Stevie Nicks was singing mournfully about players only loving you when they’re playing as I came round. My head felt like it might actually split in two, and I was lying half in, half out of Seb’s car, my own blood running into my mouth, and Seb was pulling me onto the ground, grunting with exertion. And I knew I’d blown it; I’d had my last chance to escape.
‘What are you going to do?’ I mumbled, and I was in real pain; my lips were cracked and my voice was tiny. Seb didn’t answer, just stared at me like he couldn’t focus and switched the radio off before stepping away to retrieve something.
And then I saw he had a can of petrol from the boot, and he reached forward and delved in my jeans pocket and I flinched from his touch.
‘Dirty habit, smoking,’ he said, eventually finding a lighter in my cardigan pocket. ‘You should’ve known it’d kill you in the end.’
I watched horrified and literally unable to move as he splashed petrol around the car.
‘They’ll think it was a terrible accident,’ he said. ‘Poor Maggie. Such a tragedy. So much promise, blah, blah, blah. Such a manipulative bitch, blah, blah, blah. You really were the original gilded lily, weren’t you?’ He smiled at his own wit.
‘Please, Seb,’ I implored desperately. ‘
Please
don’t do this.’
‘Shut up,’ he snapped, concentrating on the task in hand. ‘It’s too late, Maggie. Too late for you, anyway.’
‘Please don’t,’ I pleaded piteously. ‘What did I ever do to you, Seb? I don’t understand, I really don’t.’
‘You should have left us alone. We were happy, you know. Until you came along.’
‘Who?’ I croaked. ‘Who’s we, for God’s sake?’
‘The only positive thing I can say about you is’, he glanced at me, pushing his unruly hair out of his eyes with his forearm, ‘at least you weren’t a bad shag. When you weren’t too pissed, that is, Maggie-may-I, Maggie-yes-you-may, Maggie-I’ll-just-roll-over-and-let-you-do-whatever-you-want.’ He threw the empty petrol can aside and lit the lighter. I stared transfixed at the flame. ‘Nice knowing you, bitch,’ he said. ‘Ta-ta for now.’
And then someone blew that flame right out.
‘That’s not very original now, is it, mate,’ a familiar voice scolded from the gloom. ‘I think Hannibal Lecter might have said it first.’ The next moment a bewildered Seb lay crumpled on the ground as Alex emerged from the shadows, looking a little surprised himself, the poker in his hand.
‘Blimey. That packs a punch.’ He shoved Seb with a mud-flecked boot. ‘I hope the bastard’s still breathing. I don’t fancy doing time for him, you know.’
‘What are you doing here?’ I gazed up at him in bemusement. ‘Have you come to punish me too?’ I croaked, before passing out.
They landed the air ambulance in Peter Trevenna’s field to take me to Truro hospital. I remembered very little about the whole thing except feeling terribly sick, which was, they later told me, the concussion I’d sustained when the car hit the tree. I vaguely recalled Alex being in the helicopter too – I thought he might have even stroked my hair, but when I woke up the next morning in the hospital, it was my father and Jenny beside my bed.
‘Maggie –’ my dad leaned forward to kiss my bandaged forehead, ‘thank God!’
‘Hello, darling,’ said a beaming Jenny, her usually immaculate hair hidden under a scarf. ‘I’ll go and get some coffee, shall I?’ She vanished down the ward with a tactful swoop of her poncho-type affair.
‘We must stop meeting like this,’ I joked feebly, and my father gave my hand a little squeeze. He looked grey and exhausted and old, and I felt the eternal twinge of guilt.
‘I really would like to know what’s been going on,’ he said weakly, and I thought he was trying not to cry.
I remembered the utter hatred in Seb’s eyes the previous night and the venom with which he spat my name out. With a huge shudder, I thought of being in bed with him the first time we’d been to Pendarlin – the other time. And then I saw Digby’s small body as Seb flung him at the tree, and my eyes began to fill.
‘I don’t suppose –’ I gulped hard. ‘Digby, he –’
My father squeezed my hand again. ‘I’m so sorry, Mag. He’s – well, Alex found him when he went back last night, poor little chap. Alex has, you know, taken care of things.’
