‘I know what you’re thinking,’ he said, ‘that we haven’t known each other for long, but you must feel what I do, that it feels so right when we’re together. These last two weeks have been the best of my life. This is more than just a holiday romance between us, Izzy.’
‘But supposing it only feels right between us because we’re here? Maybe back in England, when it’s cold and raining and we’re trudging round Tesco’s bickering over biological versus non-biological washing powder, the magic won’t be there.’
‘Then we’ll wait and see. I’m not saying that we should rush into anything, I just want us to plan to be together.’
He sounded so sure.
So very intense.
Slipping her arms around his neck, she kissed him. ‘By the way,’ she said, ‘it would have to be non-biological. I have sensitive skin.’
A slow, sexy smile passed across his face. ‘Now there’s a coincidence. So have I.’
Dolly-Babe was all contrition. ‘I can’t apologise enough,’ she kept saying, as she led Izzy towards the shade of a large candy-striped awning and invited her to sit down. ‘I wanted to come and see you all to say I was sorry, but Bob wouldn’t let me, and I didn’t dare go behind his back. He’s so very angry about losing that olive grove, and losing it to a man who tricked us. Though I don’t suppose you would have wanted to see me anyway.’ Her words were hurried and a little too joined together, her gaze anywhere but on Izzy, and her hands busy with the animal-print sarong that matched her swimsuit, straightening it this way, then that way.
‘Is Bob here?’ asked Izzy, looking towards the villa, and hoping he wasn’t.
‘No. He’s gone down to Kávos where he’s investing in some kind of holiday village. He won’t be back till late. It’s work, work, work for him. Never stops. But that’s my Bob. Never happy unless he’s a-wheeling and a-dealing. It’s how he’s got to be so successful. Millionaire by the age of twenty-eight - did I ever tell you that? Caravan park. Who’d have thought there was any
gelt
in caravans? Can’t stand them myself. Horrible things. Give me claustrophobia. Fancy a drink?’
‘No, thanks.’
There was a well-sampled bottle of red wine on the table between them and an empty under Dolly-Babe’s chair. With shaking hands, she topped up her glass then clattered the bottle down on the table. ‘Sure you won’t join me?’
Izzy shook her head and wondered if this was what Dolly-Babe’s life was like back in England: Silent Bob away all the time, leaving his wife bored and alone, day after day. It made her think of one of Mark’s casual throwaway lines about the loneliness of the long-distance drinker. It caused her to see Dolly-Babe quite differently. She saw a determined pride in the older woman’s face, a sad need to preserve the façade of her fading youth. She probably thought it was all she had left.
‘I suppose you’ve come here to find out why I got in touch with the papers?’
Izzy nodded. ‘Yes, I am. I don’t understand why you interfered.’
Dolly-Babe slipped on her sunglasses, and got busy with her sarong again. She was pleating it now. ‘How old do you reckon I am?’ she asked finally.
Goodness! How on earth was she to answer that? ‘Ooh ... um ... I don’t know.’ ‘It’s okay. I know I’m a figure of fun to young girls like you. But you wait until your only true gift starts to let you down.’ Bitterness poured out from her.
‘Youth isn’t our only asset.’
‘It is when you haven’t got anything else to offer, such as a brain. Unlike you, I haven’t had a fancy education. My learning’s been done at the school of hard knocks.’ She drank from her glass in a long thirsty gulp. ‘I’m fifty-one, and sixteen years ago I proved beyond all doubt that I was a brainless fool.’ She fell silent, contemplating the glass in her hand.
Izzy said, ‘We’ve all done things we regret, and it certainly doesn’t mean we’re any more stupid than the next person.’
Dolly-Babe looked at her sharply. ‘How about getting pregnant and giving up the baby? How does that rate on the stupidity stakes? Because that’s what I did.’
Izzy was at a loss what to say. She had come here wanting retribution on behalf of Mark and her friends and now she was feeling sorry for Dolly-Babe. ‘I don’t think that was a mark of stupidity,’ she said, finding her voice at last, ‘more an act of great courage. It couldn’t have been easy for you. What happened?’
