The Diary Of Pamela D. (17 page)

Yet sitting next to Theo made her feel tense
and awkward all the same. She didn’t know whether to continue
gabbing with Tessa who was sitting on her right, or pay attention
to Theo who was sitting quietly on her left. To her complete
surprise, however, Theo suddenly pushed back his chair, got to his
feet, leaned over and kissed Pamela- neither a lingering kiss nor a
chaste peck, but a proper and affectionate one, straightened up
once more and said to all and sundry, ‘I’ll be back in a moment. In
the meantime, I suggest that you leave your wine glasses empty.’ He
returned from the cellar a few minutes later with a pair of dusty
old bottles, uncorked them, and served everyone himself. As supper
resumed, he said to Pamela with a small, kind, sardonic smile, ‘If
this doesn’t relax you, nothing will.’ Pamela stared at him for
some time, trying to fathom this apparent change in him. She was
still feeling giddy from his kiss, and was blissfully unaware of
the covert smiles and meaning looks the others exchanged with one
another.

Chief Inspector Robert Matthews, who had
become something of a fixture in recent weeks, sat at one end of
the table opposite Mrs. Dewhurst. Across from Pamela sat Fred
Pascoe to her left, Jennie in a highchair and Anne. Jennie stole
the show, of course, and would eventually have succeeded in
breaking the ice were they trapped in the high Arctic in
mid-winter. The Inspector was a calm, sociable man, and entertained
them with stories of life at CID. His stories were rivetting,
having an almost philosophical aspect that was at once humane,
understanding and humorous in a unique, quirky sort of way.

‘Robert, why don’t you write some of your
stories down, just as you tell them, in your own voice,’ Mrs.
Dewhurst said amidst a chorus of assent. Her familiar usage of his
first name didn’t go unnoticed, either.

He gave a self-deprecating shrug. ‘You’d
think that’s all there was to it, wouldn’t you. But it doesn’t seem
to work that way. The moment I make a conscious effort to capture
something on paper it just seems to melt away, right through my
fingers. Unless,’ he added with a menacing leer, ‘the paperwork
involves trying to nick someone. Then it’s a different sort of
story altogether.’ This, of course, got the intended laugh.

But at these words Pamela felt suddenly
separate, apart, as though she were turned into something almost
supernatural, watching the room they were sitting in and the house
from the outside, as though oak beams and stone walls were as
insubstantial as vapour. Albert Askrigg, she had come to believe,
was not a man at all, but was rather a force of nature- evil, dark
and dangerous. You couldn’t capture or subdue a force of nature.
One never truly overcame nature’s fury- one merely lived through it
any way one could. She spent the rest of the meal wrestling with
the intangibles she would need to overcome if she wished to
survive.

The final wall, as Pamela
soon discovered, that lay between herself and Theo seemed to remain
standing, as solid and unbreachable as ever. No sooner was supper
over than he turned back into his old unreachable self. Miffed, she
was all the more glad for Tessa’s presence. When they were
ostensibly alone together, sitting in the back garden where Fred
Pascoe and his wife and child also were, she confided, ‘Why does he
always
do
that? For
a moment there I thought everything was going to be just fine . . .
then, he just shut it off again: it’s like he’s able to simply
flick a switch, and poof! no more Theo. At least, not the Theo I
want in my life.’

‘Don’t be silly!’ Tessa told her. ‘He’s just
waiting until you’re married. You watch, he’ll turn into Mr.
Casanova Hot-Lips the moment he carries you over the
threshold.’

This depiction of Theo evoked a scandalized
laugh from Pamela.

‘
Casanova Hot-Lips
? Where on
earth
do you get such
ideas from?’

‘From watching
you
at the supper-table,’
she replied, watching Pamela’s blush with unrepentant
gratification. ‘It took almost half an hour for that pucker to
leave your face-’

‘You-!’ Pamela, beet red, gave her a swat. ‘I
wasn’t puckering-’

‘Were too, were too.’

The two were silent for a while after that,
looking out upon the tarn, the stone-wall-latticed rolling green
hills dotted with sheep, cattle and a few horses, and the wood
beyond which surrounded the estate.

