stop him in the street and coo over his newborn? Anyway, later I was browsing upstairs in one of the bookshops, when I felt someone touch my arm. It was Andrew. As soon as our eyes met, I knew he was still crazy for me. He told me he’d made a terrible mistake splitting up with me, said how much he missed me. I knew it was probably partly because he wasn’t getting it from his wife, but I was still flattered. I think it was his voice more than anything, Ros. He has such a sexy, husky voice. It’s the thing about him that turns me on the most, apart from, well, you know, just about everything else about him. It was all the encouragement I needed. He’d told Annie he needed to go upstairs to look for a book. We didn’t have much time. You should have seen his face when I told him I was going off on holiday the next day. I told him I’d get in touch when I got back, but he said he couldn’t wait that long. He begged me to see him that day. Trouble was, I had Stuart coming to the caravan that evening for a last night of passion before I left.”

  “Moira!”

  “I took pity on Andrew — well on myself too, to be honest, and asked if he was free later in the afternoon. Fortuitously, Annie was going to her sister’s in Crail. I told him we’d have to go to his place as I couldn’t have him at the caravan in case my boss found out. Honestly, Andrew was so relieved, he even forgot to remind me to be careful not to be seen when I arrived at his house.”

  Moira paused for a moment. I couldn’t help thinking that she’d taken on a lot and that at some point, it would all start to unravel. If it hadn’t already. I thought of the morning when Andrew and Stuart had almost come face to face in our hallway, and feared the worst.

  “I must admit, I resented Annie Kelso at that moment,” Moira continued. “I looked out the window and saw her pushing the pram along in front of her. I could just make out a little pink head poking out from one of those lace-trimmed quilts. That was when I realised I’d forgotten to congratulate Andrew on the birth of his child. I didn’t even know if it was a boy or a girl.” She paused again. “Not that I really cared, but I thought I’d better try to remember to ask when I saw him later. It was a boy, by the way. They called him Karl. After Karl Marx, I suppose. Andrew’s a tad left wing, as you know. Oh, and for Andrew’s grandfather. He was German.”

  “Okay,” I said, when she’d finished, “I see how it all came about, but I still don’t get why you want to juggle two men. Which of them do you like more? Can’t you just choose between them, and make your life a bit less complicated?”

  Moira shrugged. “I was on the rebound from Andrew when I met Stuart. I’m fond of him, but there’s no chance at all that I’m going to fall in love with him. I’ll have to tell him soon, I suppose. I just want to enjoy sex without the complications of commitment for a little longer.”

  “And Andrew? Are you in love with him?”

  “Maybe a little. But I know Andrew’s not the faithful type. If he wasn’t cheating on his wife with me, he’d be cheating on her with someone else.” A mischievous glint flashed in her eye. “Maybe even Elspeth Blair.”

  My laugh was slightly uneasy. Laughing behind Elspeth’s back always felt like a betrayal.

  “Does my promiscuity shock you?” Moira asked.

  “No,” I said, meaning it. “Of course not.” I didn’t add that I felt a bit sorry for Stuart Brogan, whom I suspected was under the impression that Moira had real feelings for him.

  “Elspeth doesn’t approve, does she?” she said.

  “Er . . .”

  Moira helped me out. “It’s partly because of her religious background, though she’d deny that. And partly because she’d love to shag Andrew herself. That’s why she hates my guts.”

  There was a brief silence. If Moira was waiting for me to agree, she’d be waiting a while, though she’d only said what I was thinking.

  “You just can’t say a word against her, can you?” Moira said. Her tone was slightly pitying, which irritated me.

  “Elspeth’s alright,” I said. “You just have to understand her.”

  “Well, there’s one thing I do understand about Elspeth Blair.”

  “What’s that?” I asked, curious.

  “She’d cut my throat soon as look at me.”

  Chapter Nine

  I drive back to London the morning after my night out at the Witchery with Elspeth and Shona, my head still full of my conversation with Innes Nevin. I stop at the service station I stopped at with Izzy, and drink coffee, half-wishing that she was with me now. My phone vibrates. A text. From Innes Nevin.

  My heart beats a little faster as I tap on the message to read it in full. It’s nothing to get excited about, just something along the lines of how he hopes he hasn’t upset me with his story about Menzies. I think he must have been slightly panicked that I would blab to all and sundry, for he’s reiterated his request that I keep what he told me to myself for the time being. I’m glad that I managed not to mention our meeting to Elspeth and Shona, even after the second bottle of champagne.

  My gaze lingers on the last words in his message. ‘If you were serious about your offer to help, I would be happy to meet with you again.’

  Happy to meet w
ith you again.

  With a sigh, I put my phone back in my bag, trying not to read too much into the word ‘happy.’

  I don’t answer Nevin’s text for a couple of days. For one thing, I’m busy finishing off a job for a client. For another, I’m kept occupied with a barrage of messages and pictures from Izzy, who seems to be taking to student life with enthusiasm. I’m relieved and happy for her, and touched that she is remembering to include me. I think back to my own first weeks away from home, glad that Izzy’s experience of university is proving more positive. There was a telephone in my hall, but there was always a queue to use it in the evenings when I felt at my lowest ebb, and the nearest public telephone was a walk away in the dark and cold.

  When I do reply to Nevin, I tell him I was serious about wanting to help. I ask him what I can do. Then, just as I am about to hit ‘send,’ I add another few lines telling him what Shona said about looking for Lucy online. I also tell him that Lucy failed to return to St Andrews for her final year, after Moira was murdered and Brogan took his own life. I don’t know why I mention it, except that I am thinking of Menzies disappearing, and it occurs to me that, in a way, Lucy too disappeared.

  Nevin’s response arrives immediately. He asks if I know where Lucy’s parents lived, and I remember that she was from Yorkshire. The following day he calls with the news that both of Lucy’s parents are dead. He hasn’t been able to track Lucy herself down yet.

  “You think she went to Australia after quitting her course?” he asks. “Maybe she decided to stay there. There’s a chance she got married and changed her surname, which’ll make her more difficult to trace.” After a pause, he adds. “But not impossible.” I get the impression that he doesn’t attach much significance to Lucy’s ‘disappearance,’ so I don’t press him to keep trying to trace her.