There were many paths to the dog cemetery, but Bella chose the route that rose up from behind the old stable block, simply because it was the one she knew best. While Grace lived here, these woods had been more like a jungle – wild and impenetrable, so much so that the way had had to be cleared by woodcutters before the hearse could pass through to collect her body. Even now, the land had an untamed and untameable quality about it: the maze of narrow pathways which ran back and forth across it were not man-made, it was said, but had been cut by a lone stag which appeared on the peninsula shortly after Grace’s death. Bella had no idea if it were true or not, but the paths remained long after the stag had moved on, and the tale was one of the kinder myths that had been spun around her sister’s isolation. It saddened her to hear Grace scorned by strangers: her privacy, her desire to honour the animals she had loved, her refusal to allow any living thing, beast or plant, to be destroyed on her land – these were codes that seemed oddly out of kilter to a generation that accepted cruelty and waste as natural and inevitable, although Bella could not help feeling that the eccentricity lay not with her sister but with the world.
The route she had chosen also had the advantage of being the most direct‚ and, with the light dwindling and rain threatening, she was anxious to spend as little time in the woods as possible. Chaplin ran ahead of her, excited by the novelty of an evening walk, and Bella was glad of his company. A sharp right-hand bend in the path led her away from the village and deeper into thick woodland, and she realised that the open spaces around the hotel had fooled her into underestimating how dark it would be among the trees. In a matter of seconds, the lamplight from the Piazza and the comforting silhouette of Portmeirion’s skyline vanished as completely as if they had never existed. But daylight was no good for what she needed to do, and she couldn’t risk being interrupted. Resisting the temptation to turn back, she fumbled in her bag for the torch she had brought with her and shone its beam determinedly onto the path ahead.
She longed for the release of the storm. The air was heavy and suffocating, closing in on her as she walked, and already her dress clung uncomfortably to her body. It was a relief when she reached a crossroads and the trees cleared, allowing the sky back in for a few precious moments. The cemetery lay a short distance ahead. She moved forward, but a rabbit shot out of the bushes, startling her, and Chaplin gave chase before she could stop him. She called the dog back but he ignored her, and Bella had to change direction to find him. A dark silhouette rose up ahead of her‚ and she stared at it in horror. For some reason, she had taken it for granted that the cottage was long gone, razed to the ground when the land was sold, but its shell was still there, a reminder of past obligations unfulfilled. She had turned away from so much of her family’s grief and a sense of justice had never burned strongly inside her unless it was personal; now her home had pulled her back, and she was shocked by how strongly she felt an emotional bond with the people she had left behind and a physical connection to the earth which held them – a physical connection made more intense by the knowledge of her own mortality.
Unsettled, she clipped Chaplin’s lead onto his collar and dragged him sharply away from the ruins, then retraced her footsteps to the crossroads. The luxury of the clearing was short-lived: when nature reasserted itself, the shadow of the trees was worse than ever‚ and, in the darkness, the woodland’s age and lush profusion seemed menacing and other-worldly. The path narrowed again, forcing its way through old firs and rhododendron bushes, then climbing steeply as if daring Bella to reach her destination. She could only have been walking for ten minutes or so, but it felt much longer; the illness that she had refused to acknowledge was making itself known now with alarming regularity‚ and she paused to get her breath, leaning against a tree for support. Chaplin seemed to sense her anxiety; he stared into the blackness of the undergrowth, ears pricked, tail taut and quivering, straining at his lead to go back the way they had come. Gently, she pulled him on, but they had not gone far before she stopped again and looked back over her shoulder. Had she heard footsteps? She coiled the leather round her hand a couple of times, instinctively wanting the dog closer, and listened carefully, but the woods were silent and she blamed her imagination.
As soon as she moved on, she heard them again‚ and this time they sounded very close, mirroring her movements, stopping and starting when she did. She longed to switch off her torch, knowing that it placed her firmly in the sights of whoever was behind her, but she needed the light to find her way, even if it made her vulnerable. Willing herself to stay calm, she quickened her pace‚ but the noise quickened too‚ and, just as she was about to sink to the ground in despair, something in its rhythm told her how stupid she was being. The path was dry and hard from a long summer, and all she could hear was the echo of her own footsteps. It wasn’t surprising that her mind was playing tricks, aided and abetted by the gloom of the woods and the knowledge of what she had come here to find. She walked on more confidently, but – now that it had been awakened – the instinct to fear could not be entirely dispelled. Ridiculously, because it was something she never did, she began to hum quietly to herself.