‘Oh God.’ I stared at my father, tears brimming now. ‘I don’t understand any of it, Dad. I don’t know what I did to Seb, I really, really don’t. He was just so – so bloody mad last night.’
A dough-faced nurse plodded up to the bed. ‘Morning there, my lover.’ She popped a digital thermometer into my ear cheerily. ‘And how are you doing this lovely day? Bit sore, my sweet?’ Turning to read the display, the morning sunlight caught the fine hairs of her bleached moustache. I smiled feebly at her and wiped my eyes.
My father cleared his throat tentatively. ‘There’s someone here who’s very keen to see you, Mag.’
‘Alex?’ I asked, brightening.
My father eyed me warily. ‘Not Alex, no. He’s had to get back to Bristol. He sent his love, though.’
‘Oh,’ I mumbled. ‘Of course.’
‘No, a policeman called Fox has been here since first thing.
He wants to take a statement as soon as possible, apparently.’
My father must have noticed my shiver.
‘Don’t worry, love.’ He patted my arm, and I noticed how speckled with white his remaining hair was these days. ‘The police will deal with Sebastian, I’m sure. You just concentrate on getting well, all right?’
As it turned out, though, what I had to concentrate on immediately were all the finer details from the previous night – again. A bedraggled-looking DI Fox was most apologetic about making me go through it all so soon; he even brought me a tepid hot chocolate from the vending machine in the corridor as a sign of goodwill.
When it came to talking about Alex hitting Seb with the poker, Fox wouldn’t quite meet my eyes, and I understood it was because he hadn’t believed my instinct about Alex. ‘
Told you so
’s’ seemed pointless, though.
‘He’s not saying much, your mate Seb.’
I scowled at the policeman. ‘He’s hardly my mate, is he?’ I replied tersely. My head was pounding now.
‘Granted.’ Fox adjusted his shiny blue tie nervously. Like most of his clothes, it had seen better days. ‘You know what I mean. He’s not very forthcoming, anyway. He’s a very accomplished liar, I’ll give him that.’
‘He would be, I suppose,’ I said slowly, ‘he’s an actor, after all.’
‘He’s certainly got a few identities going on, and Seb Rae ain’t the real one, that much we do know. But we need to get clearer on his motive, and he’s not playing ball, the bastard.’ Fox looked at me, his nose twitching rather like his namesake’s would. ‘That’s where I really need your help, Maggie.’
‘I’m not clear myself.’ I shook my head morosely. ‘I keep
thinking of how Seb ranted about the TV show I work on. He always seemed to hate it, actually, the show – even when he was being nice to me. Before he tried to – you know.’ I found I was plucking the bedclothes anxiously with my good hand; I forced myself to stop. ‘It doesn’t make any sense to me.’
I looked away from Fox, stared out the window for a moment to contain my misery. The hills rolled gently away from the hospital and there was a glimpse of blue between the December clouds. I remembered something my mother used to say about enough blue for a sailor’s trousers, and for a moment I imagined her there, patting my shoulder comfortingly as the night in the Portobello Hotel came back to me – thrashing in the bath, terrified.
‘I don’t think it was the first time, you know,’ I said quietly.
‘The first time what?’
‘The first time he’d wanted to –’ I found it very hard to say the words. ‘To – um, you know. To kill me.’
A yawning Fox left with assurances to get to the bottom of it all. The hospital said they’d probably discharge me the next day, all being well, and my father and Jenny talked about a nice hotel on the coast near St Ives that they’d heard was lovely. ‘Unless you want to go straight back to Pendarlin?’ my father mumbled with some trepidation.
I thought miserably of Digby chasing his tail round the lawn. Of Seb glowering at me with such hatred by the fire; of me running for my life out of the back door. ‘In a few days, perhaps,’ I said quietly.
The moustached nurse arrived back at my bedside. ‘You look wiped out, my sweet, and I need to change the dressing on your head. Come on, Mum and Dad. Our patient needs some rest.’
I caught the look Jenny shot my father at the nurse’s words, anxious but happy at the same time – the hand she slipped into his. I didn’t bother to correct the mistake.
