Never Alone (21 page)

You can hear Tess barking frantically as you cross the yard. She doesn’t sound ill, you think, and when you open the door she rushes out towards you, barking, crouching, baring her teeth. There is an overwhelming smell of disinfectant coming from the house.

‘All right, Tess, it’s only me…’

It takes a few moments before her tail, clamped between her thighs, starts a half-hearted wag. She approaches, head down, as if she’s expecting to be told off.

‘It’s all right, girl. Have you had a rough day? Yes, me too. I know. All right, then, come on.’

The kitchen floor is damp, freshly mopped. On the table is a handwritten note. In a neat, but wavering script, it says:

You have no idea who M is. You put the note back on the table, and fetch some dog biscuits from the cupboard for Tess, who parks her bum instantly and looks gleeful when she sees the bag of treats.

‘Good girl,’ you say, offering her a bone-shaped delight. It’s gone in less than a second. ‘Well,’ you say. ‘What are we going to do with you?’

You pull out your phone and send Sarah a text, letting her know that Tess seems fine. There is no immediate reply.

The house is warm, warmer than the cottage, but it feels strange being here without Sarah. You wander through to the living room, Tess following you. On the table beside the sofa is a framed picture of Sarah and Jim on their wedding day. You weren’t there, although you heard all about it from a mutual friend. It was an extravagant, showy wedding, which you thought was typical of Jim. A stately home, two hundred guests, fireworks, the lot. And yet, in this picture, you have to admit that they both look happy. Sarah looks beautiful, the way she always does, her hair held back with some kind of diamante hair clip. She is laughing and tilting her head back, while Jim is turned half-towards her, holding both her hands, looking at the camera. He looks into your eyes and it feels as though he is gloating.

‘Who’s laughing now, Jim, old mate?’ you say quietly, into the room.

Tess, sitting at your feet, looks towards the hallway and whines.

From upstairs, you hear the sound of the floorboards creaking.

Someone is up there.

Basil is to be kept in overnight for observation, but the vet describes his condition as ‘stable’. They have given him activated charcoal to absorb any remaining toxin. He has perked up a little after being put on a drip. The X-ray revealed no unexpected blockages or foreign objects. The blood results won’t be back till tomorrow, but they will indicate whether, as seems most likely, he has been poisoned.

‘Labs eat everything,’ the vet tells her. ‘If you’re out in the sticks, chances are he’s picked up some poison somewhere.’

‘Poison?’

‘It happens sometimes, I’m afraid. If we knew what it was he’d eaten, we could get some specialist help from the Poisons Line. But you don’t remember him eating anything, while you were out walking? Perhaps you could ask the neighbours, see if anyone’s put something down?’

Sarah thinks about Harry and Moira Button. They wouldn’t set out poison. And the nearest farm buildings are a few miles away. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says, ‘I can’t, I just can’t think how he could have…’

‘Don’t worry,’ the vet reassures her. ‘He’s stable now, anyway. We’ll keep an eye on him overnight. If anything happens we’ll let you know, but for now all we can do is wait and see.’

Driving home without him, Sarah feels numb. She keeps going over and over it in her head, the walk this morning. Last night, what was Basil doing while Tess was sniffing around
the croft? He was sheltering down by the back door, wasn’t he? Maybe he picked up something out of the bins? Maybe he found a rabbit, or a rat, that itself had eaten something? He looked guilty, didn’t he? But she hadn’t thought that at the time. He’d looked cold and wet and fed up.

And, in any case, he was fine this morning. If he’d eaten something last night, he’d have been showing symptoms by this morning, wouldn’t he?

Back at home, Tess is pleased to see her but subdued, sitting in her bed with her tail at only half-wag.

‘I know, girl,’ Sarah says, rubbing her ears. ‘Basil is a silly boy. You’re much too clever to eat something bad, aren’t you?’

The kitchen is unexpectedly spotless. There is a note on the table in a handwriting she does not recognise, but the ‘M’ can only be Moira. She thinks about going across the road to see the Buttons but they will be busy; she doesn’t want to interrupt preparations for their journey tomorrow.

She half-expected Aiden to be in here, but he must have gone back to the cottage. She will go and look in a minute. He promised her a coffee, didn’t he?

Sarah sits wearily at the kitchen table, checks her phone, just in case, but there is nothing. She drops the phone to the table and looks at Tess, who has jumped to her feet and is staring fixedly at the door to the living room, which is open. Beyond it, Sarah can see nothing but the gloomy room, dark because the curtains are still drawn.

