Lady of Hay: An enduring classic – gripping, atmospheric and utterly compelling. Barbara Erskine

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       14

      ‘May I have the Maclean file, please?’ Nick’s assistant’s voice was becoming bored. ‘For Jim, if it isn’t too much trouble!’ Behind her the office door swung to and fro in the draught from the open window.

      Nick focused on her suddenly. ‘Sorry, Jane. What did you say?’

      ‘The Maclean file, Nick. I’ll try to get Jo again, shall I?’ Jane sighed exaggeratedly. She was a tall, willowy girl whose high cheek-bones and Roedean accent were at variance with the three parallel streaks of iridescent orange, pink and green in her short cropped hair. ‘Though why we go on trying when she is obviously out, I don’t know.’

      ‘Don’t bother!’ Nick slammed his pen down on the desk. He bent to rummage for the file and threw it across to her. ‘Jim has remembered that I’m supposed to be going to Paris next Wednesday?’

      ‘He’d remembered.’ Jane put on her calming voice. It infuriated Nick.

      ‘Good. Then from this moment I can leave the office in your hands, can I?’

      ‘Why, where are you going until Wednesday?’ Jane held the file clasped to her chest like a shield.

      ‘Tomorrow the printers, then lunch with a friend, then I said I’d look in at Carters on my way to Hampshire.’ He smiled. ‘Then the blessed weekend. Then Monday and Tuesday I’m in Scotland.’ He closed his case with a snap and picked it up. ‘And now I’m playing hookey for the rest of the afternoon. So if anyone should want me you can tell them to try again in ten days.’

      Three minutes after he had left the building the phone rang. It was Jo.

      Each time Nick had phoned her, Jo had put the phone down. The last time she slammed the receiver down she switched off her typewriter and walked slowly into the bathroom. Turning on the light she gathered her long hair up from her neck and held it on top of her head, then she studied her throat. There still wasn’t a mark on it.

      ‘So. That proves he did not touch me!’ she said out loud. ‘If anyone really had tried to strangle me the bruises would have been there for days. It was a dream. I was delirious. I was mad! It wasn’t Nick, so why am I afraid of him?’

      She walked thoughtfully through into the kitchen and poured a glass of iced tomato juice, then she went back to the typewriter. All she had to do was see him. Even his anger was better than this limbo without him, and once he was there in the flesh, and she reminded herself what he really looked like, surely this strange terror would go? The memory of those eerie, piercing eyes kept floating out of her subconscious, haunting her as she walked around the flat. And they were not even Nick’s eyes. She found she was shivering again as she stared at the half-typed sheet of paper in her machine. On impulse she leaned over and picked up the phone to dial Nick’s office.

      The phone rang four times before Jane picked it up.

      ‘Hi, it’s Jo. Can I speak to Nick?’ Jo sipped her juice, feeling suddenly as if a great weight had been lifted off the top of her head.

      ‘Sorry. You’ve just missed him.’ Jane sounded a little too cheerful.

      ‘When will he be back?’ Jo put down her glass and began to pluck gently at the curled flex of the phone.

      ‘Hold on. I’ll check.’ There was a moment’s silence. ‘He’ll be back on the twelfth.’

      ‘The twelfth,’ Jo repeated. She sat bolt upright. ‘Where has he gone?’

      ‘Scotland on Monday and Tuesday, then back and straight over to France on Wednesday morning for a week.’

      Jo could hear the smile on Jane’s face.

      ‘And today and tomorrow?’ Jo could feel her voice turning prickly.

      ‘Out. Sorry, I don’t know where exactly.’

      Jo put down the phone thoughtfully. Then she picked it up again and dialled Judy Curzon.

      ‘Listen, Judy, I need to see Nick. Will you give him a message please? Tell him I’m seeing Carl Bennet again tomorrow afternoon. That’s Friday – at three. Tell him I’m going to find out what really happened on Sunday, come hell or high water, and if he wants to know he’d better be there. Have you got that?’

      There was a long silence on the other end. ‘I’m not a message service,’ Judy replied eventually. Her tone was frosty. ‘I don’t give a screw who you’re going to see tomorrow afternoon, and obviously Nick doesn’t either or you wouldn’t have to ring him here, would you!’

      Jo sat looking at the phone for several minutes after Judy rang off, then she smiled. ‘Hoist with your own petard, Miss Clifford,’ she muttered with wry amusement. ‘You walked right into that one!’

      ‘Pidwch cael ofon.’ The voice spoke to Matilda again as she stood once more outside the moon-silvered walls of Abergavenny. Then it tried in words she understood. ‘Do not be afraid, my lady. I am your friend.’ His French was halting but dimly she recognised before her the dark Welsh boy who had brought her food the night before. But he was no longer afraid; it was her turn for terror.

      She did not speak. She felt the hot wetness on her face and she felt him brush the tears away СКАЧАТЬ