Desire Line (12 page)

The master suite: half the size of their three-windowed room in Tackley Close it accommodated a double divan (just) and his and hers wardrobes connected by a white melamine counter. Josh's laptop, removed from the living room on the day of her arrival, sat where a woman's brushes, combs and creams might be laid out but weren't. Connected up in an amateurish way (in a hurry?) cables trailed to the carpet and out of sight. She sat down on the end of the bed from where it was perfectly usable… and opened it. His emails were password protected as expected. A complete waste of time but she entered
Eurwen
then
Rosemary
, Josh's long dead twin…
Megan?
and experienced joy when that one failed. She was no adept (Geoffrey or Eurwen often having to extract her from a state of techno-paralysis) and giving up, she tried other easy, familiar routes, Microsoft Word, Adobe Reader and found an oddity in the absence of any stored documents, in fact cyber-rooms bare as Avonside's actual ones. Everything she presumed had been deleted and was beyond her powers to track or recall, making the back of her neck prickle at Josh's surveillance from afar. Just on the point of shutting the machine down she thought to click on My Pictures.
Accessible
. A dozen images, and from the first Meg Upton jumped out. Yes, she was significant… that had been apparent… so not even a pretence of shock, please. Yet her heart's flutter transmitted itself to her fingers, mis-keying and the resultant frustrated sob, more painful than it justified. When the thumbnail was enlarged all it revealed was a bigger restaurant scenario with an empty chair pulled away from the vacated table setting. A slinkily dressed Meg leaned towards the photographer, the blemish-free throat and upper slopes of breast on display… the sexual fantasy this one photograph engendered in her mind was surprisingly crude. It was of the woman naked across Josh's loins, the slow rhythm of intercourse stolen straight from a lesson in equitation…
a seamless transition of pace is what you're aiming for, dear, into a rising trot that comes directly from the animal's movement…
She actually giggled.

And then, Do
not
cry! It doesn't matter. Or shouldn't. Or not very much. She could almost believe
that
(or she could in a while, once she returned with something stronger in the glass). Even if Meg had been left on show as Josh's spiteful joke, it mustn't matter. Because the vodka's smooth hand caressed her brow and would soon enter the chambers of her heart. And because all of the remaining images were Eurwen.

The series began in the backyard of Josh's mother's house; Nora Meredith clasped the hand of a white-frocked fairy, though a wicked fairy blowing bubbles straight into her grandmother's benign face. Funfair settings followed, the Ferris Wheel and the well-remembered shot (what would she be, nine, ten, possibly less?) of Eurwen's dangerously oblique silhouette as she leaned out… unfamiliar beach scenes… an aquarium visit. In the final frame Eurwen was attending some sort of outdoor event and still blissfully happy. Craning forward, trying to read her daughter's expression gave no further clues. Eurwen remained a willow-limbed, wild-haired enigma beneath the tattered bunting, as did the figure in a droopy-eared dog suit that postured at her side. For backdrop, a group of beer-swilling males. But coming straight towards the observer with one arm outstretched…
yes.
The shoddy jacket and the brittle thatch meant only one person: Kim.

Eurwen in alien company induced… bafflement? Anxiety, for sure. But jealousy was the most potent effect, stronger even than Meg could inspire and beyond control. The bed felt both her fists. She had never been so rebuffed by any other subject: Eurwen, undocumented, uncategorised, slipping away out of the
present
and leaving her literally clueless. What she did know was her daughter should not be portioned out to these strangers, eaten away at, transformed into someone she couldn't touch.

