Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
ISABELLE
Turning my blank phone over in my hand, I checked the clock again.
Thirty minutes. They would be looking for me in half an hour.
And I was miles away, in a bowl somewhere coast adjacent.
Aside from a miracle, I was never making it to my meeting point, and the last few hours spent perched on the deep chairs while the owners of the property disappeared cemented that fact.
I couldn’t have been more on edge.
Soft steps on the stairs informed me I was no longer alone.
Ben had stalled at the bottom of the staircase, hair damp over his forehead, clad in another dark sweatshirt and joggers, his tinted glasses clear enough to see he was watching me, but not clear enough to remotely identify what he was thinking.
“Do you have a landline?”
“Your phone doesn’t work.”
Was that a question?
“I need to call someone. They’re expecting me, and I’m not getting out of this snow-locked cottage any time soon, I assume.”
He shrugged, descending the final step and wandering towards the rear of the property, through some heavy-looking double doors, returning with a portable landline, he slowed as he approached.
Rolling his shoulders, he took in a deep inhale through his nose and slowed almost to a stop, offering the device to me from a full arm’s reach away.
Reaching across the remaining distance, my hand closed around the phone and no sooner had he released it than he stepped back and crossed to the kitchen before he began taking out ingredients from the cupboard.
Carefully entering the mobile number into the device, I raised it to my ear, the call beginning to ring, it connected, silence on the other end.
“Christian?” I offered down the line.
“Yes.” The voice was crisp, no emotion in it.
“We are due to–” I swallowed. “I’m delayed in the storm.”
“How delayed?”
My head landed in my hands.
“Weeks.”
The man was silent.
“If you aren’t here for the collection your deposit will be forfeit.”
“I’m sorry. I am literally stuck just a few miles from you, in the blizzard.”
He didn’t respond.
“I’ll get there as soon as I can,” I pleaded.
“There won’t be another agent in the area for weeks.”
No…
“It’s that or nothing. Another payment will be required.”
I looked up. Ben was studiously buttering toast, seemingly uninterested, but I lowered my voice to a whisper, nowhere more private to take the call.
“I can pay. Just, please, there’s nothing I could have done. Please don’t leave me behind.”
The pause before he replied dragged for an eternity.
“Call this number three weeks from today. Payment is due then. After which I will confirm collection.”
“Cash.”
“Pardon?”
“I can only pay in cash now; I have no access to my banking. Please, cash.”
“Fine.”
The call cut off.
In three weeks, I would be well and truly considered a missing person. Although families like ours would initially try to resolve issues such as these ‘in house’. They wouldn’t find me here, not in this weather, and ultimately it would end up in news outlets and with the police.
My mind jolted back to the police officer who gave me directions just miles from the forge cottage. He saw me, on my own, not under duress or with an unknown person. How would that read?
“Thank you.” Standing I walked the phone to the kitchen table, where Ben was now sitting, eating.
Coming to a stop at the other end of the table, I placed the phone down. Ben seemed to try to keep a healthy distance from me so I could respect that.
He motioned to a plate sitting on the counter, toast and avocado, scrambled egg, cold meats at the side.
“Are you hungry?”
I nodded, collecting the plate.
“There’s coffee in the machine.” He pointed behind me.
Turning I found a mug sitting on a large coffee machine, buttons lit up as I approached it. Pressing flat white, I waited until it beeped. Finding sugar sitting on the counter beside it, I spooned in several heaped teaspoons and collected the plate, taking up the chair at the end of the table.
Ben was immersed in his own breakfast, so I followed suit. The conversation with Christian competing with my current predicament, mixed with utter exhaustion. My bones ached.
I sipped the coffee and a heavy sigh slipped out at the taste.
“You’re alone.” Ben was now looking at me so I shrugged. Obviously.
“Was that your guardian?”
I looked at him then, properly. His glasses sat on the table and his eyes were clear, curious but not calculating.
“Something like that.”
He blinked at me, waiting for me to expand, but I didn’t.
“Making ourselves comfortable?” Alex stomped down the stairs and into the room.
“Stop it, Alex.”
Ben began collecting his plate and tidying up, Alex grabbing food while I finished, in silence, eyes trained on the plate I diligently cleared.
Alex slipped past me, grabbing the phone from the tabletop and retreating into the room Ben had collected it from, slamming the doors closed behind him.
“Can I dry up?” I stood, moving towards the sink, where Ben froze. His hands stilling under the running tap, his body stiffened, so I withdrew.
“No, thank you.” He reached for the plate I carried, and I passed it to him, keeping distance. He washed it then dried around the bowl, folding the kitchen towel and laying it carefully over the Aga.
“I’ll show you to the spare room.” He wandered towards the stairs.
When I didn’t follow, he turned, watching the indecision flitting across my face.
“There’s no alternative,” he offered, tone placating, as if speaking to a somewhat feral animal. “You’re stuck here until it thaws.”
I felt myself beginning to nod.
I was stuck here until the snow thawed. Or thawed enough for me to leave. And the next collection wouldn’t be for weeks.
