Palmer-Jones 05 - Sea Fever by Ann Cleeves Page B

don’t know what to do. Everything’s such a mess.”
    It had never before in any situation occurred to him that she might need him. She had been the determined one who held her family and business together, who made her own decisions. She had been the one who cheered him out of his loneliness and laughed at his weakness. He felt suddenly very strong and hopeful.
    He moved to the window to stand beside her.
    “It’ll be all right,” he said awkwardly, putting his arms around her, touching the bare skin of her shoulder, stroking it. “We’re tired. It’s the shock. We’re all upset about Greg.”
    “I’m not upset,” she said. He thought, looking at her so closely, at the lines around her eyes, the strain in her dark and heavy face, that she must be older than he. He had always thought of himself as boringly middle-aged in comparison to her, and the idea was flattering. He felt she had paid him a compliment. “I’m not upset,” she said again. “Don’t you understand? I’m bloody relieved that he’s not around to trouble us anymore.”
    She laid her head on his shoulder, and for a moment Gerald stood in the warm half light of the nursery, quite content. It seemed a moment of great promise and significance, the beginning of something magnificent. He had never been happy before.
    Then Rose broke away. She did it gently, because even in her distress she could not bring herself to be unkind. She took his hands in hers and lifted them away from her body.
    “Look,” she said. “This won’t do. It isn’t fair. You’ll have to go.”
    “No,” he cried. “ I want to be with you. I want to help.”
    “No one can do that now,” she said, and took his hand again and led him to the door and sent him away.
    She returned to the window, listening again to the voices of the people in the room below, trying to hear where their conversation might be leading. Soon after, the voices stopped. There were footsteps, the front door shutting, and the sound of a car engine being started. The headlights were reflected on the dense green leaves, and the car moved up the valley.
    It was what Rose had been waiting for. She thought that now she was safe. She assumed that both police officers had left Porthkennan. In her anxiety and need for reassurance Inspector Bingham’s promise to leave a policeman to “keep an eye on them“ was forgotten.
    She left the baby’s room and walked carefully downstairs. At the front door she paused to make sure the house was quiet. She did not want Gerald and his clumsy sympathy again that night. Outside, she listened again, but there was only the screech of a tawny owl hunting on the moor by the tin mine, and she began to follow the lane down the valley. She was wearing no shoes, and the tarmac road outside the house, which had been unbearably hot during the day, was pleasantly warm. Even in the dark she could follow the path without a torch. She avoided the worst of the bramble and nettle.
    When she reached the water, it was high tide, and the shingle beach was covered. As she approached the door of Rosco’s cottage, she could feel the spray on her face from the waves breaking over the bigger rocks. Before she reached the house, she knew it was empty, and the unexpected stillness made her panic. She had hoped to see the lantern hanging from the hook in the low ceiling and Louis in the low chair by the window waiting for her, patient, calm, unassuming. In the past he always had been, and she realised how much she had taken him for granted. She opened the door and called inside to him, even went into the bedroom to see if he was sleeping there, but she knew from the beginning it was useless, and she would have to return to Myrtle Cottage disappointed.
    Berry, who had followed her with interest down the lane and had suffered the blackthorn and bramble scratches patiently to have his curiosity rewarded, sensed her frustration as she passed quite close to him on her way back to the big house. She