Beneath the Moon and the Stars (13 page)

‘Well that’s ok then. We’ll just be two friends going to the wedding together.’

Zach crossed his heart and held his fingers up in a boy scout’s salute. ‘I promise, I won’t even squeeze your butt when we dance.’

‘I should hope not too.’

He grinned. She heard the phone ring in his house and he waved goodbye to her as he ran to answer it.

‘Jesus, you women are a sucker for the love word aren’t you?’ came Finn’s voice behind her. She turned to face him, determined she wouldn’t be embarrassed after what had happened the night before. ‘It didn’t even come with flowers, chocolates, a ring, or a violinist to serenade you and I could still see your heart fall out of your chest and the little birds singing gaily as they flew around your head.’

‘What’s it got to do with you?’ So they had gone full circle then. Finn’s niceness the day before was very short lived. The sneer on his face was back. Though she couldn’t understand why he was so angry about it.

‘Nothing at all. I couldn’t care less. I’m just amazed at how easily you were swayed. One moment you’re standing your ground, refusing to be another notch on his bedpost, and the very next second, he tells you he loves you and now you’re going out on a date.’

‘It’s not a date, we’re just friends.’

‘Men and women can’t be friends, Joy.’

There was something about the way he said that, that made her think he was talking about them not being friends. She moved closer to his fence. ‘We seemed to do ok yesterday, at the farm.’

‘Don’t mistake kindness for friendship. Besides, you crashed straight across those boundaries when you tried to kiss me.’

She hated that she gave him the satisfaction of blushing. It was mortifying. Of course he didn’t want her. He was magnificent, the great Finn Mackenzie, he could have any woman he wanted. He’d shown a little bit of tenderness to her and she’d fallen for him because of it. Idiot.

‘That’s why men and women can’t be friends, someone always wants more.’ Finn’s eyes were cold. Arrogant sod.

He was so inconsistent, she couldn’t keep up. He had been rude, but then he had been so kind, so considerate the day before at the farm, and the way he had held her when they had danced the night before was so… loving, but now this anger over a kiss. It was exhausting. Maybe it was better if they weren’t friends. Though being friends with him was far easier than this continual angst.

He must have thought so too. ‘Look, if you understand that I don’t want more, with you or anyone else, if you realise that nothing is ever going to happen between us, that I don’t find you in the least bit attractive, then maybe we can be friends.’

Egotistical, conceited little… ‘I tell you what Finn, you can stick your friendship up your arse.’

With that she stormed back into the house.

*

Finn scowled as he pulled up outside Joy’s house a few hours later, glaring at her front door. He had hurt Joy but he wasn’t going to feel guilty just because he didn’t want a relationship. He was perfectly happy with his life as it was, he didn’t need her crashing into it with her beautiful red hair, her intense green eyes, her sad stories and her stroppy moods.

He glanced at himself in the rear-view mirror. Two angry grey eyes glared back at him, the frown between his eyes was an almost permanent feature now, as it had been for the last eighteen months. Oh yes, he was perfectly happy!

He got out and slammed the door, grumpy that the blasted woman had such an effect on him, and was just unloading his car when the police car pulled up outside again.

He deliberately dawdled with his stuff as he surreptitiously watched the policewoman from the other day get out and walk up the path towards Joy’s front door.

A few seconds later the door opened and Joy gasped. ‘Oh god.’

‘Hello Joy, can I come in?’

And that was it. The policewoman went inside and the door closed firmly behind them. Not a lot to go on.

He was perturbed slightly at the lack of information. He went through to the back garden to put his stuff in the shed and attempt to fix the lawn mower that had died the day before.

It wasn’t long before he heard Joy’s front door open and close and presumably what sounded like the police car driving away.

Had she been arrested?

Though that theory was quickly dismissed as she came outside and stood on the decking. She looked very pale.

He looked determinedly down at the lawn mower.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw her walk on shaky legs down to the summer house. The lawn mower; that’s what he was out here for. He was not going to get involved.

He glanced over again and saw she was now sitting with her head in her hands.

