A Dark Dividing (19 page)

She had just managed to force her shaking hands to switch the mobile phone on, when there was a scrabbling sound from outside, and to her horror the old-fashioned latch-handle moved. He’s trying get in, thought Mel, and for a bizarre moment the famous
Red Riding Hood
scene came into her mind—the part of the story where Red Riding Hood knocks at the door of Grandmamma’s house, and is told to pull the bobbin and the latch will go up…

The latch was going up now. It was being slowly lifted from the other side: Mel could see it clearly in the uncertain light of the dying fire. The door shuddered slightly under the pressure. It would not open, of course; it was firmly locked and bolted. But supposing he went around to the kitchen door and managed to snap the safety chain off? Or he might try to break one of the downstairs windows and climb in… But if I can throw off this frozen terror, I can dial the police—

From the other side of the door a voice—a voice that was at once recognizable—called out, ‘Melissa? Mel, it’s me. I know you’re in there. Let me in.’

The terror shifted its patterns and became a fear of a totally different kind. Joe! He’s found me! Her hand hesitated on the phone. If I call out the emergency services now, once they realize it’s my husband they’ll only think it’s a—what do they call it?—a domestic. Because Joe can be very convincing when he wants…

‘Melissa,’ said Joe’s voice, sounding so close that he must be pressing up against the door, ‘if you don’t open the door, I’ll smash the window and climb through.’

Still in the fairytale, thought Mel wildly. Only this time it’s the big bad wolf, threatening to huff and puff and blow the house down if I don’t open the door to him… I’ll have to open it, of course. If he does break the window it’ll certainly wake the twins, and they’ll be terrified. A tiny shoot of anger curled upwards at that, and then she moved to the door, unlocking it and drawing back the bolt. The door swung inwards, and there was the cold, slightly damp scent of the outside air entering the cottage. Joe stood for a moment looking at her; he looked large and menacing.

The silence stretched out, and Mel had no idea how long it was before she finally said, ‘How did you find me?’

And Joe said, ‘Never mind that. I’ve come to take you home.’

He would not say how he had found her. He murmured something about private detectives and persuasion, and about the tracing of cars, but he looked so spitefully triumphant when he said this that Mel could not ask any more questions.

She said, ‘I’m not coming back with you, Joe. I’m really not.’

‘Oh, yes you are,’ he said, and there was a chilling hardness in his eyes and in his voice. ‘I’m not letting you take my daughters away from me, and I’m not letting you subject them to Martin Brannan’s mutilation.’

Mel said, ‘So it’s gone from a surgical procedure to mutilation now? And how do you know it hasn’t already been done?’

‘I do know,’ he said. ‘For one thing there hasn’t been sufficient time.’ He looked round the cottage. ‘How many beds are there upstairs?’

‘One.’

‘Then I’ll sleep down here on the sofa. It took longer than I thought to drive up here—I didn’t get away from the office until nearly seven, and then there were road-works on the motorway. That’s why I arrived so late. Don’t try any stupid tricks, will you? I’ll hear you if you try to sneak out.’

The rest of the night was dreadful. Mel did not think she slept at all. She lay upstairs, staring up at the ceiling, turning over and over ideas for stealing downstairs and getting into her own little car and driving away. But whatever she did she had to take the twins with her, and she could not see how she could do that without waking Joe. And even if she did make a run for it, where would she run to?

In the morning Joe sat at the little wooden-topped kitchen table, clearly expecting Mel to cook breakfast for him. When Mel said, shortly, that there was no bacon or sausages because she did not have a cooked breakfast, he said he would have scrambled eggs and toast. He even praised the eggs, which he said were much nicer than eggs bought in the supermarket, you could always spot real free-range farm eggs, and he drank two cups of coffee. It was a pity it was not proper ground coffee, wasn’t it, but he would make no objection to instant for once.

