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She gasped, because it was as though he had read her mind, flushing scarlet and hoping the light was dim enough to hide it as he got up and came towards her. She scrambled to her feet, she wasn’t crouching down here at
his
feet, and he said, ‘What kind of questions would you be asking?’

He wasn’t co-operating, she was sure of that. They stood, facing each other, and his nearness was so oppressive that she could hardly breathe. ‘What do you know about me?’ he asked. Pattie could hardly speak. She knew that everything about him seemed a threat. She knew all the facts she had read in his envelope in the office library. She said jerkily, ‘What other people have written.’

‘Bad,’ he shook his head reprovingly at her. The beard shadow was heavy. Michael had such a smooth skin, she had never seen him even remotely in need of a shave. The sheer animal maleness of this man horrified her, and then he said, ‘You need personal experience,’ and she did stop breathing, because he was looking at her, at her face, at her body, as though he was assessing her. And for
what?

‘You’re no beauty, Pattie Ross,’ he said at last, ‘but you’re a woman and you’re here. Don’t you think that your readers would prefer it if you could say I made a pass at you?’

Her breath came out choking, ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’

‘Oh, I’m not.’ He was smiling, but that didn’t reassure her at all. ‘Not as a lover, I assure you. What else do you suggest we do to pass the time?’ He put hands on her shoulders. The touch was light but she felt as though he was gripping her and she shuddered and, croaked, ‘Let me go!’

‘I wish I could.’ Although he wasn’t holding her any longer she could still feel his hands. ‘But that’s the trouble, you won’t go.’

She couldn’t go, there was no way, and for a moment she believed she was about to be ravished and she knew she would go mad, then he laughed and said, ‘You wouldn’t be worth the fuss.’

He was baiting her, deliberately terrifying her. She said shakily, ‘I hate you,’ and he said,

‘I’m not too crazy about you—and I’ll tell you something else, you’re sure as hell not growing on me.’

He ate in silence, a meal of cold ham and pickles, bread and cheese which he brought from the kitchen and ate at his work table. There was no suggestion that Pattie should eat, and she couldn’t have swallowed anything. She just sat by the fire, waiting to be left alone, willing him to go upstairs, but when he did he took the lamp with him. There was another one hanging from a beam, but she didn’t know how to use it, so when he went she was in darkness, except for the firelight.

It was still snowing outside. She opened the back door and looked into a whirling whiteness and sobbed, almost silently, although Duncan Keld couldn’t have heard her, not from upstairs he couldn’t. It was years since she had felt so vulnerable and so helpless. Never in her life had she met a man who showed her such contempt and such antagonism. Today had lessened none of it, and if things went on like this there would be an explosion, because whenever he looked at her violence never seemed far beneath the surface.

She built up the fire, so high that the room was quite bright with it. At least she was warm and she might get to sleep. She would probably have nightmares, but as she tried to settle herself in the lumpy old chair she wondered why she should worry about bad dreams when she was already trapped in this waking nightmare.

Pattie
had a restless night. Her aches and pains and the stress of her situation would have made it hard for her to sleep peacefully in the most luxurious of beds, but stuck in an old armchair it was a wonder she slept at all. And there was nothing better. A large sofa stood at the other end of the room, long enough to stretch out on, but Victorian horsehair, which meant it was as hard as a board and weighed a ton. Pattie didn’t think she could drag it to the fire.
She had to be by the fire, and she was sure that if she tried Duncan Keld would hear her and might come down to see what she was doing.

She dreaded that. She didn’t expect to see him again before morning, but she knew that if there was any sound of movement in the rooms above, much less of footsteps on the stairs, she would be scared out of her wits.

He didn’t fancy her. She wasn’t his type. The state she was in now she couldn’t see how she could be anybody’s type, but as he’d said, she was a woman and she was here, and suppose he got drunk. There were several bottles down here on the Welsh dresser in the kitchen. There might be more upstairs, and he looked the sort who might get drunk. Pattie did have nightmares. They were wild and violent, and she woke from them with every sense alert, straining to hear and staring into the shadows.

