‘He never touched her, Jeff.’ Sharon confronted her husband, hands on hips. ‘The doctor said she is still a virgin and she admitted to the woman she made it all up. She was jealous of Zoë, the stupid little madam.’
Jeff shook his head and sighed. ‘Why did we ever have kids, Sharon?’
‘Gawd knows.’
‘Where is she now?’
‘Upstairs. She can’t go back to school till she’s out of quarantine for the bloody chicken pox. And she’s not out of quarantine until the spots have healed, and she keeps on scratching them.’
‘So what’s going to happen about Leo?’
Sharon shook her head. ‘They said someone else had made a complaint besides Jade, and I said, yes, it was my son and he would take back every word. I asked him, Jeff, and he admitted it. He said Jade blackmailed him. What is the matter with them? I am not having Leo hounded because of my frigging kids.’
Jeff gave a small wry grin, swiftly hidden behind his hand. ‘Good for you. What are we going to do with them, Shal?’
There was a long silence. ‘I won’t be able to bear it if Jacko goes to prison,’ she whispered at last. She sniffed and turned away. ‘Are you going to take those dogs for a walk or what?’
Jeff nodded. ‘Rosemary is holding her own,’ he said gently. ‘I rang the hospital. Normally they won’t tell you unless you’re a relative, so I said I was her brother.’
Sharon smiled. ‘Please God she gets better. If he’s charged with murder –’
‘That policeman, Andy, said it would be manslaughter. He would go to prison, love. You have to accept it. He might anyway, for what he’s done. The fact that she was trespassing doesn’t make any difference.’
They stood for a moment in silence, looking at each other in despair, then at last Jeff turned away to look for the dogs’ leads. ‘We do have to sell the barn, don’t we?’ he said sadly as he picked them up off the sideboard and whistled.
Sharon nodded. ‘We could never go back there, Jeff. We couldn’t look them in the eye again, not any of them. Not after this.’
As the two dogs came running in from the garden he turned away from her so she couldn’t see his face. ‘You’re right, I suppose,’ he said. He couldn’t believe it but suddenly he felt like crying.
Zoë parked outside the barn. The whole place was deserted now, each house empty, a feeling of loss permeating the air. She glanced across at The Old Forge and then forced herself to walk casually across the grass towards the gate. There was no sign of anyone having been there. The house was locked up. No one as far as she could see had forced their way in. If the police had called on Leo they had gone away again without leaving any sign.
Standing there outside his front door she was overwhelmed with melancholy. Winter was on its way. She shivered, thinking of the ghosts and the cold grey sea heaving and breathing out beyond the river mouth like an animal, licking its lips, waiting for its next victim. Whatever happened Leo was not going to get her out there, over the bar. Her exotic shopping would be done no further away than Woodbridge.
She let herself into The Old Barn and ran up the stairs to the bedroom, glancing at her watch. She was going to drive to Max’s house; that had been the agreement and she would meet Leo there. He had told her Max’s address and how to find it, and jokingly she had said she wouldn’t write it down in case she was searched by the police. Now she wished she had. It had sounded simple when she had repeated it back to him; now that seemed so long ago.
Leo hadn’t returned her call and when she tried his number again his mobile was still switched off. She could feel panic building again. She could only pray he had got there safely and stashed the
Curlew
somewhere she couldn’t be seen.
She still wasn’t sure how long they would be away. Perhaps she ought to pack a proper bag now while she had the chance. There was so little room on the boat, but then again she could always leave it in the car if Leo looked at it askance. She pulled a holdall out of the cupboard on the landing and taking if into the bedroom she put it on the bed and turned to her chest of drawers. Nothing fancy, just trousers and sweaters for the cold nights on the river. She paused, thinking about the exotic clothes they were going to buy. Did he really see her in gypsy skirts and floaty scarves? If so, how was she going to manage on the boat? Her mind rejected the thought of setting out to sea, out of sight of land, across the ocean. That was not going to happen.
Pulling open one of the top drawers in search of warm socks, she stopped short. There was her passport. She picked it up and stared at it. If she took it she was implicitly accepting that they might find their way abroad. Unable to face the decision, she threw the passport on the bed. Something to think about at the last moment.