She closed the laptop and attempted to reposition it. From her bag next door another big splash of vodka joined the juice. But while she considered further moves she was drawn back up to her perch, Josh's bed, the only place in the house from which the river was visible… a mouthful from the glass, held stinging deliciously on the palate then let surge down, refreshed her numerous dry channels while her attention wandered over the view. That Eurwen thought gorgeous… slowly some optical illusion softened its divisions and caused the murky Clwyd to appear as though about level with Josh's larch-lap fence. Impossible, of course: it was just the tide at full, covering up the mud and at slack water by the looks of it. Call Josh? How might that progress? You didn't trust me. I took it as carte blanche to snoop through
your
private world and found… we're married, after all, separated but married in everyone's eyes except our own. A couple who had made a daughter… the words recalled a lecture from Fleur. A couple joined in a quest to retrieve that daughter, couldn't afford petty disputes, couldn't behave like tin-pot, nineteenth century kingdoms, bankrupting themselves on parades and bullets.

Long-focused on the water during this debate, her individual ideas circled like swallows until they lit upon a bright yellow item in the water, bobbing off the far bank. She watched its regular roll action, suggestive less of an object about to float free than of something contained and trying to get out. And she thought
Genie.
Its prison a plastic drum of industrial detergent instead of a lamp, consider finding it… and the release! Golden skin swelling with spite, the pigtail slick with the dregs, spitting bubbles bigger than a little girl could blow, it bats aside branches, squelches ashore, threatening and malevolent. Silt has dried to putty on its muscular calves with the heat of frustration… she took a long wanton gulp at the glass… but she was its mistress.

Three wishes. The first was no problem. ‘I want my daughter Eurwen to be found by her father Joshua Meredith absolutely safe and well this second.'

Weasel words in the small print, though, were instantly apparent. Josh could,
this second
, come across a safe and well Eurwen only to have her disappear, worse, have her dash into the traffic before his eyes. Her own doing, a stupid waste of a wish… Get the first one wrong, nothing else could put it back together. Get the first right and there would be nothing else to wish for.

‘If you restore her I'll give up the others. I don't need to be happy or have my husband love me again. I won't ask for the big one only a genie can give, to be able to drink as normal people do, sharing a glass of wine with neighbours. Or alone. If I've seen the swans flying north to Godstow across the face of a Hunter's Moon and I hear Eurwen, she's above me… awful music… but she calls down over it Coming now! and a brandy is all that's needed to reacquaint me with gladness, I won't ask for that.' But her head throbbed as the thoughts bounced around:
Evensong at St Peter's with Fleur… the altar is the white, green and gold of myrtle, solidago and Shasta daisy and Eurwen helped…! back to Pryorsfield… ‘Ah, Sara Althea and how has the week treated you?' Geoffrey murmurs… ‘there's a sherry ready-poured through there…'

I won't ask that.

Two wishes returned completely unused, so
Give her back
,
she begged.

Around three the phone rang. He had her! ‘Josh?'

‘No. It's Meg Upton.' In the background the rattle of a horse bridle just dropped, bit and buckles impacting on concrete. ‘I wanted to catch you on your own. I know Josh is doing everything he can but… look I've been thinking.'

Don't antagonise the genie whatever else you do.
‘Oh yes? What?'

‘There's a group around here Eurwen's met. I'm not saying nothing against them but—'

‘My God, what do you mean a group? Are you talking about some sort of cult, is that it?'

‘No. The opposite really.'

‘The opposite of a cult?'

‘These are the sort of people won't speak to Josh. But just you and me, say. They might talk to us. You're her mum, that's gotta count hasn't it? They've all got mums.'

‘Where do I begin?'

‘That's why I'm ringing. They're having a— there'll be something tomorrow night.'

‘How do you know this?'

‘Jay and Neil, they're going. Josh mentioned them, probably?' She waited a moment before deciding to add. ‘It's on our land, actually. Dad let's them have it now and then— in return for, you know.'

‘For what?'

‘Work, what else?'

‘So, will it be all right? For us to turn up at this event, uninvited?'

Meg laughed. ‘Yes. It'll be all right. Come over here, ‘bout ten.'

‘I'm not sure what to tell Josh. It's a Saturday, I've just realised. So… but going out at that time—'

‘Up to you, isn't it?'

