The House on the Cliff (32 page)

I wished she would let go of my arm. I didn’t feel comfortable with her holding it, but I felt it would be rude to withdraw it.

“Why wouldn’t Elsa have been able to climb up here?” I said as we stood there, looking out to sea. I was almost speaking to myself. “It would have been easy enough, wouldn’t it? Unless . . .”

I felt Arianrhod’s grip on my arm tighten.

“Unless there’d been someone standing here. Someone stopping her from—”

I don’t know exactly what happened next. My arm was squeezed tight, and I felt a shock as a sudden jolt came from behind. Shock, and confusion.

“What . . .” I struggled to get away, but I’d been taken by surprise. Arianrhod was pushing me, pushing me hard, over the edge of the jetty.

I teetered for a moment, staring down at the thick brown water below. There was another jolt, this one harder, and then she let go of me. I felt myself falling, and as I hit the icy water a stinging pain rushed through my belly, my arms, my shoulders, my head, my back, my whole body.

My head went under and I found myself gasping for breath. When I came up again, I was only inches from the jetty, so I instinctively put out my hand and grasped on to one of the wooden boards, holding on to it for dear life.

Arianrhod was standing above me. The expression on her face had darkened to one of pure rage. It was only at that moment that I realized she was intent on stopping me from getting out.

I tried to grasp the jetty with my other hand and scramble onto it, but she stepped forward, lifted her foot and, quite deliberately, brought it down hard on my fingers.

I cried out in pain and let go. A wave came in, slapping me over the head, filling my mouth with water. As the water crashed over my head, I began to choke. There was an agonizing pain in my hand. But the wave passed, and I came up, so, once again, I swam toward the jetty.

When I reached it, I moved to put my hand out to grasp it, but hesitated. Instead, I stayed beside it, treading water, looking up at Arianrhod.

She bent down. For a split second I thought she was going to change her mind and pull me out, but instead she grinned at me.

“Now you know,” she said, raising her voice against the wind. “Evan didn’t kill Elsa. And it wasn’t Bob who was waiting for her on the jetty when she swam in. It was me.

“I drowned her. And I’m going to drown you, too.”

I found it hard to believe what she was saying, but the look on her face terrified me.

“Please . . .” I whispered, but my voice was carried away by the wind. “Let me . . .”

I edged my fingers onto the jetty.

She stood up, ready to bring her foot down on my fingers again. “That’ll teach you to screw my husband. You. Elsa. And all the others.”

I drew my hand away.

“But I didn’t . . . I haven’t . . .”

“Oh, maybe you haven’t. Not yet. But you will sooner or later, won’t you?” Her voice took on a sneering tone. “What line did he spin you, then? Don’t tell me, he said he’d put you in a film. You’re a bit old for that, I’d have thought.”

It was a shot in the dark, I felt sure. Arianrhod couldn’t possibly have known about my meetings with Evan. Even if she had somehow got wind of them, I hadn’t done what she was accusing me of. I started to protest, but then I realized, with a growing sense of shock, that even though she was clearly guessing, she wasn’t far off the truth. I’d fallen for Evan’s chat-up line—flattering my intelligence, as well as my looks—just like all the others. I’d behaved like a silly young girl, no different from poor Elsa with the Strindberg line. And about to meet the same fate.

Another wave hit my head and I went under again. This time it turned me over, so I was upside down under the water. Or, rather, I didn’t know which way up I was.

I told myself not to panic. Instead I held my breath, keeping my mouth closed, waiting until the wave had passed and I could right myself, come up for air. I could hear a voice in my head, my own voice.
This is ridiculous,
it was saying
. This can’t be the way you’re going to die. This is just water, cold water. You can swim out of it, climb up onto that jetty. You can’t let some madwoman stop you.

As the water swirled around my head, I could feel tiny stones and pebbles in it, filling my nose, my ears, my hair.

I kept holding my breath.

Then I heard another voice, this time a voice I didn’t know, running through my head.
Yes, this is ridiculous,
it said.
But didn’t you know? Death is ridiculous. Everybody’s death.

I began to flail about. I needed air. I needed to come up, but I didn’t know which way was up.

This is your death, Jessica Mayhew. And it’s going to be ridiculous. Utterly ridiculous, like everyone else’s.