She was about to push the drawer shut when a box of tampons caught her eye. She froze, staring at them. She hadn’t given the subject a thought when she was packing her stuff, but now in the silence of the empty house she found she was doing some unaccustomed calculations in her head.
She sat down on the edge of the bed at last and put her hand experimentally on her stomach. Steve’s mournful statement about her lack of children must have hit a chord in some subconscious part of her brain. She wasn’t on the pill; she and Leo had taken no precautions. It hadn’t occurred to her, she was so used to the fact that Ken had had the snip. Was it possible?
She felt a flutter of excitement and then almost as quickly a moment of pure panic. Here, in this room, Ken had shown her that weird figure he had found under the bed. What had he called it? A grotesque fertility doll? Jade’s curse. No. She shook her head violently. She stood up and looked round. What had Ken done with it? She had asked him to throw it in the river. Had he?
She swallowed hard and took a deep breath. If she was pregnant it was not because Jade had left that thing in here. It was because she had been careless. Or had she been deliberately tempting fate? And it was Leo’s. It had to be. She and Ken had not had sex for weeks, if not months, and even if they had he was not capable of being a father. If he was, in spite of the op, they would have known about it years ago.
She glanced at her watch. There was plenty of time to drive into Woodbridge before she set off for Max’s. Should she go and buy a pregnancy testing kit? Her brain was whirling. Perhaps it was better to pretend she hadn’t thought about it, assume it was a false alarm and carry on as before with her plans to drive out to join Leo. What would he think about a pirate baby? Her shoulders slumped. She doubted if it was part of his master plan to embark on fatherhood again at this stage in his life. Hadn’t she mentioned it once in joking? Something about a wild child? He had not risen to the bait.
For a long time she sat there, deep in thought, then at last she stood up. Better if neither of them knew for sure at this point in the proceedings. She could be wrong. She probably was wrong. After all, stress can cause the same symptoms as early pregnancy, she had heard that time and again from worried friends. She was going to take Leo’s advice, throw caution to the winds and wait to see what fate would hurl in their direction. She picked up the box of tampons again and looked at it, then with a shrug she threw it into the bottom of her bag just in case. On top of it she threw the passport.
She headed for the bedroom door, then she paused. She was still wearing her wedding ring. She pulled it off and stared at it for a long moment, then she opened the drawer again, tucked the ring into her little jewel box and closed the drawer with a bang.
It was late afternoon when she turned the car into the front gate of Leo’s friend Max’s cottage. It was a small thatched building at the end of a long single-tracked lane, nestling amongst willow trees very near the river. Below it there was a narrow creek and at the end of it a secluded boathouse which was where, she assumed, Leo had hidden the
Curlew
.
She got out of her car and looked round. The building was run down, the walls, originally a pale Suffolk pink, here and there stained green with lumps of plaster missing. She rang the doorbell experimentally. There was no reply.
There was a small garage beside the house. She went over to it and dragged the door open a foot or two. It was empty.
Making her way down the ill-defined track from the front garden she scanned the river bank for the familiar mast. There was no sign. The whole place seemed to be deserted. She found the boathouse squatting amongst tall reeds and osiers and pulled open the side door. She stood staring down at the black water lapping against the pilings where surely the
Curlew
should be moored, and she felt her eyes fill with tears.
Leo wasn’t there. He hadn’t waited for her. Perhaps he thought she had lost her nerve; thought she had changed her mind. When he found Max wasn’t there, had he decided to go as he had originally planned on the top of the tide and was already out to sea? Her trip to the hospital and then her decision to go back to The Old Barn had cost her several hours, hours during which he must have waited, wondering if she was going to come back and at last he must have given up. But she had phoned. She had left a message. She had explained.
She pulled her phone out of her pocket and looked at it. No signal. Perhaps he had never got her call. She slumped down miserably on the damp mossy boards and sat there, eyes closed, hugging her knees.