* * *
My dreams were full of barks and screams and a crying Gar sitting in her wicker chair on the lawn of Pendarlin behind a piano that played itself, Debussy’s music soaring into the sky. I woke just after five, sweating and disorientated. Moustache Face had gone off duty, apparently, and in her place was a neat little nurse with cropped hair and a mole like a Jelly Tot on her neck. She smoothed the rumpled bedclothes and poured me a glass of water, helping me to drink it like she would a child.
‘You’ve had an awful shock, Maggie,’ she said, as I mumbled about being pathetic. ‘It’s going to take a while. You have to give yourself time. The morphine will make you feel odd too.’ She moved the roses beside the bed so she could put the water down. ‘They’re beautiful, aren’t they, you lucky thing. Who are they from?’
I shook my head as a hundred bunches of unwelcome lilies pirouetted over the bedspread like the hippos in
Fantasia
. I felt my eyes well up.
‘All right there, lovie. Don’t upset yourself.’ She produced a clean white tissue from a box. ‘Is there someone you’d like me to call for you?’
‘Not really, thanks.’ I shook my head again, feeling utterly alone. The tears came then, a deluge I thought might never stop.
I must have dozed off again for a while. I woke with a start; I could hear the inane chirrup of a game-show from the television down the corridor, and then a door closed and all was quiet. I was slipping off to sleep again when footsteps approached down the hall – two sets of them, slightly out of rhythm. I expected them to keep going, but outside my door, they stopped. My heart skipped a beat. What if Seb had convinced Fox he was innocent? He’d obviously mastered the art of persuasion …
I hoiked myself up in my bed and reached for a weapon, but all that came to hand was the water-jug. My tummy felt like it was being squeezed through an old-fashioned mangle. Then I
heard whispering outside, and before I could grab the jug, a little face popped round the door.
‘What the hell are you doing here?’ I croaked, and in response she smiled, rather timidly for her, I thought afterwards.
‘Just come to see if you’re okay, Maggie.’
And then, from behind Fay, another taller figure appeared. Alex. He stood there with a hand on her shoulder, and he too was smiling rather oddly. Grimacing was a better word, in fact.
‘Come in,’ I said rather hysterically, ‘come in and join the party, why don’t you? I can show you my war-wounds if you like.’
They stepped nervously into the room. They. Fay and Alex – my stalker and my ex. A perfect combination – a veritable match made in heaven.
‘So,’ I mumbled, feeling rather peculiar again, ‘what can I do for you? Other than thank you, Alex, obviously.’
‘We were worried about you. Thank goodness you’re all right,’ Fay murmured, blinking a lot.
‘Have you come to break the news?’ I tried to pull myself up on the pillows. God, my arm hurt.
‘News?’ Alex shook his head in confusion as Fay looked up at him, bewilderment in those great violet eyes. ‘What news?’
I decided I should get up now; I felt like a trussed-up chicken ready for the oven lying there while they both gaped at me. Slowly I swung my legs out and stood – pain shot up my ankle like a surge of electricity so that I stumbled onto a chair, Fay and Alex both rushing forwards to support me. I gazed up at them.
‘You make a lovely couple, actually,’ I mumbled, and promptly collapsed again.
However hard you try, sometimes you can’t escape yourself. I sat in the room on the hill by the sea and I tried to hide from the horrors that haunted me; I tried to remember the person I’d been before all this began. But I lived in the midst of flashbacks and a perpetual ache in my injured ankle, waking from night-sweats terrified that Seb had come for me again, my ears constantly straining for the faithful patter of Digby’s feet.
The sea rolled in and the sea rolled out again. I gazed at the water that changed colour every day, its unbroken surface belying the treacherous rocks beneath it. When I couldn’t sleep I watched the fishing boats bobbing out before dawn past the harbour wall on a good day; the craggy hillside opposite like some pagan god had whacked out his fury there. I watched the locals off for a pint at the pink-painted pub on Fore Street, the few holiday-makers in cagoules and wellies tramping down to get their fresh fish, or struggling with flapping ordnance survey maps that were welded to their bodies in the wind.
When my father had to get back to work in London, Jenny took some time off and stayed with me – and for that I was truly grateful. I didn’t want to see anyone else now; I wanted to hide. But when Bel rang from Australia, I was happy to hear her voice.
