The Diary Of Pamela D. by greg monks Page B

a beach, wearing a pale yellow summer dress, feeling
the warm wind blowing, driving white breakers upon the beach. She
was laughing, holding the hand of a little girl who was tugging at
her to move faster, to catch up with . . .
    Ahead of them, dressed in khaki-coloured
shorts and faded blue T-shirt was Theo. He was deeply tanned and
smiling, half-turned towards them with his hand open, waiting for
Pamela and the little girl to catch up.
    The child broke away from her, caught up with
Theo and took his hand. The two then stood, watching her, waiting
expectantly. But for some reason she couldn’t move, as though she
were rooted to the spot.
    Theo and the little girl began moving away,
slowly, giving her plenty of time to catch up. But still she
couldn’t move, and every instant they were farther and farther
away. She tried her voice, but nothing would come. If she didn’t
move soon, they would be out of sight altogether. Though they moved
slowly, somehow, inexplicably, they were already nearing the
horizon. She knew that if they passed beyond that point, both of
them would be lost to her forever.
    In desperation, she tried to force her
unwilling feet to move, but it was as though she were mired in
quicksand. Theo and the little girl were now little more than two
indistinct specks shimmering in the heat haze, a mirage that was
beginning to flicker and break up.
    ‘ No . . . Theo . . . please, wait for
me . . . don’t go. Theo !’
    Somehow, impossibly, he was right there
beside her. He had taken her hand. She looked around but couldn’t
see him anywhere.
    ‘I can’t . . . where are you?’
    She felt his other hand on her brow, large,
warm, calming. ‘Shush now. I’m right here. I’m not going
anywhere.’
    Strange . . . he was here, right beside
her, where he had been all along. But the little girl was off in
the distance yet-
    ‘I’ll come one day,’ the
little girl said. ‘But not yet. You will wait for me?’
    Pamela stood watching her and wondered if the
waiting would never end.
     

-5-
     
    ‘ Come along, Pamela, you can ill-afford
to be late. The concert can’t begin without its star
soloist.’
    Pamela smiled at Mrs. Pascoe’s exaggeration
as she tied back her hair, which though still a mass of dark curls
was much easier to manage since she’d let it grow out. After her
recovery she’d had to make up for lost time as Easter and the
concert approached. The choir-director, Mr. Howard, had intensified
her vocal training as soon as she was well enough, on the pretense
that Pamela and her voice were somehow an indispensable part of
this year’s performance. Pamela, however, wasn’t fooled for a
moment. There were four other sopranos with much more training,
experience and natural ability than she could ever hope to have.
She well knew the true reason to be that everyone seemed bent on
finding some small way to make her forget her experience at the
hands of Albert Askrigg. Yet despite their efforts not a moment
went by that she wasn’t aware that Albert Askrigg still roamed
free, a monster in man’s form prowling the moors of Yorkshire,
dangerous, pitiless, lethal, utterly without remorse. With a little
shiver she remembered that he had vowed to return one day to
Dewhurst mansion and finish what he’d begun. No, it was not yet
over: the demon still lived. But then, demons were supernatural
beings, and therefore were unkillable: and so Albert Askrigg was
free to try again, and possibly succeed where before he had
failed.
    She took a deep breath . . . let it out
slowly . . . did her best to push such thoughts aside as being so
much melodramatic nonsense, and hurried to join Mrs. Pascoe. When
she got downstairs, her unpleasant musings were dispelled
altogether when Pamela saw that she was indeed holding things up,
that their little motorcade was lined up in the drive and ready to
go.
     
    The concert went off very well, so well in
fact that she was able to sing her solo, ‘Let the Bright Seraphim,’
with