The Holiday (10 page)

Determined not to overreact, he had thrown the letters away, consigning the unspoken threat they contained to the rubbish bin where it belonged.

Fleetingly he had considered going to the police, but even in a quiet backwater such as Robin Hood’s Bay there were more tangible crimes to deal with than the letters of a saddo who had nothing better to do with his time. No actual threat was being made, so it would be understandable if the police put it low on their list of priorities to follow up. Besides which, if he had taken the matter to them, within hours the local rag would have got hold of it, followed no doubt by a keen-eyed freelancer for one of the nationals. And how would that look? Sure, his publishers might like the thought of all the free publicity, but for Mark it would just be an excuse for his past to be dredged up once more. It would also play straight into the hands of the stalker. When he saw for himself, in black and white, the success he was having in rattling his victim, the stalker’s insecure ego would get a terrific boost. Self-aggrandisement, big-time!

Though he wasn’t being stalked as intensely as the characters in his novel — there had been no phone calls and no visible presence as such — Mark understood the very real sense of torment to which an innocent victim was subjected. The invasion of one’s privacy means nothing until you experience at first hand what it feels like to read a letter written by somebody who has made it their business to watch and follow you.

Then, six weeks ago, the letters stopped, Hereford being the last point of contact. Anyone else might have breathed a sigh of relief and thought that the stalker had got bored with the game. But Mark was far from relieved. More than anyone, he knew the plot of Silent
Footsteps
and felt that the absence of the stalker’s presence in his life was more threatening than when it had been there, and for the simple fact that in his novel, like a lull before a storm, a silence always came before the victim’s death.

So the big joke was, if life was going to imitate art fully, Mark was going to meet his death before he was good and ready for it.

Soft footsteps on the gravel path behind him had him spinning round on his heel. ‘Goddamnit, Theo! What the hell are you doing creeping up on me like that?’

 

That evening Theo cooked them supper. ‘I’m told by my neighbours Max and Laura that my cooking is something to be admired,’ he said. ‘Your verdict, please.’

Mark chewed on a tender piece of lamb that was appetisingly pink and flavoured with oregano and lemon juice. ‘Not bad,’ he said, ‘not bad at all.’

‘Praise indeed from the maestro who introduced me to Pot Noodles and taught me to cook Spam curries on a Baby Belling. Ah, the spicy shite days, how I miss them. Can I get you anything else to drink?’

‘No, this is fine.’

‘More ice?’

‘Theo, everything is fine. Stop fussing. You’re worse than a Jewish mother.’

Theo poured some more wine for himself and thought that everything was far from fine. Mark was not the picture of health he had been when they had last met. He had lost weight and was distinctly on edge. But, then, who could blame him? Theo was glad now that he had been so insistent that his friend should spend the summer with him. Last month when Mark had told him about the crazy business with the letters he had been sent, he had said at once, ‘Trust your instinct, Mark. If you think you are in any danger, come and stay with me.’ He had been shocked to think that Mark had been on the receiving end of such a sinister campaign of fear, but more shocked that his old friend had not confided in him sooner. ‘Even if you don’t think you’re in danger, I think you should still get away. It would do you good.’ He had known that because Mark didn’t try to refute this advice, he was genuinely concerned for his own welfare. Which, in years gone by, he hadn’t always been too interested in.

Throughout his twenties and early thirties Mark had put himself through the very worst kind of hell. Addiction had nearly killed him. It had cost him his marriage, his home, countless jobs, most of his friends, very nearly his family but, worst of all, every last scrap of his self-esteem. He had sunk so low he had seemed an impossible case, deliberately isolating himself from anyone who had ever been close to him, including Theo. In desperation Mark’s family had turned to him for help. ‘You’re the only one he has ever listened to,’ Mark’s mother had said. ‘We’ve tried to help him, really we have, but he simply won’t accept that a rehabilitation centre would do him any good. He says he’s beyond help. He says ... he says he wants to die. Oh, please, Theo, please help us.’

