me, I recognised it was a huge risk, giving everything up to follow a man I hardly knew. But I was bored with Manchester, ready for a new challenge at work. And, frankly, gagging for excitement. Does that make any sense?’
‘I came up here on a whim with Miranda. Same thing.’
She blinked. ‘Look, I don’t want to impose on you. I’ll get out of your hair as soon as-’
‘Stay as long as you like. Please.’
She reached out and squeezed his hand.
‘I don’t want to be nosey,’ he said.
‘Oh yeah?’
‘Seriously, I don’t. But I don’t get it. How come everything fell apart so fast?’
‘It dawned on me that he was treating me like one of his bloody books. He lavished a lot of money on me. Not only the necklace. Designer clothes, a new hairstyle, you name it. But once he’d showed me off to his friends at the party, he was ready to put me back on the shelf. His last
two girlfriends were leggy models in their twenties. I was different, having me in tow proved he could turn even a hardbitten old cow into a simpering groupie.’
‘You’re not hardbitten, or an old cow. And I’ve never seen you simper.’
‘I didn’t simper enough to suit Stuart, for sure. He became secretive, I convinced myself he was texting another leggy admirer.’
‘Might have been your imagination.’
‘I’ve been cheated on before, Daniel. I can pick up the signs.’
He bit his tongue. She was making a supreme effort to keep herself together. He mustn’t say anything to precipitate another collapse.
‘At bedtime last night, we had a terrible row when I told him I wasn’t a toy he could pick up and drop as he pleased. He finished up snoring in one of the guest rooms while I tossed and turned. By the time morning came, I was ready for a showdown. The affair was dead and buried, but I wanted to end it on my terms. I packed my case and put it in the boot of the Merc. I parked by the back door, ready for a quick getaway, but I refused to scuttle off like a thief in the night. I had to tell Stuart what I thought about him. He got up late, and said he was setting off for a walk, but he didn’t expect me still to be there when he got back. So I let rip and told him a few home truths.’
‘I don’t suppose he’s accustomed to people standing up to him.’
Voice breaking, she said, ‘It was horrible, like nothing I’ve experienced before. He didn’t shout. Not like me, I must admit. But he said some…vicious things. I won’t repeat them. I’ll never tell anyone what he said. His raw anger terrified me. I realised I didn’t know him at all, I didn’t have a clue what he was capable of.’
‘So, you walked out on him?’
She buried her head in her hands.
‘I lost it, Daniel. You’d never have believed it, would you? But I was furious and frightened, half-out of my mind. We were in the breakfast kitchen and Stuart came towards me. He was only wearing his shorts, but his face was crimson with rage and I thought he was going to hit me…’
Daniel knelt beside her and took her hand. It felt as cold as snow.
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered.
The logs on the fire growled. For all the warmth of the room, he shivered. She was summoning up the courage to make a confession, he was sure of it.
But a confession to what?
Louise murmured something inaudible and he bent closer to her lips to hear.
‘I wish I was dead.’
‘You did your best to kill yourself on the way here.’
‘I…I should have done.’
‘You mustn’t ever say that,’ he snapped.
She lifted her head and a damp face brushed against his cheek.
‘I picked up the kitchen scissors and lashed out, like a crazy woman. I just meant to scare him off, but the scissors caught him as he came for me and he screamed with pain. I saw blood trickling down his chest. Then I ran for the door and jumped into the car. Put my foot down and didn’t stop till Crag Gill was out of sight.’
CHAPTER TEN
An indigo sky glowered at Daniel as he prowled the strange, haphazard grounds of Tarn Cottage. Although he’d solved some of the cipher garden’s mysteries, it remained as remote and unknowable as a lover who spoke a different language. Today it seemed dank and sinister, with secluded corners, meandering paths and unexpected dead ends. The ground was greasy after so much rain, and the excess water that hadn’t yet seeped into the soil formed criss-crossing puddles that resembled an exquisite calligraphy. He picked his way with care past the reed- fringed lake, towards a clearing separated from the rest of the garden by a picket fence and bounded by two monkey puzzles, a yew and a weeping willow.
The dark bulk of Tarn Fell reared up in front of him and through scraps of mist he could make out Priest Ridge, and the Sacrifice Stone. The wind chewed at his cheeks, and sliced through his clothes. His hands were numb, his feet tingling with the cold. The atmosphere was pregnant with the threat of thunder. If he didn’t head back for the hot living room, he would be soaked to the skin. But he wasn’t ready to go back indoors.
Louise was asleep in the guest bedroom. A torrid night and calamitous morning had drained every last scrap of her energy. His temples throbbed, his thoughts were as tangled as the undergrowth. It was hard to grasp. Louise — of all people — had stuck a pair of scissors in her lover before running off to crash her car into a ditch.
What scared him was that she had form. If asked to describe his sister, he’d say without thinking that she hadn’t a violent bone in her body. But it wasn’t the whole truth. Once before, she’d defended herself when afraid, a defensive act of violence that briefly threatened her future.
During the summer between finishing at school and starting her law degree course at Durham, she’d gone out on a few dates with a student who lived nearby. At midnight one drunken evening, he’d tried to seduce her on the front room sofa, while his lone-parent mother was out at a hen party. Frightened by his refusal to take no for an answer, she tried to fend him off by slapping his face. The lad lost his balance and fell against the side of a wroughtiron coffee table. He smashed his cheekbone and suffered severe lacerations to his face. When his mother arrived home moments later, he tried to cover the pain and humiliation by claiming Louise had gone berserk and attacked him simply because he’d ventured a clumsy kiss. The mother, furious and overprotective, insisted on calling the police. The boy’s injuries needed surgery, and it looked as though Louise’s career in the law might be stillborn. In the end, the police saw through the lad’s story and he was lucky to avoid a charge of attempted rape.
Daniel and Louise had only ever spoken about the incident once, and he’d never forget her unrepentant ferocity.
‘He got what he deserved.’
When cornered, Louise’s instinct was to lash out. She would grab the nearest weapon at hand. The time before, no lasting harm had been done. But Daniel knew that history never repeats itself in precisely the same way. Just as well Stuart Wagg didn’t keep a shotgun.
Was her car crash all it seemed? He refused to believe she meant to kill herself when she hurtled round that bend on the Brack Road. He knew about the impulse to self-destruct. Aimee, his lover in Oxford, had plunged to her death from the old Saxon tower in the middle of crowded Cornmarket. Yet Aimee was fragile, a polar opposite from his sister. Louise was resilient — at least until she’d succumbed to Stuart Wagg. The affair left her like a druggie on a bad trip: reckless, frantic, and out of control. Moving in with a man she hardly knew, waving a pair of scissors at him the moment he wanted rid of her. She must have been very unhappy with her old life. And he’d swanned off to the States without having a clue.
Pangs of guilt assailed him. He’d been preoccupied with his own losses, first of Aimee and then Miranda, barely giving Louise a second thought. He owed it to her to make amends. As the first drops of rain flicked his cheeks, he touched a branch of the monkey puzzle tree. The spikes were sharp and left a tiny drop of blood on the
