Chapter Three
Phinn kept his eyes shut. He knew she was looking at him from time to time because the rattle of the keyboard would stop and she’d move her chair a fraction against the bare wooden boards of the floor so that she had a view of him unobscured by her screen. He was playing dead, he knew. For the same reason as possums did, probably. Was it possums? His brain swam through the brandies and broke surface, treading vodka, while he tried to bring his thought processes online. Yes, possums. Pretending to be dead to avoid predators. Or, in this case, questions.
Why he was scared of questions from . . . what was her name again? Polly . . . no, Molly . . . yes. Molly put the kettle on. No, that was the other one, Polly. This was Molly. A softer name, a floppy rag doll of a name. She didn’t seem floppy though. Was more stern. A bit schoolmistressy, but that was probably because she didn’t speak to many people. Working for a magazine, sending in the articles, living in this rural backwater with a friend she spoke about as if it was her only one. So. Maybe a bit shy? That might account for the awkwardness of their conversation — oh, wait. The awkwardness might be because she’d seen him naked and he was unable to string together a sentence that wasn’t curling at the edges with bitterness or just plain alcohol-induced confusion. Yeah. The situation was awkward.
Still. Another half-hour, say an hour tops. Then he’d be feeling steadier, get dressed, get out, get his bearings, make his way back to where he’d been staying; sleeping on bare stone floors wrapped in inadequate sleeping bags. Waiting.
His half-sleeping brain sucked him back through time until he almost believed he was in his own flat in Bristol, crashed out on the futon after another argument. Another desperate attempt to explain himself, to justify his existence. Another sleepless few hours spent waiting to see if it would be all right in the morning, his fears flicked off and forgotten, his emotions dismissed. He twitched, his muscles attempting to put him back on his feet, send him back into the fray, and he was suddenly awake again to the knowledge that this was not where he should be. But then, where was? Everything was gone, everything.
The lights were the only constant now. The lights and the permanent headaches, the hangovers which padded along at the back of his brain like faithful hounds awaiting their unleashing. There was nothing else.
* * *
I read through the article once again, checked that the pictures were in the right format, and mailed the whole thing off to Mike, editor of Miles to Go . The article had come together just right, the pictures taken from Stan’s ample back earlier in the week showed the moors in their spring colours and, although my words had a bit of a condemnatory tone regarding farmers who blocked rights of way, the pictures would please the Tourist Board, so it all cancelled itself out in the end. Deprived of any further activity that would distract me, I pushed my chair away from the table and stood up, stretching out my back.
‘I’d better go and turn Stan out into the paddock.’
He didn’t move or acknowledge my words although I had a feeling that he was pretending to be asleep again. The rhythm of his breathing was nowhere near steady enough to be that of someone sleeping. Well, that was fine by me.
I squinted another look at him as I pulled my jacket on. He was what Caro would call ‘cute’, but I didn’t know if I’d go that far. He did have good bones, most of which were visible under the tightly stretched skin and unruly hair, but he certainly looked like someone who either doesn’t care or doesn’t do anything to maintain good looks, what with the stubble and the shadowed eyes. I found myself wondering what he’d look like if he relaxed, had a few good nights’ sleep and put on a bit of weight. Nice, I should think. Pretty, in a rock star kind of way, perhaps.
My jacket settled over my shoulders bringing the smell of wet horse and damp blankets to my nose and I gave an inward sigh. How or what Phinn Baxter might be was none of my business. I had about as much interest in men as I had in . . . well, astrophysics, and I wanted it to stay that way. After Tim, who hadn’t so much hurt me as killed me stone dead and then jumped on my corpse, it was going to take mankind to evolve into a whole new species before I seriously looked at a bloke again in any way other than the practical.
I tried to close the front door quietly in case Phinn really was asleep, but it stuck and I had to drag it closed over the lino, with a squealing noise like a rabbit in deep distress. I listened from the garden side, if the noise had woken him then he might call to find out where I’d gone, but there was nothing, so I shoved my hands deep in my pockets and went to rug up and turn Stan out for the rest of the day. Exercised, fed and let out, one less thing for me to feel guilty about.
* * *
When I returned to the house, Phinn wasn’t on the sofa. The duvet was folded up and draped over the cushions and his clothes were gone.
I stopped, frozen in the act of taking off my coat, feeling ridiculous at missing someone who’d only been in my life for a couple of hours. He had woken up, felt better and remembered where he was supposed to be, that was all. Recovered and headed out. Wasn’t that what I’d wanted him to do? It wasn’t as if I’d offered to cook him lunch or put him up overnight until he felt well enough . . . Woah. Was that what I’d been going to do? In the back of my mind, had that intent been working away? And if it had, then why?
I felt sorry for him, of course I did. No one drinks themselves into a stupor and then tears off all their clothes on a chilly March morning on a whim. Although he walked and talked coherently, he’d had the air of a man who’s hanging on to sanity by the tips of his fingers, which wasn’t really the sort of thing I needed right now. What I needed was what I’d come here to find: quiet, peacefulness. A horse to plonk around on without the attendant excitement of occasionally being hauled off into the next county at speed.
