A Place Of Safety Read online

  Ann got up again and started once more to pace about, padding up and down softly on the faded yellow Aubusson carpet. She could not be still for a minute. Had not been still since that terrifying moment on the bridge when Carlotta had slipped from her grasp and drowned. For surely, by now, she must have drowned.

  Ann had run along the side of the river calling, crying her name, staring into the dark, rapidly swirling water. Ran until she was exhausted. Eventually she reached the weir, a narrow strip of foam, curling and hissing in the moonlight. Nothing. Not the slightest sign of life, animal or human.

  She trudged back to the village sick with emotion and fear. What could she do? Her watch showed that nearly half an hour had gone by since the accident had happened. What would be the point of telling anyone now? On the other hand, how could she not? Suppose, by some miracle, Carlotta had not drowned but was caught up somewhere beyond the weir. Perhaps she had managed to grab an overhanging branch and was hanging frantically on, cold, soaking wet and desperate for help.

  Ann saw now that she had made a dreadful mistake in racing along the river bank, searching and calling. It had been instinctive, a natural human impulse. What she should have done was run to the nearest telephone and dial the emergency services. Surely they would not have taken half an hour. And they would be properly equipped with lights and ropes. And divers.

  There was a telephone box next to the Red Lion now quietly shuttered against the night, all revellers departed. Ann stabbed at the figure nine three times, the receiver slipping and twirling in her sweaty hand. Asked what service she required she hesitated then said the police. They would notify the ambulance service surely, should one be necessary.

  She described the situation somewhat incoherently while still managing to make it plain that a person had fallen into a river and been swiftly carried away. A search immediately afterwards had proved fruitless. She gave the exact locations but then, asked what time the accident happened, stared at her watch, struggling to make sense of the figures on the dial. She said she didn’t know. Perhaps half an hour ago. Maybe less. And then the person on the other end of the line wanted her name.

  Ann dropped the receiver which swung and clattered against the glass. Her throat constricted suddenly as if a hand had gripped it tight. She stood rigidly, swamped by horror. Her name. How could she possibly give her name? Her mind leapt ahead and saw it printed in large letters across the front page of the local newspaper - maybe even the nationals. She pictured the repercussions. Her husband’s distress and its possible effect on his reputation. His sorrowful disappointment not only at her failure to provide the secure environment that Carlotta had so urgently needed but that she had actually driven the girl from the house. At least that was how it would appear.

  Ann slid into a maelstrom of miserable reflection. When she emerged moments later, wretched and on the verge of tears, it was to realise she had put the phone back on the hook.

  Fortunately there was no one to see her return home. Ann was horrified at the sight of herself in the hall mirror. Face streaked with dirt. Shoes and stockings soaked through. She was shivering as the sweat generated by her mad dash along the river bank dried coldly on her skin.

  She started to run a bath before she had even taken off her coat. Bypassing her husband’s Radox which promised to ‘soothe away aches and pains, easing tension and tiredness’, she reached for Molton Brown’s Sensual Foaming Bath. A Christmas present from Louise Fainlight, ravishingly scented, wonderfully effervescent and surely much more likely to ease tension and soothe pain. Tiredness was not a problem. She had never felt so wide awake. Was inclined to believe she would never sleep again. Unscrewing the cap, she noticed without surprise that the bottle, which she had used only once, was nearly empty.

  She dropped her clothes on the floor, put on a robe and went downstairs to pour herself a drink. There wasn’t much choice. Harvey’s Bristol Cream. Some dregs of Dubonnet which her husband would drown in soda and sip rather daringly. Rose’s Lime Juice.

  Ann sighed, terribly tempted in her present frame of mind to empty the lot into a giant tumbler and swig herself to oblivion. She opened the huge carved sideboard and discovered, right at the back, a single bottle of Sainsbury’s claret. Five minutes later, lying in perfumed water and knocking back the fruity stuff, she replayed the dreadful events of the past two hours a frame at a time. She could still hardly believe that the ground could have been so violently snatched from under her. Or that events had whirled out of control at such a speed. Surely there must have been some point at which she could have avoided being sucked into the eye of the storm?

