She fussed over me nonstop — as she had probably been told to do, I thought — not surprising when I finally began to learn the truth about the incident that had nearly killed me.
It was Robin Davey who did his best to explain. Upon returning to the house he came straight into the drawing room and sat down opposite me.
‘I’m just so glad you’re up and about,’ he said, and smiled that smile again.
‘Thank you,’ I responded. And waited. He knew exactly what I was waiting for.
‘I expect you want to know what happened?’
I merely nodded.
‘Yes, well, I won’t beat around the bush,’ he said. ‘Jason Tucker suffers from epilepsy. Acutely so, and a very extreme form. He appears to be perfectly normal ninety-nine per cent of the time, but when he does have an attack he is capable of completely losing his short-term memory.
‘He had a grand mal while you were on the Pencil and he was hovering around in the inflatable. He passed out and then went into a kind of trance. By the time he had fully recovered consciousness the boat had drifted almost back to the shore — the tide was coming in if you recall. Jason had absolutely no memory of dropping a visitor off at the rock and had completely forgotten why he was out at sea at all.
‘We are all terribly, terribly sorry, and both Jason and his father will be up here this afternoon to apologise to you personally.’
I stared at him in amazement. ‘As simple as that?’ I said. ‘Look, I’m sure Jason is a very nice young chap and everything, but nobody with that affliction should be in charge of a boat at all, let alone carrying unsuspecting passengers around the place.’
‘I know.’ Robin Davey sighed resignedly. ‘He wasn’t supposed to do what he did, of course he wasn’t. I employ him as a porter and an odd job man, but his family have fished off Abri for almost as long as mine have been here. We let him use the boat and do a bit of fishing because he loves it, but he’s not supposed to carry passengers, he knows that.’
‘Mr Davey, I could have died,’ I said.
‘Call me Robin, please,’ he responded. ‘But no, you had to be missed, we were always going to miss you. You must realise that. We only take a maximum of about twenty staying guests on the island, and there are just a dozen of you here at the moment. As soon as you didn’t turn up for supper at The Tavern, we reckoned something was amiss. One of the waitresses remembered seeing Jason bring the inflatable into the landing beach quite late in the day and that when she spoke to him he had seemed confused and unwell. We put two and two together...’
I wasn’t entirely convinced. I reckoned I’d had a very lucky escape indeed. All Abri’s accommodation had at least elementary cooking facilities and some guests did their own catering. It was fortunate that I had trotted along to The Tavern at about six every evening for my first drink of the day followed by an early supper. Had I not been both bone idle when it came to any kind of domesticity, and also such a creature of habit, I might not have been so fortunate. I might not have been missed until the next morning, and I was quite sure that I would have been unable to survive an entire night clinging to the Pencil. The very thought of my fate had my ordeal lasted much longer brought me out in a cold sweat.
No wonder Robin Davey was showing so much concern. Idly I wondered how much I could sue the bugger for, and I did obtain a certain rum satisfaction from watching him turn a dull shade of green when I casually told him my job.
I don’t look like a Detective Chief Inspector. In fact I don’t look like a copper at all, although I’ve never been quite sure whether that has by and large been an advantage or a disadvantage to me. I have quite a lot of very curly fair hair, and as I had allowed it to dry naturally that morning, it had formed itself into a fuzzy blonde halo around my head. I had once overheard a couple of particularly chauvinistic Avon and Somerset wooden-tops describe me as ‘a Barbie-doll with a brain’. However, being all too aware of the average copper’s opinion of women in The Job, certainly in senior positions, I had merely counted myself fortunate that they’d allowed that I had a brain. On this occasion it was pleasantly entertaining to watch Robin Davey’s reaction to my profession and my rank. He was a quick recoverer though.
‘I see,’ he remarked, trying, somewhat desperately I thought, to sound light-hearted. ‘I’d better watch my step then, hadn’t I.’
Even the twinkle which seemed to be permanently in his eye momentarily disappeared. I decided to rub things in a bit — he owed me that luxury, at least.
‘I think it’s a little late for that,’ I said. ‘You’re already involved in very nearly causing the death of a police officer.’
‘I wouldn’t have put it quite like that,’ he ventured.
‘No, I’m sure you wouldn’t,’ I said.
‘I’m not sure whether you’re making veiled threats or teasing me,’ he said, his voice gentle now. ‘I don’t blame you in either case. I am so sorry for what you have been through, and I just want you to know that you are welcome to stay in my home for as long as you like. Take all the time you can to get over this.’
I didn’t respond for a moment. When he spoke again his manner was ever so slightly hesitant, his voice sounded just a little doubtful.
‘Assuming you want to stay on Abri, of course...’
I did want to stay — although only a couple of days of my planned holiday there remained, I had a further week’s leave before I was due back at the nick and no special plans. I wanted to stay with Robin Davey. That was my trouble. I hadn’t learned about men at all as I had grown older, just got stupider as every day passed, in fact.
At least I managed not to sound too childishly eager when I eventually responded.
‘A few days would be good,’ I said lightly. ‘I still feel a bit shaken up, to tell the truth. Some time to recover quietly would go down well...’
He was immediately all concern again. He leaned close to me, reaching out with one hand to touch my shoulder.
‘Of course, you’re shaken up,’ he said. ‘You’ve had a very frightening experience. I’ll get the rest of your things brought over from the Old Light, then you must try to relax. And just remember, if there’s anything else I can do to help I will, anything at all...’
I swear my heart fluttered. The expression there’s no fool like an old fool could have been invented for me. At thirty-five I could still be bowled over like a teenager. Loneliness was small excuse.
I watched Robin Davey eat his dinner and fortunately was not actually force-fed by Mrs Cotley, who was probably so thin because she was so busy feeding up everybody who came into her clutches that she never had time to eat anything herself, although she did express some concern about my not having eaten for at least an hour.
Soon after Robin returned to whatever it was he was doing at the farm, Jason Tucker and his father Frank arrived as promised.
Mrs Cotley led them into the drawing room to me as if I were some ancient dowager aunt granting an audience, which at once made me feel at a disadvantage even though the company was hardly overbearing. Frank Tucker was a small scraggy man. His sinewy arms protruded from rolled-up woollen shirt sleeves and his trousers flapped around exceptionally skinny legs. Strange that he had fathered so strapping a son. Both men looked red-faced and uneasy, although they couldn’t have been more uneasy than me.
‘Miss, ’e’s a good boy, my Jason, but ’e should have knowed better than to do what ’e did,’ said Frank, in an accent much broader than his son’s, but a voice just as soft and gentle. His blue eyes, bright as Robin Davey’s, shone earnestly out of a sharp-featured brown leather face. ‘’E knows he mustn’t take no one out in thigee boat. Don’t ee boy?’
Jason nodded shamefacedly. ‘I thought I was better, miss, honest I did,’ he said. ‘I hadn’t had a turn, oh, not for two years nor more, ’ad I, father?’