Newlyweds of Convenience

What could she say, though? I argued with my husband and now he’s gone off for the night and hasn’t come home, and, yes, he might be with another woman.

No, she couldn’t ring the police. Not yet.

Round and round Mallory’s thoughts churned, feverishly inventing ever more disastrous scenarios, until eventually she had worked herself into such a state that she was ready to risk the humiliation of calling Torr’s mobile. Too bad if she woke him up. At least she would know that he was alive.

It was only then that she discovered that the line was dead.

Mallory felt sick. With no phone and no car, how would she find out what had happened to Torr? The roofers wouldn’t be back until Monday. He could be lying in hospital, thinking that she didn’t care. Or perhaps he was unconscious. What if even now some nurse was desperately trying to get hold of his next of kin? She would rather he was having an affair with Sheena than think of him dead or badly injured.

At three o’clock, for want of anything better to do, she went to bed. But she was too tense to sleep. She lay staring at the ceiling instead, gripped by a fear greater than she had ever known, and wishing desperately that she could rewind time so that she could have told Torr how she felt about him, while a single thought circled endlessly and dully round her brain.

She hadn’t even said goodbye.

CHAPTER TEN

THE PHONE was still dead the next morning. Mallory had fallen into a restless doze eventually, but she woke very early, with a sick sense of premonition.

For a few moments she let herself hold onto the hope that Torr had magically arrived when she was asleep. She saw herself walking into the kitchen and finding him slumped in a chair. He would tell her that he hadn’t wanted to wake her, that he been very quiet so that she could sleep.

Almost eagerly, Mallory threw back the duvet and hurried into the kitchen, but the room was cold and empty. There was no Torr, no Charlie. Never had she felt more alone.

Panic scrabbled at the edge of her mind, but she made herself stay calm. There was no point in getting hysterical. She had to find out what had happened to him, that was all.

In the bathroom, she splashed water on her face and grimaced at her reflection in the mirror. She looked ghastly. Her face was white and pasty, her hair lank, and there were dark bags under her eyes.

Mallory’s whole body was buzzing with tiredness and tension, but that was too bad. Somehow she was going to have to find the energy to walk to Carraig and find a phone. It was a good twenty miles, but not impossible, and she had to do something.

So she put on the walking shoes that she hadn’t used since Charlie had died, and zipped up her old dog-walking jacket. Some time in the night the gale had subsided, but a stiff wind still blew off the steely-grey sea and heavy clouds jostled over the hilltops. It was hard to believe that it was June already. In Ellsborough she would have expected sunshine at the least, but here she was just glad that it wasn’t raining.

Worry and exhaustion had created a tight band behind her eyes, and her head throbbed, but Mallory kept her head down and concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other. She made bargains with herself. If Torr’s all right, I’ll never complain about anything again.

I won’t say a word when I see him, she promised herself. I won’t tell him how worried I was. I’ll be sweet and understanding and make him glad that I’m there to take him home. I’ll do anything as long as I find him.

On she plodded, with the wind whipping her hair about her face, and dark forebodings circling endlessly and uselessly around her brain. It took her over an hour to get to the end of the Kincaillie track and onto the single-track road that wound through the hills. Surely someone would come along and give her a lift now?

But she had walked a good mile or so before a glint in the distance caught her attention. A car was bowling along the road from Carraig, its metalwork flashing as the sun came out from behind a cloud for one brief, dazzling moment before it was swallowed up behind the greyness once more.

Mallory’s heart leapt with hope. It was coming from the wrong direction, but that didn’t matter. This was the Highlands, not Ellsborough. The driver would stop when he saw her and take her back to Carraig, or at least on to the nearest phone. The road was very narrow, but she went on to the next passing place and stopped to wait impatiently.

It seemed to take a very long time for the car to reach her, and she began to be afraid that it had turned off when the sound of an engine made her straighten and begin waving frantically as it came round the bend.

So convinced was Mallory by then that Torr had been in an accident, that it took a few moments for her to recognise the vehicle that braked hastily at the sight of her.

It stopped right in front of her and the driver wound down the window and leant out. ‘Mallory?’ said Torr in astonishment. ‘What on earth are you doing out here?’

Torr. Torr, with his dark blue eyes and his austere mouth and his dark brows contracted in a frown. Not being cut out of his car, or in a hospital bed, but whole and healthy, making the hills recede with the immediacy of his presence.

He was all right. That was all Mallory could think at first. She stared at him as if hardly daring to believe her eyes, only to find that the dizzying rush of relief was swiftly succeeded by white-hot anger.

‘Where have you been?’ she demanded, the desperate bargains she had made with herself utterly forgotten.

‘In Carraig.’

‘Carraig? Carraig?’ She glared at him. ‘What were you doing there?’

‘I spent the night at the pub-’ Torr started to explain, before she cut him off.

‘Do you mean to tell me that I’ve wasted all night worrying about you, and all the time you were in Carraig?’ Mallory was spluttering, practically gibbering with fury. ‘I suppose it was too much trouble to drive the last twenty miles!’

Torr drew an exasperated breath. ‘It wasn’t-’

‘Why would you bother, after all?’ She ignored him. ‘It was just me waiting for you. Just stupid old Mallory, who can’t climb mountains and isn’t any use for anything. Just your wife. What do I matter?’

‘I couldn’t get through.’ Torr had to raise his voice to interrupt her. ‘I’ve been trying to tell you. The storm blew down a couple of trees and the Carraig road was completely blocked, so I went back to the pub inn and spent the night there. I did try to phone you, but the lines were down too. There was nothing I could do.’

‘You could have walked,’ said Mallory, incandescent at the thought that she had been tossing and turning all night while Torr had been comfortably tucked up in bed at the pub, and no doubt sleeping soundly. He had probably been enjoying a good breakfast too, while she was trudging through the hills in search of him!

Torr stared at her. Her hair was wind-blown, her eyes dark and furious as she glared back at him.

‘Walked?’ he echoed incredulously. ‘You wanted me to walk twenty miles through a storm in the dark, and then back again this morning to collect the car with all your shopping in it? You don’t think you’re being a touch unreasonable?’

‘Unreasonable! I’ll give you unreasonable!’ Mallory was beside herself by now, beyond thinking clearly. ‘You drag me up to the back of beyond to live in a ruin, and then abandon me so that you can spend a little quality time with your precious Sheena! That’s unreasonable! I’ve had a hellish night,’ she told him, her voice shaking. ‘I was stuck in the set of some horror movie on my own, with no phone and no way of getting help, but I was prepared to walk twenty miles!’

‘What for?’

‘To find out what had happened to you, of course! Did it never occur to you that I might be worried?’

‘Well, no,’ said Torr. ‘You made it fairly clear yesterday morning that you didn’t care whether I stayed away or not.’