Chapter Fourteen
‘Sometimes it’s not what’s written on the stone that’s interesting, sometimes the spaces that are left can tell us more about the person lying beneath, or, at least, they can hint heavily . . . One Alexander Wright (1748–1813) had his stone erected ‘by his loving and grieving wife, Mary’, who clearly expected to be buried with her husband, judging by the space left beneath his epitaph for her own. However, the space is still there and Mary lies elsewhere in the churchyard, having overcome her grief to the extent of marrying a Thomas Fenwick six months after the death of her previous husband. Thomas must have swept her off her feet in a significant fashion — there are local reports of his having hired a coach and four to drive them to their wedding. They lie together beneath a stone much more ornate than that of the briefly-lamented Alexander . . .’ — BOOK OF THE DEAD 2
* * *
It was a warm morning that smelled of the plums which seemed to hang on almost every tree in Great Leys, the air buzzed with wasps and a wind jangled the yellowing leaves. I squared my shoulders on the doorstep and went out, my notebook clutched to my chest and my pen rigid between my fingers as though I was off to attend some kind of inter-author jousting event. The road was busy, the pavements teemed with Stepford WAGS and children off to the school bus and there was no sign of Dan; my fingers loosed their grip on the biro a little and my shoulders relaxed a fraction. Of course there wasn’t. He hadn’t meant any of it — all that stuff about hanging around to get the book finished, he was just trying to freak me out, to rock the equilibrium of this little world I’d started to accrete around myself as though I was one of those naked creatures at the bottom of a pond, searching for things to barricade round me to keep me from harm.
In fact, knowing Dan and his dislike of wide-open spaces that didn’t have a DJ in front of them, he’d probably headed straight back to London. He looked tired. Stressed. Maybe he really was telling the truth about needing this book? I shook my head against the little voice in my head, aware that people were starting to look at me strangely, poised here on my doorstep staring out into the morning busyness with my writing gear held in front of me like a shield, and I slammed the door behind me in a meaningful way and stalked out across the pavement.
The churchyard was a little heap of quiet, like an island in a sea of noise. The sun slanted down through the shading trees, making little patches of light and shade on the grass through which the headstones reared up to point long fingers of shadow towards the town like worn auspices of mortality. Not quite sure what to do with myself, other than try to occupy my mind, I leaned against the familiarity of Beatrice, letting the warmth of her sun-heated limestone seep into my jangling nerves.
‘Hey.’ The voice came from a dark bulk under the branches of overhanging cedar and made me drop my notebook into the long grass.
‘Dan?’ I put the mass of Beatrice between me and the shape, uncurling itself from where it had, apparently, been sitting cross-legged on top of a tabular monument to the father of a large local family whose high point had been opening a bakery.
‘It’s a graveyard. Who’re you expecting?’ There was a soft sweeping sound as his coat flicked loose of the memorial and he stepped forward into the sunlight, boots jingling. ‘Mr “Massively Over-Compensating for Something”?’ He slapped at the stone as he moved past it. ‘Seriously, mate, that amount of curly writing? Never in a million years . . . Might just as well have had “I made a fortune but had a tiny knob” carved on your stone.’
I was aware that my fingers hurt as they tried to dig into the solid stone under my hands. The stone felt a little like my heart at the moment, harsh and rough with scuffed edges. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Oh, you know.’ Dan’s coat swung and coiled around his body like a solid mist, the buckled fastenings giving it weight and the light sparking off the silver catches. He flipped the collar up and hunched his shoulders, standing in the patch of sunlight that lay between us as though he knew the impact his slender dark outline would make. ‘Like I said, just protecting my investment.’
Yeah, like I’m a ‘thing’. Something to be watched, not a person. Thing. Anger tried to swell my throat. ‘Everything is under control.’ I bent to pick up my notepad without taking my eyes off him which meant contorting my body, and I saw the way his eyes hovered along the lines of my buttocks and his lips formed a growl shape. ‘And anyway, I meant, here. How did . . .’ I stopped. I would not let him know how much his physical presence affected me. ‘What made you think I’d be here?’
‘Bloody hell, there are other places you could be?’
I felt my mouth betray me by trying to twitch into a smile and firmly stopped it. ‘I could have been in the coffee shop. Or the library. Or bed.’ The more I looked at him the easier it got, he wasn’t the bogeyman my mind had built him into — cruel and warped and evil. He was just Dan, just the guy I’d just . . . Dan. My editor, the man who wanted this book written almost more than I did, the person most likely to understand the problems I was having with it. Whatever else he was, underneath, I didn’t have to deal with right now. ‘Or halfway to the nearest place round here that sells actual things instead of scented candles and pumpkins, which, I have to tell you, is probably York and that’s a really long way away.’
