Girl Number One: A Gripping Psychological Thriller (34 page)

‘Dad?’

Perhaps
he had gone upstairs to dry off.

He slipped the book back inside the suitcase,
then straightened to see Cathy standing in the open archway that led to the
kitchen.

He did not recognise the housekeeper at first,
it had been so long since his last visit. He remembered a shy local girl with a
thick fringe hanging over her eyes like a moorland pony. Manx as the hills, his
father had described her once, but good at her job. Cathy had never been
curvaceous, not in those days, besides being a good head shorter than Juliet.
But she’d been young and had a way of walking that turned heads. Turned his,
anyway.

He
wondered if she still had that walk, noting a thickened waist that had blurred
into solid hips and thighs under her corn-yellow blouse and flared jeans.

‘Hello,’ he said awkwardly.

Cathy met his eyes, a hard look that spoke of
neglect and long years of resentment. Then she turned and disappeared back
towards the kitchen.

He slicked back wet hair, his heart thumping.
Fuck
.

‘Hello, darling. Is that all the luggage in
now?’

He turned, startled. Juliet was standing in the
doorway to the living-room, damp blonde hair curling attractively about her
face, her clothes dishevelled yet somehow sexy. Her mascara was smudged and she
was wearing what he thought of as her ‘brittle smile,’ the one that meant
trouble. Had she witnessed his encounter with Cathy? He no longer knew how to
read her face. Was it too late for them? He refused to believe it was too late.

She held out a steaming mug, her voice breathy
and over-loud. As if she wanted Cathy to hear. ‘Has your dad gone up to bed?
I’m not surprised; he looked shattered, poor thing. But his housekeeper waited
up for us. She made cocoa too. Wasn’t that thoughtful of her?’

‘Yes,’ he said automatically, and took the mug
of cocoa. It smelt rich and chocolatey. ‘Very thoughtful.’

He followed her into the living-room.
Floor-length red velvet curtains had been drawn against the storm; he recalled
a sweeping vista over the tiered gardens and the wide blue bay below. Rain
battered noisily against the windows, unseen. The place looked essentially
unchanged, though his father’s high-backed armchair was a little scruffier, and
his mother’s old chaise longue had gone, replaced by a modern sofa with brown
leather seats.

Lawrence
stared at himself in the large gilt mirror hanging over the mantelpiece, and
saw his wife come to join him, her familiar reflection meeting his eyes.

Juliet
lowered her voice. ‘I think she lives in,’ she whispered, still smiling her
brittle smile. ‘His housekeeper. What do you make of that?’

Chapter Two

Lawrence stirred,
vaguely aware that it was morning and Juliet had moved from his side. He turned
his head, still drowsy, adjusting to his new surroundings.

The bedroom curtains had been partially opened
to let in light. Outside he could hear birdsong in the unseen garden, and
recalled the flat green stretches of lawn tumbling down in carefully
constructed terraces towards the sea, hemmed in on one side by spindly trees,
dark with rooks’ nests, and luxuriously over-grown hydrangeas on the other. He
remembered flights of steps running down the centre of those terraces, headed
by squat stone lions ruined by lichen and decades of bird droppings, ending in
a gate at the far end and a rough path beyond it which led directly to the
beach.

His
mother had loved this rambling old house, thinking it would be a wonderful
place to spend her retirement. And the garden too, its endless hiding places
and surprises. He thought of the new flower beds he had seen last night,
planted up with lupins, red-hot pokers and delphiniums. Cathy’s handiwork, for
sure. These yellow roses too, arranged tidily in a vase on the mantelpiece. She
had always loved flowers.

He turned over in bed, pushing that troublesome
thought away. The island had seemed such a magical place when he first came to
stay here, steeped in grief at his mother’s death and open to anything which
suggested that life went on, that nature always found a way. Now he knew that
for a comforting illusion. Some things went on; others shrivelled and died. Not
everything was magical, not everything found a way.

Juliet was sitting up nude on the edge of their
bed, her back towards him, plaiting her hair in the dusty sunlight. She was
humming softly under her breath. The long fingers danced in their mesmerizing
rhythm, up and over, between and above, weaving both halves of neatly gathered
blonde strands together into the plait.