When she saw the old pheasant hide, she knew she was close to the cemetery‚ but she had forgotten quite how suddenly it appeared. Her torch picked out the wooden carving of a dog which stood at its entrance, as still and lifeless as the companions it guarded. Chaplin whimpered and stared at her reproachfully, sensing that this was a place of death, and Bella had a pang of guilt at having brought him here. ‘Don’t worry, honey,’ she said, crouching down to reassure him. ‘I wouldn’t do it to you.’ She looked around her and shivered. So much loss, so many friendships cut short – and now, so much guilt. The cemetery had always spoken to her of desolation, not comfort or solace. It was the last place in the world that she would ever want to leave someone she loved; better that they should burn in Hell than lie cold and alone in such unforgiving soil.
The rich scent of pine and the melancholy sound of birds roosting served only to darken Bella’s mood. Reluctantly, she hooked Chaplin’s lead around the wooden dog, sparing him from any more distress, and walked alone into the circle of graves. She moved slowly, avoiding the tangle of twigs and branches which crawled at head height through the air. The summer growth had become so densely entwined that very little rain could find its way between the leaves, and the groundcover was dry and brittle underfoot. A branch snapped as she stepped on it, holly scratched at her face, and, in her mind, Bella imagined bones breaking, felt fingers touching her skin. She shone her torch round to identify the grave she had been told about, the tangible proof of her brother’s guilty secret, but something in the cemetery’s defiant peace made her hesitate. After all these years, what good would it do anyone to discover the truth behind Rhiannon Erley’s disappearance? Then she saw the marker in front of her – a mound of rough stones, more like a cairn than a traditional memorial, and its poignancy gave Bella her answer. As she knelt down to examine its careful formation, the dank, fetid smell of earth rose up to greet her.
The second time she heard it, there was no mistaking the sound, no blaming her imagination. Footsteps circled the cemetery – slow and predatory, making no attempt at secrecy, and it was this very openness that frightened Bella most: it told her that any hope of escape was already lost to her. She stood up and swung her torch round defiantly, desperate to put a name to the evil that threatened her, but its beam was too weak to reach the edge of the burial place‚ and, without thinking, she threw it away from her in frustration. Deprived of any definite form, the footsteps became more sinister than ever, crawling insidiously into her mind and fashioning horror after horror. Behind her, Chaplin growled, then began to bark furiously, but the barking stopped as suddenly as it had started. Fearful that her dog had been hurt, she went to retrieve the torch to look for him but, before she could pick it up, the light from the beam went out.
And then she felt it. A presence, unbearably close. The terror that had so far failed to overwhelm her did so now with a dreadful, all-consuming force. Blindly, she turned to run‚ but the panic disoriented her‚ and she had no idea how to find the path out of the cemetery. Something moved to her left‚ and she stumbled in the opposite direction, but it must have been a trick of the shadows because she realised immediately that she had in fact moved towards the danger. A hand reached out to her face. She ducked to avoid it‚ and the holly scratched her cheek again, deeper this time, its prickles sharper than she would ever have imagined possible. She tripped and fell, and her exhausted body longed to stay where it was and submit to the earth, but the primeval instinct for survival was still strong enough in her to force her to her feet. She wiped the damp, rotting soil from her skin, sickened by the smell of death that clung to her so stubbornly, refusing to be brushed away, and a sharp pain shot down her cheek as she rubbed it. Her hand came away wet with blood. Only when she saw the knife flash towards her face again did she realise that what she had believed to be a holly tree was something far more deadly.
With a scream, she broke free for the final time‚ but she had lost all control now and crashed against the nearest gravestone. On her knees, she began to crawl like an animal through the undergrowth, but all the time she was aware of someone walking behind her, taunting her with the possibility of escape whilst waiting for the moment to strike. At last, the game was up and hands grabbed her ankles and dragged her roughly back to the middle of the graveyard. Her face scraped along the ground, rubbing dirt and leaves and pine needles into the open wound. The agony was almost enough to make her faint, but her body refused her the oblivion she craved. Out of nowhere, she heard a mournful, pathetic whimpering; just for a moment, she allowed herself to hope that Chaplin was alive after all, but the noise was too close‚ and it did not take her long to realise that it came from her own throat.