Taking another swallow of wine, Dolly-Babe said, ‘It was before I’d met Bob. I’d just started work on a cruise ship as a croupier. It was a great life. I was earning good money, travelling the world, and meeting any number of men. Then I got pregnant. There was no way I could keep the baby, and with no one to turn to for help, I had to give it up. I know you’re thinking I was being selfish, and probably I was, but at the time having kids wasn’t what I wanted. I was having too much fun. So I had the baby, gave it away and went back to my old job. Not long after that I met Bob. But as the years have gone on, I’ve ... well, you know ... I’ve wondered about him. Yeah, I didn’t mention that, did I, that he was a boy? Nice-looking little lad, thatch of black hair like you wouldn’t believe, and a cute little nose.’ She turned her head, stared down into the bay, her thoughts obviously on that tiny baby she had known for so short a time. ‘Gawd, just listen to me!’ she said suddenly, with false brightness. ‘It’s confession time at the OK Corral.’ She sniffed loudly and reached for another drink.
‘Did you never think of finding him?’
She shook her head violently. ‘Bob doesn’t know anything about it. He’s got very strong views on matters like that. Likes things to be proper, no nasty secrets. The irony is, he’s always wanted children, especially a son, but we haven’t been able to have any. How’s that for a cruel trick on nature’s behalf? Punishment or what?’
‘You could have adopted?’
‘No, like I said, Bob’s got strong views, his own, or not at all. And, besides, we were too old by then. We were in our early forties by the time we sussed that he was firing blanks. The adoption agencies would have laughed in our faces.’
‘So, the thing with Christine and Mikey was all about your son?’ ventured Izzy.
‘I know it sounds dumb, but yes, yes, it was. I kept thinking that it could have been my son being seduced by that dreadful woman. Not that I’m saying Mikey’s the child I gave away. Gawd, no, I’m not that daft. No, it was just the connection I’d made in my head. It was the age, you know, him being the same as my lad. It seems crazy now, hearing myself say all this. To be honest, it’s a bit of a relief.’
‘Don’t you have anyone at home you can talk to?’
‘No. Once I got married that was it. The life I’d led before was wrapped up and put away the moment Bob put this ring on my finger.’
Izzy eyed the impressive cluster of diamonds on Dolly-Babe’s hand and wondered sadly if it had been worth it.
Hearing the phone ring, Mark hurried inside to answer it.
‘Good and bad news for you,’ Theo greeted him, his former good humour completely reinstated, as it had been for some days — to his shame, Mark wasn’t so sure that he would have been able to forgive Theo so easily had the tables been turned.
He said, ‘Go on, then, give it to me.’
‘The good news is that the lengthy discussions I’ve had with old man Karabourniotis have not been for nothing. I have, at last, acquired the hotels I wanted.’
‘Oh, I get it, and the bad news is that you’re coming back?’
‘Aha, always the step ahead of me, Mark. Yes, that is the bad news, so please, tidy up the love-nest the pair of you have created for yourselves. As from tomorrow you will have to keep the noise down at bedtime. Hearing Izzy’s cries as you have her spiralling into a state of ecstasy will be too much of a torment for me.’
‘I’ll see what I can do.’
They talked some more. Theo wanted to know if there had been any more excitement in Ayios Nikólaos during his extended absence. ‘No, it’s all gone quiet. The Pattersons left with their tails firmly wedged between their legs. Harry, the only decent one among them, came to say goodbye and to thank Izzy and me for even thinking of saving his brother from drowning.’
‘And Dolly-Babe and Silent Bob? What of them?’
‘According to Angelos, they’ll be leaving pretty soon. In fact, that’s where Izzy is right now. She went marching off to extract an apology from Dolly-Babe for Max and Laura who, by the way, are also returning tomorrow afternoon.’
‘Ah, that’s good. I look forward to seeing Laura. I will be able to resume my flirting with her, now that I am no longer forcing myself to behave in front of Izzy. It will be just like old times. And to celebrate such happiness I will cook us all a meal.’
Finishing their call, Mark went back outside. He blinked in the bright sunlight, and awarded himself a short break from work. He decided to go for a walk along the beach. He didn’t bother locking up as he would only be gone a few minutes and, besides, Corfu was the safest place he had ever known. Wasn’t that what Theo had said when he had been urging him to come and spend the summer in Ayios Nikólaos?
