Father Unknown (26 page)

She imagined Nick running through the trees in the almost-dark. Was he heading for the right place? Who would he find when he got there? Was he already too late?

For the second time that evening, Reynard Woodman's voice shocked her.

‘Poor Suzie. He's left you alone in the dark, has he? With a man he suspects of having violent intentions? Not very chivalrous.'

His smile gleamed white in the reflected light of the river. There was a softness in his voice. It sounded like pity.

A flicker of resentment ran through her. Why
had
Nick been so ready to run off and leave her alone in the twilight?

Reynard seemed to understand that. ‘Wouldn't you like to come aboard and do your sentry duty in comfort? I could rustle up a gin and tonic for us both.'

‘It's not dark,' she said, like a quarrelsome child.

It was true. There was still some light over the river.

Blood pounded in her throat. She did not want to go on board with him. Even though her fear of him was irrational.

‘Oh, Suzie. Isn't this all just a tad ridiculous? We're old friends.'

He was putting her own thoughts into words. And it was the old friendly smile, though she could barely see the crinkling around his eyes.

But she was afraid of that smile now. Afraid that she would succumb to its magic, as so many people did. Millie, Tamara, the black-haired Pet.

Scolding herself for being an idiot, she turned without replying and began to walk away. Nick had told her to watch the boat, but she couldn't. She dared not stay, alone with Reynard Woodman, while night closed in around them.

Suzie sped up the gentle slope with what dignity she could manage. She felt a mixture of guilt and frustration. Nick had set her to watch the boat. They had to know if Reynard left it, or Pet came back. Most of all, if Pet returned with Tamara. Her mind recoiled from thinking what
that
might mean.

But she was too afraid, and too humiliated by her own fear, to stay with Reynard. It made her hot to think that, even now, he was probably laughing at her. He had outwitted her, the clever red fox. She could barely admit to herself how much she still wanted him to think well of her. To earn that smile. It was easy to see how he could enchant so many millions of fans.

He had been mocking her fears. He knew what she thought he had done. Instead of exploding with rage, he had poked fun at her.

It was not the way a guilty man would behave. Was it?

She had no clear idea where she was going. The path twisted round bushes and trees. She came round a corner and almost stumbled over something grey in the grass.

She bent over and let her hand trace its contours. A stone dwarf peered up at her. The twilight made enigmatic shadows of his eyes. He was grinning at her.

What did she really know about the Gambles' tangled relationships? It was all guesswork.

Like her family tree. It might all be a fiction. It only needed one undiscovered family secret. A child whose father was not who the records said he was. It must have happened. She would never know.

She must get control of herself. Nick was depending on her. She must find a higher spot from where she would have a view of the river and watch the boat from there. It was growing harder as the dusk deepened. But if she did not retreat too far, she should still see movement on the landing stage, where the light lingered longest along the river.

She set off again, angling closer towards where she thought the summer house was. Now that she was in the wood, she could no longer see it. The upward slope was all that guided her. She must stop as soon as she came to a clearing that overlooked the river.

She was conscious of her own rapid breathing, of the rustle of foliage as she pushed up the narrow, half-overgrown path. It seemed to be getting louder.

It was only slowly that she realized it was not just the sound of her own progress. Someone was rushing through the bushes ahead. Feet thudding on the path. Whoever it was, was running towards her.

She leaped aside, crouching to hide until she could see who it was. Petronella? Running from what? Her heart raced as she pictured the possibility of the scene the young woman might have left behind. Why was she in such a frantic hurry to get away? Suzie's mind screamed that Nick had found the summer house too late.

A hurtling figure came clearly into sight through the shadows. The glimmer of a pale T-shirt. Short white hair.

‘Millie!'

Suzie leaped upright, blocking the path so fast that her daughter cannoned into her.

Millie screamed, in the second before her brain caught up with reality. ‘Mum?' she gasped. ‘What are you doing here?'

Suzie gripped Millie's arms. ‘Where's Tamara? Why have you left her on her own? What's happened?'

Millie shook her head, fighting for breath. ‘I never found her. Frances told me . . . how to find the summer house. She said Tamara was hiding there. But I got lost. All these twisty paths. And . . . and there are these spooky things. I bumped right into one. It was hanging from a tree. A giant bat. I didn't know it was made of willow, did I? I nearly died of fright. And it was getting so dark. All I wanted to do was to get back to the house and Dad.' She clutched her mother. ‘Will she be all right? Has Reynard come? Does he know she's hiding?'

‘Yes. I'm afraid he's guessed. But it's all right. He's down at the boat.'

‘The
boat
?'

‘Didn't you know? No, of course you didn't. Frances was expecting him to come by car, but instead, he and that woman Pet took the boat. It's down at the landing stage.'

‘But he's not coming to look for her?'

‘He came up to the house. Frances wouldn't tell him anything, so he went back to his launch. Only . . . Pet isn't there. We've a horrible feeling she's up in these woods, searching for Tamara. And she's probably seen the summer house. Nick's trying to get to it first. I just pray he does.'

‘Why? What would she do?' Millie's eyes shone wide in her pale face.

‘I don't know. Whatever she thinks will help Reynard's career.'

‘Mum!' Millie's fingers clenched tight around Suzie's arm.

TWENTY-EIGHT

‘
W
e have to hurry.'

The knowledge that Tamara was alone shocked Suzie. In the anxious minutes before she met Millie, she had been consoling herself that there was little Petronella could do against two girls. The news changed everything.

‘Do you know the way?' Millie panted. ‘I lost it.'

‘Sort of. Did Frances tell you to look for this white summer house?'

‘Yes. She said it looked a bit like a Greek temple.'

‘Then I'm sure that's what we saw. To the right of the landing stage, on a little hill. Nick's heading for it.'

