you all right, Katie?’ he asked.
‘Yes, yes, thank you.’ Katie stared down at the patterned carpet as she spoke. ‘I-I’m sorry… I’m so embarrassed. It’s not the first time he’s tried to touch me, but he’s never been that rough before.’
‘He’s drunk,’ Fletcher said, then smiled. ‘Don’t worry. I’ve been wanting to do that for a long time.’
‘But what will he do? He looked so angry.’
‘He’ll cool off. Come on, let’s get back to the others.’
Katie picked up her shawl, and they walked back into the garden, which was lit now by strategically placed antique lanterns. Katie excused herself, thanking John again, and sneaked around the side of the house into the street. She felt she needed to be out of there for a while, at least until her heart stopped beating so wildly and she could catch her breath again. Her flesh felt numb where Nicholas’s hands had touched her.
She shuddered.
There was no one in the street. Even the old men had gone from the bridge. The lights were on in the White Rose though, and Katie heard the sound of laughter and talk from inside. She thought the young policeman would be in there, the one nobody knew about but her. He hadn’t been invited to the party, of course, so he wouldn’t get the chance to spy on them that night. She wondered why he was really in the village. He hadn’t asked any searching questions of anyone; he just seemed to be there, somehow, always in sight.
Sighing, Katie crept back into the garden. A slow song was playing and some of the couples held each other close. Suddenly, she felt a hand on her back and flinched.
‘It’s only me. Dance?’
‘B-but I… can’t…’
‘Nonsense,’ Stephen Collier said. ‘It’s easy. Just follow what I do.’
Katie had no choice. She saw Sam looking on and smiling with approval from Stephen’s doorway. She felt like she had two left feet, and somehow her body just wouldn’t respond to the music at all. It felt like wood. Soon, she began to feel dizzy and everything went dark. At the centre of the darkness was a biting, sooty smell. She stumbled.
‘Hey, I’m not as bad as all that.’ Stephen supported her with one arm and led her to the fountain.
Katie regained her balance. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I told you I was no good.’
‘If I didn’t know better,’ Stephen said, ‘I’d say you’d had too much to drink.’
Katie smiled. ‘About one sip of white wine. It’s too much for me.’
‘Katie?’ Stephen suddenly seemed earnest.
‘Yes?’
‘I enjoyed our little chat in your kitchen that time. It’s good to have someone… someone outside to talk to.’
‘Outside what?’
‘Oh, business, family…’
The occasion seemed so long ago that Katie could hardly remember. And Stephen had ignored her ever since. She certainly hadn’t imagined it as an enjoyable occasion for either of them. But there was something so little-boyish about Stephen, especially now when he seemed so nervous and serious. The muscle in the corner of his left eye had developed a tic.
‘Remember what we talked about?’ he went on.
Katie didn’t, but she nodded.
He looked around and lowered his voice. ‘I think I’ve made my mind up. I think I’m going to leave Swainshead.’
‘But why?’
Stephen noticed a couple of his senior executives heading in their direction. ‘We can’t talk here, Katie. Not now. Can I see you on Friday?’
‘Sam goes to-’
‘Yes, I know Sam goes to Eastvale on Fridays. I don’t want to see Sam, I want to see you. We’ll go for a walk.’
‘I-I don’t know.’
His tone was urgent and his eyes were pleading with her. The two men had almost reached them. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘A walk. A little one.’
Stephen relaxed. Even the tic in his eye seemed to disappear.
‘Ah, Stephen, here you are,’ one of the executives, a plump florid man called Teaghe, said. ‘Trust you to corner the prettiest filly at the party, eh?’ He cast a lecherous glance at Katie, who smiled politely and made an excuse to leave.
She poured herself another glass of wine for appearance’s sake and leaned by the side of the French windows, watching the lantern-lit dancers in relief against the huge black mass of Adam’s Fell. The garden was a tangled web of shadows, crossing and knotting like an enormous cat’s cradle. As the warm light caught their features at certain angles, some of the dancers looked positively satanic.