‘It’s so beautiful here,’ Tessa breathed at
last. ‘To think that you get to spend your whole entire life here,
having children and raising them, having all this space for them to
play and grow up in. You’ve got to be the luckiest person I
know.’

There was an underlying sadness to what she
was saying that caught Pamela’s attention, and she remembered
little hints dropped by Ellie, Doris and Theo, that Tessa wasn’t
happy with her own life.

‘What?’ Pamela said quietly, nudging
shoulders to get her attention. ‘Out with it. By the way, aren’t we
supposed to be calling each other Tess and Pam?’

Tessa smiled, but there was little humour in
it. Keeping her gaze fixed into the distance, she said, ‘I’d rather
we kept things just as they are between us- I feel as though we
have something special, you know? No one else besides you and
Auntie Ellie and Auntie Doris calls me Tessa.’ She sighed, seemed
to come to some sort of decision, and began speaking.

‘All right. You’re going to notice something
sooner or later anyway, so I might as well tell you now. I got sent
here by my parents because I’m pregnant.’

Pamela could tell at once that Tessa was
anything but happy about it, so she said nothing, waiting for her
friend to continue when she was ready.

‘David- David Priestly,
that’s the father’s name- he wanted me to go straight out and get
an abortion. He accused me of trying to trap him, and he hit me-’
she wiped at her angry tears which betrayed the depth of her hurt
even if her voice didn’t. ‘We were so
careful
- I mean, we were using almost
every form of birth-control known to Man and I
still
got pregnant. But he and I had
talked about it before, like what would I do if I got caught. He
knew before we started going out together how I felt about
abortion, but that never stopped him. Then when I finally told him,
he called me an opportunist and a slut. We were out for a drive
when I told him, and he just stopped the car and told me to get
out. I was so stunned that I just sat there. That’s when he hit me.
Not a slap, not with the flat of his hand, but with his fist. Then,
he leaned across, opened the car door, and shoved me out with his
foot.’ She took a deep breath that was all but a sob. ‘God, I was
such a mess! I was staggering around, half out of it with shock,
covered with blood, and I was alone in the middle of nowhere . . .
and nobody would stop and pick me up except the police.’ She
huffed. ‘The only reason they did was because at first they thought
I was drunk or something, and they were going to arrest
me
.

‘I never saw David again
after that, but Daddy did, after I told Mum what happened, and she
called Daddy at work and told him. Daddy wouldn’t believe my
account until he talked with David himself.’ She gave a little
laugh through her tears. ‘When Daddy finally got the full picture,
he nutted David a good one. Pow!’ She screwed up her face and
slammed her fist into her hand. ‘Ow.’ She shook her hand, wincing
before continuing. ‘David’s Dad came over to talk to my parents
after that. When Dad was done talking to him, he left, telling Dad,
“You should have told
me
, first.
I’d
have broken his head, not his nose.”

‘So that’s what’s going on in the wonderful
life of Tessa,’ she concluded, shrugging, unable to look in
Pamela’s direction. ‘So, what do you think now? Am I a tramp who
doesn’t deserve to be given the time of day?’

‘I think you’re being very brave,’ Pamela
told her truthfully. ‘As for your David . . . ’ She paused to
consider her words, carefully. At last, she said slowly, ‘People
don’t always say or do what they mean. It could be he was just
scared-’

‘David?’ Tessa said, raising
an eyebrow in tired contemplation. ‘He used me, right from the
start. I knew it too. But I loved him so much . . . I couldn’t seem
to help myself. I knew he was bad news, but I talked myself into
believing that he’d change one day. Would you believe that even
his
parents
tried
to warn me off him? Well, they did. I’m such an idiot! What more
warning could I possibly have wanted, if his own parents thought he
was a bad gamble?’

Instead of talking further, Pamela
instinctively put her arm around her friend. The dam burst then,
and Tessa put her head on Pamela’s shoulder and began weeping
uncontrollably.

‘Will you . . . are you still going to be my
friend?’ Tessa sobbed.