It was dark when she was woken some time later by the sound of the doors behind her opening. ‘Leo?’ Her heart leaped with hope and then plummeted again in a panic when she saw the silhouette of a stranger standing there. He had a torch in his hand and shone it into the boathouse, picking her up at once as she sat on the damp floor, too frightened to move.
‘Zoë? Is that you?’ He stepped inside. ‘Sorry, did I give you a fright? I am Max, Leo’s friend.’
Slowly she scrambled to her feet, trying to muster her thoughts. She could see him more clearly now in the reflected torchlight. He was tall and thin with grey hair, dressed in jeans and a Guernsey sweater. ‘Come up to the cottage. You look frozen, my dear,’ he went on. He held out his hand. ‘Let’s go and switch everything on, light a fire and have something to eat. Leo is no doubt in the pub at this moment and the first thing you can do is ring him from my phone indoors.’
Numbly she followed him up the path, through the front door and into a small low-ceilinged room. The house was cold and smelled of old wood fires and damp. ‘I have only just got back,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘I flew back from Capetown last night.’ He went straight to the fireplace and within minutes had collected firelighters and kindling and logs from the basket beside it. ‘It won’t take long to warm this place up.’
He turned and smiled at her. He was much older than she had at first thought, perhaps in his seventies and he had a kind smile. ‘Leo rang me. Just as well. I arrived back to find a strange car outside my front door. I wondered if I had squatters!’ He smiled again. His face was deeply lined and weather-beaten. ‘When he arrived here he found there was no signal to phone anyone and I was clearly still away so he took
Curlew
on down the river. He tried to leave you a message but your phone was off. He left you a note, didn’t you find it? He knew once you got here your phone wouldn’t work either.’ He paused, looking at her with concern. ‘He has explained the situation, Zoë, and between us we have worked out a plan to deal with this wretched accusation if they persist with it, so, my dear, you needn’t look so unhappy.’
Zoë felt herself blush. So far she had not uttered a word and she was suddenly aware of how she must look, crumpled by sleep, her face tear-stained, her clothes dirty from the floor of the boathouse.
‘First we are going to ring Leo,’ he went on, ‘and tell him that his pirate’s moll has turned up.’ She blushed even deeper at the realisation that Leo must have told Max all about them. ‘Then we’ll eat, then tomorrow I am going to drive you down to Felixstowe Ferry where
Curlew
is moored.’ He sighed. ‘I wish he had waited here; we could have sorted all this out once and for all, but dear Leo, he does have a taste for the dramatic! I think he quite fancied the idea of being on the run and he couldn’t contemplate being out of touch with the world. As far as I am concerned the lack of a phone signal here is bliss. But we always have the dear old landline.’
He pointed out the phone, black and Bakelite, in the corner.
‘Leo?’ Her hand was shaking on the heavy phone receiver. ‘I thought you had gone without me!’ Max had left her alone in his small study. The room smelled of damp.
‘Would I!’ The line was crackly and she could hear the sound of laughter in the distance. He was indeed in the pub. ‘Didn’t you find my note?’
‘No. Where did you leave it?’
‘In the boathouse. I thought you would go there to look for
Curlew
.’
‘I did. But I didn’t see a note. Never mind, I know where you are now. Max is going to drive me down to meet you tomorrow. I buried the sword, Leo, and Rosemary regained consciousness. That was why I was late. I had to drive Steve to the hospital. His car broke down.’
‘So, the gods were pacified.’ She could hear the smile in his voice. ‘You are a brave woman, Zoë. Tell me all about it tomorrow. Max will look after you. He is a brick!’
The call ended, Zoë allowed herself to be shown up to a bedroom under the thatch; she was summoned down again almost at once for an improvised supper, as her host put it, quickly thrown together from some bits and pieces he had picked up at the village shop on the way home. Judging by the smell coming from his small kitchen it was improvised cordon bleu! She was handed a glass of wine, told to lay the table in the corner of the living room and in the course of the ensuing evening discovered that her host had known Leo for many years, had been the one to find Leo The Old Forge after the break-up of his marriage, that he himself was a widower, a passionate traveller and sailor, and that, as a retired High Court judge, he would have no problem sorting out any repercussions reverberating from Jade and Jackson’s wild accusations.