A Trick of the Mind (30 page)

‘I’ll have nowhere else to go when he comes back, until I get another assignment,’ Patrick said. ‘So it’s lucky we met, isn’t it, even in such dramatic
circumstances.’

‘What do you mean, another assignment?’ I asked. ‘You work on things in the City? Fish futures and stuff.’

He laughed.

‘That had you fooled! It was a joke. I don’t even know what a fish future is. No. I get by doing the odd deal here and there. Sailing rich bastards’ yachts back to ports so
they can be chartered again. Hey, baby, keep your eyes on the road!’

‘But where do you live? If you don’t own the apartment we’ve been in?’

‘Here and there,’ he said. ‘I sail boats from here to there and back again, and usually some guy lends me a place between jobs. But for tonight, we’ll stay at your
aunt’s house. Aunty May’s lovely house on the beach that she rejected me from all those years ago.’

‘Patrick! I need to be in London. I’ve got the painting to finish, I have things to do! I have to work. I can’t just drop everything.’

‘I think you can, Ellie,’ and he did what he always did now, waved his hand over his prosthetic, reminding me how much I owed him.

I drove on. We were heading up the M11 when something else occurred to me. ‘My studio, the containers, they are one of your sidelines, aren’t they? You do own
those, don’t you?’

‘One of Craig’s sidelines.’

‘You mean I’m working in a studio that belongs to someone else?’

‘It’s OK, Ellie. Don’t look so worried. He asked me to keep an eye on them while I was apartment-sitting and I figured it was better if they were used than sitting empty.
That’s why I suggested you use one. Keep going, Ellie. You’ve slowed down and there’s a juggernaut behind us getting impatient.’

‘But does he know? Does Craig know?’

‘Why are you so worried about Craig? Isn’t it me you should be worrying about?’

I glanced at him. He wore his little boy’s expression again, a look of hurt, the look that said I owed him something. More than something.

Everything.

I must keep calm.

I mustn’t stir him up.

‘Watch the road!’ he shouted then. ‘Don’t keep taking your eyes off it. I don’t want another injury to get over.’

I clutched the steering wheel tighter, fixed my eyes on the road ahead, glanced in the mirror to check Pepper was OK.

‘Then where do you get your money from?’ I asked quietly, once I got my breath back.

‘Ellie, too many questions for one night, darling. Now, like I say, why not drive rather than interrogating me? We don’t want a repeat of what you did to me on that road all those
weeks ago, do we? We don’t want me to lose the other leg!’

I didn’t speak for the rest of the journey. Patrick put music on through his iPod, and John Mayer accompanied us as we drove through the flat evening countryside. I yearned suddenly for
Finn’s music, something with a bit of instrumental variety. The sun was still high in the sky, though it was evening, and the fields had darkened since last time we came. The greens were
deeper, richer, and the blossom and rapeseed flowers had all gone. It felt heavy and sultry out there.

At last we turned off the main road onto the single road into Southwold.

I felt sick.

‘This is where it happened, Ellie, right here, do you remember now?’

Patrick took my hand and placed it on his thigh, where it was cut off at the base.

‘This is where you were responsible for the loss of my leg.’

I couldn’t reply, my jaw felt rigid. Jammed shut.

He had told me so many lies. Now I wondered, suddenly, could he possibly be lying about this?

There had never been any proof, other than his own memories, to say I had been responsible for the accident.

It was a hot evening, even the wind that came in through the car windows felt more like the hot blast of a hairdryer. It was growing dark when we arrived at May’s
house.

Warm air blew in from the sea.

I stood for a moment when I got out of the car, breathing the briny air deep into my lungs. It was OK, I told myself, it would all be OK. I would play this carefully, keep my wits about me. I
had a car, I could drive away if I had to.

I moved round to the boot, about to drag our bag out, but then I felt Patrick’s iron grip on my upper arm.

‘We’re not going in. We’re going to swim.’

‘No, Patrick. Not in the dark. It’s dangerous, and I’m not a strong swimmer.’

‘You’ll be fine. And I want to swim, so you have to help me. You have to do as I say, Ellie. I feel as if you’re somehow trying to slip away from me.’

These words frightened me more than any.

‘No, Patrick. I’m not. Of course I’m not.’

