Why Don't You Come For Me? Part 18

'Lauren had a cat.' Jo spoke so quietly that the last word was almost drowned by a crack from the fire. Gilda automatically extended her foot to rub out the spark which had leaped on to the rug. 'She called him Puddy,' Jo continued. 'She had him with her on the day she was taken.'

Gilda frowned momentarily before saying, 'Oh yes Lauren was your daughter, wasn't she?'

'Is. She is my daughter. Does she still have Puddy?'

Gilda frowned again harder this time, so that her eyes narrowed to shadows beneath a deeply puckered forehead. 'I'm sorry, but I don't understand. What cat are you talking about? Do you mean this cat Timmy?'

'No, I mean Puddy. Does Lauren still have Puddy?'

'I'm sorry,' Gilda repeated, 'but I'm afraid you've lost me. What is it you've come to see me about, exactly?'

'Where is Becky at the moment? Can she hear what we are saying?'

'I doubt it. She's up in her bedroom, listening to something on her iPod, I think.'

'I know the truth, Gilda. I know that Becky is Lauren.'

'Dear G.o.d you're mad! Absolutely mad!'

'No, I'm not. Becky isn't your daughter. I've checked up. Her name is Rebecca Heidi Ford, and her mother's maiden name was Parsons, not Stafford.'

'Well, that's no secret. Rebecca Ford is my adopted daughter, and her mother, Heidi Ford nee Parsons, was my friend. I adopted Rebecca when my friend and her husband died. As it happens, I can't have children myself.'

'You're just saying that,' said Jo, but her voice wavered.

'I cannot believe that you have come over here to confront me with such a half-baked tale. Imagine how upset Becky would have been if she had heard what you said. And how dare you obtain a copy of my daughter's birth certificate! Whatever possessed you? It's horrible to think that you must have been checking up on us, watching and spying ...' Gilda appeared to be gripped by a mounting sense of outrage. She stood up and took a few steps towards the window, before returning to grip the back of her chair as if she could hardly contain herself.

'I didn't get a copy of her birth certificate. I looked it up on the internet.'

'I don't believe you. I don't believe people's birth certificates are on the internet.'

'Not exactly not the whole certificate.'

'I should think not.'

'She's the same age,' Jo said. 'She's got blonde hair-'

'So has half the population.'

'And and I didn't believe you'd been married.'

'I suppose you tried to check that up, too.'

'No.'

'I suppose you just took that as read. It would be like you to a.s.sume that I couldn't get a husband if I wanted one.' A strange smile crossed Gilda's face. Bitter, while at the same time knowing and in control. The smile of one who knows their adversary, and is capable of inflicting great damage. It was the sort of look which made Jo instinctively want to flinch away.

'I thought I saw you there in Barleycombe that day she was taken. And then you were watching the night when I went to the rendezvous on the postcard.' Jo's voice shook. She knew that at any minute she would succ.u.mb to tears.

'What postcard? What on earth are you talking about? You know what the trouble with you is, Joanne Savage? You're as barmy as your mother. When I first knew you it just manifested itself in your being a nasty little piece of work, but now you've gone completely over the edge just like she did. Look at yourself. You're a wreck, a laughing stock. Oh, you thought you'd got it made, with your nice little business showing rich tourists where Wordsworth ate his supper, but it's all gone wrong again now, hasn't it? Of course they're still at the stage of being sorry for you, Maisie and Sh.e.l.ley and the others, but they don't know the half of it, do they? Did your first husband see it coming, when you pushed him over the cliff? You got away with it, too, didn't you? Not like your mother. Still locked up in Broadmoor, is she? And how about Marcus, is he watching his back? Because he certainly ought to be.'

'Stop it!' Jo stumbled to her feet. 'Stop it. My mother's dead and I'm not Joanne Savage any more. That's all behind me now, all those terrible things.'

'I don't think so,' Gilda spat. 'I don't think anyone forgets that easily. I don't. Remember that time you all got me in the toilets, shoved my head down and flushed the chain? Or burning my homework with Colleen's cigarette lighter, so I'd get into trouble for not handing in my a.s.signment? Remember the names you called me? That way you all had of sticking out a foot, so that I tripped over it? You see, I don't forget things, either.'