Nella, I thought. Rose. Bob.

Another wave hit me, and I felt my body crash into something hard. This is it, I realized.

I can’t die now. They need me.

I put out my hands. It was a pole. An iron pole. The pole of the jetty. If I could just find the end of it.

My lungs were bursting. I felt my way up the pole, hoping it was the right way, but I didn’t come any closer to the surface. It was no use, I realized. Sooner or later, water or no water, I was going to have to take a breath.

I was just about to take in a lungful of water when my head popped out of the sea.

I began to cry with relief, gasping for air. There was hope, after all. I was still in the sea, with no way out, but at least, for the moment, I could breathe.

I looked up at the jetty. My vision was blurred. Initially I thought I saw that it was empty, that there was no one there. But then I made out the figure of Arianrhod still standing there, towering above me.

I clung on to the pole of the jetty, determined not to let go.

She came toward me, ready to push me away from it. Under the water I wrapped my legs around the pole and let my body float away from it, so that she couldn’t reach me. As she bent over, I saw the fury in her face.

I used my free arms to splash her with water as she leaned down. It was a feeble gesture on my part, but it enraged her.

“You’ve only got yourself to blame.” She hissed the words, brushing the water from her eyes. “You knew perfectly well what you were up to. You’d no right to mess around with people like that. Flaunt yourself, take whatever you wanted, whenever you wanted. It just wasn’t fair. . . .”

She was looking at me as she spoke, but she seemed almost to be talking to herself, reciting an ancient litany of resentment.

“I’m only doing what I have to do,” she muttered under her breath. “You bloody well deserved it. Sitting there with that nice, kind smile on your face, as if butter wouldn’t melt.” Her voice began to rise. “Silly little bitch. This is your own stupid fault, not mine. . . .”

She sat down on the edge of the jetty and began to use her legs to kick me off the pole. As she did, one of her shoes dropped into the water beside me.

I picked it up and hurled it at her head. She ducked, and it missed. Once again, it was a feeble attempt at defiance, but it served to infuriate her further.

She took off her other shoe and threw it at me. It caught me full in the face and I felt a sharp pain across my forehead. I gasped, my mouth filled with water, and my legs uncurled from the pole. Another wave hit me, but this time, when my head went under, I managed to remain upright.

When the water cleared, I peeled off my outer clothes, which were heavy with water, and looked up at the jetty. Somehow I kept hoping, each time I went down, that I’d come up and realize this was just a bad dream. But each time, Arianrhod was still there, her dark head outlined against the sky.

“Please, God,” I whispered to myself, “help me.”

I could no longer feel my toes or my hands, and the aching cold was spreading from my head into my torso and limbs. If I didn’t get out of the water soon, I knew, it would freeze me to death. It was only a matter of time.

I swam up to the jetty again, as close as I dared.

“You can’t do this, you know,” I shouted. “You’ll go to prison. . . .”

She wasn’t listening. She probably couldn’t hear, with the wind whistling in our ears. But I persevered all the same.

“I can explain what happened with Evan. Just let me come in. We can talk. . . .”

She gazed out to sea, ignoring me.

I stayed out there, a safe distance away from the jetty, treading water, for what seemed like hours. I felt the cold begin to freeze my body, first my feet, then my legs, then my hands and arms.

It’s just a matter of time, I told myself. But time was on her side, not mine.

It was then that I looked up, into the distance, and saw a tiny figure standing at the top of the steps of the cliff. I looked away. What if I’d imagined it, like some parched traveler dreaming up a mirage in the desert? But when I looked again, the figure was coming down the steps, toward the jetty. From the way it moved, it looked like a man.

I didn’t cry out. The man was too far away to hear me. And I didn’t want to alert Arianrhod. I didn’t know who it was, or whether he had come to help me, but I knew that, whatever happened, when he reached the jetty there was a chance I could scramble out and survive. Time was on my side once more.

So I stayed where I was, treading water. Three times the waves hit me, submerging me. Each time I came up, I feared that the man would be gone. But each time he was still there, coming nearer and nearer, until at last he was on the jetty.

I saw Arianrhod turn in surprise.

It was Gwydion.