  It had all started with the disappearance of her mother’s earrings. Delicate exquisite things: rose diamonds and emeralds on an amethyst clip. They had been given to Ann on her eighteenth birthday, together with a fob watch on a watered silk strap, a garnet and turquoise necklace and several beautiful rings, too small for all but her littlest finger.

  She had been looking for a handkerchief when she noticed that the tortoiseshell silk scarf under which she kept her carved jewel box had been moved. She opened the box. The earrings had gone.

  Ann rarely used any of the jewellery. The life she led gave little opportunity for wearing such lovely things - or showing them off, as her husband would have put it. We mustn’t flaunt our wealth, he would frequently say in his bland, determinedly non-critical way. And Ann always agreed, never ever pointing out that it was in fact her wealth.

  She sifted through the other items in the box, her fingers shaking. She counted the rings, held the necklace briefly to her heart then put everything back. Nothing else was missing. She stared at her pale face in the glass, at her sandy lashes already fluttering and blinking with apprehension. But she couldn’t, she wouldn’t let it pass.

  The fact that she knew who had taken the earrings made things worse rather than better. It meant a confrontation. Something from which her very private soul shrank. But the only alternative was telling Lionel and that would mean a deeply embarrassing meeting between the three of them. Herself struggling to appear non-accusatory. Lionel twisting himself into compassionate knots trying to understand and excuse and forgive Carlotta. Carlotta either denying she had taken them, in which case what could they do? Or playing her deprived, unhappy background card, whining that she never meant any harm. All she had wanted was to try them on, having never owned anything worthwhile or beautiful in her whole wretched unloved young life.

  Ann was pretty certain that Carlotta occasionally wore some of her clothes. She had noticed a rather sour smell on one or two shirts and dresses. And various items had disappeared before. Some rather expensive diamond-patterned tights. A pair of fur gloves left in her coat pocket in the hall. Small amounts of money from her purse. Pretty much what she had come to expect from Lionel’s succession of lame ducks.

  Lifting her head, Ann stared upwards in the general direction of Carlotta’s room from which came the relentless thud, thud, thud of rock music. It was played from the moment the girl got up until eleven at night: a curfew Lionel had imposed as, by then, even his patience was wearing thin.

  She would have to tread carefully. Carlotta was supposed to have a history of instability. When she had first arrived, Lionel had urged caution, assuring his wife that the slightest criticism or pressure to embrace petty, bourgeois restrictions could well tip Carlotta over the edge. So far Ann had seen little sign of this. In fact she was starting to think the boot could well be on the other foot.

  She felt queasy, as she always did when faced by the compulsion to demonstrate aggression. Feeling it, no problem. Showing it, well, maybe tomorrow. But perhaps - Ann started to backtrack - it might not after all be necessary. For instance, shouldn’t she first make sure the jewellery was really missing?

  Relieved at the possibility of postponement, Ann removed the top drawer, tipped the contents out on the bed and started to sort carefully through her tights and underwear. No earrings. She checked the other two drawers. Same result
.

  She recalled clearly the last time she wore them. It was the anniversary of her mother’s death. Ann had taken fresh flowers to the grave. While her grown-up self had poured water into the stone urn and carefully arranged yellow roses with buds like candle flames, her six-year-old self, aching with grief and loss, had longed for her mother to appear, just for a moment. Just long enough to see that she was wearing the earrings. That she had not forgotten. That she would never forget.

  The music suddenly became very loud. Whether it was this ugly intrusion into her painful reflections or the renewed conviction that the girl had indeed stolen one of her most precious possessions, Ann suddenly found the courage to move. She strode along the landing, half ran, half stumbled up the attic steps and banged on the door.

