Maestro (11 page)

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Sara drove swiftly down the main street in Glymeer.

The street was deserted except for a white van parked outside the post office. A young lad was dropping off bundles of newspapers and paused from his task to look up at Sara briefly.  

Further down the street, John was already hard at work stacking his crates into place. His back to the road, he didn't turn around when Sara passed. 

Sara looked into her rear view mirror as she drove on. Behind her, tiny little Glymeer with its single street, fitted neatly into the mirror. A perfect picture postcard. 

Suddenly, something in the postcard image moved. John was standing in the middle of the street, his hands on his hips, watching her. His ruddy face staring.  

The Meer Valley was particularly beautiful this morning, the golden rapeseed fluorescent against the green slopes. The sun was slowly rising, swallowing up the darkness around it. 

Sara opened the car windows to let in the sun, the air, the freshness of the morning. 

The winding valley road forced her to drive slowly. And of course, the thought of colliding with more sheep and their disagreeable owner. 

Sara fiddled with the car radio, momentarily losing sight of the road ahead. She didn't see what was coming.  

Instead of sheep, a man on a horse leaped across the road from one side of the valley to the next. 

Sara screamed at the sight of a ton of horse just inches from the bonnet of her car. The horse high-jumped clean across the full width of the road.  

Neither the rider nor the horse appeared to notice her and continued undisturbed onto the other side. 

Sara's memory returned to her. She pulled the car over and switched the engine off. The rider and his horse raced along over the hills. The sun was shining onto the rider's back. Once before, she had watched the sun on that man's back. She remembered how it had cast a long shadow as he walked away from her. 

The tall, athletic body, the long back, belonged to Gillane. 

Gillane the enigma. 

Sara had assumed he didn't ride. On the two occasions she had gone to his house, she hadn't noticed any stables. And there was that odd remark from Mag that he only kept pigs. As pets.

The Inspector Jay had said that Gillane had the stables dismantled. That was what he was doing the day Sarah Lunn disappeared. 

Sara started the engine again. She thought to herself that it didn't seem unusual for a man to be out so early riding a horse. Gillane was capable of that and much more. It would have been ironic though, if they had collided - her car against his horse. Then he would not have been able to hide the darker side to his nature. Or was that too well hidden away? 

Sara prayed that Gillane had not seen her.

She slammed her foot down hard on the accelerator. If there were sheep coming, damn them.

Every twenty miles or so, Sara stopped the car to scrutinise her map. Having never driven to Wales before she was confident that she was lost. Already on the road for more than three hours and she had barely made it halfway. 

Anxious and weary, she drove on for another couple of miles. At the side of the road, she saw the familiar WIMPEY sign and decided to stop for a late breakfast. 

The great thing about England, she thought to herself as she entered the sterile cafeteria, had to be the full English breakfast.  

Recovered from her early morning angst when all she could keep in her stomach was coffee, Sara now chose scrambled eggs, bacon and coffee from the menu. 

She ate with great enthusiasm, swallowing the food without chewing. 

Her breakfast consumed, she lit a cigarette. Drawing on it deeply, she scanned the other patrons. Mostly elderly ladies and children in school uniform.  

Sara looked at her watch. 9.45am. The children were probably skiving from school. How things have changed, she sighed, puffing out a cloud of smoke. Once upon a time, a child would not have dared show his face in a public place when he should have been at school. 

A couple of the grannies to Sara's right, smiled cheerfully at her. She may be lost but at least she was far from Glymeer. Here, people smiled. 

Forgetting to smile back, Sara pulled the notepad from her bag. On every single page, the words "Sarah" and "Gillane" stood out boldly. She flipped through the pages to the end of her notes and began to write: 

"Visit to Angels Rest...." 

She stopped, the image of Gillane on his horse in her mind. Maybe he had reverted to keeping horses again and had built himself new stables. Perhaps someone in the village had lent him a horse. Surely out of all the scowling, suspicious villagers in Glymeer, there was one individual on good enough terms with Gillane to consider lending him a horse.  

The waitress was wiping the table next to Sara. Her mind off Gillane for a second, Sara asked the waitress for another coffee. 

Gillane was an experienced equestrian. He could have steered the horse across the road at a gentle trot. But no, what did he do? Command it to jump with all its strength.  

The coffee arrived and Sara lit a second cigarette. She closed the notepad and put it away. The safest place for her thoughts of Gillane was in her head. Where no one could find them. 

Sara drank the coffee and smoked. She imagined Gillane and Sarah Lunn out riding together for hours. Sarah would gallop away, taunting Gillane to catch her. He would. Then he would pull her off the horse and they would make love in the open field not caring who saw them. 

Maybe Gillane had loved Sarah; her fresh innocence, spirited nature and boundless energy for love. Mag said she had the sweetest smile. 

Sara paid for her breakfast and coffee and left the cafeteria. She was eager to resume her journey and find Sarah's mother.  

Mothers know their daughters. Daughters are what mothers would have liked to be. Daughters make up for lost dreams and chances. 

Sara's own mother, Henrietta, was a wise old soul. Sara hardly ever saw her these days, which she regretted. 

When Sara was growing up, her mother often remarked how much they were alike. 

"You're just like your mother!" seemed to be all Sara ever heard. 

The remark infuriated her and in truth, hurt her deeply. She argued endlessly with her mother, shouting at the top of her lungs about why she was not like her at all. 

Towards Sara's eighteenth birthday, the arguments had gotten worse. She was relieved to go off to university just to get away. 

