Chapter 23
Tilly felt herself go hot, then cold and then hot again.
She hadn’t ever fainted before in her life, but this was obviously what it felt like.
As Otto pulled the seatbelt around, she couldn't muster up any energy to speak or move, and it felt as if she could hardly breathe.
As she heard the engine, Stanley made a noise from the back, and Tilly closed her eyes and clung to the door handle.
Otto looked over. 'Right. I live just down the road here, not far from Leo. I’ll call him and see if he’s in. I've just come back from the other side of the island and stopped to take Stanley out. We'll go to mine and see what Leo thinks if he's in. Actually, I'll give him a call.'
Tilly didn't remember much of the drive, but it couldn't have been very long because what felt like a few seconds later, the car turned left and pulled into a road where glimpses of the estuary glinted from behind tall white houses.
Leaning her head back on the headrest, Tilly was trying to get her bearings and work out how she was going to get out of the car without passing out.
Pulling onto a fairly narrow driveway, Otto swerved to the right, pressed a button, waited for a set of garage doors to go up and parked inside.
Tilly was now not only feeling faint and stupid, but she was also wary.
She'd got herself into a situation seen on a BBC drama series where women were never to be seen again.
As the electric garage doors shut beside her, a strange, scared sound came out of her mouth as she tried to frantically get the door open.
'Hang on!' As quick as a flash, Otto was out of the car, around the front and opening the passenger door. Stanley started to bark like crazy.
'I need to go home.'
'What? You're not going anywhere.'
Oh my God. I am going to die here. 'Please.'
Otto swore. 'Christ, you are some sort of nutcase! We'll get you upstairs. I already called Leo from the car, remember? He's on his way home from work. He said you sound fine, but to start on getting the spines out.'
Tilly did not recall any phone call, and her brain felt so fuddled she wasn’t sure where she was.
So not only had she been abducted, he'd drugged her too.
She couldn't remember anything about the drive and stumbled as she got out of the car. Yes, she’d definitely been drugged.
A few minutes later, she was through a set of doors at the back of the garage, walking past a boot room.
Loads of pairs of wellies stood in a line under a bench, coats on hooks, a wooden chest, a stack of books on a shelf.
A riding hat on a top hook, a green cagoule, outside a back garden running down to a low wall with the sea beyond it.
A walled kitchen garden to the right with an old greenhouse at the end.
Pulling out a chair at a large rectangular table, Tilly put both hands on the table and started to cry. Otto went through an inner door into what appeared to be a butler's kitchen and came back with two rolls of kitchen paper. 'Press those on the cut on your face.'
Pressing the kitchen paper to her cheekbone, Tilly swallowed and looked around the kitchen.
It didn’t look like the home of a serial killer.
An Aga against the far wall, open shelves with piles and piles of crockery, a Belfast sink under a window that looked out over the kitchen garden and the greenhouse.
A corkboard on the wall beside the door covered in pictures, a tide table and a printed sheet that said Carrington Oyster Co and what looked like a letter from an accountant.
With the kitchen paper held up to both cheeks, Tilly looked around.
On the windowsill above the sink, a framed photograph displayed a dark-haired woman laughing in a green coat on a beach somewhere, looking at whoever was taking the photograph with love in her eyes.
Otto reached into a pantry cupboard, heaved down a large rectangular plastic tub, took out a first aid kit, pulled a chair out and sat down.
Tilly started to cry again. She just wanted to go home.
She was in some sort of living nightmare covered in needles.
At least her arm had stopped bleeding. Otto tapped the torch on his phone, wrinkled his nose, then shone it sideways across Tilly’s palm so that the spines cast shadows, and then he started with tweezers from the kit.
Tilly had been prepared for it to hurt, but in actual fact, it hurt a lot less than expected.
Otto was quick and precise, and in no time most of the spines were released.
There was no fuss, no unnecessary movement and not a single word uttered.
Each spine came out clean, and Tilly felt slightly less woozy as she sat totally still, wondering how she was going to get home.
By the time Otto had finished both hands, Tilly had stopped crying and sat up a bit straighter. Next, the scratches on her face were dealt with and antiseptic cream applied. Otto read the room. 'Better?'
'Yes. Thank you.'
'Leo'll be here in ten minutes or so. He'll want to look at the arm properly. Not sure what we're going to do about that.'
'I think it's fine now it's stopped bleeding.'
'I'll put the kettle on, we'll wait for Leo, and then I'll drop you home. Tea?'