'But that wasn't me. It really wasn't. I didn't do any of those things it was the others. I should have stopped them, I know I should, but I was afraid of them, too.'

'It wasn't me,' Gilda jeered. 'Oh, yes it's always someone else, isn't it? You picked on me at school and you think you can do the same now.'

'I don't. I'm not. I'm truly sorry about what happened to you at school,' Jo sobbed. 'But my child someone took my child.'

'Well, maybe that was your punishment. Maybe that's how life works: what goes around, comes around. You give someone h.e.l.l, and it comes back at you in a hotter form. And being the victim is still your trump card, isn't it? It kept you out of trouble at school poor Joanne, we have to make allowances because she's had such a rough time and now you think you can come here and make accusations, and then when someone calls your bluff, you turn on the tears and start to bleat. Someone took my child,' Gilda mimicked cruelly. 'How dare you come into my home, trying to upset me and my daughter, pus.h.i.+ng your particular brand of lunacy into our lives.'

Jo stood up and made her way unsteadily into the hall, almost falling over the roll of carpet on the way. 'I'm sorry. I can see that it was wrong ... I just thought ...'

'I don't want to hear any more. Get out of my house.' Gilda marched down the hall behind her, a threatening presence before which Jo cowered at the front door, where it took her an age to fumble her feet into her wellingtons, while tears cascaded on to her hands, blurring her vision, m.u.f.fling her voice, as she repeated over and over again that she was sorry, that she should not have come.

The cold outside took her breath away. Gilda had shut the door at her back, but the outside light was enough to see by. Her own footprints were mixed up with the tracks made by Sean and Rebecca earlier in the day, all of them now frozen into a lethal skid pan. She picked her way around this b.u.mpy patch of ice, seeking the relative safety of the virgin snow. Shame lashed her as she trod a wavering path across the lane. How had she reached such a dark place? How could she not have foreseen this obvious flaw in her perverted logic? Gilda's daughter was adopted. She had followed a false trail, wrought of her own imagination and despair. If Gilda was right, then she should end it now, before she did something really terrible. If she walked the other way along the lane, turned up the footpath through the woods and carried on until she reached the moor, she would only have to sit down among the cl.u.s.ter of rocks in her drawing place and she would surely be dead by morning. She had once read that hypothermia was not a painful death. Strangely, it was not the thought of death that deterred her, so much as the thought of the darkness among the trees. It reminded her of the night when she had gone to Claife Station, not knowing what unseen horror might be waiting for her there. And if she killed herself, who would be left for Lauren? Unless, said a voice in her head, Lauren is already dead. Maybe Lauren wants you to do it. Maybe she is waiting for you on the other side. Perhaps that is what lies just out of sight, those shadowy watchers that you are afraid to confront ... maybe it's Lauren and Dom, hand in hand, waiting for you.

But it was already too late. She had reached the house and was stamping the snow from her boots. When she got inside she ran upstairs, buried her face in the duvet and wept hysterically.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR.

Sean had not realized that his stepmother had left the house, but he was aware of her return because he heard the front door slam and her feet on the stairs, followed by the sound of her bedroom door closing. When she had not emerged by eight o'clock, he put a frozen pizza in the oven, then went around the ground-floor rooms, switching on lights and closing the curtains and blinds. He did not like uncurtained windows after dark, with their ever-present sense that someone might be on the opposite side of the gla.s.s, looking in. Not that there was ever anyone around, but it felt spooky even on nights like this when the combination of moonlight and heavy snowfall made it easy to see into the garden without switching on the outside lights. It occurred to him that it would be pretty neat to go sledging by moonlight. Maybe it was something they could do when Harry came.

He looked forward to Harry's visits. He sometimes talked to his old mates online, but it wasn't like being able to hang out with them. The kids at school were OK, but they already had their own friends, who they seemed to have known for ever. They didn't deliberately exclude him, but they didn't bother to include him either. He missed his old mates, and the comfortable familiarity of a mother who could be relied upon not to take off without telling anyone where she was going, who would always provide meals at predictable times and who could yell at him with impunity because she didn't have to be seen to be making a serious effort to like him all the time.

