Chapter 6 #2
“Well, there you go—that’s not something I usually talk about.” No wonder he’d felt so connected with her, come morning.
“About wearing body armor and driving in armored vehicles and being surrounded by a literal army of elite soldiers, and yet it was probably the least safe you’ve been in your life.
” He nodded, starting to remember. “‘Probably’ being the operative word, you said. Because you’re unsafe every time you hit the … M1?’”
“The motorway, yeah.”
“You said we’re incredibly vulnerable whenever we get behind the wheel, but it’s a risk we all take so we can do the stuff we want to do or need to do.
‘Every day,’” she said, air-quoting, “‘we put our lives in the hands of hundreds of strangers, trusting that they won’t veer over the center line, or plow into the back of us. We live our entire lives seconds away from oblivion—a freak natural disaster, a bee sting, a random heart attack—a thousand and one ways to die, every minute of our lives… ’”
“Gee, I sound like fun.”
“You weren’t wrong. The human body is fragile and delicate, and we’re all broken in our own little ways, but somehow most of us manage to live our lives. Every day, we have to trust that nothing horrible will happen to us, or we’d never leave the house.”
“And you’ve lost that trust.”
“I know that the fragility of life is supposed to make us value it more, but that doesn’t stop me being scared to properly live it.
” She stared out the window, the morning light leaching the tan from her face.
“People are always trying to get me to ‘put things in perspective.’ But that doesn’t help me see more clearly.
It just makes me feel guilty for feeling the way I do.
We can rationalize all we like, but emotions don’t have brains.
Like you saying, ‘Times have changed,’ as if that should make you feel okay about losing your family home. But does it really?”
He grunted, duly chastened. “No wonder you don’t usually tell people.”
“I’m kind of glad you know. It’s a difficult thing for me to explain, and it’s a difficult thing for people to hear, so I try not to share. People never know how to react. You did, though.”
“We just established that I tried to fix you.”
“I mean, you hugged me. I remember the hug. In fact, whoa, my body is currently reliving it.” She looked down at herself and seemed to take some time to process, then met his gaze. “Poor you, though, getting a category-five emotional dump from a stranger.”
“I don’t feel like we’re strangers, Amelia.”
She blinked a few times. “Me neither,” she said, quiet and serious. “I know we don’t remember much of yesterday, but I know that hug… It meant a lot to me.” She sat a little straighter, as if remembering something. “I can’t find my keys!”
“So that’s why you hadn’t left? You sex tourists, you’re heartless.”
“I am not a…” She grabbed something off the floor and threw it at him.
He caught it just in time. A grapefruit, slightly smashed. He didn’t want her to leave. He felt it as strongly as his conviction last night that she was the woman for him. But then, he didn’t want a lot of things to happen that were happening.
“In a hurry to get to the next stop on the Austen tour, are we?” he said, forcing a light tone. “Who’s it going to be? Mr. Knightley of Highbury? Colonel Brandon of Dorset? Captain Wentworth of…”
“No fixed abode?”
“Or perhaps Ed—” He stopped. He could hear a vehicle on the driveway. “Bollocks!”
“Tom?” Amelia spoke warily, like she couldn’t take any more surprises.
“The Upstairs-Downstairs tour.”
“The what?”
“A TV show—Edwardian, toffs and servants. Point is, it involves the kitchen.”
“Oh.” She looked around. “Oh,” she repeated, as the implications sank in. The place looked like… Well, it looked like two people who were off their faces cooked a meal, had a food fight, and then had hot sex.
“Obviously, I’m well beyond giving a toss,” he said, throwing the grapefruit into the nearest rubbish bin, “but Xanthe’s hoping to keep the business going, trying to get some other tours started in the area, so I owe it to her not to tank her ratings.”
Amelia started gathering scattered crockery. “Is there a TV show you don’t do?”
“If there’s a buck—a pound—to be made…” He shoveled a clutch of bottles into the recycling bin with a brain-crunching clinking and smashing.
“The Brideshead Revisited Experience in summer is my favorite—was my favorite. Croquet, backgammon, Dubonnet and gin. This estate is the cinematic equivalent of a gigolo. For the right price, it’s anyone’s.
Any price, to be honest. I’ll go out and tell Xanthe to stall while I clean up a little. ”
“Hopefully, we’ll find my keys somewhere in this mess,” she said, dodging past him to stack the plates in the dishwasher.
“What do they look like?” He grabbed his coat from the back of a chair.