September 28th

She would not have found it, even during the day. She would not have found it sober. By the time Josh gave in, they were huddled and chilled, needing the street lamp next to his car to see each other for a final round of sniping… then Josh's deliberately slow movements to climb in beside her switched over to manic once the engine caught.

The pavements were already filled with the half-drunk and half-dressed. A thick knot of young men unwound onto the road feeling safe in their numbers though a glance at Josh's expression would have disabused them. He swerved but came within inches, not braking, hand on the horn. They yelled and cat-called in the car's wake, gestured impotently.

‘Josh!'

‘It's just a couple of miles. Have you got your phone? I'm thinking now—' he did take his foot off the pedal for an instant to let a female party cross their T, ‘that maybe I'll park up in Green Fields. If Clive's about I'll have an hour with him, then ring you to see.'

‘To see what?'

‘What I can come and do. Or if you're ready to pack it in… as a no-hoper, which it will be.'

‘Your friend said she will bring me home. There isn't any point in your staying.'

‘Not your call is it?'

The dashboard clock said
10:19.
By 10:30 they were into a dark lane with only the distant bypass lights to show tall hedges. A pair of five-barred gates opened up suddenly to the left and the headlights sent a pale bird fluttering panic-stricken into their path. For what felt like only the second time since leaving Avonside they braked. Josh manoeuvred the big saloon onto a square of concrete and cut the engine. ‘Come on then.'

She pulled the borrowed coat across her body as armour before getting out.

Security lights flicked on to reveal a courtyard enclosed by low structures in the manner of a
villa rustica
. But the occupants were shifting silhouettes, their shadows giant knights from the chessboard and an iron stamp the only sound. The spiciness of horse was a perfume that overpowered salt this far inland. Sara was about to speak when a blast of sound hit her from only a foot away, so terrifying she was back behind the car without having made a decision to move. The klaxon continued and then, bizarrely, seemed to draw breath before finishing with a strangled moan. Josh laughed.

‘It's Crook,' he said. ‘Best burglar alarm ever invented.' The donkey's cartoon ears took shape as her senses recovered. Its muzzle split horizontally, the top hinged up showing a set of teeth. Josh reached out to rub the outsized, woolly head.

‘He can break into anywhere there's food— and don't believe in work, do you? Chucked every kid off when he was on the beach. This way.' As he disappeared into the dark beneath the arch, a horse snickered its welcome.

The Uptons' house was unsightly and extensive. Numerous lit rectangles let into the weather-boarded front produced glare sufficient to make concrete containers on either side of the steps into marble funerary vessels. Curtains inside the hall were flung open and Meg could be seen struggling with the door lock.

‘You got here.' In jeans again, the thick sweater obscured any tendency to embonpoint Sara's imagination furnished. ‘At least it's dry.' Meg may have been speaking to Sara but her eyes were on Josh. Each expecting the other to reply, they following her silently into a room which, despite its barn-like proportions, was overly hot. A scaled-up version of Josh's home was how it struck Sara: showroom-type furniture filled some of the carpeted floor space but the walls were bare, the exception being provided by the most enormous television she had ever seen hanging above an empty fireplace and watched by Clive Upton… she guessed. Caught lounging across three sofa seats, he killed the sound, slid bare feet into a pair of moccasins and got awkwardly upright. A thin brown arm shot out in an offer to shake.

‘Mrs Meredith. How's it going?' He was no taller than his daughter and certainly weighed less, with a ribcage that jutted through the tight denim shirt: a neat old/young man whose darting glance came from a leathery face. The hand was leathery too. ‘Josh. Meg said you might tag along— No news, eh?' His voice, though primed for it by Josh, still came as a reminder of home to Sara. The Pangbourne Valley was in every rolling syllable. Josh had described ‘a jump-jockey not too shabby in his day but going nowhere— met a Welsh girl at Bangor Races and stayed. He's
made more up here than he ever would of as head lad. Owns half of Rhyl, now, I sometimes think. Into everything.'