  The volume increased again, hugely this time. The pounding bass battered her eardrums, burst through, invaded the inside of her head. The wooden panels of the door and the boards beneath her feet danced and shuddered. Consumed by anger - this is my house, my house! - Ann thundered on the door with her fists until the knuckles grazed.

  The music stopped. A few moments later Carlotta appeared, standing square in the doorway in her dusty black jeans and T-shirt. Split sneakers on her feet. Long matted dark hair tugged through a purple scrunch band. She wore the expression so frequently present when they were alone together. One of amused contempt. Then she ducked under the Mind Your Head notice, crossed the threshold and stood, blocking Ann’s way.

  ‘Got a problem, Mrs Lawrence?’

  ‘I’m afraid I have.’

  Ann stepped boldly forward and, surprised by the sudden movement, Carlotta stood aside. She did not follow Ann into the room which was very untidy and reeked of cigarette smoke.

  ‘What’s that then?’

  ‘I can’t seem to find my mother’s earrings.’

  ‘So?’

  Ann took a deep breath. ‘I was wondering if you’d . . .’

  ‘Thieved ’em?’

  ‘Borrowed. Perhaps.’

  ‘I don’t wear old lady’s stuff. Thanks all the same.’

  ‘They were in my jewellery box the other day—’

  ‘You calling me a liar?’ Spittle flew as the words twisted thin scarlet lips.

  ‘Of course not, Carlotta.’

  ‘Search the place then. Go on.’

  She knows I never would, thought Ann. Especially with her standing there watching. She imagined calling Carlotta’s bluff but couldn’t bear the humiliation of not finding the earrings. Or the awful scene that could ensue if she did.

  She wondered if the jewellery had already been pawned or sold and felt quite ill at the idea. She pictured her precious things being handled by knowing, dirty fingers. Money, a fraction of what they were worth, changing hands. It was this that prompted her fatally rash next words.

  ‘If you do know anything about this I’d like them returned by tomorrow. Otherwise I shall have to tell my—’

  The girl ran forward then, pushing past Ann with so much force she nearly fell backwards. Carlotta hurtled around the room, pulling out drawers and tipping the contents over the bed - make-up, tights, underwear, hair spray. A box of powder burst: tawny dust flew everywhere. She ripped down posters, pulled old clothes out of the wardrobe and cushions from chairs, shook open magazines, tearing savagely at the pages.

  ‘Don’t seem to be here, do they! Or fucking here! Or here neither!’

  ‘No! Carlotta - please.’ It was a cry of horror. Ann realised Carlotta was weeping as she stumbled blindly about. ‘Look, it doesn’t matter. I must have made a mistake.’

  ‘You’ll still tell him though, I know you. Any chance to get rid of me.’

  ‘That’s not true.’ Ann, facing the fact, protested too much.

  ‘You don’t know what it’s like out there, do you? You spoiled bitch! You ain’t got a sodding clue.’

  Ann hung her head. What could she say? It was true. She didn’t know what it was like out there. She didn’t have a clue. The savage snarling raged on.

  ‘You any idea what it’s meant to me, this place? People want to harm you where I come from, you know?’ She dragged her sleeve roughly across her face, grossly swollen with tears. ‘They want to do you damage. Now he’ll send me back!’

  It was then she ran away. One second she was screaming in Ann’s face and throwing books about. The next, gone. Down the stairs. Across the hall. Out into the night.

  At this point Ann, by now lying in nearly cold water, struggled to put a clamp on these wretched reminiscences. She wrapped herself in her robe and took the claret and her glass into the bedroom. She drank a little wine but it made her feel sick so she simply lay down on the bed and prayed for oblivion. But it was nearly dawn before she fell asleep.

  Chapter Two

  There was a certain amount of talk the next day in and around the village touching on the possibility that someone might have fallen in the river over Swan Myrren way. The Wren Davis milkman, whose cousin lived nearer the spot, said the police were there round about midnight. And an ambulance. He, his wife and the neighbours went out to see what was going on but the police were not very forthcoming. Asked a few questions but didn’t give much in the way of answers. After a while they worked their way down river and that was the last the milkman’s cousin saw of them.