Lawrence lay still, admiring how the muscles in
her back and shoulders moved delicately under the skin as she worked. She was
still a beautiful woman at thirty-nine, her waist almost as neat as when they
had first met, hips curving in that slim boyish way. Following the taut
fishbone of her spine with his eyes, he felt the weight of his failure pull him
inexorably towards depression.

It was years now since he had persuaded Juliet
to try for a baby. She had been reluctant at first, saying they could not
afford to lose her income from the small accountancy firm where she worked.
Then finally she had agreed, perhaps worn down by his insistence, and Lawrence
had been overjoyed, promising to take on extra teaching work at the college if
she fell pregnant. Yet each month she bled lightly as a young girl, shaking her
head whenever he asked that familiar tentative question, her belly flat and
smooth as ever. Somebody up there must be laughing at them, he thought,
watching her rise gracefully from the bed and cross the room. His only true
desire in life had been for a child of his own, and yet it seemed the one thing
impossible to achieve. He longed to hold his wife’s thickening waist in his
hands and feel the baby inside kick at the thin surface of her abdomen,
gripping her hand as she strained to push his child out into the world, tiny
and red-faced.

She was dressing in silence now, turned away from
him as she fastened her gold silk top and reached for her jeans. He had been
taking wedding photos and teaching adult evening classes in North London when
they met, scraping a living while he worked towards his first photographic
exhibition. Juliet had signed up for his basic photography course, so vibrant
and attractive that Lawrence found himself unable to take his eyes off the
sensuous young woman in the bright blue kaftan.

They had shared a few drinks in the pub with
the rest of the class before he finally gathered the courage to ask her out to
dinner, stumbling over the words like an idiot, convinced she would refuse him.
But she hadn’t.

He was lost within seconds of their first kiss.
Lawrence had known what he wanted as a compass knows to point north. It had
kept him awake at night, his unswerving desire to marry Juliet and give her
children. To fill her with them, until they were spilling uncontrollably out of
her body. It had seemed such a small thing to ask at first, to become a father
and watch his child grow inside her, and yet the only thing of any real
significance in his life. All over the world, babies were born every day with
apparent effortlessness, handed to their fathers like fruit plucked from a
tree. Yet for him the days had dragged into years and still the branch was
bare.

‘You look beautiful in that. Ethereal.’

He had slipped out of bed and now came up
behind her, putting his arms clumsily about her waist. She said nothing but
leant back against him, her skin warm under the thin gold silk. They hung there
in the sunlight for a few moments without speaking. He could hear her heart
beating, light and rapid, as if she already knew what was on his mind.

‘I want to make love to you.’

‘I’m dressed now.’

‘You could get undressed.’

She sighed. ‘Not like this, Lawrence. Not
here.’

‘Why not here?’

‘Your father’s house. He might hear us.’

Lawrence slid his hands up to her breasts over
the diaphanous fabric, unable to resist a smile at her prudish attitude, though
he knew she couldn’t see him.

‘So what if he does? It’s not against the law.
We’re a married couple in the privacy of our own bedroom.’

‘I’m not in the mood.’

His hands dropped at her abrupt change of tone.
Chastened, he let her move away. He immediately wanted to say something in
return, protect himself from the sting she had driven into his flesh, but
everything that came into his mind was worthless and beneath him, so he said
nothing.

Lawrence picked up his shaving bag from the
dressing-table and made for the door. She said his name quietly but he ignored
her.

Part of him knew he was being ridiculous and
unfair. It wasn’t the first time she had rejected him, and it wouldn’t be the
last. He ought to be inured to it by now, relaxed about the fact that they made
love so infrequently, yet at the back of his mind there was always the
agonising knowledge that she was nearly forty. Time was running out.

Climbing the stairs
to their bathroom on the upper landing, Lawrence stopped dead at the sight of a
girl curled up in a shadowy alcove, a paperback book spread open in front of
her. She was silently mouthing the words to herself as she read, head bent to
the page. He thought at first she was a teenager, then realised she was
younger, maybe eleven or twelve years old.

