Birdkill (3 page)

Speeding through the woodland, an odd thought occurred to her. ‘I never asked you. Did you ever drive? In Lebanon?’

Robyn’s glance was amused. ‘Are you crazy?’

‘I just wondered.’ Mariam settled back in the seat happily.

‘So why do you have to go back early tomorrow?’

‘I’ve got a new gig writing for a news website called 3shoof. It’s the fastest growing site in the Middle East right now. They’re based out of London.’

‘Never heard of them.’

‘They’re big, aggressive. Punchy.’

‘You’re not going back to Lebanon, surely?’

‘No, it’s desk based. At least until I get bored.’

‘So that’ll be two weeks at the outside.’

Mariam shrugged. ‘Whatever. It’s a job. And the money’s good.’ She gazed out at the wooded slopes. The road descended towards the pretty little seaside town and the white and black Tudor façade of the Davington Hotel at its centre.

Robyn pushed at the glass-panelled double doors leading from the street into the warm hotel reception. A fire burned in the great hearth. Opposite was a delicate Georgian table with a little brass plaque proclaiming it to be Reception. Two elegant old ladies were taking coffee. An enormous painting of a bull dominated the space, hanging from a picture rail in its heavily decorated gilded frame. A girl in black and white smiled at them from behind the desk. ‘Good morning. Can I help you?’

‘We were looking for some lunch.’

‘Certainly. We offer bar snacks in the Davington Arms or meals in the dining room. It’s market day, so there may be a short wait for a table.’

They wandered together to the dining room for their short wait, but as it turned out there was a table for two free by the window overlooking the street. The waitress cleared a soup bowl and teacup from it and wiped the dark wooden surface.

Mariam glanced around, her nose wrinkled. ‘Damn but this place is ancient.’

Robyn smiled. ‘It’s a country market town, you’re hardly going to get Michelin stars or funky macrobiotic quinoa salads here.’

Robyn slid her bag under the table. Mariam hooked hers on the chair. The restaurant was busy, waitresses dancing between the packed tables with steaming plates. Dark panelled walls, a yellowing ceiling with chandeliers and a royal blue carpet enclosed them; the hubbub of conversation and clatter of hollowware dulled the sharpness of the outside air. Robyn wallowed in the normalcy of it all, closed her eyes and smelled cooking and coffee.

Mariam broke in. ‘A penny for them.’

Robyn brushed back a stray strand of hair. ‘I had another dream. It’s really thrown me, sort of upset my grip on things. Something really strange happened today and I’d swear it was all a dream as well except it hurt me and I’ve still got the scratches. It was real.’

Mariam leaned forward, her hand raised to staunch Robyn’s reminiscence. ‘Slow down there, cowgirl. What happened?’

Robyn laid her hands flat on the table. She only wore a plain white gold ring on her left little finger. There was a freckle between the ring and her knuckle. ‘I was walking in the woods outside the Institute. There was a bunch of kids playing in a clearing. One of them was calling sparrows to come to him out of the air and, well, killing them.’ She looked up to check for Mariam’s reaction but her friend was attentive and serious-faced. ‘Breaking their necks. He spotted me and I felt this enormous pull, to run to him and be killed like them. To feel peace. It took me apart, reached inside of me and literally tore me apart. I managed to cling on to a tree to stop myself going to him, but it was like being pulled by a huge magnet, full of the urge to let him take me like he was taking them, to let him have my life.’

‘Jesus. No wonder you’re in pieces. Did you find out who he was?’

‘No, they ran away. I heard someone cry out the name Martin but I was in a sort of, well, state.’

‘It’s pretty weird as dreams go.’

‘It wasn’t a dream. It actually happened. I’ve even got the scratches from the tree trunk I clung to when I tried to stay back from his pull.’ Robyn pulled her sleeve back and displayed the red welts for Mariam.

‘Can I take your order?’ The young blonde waitress stood by the table, pad and pen in hand, her gaze on Robyn’s slashed-looking forearms. Robyn slid her sleeve back.

Mariam smiled up at the woman. ‘Can we have five minutes?’

Robyn pulled her hands from the table and held them together in her lap. She bit her lip, gazing at the grain of the wooden table and willing the woman to go away.

‘Sure, no problem. I’ll just let you know, the soup of the day is cream of mushroom and the special’s roast beef.’

‘Thanks. Thanks very much.’ Mariam reached out and stroked Robyn’s arm. ‘Are you okay?’

‘Yes, fine. Sorry. It’s just everything’s a bit strange right now. I didn’t know what to do, who to talk to. I’m not making it up, but it seems absurd now, sitting in a restaurant and talking about it.’

