“Oh, yes, sorry, I should have said...”
“It is also polite to state one’s name on the telephone.”
“Sorry, yes, my name is Paige Webb.”
“And what makes you sure that you would be qualified for such a task? Most of my papers are academic, I need somebody who knows the subject.” A noise rattled through at the end of his sentence as Eckland covered the mouthpiece to hide a hacking cough.
“I am university educated.” Paige began to feel her confidence waning.
“And, is the Pope Catholic?” Eckland laughed. In his mind, a university degree was clearly a pre-requisite to this very phone call.
“I studied English. Tom said you write on Shakespeare. My final dissertation was on Macbeth,” Paige offered.
“To be a well-favoured man is the gift of fortune; but to write and read comes by nature,” Eckland mused.
“Much Ado About Nothing?” Paige could feel Eckland’s attention slipping from the matter at hand.
“People’s good deeds we write in water. The evil deeds are etched in brass...” Eckland said, as if to himself.
“That’s one of the Henrys, I’m sure...”
“To write is to unfold your mind’s greatest dreams.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t know that one.”
“Ha!” Eckland began to laugh to himself.
“Um, so... perhaps, I could meet you and discuss the work further?”
“That was an Eckland quote, not a Shakespeare quote!” He was laughing quite raucously, only adding to Paige’s discomfort, “And did those feet in ancient times...” Eckland started off loudly singing Jerusalem and Paige began to wonder if this phone call would ever end.
“I...” Paige was momentarily frozen in social awkwardness. She cleared her throat and tried again, “I could meet you anywhere in the town centre, if that is easier for you.”
“Oh, no. You will come here to do the work. I have an adequately equipped study.”
“To do the work?”
“Yes, you can start tomorrow. Write this down: The Rectory, Mill Street, OX2 0AL. Got it? Good. See you tomorrow at 7am, sharp!”
“I...” But he had already hung up.
Staring blankly at her phone, Paige wondered what sort of person Eckland was – clearly intelligent, but somewhat scattered. She wondered if he had always been that way, or if he had grown increasingly bizarre with each year.
Her phone buzzed and she realised she had missed a call while she was speaking to Eckland. She presumed it was Rufus, begging her forgiveness, but unlocking the screen she read:
07764321123 – unknown number
06.34pm
Missed call
How odd, she thought, locking her phone and heading to the kitchen to help her mum wash up. Hardly anyone has this number. She quickly googled the number to see if it was a cold caller but found nothing.
She shrugged it off as a wrong number.
CHAPTER FOUR
THREE DAYS INTO HER employment with Eckland, Paige had rooted through forty articles, most of which were nonsensical besides a paper about The Taming of the Shrew which Paige had started to fine tune.
In the evenings, Eckland insisted on having Paige eat dinner with him and Arlene. Arlene was clearly beginning to drift from reality in her old age and mostly talked about fictitious characters as if they were her friends, but her cooking was sensational. Paige was treated to three course meals of a range of homemade dishes from tortellini to risotto to souffles.
The meals lasted for hours. On her fourth day, after three servings of îles flottantes (after Arlene had adamantly continued to offer plate after plate) it was already 9pm and the June sun was just beginning to set.
“I really must be leaving – thank you for the lovely dinner, Arlene,” Paige started to make her excuses knowing Eckland would delay her departure with his meandering stories.
To her surprise he simply nodded and said, “Until tomorrow.”
Taking the opportunity while she could, she grabbed her bag and left. She had borrowed Tom’s bike again.
It was a beautiful evening, and a touch of the hot day’s light still tinged the sky. But, due to the late hour, she decided to cut through Oxpens Meadow, a park next to the river.
She used to have a friend who she played with during the summer holidays who lived just behind the park. She remembered the shape of the banks, the way the path curved more in some places than other, the bench set back from view, the angel statue that stood watch in the middle of the field. The angel’s hands reached down towards her feet in a cupped position, as if offering something to those below.
Her grandmother had always said she was a guardian angel, but Paige had read the plaque – she was a memorial, a symbol of the fallen soldiers from the Second World War. The plaque read “Lest We Forget”, and every November the angel’s hands were filled with paper poppies.
At that point the front tyre of Tom’s bike began to protest. Struggling to push on with the rapidly deflating tyre, Paige swung down and continued walking, pushing the bike.
A few metres along the path next to the river she heard a sound and stopped, expecting to see a dog come out of the reeds along the riverside. No dog appeared and so she continued, having to push hard on the handlebars as her bike stuttered along the grass.
Another noise and then running footsteps.
She froze as she felt a stranger’s arms enclose her. He was breathing hard in her ear as his forearm hooked her midriff. She quivered as she felt metal caressing her throat.
In a split-second decision, she rammed the bike backwards so that it hit her assailant in the leg. He cried out but kept hold of her, the knife at her neck beginning to make a mark.
With a whimper she made another bid for freedom, butting her hips backwards into his and thrusting her left elbow into his side.
Slightly knocked off balance, perhaps shocked by her retaliation, he responded by grabbing her elbow and pulling her backwards so that she fell to the ground.
The warm grass hit Paige in the back of the head with a jarring thud and she struggled to focus on
