CHAPTER 21 #2
‘I could come down at the weekend if you want? Let me rephrase that. I’d love to come down for the weekend and look after you for a bit.
Spoil you. We could go out to the pub for supper – the Green Lion, isn’t that what it’s called?
I seem to remember they do some nice fishcakes.
’ Pat didn’t reply. What to say? She didn’t want to offend Sue, especially after she’d offered.
‘Or not?’ added Sue, as she sensed the reticence down the line.
‘The thing is, Sofia is coming for the weekend …’
‘Your Sofia?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, that’s great,’ said Sue. ‘I know how much you miss her, and you haven’t seen her for ages.’
‘Why don’t you come too?’ suggested Pat, with mild enthusiasm. ‘It would be nice for you to catch up.’
‘Well,’ Sue sighed. ‘Maybe not.’
‘I know, how about you come for Sunday lunch? You can take the train. It’s easy, and that way I can have Saturday night with my daughter and then both of you on Sunday. Two of my favourite people.’
‘It sounds like a good plan,’ agreed Sue. ‘Then at least I get to check that you’re OK.’
Pat hung up and felt a little better. But her office was still a mess and Henry’s file was missing, and she had an uneasy feeling that she was being watched or observed in some way.
How else could the criminal have managed to get in and out of the hut so quickly?
She had only been gone an hour or so. She sat on the floor and started picking up the pieces of loose paper.
Some of the clients’ notes that she was looking at were quite a few years old.
Some of them she remembered clearly, some of them she had almost forgotten.
Her mobile rang.
‘Prichard Knowles!’ he announced. His voice sounded a little jaded.
‘Hi, Prichard, how are you?’
‘Not well, Pat, not well at all. I ended up playing party games, spin the bottle and all that, until past midnight. I’m exhausted. I also drank Baileys, which should only ever be drunk at Christmas; it’s not something one should indulge in outside the festive season. Anyway, you left early?’
‘Well, I was somewhat threatened by Derek in the utility room with a bottle of wine.’
‘That sounds like a very grown-up form of Cluedo,’ laughed Prichard. ‘I’m not sure I comprehend.’
‘Derek threatened me while I was in the utility room with Fiona, and he was holding a bottle of wine and swinging it around.’ The more Pat explained the situation, the more bizarre it sounded.
‘I’m sorry. You’re going to have to rewind. What were you doing in the utility room with Fiona in the first place, and more importantly, where was I?’
Pat talked Prichard through her evening, including Derek and Fiona’s liaison, the admission of their dalliance, and Derek’s menacing words by the tumble dryer.
‘Well, I am shocked!’ declared Prichard. ‘I had no idea.’
‘And the shepherd’s hut was broken into this morning.’
He immediately offered to come over and help her tidy up, and to stay as security. But Pat could tell that he was not in the finest of fettles, and she would clearly have ended up looking after him as he moaned around the kitchen asking for paracetamol and craving salt, fat and carbohydrates.
‘Don’t worry, Prichard,’ she said in the end. ‘I’m a big girl, and I can look after myself.’
She tidied the hut, put everything back where it belonged, had a cereal bar in the kitchen, then returned to the hut for the day’s Zooms.
It was still light when Pat decided to have a bath.
She stood in the avocado suite, waiting for the plastic bath to fill up, and found herself locking the door.
It was an odd feeling being scared in her own house.
Somewhere she’d lived very happily for ten years.
She added some bubbles. She was not normally that type of person.
She’d been given them for Christmas and they had sat unopened by the bath ever since.
She was tempted to climb up onto the edge and have a look next door.
But as she turned off the taps, it was all quiet the other side of the leylandii.
What scene had greeted Malcolm on his return, she thought as she slipped into the bath, was anyone’s guess.
She didn’t stay in there long. She’d planned to lounge around for a good half-hour, having a luxurious soak, but in the end, she was in and out.
She told herself it was the over-sweet smell of the bubble bath.
Truth was, she felt vulnerable, exposed; each time she ducked under, her mind told itself either that Derek would be there when she surfaced, or that she would be held under by some violent criminal and would flail around in the water until she drowned.
They were just thoughts, she told herself. Ignore the thoughts.
Dressed in her fluffy dressing gown, with a mug of herbal tea, she sat down with Dave to watch TV, which as far as she could work out consisted of back-to-back panel shows.
She called Sue. The phone went straight to answer machine.
She wasn’t sure she could manage Prichard’s laugh tonight.
She was fine. This was her sitting room after all.
She dozed on the sofa and listened to her purring cat as he kneaded the fluffy edge of her dressing gown with his sharp nails.
The tapping on the window was light, like raindrops on glass.
Pat went rigid on the sofa and held her breath.
What was that? Was it a branch, a twig on the window?
Or was it someone clawing at the glass trying to get in?
She lay motionless, her ears straining, her whole body stiff, on high alert.
Fight? Flight? All she could hear was the pounding of her own heart as it hammered away against her eardrums. There it was again.
The noise. Even Dave stopped purring and looked across at the window.
Pat inhaled and then sat bolt upright on the sofa, spun her head to stare at the window and screamed loudly. The apparition at the window also screamed. Pale skin. Bright pink lips. Black hair. Hands either side of the face. For a nanosecond, she believed she was looking at Edvard Munch’s Scream.
It was a Korean tourist. Tapping the glass with acrylic nails, asking for help: how did she get back to London from here?
Eventually Pat sent her on her way to the village bus stop, then drew all the curtains, turned off the lights, bolted the doors and windows, picked up Dave and went to bed, pulling the duvet right up under her chin.