‘Talking of restaurants.’ Mariam picked up the brown leather folder. ‘We’d better have a look at the menu. Fancy a glass of wine?’

‘You’ve no idea how good that idea sounds right now.’

‘Woah, you’ll never guess what? They’ve got Ksara.’

‘No way.’ Robyn reached for her menu. Sure enough, at the bottom of the selection of reds was Chateau Ksara, Bekaa Valley, Lebanon. The Ksara chateau was just outside Zahlé. ‘How did that get here? That’s a hell of a price for it.’

‘Fuck it. I’m paying. We can’t not drink Ksara.’ Mariam called the waitress over.

‘Can we get a bottle of the Ksara, please?’

‘Certainly.’ She scribbled in her notepad and waited uncertainly, her pen hovering over the paper with its little blue leaf of carbon paper tucked underneath. ‘Would you like anything to eat?’

Mariam glanced at Robyn, a flash of naughty schoolgirl in her eyes. ‘No, that’ll be all for now thank you.’ The waitress departed. ‘Her arse,’ Mariam’s gaze followed the girl, ‘does not approve.’

Robyn wondered at Mariam’s ability to make her feel comfortable, her breeziness and positivity should be annoying and yet somehow Mariam always knew when to let Robyn have quiet and when the right thing to do was be a noisy brat. The frizzy-haired banker’s daughter perennially dressed in baggy long-armed jumpers, battered coats and cargo pants, had never to Robyn’s knowledge let a brush or comb get within a mile of her, let alone wear makeup. And yet she turned men’s heads, seemingly oblivious to the effect she had.

The waitress brought two claret glasses and the bottle to show them. Mariam nodded at her and she left again. ‘Oh, the theatre of it all. Do you think she’ll bring us the cork to smell?’

‘For that price, I hope it’s on a silver salver.’

Mariam put on an awful Cockney accent. ‘Yer pays yer money, yer takes yer choice.’

Robyn had a fleeting sense of lifeless brown feathers. Her hands were back on the table, Mariam laid her warm, olive-skinned hand on top. ‘It’s okay, take it easy.’

The waitress reappeared with the opened bottle and the cork, which Mariam acknowledged with a royal inclination of the head. ‘That’s fine, we don’t need to taste it. Just pour away, please.’

The wine splashed into the wide glass, curling like surf and splashing back, rippling and slowly calming to a placid, reflective pool. Blood. Flies. Mariam’s hand on hers, squeezing. ‘Robyn. Robyn. Snap out of it.’

She clenched her eyes shut and grimaced, banishing the thoughts crowding her. ‘It’s okay. I’m fine. Honestly.’

Mariam released her hand. ‘Great. Now she thinks we’re alcoholic dykes. Here. Cheers.’

Robyn raised her glass to chime against Mariam’s. She inhaled the heady fruit of the wine, tilted the glass and let it wash against her lip before letting it seep into her mouth. She met Mariam’s eye as she pulled the glass away from her. ‘Oh, God. That’s gorgeous.’

Wonderment on her face, Mariam put her glass down. ‘There’s something magical to being somewhere like this and finding a little bit of home in a bottle.’

‘I once went to the Chateau for a tasting. It’s lovely there.’ Robyn glanced out of the window and back at Mariam, who was regarding her, serious-faced. The brown eyes were turned hazel by the sunlight.

Mariam leaned forward. ‘So have you been having the dreams again?’

Robyn nodded. ‘Yes.’ She fiddled with the stem of her glass and took another sip of wine. ‘I don’t remember much in detail, just feeling so very scared and,’ She pursed her lips and stared out of the window at the street beyond, the cars and people. An old woman being pulled along by a wagging Westie in a tartan coat. She looked back helplessly at Mariam. ‘Violated.’

Robyn lay in the darkness. Her head span if she closed her eyes. They’d drunk too much. They’d done for the bottle of Ksara in the Davington. Robyn had put her hand over the glass after one refill ‘Driving, remember?’ and Mariam finished it off while Robyn guzzled Perrier brought by the stiff-backed little waitress who Mariam had decided was a closet Nazi, all blonde, blue-eyed and Slav-cheeked.

They’d gone shopping for basics at the big Tesco just out of town. Mariam had been giggly and Robyn stern and matronly. Back at Robyn’s, they opened a bottle of Californian merlot and agreed it wasn’t a patch on the woody, deep marvels of Ksara. Robyn made risotto and Mariam watched her, spooning hot stock from one pan into the rice and onions in the other. The Swedish style open fireplace, charged up with newspaper, kindling and chunks of wood, warmed them as they sat with their legs tucked up and ate from bowls and talked, about new beginnings and, as the level on the bottle dropped, their pasts and fears.