Calm. That was what my life was beginning to be, a little oasis of peace after the tumultuous events of the previous year. Untrammelled, if that word meant what I thought it did. And the last thing I needed in all this lovely serenity was some bloke with issues making me feel like I had to do something. Even if the bloke in question did look like a science pin-up.
No. The events of today would seem like a dream in a few weeks’ time. Doctor Phinneas Baxter would have moved on from his squatting impermanence in the deserted and largely derelict farmhouse. I would have regained my feeling that this tiny village hidden away in the depths of the moors was the only secure spot in a frightening world, and I’d be able to roll my eyes at Caro if she ever wondered in my hearing about ‘what happened to that naked guy you found that time’. It had been a little blip in my semi-hermetic existence.
But, as I found when I folded my laptop and went to carry it upstairs, the blip had left his wallet behind.
* * *
I arrived in Caro’s huge kitchen carrying the wallet and a bottle of wine just as she came in from evening stables. It was cold and getting dark outside, but her Aga was warm and there were cats and dogs all over the flagstoned floor in total contrast to my slightly sterile cottage.
‘I need your advice.’
Without preamble I opened the bottle and poured two glasses.
‘Okay.’ Caro washed her hands, shoved a cat off a chair and sat down. ‘What about?’
‘Naked guy.’
‘Right.’ She rested her elbows on the pine tabletop and scrubbed her hands through her hair. ‘So, where’ve you left him?’
‘I don’t know.’ I explained about my leaving Phinn asleep on the sofa and his being gone when I got back. Caro listened quietly. It was one of the things that had drawn me immediately to this crop-headed woman when I’d blown into Riverdale in a state of near breakdown a year and a half ago. I’d come in search of somewhere to hide out and lick my wounds, a place where no one would ever think to come looking, and I’d met Caro in the pub, when sheer luck, and the busiest night I’d ever known the place to have, had squeezed me between a darts match and the kindest woman in the world. She’d asked if she could share my table and then drawn me into a conversation, gently teasing out of me some basic story to explain my bleak expression and my red-rimmed eyes.
With no outward display of sympathy or anything other than practicality she’d offered me the lease on the little cottage opposite her house without even asking for the usual month’s rent up front or bonds or any kind of references. In return all I had to do was help her out with the horses whenever the usual bevy of teenage girls that mucked out and rode exercise were elsewhere, and she’d never once asked me anything about my past. I’d volunteered the occasional piece of information. She knew for example that I’d come from London, that my relationship had ended badly and that if anyone asked, I didn’t live here. But she accepted everything I said with a quiet placidity that belied her tendency for efficiency and hard work. She wasn’t religious, didn’t believe in great acts of generosity — she was just, plain and simply, kind. And Caro, as they said, got things done.
‘Okay. You’ve got nothing to feel guilty about, Moll, you know that, don’t you?’ Caro raised her glass to me.
I wouldn’t say that , I thought, but I knew what she meant.
‘It’s not that. It’s that I don’t know if he recovered and went or whether he went because he knew I didn’t really want him there. And I don’t like the idea of him dragging himself out because he thought he had to.’
Caro twisted her mouth. ‘Did you say anything to make him think you wanted him to go?’
‘No.’ I had wanted him to go but not like that, not without warning.
‘You can’t second-guess his reasons then. He went, leave it at that.’ She refilled her glass.
Behind the windows the shadows lengthened, pointed at the light. The air was chilly despite the Aga’s best efforts.
‘I know. He probably just felt that he was outstaying his welcome and went back to where he’s living. But he left this behind.’ I dropped the wallet onto the table. It landed with a thump and several cards slid out.
‘Oh, I see. Well, take it back then. It’s not like he’s a million miles away, is it? Up to the end of the road, turn left and up the drive.’
‘I thought I might wait until tomorrow morning.’ I smoothed my fingers over the leather casing, it felt lumpy with content. ‘It’s a bit dark now.’
Caro let out an explosive chuckle. ‘Molly Gilchrist! You are not going to tell me that you’re scared, are you? What of, exactly? A bloke you’ve already seen in the altogether, and who might be desperately in need of his wallet? Or the ghost of Mr Patterdale?’
‘I don’t . . . there isn’t a ghost, is there?’
Caro shrugged. ‘Who knows? That place is old, sixteenth century or something, there’s bound to be things hanging round, spirits of ill-used serving girls, that sort of thing. You know Riverdale, we’re like . . . I dunno, a magnet for the weird.’
‘Well, thanks a lot for that.’ I pulled a face at her. ‘Oh, talking of weird, though—’
‘Don’t tell me, he’s got two willies.’ She toasted me with her glass.
‘Shut up about him for a moment, will you? This has nothing to do with the vanishing naked guy. This is about me. Last night I was looking out of the window and I saw these . . . lights. In the sky, I mean, not in the village — I might be a bit mental but I think even I would know if I was looking at house lights. These were . . . twinkly. Colourful.’ Disturbing.
