Killing Me Softly (2 page)

But after tonight, she was dully aware that it had gone beyond Ellie and Tim. Clare and the children could well be drawn in. The time had come when she had to act. Very well then, she would. Somehow she'd find the will to do it. But she swore that never again would she allow anyone to do this to her. Which meant that she could see her life going on, futile, pointless, repetitive, until she became too old to attract anyone and then – she'd be alone.

Except for Clare. One thing she could rely on: Clare would always be there.

Some distance away, another woman lay in the dark. She came back to consciousness, opened her eyes, but could see nothing only blackness. She had a violent headache, and felt slightly sick.

She had a vague remembrance of a previous awakening, of finding herself struggling to move her limbs, and being unable to move. Her hands and feet had been tied. She'd struggled feebly, and felt the bonds chafing her wrists, but her strength soon gave out and unconsciousness overcame her again.

She was lying now on what seemed to be some sort of narrow truckle bed with a blanket thrown over her. Experimentally, she moved her hands, then her feet. They were no longer tied. She tried to sit up, but dizziness and nausea forced her to lie back again.

She stared into the blackness and tried to remember what had happened. She could dimly recall a fierce struggle with someone who was taller and stronger than she was; but nothing more. Where was she, and why had she been brought here? How long had she lain unconscious? Who was he, her assailant?

More importantly,
who was she
?

The sense of non-identity was terrifying. Almost worse than the thought of being left here alone, in this cold, dank, echoing place, perhaps until she died.

The horror of that made her try and sit up again, but her head swam and she had to abandon the effort, defeated by her own weakness. Yet behind the helplessness she sensed a strength and determination that seemed to be natural to her. She would surely feel better presently, and when she did she would get up and explore, find some way out. She wasn't going to die, not yet.

At some time during the night, the wind died down and the heavy rain turned to a drizzle that would later still turn to fog. The river banks did not overflow. And the long night's surveillance by the police brought forth nothing, other than frustration. No one visited, or left, the ramshackle house on the curve of the river.

‘Come to bed, you can't stay up all night.'

Alex, ex-sergeant Alex Jones of the Lavenstock police division, stood in the doorway, her dark hair tousled, her face still blank with sleep. ‘They'll ring if there's any news. I'll make us a hot drink.'

So she hadn't been able to sleep, either. Mayo's heart smote him. Alex was the sort of person whose inner state was reflected in her looks, and her dark blue eyes had darker smudges under them, her clear, naturally pale skin was paler than it should have been. She didn't look well. Or was he letting his imagination, his worry, get the better of him? He should have more confidence in her innate steadiness, her ability to see things straight.

She'd lately had things on her mind, sure, a big decision to make, but, being Alex, and having maybe made one mistake already, she was still capable of worrying about it. Another blast of rain hit the window panes and she stretched her hand out and pulled him to his feet.

The parrot, Bert, under his night-time covering, stirred and gave a token squawk on hearing voices, rustled his feathers and sank back into his own mysterious night world as Mayo switched out the light.

Breakfast at Clacks Mill was always a self-absorbed affair. None of the family were great communicators at that time in the morning, except for Tim, if he were in a good mood. But he wasn't there today.

Clare drank her coffee while running through her lists, checking things to be done and worrying about the fog which had succeeded the rain. She hated these dark February mornings, driving when you couldn't see a hand in front of you, and today the fog would make it worse. The forecast, so far as it could be believed, didn't hold out for much improvement. There was no help for it. She had to get to Miller's Wife, and drive her children to school.

And that heralded yet another argument with Richie. He was seventeen, at Sixth Form College, had passed his driving test a few weeks ago:
why
couldn't he have his own car, a motorbike, some means of transport? Because who, Clare asked in her turn, is going to afford a car for you, just another expense, plus the exorbitant insurance for someone your age?