It was almost nine o’clock and a thin autumn mist was lingering outside, wrapping ghostly grey fingers around the trees. If Mel had been on her own she would have enjoyed being inside on a morning like this: she would have switched on lights and zapped around the cottage with polish and dusters, with the radio tuned to some bright music.

She had just washed up the breakfast things when Joe said, ‘Time for us to set off home, Melissa.’

Home. The place where the glass cage is waiting. Mel was still trying to hit on a way of getting free of him but the grey mist seemed to have got into her brain and none of the half-formed ideas of the night seemed remotely possible.

‘Just pack what you need,’ said Joe, following her up to the bedroom. ‘If you can’t pack everything we’ll send for the other things later. We’ll have to get your car collected, anyway.’ So he was not going to let her drive back in convoy with him. It had been clutching at straws to think he would.

Mel had the feeling that there was something odd about the morning but she could not pin the feeling down. She took things out of the wardrobe and the dressing table; she had not brought many clothes up here with her but what she had brought she piled into a case, adding the twins’ things. As she dressed the twins she felt even more woolly-headed, and once, bending over to tie on Simone’s little bonnet, she had to clutch the back of a chair because the room had tilted and spun all around her. It would be the sleepless night, of course, and the shock of Joe finding her. Once outside her head would clear and she would be able to think of something. She tucked an extra shawl over the twins because of the damp morning. When she put them into the little carry-cot Joe clucked disapprovingly at it, and just for a second or two he was again the man she knew and had married: irritating and old-fashioned and over-fussy about appearances.

But she got into Joe’s car which he had parked at the side of the cottage, and sat on the back seat with the twins. The fresh air was not making her feel any better, in fact as Joe drove down the little lane she was feeling very light-headed indeed and slightly sick. The thought of having to endure a three- or four-hour journey home feeling like this, shut into the car with Joe, was appalling. At least the twins were being good; they liked being in a car. Mel usually sang to them while driving; she could see Sonia looking at her, as if expecting it now.

‘This is better,’ said Joe. ‘I’m glad to be out of that frowsty cottage.’

It stung to hear him denigrating the cottage that had been so snug and so safe-feeling. If Mel had felt clearer-headed she would have challenged that one. She wound the window down to let in some fresh air, and then said suddenly, ‘This isn’t the road to the motorway—’

‘No. We’re making a detour.’ He glanced at her. ‘We’re going out to the Marsh Flats,’ he said. ‘Yes, I do know all about them, Melissa. I did my homework on this place before I came up here to find you.’

The cold terror came rushing back. Marsh Flats. The place where people sometimes died in tragic accidents. The farm delivery-boy, when he called for his milk-and-egg money each week, had gleefully related tales of unwary tourists and naturists who had succumbed to the Flats’ unpleasant and glutinous embrace. ‘Drag you down like quicksands,’ he had said, and after that first brief exploration Mel had resolved to steer well clear of the place.

And now Joe was driving her out to them.

She said, with an effort, ‘The Flats aren’t a very pleasant place for a drive. They’re very desolate.’

‘I know.’ He swung off the road and there ahead of them were the bleak wastes of quagmires and marsh. Mel stared through the car window. The Flats were not precisely the shifting sands of sensational or gothic fiction, but they were not far off. There were patches of loose sand here and there, oddly interspersed with the thick, oozing silt that could suck people into its depths… (‘Drag you down like quicksands…’)

And now here was Joe—Joe who normally thought the countryside was just somewhere you drove through on your way to somewhere else, and who had never, to Mel’s knowledge, even possessed a proper pair of walking shoes—parking the car on the grass verge, and telling her to get out so that they could walk a little way.

‘I’d rather stay in the car—’

‘No, you won’t stay in the car.’ Clearly he was prepared to drag her out if she resisted.

‘What about the twins—’

‘They’ll be fine on the back seat for a few minutes. I’ll lock all the doors. And we shan’t be out of sight of them.’