And there I was, helping Patrick silently down to the shore, holding his arm, helping him hobble with his crutch to the edge of the water.

‘Come here. You’ve had to do things for me, now I’ll do stuff for you.’

He began to undress me slowly, without speaking, a tenderness in his touch that was utterly convincing, utterly overpowering. I flinched as his fingers brushed my skin, tried to make it look as
though it was a shiver of desire.

His mouth was on my neck, his hands moving up over my back and under my arms, removing my clothes. I wanted to resist, my whole body shrank from him now, but, I thought,
it is better just to
do as he says. It’s safer this way.

Patrick had removed his prosthetic. He was holding a crutch in one hand and he took my hand with his free one and pulled me, his strength and balance remarkable, so that I had no choice but to
let him tug me into the water. Once he was in, diving through the waves, he moved so freely it made my heart ache.

The last rays of the sun disappeared over the horizon and the stars were thick in the clear sky above us.

I gasped at the bite of the water but quite soon the cold seemed to diminish, and felt almost soothing, a balm.

Patrick was a strong swimmer, no longer hindered by the uselessness of his damaged leg. He swam fast out into the darkness, beyond the end of the groynes. I followed at a distance. I was a slow
swimmer, afraid of getting out of my depth, and used the groynes as a marker. If I kept within them, I would be able to get back to the shore easily.

The mist appeared with a swiftness that was shocking, rolling in over the sea, snatching away the stars, veiling everything in a thick white blanket.

‘Patrick!’ I was afraid. I could feel the beginnings of panic that I wouldn’t make it back to the shore now it had vanished under the white mist and I turned, flailing my arms
though they seemed to make no impact on the strength of the current. I turned, shouted again. He didn’t reply.

‘Patrick, I can’t swim in this, come back!’

Pepper was on the shore, barking.

I needed to feel the shore. I pedalled my legs but the seabed had vanished beneath me. I moved my arms in breast stroke, though it felt as if they were getting me nowhere, until at last, when
they ached with exhaustion, I regained the feeling of stones beneath my feet, and it was then that an arm grabbed me from behind and pulled me back out into the invisible water.

‘Patrick. Please! Gently.’

He was turning me round and I was helpless as he positioned me so I was facing him. He took my hair in his hands and he was pulling it and my head was yanked backwards so I was staring through
beads of salty water, my eyes stinging, and I had to shut them tight, and then my whole face was under the water. I opened my mouth and it filled so that I spluttered, struggling for breath. I
pinched him hard and he let me go and I came up gasping for air. He was laughing. His arms clamped about me, looking down into my eyes. I could no longer feel the seabed beneath me again and gasped
for breath.

‘You know what, Ellie. We are now at the exact spot where Stef died.’

‘Don’t, Patrick.’

He was going to kill me!

He had somehow realised I had been thinking of leaving him and he was going to kill me!

I tried to swim back to the shore but he caught hold of me and turned me towards him again.

‘It’s true,’ he said. His voice had that high-pitched tone it had adopted in his bedroom when he’d first told me that Stef had tried to leave him. When I first wondered
whether he was completely sane.

‘I remember which groynes she was driving between when the boat went out of control,’ he said in his singsong voice. ‘I remember she was parallel with that post! It was almost
exactly here.’

The sea fret was dissolving as quickly as it had come, and the dark groynes were just visible now, waves smashing against them. My legs were exhausted with treading water.

‘I don’t want to hear about it.’

‘There was such a lot of blood, the water changed colour. Oh, I already told you. They found her face up, floating like this—’ And he turned me over so I was staring up at the
sky, which had cleared again now. Water sloshed over my face.

‘Please!’ I was gasping for air. ‘Stop it.’

‘It’s good to have you though, Ellie. It’s good to feel a warm, live, body here now. It’s so healing for my poor leg that you damaged.’

‘Please! I don’t like being out of my depth!’

‘You’re already out of your depth, don’t you think?’

‘What do you mean?’

And I was sinking beneath the water, struggling against his arms that had clamped mine behind me so I could only kick my legs to no avail.

‘You’re out of your depth getting involved with me, aren’t you? Coming to visit me in hospital, letting me believe we’d already met, playing me along when I was
vulnerable and had lost my memory.’