As soon as it began to get light she went into the kitchen, scooped up snow from the drift that had blown against the door in the night and heated it in the kettle. She was listening all the while. She could only guess at the time, somewhere between six and seven, she thought, because her watch was in her jewel case in the car. She didn’t wear a wrist-watch, she had a slim gold modern fob-watch that hung on a chain round her neck. The chain belonged to her amulet. She had been wearing that, and she was so glad she had because she couldn’t have left that behind. Somehow or other she would have dug down for that.

There were still two wrapped loaves, and a half loaf, and after she had washed she spread herself a slice of bread and butter which she had to force down. She didn’t know whether it was because it was Duncan Keld’s food that made everything so unappetising, she wanted
nothing
of his, or because she had just lost all appetite. She might have picked at a dish that was cooked and served daintily, as a convalescent would, but scraping rock-hard butter, and trying to make it adhere to three days old bread turned her stomach. She couldn’t face cheese or bacon, she couldn’t really face anything, but she did boil the kettle and make tea and take a mug of that back to the fire.

Before he got down she looked around for something to read today, and wished she had the courage to help herself to pen and paper. The paper on the table was covered with writing or typing, but there would surely be a supply in the drawers, and what was a sheet or two of paper? It was enough to spark off a row, that’s what it was. He was just looking for excuses to insult her, and if she opened the drawers of his work-table she would be asking for it.

But she did find some old National Geographic magazines and took those to her spot by the fireplace, then she heard him coming downstairs and sat, arms folded and fingers gripping. He walked through the room as though it was empty and Pattie thought, that’s what I’ve got to do, I’ve got to block him out the way he does me, and tell myself he isn’t there.

Only it was impossible.' She didn’t have to look, but she couldn’t close her ears. She leafed through a magazine, but she could hear him clattering around in the kitchen, and smell bacon frying. That made her queasier than ever. She was glad he stayed where he was to eat it, but she was still following his movements, and when the door opened and he came back into the room she couldn’t help turning.

Of course he hadn’t shaved. He looked like a hairy ape, and her face clenched and he said, ‘You look pretty rough yourself,’ and Pattie thought, not as rough as I feel. Tonight after he’s gone upstairs I’ll wash my underclothes and dry them in front of the fire. She said nothing, and the sound of his typewriter soon filled the silence.

She didn’t mind that. It was a familiar sound, she had always worked among clattering typewriters. The wind was rising. She could hear it howling in the great chimney, and she read her magazines very slowly, not missing a word, trying to put herself into the pictures.

When she was a child she had expected to travel all over the world. Her father was an overseas radar expert for an international engineering firm, although most of his trips were brief he was sometimes away for months on end, and when Pattie was through with school he had promised to take her along. She had always wanted to write. She had sold short stories to children’s magazines when she was quite young, monopolised the school magazine and got glowing reports from her English teacher. She was going to travel with her father, meet people, write real books, but it hadn’t happened.

She couldn’t complain about her life. She had been lucky to get the breaks she had had, but it could have been different, she could have been different. She had never been afraid of anything while her father was alive, and look at her now, hardly daring to breathe for fear of the man at the other end of the room. Of course he wouldn’t touch her. He was no fool, he would know what the consequences would be and as he had pointed out, she wasn’t worth the fuss. He wouldn’t harm her. Not physically. Mentally she could harm herself, and perhaps she
was
heading for a breakdown.

She hadn’t been herself for some time, and now she had nothing to do but sit and think she faced the fact. She longed for Michael now, and the soft easy life he represented, but before she came here she had sensed something missing in their relationship. She had been restless, she had wanted to break out in some way, but she surely hadn’t bargained for what she’d got. It had been like taking a stroll on your own down a country lane, and ending up in a jungle.