A little of the darkness left his face, as though the mischief in his eyes had become the normal, ‘knock on doors and run’ kind rather than the ‘knife them in the dark singing nursery rhymes’ sort. ‘What can I say? Intuition.’ He gathered the coat around him, then hopped up to sit on another flat-topped tomb, biker boots up so that his knees were under his chin. He’d shaved since last night, I noticed, or at least hacked the stubble into reasonable order. ‘Besides, the local coffee shop is still shut, I checked the library, and I knew you weren’t in bed because I saw you.’ He coughed and looked down at his knees, pretending shame. ‘I’m staying with Mrs Hill up the street from you and from her guest bedroom you can see the curtains on your upstairs windows, so I knew you were up. Who’s Alex?’
I dropped my pen now. ‘Alex?’ Wow. He is quick. I’d forgotten that about Dan, that he could get squirrels to tell him where they’d buried their nuts, using only the power of his charisma and those wicked eyes.
‘Yeah. Mrs Hill mentioned that she thought you might be off to see Alex. I didn’t like to say “who” because, well, you know me, never admit to not knowing something when you can always pretend and find out later, so who is he? She? Anything to do with the book or . . . ?’ he tailed off and tilted his head to regard me at an angle that made him look like a curious funerary statue.
‘He’s Mrs Hill’s son. He and I . . .’ The memory of Alex’s warm kiss and hot body must have heated my eyes because Dan twisted his mouth and stood suddenly on top of the grave.
‘Okay. So. What’s the plan for today?’ He spread his arms wide and his coat flapped, he looked like a raven preparing for flight. ‘Research, writing, what?’
‘I don’t know.’ Something about the sheer energy of him made me feel as though he could somehow anchor me. ‘But it’s okay, I’ll think of something. I just need . . .’ I made a sort of shrugging motion with the notebook still clutched to me. ‘It’s fine.’
Dan stepped a slow ring, arms still held out. His sleeves fell back and the tattoo of a circle and eight points gleamed for a second in a stray beam of sunlight on his wrist. Chaos. What Dan was really all about, and what he brought to everything. ‘We can do this, kiddo. We can.’ He turned his face to the sun. ‘Yeah?’
‘Don’t, Dan.’
He finished his rotation and looked down. ‘Don’t?’
‘Try to jolly me along. Not now. Not any more.’ I tore my eyes away from his wildness, from that careful illusion of anarchy and pandemonium that he promulgated. ‘I don’t need your help and I don’t need you .’
‘Sure about that, are you?’ And now he was so still, so dark, it almost felt as though the sunlight bounced off him. A black hole. ‘Because I’ve tracked all your messages back to the mothership and it doesn’t look as though there’s a whole lot of work getting done right now. Last word we got, you were about halfway through and since then . . .’ Dan spun once more then jumped easily down, landing with a chink of metal and the sound of hollow earth. ‘. . . nada. Now I hate to get all “editor” on your ass but, hey, we have a deadline here, and it’s beginning to make a ticking noise.’ He made ‘metronomes’ of his two index fingers, wiggling them to and fro. ‘You sure you don’t want a little bit of input from One Who Knows, that might just get this book brought in, on time, and earning its keep?’
A deep breath. As though that would save me. ‘I’d rather you were on the other side of the planet, actually, Dan. But yes, you’re right, things haven’t been going quite like I’d hoped.’ I saw him give a slow smile and hurried to smack it down. ‘Oh, it’s nothing to do with us, with what happened, it’s just that there’s so much material here, so much more than I thought, it’s like I can’t pick out which people to write about.’
His hands went into his pockets and an expression came over his face that I might have expected to see on Scarlet’s, a sort of ‘deep thinking sulk’, as though he was mentally weighing up options to see which was the most likely to get a positive reaction. ‘Right,’ he said, slowly. ‘Right, yeah, okay. I see.’
He half-turned and swept the coat close around his body and there was a finality about the gesture that made something deep inside me ache like an old bruise. Go away, Dan , I thought, but somehow seeing him here, everything was different. ‘Look. You can help me, if you must, but only if we can be professional about it. No being unnaturally “upbeat” about the book, no cosy little meetings like this or talking about . . .’ My voice fell into the unsayable.
‘Daisy. Right?’
All I could do was nod and scrunch the paper under the tips of my fingers.
‘I get that.’ Dan closed the gap of grass that had stood between us, stitching its sunlight space with his darkness. ‘And that’s what’s behind this?’
You can do this, Winter. This is the conversation you’ve rehearsed in your head over all those sleepless midnights. My palms tingled and dampened and my heart performed a nauseating double beat, but I held steady. I can do this. ‘I hated you, Daniel.’ My voice came out only slightly shaky. ‘I mean, before, I . . . well, it was good, we were good. And then, the stuff you said’ — and now the tremor was more of a catch — ‘about Daisy, it made me hate you so much.’
He stopped moving. Just stood as though the words had frozen him. ‘I never meant that to happen.’ But his hands had come up in front of him now, that giveaway gesture he could never manage to control, pushing his cuffs back as though revealing that chaos symbol on his skin could somehow keep order.