‘I knew he was no good, the bloody bastard. The handsome ones never are. I did say that, Mag, I’m sure I did.’
‘Did you?’ I asked wearily. ‘I must have missed that bit.’ I
caught sight of my colourless face, the cut on my forehead stitched and covered still with a large plaster. ‘I could use some of your magic, Bel, I must say. I look like the living dead.’
‘You need some sun, my girl. Look, Maggie, I know it’s awful, what you’ve been through, but you’ve got to forget Sebastian now. Come out here – we’ll look after you.’
‘I’d love to, Bel, if it wasn’t so bloody far away.’
‘Sydney’s amazing,’ she ignored me, ‘we’ve got a huge apartment right on the bay, and there’s loads of work for bods like you. The TV’s atrocious here. They’re crying out for your experience.’
Beneath the window a young couple tugged a sturdy black Labrador behind them, their little girl in a pink sou’wester fighting to keep her hat on in the December wind.
‘How’s Hannah?’ I changed the subject, doodling on the pad by the phone. ‘I really miss her, you know.’ I drew a bucket and spade.
‘She misses you too, darling, but I have to say, she’s loving it. There’s just so much outdoor life here, Mag. The food’s amazing; I’m getting really fat. Actually,’ she went all coy, ‘that’s not the only reason.’
‘You – fat! Pull the other –’ I stopped drawing. ‘Oh my God! Bel – you’re not! Already?’
‘I am! I mean, it’s early days, but please, think about coming.’
‘You need a babysitter, you mean. Oh that’s great news, Bel, congratulations! How fantastic.’ I was delighted for her, really – but I couldn’t deny the tiny acorn of envy deep in my gut, envy for the stability I’d craved for so long. I shoved it down.
‘I can get you loads of meetings if you do come.’ Bel was oblivious, thank God. ‘You know, with all the right people.’
‘I’m not sure I want to make TV any more, you know, Bel.’ I drew a small box. ‘I’m thinking about retraining.’
In what, though? A diploma in choosing the wrong men?
‘Mag, just because things went wrong at Double-decker, it
doesn’t mean all television’s bad. It doesn’t mean everything you’ve done is worthless. You know that, right?’
‘Right now, I don’t know much, Bel.’ I flopped back on the bed. ‘I don’t trust my own instincts any more.’
‘You’ve had a bad year, that’s all. That’s why you need to get away. At least say you’ll think about it, hey?’
‘God, you’re even starting to sound like an Aussie.’ I managed a laugh as I gazed up at the ceiling, picturing the sun and golden beaches, barbeques and opera houses. For a moment my heart lifted. ‘Okay, I’ll think about it, I promise.’
‘That’s my girl,’ said Bel cheerfully. ‘Right, well, gotta go, darling. It’s well past my bedtime now. You get on that Internet and check out some flights, okay? You’ve got to grab the bull by the horns now, Mag.’
But I’d done that already, hadn’t I? And the bull turned out to be quite mad and savage. I didn’t think I was going anywhere for a while. Not till Seb’s trial came up.
The day after I’d moved to the Port Isaac Hotel, a rather muted Fay came to see me.
‘Do you want me to stay?’ my father asked discreetly. Frankly, I was just relieved that she’d come alone. I shook my head and he disappeared into the afternoon drizzle for a walk with Jenny.
Fay and I sat in uncomfortable silence as the matronly owner set out tea and mince pies in my small suite, recently festooned with flowers from Charlie ‘and the gang’. Over the steaming teapot I watched the moss-green
Hope of Port Isaac
chug back into harbour as I waited for Fay to explain her presence.
‘I feel so guilty,’ she said eventually, and I poured the tea so I could keep busy while she spoke, shoving away images of her and Alex together. She didn’t look quite as glossy as usual; she looked young and rather swamped in a long gypsy-style dress, her hair a mass of short curls now it had started to grow out, back to its natural dark colour.
‘These things happen, Fay. It takes two.’
I winced as a spot of boiling liquid splashed my hand.
‘Maggie –’ She looked away. I waited patiently. I had all the time in the world these days.
‘I led him to you, I think.’ Her voice was small, her hands clasped tight in her lap.