He remembered the artificial jollity of his first Christmas at The Hideaway in less than a week they would be playing out the same farce again except that she was getting worse and worse at managing to play her part. You never knew where you were with her. Only that morning she had appeared to be in a fairly reasonable mood, but there was something up with her again now. At one time she had seemed quite scary (he still had the knife, currently slipped into an old box which had once housed Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Seven), but lately she just seemed pathetic. He wondered what she was doing now. Just sitting on her own, staring at the carpet, probably.

He couldn't imagine why she was so interested in Becky. He had not minded being asked to find out her last name. In fact, he was pretty pleased with the way he had managed it. Nor had he really minded taking Becky out sledging, because things like that were more fun when there was someone else to have a laugh with and he had sort of said he would call for her again tomorrow.

Jo lay on her bed for a long time. She tried to empty her mind completely; not to facilitate remembrance, but in order to forget. Imagine if the accusations she had levelled at Gilda travelled beyond the four walls of The Old Forge. Gilda could easily tell other people what she had said she might even go to the police and make a complaint of some kind. Hara.s.sment. It might const.i.tute hara.s.sment. Suppose Gilda did something spiteful, like sell the story to the papers. Tell them how she, Jo, went about accusing innocent widows of having stolen her child. That awful excoriating shame of publicity. Everyone would know who she was. Marcus and the business would get dragged in; he and Melissa would be furious.

She crawled under the duvet without bothering to remove her clothes, then lay there trying not to think. If only she could blot everything out by falling into a deep, dreamless sleep.

After a long time she sensed that the room was becoming lighter. It was an uneasy feeling, as if an unseen hand was turning up the dimmer switch millimetre by millimetre, the better to spy on her. It took her a while to realize that it must be the moon, moving around the house until it shone in at the window.

The moon made her think of the path along the cliff top at Shanklin; she and Dominic, hand in hand on their honeymoon, looking at the stars while the moon reflected silvery patterns on the sea. Happy so very, very happy. Not caring that they could not afford a Caribbean island. She had the strangest feeling that if she turned to look out of the window he would be floating just outside, beckoning her to come away with him, out into the cold pale moonlight and away to the dark places where there is no more feeling, no more pain, no more doubting what is real and what is true because there you know everything.

The feeling was so overwhelming that she rolled over to look, but there was nothing to be seen except the skeletons of the trees, the uppermost edge of each s.h.i.+ny black branch highlighted by a coating of snow. Ransoms grew among those trees in springtime, and beautiful carpets of bluebells, but that was a long way off. Maybe she would not be here by then.

She slept for a while, then woke suddenly in the darkness, crying out in confusion. The air felt cold against her face. For a minute she thought she must be in a sleeping bag, camping out on the fellside not that she had ever done so. Then she remembered that the heating would have gone off for the night, and with the weather being so bitter, she should have set it to override the timer. Cold as the grave, said a voice in her head. She had once driven through a part of the munic.i.p.al cemetery set aside for the interment of children. A terrible place of soft toys and withered balloons. She had not wanted that for Lauren. She would have done anything anything at all to give Lauren the chance to live and have a happy life. After a time she fell asleep again. In her new dream Lauren was riding a pony. The pony kept breaking into a trot, and although she could hear Lauren laughing and encouraging it to go faster, she was afraid for her. Surely Lauren was too small to be on the pony by herself, without someone there to hold the reins. She tried to catch them up but the pony was always a bit too fast for her and full of cunning tricks, getting itself on the far side of a hedge or the opposite bank of a stream. The girl in the saddle seemed to have grown she turned to look over her shoulder, and Jo saw that it was Gilda's daughter after all. The girl pressed her knees into the pony's sides and the animal galloped away.

When she next awoke it was to broad daylight, and Sean's voice was coming from the other side of the bedroom door. 'I'm going out,' he shouted. 'I'm taking the sledge.'

'OK.' Her first attempt to respond was just a croak. She tried again, and her response emerged more clearly, although she was uncertain whether Sean had waited for an answer.

She rolled over and looked at the clock. It was approaching eleven in the morning. She dragged away the duvet and stood up, straightening one sleeve of her jumper which had become twisted around her arm, dragging up her socks before they completely parted company with her feet. She went downstairs slowly, reaching the sitting room just in time to see Sean dragging two sledges into the gateway of The Old Forge. She ought to have warned him that he might not be welcome. She waited anxiously at the window, but it appeared that whatever animosity Gilda might entertain towards Jo, she was not taking it out on her stepson, because after what seemed like an age Sean and Rebecca emerged from between the gateposts, he pulling the larger wooden sledge, she the cheap plastic job. As they turned away down the lane, she saw them both raise a hand in acknowledgement of someone she could not see.