Sara had to wait until her thirtieth birthday before she was able to appreciate what her mother had been saying for all those years. But by then, the best they could do was to manage a certain complicity. Both mother and daughter accepted that they would never be close.  

Men came and went in Sara's life but the only one her mother ever met was Carl. Mrs. Perrins had been deeply disappointed when Sara didn't marry Carl. Years later though, when Carl moved in to Sara's house in London, she turned a blind eye. She was careful not to ask too many questions or make any comments.  

For Sara's part, she was grateful to the woman who had given birth to her - for more than she was able to express. 

The signs at the approaching roundabout were in Welsh and English. There was no point going any further without asking for directions. Sara pulled off the road into a nearby petrol station. She filled up the petrol tank first.  

The cashier inside was a plump, cheerful-looking Welsh girl. Sara didn't notice her right away hidden behind buckets full of fresh flowers stacked along the counter. 

"Fresh from today?" Sara smiled handing the girl twenty pounds for the petrol. 

"Yes Ma'am," the girl replied mistaking Sara for royalty, "I keep them inside so the fumes don't get at them." 

Sara selected a bouquet of white and yellow chrysanthemums from one of the buckets. 

"These look nice. How much are they?" 

"Three fifty, Ma'am." 

Sara gave her another five pounds. 

"Do you know a place called Angels Rest?" she asked as the cashier gave her the change. 

"Yes. It’s not very far. Continue straight on past the roundabout." 

Sara nodded and thanked the girl warmly.  She settled back behind the wheel wondering if she had done the right thing to buy flowers. It was too late to reverse the decision. She had passed the roundabout and the petrol station. 

She looked at the flowers apprehensively. She would see how her visit went before offering them to Sarah's mother. She rued her choice of flowers; in Japan, chrysanthemums were symbolic of death. Lilies or roses would have been better. 

The girl at the station had said it wasn't far. Sara looked at the odometer. She had driven another twelve miles since the station. There were too many other cars going in both directions for her to attempt a three-point turn. Her best bet, she decided, would be to turn the car around as soon as she came upon a side road she could stop at.  

She was getting further and further away from the petrol station and the girl who had given her the worthless directions. She was determined to go back and wring her neck. 

At long last, after what seemed an eternity, she saw a small white painted sign on the side of the road. Sara slowed the car down and put her indicator on. If she didn't stop now, God only knew how far her next chance would be. 

She turned the car. Angels Rest, announced the sign. She had made it!  

Singing the praises of the girl at the station, Sara drove down the narrow path. Her progress was severely impeded by bramble bushes left to grow so wild they overflowed onto the path, scraping her BMW with their thorns. Unrestrained, the bramble had shaped itself into an uneven, straggly hedgerow. Its branches tangled and intertwined in all directions. 

Faced with no other option, Sara manoeuvred the car as best she could from the bramble. A series of potholes presented a different type of challenge: when the car tyres weren't sinking into them, the paint on the car was being scratched and scraped by the thorns. 

Shell shocked, Sara came to the end of the pathway from hell. Waiting for her was another sign: Angels Rest and an arrow pointing straight ahead. 

"No more. No more, please," she groaned.

Her throat was parched from all the anxiety. It was 11.30 am. Five and a half hours since she had left Glymeer. 

She overcame her exhaustion enough to take a good look at her surroundings. Dazzling green hills for as far as the eye could see. Not a fence or a brick or a sound to be seen or heard. The square white sign with Angels Rest painted in green, looked out of place. It was ironic and comical at the same time. The thought crossed Sara's mind that John Sheeley had led her to a place that didn't exist. 

She drove wearily along what was not much more than a dirt track. She opened the car windows hoping to hear a bird or a voice. Not a single bird flew past. There was no robin here.  

Sara began to sense that her presence here was tantamount to sacrilege. She glanced nervously at the chrysanthemums next to her: a small inadequate recompense for those whom she expected to reveal themselves. In this place. A place where one came to be alone. When there was nothing left in the world that you wanted to be part of. The only ones to find Angels Rest would be those searching for it. 

The track rose steeply ahead of her. She switched gears and drove the car up and down again. On the way down, she saw a white cottage, nestling at the foot of the sloping hills. She stopped and got out of the car. She looked around her and could see nothing else. The track continued on for some distance. Like a piece of string stretched along a bright green canvas. It might go on forever.   The solitary cottage could be the home of a mad hermit.  

Sara decided to drive on, to follow the track and see where it would take her. 

Five hundred yards on, the track vanished into a pile of rocks. The cottage behind her had to be Angels Rest. 

The prospect of having found Sarah's family filled her with trepidation. Sara turned the car around and sat staring glumly at the cottage. Her search for Sarah Lunn now seemed an immense responsibility to have taken on. Just as the track had literally vanished into a pile of rocks, going to that cottage was a point of no return. An end. An absolute. Sarah Lunn would no longer belong to her imagination but perhaps to a dreadful reality which she was not sure if she could face. To go any further, would require a leap of faith, a belief that something good would come out of it. 

Sara's mouth felt dry. She began to cough. The sweat was dripping under her arms. She needed to empty her bladder. She was alone and on her own with no other resources to rely on than her diminishing determination.  

She approached the cottage slowly, turning off the track and onto the grassy path leading to it.  The cottage itself was bigger than Downswold and quainter with its large wooden porch and baskets of hanging flowers. To one side, a wooden barn-like structure for storing tractors maybe. 

Sara stopped the car and deliberated whether she should sound the horn or get out and knock on the door. The decision was made for her when a young man came out of the cottage and stood on the porch squinting at her. He heard the car and had come out to investigate.