He yanked my hair again. ‘Just say, “Yes, Patrick. I’m out of my depth”,’ he commanded.

‘Yes, Patrick, I’m out of my depth.’

‘So I’ll do as you say.’

‘I’ll do as you say.’

‘I’ll live with you in the house where you always belonged.’

‘I’ll live with you.’

‘I won’t ever leave you.’

‘I won’t ever leave you.’

‘Or I’ll regret it the way Stef regretted it.’

‘Or I’ll regret it . . . please, please, let’s go back now!! I’m here for you. I’m yours. You know that!’

At last he released the pressure, let me go, and I turned and thrashed my way back to the shore.

Pepper leapt up at me, barking, and I picked him up and kissed his ragged fur.

I dried myself roughly with the clothes I’d left in a pile on the shore, pulled on my knickers and my T-shirt and walked back up the dark beach to May’s house. I was trying not to
cry.

Patrick followed me in.

I was shaking with cold, or with the shock of his taunting me in the water with his wife’s horrible death, the conviction he was about to kill me.

He said he wanted alcohol, and I went straight to the kitchen. There was still some whisky left in the bottle on the shelf. I took down two tumblers. I didn’t usually like whisky but I
needed it, to ease the shivers and to warm me up. May had an old spirit measure somewhere in one of the drawers. I rummaged about and as I looked my eye fell on the bib I’d found between the
floorboards when I’d first come down to sort her house.

I lifted it and looked at the funny hand-painted picture she must have done on the front of it for one of her children and the nursery rhyme.

‘There was a crooked man.’

I looked at the picture, a tiny figure beside a stile. Lopsided, crooked.

I put it in my handbag.

I handed Patrick his whisky, then I found old flat towels in the bathroom and dragged them out of the cupboard and chucked one round Patrick.

‘You’re a good girl, Ellie,’ he said. ‘You work hard to atone for all the harm you’ve done, don’t you? That little girl who died here when you were meant to
be watching her. Your kid Timothy at school. And me. But you’re making amends by doing all this. It’s good. You’re doing the right thing. Now, I need food. You cook and I’ll
build the fire. We can play at houses.’

He began to sing ‘Our house is a very very very fine house’ again, a song about home-building, about comfort. It felt wrong hearing the words coming out of Patrick’s mouth, in
my Aunty May’s cottage.

Not a comfort at all.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

‘We’ve got another month here then we have to move on,’ Patrick said. ‘It’s so lucky we’ve got your Aunty May’s lovely place by the
sea.’

We were back in London in the Wapping apartment.

My painting was almost complete. I didn’t remind Patrick it was only a few days until it was due to be shipped out to New York. Or that I had booked a flight to go out there too.

‘I’m going to the studio,’ I told Patrick on Thursday morning.

‘OK, babes. I’m making us bouillabaisse tonight. I’m popping over to Borough Market this morning, want to treat you. I’ll come and get you this afternoon and we can drive
back together. Work hard.’

And he leant over me, pulled me harshly to him and kissed me fiercely on the lips, taking my lower one between his teeth and biting it.

I was working extra hard at the studio. Powered on by the approaching deadline.

New York. There was always New York. Once I got there, I thought, I would be safe.

I didn’t have long. Patrick was coming to pick me up from the studio at five, he said, so he could travel back with me. I knew what he was doing, he was keeping tabs on
me. He was terrified I would do a runner. But where would I run to? Nowhere was safe after what I had done to him, and never confessed.

All I had was the little bib in my bag and the germ of a theory that was forming like a faint light glowing in the murk in my head. But I had to see my mother.

Ask her if she remembered a little boy who had stayed with Aunty May, ask if she remembered his name, what he looked like? If I took the train from King’s Cross I could be in Cambridge in
an hour, see Mum and be back by the early afternoon. Patrick was going to Borough Market, so he wouldn’t be coming to the studio this morning. He would never know he’d lost track of me
for a few hours.

I found Mum at the Apple Store, of course. She was sitting up on a stool at a large table among other middle-aged to elderly women bent over iPads and listening intently to the
workshop leader, a man with golden skin and long bronze hair who looked as if he had been moulded out of metal like a football trophy.