While she was waiting for Sean to reappear, she saw a large green Jeep drive slowly along the lane. The world was waking up and moving along without her. The world, in fact, did not need her. She went into the kitchen, which bore evidence of both Sean's breakfast and supper. He had actually remembered to put his cereal bowl into the dishwasher, although the crumbs from his toast lay forgotten on the worktop.

She imagined him now with Becky. That singular exhilaration of travelling fast downhill on a sledge. Happy, laughing, their whole lives ahead of them. Her life had never really been like that. It was true that there had been moments of exhilaration, but it seemed to her now that they had always been tempered by shadows. She remembered once holding Lauren up in front of a mirror. Lauren had been laughing and trying to touch the gla.s.s with her stubby fingers, but Jo had not let her get close enough to put smudges on it. As she watched their reflections looking back at her mother and daughter together from nowhere had come the thought that one day she would have to explain to Lauren about her mother and what she had done; after which Lauren, too, would have to bear the burden, wonder what it might mean for her own mother and for herself. Always that past which you could not escape from and whenever you thought you had got away, someone sent a postcard, dropped a pebble in a pool, left a paperclip on the carpet, or a penny down the back of the settee. The only way you could escape your family history was by not knowing about it in the first place. She thought of Sh.e.l.ley's father, digging away so eagerly, wanting to find it all out. Well, her advice to anyone would be: run away, run as fast as you can in the opposite direction and don't look back.

She found that she was standing at the foot of the stairs. What should she do now? Clean your teeth and have a shower, suggested an inner rationale. Then have some breakfast. That's what a normal person would do. Ah, but I'm not normal, said a second voice which sounded suspiciously like her mother.

Jo gripped the k.n.o.b at the end of the banister, feeling the artificial greenery of the Christmas garland p.r.i.c.kling against the back of her hand. She would not hear her mother's voice, she told herself angrily. Her mother was dead.

That was it ... Dead.

She ran into the office, threw herself down into the big leather chair and scrabbled the mouse to and fro on its mat, impatient for the computer to wake into life. It had been left on all night, the screen saver weaving never-ending patterns against its own version of the night sky, but now it sprang to life as if eager to do her bidding. She keyed in the website address from memory, logged into her account with the pa.s.sword she had acquired the day before, then typed in the search. Deaths Ford Rebecca. There were only three results for the relevant period, and the last one was 'Rebecca Heidi Ford, born 13 Mar 1998, death registered Dec 1998.'

She logged out and almost ran into the kitchen. She pulled a knife out of the block so violently that all the other knives jumped and clattered, as if unnerved by this unaccustomed rough usage. She took the one with the six-inch blade, which she normally used for vegetables.

She pushed her feet into a pair of flat black ankle boots which were lying near the front door, then flung on her old gardening coat, which she did not bother to b.u.t.ton. She strode down the drive and across the lane, entirely careless of slipping on the snow and ice. When she got to Gilda's gate, she found the other woman in the act of kicking snow off her boots, alongside the open front door. Jo instinctively hid the knife behind her back like a guilty child.

Gilda had been clearing away the snow between her parked car and the road, so she was evidently planning to drive somewhere, either now or later. At the sound of Jo's approach she looked up in surprise. 'If you've come for Sean ...' she began.

'No,' said Jo. 'I have come to see you.'

'I really don't think ' Gilda began, but Jo walked forward so purposefully that Gilda broke off and darted into the house. Jo was too quick for her and got there before she had time to get the door even part way closed.

'If you don't leave', said Gilda, retreating up the hall, 'I am going to call the police.'

'Oh, I don't think so.' Jo continued to advance, not bothering to close the door behind her, never taking her eyes off Gilda, who had backed into the sitting room, taking an elaborately large backward step over the roll of carpet, unable to look down for fear of taking her eyes off the knife, now clearly visible in Jo's right hand.

'Rebecca Heidi Ford died in December 1998,' said Jo.

Gilda said nothing.