Theo had known for a long time that Mark was in trouble. Back in Durham he had often witnessed Mark drunk and seen how alcohol darkened his mood, how it revealed the savage anger in him, as well as the unimaginable self-hate. He had tried on several occasions to step in and make Mark see what he was doing to himself, but without success. Helpless, he had had to stand back and watch his friend’s gradual decline as he turned ever more to alcohol and drugs. Though it had been painful to admit, he had known that if his friend was ever going to get better he was going to have to reach rock bottom.

After the conversation with Mark’s mother, Theo flew over and tracked him down. He was living, if one could call it that, in a squalid, cockroach-infested bed-sit. The room was poorly lit, the single window obliterated by a piece of dirty cloth hanging from a broken rail. The walls were grubby and peeling, the carpetless floor littered with filthy clothes, the sink piled high with unwashed crockery. It was a stifling hellhole, the air fetid with the stench of sweat, alcohol and despair. And sitting hunched on a damp, uncovered mattress against a wall was Mark. Except it wasn’t Mark. It wasn’t the vigorous strong-minded, volatile man Theo had known from college, a man whose sharp humour and clarity of thought could cut through the most persuasive argument. To his horror, he was looking at the remnants of a dying man. He had known real anger in that moment as he had held out a hand to Mark and helped him to his feet. Anger that, somewhere beyond those walls, people were making money from Mark’s misery.

The rancid smell of that awful room had lingered in Theo’s nostrils as he had driven Mark the length of the country and admitted him to the clinic his parents had found for him.

‘How did you manage it?’ they asked Theo. ‘How did you make him get in the car with you?’

‘I didn’t need to do anything,’ he told them. ‘It was as if he was waiting for me.’

That was the picture Theo had of Mark for many years to come. The ashamed acceptance in his painfully thin body, the unshaven face fixed on Theo with eyes hollow and dark, pleading, reproachful, as though saying, ‘What took you so long? I could have died.’

The pain of that encounter eight years ago had never left Theo. He imagined that it must haunt Mark too. And though Mark had made a full recovery, he would probably be the first to say that, if the circumstances were right, it might happen all over again. ‘I have to remind myself that once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic,’ he had said when he came out of the clinic. Out of deference to his friend’s ability to turn his life round, and knowing that it would only be by the most extraordinary effort of will that Mark would be able to stay clean, Theo had been fanatical about not having alcohol in his apartment when Mark came to stay. He even hid packets of paracetamol and aspirin where he thought no one would dream of looking. ‘Go easy, pal,’ Mark had told him one day when he had caught him turning the apartment upside down because he had a headache and couldn’t find any aspirin. ‘Temptation is there every day, with or without your hindrance. It’s me who can’t handle the booze and pills, not you. It’s also bloody insulting. Stop treating me like a criminal. Have you tried the fridge? That’s where Kim used to try to hide things from me. An empty egg box was a favourite of hers.’

It still felt insensitive to drink in front of Mark, but in spite of that, Theo made himself do it so that his friend would never think he doubted that he had the strength of character to say no to temptation.

Their meal was finished now, and turning their chairs round, they faced the sea and the darkening sky. Theo looked at Mark’s pale face. ‘You won’t be spending the entire summer working, will you?’ he asked.

Without turning his head, Mark said, ‘Probably. Why?’

‘No reason.’

‘Oh, come on, Theo. You’ve always been lousy at subtlety. What are you really saying?’

‘Okay. I think this business with the stalker has affected you more than you are letting on. I think that when I surprised you in the garden and nearly made you jump out of your skin, for a split second, you were more than just alarmed.’

‘How about we invite Theo to join us?’ asked Max. He had just proposed that they take the boat out for the morning to go cove-hopping, then stop for lunch at one of his favourite tavernas in Áyios Stéfanos.

‘You’re forgetting, he’s got company,’ said Laura, looking up from
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin
and noting that, as usual, her husband was incapable of sitting still for longer than ten minutes without searching for something to occupy him. He had already swept the veranda and terrace and watered the plants, despite paying Sophia and Angelos to do it for them; he was now repositioning the umbrella above her sun-lounger so that she was safely in the shade. She tilted her wide-brimmed hat back on her head, looked at him over the top of her sunglasses and added, ‘I don’t think we should bother him, do you? Not today. We don’t want to make a nuisance of ourselves.’