And then the knife was there again, driven with force through her hand so that she was pinned to the floor. Instinctively, Bella yanked her arm upwards, but the sight of the blade piercing her flesh made her gag, and the drag of the knife through her skin as it was pulled slowly out left her weak and defenceless long before the pain had time to register. The knife passed back and forth across her body, cutting rather than stabbing‚ to prolong her agony, indiscriminate in where it landed and moving so swiftly that she barely felt it touch her skin. Sobbing, she rolled over onto her back, wanting the knife to strike where it mattered, offering herself to its deadly caress if only it would do its work swiftly. Still the torture continued, but there was a different, frenzied quality to it now, as if her submission were an incentive to even greater violence. The knife was thrust repeatedly into her stomach, deep enough for her to feel the hilt against her skin. Her body jerked in some terrible, violent dance, as if she were possessed, and she felt her life seeping away in the warm trails of blood which mapped the blade’s path. As the knife worked its way systematically upwards, reaching her chest and neck, she heard a gurgling sound coming from her throat but it was the last thing she was aware of. She had closed her eyes for good long before the knife sought them out.
Glad of some air and some peace, Josephine slipped away from the hotel and found Neptune in darkness. She knocked softly on the door, thinking that Marta might simply have fallen asleep after a long day, but all was silent. Perhaps they had missed each other and she was already back at the hotel with Lydia, but Josephine was reluctant to go and find out; tired of dancing around her own feelings and other people’s, she wanted Marta on her own or not at all.
The strong scent of roses and lavender drew her further into the Piazza, and she sat down on one of the benches. This was her favourite part of Portmeirion, particularly during the evening. The glamour of the hotel was exciting in small doses, but there was something about the village itself that appealed more to her imagination. The visitors had gone, leaving the imprint of their day in the air and the promise of return in the neatly stacked chairs and clean café tables, and a few of the residents were taking a stroll after dinner. Their voices sounded deceptively clear across the peace of the square, making them seem closer than they really were, and it interested Josephine that Portmeirion played tricks with the ear as well as with the eye. The atmosphere reminded her of solitary walks at dusk through small French towns, when the character of a place seemed to reveal itself more honestly, freed from the confines of tour guides and history books. Or perhaps it was simply that
she
had felt free.
She smelt the cigarette smoke before she felt Marta’s hand on her shoulder. ‘Running away from your own party?’
Josephine smiled. ‘Age must have some privileges.’ She took Marta’s hand and pulled her down onto the bench next to her. ‘Anyway, I was looking for you. Where have you been?’
‘Just for a walk. It was far too hot inside. Sorry.’
‘Don’t apologise. Sitting out here is exactly what I need after coffee with the Hitchcocks.’ She kissed Marta’s cheek, noticing the faint scent of gardenia on her skin. ‘And you’re worth waiting for.’
‘I’m glad to hear it.’ The words were playful, but Josephine knew that they had each said exactly what the other wanted to hear. ‘So was Hitch’s cabaret as awful as you expected it to be?’
‘Worse, if that’s possible. He delivered some sort of definitive lecture on fear, then wound everyone up and watched them go. It was good to see him squirm when it turned nasty, though,’ she admitted. ‘I thought Archie was going to have to get his notebook out.’
‘Didn’t Alma rein him in?’
‘She had the sense to stay out of it until Bella Hutton turned up. Is there an issue between those two?’
Marta shrugged. ‘I don’t know, but I can see why you’re out here. Where’s everyone else?’
‘Back at the hotel, except Archie. He went to have a drink with Bridget.’
‘Ah. Leaving his notebook at home, presumably.’
‘Quite.’
Marta stubbed her cigarette out on the floor. ‘Do you mind?’
‘No,’ Josephine said truthfully, taking the packet out of her hand. ‘For what it’s worth, I liked Bridget.’
‘So what
were
you so deep in thought about just now?’
‘Nothing very original, I’m afraid.’ She paused while Marta lit her cigarette. ‘I promised myself I wouldn’t start taking stock of my life at every big birthday, but that’s exactly what I was doing. Forty obviously matters more than I thought it would.’
‘You must be pleased, though? You’ve got a Hitchcock movie, a string of stage hits and another book about to be published. Oh, and half a racehorse. That’s not bad for forty.’
‘But I haven’t got you.’
Her directness seemed to take Marta by surprise. ‘Why do you say that?’ she asked. ‘I’ll move heaven and earth to be with you, Josephine, whenever you ask me to. I don’t know how to make that any clearer.’
‘It’s not you I’m doubting,’ Josephine said, looking out across the square. ‘But that sort of life isn’t real, is it?’ Her eye fell on a bust of Shakespeare, perched playfully on one of the balconies that linked the two buildings on the southern side of the village and convincingly lifelike from a distance. ‘We’re like one of Clough’s tricks, you and I: it’s beautiful and intense and exciting, but if you look at it for long enough you see straight through it.’