'You were there, weren't you? That day in Barleycombe. You saw me with my husband and my baby, you followed us and when I went into the shop, you took her. Out of spite and revenge and jealousy. And if that wasn't enough, you tormented me all these years, sending those b.l.o.o.d.y postcards. You even came to live opposite me, so you could see what you were doing to me. You hated me so much that you wanted to destroy my life.'

Now that they had reached the living room, Gilda stood her ground, taking up a position alongside the armchair in which she had sat the day before, resting one hand on its back. 'This isn't going to do you any good,' Gilda's voice was remarkably calm. 'If you harm me in any way, do you think for a moment that they will give Becky back to you?'

'She's not Becky. Her name is Lauren, and I am her mother. A DNA test will prove it.'

'She answers to Becky. Has it occurred to you that she may not want to be with you? I am her mother, you see. She loves me even though she knows I'm not her real mother. I'm the person who brought her up, cared for her when she was ill, taught her to read before she ever went to school. You're just a stranger. An unstable woman who careers around the village, acting strangely and threatening other people with knives.'

'She won't love you when she finds out what you did.'

'Love isn't switched on and off like a tap. Becky loves me she doesn't even know you. You're going to tell her that nothing she has ever believed about herself is true; that her birthday happened two months after she thinks it did; that her real father threw himself off a cliff; and that her maternal grandmother finished up in Broadmoor. And then you're going to tell her that she's got to live with the village loony and a stepfather who's more concerned with what happened on a medieval battlefield than what's going to happen next week. Do you think she's going to fall into your arms in an ecstasy of delight?'

'She'll grow to love me, once she gets to know me.'

'Look at yourself. You're a wreck see the way your hand is shaking? That knife is wobbling like a jelly. Why don't you put it down, before you do yourself an injury?' As Jo glanced down in spite of herself, Gilda asked, 'Are you going to destroy that girl's life by making her come and live with you?'

'She's my daughter. I love her.'

'Love her? You don't even know her! She's just an idea to you an obsession.'

'That's not true. You don't know what it is to be a mother.'

'I have been a mother a good mother. What kind of a mother do you think you would ever have made?' Gilda's eyes abruptly focused on something beyond Jo's right shoulder. 'Becky!' she shouted.

Even as Jo turned to register the empty doorway, Gilda was on her, flinging her whole weight against Jo's left side so that she tumbled face down on to the sofa, with the knife trapped and useless beneath her. Gilda was by far the larger and heavier woman, and she used her weight to crus.h.i.+ng effect, pinning Jo down and pus.h.i.+ng her face into the cus.h.i.+ons so that she could hardly breathe. When Jo managed to twist her face aside, Gilda grabbed the hood of the old gardening coat and forced it over Jo's head, holding it over her mouth with one hand while she used the other to quest between Jo's body and the upholstery, seeking the buried weapon. Although half suffocated, Jo mounted a frenzied defence, thrusting her free hand over her head and clawing blindly at her adversary, until Gilda was forced to let go of the hood in order to defend herself, grabbing Jo's wrist and snapping it back so that the other woman screamed.

In spite of Gilda's determined a.s.sault, the sheer unreality of what was happening and the knowledge that her wrist was probably broken, Jo was still thinking clearly. She knew what she needed to do it was just a question of timing. When Gilda's fist slammed into the back of her head, even in the midst of blinding pain, she guessed that Gilda would repeat the action and knew it represented an opportunity. As the second blow fell, she gave a loud moan and let her body go limp. Gilda's momentary hesitation was enough: Jo pushed up with all her might, throwing her entire body backwards in a twisting movement which tumbled them both off the sofa.

Jo's 180-degree turn had taken Gilda completely by surprise, but as they hit the floor with a crash that reverberated through the house, it was Gilda who managed to wrestle herself into a position of superiority with Jo still trapped underneath her, although Jo was now facing her a.s.sailant with her right hand freed. She stabbed the knife wildly in Gilda's direction, but Gilda saw it coming and grabbed Jo's wrist, forcing it away. Using one hand to keep Jo's arm at bay, Gilda used the other to claw at her fingers, hoping to prize them from the handle.

With her left arm now useless, Jo focused everything she had on retaining her weapon. She tried holding the knife at full stretch above her head, but the other woman's reach was longer. She flexed her legs, but it was impossible to gain much purchase against the carpet, which seemed to slide away from her like quicksand. She attempted to buck Gilda off, but nothing was working and all the time Gilda's full weight bore down on her ribs, pressing the breath out of her.