‘I hope he had more luck finding it than I did,' Millie complained. ‘The paths keep twisting and forking.'

Suzie increased her pace. But Millie was right. It was hard to keep her sense of direction.

‘Should have brought my knapsack. I always carry a compass on the moor.'

‘Ow!' Millie had collided with something in the gloom. ‘I've stubbed my toe.'

Suzie's brain was working fast. It was becoming harder to see where they were going. Outside the wood, the long summer day had not completely faded, but here they were stumbling through a different world. Branches reached out to claw at them. Shadowy undergrowth masked the cavities around tree roots and uneven stones. It would be so easy to miss a fork in the path and lose the summer house entirely. She wondered if she dared call out to Nick.

But who else might hear her?

A sudden clearing surprised her. The air was lighter. She had the sense of trees retreating. But the path ended in grass. Could she find it again on the other side? There was a dark clump of bushes in the centre, masking her view.

Millie pushed through the leaves to overtake her. ‘Come on, Mum!' She plunged forward. And screamed.

Appalling images raced through Suzie's mind of what Millie might have found. She dashed after her.

She stopped short, aghast at the different horror which confronted her. These were not bushes in the centre. And it was nothing like what she had imagined.

Rearing in the half light in front of her was a leg. A crooked leg whose joint was almost on a level with her eyes. Beyond it was another. And yet more. A gigantic dark body hung suspended between the many splayed legs. An enormous spider.

Millie was clutching her, shivering uncontrollably, trying to drag Suzie back.

‘Mum! It's horrible! Is it alive?'

Suzie tried to still her own pounding heart. ‘No. Don't be silly.' She put out an unwilling hand and felt the crooked leg. ‘Look. It's just another willow sculpture. It's quite clever, really. I wonder if Frances makes them.'

‘It's sick! Why would anyone want to put something so gross in their wood?'

‘I dare say it just looks a fun thing in daylight.' Is that true of this whole evening? she wondered. Will we wake up in the morning and wonder how we could ever have believed the sensational ideas that are frightening us now?

But Tamara was terrified of something. Both day and night.

‘I'm getting disorientated. I think we have to get round to the other side of this spider. The path should go on from there. I only hope there isn't more than one choice.'

Rationality did not entirely take away her reluctance to pass that massive brooding figure. It had been fashioned in realistic detail. Head and thorax, prominent eyes. Eight rearing legs. The raw materials of the forest had been fashioned into something much more sinister.

‘Help me,' she said to Millie, when they had rounded it, giving it a wide berth. ‘Can you find anything that looks like another path? I really don't want to get lost and have to blunder through the trees.'

‘Listen!' Millie said suddenly. ‘What was that?'

Suzie held her breath. The evening bird-calls had fallen silent. Then, distant but urgent, she heard a shout.

‘
Tamara
!
Look out
!'

‘That's Nick! Something's happened. Quick!'

She dashed into the trees towards the call. Her desire to find a proper path was forgotten. She plunged through bushes, avoiding at the last moment tree trunks that rushed towards her in the gloom. Her feet caught in looping brambles, sending her pitching forwards, almost to the ground.

‘Wait!' she gasped to Millie.

They listened again. There was nothing now.

Desperately hoping that she had got the direction right, Suzie ran on again. The slope was rising. She could only pray that she not been wrong about the origin of that single cry. That this was the mound on which the summer house stood. That Tamara and Nick were there. And no one else.

The sky was grey above her now. She snatched at hope. The trees had been felled around that white building glimpsed from the river.

It was there, up in front of her. Glimmering in the dusk. Faintly Grecian. A little building with a pillared porch.

She stopped to draw breath.

Millie whispered beside her. ‘That's it, isn't it? Where she's hiding?'

‘
Was
hiding. Why did Nick shout to her like that?'

They scrambled up the last incline.

Slowly, Suzie mounted the porch steps. She peered inside. ‘Tamara?' her voice asked softly.

Nothing stirred. No sound of frightened breathing.

Millie joined her. ‘It's me, Tamara. Millie.'

There was no answer.

‘She's not here.' Millie turned on Suzie, accusingly.

Suzie nerved herself to go inside and feel the shadows.

There were plastered walls, a cold stone floor. Suddenly, she recoiled, thinking she had touched something living. But it was only the softer feel of cloth. There was a line of serrated metal. A zip.

‘She
was
here,' said Suzie, backing out. ‘There's a sleeping bag.'

‘Then where
is
she? And where's Dad?'

Suzie turned. The river glistened faintly below them, like a snail track winding between woods and fields. More clearly than she had expected, she picked out the white of Reynard's launch, the gleam from the cabin. To her immense relief, there was no sound of the engine starting. Petronella must not yet have got Tamara to the boat. If that was her plan.

But would she have still wanted to, knowing the Fewings were in pursuit? Might she have felt driven to act more quickly than faking an accident on the river?

On a sudden impulse, Suzie dashed around to the back of the summer house.

A broader track led down through the trees, towards the unseen road. Even as she stared down it, Suzie caught a glimpse in the dusk of a running figure. Dark top, lighter trousers.

‘There she goes!' She pointed.

‘Who?' Millie cried. ‘Tamara . . . or that Petronella woman?'

The thought flashed through Suzie's mind that she was supposed to be watching the boat and Reynard. But the drama that mattered was right in front of her. Whoever this was, she was running away from the river.

Suzie did not make a conscious decision. Her feet were flying down the mound. She was aware of Millie sprinting beside her, pulling ahead.

The track that cut through the trees on this side of the hill was broad. For a few blessed moments they were running in grey half-light, not the darkness of the woods. Yet as they plunged lower, it became harder to distinguish the pale trousers of that racing figure in front of them.

Then the ground levelled out and the shadows were upon them again. The broad ride separated into smaller paths, forking in all directions.