“A basic metal keychain with the car key and a few others—padlock keys, the key to a B&B I forgot to return… Wait… Shit…”
She was staring at the bottom of his coat, still holding an armful of plates.
“What is it?” he said.
“I saw a man in a gray coat.”
“You mean when we saw the men carrying the rug—if we did?”
“No. Could have been the same coat though. I just got a clear image of someone running away from me, wearing a big gray coat. The hem was flapping. He was wearing boots.”
Tom placed a hand on her upper arm. “Any idea when? Where? Inside? Outside?”
“It was dark, so last night sometime. Inside. A long corridor.”
“The servants’ corridor?” Tom pointed through the archway.
“No. Narrower.”
“Sounds like the attic. Where was I, at the time?”
“I don’t know. Do you think we should tell the cop?”
Tom winced. “Tell her what exactly?”
“Good point.”
Tom squeezed Amelia’s arm. “Keep thinking.”
As he headed for the entrance hall, he rubbed his face, and discovered that only part of it was shaven. He’d got halfway through in the shower before getting the flashback to the body in the rug, or whatever that was.
As mornings-after went, this one was completely nuts. But then, even before the hallucinations had started, it was well on its way to being a deeply intense twenty-four hours, mostly in good ways. Very good ways. It would indeed be a wrench to lose Amelia to dull old Mr. Knightley.
Tom hauled open the main doors and jogged down the steps.
After briefly greeting the visitors, he took Xanthe aside.
“Have you heard from Duncan this morning, by any chance?” he said.
His mouth was so dry it was hard to speak properly.
He’d given Amelia a glass of water and forgotten to pour one for himself.
“Not a peep,” Xanthe said, looking around. “He’s usually faffing about somewhere when we arrive, to make sure the tourists don’t take one look at the place and back out. Something wrong?”
“Not at all,” he said. No point worrying her if it was indeed a hallucination. “If you see him, let him know I’m looking for him?”
“He’ll be out fixing fences for your nonexistent sheep. He’s determined no one is going to find fault with his landscaping. I told him they’ll probably concrete the lot. Tossers.”
“Hey, can you stall coming into the kitchen for a bit?”
“Sure. Everything okay? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“That might well be the most likely explanation.”
Her face lit up. “Which one? The soldier, yeah? I swear I’ve been feeling his presence. And did you hear that scream yesterday, just after we did the air raid siren? It was unearthly.”
“I’m joking. No ghosts. Just … a technical hitch. Five minutes.”
By the time Tom returned to the kitchen, Amelia nearly had it restored to its normal state of disrepair.
“I’ve mostly just shoved everything in the nearest cupboard,” she said as she finished wiping down the table.
“Isn’t that what cleaning up is? Might as well leave it there for when they bring in the wrecking ball.” He grabbed a cloth, wiped the kitchen sink, then stood back, assessing. “That’s respectable enough—thank you. Looks like less of a crime scene. Did you find your keys?”
“No,” she said, doing a last circuit of the room, “I remember putting them in my pocket after I locked the car, and that’s all.”
“The bedroom?”
“I had a good look this morning.”
“While you were creeping away without saying goodbye?”
Suddenly, Amelia screeched and sprang backwards, clattering into a stack of copper pans. She was staring at something on the floor, beside the door to the kitchen garden. “Holy shit, is that … blood?”
Tom caught up with her. It did look like a pool of blood.
Dark-red rivulets had flowed out between the flagstones and dried.
He tracked the trail back to a bottle of wine, knocked onto its side.
He picked it up and swished around its remaining contents.
“Not blood. That was one of the bottles that had gone off. There was thick sediment in it, remember?” He grabbed a mop from a bucket in a cleaning cupboard and ran it over the puddle.
“And now it looks like a poorly cleaned crime scene.”
“Yes, when you look closer, it’s too gritty for blood.” She planted her palm on her chest, relieved.
Xanthe stuck her head around the arched doorway. “Are we good to go? I’ve left them in the… Oh!” she said, noticing Amelia.
“Hi!” Amelia said, awkwardly loudly.
“Hold on, weren’t you on the tour yesterday?” Xanthe inhaled sharply. “Did I leave you behind?”
“No, no, I drove myself.”
“Oh, that’s all right then!” Xanthe darted a guilty look at Tom.
Was this something she’d done before? “Pregnancy brain! Well, everyone’s driven themselves today, so I’m off the hook.
And from next week, none of us has to worry.
” She gazed up at the sooty, flaking ceiling with a sigh, as if it were a nostalgic memory worth preserving. “Unless some miracle happens.”