Less than half an hour later, he was retracing his steps and enjoying a lightness of heart that was becoming familiar to him. Life had taken on a whole new dimension. There was a serene calmness to his days, which gave him a wonderful clarity of thought and hope for the future. Hell, he’d even started talking long-term plans with Izzy. Who’d have thought it?
For so much of his life he had worn bullet-proof armour to protect himself from any attack on his emotions, and now here he was fully exposed and loving every minute of it. What he had with Izzy, he had never known before. The funny thing was it didn’t surprise him. There had been no earth-shattering moment of realisation that he loved her, not even a seismic jolt of his heart. It had slowly but surely crept up on him ever since their first meeting back in June.
He would never have believed that in less than two months he could have formed a relationship that had moved on to such a profoundly satisfying level of companionship. He knew, though, that he would do everything in his power to keep it that way. He had experienced very little real peace of mind in his life, and now that Izzy had given it to him, and in such abundance, he’d be damned if he let it slip out of his grasp. Being so perfectly connected with Izzy made him realise how narrow and one-tracked his life had been before. She truly touched the best in him, revealed a side of his personality he hadn’t known existed.
And what would Bones make of it all? Would he warn him that there was a danger he might become too dependent on Izzy? Or would he just sit there looking all benign and whistling one of his blasted tunes? What would it be? ‘Love Changes Everything’ perhaps?
He pushed open the gate to Theo’s garden and wandered over to the terrace, wanting to get out of the blistering August heat. He stood with relief in the cool shade of the pergola. He was just thinking of getting himself a drink when he stopped in his tracks. There on the table, where he had been working earlier, was an envelope with his name on it.
The writing was unmistakable — small, cramped and slanting to the left.
It was just like all the other letters he had received back in England.
Chapter Forty-Four
Mark sat down to read the letter.
It didn’t take long.
All it said was: ARE YOU READY?
He crumpled the piece of white A4 in his hand, crushing it so hard he half expected to see it disintegrate into a pile of dust. He dropped it to the ground.
He bent forward, clasped his head. It was madness. How could this be happening? How had the stalker found him?
The answer came to him in a sickening bolt of comprehension.
How had Izzy’s mother known about the pair of them?
She had read it in the newspapers back home, that’s how. Even his parents had got in touch after reading about him at their Buckinghamshire breakfast table.
So, thanks to Dolly-Babe and those bloodsucking journalists, his whereabouts had been handed on a plate to whoever was stalking him.
ARE YOU READY?
They were the very same words he had written in Silent
Footsteps.
It was the last communication the stalker made before he killed his victim.
He closed his eyes, rubbed at his temples. This couldn’t be for real. Whoever had done this, surely they didn’t really want to kill him. Wasn’t it just a sick joke that had slipped beyond the usual boundaries of loony-tune behaviour?
He let out his breath, realising that he had been holding it in. A coldness was gripping his insides. His heart was racing, thumping painfully in his chest. His every instinct shouted that this was no joke. Somebody was playing with him in deadly earnest. This was serious. Somebody had a grudge against him and was determined to make him pay for some imagined crime he had committed.
But who?
Who had he ever crossed — and to the extent that they had been prepared to track him down half-way across Europe so they could extract their revenge?
No, it was no joke. For somebody to have come this far, they meant business.
He thought of everyone he knew — or thought he knew - back in Robin Hood’s Bay. He pictured the small writers’ group he taught in the village hall, seeing their faces one by one. Okay, some pretty off-the-wall folk attended the weekly get-togethers, but not one of them seemed so kooky as to want him dead. Not even Lionel Bridges, whom he had had to take aside one night when the class was over and ask him to ease off the pornography he insisted on writing and reading aloud to the group. Lionel wrote under the ridiculous pseudonym of Shona Mercy, and caused no end of offence and embarrassment to some of the more genteel lady members, including Deirdre, a grey-haired spinster who cleaned for Mark once a week.
Deirdre had full and frequent access to his home and correspondence, which gave her plenty of opportunity and the means to stalk him, but he simply couldn’t accept that she had a malicious bone in her body. Since her retirement as a school secretary, she took care of her elderly mother, who was in her nineties and whose health was failing, and now spent her free time writing what he called chintzy poetry.