And because, my darling boy, she thought, but didn't say, in one of the moods you've been in all too often lately, you could kill yourself, not to mention other people. She was prepared to lend him her car occasionally. Meanwhile, being driven in to school by her in the mornings, being dropped off at the end of the lane in the afternoon by the school bus was good enough for now, she told him firmly. Bad for his ego, though, she could see that, and his standing among his peers. And more often than not, one of the same mates, no more reliable than he was himself at the moment, would drive him recklessly home along the narrow country lanes in some clapped-out old banger. Or worse, he'd ride motorbike pillion without a crash helmet. There was no way of stopping that, but... oh God, the joys of parenthood! she thought, churning inside as Richie shoved his chair back and thudded upstairs to plot further ways of undermining her resistance. He'd already got his father's tacit consent – providing Clare could find the money – which was the way things worked in this marriage: Tim the easygoing parent, Clare the one who had to make the rules.

None of the emotional turmoil she felt showed, as she drank the last of her coffee and organized her day. She'd learned that it paid to keep her thoughts and her emotions to herself. She had a neat and disciplined face that gave nothing away, and cool, grey eyes. Finely drawn charcoal brows emphasized a delicate skin, she wore her silver-blonde hair in a smooth, square-cut bob. Snow Princess, Tim had called her once upon a time, then Ice Maiden when he became less pleased with her ... specifically, when he discovered the vein of inherited self-sufficiency running through her, inherited from her father who'd made what Tim was pleased to call all that disgusting money. Forget that much of that same money had made his own present lifestyle possible, it was obscene, Tim said, to be so rich and then be so grudging with it. Forget that it was only through Sam Nash's generosity, plus Clare's own efforts with Miller's Wife, that they were able to keep Clacks Mill.

His own situation, though he refused to face it, was growing more and more untenable. He called himself a financier, though he'd never been serious about it, playing at it as if it were just another game of squash, or rugger. He was a natural gambler, but his judgement had grown poor, he'd borrowed a lot of money, speculating unwisely in the property boom of the eighties, and lost more when the same property values fell. As a Lloyd's Name, he'd come the final cropper, though he still refused to look the facts in the face, believing Micawberishly that something would turn up to help meet his losses. His ‘contacts' were growing fewer, more wary. There were too many others, part of the same Old Boy network, on the same merry-go-round.

It was just as well they had Miller's Wife to fall back on, thought Clare, the business she and Ellie had started here in her own kitchen. It hadn't been much more than a lark at first, a pastime for two women who needed to occupy their time rather than make money. Both were excellent cooks, by way of a Cordon Bleu course after school. At first it had been directors' lunches, or catering for small dinner parties ordered by busy or lazy wives. Their success had amazed them. But heavy lunches for directors were out nowadays, on both health and expense grounds, and less money to go around had forced more women to cook for themselves – just when making money had become necessary to Clare. Then somehow a new notion had developed. They had opened a shop in addition, selling the same sort of meals, fresh-chilled or frozen, and so making them more widely available: beautifully cooked and presented with that touch of flair and discrimination which set them miles apart from the ubiquitous TV dinner, but still less expensive than the service previously offered. Affordable as a treat, or for that special occasion, without ruining the budget, the new venture had widened their clientele, and they now had customers from all walks of life. They were also – though they never let it be known – finding outlets in some of the better hotels and restaurants in the area.

It had meant taking on officially approved premises in the town in line with EC directives, and equipping themselves with new technology, and some staff, though it remained essentially a small enterprise. Neither woman wanted it to grow beyond itself. Taking on Barbie at a small wage in return for the flat over the premises had been a stroke of genius, though, and with David Neale now to look after the finances they were well accommodated.

Sometimes, Clare regretted the move. It had been fun, just she and Ellie working quietly and companionably together, here in her own huge, Aga-warmed kitchen. There was something about its special ambience that induced creative cooking, about the long hours spent slicing and dicing, constructing new recipes while they gossiped and planned and laughed together amidst the delicious aromas of cooking food. Oversized by modem standards, a disaster when she and Tim had first come to the mill, the kitchen now had blue drag-painted units and honey-coloured walls, spiced with sharp white paint. Bright curtains at the windows, and the old uneven flagstones replaced by homely Italian tiles. Tim had rolled his eyes over that, but Clare had gone ahead, anyway, not prepared in this case to sacrifice hygiene and convenience for authenticity. The new tiles made the kitchen warmer, they went with the decor, and you didn't get irremovable gunge in between the cracks. ‘Well, anyway, she defended her choice, ‘Ellie likes it.'