When Mel got out of the car her legs seemed to have turned to rubber, and she had to clutch the door to prevent herself falling. This was something more than lack of sleep and the shock of Joe turning up. Or was it? But as Joe reached out to put his arm about her shoulders and began to propel her towards the gate leading to the Flats, she suddenly understood. I’m drugged! The evil bastard’s drugged me! Something in the coffee at breakfast? She pushed his arm away, but by this time she was so disoriented that she was able to make only the most feeble of flailing gestures.

‘You put something in the coffee.’ It came out slurred, as if she had had too much to drink.

‘I did.’ Nodding, as if pleased. ‘Six paracetamol. I brought them with me, crushed in an envelope. And I stirred them into your cup while you weren’t looking.’ Incredibly there was a lick of self-congratulation in his tone. ‘It’s just enough to make you giddy and weak and drowsy.’

By this time Mel was struggling so hard against the sick dizziness and the engulfing waves of sleep that she was barely aware of him pulling her through the gate, and on to the treacherously narrow towpath that wound through the Flats.

On a spring or summer day the marshes probably looked gentle and benevolent, and they were probably filled with all manner of wildlife and unusual flora, but seen today, on this early autumn morning with the sea-mist lying along the ground, and clinging to the occasional stunted tree that grew out here, they were bleak and slightly sinister. The few sparse trees that grew out here dripped with moisture, like stealthy footsteps creeping along just out of sight. Drip-drip, step-step—

Mel managed to say, ‘Joe, what’s this all about—?’

‘This,’ he said, and there was a sudden flurry of movement. His hand smacked into the small of her back, and Mel was propelled violently forward, off the towpath, and straight into the squelching, sucking mud of the Marsh Flats.

M
EL DID NOT fall headlong, she slithered awkwardly, wrenching an ankle painfully as she tried to save herself, and ending up feet-first and thigh-deep into the quicksands. It was the most disgusting sensation she had ever encountered. She was wearing corduroy jeans and trainers, but even through them she could feel the thick mud lapping greedily at her legs.

She struggled to climb out at once and realized with fresh horror that she could not: it was as if her feet had been planted firmly in quick-setting concrete. The more she struggled the more the glutinous mud seemed to pull her down. But it would be all right: Joe was on the towpath and there was only about six feet between them. Mel held out her hands to him, expecting him to crouch down and reach out to pull her free. But he did not move. The world began to fill up with panic.

‘Joe! For God’s sake pull me out!’

A long pause. Then—‘I’ll need to think about that,’ he said.

‘Joe, don’t play games! For God’s sake get me out!’

‘I can’t let you interfere with my plans, you see,’ said Joe. He was half-kneeling on the path, watching her. Almost to himself, he said, ‘I’m going to be so successful, you know. Parliament, and later on the Cabinet. I’m easily good enough for that. There’s no limit. Don’t you want to share in all that, Melissa?’

‘Yes. Yes, of course I do!’ Oh God, you evil monster, I’ll share in anything if you’ll get me out!

‘Then why did you try to take away the best weapon I had?’ he said reproachfully.

‘Weapon—’

‘The twins. So much sympathy there’ll be because of the twins. I’ll sail through the by-election because of them. Poor good Joe Anderson, bearing such a hardship so bravely. Such staunch religious convictions. Just the kind of man we need in Parliament these days. Just the kind of man for a Cabinet post.’

Mel was hardly believing he was saying all this, even though deep down she had known these things all along. There was a wild moment when she wanted to argue against him: to say, You stupid selfish monster, if you leave me to die you’ll never get away with it! And there was another moment when she saw, quite clearly, that he probably would get away with it; he would tell the story of how he had found his poor bewildered wife out here and tried to bring her home where she belonged, but how she had run from him, and had tumbled headlong into the marshes. I tried to get her out, he would say sorrowfully, and he would probably even choke down tears. I tried to rescue her, but she was too far out. He might add that since the twins’ birth she had been over-emotional, given to melancholy. He would not use the term post-natal depression, but people would use it for him, and nod solemnly, and say what could you expect, poor dear.