Robyn closed her eyes and steadied herself as the spinning sensation faded. The rain pattered on the window and she tried to cast her mind back to the yawning lacuna in her past, as she did every night when she found herself with nothing to distract her. Peel away the onion skins, reach into the blackness. As always, it skittered away, elusive just beyond her grasp. Frustrating, shapeless things evaded her; try as she might, they wouldn’t come back.

Robyn imagined herself sailing on a great lake, as she sometimes did when sleep evaded her. She slid across the mirror surface, the gentle splash of the water and flap of canvas sail relaxed her. The sharp perfume of clean open water and the bobbing of her little vessel cleaving the grey, reflective surface brought delight. Reaching the beach, the boat hove to and the waves expanded in circles dying down to leave peace and tranquillity in their wake. Sleep came.

She woke with no memory of the night and was thankful, as she always was on a clean awakening.

THREE

A New Start

A six o-clock drive to London with the hangover from hell wasn’t Mariam’s idea of fun. She gulped from the plastic water bottle in her cup-holder, the sweet vestige of her second service station coffee still on her palate. It was a grey, misty morning and the motorway had been quiet for much of the way, Mariam lulled by the buzz of the car’s engine. Closer to London the traffic got heavier. Now she was crawling towards 3shoof’s trendy Richmond offices. She checked her watch, if she was lucky she’d be just in time.

She had woken on the foldout bed at Robyn’s to the peeping of her mobile alarm and had staggered into the kitchenette and made coffee. Robyn came down, tousle-headed and still pallid and dark-eyed, but she hadn’t had a nightmare, which was worth the six hours’ drive there and back. Sometimes Robyn’s fragility made Mariam want to cry.

She wondered about 3shoof and Adel Ibrahim, the site’s infamous proprietor. She hadn’t met him, editorial director Alan Kingsthorpe had hired her. Great to turn up for her first day panda-eyed in clothes she’d slept in, sporting boozy dragon breath. Very old school journo.

Mariam parked up and walked across the road to the townhouse with blue painted windows and the 3shoof logo by its door. She jumped up the steps, her laptop banging against her side and decided that was perhaps a mistake as her head threatened to burst. The receptionist was wearing a headscarf, a blue-eyed pale Circassian whose smile didn’t quite reach those striking irises. Her lipstick was wrong, Mariam decided, beaming at her and asking for Alan Kingsthorpe.

‘You have appointment?’

‘Sort of. I’m starting a new job here.’

‘Ah, yes. Good.’ the woman drawled. ‘Very good.’ She reached for the phone on her desk. She gestured languidly across the grey cloth reception sofas arrayed around a coffee table strewn with dog-eared magazines. ‘Sit.’

Mariam dumped her laptop and handbag on the sofa and stood looking out of the window at the street beyond and wondering how Robyn’s day was shaping up. The strange incident with the kids in the field had really thrown her friend. Mariam wondered what had really happened out there and how much of it had come from Robyn’s imagining. The bark of a male voice startled her.

‘Hi. Mariam. Welcome to 3Shoof.’

He was skinny, donnish and bespectacled, wispy pale blonde hair and an aquiline nose, angular and terribly English. Mariam took Alan Kingsthorpe’s out-thrust hand. ‘Glad to be here.’

‘Come on, I’ll show you the rumpus room. Did you have much of a journey?’

‘Sort of, I was staying with a friend in Somerset.’

He led the way up a narrow staircase. ‘That’s some voyage. Want a coffee?’

‘Kill for one.’

‘Let’s get you sorted. Then you can install yourself, we’re short-handed right now. Come to think of it, we’ve been shorted handed since we started this whole thing. Coffee machine. Bring your own cup. You can use the guest ones for today. They’re the ones with our logo on them. When you’ve sorted yourself, we’re along there, third door on the right.’

He slapped her shoulder and Mariam knew this was going to be a
good
gig.

It was a good day in all. A lot to take in, a lot of new faces but all young, friendly and pleased to welcome the newcomer. Lunch was ordered in from a local Mediterranean deli and taken in the meeting room, a family affair presided over by the avuncular Kingsthorpe.

Mariam found her energy levels crashing after lunch. The tiredness washed over her. She fixed herself a strong, sweet coffee and was just back at her desk when Kingsthorpe tracked her down with his hunt master’s cry.