Shit.

No, it had nothing to do with him. His eyes slid back towards her again. Was she crying?

He stared back at the screwdriver in his hand, threw it down in annoyance and pushed his way through the connecting gate.

She was crying. No doubt about it. He could hear the stifled sobs as he walked closer. She hadn’t seen him yet, he could still back out.

‘Are you ok?’

She jolted in shock, looking up and quickly wiping the tears from her face. Damn it. A woman’s tears were the most powerful tool in the world. He would have done anything for her right then, he would have lain down and died for her if she’d asked, or thrown her into the back of his pick-up truck and spent the rest of their lives on the run, hiding from the law.

‘I’m fine,’ she snapped, clearly embarrassed.

‘Well you’re obviously not.’

‘Like you care.’

He felt his jaw clench. ‘You’re right, I don’t.’

He turned and stormed away, angry that his offer of help had been refused.

*

She wouldn’t let it affect her, Joy thought as she loaded her boot with her chainsaw and a collection of other power tools. She’d had a little cry and that was only natural, but she wouldn’t think of it again. If she dwelled on it, allowed herself to be scared, then the bastard had won – and he wouldn’t win, she was damned sure of that.

She jumped in the car and drove off up the road, deliberately ignoring Finn as he watched her from his window.

But she was angry and she was entitled to that. The justice system had let her down. If she hadn’t fought back, if she had let the bastard have his way, he would still be rotting in prison, probably for another four years. Instead he had got out in just under two. The fact that he confessed and that his solicitor had said there was mitigating circumstances had made the sentence much less. Mitigating circumstances. Bullshit.

She stopped the car in a layby and when the road was quiet, she quickly got out and covered her number plates. She drove round the corner and as the road was still empty she turned off and drove through the trees, allowing the greenery to swallow her, hiding her from the view of the road. She drove on as far as she could before she had to stop; the trees were getting too close together to go any further.

It was a good five minute walk from where she’d stopped to get to her target, so she’d kept the luggage to a minimum, one large rucksack on her back and she carried the larger chainsaw in her hands.

It was quiet in the woods, trees stretching as far as the eye could see in every direction. This was the perfect place to work. Working in the public grounds of Menton Hall the other night was not ideal, it was more likely she would get caught in such open places like that. But not getting caught was part of the thrill and it was also integral to being The Dark Shadow. Without the mystery, there would be no demand, well very little.

She had fallen in love with chainsaw carving when she stayed with a chainsaw artist for a week in Alaska four years before. She had become hooked on the excitement of using such dangerous equipment and relished in the skill needed to use chainsaws to carve such intricate pieces.

On her return to the UK, she had gained her chainsaw qualifications at a local agricultural college and spent months refining her skill. She had contacted a local chainsaw artist, Dan Cordell, with the hope that she could get some pointers from him. His work was stunning. She expected to get little or nothing back. Based on her limited experience of those in the art world, people didn’t really have the time or inclination to help their peers. Chainsaw carvers were a different breed. What she had got from Dan had been amazing. He taught her so much about the use of different power tools and their effects. He introduced her to loads of other chainsaw carvers who were also more than willing to pass on their tips and expertise. She had met Matt George, another carver, who had lived just down the road from her at the time with his lovely wife Emily and three beautiful daughters. Matt had firmly taken her under his wing. He had been more than happy to let her follow him around for weeks as he did commissions and attended events. The carvers were a family of great people who looked after one another, and were genuinely happy for each other’s successes. She was quickly accepted as one of them and not just Matt’s weird little stalker. She attended events, small school fetes, craft fairs, demonstrating her skills and slowly, very slowly, building a name for herself. Although she got a few commissions, work was still very thin on the ground.

She had been keen to show Jake Aldbury, her former lover and mentor, how much she had learned in wood carving since they had parted in Australia all those years before. One night, she had snuck into the grounds of his farm and using the chainsaw had carved a huge flying unicorn into the trunk of a dead oak tree. It was fantastic and to this day was one of the pieces she was most proud of.