She strains to hear, but there is no sound other than the wailing and moaning of the wind outside. Tess licks her nose and looks up at Sarah, then back to the door. Maybe it was the wind? Maybe something got knocked over, or a door shut in the draught? It doesn’t seem likely. It never has before. Sarah reaches down to stroke Tess behind the ears. The dog is rigid, tense, trembling ever so slightly.

And then she hears something too, looks up sharply.

Will is standing in the doorway.

‘For Christ’s sake, Will!’

Sarah gets to her feet, because she doesn’t want to be sitting down to have this conversation. ‘What the hell are you doing in here
again
?’

‘I came to see how you were,’ he says, simply. He is dressed in a shirt and jeans, his hands shoved casually into his pockets. ‘And if you’d heard from Sophie. I’ve been worried about her.’

‘How did you get in?’ she asks.

‘The door was open, same as it always is,’ he says.

‘I asked you not to come in here without being invited. Do you remember?’

He smiles, his big, open, wide smile showing those lovely white, even teeth. ‘I did knock,’ he says.

Oh, well, that’s all right, then.

‘And I didn’t answer,’ she says. ‘You shouldn’t have come in, Will, you just shouldn’t.’

He looks around. ‘Where’s Basil?’ he asks.

Sarah stares at him. ‘He’s at the vet’s; he’s not well.’

Will saunters into the kitchen, as if he owns it. Sarah realises her heart is still thumping. It’s not just the shock, she thinks. She doesn’t like him being in here when she’s on her own. Why ever not? He’s harmless, isn’t he? That’s what she’s been telling everyone.

‘Sorry to hear that,’ he says. He crouches down next to Tess, rubs her ears. Sarah notices her tail is not wagging.

‘I’ve got lots to do,’ she says, ‘so if you don’t mind I’d like you to go.’

He looks up at her from his position, down on his haunches. He is smiling but he looks pale.

‘Sure,’ he says. ‘Have you heard from her? From Sophie?’

‘No,’ she says, ‘but I’m sure she’s fine. I think she probably just needed a break from everything.’

‘A break from George, you mean.’

‘George is all right,’ she says quickly, at the same moment wondering why she’s leaping to his defence. She’s never been particularly fond of the man. And Will is quite possibly right.

‘She’s afraid of him, you know,’ Will says. He stands up abruptly, in one fluid move; a young man with strong legs, no effort involved at all. He is taller than Sarah, and standing so close now that he towers above her. As if realising that she is alarmed, he takes a little step back. ‘He threatened her,’ he says. ‘Like I said last night. He told her that if she left him he’d kill her.’

‘What?’

‘She was in a state about it. I thought it was hormones, you know, making her irrational. Why didn’t she tell you any of this?’

‘I don’t know,’ Sarah says.

‘She liked keeping her secrets,’ he says, nodding. ‘Even from me. But it looks like she was keeping secrets from you, too. Her best friend.’

He comes closer again. Sarah moves back, fractionally, and her thighs hit the edge of the kitchen table. She has nowhere to go. She can feel his breath on her forehead. Her eyes remain fixed on his chest, the buttons of his check shirt, the white T-shirt underneath which, close up, looks as if it needs a wash.

‘I kept my secrets too,’ he whispers. ‘I never told her about us, you know.’

His hand lifts and touches her upper arm. Sarah flinches a little, then tries to relax as he strokes his hand up to her shoulder.

‘I never told her about that night we had together. She would have been so upset, Sarah. She would hate to think that
you and I had something so special… and it was special, wasn’t it? That one night. You were so good. You were… wild.’

‘Will,’ she says, trying to keep her voice firm, ‘don’t.’

‘You were such a good lay, Sarah. You know that?’

‘Stop it!’

Her voice is high and querulous, but something about the force of it stops him dead. He drops his hand and takes a step back, gives her a nervous smile. ‘I’m sorry, really, I just…’

Sarah folds her arms tightly across her chest. ‘Just go, Will. Aiden’s in the cottage. If I call out, he’ll come over.’

Will laughs, gives her a look. ‘Oh, aye, Aiden? Your friend? The one who sells himself to poor, lonely women?’

She breathes in sharply.

His smile widens. ‘You think he can hear you from here?’

‘I only came to get the dog,’ she says. ‘He’s waiting for me to go over there. If I don’t appear in a minute he’ll come looking for me. I don’t think he’ll be impressed that you let yourself in, either.’

‘No,’ he says, after a moment’s pause. ‘You’re probably right. I’ll just – get my jacket. Cold out there, you know.’