So, although she had never thought of herself as a sympathetic listener - so bound up in her own shyness and discomfort was she - Stephen had asked her to be his confidante and she had agreed to go for a walk with him, to listen to his problems. It was more than Sam ever asked her to do. There were only two things he wanted from her: work and sex.
She trusted Stephen as far as she could trust any man. He hadn’t tried anything last time, when he could have, and he’d been distinctly cool towards her since. But why did he want to leave Swainshead? Why did he seem so on edge? Was he running away from something? Still, she thought, if he was going away, and he really liked her, then there was just a chance he might take her with him.
She suspected that it might be a sin to desert her husband, but she had thought so much about it that she decided it was worth the risk. Surely God would forgive her for leaving a man with such vile and lascivious appetites as Sam Greenock? She could make amends, do good works. She might have to give Stephen her body too, she knew that. If not on Friday, then later, if he took her away with him. But that was one sin nobody could catch her out on. She had learned how to comply with all the things men wanted, but she got no pleasure from them herself. She thought it was just because of Sam, her only lover for years, but when Bernie had forced himself on her and she hadn’t had the energy or the power to fight him off, she knew that she could never enjoy the act with any man. Bernie had at least been kind and gentle when he got her where he wanted her, but it made no difference to the way she felt about what he was doing.
She looked at the lantern-lit guests again. Sam was dancing with an attractive brunette, probably from Collier Foods, and Nicholas was back in circulation, talking and laughing by the fountain with a group of commuters who lived in Swainsdale and made their money elsewhere. His lower lip was swollen as if he’d been stung by a bee. When he caught her glance, he glared at her with such lust and hatred that she shivered and pulled her shawl up more tightly around her shoulders.
TWO
In Toronto, Banks combined sightseeing with his search for Anne Ralston in the English-style pubs. The weather remained uncomfortably hot and humid, and a window- rattling thunderstorm one night only seemed to make things worse the next day.
Banks gave the CN Tower a miss, but he walked around the Eaton Centre, a huge shopping mall with a glass roof and a flock of sculptured Canada geese flying in to land at one end, and he visited Yonge and Dundas after dark to watch the hookers and street kids on the neon strip. He took a ferry to Ward’s Island and admired the Toronto skyline before walking along the boardwalk on the south side. Lake Ontario glittered in the sun, as vast as an ocean. He went to Harbourfront, where he sipped Carlsberg on a waterfront patio and watched the white sails of the yachts cut slow as knives through treacle in the haze.
One morning he took a bus to Kleinburg to see the McMichael collection. Sandra, he thought, would love the Lawren Harris mountain-scapes and the native art. Also in the collection was a painting by Emily Carr that he associated with Jenny Fuller, a psychologist friend who sometimes helped with cases in Eastvale.
She had a print of it on her living-room wall, and it was at her suggestion that he had made the visit.
Nor could he bear to miss Niagara Falls. If anything, it was even more magnificent than he had expected.
He went out on the
The rest of the time, he visited pubs. Allowing an hour or so in each, he would sit at the bar, show the photographs and ask after Bernard Allen and Anne Ralston of bar staff and customers.
This part of the job was hard on his liver and kidneys, so he tried to slow down his intake and pace himself. To make the task more interesting - for solo pub-crawling is hardly the most exciting pastime in the world - he sampled different kinds of draught beer, both imported and domestic. Most of the Canadian beers tasted the same, and they were uniformly gassy. The English beers, he found, didn’t travel well.
Double Diamond and Watney’s he determinedly ignored, just as he did back home. By far the best were the few local brews that Gerry Webb had told him about: Arkell Bitter, Wellington County Ale, Creemore Springs Lager and Conner Bitter. Smooth and tasty, they had body and, when required, boasted fine heads.
Despite good beer, he was heartily sick of pubs. He was smoking too much, drinking too much and eating too much fried food. On Tuesday, after getting back from Kleinburg, he had tried the Sticky Wicket, the Madison and the