Gilda too had sustained damage. Jo had scratched and bitten her, and her right knee throbbed agonizingly where it had taken the brunt of the impact when they hit the floor. She had the greater bulk, but Jo was fitter and had managed against all odds to keep hold of the knife, so that while Gilda laboured for breath and struggled to keep her adversary pinned down, she could not afford to lessen her grip on Jo's wrist for a second because a second was all it would take.

Jo's attempts to unseat her a.s.sailant had gradually moved them across the floor. Inch by inch, they were getting nearer to the hearth, where Gilda knew that the poker was resting upright against the fireplace, but still well out of reach. Then she became aware of something else appearing at the very periphery of her vision: a dark shape at ground level, which she recognized as Timmy the stone cat. She dared not take her eye off the knife, but in spite of this she judged the distance perfectly: a lunge to her right, and within a single arc of movement she had grabbed Timmy from his usual place on the hearth and smashed him against the side of the other woman's head.

The hand holding the knife drooped in her grasp, then relaxed until the handle slid out of Jo's grip on to the carpet. Gilda instantly grabbed it. For some moments after gaining the knife she stayed where she was, alert for another trick, watching and waiting while her own breath came in ragged gasps but Jo was not faking. Her eyes were closed, her body limp.

Gilda's overriding emotion was one of relief. Like the drowning woman who has been swept away in the floods but unexpectedly fetches up in an isolated tree top, her immediate thoughts did not extend to how she was going to escape from her new predicament. As she sat astride her neighbour, dishevelled from recent combat and clutching a kitchen knife, she was abruptly reminded of the moment when, striding along the cliff path clutching someone else's baby to her chest, she suddenly realized that she had gone too far to turn back.

She stood up slowly and looked around the room. Remarkably little had been disarranged. She was uncertain whether or not Jo was still alive, but s.h.i.+ed away from close investigation. Blood had begun to appear in Jo's hair, at the place where the stone cat had impacted with her head, but the thick hood of her coat had fortuitously fallen in such a way that, as it began to drip out of her hair, it found the coat rather than the carpet. She could not have Jo's blood on her carpet. Somehow she had to get rid of the woman and quickly. No one must ever know that she had been here, and there was no time to waste because Becky might be back at any time, walking in on the scene, needing answers.

Still clutching the knife, she hurried into the hall, where she dragged on her coat and thrust her feet into outdoor shoes. She returned to the doorway of the sitting room, where she made a pig's breakfast of tying the laces because she was trying to do it without looking down, watching all the time for any movement from the form on the floor. Her first thought was to put Jo in the boot of the car, but it was still full of logs she had bought a couple of days before. If she tried to unload them now the delay might prove fatal. She glanced at the figure on the floor again but it gave no sign.

Gilda hurried outside and got into the car. While the demister sprang into action, she manoeuvred the Volvo closer to the front door. With the engine left running, she opened the rear door nearest the house, then set about half lifting, half dragging Jo along the hall, out of the house and into the car, taking care to keep the hood of the coat between herself and the head wound. It did not appear to have bled very much, but she did not want to get blood on her hands or clothes. In fact, she wanted to touch Jo as little as possible, but at the car door she was forced to bend almost double as she manhandled her load on to the back seat, so that Jo's coat hood brushed her face, making her recoil as if she had been stung.

It was difficult to get a proper purchase: tugging at the woman's clothes merely disarranged them without s.h.i.+fting their contents. It was almost as if Jo herself was holding back, trying to extend the operation until someone walked past the gateway, looked in and saw them there. The best she could achieve was to prop Jo half inside, then go round to the offside door and drag her the rest of the way. She began to doubt her own strength. Her breath was coming in gasps, as if she had been running in a race, and Becky might appear at any moment, coming home to her because she had won. Triumph gave her strength. She heaved the body across the seats and closed the door. Did Jo stir at that moment? Was it just coincidence, or imagination or maybe the jolt of the door itself? Round the other side she found Jo's feet were still dangling against the sill of the car. Gilda slammed the door against them. When it didn't close first time, she slammed it again harder.