He wasn’t entirely sure if she was real, there
was something so still and other-worldly about that dark passageway; there was
only one window, its long dusty curtains drawn, shutting out most of the
sunlight. But then the girl glanced up as he approached and hurriedly closed
her book, keeping one finger inside as though to mark the page.

‘Hello,’ he said rather self-consciously, aware
that he was wearing nothing but pyjama bottoms.

‘You’re Lawrence Cardrew,’ she replied,
unsmiling.

‘That’s right. And you must be ...’ He
hesitated, suddenly unsure.

‘Miranda.’

He waited, still not understanding.

‘My mother’s the housekeeper,’ she explained,
and there was something awkward about the way she paused afterwards, as though
expecting a question that never came.

My
mother’s the housekeeper
. He was too busy unknotting that statement to
focus on her anxious air. ‘Cathy? You’re Cathy’s daughter?’

The girl kept the book tightly closed on her
finger, like a bookmark. She had her chin up, her look inexplicably
confrontational. ‘You were watching me last night,’ she said.

He frowned, then remembered how he had looked
up into darkness as the car pulled up outside the house. One window lit up, a
face staring down at him through the rain.

‘Only because you were watching me.’

She raised thin brows, her voice oddly precise
for someone so young. ‘That’s no excuse. I was in bed.’

‘Sorry, did we disturb you?’ He managed an
apologetic tone, deciding she must be angry about their intrusion. She was
probably used to being here alone much of the time. ‘The last ferry was the
only crossing we could get at short notice. I did tell Dad we should stay in a
hotel last night and drive over this morning, but he wouldn’t hear of it. I
hope it didn’t take you too long to fall asleep again.’

When she said nothing in response, he added,
curious and uncertain, ‘So you live here? You and Cathy? Not in the village?’

‘Not in the village,’ she agreed.

He wanted to ask about her father too, but
something in her expression stopped him.

‘I suppose it’s a big house just for one
person.’

She still did not smile.

So his father’s housekeeper had a daughter now,
and she lived here with her mother. A strange arrangement. And a very strange
little girl, he thought, with short dark hair and huge expressive eyes that
watched him implacably across the landing. Her clothes seemed mismatched, a
faded green dress that fell almost to her ankles coupled with a scarf tied
bandana-style around her head, and what appeared to be hefty brown hiking boots
on her feet. If the child hadn’t seemed quite so at home in the outfit, it
might have looked as though she had been delving into some theatrical costume
box.

‘What’s that you’re reading?’ he asked.

‘A book.’

He smiled, then tried a different approach. ‘I
used to do something similar when I was your age, you know. Find some dark
corner of the house to hide in, so I could read in peace.’

‘I’m not hiding.’

Lawrence tilted his head and slowly deciphered
the title of her book.

‘
I
Capture the Castle
,’ he read out. ‘Any good?’

‘It’s about a girl with no money whose father’s
a failure.’

‘Oh.’

The girl checked her page number, then snapped
the book shut. He had the distinct impression that he was being dismissed.

‘We’re going out walking in Dhoon Glen today,’
she said coolly, and for the first time he heard her mother’s accent in the
lilting way she pronounced the Manx place name. ‘I hope you brought boots. The
glen can be very muddy after a rainstorm.’

‘Right.’

She glanced at his shaving bag, then pointed
along the landing. ‘The bathroom’s the third door along.’

‘I know. I’ve been here before.’

‘Oh.’ She looked surprised at last. ‘Well, the bathroom
lock sticks.’

‘I’ll remember that, thanks.’

Miranda turned and went downstairs with the
book tucked under her arm, her back very straight. Her disembodied voice
floated up to him from below as he headed for the bathroom. ‘Don’t worry if you
forgot to pack boots. Gil keeps tons of spare wellies in the garage. They’ll be
full of spiders though, I expect.’ Her voice seemed to mock him. ‘Not afraid of
spiders, are you?’

Smiling,
he continued on along the landing. She was an interesting kid; he could see why
his father might have asked them to live up at the house. And she called him
Gil, not Mr Cardrew. Not much awe there. Gil would probably like that.

As
he reached the bathroom, someone whispered softly behind him, ‘Lawrence?’ He
thought he knew the voice.

Lawrence
turned, but the landing was empty. And from downstairs he could hear the girl
singing.