By the roaring log fire it was as hot as a jungle, but out there was a frozen world. She had to keep the log supply high and dry, so she put on the sheepskin coat and went out through the back door. The flakes were still drifting down, not heavily, but that was no guarantee that the worst was over. The colour of the sky hadn’t lightened much. The way the snow stopped, then started again, was enough to snap your nerves. Like opening a prison door by a tiny crack and banging it shut.

I’m full of little fancies, Pattie thought. Next thing I’ll be mumbling them aloud to myself for company, and when he says, ‘I told you to be quiet,’ I’ll say, ‘Who, me? I never said a word,’ and I’ll believe it.

The log pile was buried under deep snow, but there was a shovel in the kitchen, and she scraped and dug down to the soaking wet wood. She would have given a lot to have been wearing gloves when the car crashed. Even thin leather ones would have been a godsend. Her hands were frozen, and she carried in the logs three at a time—which was as many as she could manage—and stacked them neatly, a safe but drying distance from the fire.

Duncan Keld never looked at her. He was in his own little world and although she was going about her task as quietly as possible she still resented his concentration. If she wondered off into the snowy wastes he wouldn’t notice she’d gone until night fell and he lit the lamp. He wouldn’t go looking for her then. The ego of the man! All he thought about was himself. The way her getting stuck here had inconvenienced him. Well, it was no birthday party for her.

At least anger was warming. When she decided she had enough logs indoors to last for a while she walked around outside at the back of the house, her hands tucked into her sleeves. The wind was blowing the top snow in spiralling flurries, and several times the frozen surface gave way and she was up to her knees in softer snow.

She stayed close to the house. She had never taken a good look at the back before. There were four windows up there, which must surely mean more than one bedroom, and although Duncan Keld said there was only one bed there might be a camp-bed, or even sheets. It would be lovely to wrap herself up in a sheet instead of that hairy smelly travelling rug.

The door at the bottom of the stairs creaked slightly, but the typewriter probably drowned that, and the sound of her footsteps on the stone steps. Two doors led from the little landing at the top of the stairs. Pattie opened one and closed it very quickly because it was obviously Duncan Keld’s bedroom and she had no desire to go poking around in there. She gave a little grimace which she couldn’t have explained, because the glance had shown it to be fairly tidy with white sheets on a turned down bed.

The second room was big, at least twice the size of the first, very cold, and empty except for a couple of old trunks. The walls were white and the roof beams were black and in summer it would have been pleasant with windows both sides letting in the light, but it didn’t look as if it was in use summer or winter. There wasn’t even a rug on the bare boards of the floor.

Pattie breathed on one of the windows to melt a peephole, rubbing the frost away and looking out over the unbroken white landscape. It was the most desolate scene she had ever seen, like a dead planet, and she thought how wonderful it would be to spy a snowplough in the distance, or helicopter in the sky— although could helicopters land on snow? There wasn’t a helicopter. There wasn’t even a bird. And she would have to go down to the fire because she was shivering again.

She got through that day thanks to the magazines. There were actually times when the articles and pictures transported her for a little while, and time passed, and when the light started to fade she read by the firelight, moving closer to the flames.

She saw Duncan Keld lighting the lamp, then he went into the kitchen and she thought, that’s another day nearly through, now for the night, only the nights are worse, and automatically she went to hold her amulet. But it had gone. She was no longer wearing it, and she fumbled frantically round her throat as though the chain might have slipped inside the high neck of her sweater. Then she jumped to her feet and pulled off her jacket, but it wasn’t there, and she stared around on the chair and on the rug and in the circle of firelight where she had spent most of the day, her head jerking from side to side, her eyes wild.

Her sense of loss was enormous. She would have been heartbroken at losing it any time, but here, where she was so miserable and under such strain, it tipped the balance of her self-control into hysteria so that she hardly knew what she was doing.

But she had to find it again, she knew that, and she had been upstairs. So she ran up the stairs, into the big empty room where through the failing light she could see nothing on the floor but the faint mark of her own footsteps in the dust.