‘Ellie doesn't have to live in it,' Tim had rejoined, after a pause. Clare had said nothing.

He could have driven them in to Lavenstock this morning – he was a better driver than she was, or at any rate, his recklessness was curbed when he had his family with him – had he not been staying overnight at his mother's flat in Edgbaston, as he often did when he was out late to dinner. But Clare didn't care to put that to the test by telephoning him there, and hearing the lies which were still lies, even when spoken in his mother's aristocratic tones. In Sibyl Wishart's eyes, Tim could do no wrong, she would go to the scaffold for him, and though she'd forgiven Clare for Tim wanting to marry her when the extent of her father's fortune had been revealed, she'd never allowed any real friendship to develop between herself and her daughter-in-law. She had cooled off even more when she discovered Sam Nash had no intention of bailing out his indigent new in-laws in return for the distinguished and respected old name conferred upon Clare, and her introduction to the county set – which Clare disconcertingly didn't care about, anyway.

The big wall clock struck quarter to eight and Clare wrote a note for Jackie, the young woman who came to clean for her on Thursdays, another to the milkman. One to herself to remind her to pick up some dry-cleaning. Amy pushed her chair back and carried her breakfast things to stack in the dishwasher. ‘Shouldn't we be off a bit earlier, Mum, with this horrible fog?'

‘OK, I'm ready, give Richie a shout.' There was ten minutes yet before they need set off, but Richie would wait at least that long before making an appearance, in order to register his unwillingness.

Amy went to call her brother, barely raising her precise little voice. Yet Clare knew from experience how surprisingly penetrating and commanding it was. A younger version of her mother, with her smooth blonde hair curving round her face in parentheses, Amy was a composed, collected sixteen-year-old. Unlike Richie, she wasn't given to rebellion. Somewhere around the age of eleven, she'd decided she wanted to be a doctor, and since then nothing had deflected her from her ambition. She worked hard at the necessary subjects and did well at them, without being obsessive about it. She was good at games, too, and popular. She didn't dress outrageously, and kept her room tidy. She was such a
good
girl, without Richie's difficult moods, no trouble at all. But it would be nice, sometimes, to have known what she was thinking.

At that point in her mother's reflections Amy, who had cleared the rest of the table and was shrugging herself into her school blazer, suddenly cried out, ‘It's Daddy!' as a four-wheel drive scrunch of gravel announced Tim's arrival at the front of the house. A car door slammed. She flew across the kitchen to take his grip as he came in the door, throwing herself into his arms. The fog was still there, thick as curdled cream outside the door, but indoors the sun shone for Amy.

Tim's first thought was to pick up his morning mail from the old majolica dish on the dresser, where it was always placed. His face darkened as he read a couple of letters – one, as Clare had noted from the envelope, from the bank – then stuffed them into the pocket of his Barbour. She looked at him quickly, trying to assess the mood he was in, as he strode across to the stove, held his hands out to its heat. He looked haggard. Maybe he was more concerned about his money worries than she gave him credit for. Despite his obvious tiredness, he said, ‘It's really nasty out there, come on, I'll drive you all into town.'

Where had he been last night, that his conscience was pushing him to make amends? Not at his mother's flat, Clare was certain. Richie appeared in the doorway in time to hear the last words. ‘Hi, Dad. Can I drive?'

‘Let's leave it till you've had a bit more experience before tackling this sort of stuff, Rich, OK?' Tim said absently.

‘OK,' Richie responded equably.

And Clare, noticing her son's easy acceptance of the refusal, despaired. She could view Tim dispassionately and hate what she saw, or what he'd become, even wonder how she could ever have really loved him; yet, seeing him with Richie, and remembering the time when her heart, like her daughter's, had done a dance, too, whenever she saw him, she could somehow find it in her heart to try and forgive him once more.