‘Alex?’ I stared at her until the teapot’s handle began to burn my palm. ‘I don’t understand.’ I relinquished it onto the table.
‘Not Alex,’ she muttered. ‘Troy.’
‘Troy? I still don’t –’ And then we gazed at each other. I felt my eyes go wide. ‘Troy? You don’t mean Troy is – is Seb? They’re the same – the same person?’
‘Yes.’ Her voice was little more than a whisper.
‘Seb is your – your ex-boyfriend Troy? God.’ I felt like I’d just been punched in the head. ‘Does – have you told the police?’
‘Yes, of course.’ She stood up and walked to the window, her hem swishing on the carpet. ‘I’m so sorry, Maggie. I mean, I knew he was unstable. I just had no idea to what extent.’
‘
When
did you realise?’ I was trying frantically to piece things together. My head felt like a child had set his spinning top off inside it. ‘Why didn’t you warn me if you knew it was him?’
‘I didn’t know until the afternoon he came to – to get you, I swear,’ Fay pouted prettily. ‘He’d fairly much disappeared when we split up. I only rang him to get a forwarding address for his post. And then on the phone that day he started ranting about how much you’d hurt him.’ She sat down again, perching like a bird on the edge of the sofa. ‘I was truly shocked, Maggie, to be honest. That you’d been together, I mean.’
I looked down at my stripy pyjama knees, at my bandaged foot. I refused to feel guilt now for Fay as well.
‘I mean,’ she went on, ‘the previous time Troy had mentioned you, when we split up, he said he hated you. He blamed you, you see, after he saw us together on the show. It took me a while to get my head around it to be honest. You and him, I mean.’
Those great violet headlamps searched my face. ‘But you have to believe me, Maggie. I didn’t know he was after you.
Of course
if I’d known what he intended I would have tried even harder to let you know. I thought at the worst he might smash a few things up, or, I don’t know, lock you in a cupboard. You know – to punish you.’
‘To punish me,’ I echoed numbly. Seb’s words from the other night rattled like a spectre in the room.
‘That was the expression he always used. If you hurt him, he’d have to “punish” you. He felt things very deeply.’
‘Obviously,’ I said dryly.
‘But I can’t believe’, she could hardly look at me now, ‘that he actually tried to kill you. He’d never been violent before. Not to me, anyway.’
‘No, well,’ I said flatly, ‘I obviously have that effect on men.’ I had the sense of a great pressure bearing down on me; of everything I’d known shifting shape again. I wanted to stand and scream; to burst out through the roof into oblivion. I picked at the bandage on my hand instead.
‘So I asked DI Fox to let me tell you myself,’ she quickly pointed out. ‘I thought I should. That’s why I’m here.’
‘Thank you,’ I said stiffly, still trying to grasp this new reality. The text message I’d received from Fay that night at Pendarlin finally made sense. ‘So – you were trying to warn me about Seb then? I thought you meant Alex when I got your text.’
‘I’d been ringing your phone all afternoon, since I’d spoken to Troy, but I just kept getting your voicemail. I assumed you’d have got the messages, but in the end I rang Alex because I was worried by how mad Troy sounded. Alex was in Bristol, so he drove down. I don’t think he really believed me, but he rang the local police.’
I remembered the slowly cruising police car; my voice snatched up by the wind as I shouted desperately at its tail-lights, trapped by that bloody wire.
‘I didn’t get your messages in time,’ I said slowly, my mind somersaulting wildly as I started to compute it all. I felt sick. ‘Fay, sorry. Would you mind just giving me a minute?’ I staggered to my feet, my leg stiff from sitting for so long.
‘No, of course not.’ She stood quickly as if to help me – but I was all right on my own. ‘I need to ring my agent anyway.’
I pulled open the balcony door as Fay left the room, and stepped out into the cold.
Below me the grey-green sea swelled gently like a giant sigh. The afternoon was colourless, the sky a huge merging of cloud and colour into grey. Into nothingness.
Tiny pins of moisture pricked my face as I leaned against the damp rail watching a single gull wheel and surf the sky. For a moment the smooth-breasted white figure battled against the wind, and then he gracefully pivoted above me to let the slipstream take him where it chose. And I knew that I must succumb to the fate that had brought me here, that there was no point fighting it; that to recover from Seb’s campaign of terror I needed to somehow accept it – accept it and get on.
