no can do
y y y
not on mobl
u promised u said
lets talk
Tim looked up from the screen. He didn’t want to talk. He wanted action. He’d kept his part of the bargain and it was only fair that Toy4You do exactly the same. It always came down to this in the end, he thought bitterly. People played each other like a deck of cards and he was bloody sick and tired of it all. But what choice did he have? He could start all over, but he didn’t want that. It had taken long enough to find Toy4You.
He punched in his answer. Where
u no
2day
2night
ok
He flipped the phone closed and shoved it into his pocket. A fat girl whose name he didn’t know was watching him from a bench. His eyes met hers and she lifted her school skirt. She spread her legs. She had on no knickers. He wanted to spew all over the path but instead he went for a distant bench and sat down to wait for his ride back to Bryanbarrow. He considered the ways he could torment Kaveh on the long trip home, and he congratulated himself for the piss on his trousers. That would get up old Kaveh’s nose in more ways than one, he thought with an inward chuckle.
ARNSIDE
CUMBRIA
Alatea Fairclough was mesmerised by Morecambe Bay. She’d never seen anything like it. The ebb tide emptied its vast expanse, leaving behind one hundred twenty square miles of varying kinds of sands. But these were sands so dangerous that only the unwary, the lifelong fishermen of the area, or the Queen’s Guide went out on them. If anyone else wandered into the empty bay— and people did all the time— they ran the risk of ending their days on earth by stumbling onto an area of quicksand that was, to the casual observer, indistinguishable from solid ground. Or far out in the bay they stood too long on rises of sand that seemed safe, like islands, only to find that the flood tide cut them off and then covered them in its return. And when, instead of a mere flood tide, a tidal bore brought the water swirling back into the bay at the speed of a galloping horse, things happened with a dizzying quickness as a vast surge of water covered everything in its path. And that was the thing about the tidal bore that Alatea found so hypnotic. It seemed to come from nowhere, and the speed of the torrent suggested a power driven by a force beyond any man’s control. The thought of this generally filled her with peace, however: that there was a force beyond man’s control and that she could turn to that force for solace when she was most in need.
She loved the fact that this house— a gift from her husband’s father to celebrate the occasion of her marriage to his only son— sat just above the Kent Channel, which was itself part of greater Morecambe Bay. From the edge of the property where a stone wall marked a public footpath along the channel and ultimately up to the wild, open hilltop of Arnside Knot, she could stand with a voluminous shawl wrapped round her and watch the renewing return of the salt water. She could pretend she knew something about how to read the eddies that it created.
She was there now, on this November afternoon. The sunlight was dimming as it would do earlier and earlier until late December, and the temperature was fast falling as well. A cloud bank over the rise of Humphrey Head Point across the channel to the west suggested a coming night of rain, but she wasn’t bothered by this. Unlike so many people in this adopted country of hers, she always welcomed rain with its promise of both growth and renewal. Still, she found herself uneasy. Her husband was the cause.
She hadn’t heard from him. She’d phoned his mobile during the afternoon, once she’d learned from ringing Fairclough Industries that Nicholas hadn’t gone into work that day. She’d made that phone call round eleven, when he still should have been there prior to leaving for the Middlebarrow Pele Project, where he now spent half of his workdays. She’d first assumed that he’d gone to the project earlier than usual and she’d then rung his mobile. But all she heard was that disembodied voice telling her that she had to leave a message. This she had done, three times now. The fact that Nicholas had not replied filled her with concern.
His cousin’s sudden death loomed large. Alatea didn’t want to think about it. Not only did death in general shake her, but this death in particular and the circumstances of this death filled her with a dread that took every ounce of her skill at subterfuge to hide. Ian’s drowning had hit the family hard. Particularly had it devastated Nicholas’s father. So staggered had Bernard been at first that Alatea had wondered at the nature of his exact relationship with Ian. But it was only when Bernard had begun to distance himself from Nicholas that Alatea had sensed an undercurrent beneath the older man’s grief.
Nicholas was not involved in Ian’s drowning. Alatea knew this for a hundred and one reasons but most of all she knew it because she knew her husband. He seemed weak to people because of his past, but he was no such thing. He was the rock and substance of her life, and he would become the same to many others if he only had the chance. This was what the Middlebarrow Pele Project was giving to him.
But he hadn’t been at the project today any more than he had been at Fairclough Industries. Had he been, he would have had his mobile switched on. He knew it was important to her to have contact with him periodically and he was always willing to allow her the access. He’d said at first, “Do you not trust me, Allie? I mean, if I’m going to use again, I’m going to use again. You can’t stop me with a phone call, you know,” but that hadn’t been the reason she wanted close contact with him, and through partial truths she’d ultimately been able to persuade him that her need had nothing to do with the need he himself had finally managed to conquer.
Whenever he was gone from her, she worried that something might happen to him, entirely unrelated to his addictions. A car crash, a stone falling from the old pele tower, a freak accident… exactly like what had happened to Ian. Except she wouldn’t think about Ian, she told herself. There were too many other things to consider.
She turned from the sight of the floodwaters swirling into the Kent Channel. Up the slope of the lawn in front of her, Arnside House spread out. She allowed herself a momentary feeling of pleasure as she looked upon the building. The house gave her a focus for her energies, and she wondered if Bernard had known that when he presented it to them upon their return to England.
“It was used for convalescing soldiers after the war,” he’d said as he’d walked her through it, “and then it spent some thirty years as a girls’ school. After that there were two sets of owners who did a few things to restore it to what it once was. But then I’m afraid it stood vacant for a time. Still, there’s something about it that’s very special, my dear. I think it deserves a family running about inside it. And more, it deserves someone like you to put your touch upon it.” He’d kept his hand on the small of her back as he’d walked her through the place. He had a way of looking at her that was a little disturbing. His gaze would go from Nicholas to her and back to Nicholas as if he couldn’t understand what they had between them: either where it had come from in the first place or how it was going to endure.
But that didn’t matter to Alatea. What mattered was Bernard’s acceptance of her, and she had that. She could tell he thought she possessed a form of magical power that was protecting Nicholas, a kind of sorcery perhaps. She could also tell from Bernard’s assessing looks, taking her in from top to toes, that he reckoned exactly what the sorcery was.
She went up the slope of lawn towards the house. A set of stone steps led up to a terrace, and she used these, careful of the damp moss that grew upon them. Across the lawn she made for a doorway tucked into the side of the building. There she let herself into the drawing room, whose pale yellow walls suggested sunlight even on the most dismal of days.