‘Who said anything about bothering anyone?’ Max said indignantly. ‘I don’t call it making a nuisance of ourselves by being friendly. Naturally I was including Theo’s friend in the invitation.’

Laura exchanged a smile with Izzy, who was stretched out in the sun a few feet away, tanning nicely. ‘Of course you were, darling.’

‘Okay, okay,’ he said, ‘so I’m as transparent as polished glass. And what if I am curious to meet the man behind so many good books?’

Laura laughed. She closed
Captain Corelli,
slipped the paperback on to the floor, and held out her arms to Max. ‘My husband, the star-struck little boy, wants to rub shoulders with his hero. How sweet.’

He leaned down to her and gave her a kiss. ‘I thought perhaps you could go and see if they’d like to come,’ he said, when he emerged from nuzzling her breasts.

She pushed him away with a playful shove and rearranged her swimsuit. ‘Why me? Why not you?’

‘It’ll be more of a temptation coming from you. You know how Theo panders to your every whim.’

‘But this isn’t
my
whim,’ she teased, ‘it’s
yours.
Try asking Izzy to help you out. I’m sure Theo would be just as persuaded by her. If not more.’

Izzy raised her head. ‘Oh, no, you don’t,’ she said. ‘Don’t go including me in this.’

‘I think it’s a brilliant idea,’ said Laura, warming to the suggestion and seeing it as a way to push Izzy in Theo’s direction. ‘How could he say no to you, especially if you go just as you are in that very-nearly bikini?’

Izzy flushed. She had known she would regret buying such a skimpy little thing. It had been one of those impulse buys that was supposed to boost her confidence, confirm her independence. You see, she was telling her mother, this is what I can wear when you’re not around. Except it wasn’t really working: her mother’s disapproving influence was only a stone’s throw away. Self-conscious, she sat up, pulled on her sun-top, and wondered if she would ever shake off the nagging voice that followed her wherever she went.

In the end Laura put Max out of his misery and agreed to go and see Theo. She tied a sarong around her waist and set off. When she reached Villa Anna she found him sitting on the terrace reading a newspaper while eating his breakfast.

‘An unexpected pleasure,’ he said, rising to his feet and bending his head to kiss her cheek beneath her hat. He hadn’t shaved yet and his stubbly chin grazed her skin. It was not an unpleasant sensation. His shirt was unbuttoned and flapped loosely at his sides in the breeze. ‘Please, sit down. I am having a late breakfast. Would you care to keep me company. A drink? Or maybe something to eat?’

‘No, thanks. I’m here on an errand.’

‘Oh?’

‘I’m sorry, but it’s Max. He’s dying to meet your friend and has sent me here to invite you both to join us on a little boat trip down to Áyios Stéfanos.’

He gave her a shrewd look. ‘And why did Max not come here himself?’

Laura smiled.

‘Aha, the cunning Max. He is a man with so much guile. So you are the bait, are you? What a dangerous game he plays.’

‘Dangerous?’

He bit into the cake on the plate in front of him. ‘Yes,’ he said, when he had finished chewing. ‘Am I not the hungry shark who might be tempted to snap up the bait in one delicious mouthful?’

‘Now, Theo, you really must stop fantasising like this.’

He licked his fingers provocatively. ‘Sadly, it is all I am allowed.’

‘Well, I wish you’d transfer your affections to a more worthwhile recipient.’

‘So tell me, how is the lovely Izzy? Did I play the situation well the other night during dinner? Is she madly in love with me already?’

His quickness of thought — not to say his arrogance — surprised even Laura. ‘You really are the most dreadful man. Of course she isn’t in love with you. What on earth makes you think she’d fall for a shallow flirt like you?’

He made a pretence of considering her question before answering it. ‘Mm ... could it be because I am a devastatingly handsome devil? Charming too. Not to say witty.’

‘And let’s not forget how self-effacing you are.’

‘I was coming to that.’ He poured himself a glass of orange juice. ‘Are you sure you won’t join me?’

‘No, thanks. So what did you think of Izzy?’

A slow smile spread over his face. ‘She is the perfect
ingénue.
She is as innocent as a child and as sweet and as delicate as a rose.’