When I saw him, my heart leapt. How or why, I wasn’t sure, but I knew that he’d come to save me.

He reached the end of the jetty. I couldn’t see clearly, but Arianrhod seemed to fall into his arms. They seemed to be embracing. A sudden panic ran through me as I wondered whether I’d been wrong. Perhaps Gwydion hadn’t come to my rescue after all. Perhaps he and Arianrhod were in this together. Perhaps he’d come to help her drown me. Or to gloat.

I began to cry. Not proper tears, but the kind of theatrical whine a child makes when it doesn’t get what it wants. This was too much, I told myself. First, the promise of hope. And now . . .

I watched as the embrace turned to a struggle. I heard snatches of shouting, carried on the wind. Then Gwydion ran forward. He came to the end of the jetty and bent down, holding out his hand toward me.

I swam forward. By now my legs were completely numb. So I pulled my body along using my arms, until I reached the edge of the jetty.

As I did, Arianrhod came up behind Gwydion. She was screaming at him, pulling at his shoulder. But he ignored her cries, pushing her away.

I reached out my hand and caught his. I saw his look of shock as he registered the cut on my face.

“Leave her there, the whore.” Arianrhod was beside herself now, shrieking in his ear. “She’s been sniffing round your father, the bitch, like all the rest of them.”

I felt Gwydion start as she spoke the words. He looked straight into my eyes, and I looked back into his. He didn’t ask me anything, and I didn’t say anything, but I knew he knew that there was some truth in what she’d said.

He hesitated for a moment, but his grip on my hand didn’t loosen.

If I’d had the presence of mind, I would have lied. Told him I’d never been anywhere near his father. Anything to get out of that icy water. But I didn’t. Instead, I cried out, “Help me, Gwydion. Please, help me.”

He reached out his other hand toward me. I grasped it and, in one swift move, he pulled me out of the water.

Once he’d got me out on the jetty, he carried me in his arms, staggering slightly, and laid me down gently on the boards. My body felt like a dead weight. Water was streaming from my clothes. My head was spinning, and I wondered for a moment whether it was too late, whether I was now going to die.

Gwydion bent over me, holding me by the shoulders as I began to retch, dredging up the seawater from my lungs.

I hung my head, clutching it with my hands, hoping that the spinning would stop. But it went on. Then I started to shiver violently.

“We’re going to have to get her back up to the house.” He spoke sharply to Arianrhod. “Come on, give me a hand here.”

Arianrhod didn’t reply.

Gwydion tried to pick me up, but I signaled to him to wait. I was feeling too sick to be moved. So instead, he took off his jacket and wrapped it around me.

I heard him get out his mobile phone and dial a number.

“Yes, and police,” he said, in response to someone on the other end of the line. Then he began to give them directions as to where we were.

I don’t know what happened next. I seemed to drift in and out of consciousness, seeing nothing in front of my eyes but water, and rocks, and sea, and sky. I felt so sick and aching that I wanted to die, wanted to slip peacefully away into the blackness that was waiting to claim me.

Then I heard a distant roaring sound. I looked up, barely able to raise my head, and saw a great fat insect buzzing in the sky. It was still far away, but it was bearing down on us. As it came nearer, I realized, dimly, that it was a helicopter. And that it was coming to help us.

That was when I heard a cry, and then a splash. I looked over my shoulder and saw that Arianrhod had dived off the end of the jetty, and was swimming out to sea.

“Gwydion,” I said. My voice seemed to have disappeared somewhere into my chest, and all that came out was a croak. “Do something.”

But Gwydion didn’t move. Instead, he stayed beside me, shielding me from the wind, as the blades of the helicopter whirred above us, coming closer and closer down to land.

22

It doesn’t take long to get used to being in hospital. I’d only been there a week, but already I was looking forward to my midmorning cup of tea, fretting about what to tick on the menu for lunch, and being nosy about the other patients’ visitors. I was becoming institutionalized, I realized. It was time I got out. There wasn’t much wrong with me, and my lungs had cleared, but they weren’t letting me go till I got my strength back. I was fine in bed, but when I got up, I was weak and shaky on my legs. And I was sleeping through large chunks of the day—though I could have done that better at home, I reflected, what with all the noise, and comings and goings, and constant interruptions of hospital life.