Caro shrugged again. ‘Could be anything. Chinese lanterns, lasers if they were having a disco in Pickering — do people still say “disco”? Or maybe . . .’ she drew her eyebrows down and hunched her shoulders, curling the fingers of the hand not holding her glass into witches’ claws, ‘. . . maybe you saw the Alice Lights.’
I sighed. ‘I know I’m going to regret asking this but what are the Alice Lights?’ I felt a lot better now that I’d put the subject out into the open. There had been something otherworldly and ethereal about those pinpricks of illumination in the sky, but now Caro had possession of the facts they’d lost the unearthly aura they’d had in my head. Caro was so ‘down to earth’ that she was practically magma.
‘Nothing. Stupid stuff that my dad used to make up. I remember him saying something about lights in the sky being the Alice Lights.’ She swigged another mouthful of the wine with a healthy disregard for early morning starts. ‘Like I said, this place is all ghouls shrieking and headless women walking and strange black shadows that move when you’re not looking at them.’ She wiggled her eyebrows. Especially round at Mr Patterdale’s old place.’
‘Right, that does it.’ I put my glass down heavily. ‘I’ll go round there tomorrow. When it’s light. And the sun is shining. I’ll be the one carrying a fully-loaded crucifix, two Bibles and a shotgun. He can manage without his wallet until then. After all, what’s he going to use it for? The shop’s closed until the morning and I really don’t think he’ll be doing any Internet shopping, not with our wretched broadband connection out here.’
‘Not even sure Howe End has electricity.’ Caro got up and peered in a cupboard, returning with crisps. ‘Mr Patterdale was a bit old school.’
‘Having no electricity isn’t “old school”, it’s practically workhouse!’
Caro tore open the crisp bag and stared at the wallet that was lying innocently on the table. ‘Have you looked inside?’ She poked it with a forefinger. ‘To check that he isn’t a multimillionaire?’
‘I looked when he asked me to. When he couldn’t remember his name.’
She made a face. ‘Oh. That kind of unconsciousness. You sure you don’t want me to come with you to give it back?’
‘I’m only going to shove it through the letterbox. I’m not going to enter a debate.’
‘So, what’s he got in here?’ Before I could stop her Caro had picked up the wallet and tipped its contents onto the table. ‘Blimey. She’s a bit tasty.’
In a transparent section at the front was a photo of a woman lying in a deckchair, wearing an enormous sun hat and a bikini. She was slim and pretty, head turned towards the photographer to show a wide, appealing grin.
‘He’s obviously got an eye for the girls. Funny, could have sworn he was far too cute to be straight.’ She flicked through the things that had fallen out. ‘Pretty girlfriend, plenty of credit cards, one bank card, a driver’s licence . . . and half a packet of Prozac.’
‘I don’t think we should be going through his things, Caro.’
‘Why not? He must have found out that he’s lost it by now, and known exactly where it was, if he asked you to check it out. Hasn’t been back to pick it up, has he? He’ll have to take his chances that we’re not a couple of international Internet fraudsters hell bent on squeezing his cards until they squeak.’ She held up a platinum American Express card. ‘Mind you,’ she said thoughtfully, ‘the feed bill is due, and China could do with a new set of shoes all round.’
I snatched the card from her fingers. ‘Stop it. I’ll take it back tomorrow.’
‘Good. And if the whoo-whoos come to get you, I’ll be in York.’ She let me tuck all the receipts, cards and pills back into the wallet. ‘In York, no one can hear you scream.’
‘No ghosts,’ I said firmly, after all I had to walk back across the road in the dark to get home. ‘I don’t believe in anything that I can’t personally poke in the eye.’
‘Well, it’s time you did some kind of poking.’ Caro divided the last of the bottle between our two glasses, erring slightly in favour of her own. ‘Even I get more success than you do, and I’m nearly ninety and completely without any favourable features at all.’
‘Liar.’ Caro was thirty-eight, with a boyish figure and a laugh that could stun pigs. ‘I hope you’re not suggesting that I start making eyes at a tramp squatting in a deserted house with no mod cons.’
‘An attractive tramp, though. And he’s a doctor.’ She flicked the wallet.
‘No thanks.’
Caro’s eyes were suddenly serious. ‘It’s not good for you, Moll, being hidden away here. I mean, I know you want to be hidden but . . . eighteen months? Don’t you think you’ve let long enough go by now? Isn’t it time you stopped locking yourself away here and got out and found yourself a real job? Met some real people?’
‘I’m going home. Before you persuade me to sit here all night and I end up taking Stan out tomorrow with a hangover from hell.’
Caro waved me towards the door. As I left, her cry of ‘You can run, but you can’t hide!’ followed me out and across the narrow potholed road that separated Caro’s old farmhouse from the row of cottages where I lived.
But she was wrong. I could both run and hide. And I had.