He saunters into the living room, all the time in the world. Sarah looks at her phone, snatches it from the charger. It has one bar, not enough to rely on.

Will is back a few moments later, pulling his jacket on.

Sarah takes a deep breath, stands a little straighter. In case he is about to argue or come close to her again. But he smiles and passes her, heading for the door.

‘Your friend,’ he says, turning with his hand on the latch. ‘Give him my best? I don’t think he likes me very much. I think we got off to a bad start, me and him.’

Sarah’s heart is beating. She manages a casual shrug. ‘Maybe.’

But Will just grins. ‘I’ll see you later, then,’ he says, and opens the door, walks out and pulls it to behind him.

Sarah goes to the sink and watches him crossing the yard towards the gate. As he passes the cottage, he turns to look at it. Stops, for a moment, and stares at the door. Then he turns, looks directly at Sarah, and waves before he heads off towards the road once more.

Sarah looks down at her hands. They are shaking.

Sarah waits five minutes before calling the police non-emergency number. It feels like an emergency, but, in the same way that Sarah prefers not to go to the doctor unless she’s actually at death’s door, it probably isn’t.

‘I’d like to report someone for harassment,’ she says, when she eventually gets through.

She spends the next twenty minutes telling the operator all about Will turning up unexpectedly, letting himself into the house when she has specifically asked him not to.

‘Can you make the house secure?’ the operator says eventually.

Sarah has a vague sensation that she is being told off. She might be imagining it, but then that’s what she would say too. If one of her friends told her about someone repeatedly walking into their house, she would tell them to lock the bloody door and not be so daft.

Well, the operator is right: she can stop Will getting in by locking the doors, and that’s what she will have to do.

When the call is finally finished Sarah looks in the wooden bowl for the spare keys to the front door.

Tess looks expectantly at the door.

‘You want a walk, Tess?’

It seems like the best thing to do, the thing she always does: get out of the house, get into the fresh air, walk it off, think it through. She goes to the utility room and pulls on her waterproof jacket and her boots. As she shuts the door of the utility room behind her, she remembers her new resolution to
lock the back door. But there’s no key on the inside. She can’t remember the last time this door was properly locked; when she goes away, she bolts it from the inside and then leaves by the front door. She doesn’t want to take the dog out and come back in through the front, though; there will be mud all over the place if she does that.

There is a key for the back door on one of her key rings, isn’t there? She goes back to the kitchen, Tess following her impatiently, and hunts through the bowlful of keys, thinking that half of them must be for doors and locks from previous addresses, until she finds one that looks likely.

The key turns stiffly in the lock, fastening the door firmly. She slips the key into her jeans pocket, then sets off through the garden to the gate which leads out to the field. As she rounds the corner and emerges from the shelter of the wall, the wind takes her by surprise, almost knocking her off her feet.

The clouds overhead are heavy and dark, and tinged with yellow. She can smell the snow on the wind. She hopes Kitty is on her way to get the train by now. If the snowfall is heavy, and settles, the trains might stop running for a while. If that happens, she would rather Kitty were here, with her, than on her own and miserable in her hall of residence. Especially if, as has happened before, the phone lines go down. The mobile signal up here isn’t really good enough to be relied on.

Tess races ahead, barking, skirting the edge of the wall.

Sarah has a sudden thought that whatever Basil ate might have been hidden there, by the wall. After all, that’s where Basil was last night, wasn’t he? Sheltering from the weather?

‘Tess!’

Her words are snatched away by the wind as soon as she says them. Tess has sped off up the hill. She is heading straight for the croft.

‘Tess!’ Sarah breaks into a run uphill, as fast as she can given the rough terrain and her heavy boots. It takes her several minutes to catch up.

The door to the croft is shut fast. Tess is crouching outside it, barking, then scrabbling at the bottom of the door. Sarah has to get hold of her collar and drag her away. ‘Come on, you daft dog. You’re as jumpy as I am.’ As she heads back down the hill, her mobile phone buzzes in her pocket. It’s a text from Kitty:

Up here where, sometimes, the mobile works, she thumbs a reply:

When she finally gets back to the house, she has to wrestle with the key for several moments before it finally turns. She will have to put some WD-40 on it, try to ease that lock.

She rubs Tess down with the towel. Now she feels better. Now, she has a plan. She will phone the vet’s, get an update on Basil, then head out to Thirsk to get in some groceries and wait for Kitty’s train to arrive.

Kitty is coming.

Everything will be all right.