‘But it did. You became something in my head, some huge monster, but now I’ve seen you, now you’re here, and now I’ve got, well, other things to think about besides the vile things you said about my sister, I’ve started to realise. You’re just this bloke, Daniel. Not evil, not something to fear, just a really stupid bloke who doesn’t know when to keep his nose out of someone’s business, and who thought that isolating me from my sister would, what? Get you centre-stage? So, yes, for the duration of this book I can work with you, but on a professional basis only. Understood?’
‘Whew.’ Another step, and now I could smell the vanilla from his skin. ‘Some nasty stuff coming out here, Win.’ His voice was soft. ‘For the record, I’ve only ever tried to help you. Nothing else, no agenda.’
‘Right, so sleeping with me wasn’t “having an agenda” then?’ I dropped my voice to match his.
He looked down at the toes of his boots, collecting little beads of damp from the grass. His hair flopped towards his forehead, unspiked today and allowed to fall naturally; it gave him the look of an off-duty punk. ‘No,’ and his voice was soft. ‘That wasn’t agenda. That was something else.’ A sideways look up out from under the hair, his eyes had an almost ‘walled-in’ expression. ‘Never mind. Doesn’t matter.’ Another shove at his cuffs until his palm cupped the chaos symbol.
‘It does to me,’ I said, softly.
He lifted his head. The sun caught the edge of his hair and highlighted the side of his face, so he looked split, half in shadow, half in light. Very Daniel. Never quite sure which side he comes down on. ‘Okay.’ A slow nod. ‘We’ll be professional, get this thing done and then I’ll let you get back to toying with the affections of Mrs Hill’s lovely son, deal?’
‘I am not toying with his affections!’ But he’d done it, done the thing that Dan was best at — twisted the conversation away from the dark, away from pain and panic and into me being infuriated with him. To know Dan was to cultivate a really firm jaw from all the teeth gritting you had to do.
‘If you say so.’ Dark eyebrows lifted. ‘Right, we’re kicking this book into shape, yes? What’s first on the list?’
‘I’ve sort of promised to go down to the local primary school.’
‘Seriously? Primary school? Wow. And there was you never so much as looking in prams when I knew you.’ He kicked his toes against a tussock of grass and gave me ‘wicked eyes’, slightly hooded as though he wasn’t quite sure how I’d take the lightness of his tone.
‘It’s a bit of a long story, but I think I can get a little girl some kudos if I go in and give a talk. Maybe stop some rather nasty kids from picking on her.’
Dan gave his head a quick shake as though flipping away a thought. ‘Okay. Probably not such a bad idea, get yourself a bit of a rep around here, bit of a local base for when the book comes out. You won’t need me to come with you — small children and I don’t really mix well, unless it’s nieces’ and nephews’ parties with cake and some suspicious old bloke dressed as a clown making things out of balloons.’
‘Nieces and nephews?’
‘Four.’
Why hadn’t I known that? ‘You never mentioned them before.’
He shrugged. ‘No. Well. Maybe we kind of screwed up that stage, didn’t we? The whole “taking home to meet the family” thing, what with your family being all spread out around the world, and my lot professional workaholics that think a day off is like admitting failure, well . . .’ He stopped staring down at his feet and gave me a sudden, and very steady, look from tawny eyes that held a hint of a challenge. ‘Not taking any of it back, before you start to wonder,’ he said, his voice very quiet. ‘You and . . . her. I stand by what I said then, Win, what you and Daisy have, it’s not healthy, and that, I promise, is absolutely the last time I shall refer to your sister, okay?’ With a squaring of his shoulders that told me he expected me to retaliate, he took a step back.
‘Fine.’
His surprise manifested in a billowing of coat as his body moved inside it, and he looked as though he was about to say something; a frown flashed across his forehead and vanished behind his eyes.
‘What you think of Daisy, or of me, or the relationship we have doesn’t matter any more, does it?’ I went on. ‘As my editor you said you can work with me, anything else is just . . .’ I threw my hands wide, the pages of my notebook scuttling and riffling like a nest of caffeine-addicted ants. ‘As I said, just strictly professional.’
Another shot of the cuff, another rub of the tattoo. ‘That’s what I’m here for,’ he said, then turned and was gone in a swirl of coat, like a traditional villain making good his escape, walking through the dew-laden grass without looking back. The cool air closed around him as though reclaiming its own and he was lost to sight before he even rounded the church building.
My shoulders slumped and I realised how tense I’d been all the time we’d talked. The sheer familiarity of him and the way he was had somehow fooled me into forgetting so much that I’d managed to function almost normally while he’d been in front of me, but now I could feel the low, hot burn of the anger and pain deep in my stomach again. An emotion that had been put on hold while Dan was actually there, as though his presence had functioned as a kind of damper, but now my mind was free to fan those flames into life again.
‘Bastard.’ My hands scrabbled a sheet of paper from the pad, nails raking it to strips, then my fingers curled it into a ball so tight that the molecules squeaked. ‘Completely bloody stupid . . . ’ And whether I spoke about him or me, I couldn’t have said.