When Fay came back I attempted a smile as I sloshed out the last of the Earl Grey with an almost steady hand. The tea was stewed.
‘My agent’s got me an audition for
I’m a Celebrity
, can you believe it?’ She looked shell-shocked.
‘I can, actually,’ I said politely, passing her a cup, strangely reminded of Gwendolen and Cecily’s tea party in
The Importance
of Being Earnest
. This was the version on acid.
‘I’m not sure about the jungle.’ She was genuinely worried. ‘All those horrid beasties. Snakes and things. Ugh!’
I ignored her. ‘But I don’t understand why Seb bothered to actually go out with me.’ I thought uncomfortably of everyone who’d said Fay and I looked alike. ‘To get at you, I guess?’
‘I don’t think it was that simple.’ Fay wrenched herself back
from the jungle. ‘He blamed you for splitting us up, so it probably started out of revenge. After what you said on the show, you know.’ She added a dainty spoon of sugar to her tea.
‘What did I say?’ I racked my brain.
‘That being overprotective wasn’t necessarily right, that wanting to know where I was at every moment might just mean he liked control, not love. In a way, you know,’ Fay gave me that intense look I remembered from that first show, ‘he was right, you did split us up.’
‘Oh, great,’ I muttered. ‘So you blame me too?’ A moment on the lips, a lifetime running away from madmen you’d inadvertently offended.
‘No, no.’ She was quick to refute it. ‘I mean, I never would have left him if you hadn’t pointed out a few home truths. I wasn’t strong enough. But it was absolutely the best thing I ever did, splitting up with Troy.’ She reached out and grasped my hand in her little one. ‘I’m really grateful to you, Maggie, honestly.’
‘Oh,’ I said. I didn’t dare remove my hand. ‘You know, Fay, the funny thing is, for a while there I thought it was you out to get me.’
She looked aghast. ‘God, no.’ Her fingers slid off mine. ‘I just wanted to be your friend. It took me a while’, she looked down, ‘to realise you didn’t want to be mine.’
I felt a pang. ‘It wasn’t that simple, Fay. I – I’ve been in quite a bad place for a lot of this year. Dealing with a lot of trauma that I – I maybe haven’t handled very well.’
‘Shock’s a very hard thing
to
deal with,’ she said sagely. ‘That’s why I wanted you to join my Survivors’ group so badly.’
‘Yeah, well, maybe I should have done. At least I mightn’t have been alone so much.’ I thought about that first bunch of lilies arriving at my house, the same day she’d turned up. The fact I must have somehow shown I hated them on TV. He’d been watching hard. ‘How did Seb get my address? You know he sent me loads of funeral flowers?’
‘That nice policeman told me.’ She shook her head sorrowfully. ‘Seb was so angry after I’d appeared on telly that day, kept ranting about people out to get him, and you sticking your nose in – but I didn’t take him seriously.’ She fiddled with a tassel on her dress. ‘He insisted on giving me a lift when I brought you the crash photos. I’d given him the address so he could look it up beforehand. Oh God –’ She caught her bottom lip with two pearly top teeth. ‘I’m so sorry, Maggie.’
‘It’s not your fault, Fay.’ I abandoned my foul tea. ‘I guess he loved you very much.’
She toyed with her mince pie. ‘I think he loved you too. He just had such a distorted view of it all. Poor Troy.’
‘Why, though?’ I felt the anger rise again. ‘
Why
was he so messed up?’
‘He had a very odd image of women generally. I was so in love with him, it took me a long time to realise it,’ she said sadly. ‘He invited us both to the film premiere, you know, though I didn’t realise it was him then. Perhaps he was hoping I’d see you with him and be insanely jealous.’
I looked at her. ‘Would you have been?’
She walked to the table in the window, flicked nervously through a
Country Life
magazine. ‘Probably. I knew he was wrong for me, but I loved him so much.’ Her eyes filled with tears and I thought of my love for Alex despite all the pain we’d been through, and I felt an enormous bolt of sorrow for the mess we were all in. ‘So much, Maggie. That’s why I put up with it for so long.’