‘You told me not to ask any more of you,’ Marta said quietly. ‘You said that’s how you wanted it to be.’
‘No. I said that was how it
had
to be. It was never a matter of choice.’ Josephine took Marta’s face in her hands, wanting her to understand that this frustration was only with herself. ‘But there are times when I’d swap intense and exciting for something more normal, for what you and Lydia have. You’re not continually analysing your own relationship. You laugh, you bicker, you look out for each other and make plans.’ She paused. ‘You talk about moving to Hollywood together.’
‘Is that what this is about?’ Marta asked, exasperated. ‘I don’t want to go to Hollywood, Josephine. It isn’t an option.’
‘No, you’re probably right. I think this evening put Lydia off any travel plans she was tempted to make, at least for now.’
‘Not just for now. I’m not going anywhere. There’s no way that I would ever . . .’
Josephine cut her off with a kiss. ‘Please, Marta – don’t look that far ahead. It’s tempting fate, and I don’t want either of us to make promises we might not be able to keep. Things change. People change.’
‘I didn’t know you felt like this. I thought it was out of sight, out of mind the minute you crossed the border.’
‘Don’t think I haven’t tried, but I can’t do it any more. I can’t be content in that other life because part of me is always with you.’ Such thoughts were a familiar part of the hours she spent alone‚ but Josephine had never intended to speak them aloud; suddenly‚ though‚ there seemed little point in keeping anything from Marta. ‘Sometimes, just for a minute, I let myself think about what it would be like if you and I were free to do whatever we wanted‚’ she admitted. ‘I imagine you in my house, in my bed; going shopping or walking over the sands at Nairn. And then I have to stop because it hurts too much and I can’t bear all the things I don’t know about you, the things you only find out when you’re with someone all the time.’ The quiet of the square conspired with Marta’s silence to make Josephine feel vulnerable and uncertain. ‘Because I’m
not
free, Marta. I have people who expect things from me. A father to keep an eye on, a house and a reputation to look after, sisters who take things for granted now because there was a time when it suited me to let them. I could never drop everything and go to Hollywood with you, even if you wanted me to.’
‘And neither could Lydia. Have you met her mother?’
Josephine laughed. ‘Once was enough. But that’s what I mean by normal. I could never share my whole life with you in the way that Lydia does. I have to keep it all in compartments and remember to be someone slightly different in each one. Lydia’s always Lydia. All right, she flirts with the odd producer if it’ll get her a part, but pretending to be someone else is her job. It shouldn’t be mine.’
‘So what are you trying to tell me?’
Josephine heard the fear in her voice and wondered how she had managed to stray so far from what she really wanted Marta to understand. ‘That I love you,’ she said, trying again. ‘I love you and I’m scared – scared that I won’t be able to do all the things I want to do in the time I’ve got left. Scared because there’s another war coming, and people will disappear and the joy will go out of everything. Scared because I’m trapped by my own decisions and I might never be able to find a way back. That’s
my
fear – running out of time before anything changes. And you’re the only person I can say that to. The only person who makes it go away.’
Marta let her hand rest gently on Josephine’s cheek. ‘And you don’t think that’s real?’ she asked softly. ‘Come on – let’s go somewhere more private.’
Josephine stood and turned towards Neptune, but Marta caught her arm and nodded in the opposite direction. They left the square and took the steps down to the beach, using the lights from the hotel to guide them, and then, as they faded, a torch which Marta had brought with her. ‘You came prepared,’ Josephine said dryly, wondering where Marta was taking her. ‘I wouldn’t have thought you were the Girl Guide type.’
‘And you’d be right. I can’t say uniforms have ever been my thing.’
The tide was out, and they followed the headland round until they reached a stretch of coastline dotted with tiny coves. The path narrowed and Marta slowed down to let Josephine walk in front. Up ahead, she could see a faint light coming from one of the small caves; it was further inland than the rest and, as she crossed the sand to reach it, she realised that it was filled with candles, tucked into crevices in the rock where they were sheltered from the night air. The floor was covered in blankets and cushions, and a picnic hamper stood waiting on a makeshift table. Josephine stared at it in astonishment. ‘This is what you’ve been doing?’
‘Happy birthday.’ Marta stood close behind her and kissed the back of her neck. ‘We’re just in time – it’s not even midnight.’ She put her arms round Josephine’s hips and spoke softly into her hair. ‘I know it’s hard, but you don’t always have to imagine it.’
Josephine turned and looked at Marta for a long time. ‘I once asked you not to change anything about my life, didn’t I?’ Marta nodded. ‘Well, now I’m begging you not to leave it as it is.’