The knife she must not forget the knife. She had put it on the table in the living room, when she first attempted to move the body. It must not be left there for Becky to find when she came back from playing in the snow. Gilda carried it into the kitchen and rinsed it under the tap, before dropping it into the drawer where she kept her own kitchen utensils. As she pa.s.sed through the living room on her way back to the car, she stopped to retrieve Timmy from where she had dropped him, after striking the blow which had ended the contest. He bore no visible sign of his involvement in the fray, but his stone eyes followed her accusingly to the door.

No one was around to see the car creep into the icy lane. The state of the roads was inconvenient, but at least it reduced the likelihood of witnesses. The car slid badly on the descent towards the bridge, and Gilda had to coax it up the incline on the other side, almost by sheer strength of will. She had embarked on the journey with no clear plan in mind, focusing only on the fact that she must get Jo as far away from the house as possible. She wasn't absolutely sure whether Jo was alive or not she thought not but she needed to be sure. It was hard to think at all when she had to concentrate on keeping the car moving along the parallel tyre tracks left by earlier vehicles, but now she considered two possibilities. First, that she could dump Jo just as she was, somewhere well out of the way or as far out of the way as she could manage, given the state of the roads. The sky was pregnant with the promise of more snow, and a fresh fall would obscure any tracks and hasten death by hypothermia a.s.suming that she wasn't already dead. Jo's head injury might even look like an accident. She was given to wandering off by herself, and probably reckoned daft enough to do it in these conditions. But suppose someone found her, and she was still alive? Hill walkers, shepherds, random motorists stopping for a pee. There was always that chance.

On the other hand Gilda gulped and recovered her steering as the car skidded on a bend if she made sure of it by hitting Jo with something else, or maybe strangling her, then it would obviously be a case of murder and there would be a big investigation, starting in Easter Bridge where Jo had last been seen alive and where her car was still parked at the front of her house. The police would inevitably take an interest in everyone else in the hamlet. Her own past connections with Jo were common knowledge. Jo had been in her house, and would surely have left some forensic evidence behind and all of this would have to be explained.

Then she heard a sound from the back of the car. Lower than a moan, but a sound of life. She glanced in the rear-view mirror, but Jo was completely hidden below the level of the front seats. Panic travelled up Gilda's spine, settling in the roots of her hair and radiating down her arms until it tingled in her fingertips. She should have made sure. If Jo came round, she could pull herself into a sitting position and attack from behind. She could signal from the windows to attract attention even open the door and throw herself out G.o.d knows, they were travelling slowly enough to facilitate it. If they stayed on the main road, it meant driving through Penny Bridge and Greenodd, where there might easily be someone to see.

The fingerpost at the next junction was obscured by snow, but Gilda knew where the lane went and it appeared to be just about pa.s.sable. She eased the Volvo into the turning. Very few vehicles had attempted to come this way, but if she could just force the car up one more incline, after that it was downhill all the way to the main A590. Once she got that far, the road would be well traversed and gritted. She could get up enough speed to preclude any escape attempts. If she drove to the place where the road ran alongside the estuary, there was a lay-by which was all but invisible from the road once you had pulled into it, with only a low barrier between the verge and the water's edge. She would drown the b.i.t.c.h if necessary.

Another low animal noise came from the back seat as the car crested the hill. She hit a patch of ice at the crest and the car almost spun full circle, before coming to a standstill with its front b.u.mper inches away from a catastrophic encounter with a ditch. Gilda revved the engine desperately, edging the vehicle forward and back to get it going in the right direction again, all the time glancing in the mirror, expecting to see a head or hand emerging into view. As she righted the car and continued down the lane, she became aware that she had made a bad mistake. It was steeper than she had remembered, and the lane was like a sheet of ice. Even in first gear the car was gathering speed. She would have to brake, otherwise their own momentum would take them straight out into the main carriageway, but if she applied the brakes she was sure to skid.

She sensed the movement behind her before she saw the face in the rear-view mirror. Even as she tried to focus on the road, she was mesmerized by the look in Jo's eyes. The end of the lane came into view below them, and she could see the vehicles flas.h.i.+ng by at normal speed, sending up showers of dirty brown slush. The 'give way' sign was partly obscured by dimpled snow. She pressed the brakes and nothing happened. She put her foot down harder just as Jo reached for her. The car skidded sideways into the path of the tanker and the noise of metal on metal obscured her screams.