However, these notions were cast aside by a sign of movement at the back of the garden. Though Amanda only noticed the shifting shape out of the corner of her eye, she was almost certain she had seen something, and that this something had covered too great a distance to be just one of the garden’s bushes swaying in the breeze. As her eyes adjusted to the relative darkness of the garden, compared to the brightness of the window, Amanda thought that the sight of a man in a long coat was emerging before her. The figure was standing next to what seemed to be Mary’s shed and continued to remain stock still as Amanda continued to observe, making it impossible for her to know for sure if there was someone really there: it was just too dark to tell.
Suddenly, the spell was broken as Amanda’s phone rang with a noise that - even though it was not so loud - was alien enough to shatter the previous calm and silence of the evening. As quickly as she could, Amanda withdrew the phone from her pocket and hit the pad to decline the call. When she returned her attention to the spot where the figure had been standing, she found it to be empty. The lack of something or someone being there left her feeling exposed and led her to hurriedly examine her surrounds for fear that whoever had cast the stone at Mary’s home had now turned their attention to her.
There was no one in sight, but in the darkness around her, this gave her little comfort. Part of her still wanted to check whether whoever or whatever she thought she had seen in the garden had left anything behind, but as she remained standing and staring through the fence, she could not hold down the growing sense of fear that she was in danger. Soon enough, her fear grew to be too much of a distraction and, after muttering to herself that she was just being a coward, she began the slow trek back to her car.
Within what she told herself to be the relative safety of her Clio, Amanda kept a watch on Mary’s house for a dozen painfully slow minutes. As she watched, no figure emerged from the field or the pathway that led to the home’s back garden. Indeed, as far as she could tell, nothing stirred at all. It seemed unlikely to her that anything further would develop and that if it were the case that the figure she had seen in the garden was still around, there was little chance after so long that he, or whatever it was, was going to make himself known. She withdrew her phone from her pocket, where she had hastily stored it after declining the call that had given her away, and found that it had been the deputy who had tried to get in contact with her. She had no intention of calling him back straight away, she still felt too unsettled. She urged herself to start the car, she would return the deputy’s call when she was back at the hotel.
***
As Amanda’s Clio disappeared around the corner, he emerged from his favourite hiding spot beside 53 Balfour Lane. What had been an anxious and drawn out twenty minutes or so for Amanda had been a playful period for him, one that was over all too soon. Others might have been disappointed that a plan that had been set in place had failed to come off, but not him. Yes, it would have been fine for him if the school investigator had already discovered what Mary was hiding – oh, how he enjoyed observing how someone’s life could change in just a few moments - but he had to admit to himself that in many ways he was glad that she had not. The way the cards had fallen, he had been provided with the exquisite show of the discomfort and confusion displayed by Amanda after she had seen him in the garden and returned to her car. Now he could return to the main act, to watch on and wait for the young Amanda to return so she could uncover Mary’s little secret.
He sighed through a smile, rueful at the thought that the fun for the night was most likely over. He withdrew his trusty Nokia 3210, a piece of technology he still marvelled at, from the inside pocket of his raincoat and found his dear friend Samuel Packard in the phonebook. He chuckled as he imagined what the impatient fellow would say when he heard that the plan had not worked and that he would have to wait another day, at least, for his endeavour to move forward. Perhaps there was a little fun left in the day after all.
***
Settling into one of his favourite pieces by Schubert, Adam felt himself drifting back to another time. As always, the piece - like a select number of others from the same period - brought up memories that were far more painful than he liked to admit to himself. In a way, this was one of the reasons why the piece was dear to him and why he so often returned