  But although the excitement was over almost before it had begun that did not stop Ferne Basset making something of a meal of it. Drama had been in short supply since the church fete when the pig, whose weight everyone was trying to guess, had broken out of its pen and ran amok, laying waste several stalls and making a mess in the refreshment tent.

  In Monday’s pension queue at the post office it was generally agreed that there was no smoke without fire. The police would not turn out for nothing and were no doubt concealing the true state of things for reasons of their own. It would all turn up, sooner or later, on Crime Watch. Disappointment that no one in their own village seemed to have disappeared was well concealed.

  The conversation in Brian’s Emporium, the single tiny self-service shop, had a harder edge. A bloody hoaxer, was Brian’s opinion. Nothing better to do than waste police time with daft phone calls. If he could get his hands on them. Someone in the lottery line-up suggested it might be the old lady who lived near Penfold’s Mill and was sometimes to be found wandering and reciting poetry. The poetry clinched it. People dispersed to await the news that she had been found floating downstream supported only by a brace of rhyming couplets.

  Lunchtime in the Red Lion saw a more crude, even heartless response. Many customers suggested well-known personalities who could well be spared and were more than welcome to a watery grave. These included politicians, sportsmen and television personalities. The conversation then got more personal and several relatives, neighbours, a spouse or two and, inevitably, someone’s mother-in-law were thrown into the ring.

  Louise Fainlight heard the rumour from their postman. She strolled into the huge steel garage where Val was racing through his daily twenty miles, today on a dazzling Chaz Butler. The bike was balanced on rollers which made a powerful humming noise, like a tremendous swarm of bees. Speed transformed the wheels to a blur of flashing light.

  Louise loved to watch her brother exercise though she knew he didn’t really like this. Val rode like a man possessed, his face a grimacing mask of concentrated effort, eyes invisible behind screwed-up lids, lips clamped together over gritted teeth. Perspiration flew from his body in a constant glittering spray. Every now and again, when his legs would not, could not go any faster he cursed, using imaginative and profane language.

  When he did this Louise laughed, relishing the contrast between this demonic display and the ironically detached persona Val liked to present to the workaday world.

  She heard the computer attached to the frame click off. The humming gradually became less powerful, the outline of the wheels more distinct. Then the spokes. The hubs. The delicate but immensely strong chain. And finally the bike was
still. Val climbed down, the powerful muscles in his legs and shoulders still quivering. Louise handed him a towel.

  ‘You’ll be back in the Tour de France yet.’

  ‘Too old,’ Valentine grunted and mopped his streaming face. He took the machine off the runners and placed it carefully at the back of the garage where there were already almost a dozen others. ‘Got the coffee on?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Good.’ They made their way across a covered walkway leading to a verandah at the back of the house. ‘Any mail?’

  ‘Only junk. And some gossip from Postman Pat.’

  ‘I was promised the proofs for Barley Roscoe and the Hopscotch Kid.’

  ‘Don’t you want to know what it is?’

  ‘What what is?’

  ‘The gossip.’

  ‘For God’s sake, woman.’

  ‘Someone’s jumped into the river down by the weir.’

  ‘It’s Lavazza, the coffee - right?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Good. I didn’t like that chocolatey stuff we had last week.’

  It was the cruellest type of day imaginable in which to wake to anguish and remorse. Ann, curled up tight, arms straitjacketed round her body, agonising cramp in every limb, squinted at the lovely pattern of greyish leaves floating and shifting on her bedroom ceiling. Through the window she could see a rectangle of brilliant blue sky. The whole room was flooded with autumn sunshine.

  Already the torture had begun. The whole dreadful business of the previous evening, powerfully animated and brilliantly lit as if on a cinema screen, running and rerunning through her mind. Herself climbing the attic stairs full of apprehension. Carlotta howling and throwing books and clothes around the room, her flight into the darkness. The quickly flowing water.