She presumed she would get a text or a phone call from him the next day but instead Jake went to the press. Hamming it up for the TV cameras, he stood in a pork pie hat, chewing on a blade of grass, looking confused and a bit simple. He explained to the journalists that he had gone to bed the night before and when he woke in the morning the unicorn was there as if it had quite simply grown out of the wood. He spoke of aliens and of time travellers, but repeatedly kept saying “why me, why did they choose me?” Joy’s favourite part of the news clip, which she had played hundreds of times since, was Jake looking round at the unicorn in bewilderment, shaking his head, but as he turned back to the camera, for a split second there was a fierce pride in his eyes. When the journalists asked if he had seen anything, he told them of what had appeared on the CCTV, a shape, a dark shadow that moved so quickly it was impossible to tell who or what it was. The news programme then played the clip of the CCTV in slow motion, and as Jake said it was nothing more than a shadow and subsequently The Dark Shadow had inadvertently been born.

Joy had quickly followed up with two more strikes, one in Western Scotland and one in Dartmoor the day after, using old dead trees as her canvas. Suddenly there was a media frenzy, with everyone wanting to know who and what The Dark Shadow was.

Alex had quickly helped her to set up a website with photos of her “strikes” and hundreds of people had started contacting The Dark Shadow offering to pay her to come and do something in their grounds. Mainly she had only accepted offers from public places, attracting more visitors to come and see them. And it was only ever dead trees that she carved, bringing life where there was none anymore.

In a matter of months, she had gone from living on baked beans on toast and wondering how she was going to pay the rent to having more money than she’d ever had in her life. She’d paid cash for her second hand Range Rover and had enough money in the bank now to buy her little house outright and still have some left over. But she wasn’t stupid. She knew the popularity of The Dark Shadow would be short lived, people would tire of it, or her identity would eventually be revealed. Although she would still get commissions on the back of the Dark Shadows success, she would never be as popular as she was now once her identity was out there. She had to be careful with her money, make sure she had enough to live on after the frenzy died down. But for now she could enjoy the glory.

In the months that followed, the demand for The Dark Shadow grew and grew until she was doing strikes three or four times a week. The Dark Shadow had gained so much in popularity there were now treasure maps showing where the strikes were across the UK. There was a special geocache website set up exclusively for her pieces, people would follow co-ordinates to find them and have their photos taken with some of the pieces and post them online. There were even T-shirts printed by a company that sold the rather provocative phrase “The Dark Shadow did me last night,” printed across a range of different coloured styles.

The great thing about the secrecy was that although the clients had paid for her services, they never knew when she was going to strike and sometimes it would be weeks after she had carved the pieces that it would be discovered and news of it would hit the headlines. Sometimes two strikes would appear in the news on the same day hundreds of miles apart, leading to more conspiracies about the identity of The Dark Shadow.

As time went on, these conspiracy theories as to the true identity of The Dark Shadow became more and more ridiculous, which just added weight to the intrigue. But none of them suggested it was a five foot girl from some little village in the middle of nowhere. In fact, as some of her sculptures were quite high up, many people believed it must be a very tall man. Though a few tree surgeons had said how easy it would be to get up a tree to carve, using ropes, harnesses and spikes strapped to the feet. She had been slightly annoyed at that – hanging from a harness to cut off a few branches was one thing, but doing so and still being able to carve a detailed, intricate piece was a whole other ball game. Other chainsaw carvers she knew erected scaffolding to do high pieces, but she didn’t have that luxury, she had to be in and out in a matter of hours.

The Dark Shadow had even made international strikes, two in Alaska where it had all begun for her, and ones in Washington, France, Madeira and Spain. That was harder. Strict airport security meant she could never take her own chainsaws on a plane, she had to hire them or ask for her clients to provide the tools in a secret drop off. The Americans loved the secret drop offs, going to a park and placing a chainsaw in a secret location for her to collect, it added to the thrill for them too. For her second anniversary the month before, she had been invited to do a piece in Central Park in New York. For the city that never sleeps, keeping her strike a secret was very tricky, but fun.