To be frank, Tilly required something a whole lot stronger than tea, but didn't like to say. Really, she just wanted to go home, but she could barely muster the energy to speak, let alone get up. She’d have the tea and then get going. 'Please, thanks.'
Otto went to the Aga, picked up a kettle, filled it and put it on the hotplate. Then he went to the far end of the kitchen to a tall cupboard and turned around. 'Do you want something in it?'
Tilly blinked. 'Sorry?'
'Something in the tea. I've got whisky.'
Oh. Oh yes, please. 'I'm absolutely fine, honestly.'
'On the side?'
If she'd been drugged and was about to die, she might as well have a drink. 'Please, that would be lovely.'
Half a minute later, a small, heavy glass with a tiny amount of whisky at the bottom arrived on the table.
Touching the glass to her lips, Tilly took a whisper of a sip and nodded.
Rich, warm, a tad on the earthy, peaty side and exactly what a woman covered in gorse spines in a stranger's kitchen needed.
Looking at Otto over the glass as she felt the whisky go down through her ribs, Tilly couldn't quite get enough.
Tall, fair hair, the jaw out of a men's country living catalogue.
The bicep situation. Ditto the forearms. His wife looking at her from a frame on the windowsill.
Telling herself to get a grip, Tilly sipped the whisky and wondered about Otto.
The house definitely had a woman's touch to it; the kitchen felt homely and lived in, and from the wellies, Otto did not live alone.
Shame. However, no wedding ring and a sort of air of independence about him or loneliness, one of the two.
With the sips of whisky giving her a bit of Dutch courage and feeling better by the minute, Tilly decided to do a little bit of digging.
Attempting to make her voice sound casual, she almost chirped.
'So, how long have you been on the island? '
'Sort of all my life here and there.' Otto seemed to be purposely vague.
Tilly wanted to clarify. 'You grew up here?'
'I went to school on the mainland and then came back when, well, yeah, it's all to do with business and the farms. I lived in different places.'
'Ahh, right, the oyster business. That's been in the family a long time, you said.'
'Since the eighteen-eighties. My great-great-grandfather started the business and the Darling beds. Scotland came later, then a few other places, then Ireland later still.'
'Oh, so it's, umm, quite a large affair then? Ireland, hmm, I've always fancied going there.'
'Yep, our Galway site is lovely actually. My wife's family are from there too.'
Wife. There it was. Out in the open, on the table, just like that.
Present tense, or near enough. Tilly looked at the photograph on the windowsill of a dark-haired woman in a green coat on a winter beach and wondered where she was.
Changing the subject, she smiled. 'This house is lovely.
What a view out the back here. Have you been here long? '
'Yes, it's been in the family a long time.'
'It's really beautiful.'
'Yep, not a bad part of the world, but there's quite a lot of upkeep. Luckily, I have help.'
The whisky was making things warm and slightly gentle at the edges, which, given the gorse spines and the passing out and the lying in a lane, Tilly felt, was very welcome. Stanley started barking at a noise, and there was a knock at the front door.
'That'll be Leo.'
Two seconds later, the broad-shouldered, extremely good-looking Australian from Darlings, in possession of the kind of tan that doesn’t fade and a brown leather holdall over one shoulder, beamed. 'G'day, I hear someone had a bit of a fight in the lane. I'm Leo, I live along the road. How are ya?’
All the better for seeing you. Tilly felt her eyes widen at the absolutely stunning man in front of her. Now there were two of them. She didn't quite know where to look first. 'Tilly.'
'Boat Shed, Evie at Darlings said. Right?'
'Yes,' Tilly confirmed.
Otto rolled his eyes. 'She thought it would be a good idea to have a go on that dilapidated old swing down the lane there. Luckily, she didn’t land in the barbed wire.'
Leo pressed his lips together. 'She'll be right. Let's have a look then.'
Checking over Tilly’s hands, the scratches on her face and examining her arm, Leo asked a few medical questions, waited for the answers, and nodded at each one.
'Looks like you'll live. I'll just get the arm dressed properly, and you'll need to look out for signs of infection, but I think you've escaped anything bad.
Your hands'll certainly be sore for a few days.
The arm was bleeding well, which is good; nothing in it, it'll heal clean. '
Tilly felt as if she were in a dream as the whisky went down and the Australian almost swam in front of her eyes. Life was very strange. The last Australian she’d seen hadn’t been anywhere near as nice.