Snatching my belongings from the lounge, I held my boots, the silent question picked up immediately by Ben.
“Inside the boot room, by the back door.”
I followed his instructions, opening the door to the boot room. Warmth rushed out, a large boiler in the far end of the room kicking out significant heat. At least my boots would finally dry.
Returning to Ben, I stopped a clear distance from him and his mouth quirked up in a half smile.
The stairs opened onto a large hallway, long rows of windows opposite several doors we passed on our way towards the far end.
“The guest room has no en-suite I’m afraid. Only Alex has that.”
I murmured my understanding. No awkward midnight run-ins with Alex, thank goodness.
Ben motioned to a door. “Bathroom, plus there’s a WC downstairs, beyond the boot room.”
“Okay.”
He continued down the hall.
“I’m at the top of the stairs, Alex is at the end of the hallway, and you’re here.”
He entered a bedroom, walking across the expanse to a large bay window, a deep window seat below. The room was large, the bed unnecessarily so, wardrobes covered an entire wall and I scrunched my nose. Far more space than my three outfits would require.
After I placed my belongings gingerly on the bed, Ben carefully moved past me to the door, just before he left he hesitated and turned back.
“Make yourself comfortable. There are towels and toiletries in the bathroom, food downstairs, you know how to make a fire.”
Was that a joke?
I smiled and he nodded, thinking.
“Alex and I need to go to the manor so we will be out for a few hours.”
I nodded again and he went to leave but paused again.
“You’ll be safe here.”
Before I could think about it properly I had shuddered out an exhale, exhaustion, or relief, but Ben had already left me, clicking the door closed behind him.
I had dug the clothes back out of my duffel and laid them carefully over the window seat where they were slowly drying in the crisp sunlight.
Unable to trust myself, I wrote the date three weeks from now on the back of my tattered maps and pinned it to the bedside table using the lamp.
Outside the window the snow still fell. Nowhere near as heavily as the previous day but the damage was already done, the drifts now at least four feet deep.
I could see where Ben and Alex had shovelled paths between the barns and outhouses, a gazebo near what looked like a pond, or maybe at that size it was a small lake, but the snow still fell and even those areas now had a healthy layer of snow.
The sound of movement in the house had stopped in the early afternoon, and I took it to mean I was alone.
Making the most of Ben’s recommendation, I explored the bathroom.
I had enough of my own toiletries for a short while, but I took advantage of the large shower, brushing my teeth, washing and combing out the mess that was my hair and drying it with the hairdryer on display on the granite countertops.
The cottage really was beautiful, traditional yet everything was modern in its capacity, as though the men had chosen function and capability and then ensured country-living by design.
Realising my clothes I’d rambled in were absolutely not clean, I opted for a pair of leggings and an oversized jumper.
This was outfit two of the meagre three I had space to pack, and I committed to asking about running a wash seeing as I thought it ruder to hand wash my belongings and leave them dripping away in the shared bathroom.
Then I wandered downstairs, slipped on my boots and exited the house into the continuing snow.
My mobile was still off, the music on it lost to me for now, but I had an MP3 player I used when I was prevented from having my phone with me at university, and while my collection was incomplete, it was sufficient.
Crunching along the path towards the water, snow building up on my boots but thankfully not deep enough to spill over the top, I drew in a deep lungful of fresh air.
Everything was pretty much fucked. And worst of all was that I now had several weeks to think about the worst-case outcome before I could speak with Mr Personality – Christian – again.
Sucking in another huge breath I pushed the earphones into my ears and began playing the songs on shuffle. I didn’t need anything in particular, just something.
The cold bit at my nose, the jumper thick but insufficient, after a short while the chill bled through. Now, however, I enjoyed it. It was a choice for me today, a chance to feel something other than bloody despair.
Cold becoming bone deep once again, the thought crossed my mind to return to the house when I felt the hairs on my neck lifting.
Alex and Ben weren’t back, the snowmobiles I’d seen by the barn still missing and there was no-one else here.
A hand landed on my shoulder, startling me.
Without hesitation I reached over my shoulder, grabbing the wrist of whoever stood behind me, dropping as I yanked them forwards. They flew over my head, landing heavily, the snow breaking their fall before they curled upwards.
Jamming my knee onto their stomach and hands to their shoulders I pushed them back down into the snow.
My earphones pulled from my ear at the quick movement and the man beneath me groaned loudly, halting his resistance to the pressure I was bearing down onto him.
Then his groan slowly transformed into a wide grin, green eyes twinkling from under a heavy parka hood, completely disarming me.
Gradually my fear and adrenaline peaked, and the sharp pain of my tattered, bruised knees roared to the front of my awareness.
“Holy fuck, my knees!” I groaned as the man let out a full laugh, jostling where my one injured knee still bore down into his chest.
I released the pressure marginally, predominantly to ease the pain in the joint, but in part because I suspected the chuckling man below me was not the threat I initially assumed.
His laughter slowed, his smile widening until dimples popped each side.
“Well… hello, Killer.”