Putting her arms around her
best friend, Pamela said with a confidence that was entirely new to
her, ‘Always. Always and forever. If any man ever tries to hurt you
again, he’ll have to go through me, first.’ Her gaze straying to
the wood beyond, Pamela thought to herself, ‘No matter
who
he is.’

It was a perfect day, with a light breeze and
white billowing clouds in a crystalline pure blue sky. Pamela was
far from the mansion, sitting cross-legged in the tall grass,
watching over little Jennie who chased anything that hopped,
crawled or flew, thankfully without any success. Pamela glanced
once or twice towards the mansion to see Theo on his balcony,
sitting in his chair and keeping an eye on the pair. She gave him a
wave and he waved back. Even at this distance she knew he
smiled.

Something, a sound or
movement from the direction of the forest, got her attention and
her wave faltered. But there was nothing. Breathing a sigh of
relief, she turned her attention back to the little girl. ‘I sure
wish you were mine,’ she told the child, because she was secure in
the knowledge that Jennie was too young to understand. ‘One day I’m
going to have a little girl of my own. Or a little boy. Then you
can have someone to play with. And then there will be Tessa’s
little . . .
something
. Before me, of course. Doesn’t that sound nice?’

Jennie smiled and said, ‘Ba-ba.’ Abruptly,
the child’s smile faltered and she turned her head to look
apprehensively towards the forest.

With a worm of fear gnawing in her chest,
Pamela got to her feet and picked up the child. ‘That’s twice now.
Twice too many. Let’s go back in, just to be on the safe side.’

The moment she began moving toward the
mansion, however, another sound, this time unmistakable and clear,
caused her to turn-

-and make an incoherent noise that was pure
terror. Albert Askrigg had come bursting out of the wood and was
running straight towards her, his eyes filled with naked, savage
murder, a long knife flashing in his hand.

‘Run! Run!’ For a moment she had to coax her
unwilling feet to move. And then, all at once, she was flying,
running for all she was worth. But she could feel Albert Askrigg’s
heavy footfalls growing closer with each thud of her hammering
heart.

Where were the police? Where was Theo? He was
no longer on the balcony watching her. The day which had been
clear, sunny and bright, was suddenly overcast- she felt a drop of
moisture strike her face, causing her to flinch involuntarily. But
no . . . the water hadn’t come from the sky . . . For some reason
she found that she had stopped running, and now stood beside the
tarn. Jennie was no longer in her arms, or anywhere to be seen. And
Albert Askrigg?

There was no sign of him. But still her chest
felt constricted with terror. She was standing at the edge of the
tarn looking into the water. Strange . . . something seemed to be
moving down there. She knelt at the edge for a closer look,
extended her hand towards its own mirrored image-

At once her wrist was seized by a hand that
shot from the water, enclosing it in an unbreakable grip of iron!
She tried to break free . . .

. . . but the hand that clutched her was not
Albert Askrigg’s. It was a young woman’s hand, pale and deathly
cold. At once, the young woman’s face became visible, her eyes dead
and staring. Pamela began screaming in horror-

‘Pamela! Pamela! Wake up! Please, stop
screaming! You’ll soon have the whole house in an uproar!’

The light had been turned on, and she was in
Theo’s arms. He was holding her close, stroking her gently. ‘Shush,
shush. It’s all right, my love. Everything’s fine.’ She felt him
nod towards whoever had opened the door.

‘They’re dead!’ she sobbed unconsolably. ‘Oh,
God, Theo! I saw them! They were all dead in the water, where he
buried them!’

‘What? What on earth are you talking
about?’

‘The missing women,’ she told him. ‘He tied
rocks to their bodies and threw them into the water.’

‘What? How do you know this? Did you actually
see something, or are you just talking about your dream?’

‘It was something he said, just before I got
away from him,’ she said. ‘He told me that when he was done, he’d
toss me in with all the rest of them-’ She began sobbing
hysterically. ‘Oh God! Oh God! He hurt me! He-’

Theo took a shuddering breath and buried his
cheek against the nape of her neck. ‘I’ll protect you from that
monster. He’ll never hurt you again- on that you have my solemn
promise.’

To someone she couldn’t see, he added, ‘For
this, he’d better pray that I don’t get to him first. He’ll get no
mercy from me.’