“It’s Zach, Miss Hatcher. I came to see you before, remember? You asked me to come back and bring you some things… and maybe to talk about Charles Aubrey a bit more?”
“Of course I remember. It was yesterday,” she said, after a pause.
“Oh, great. Yes, of course.” Zach smiled.
“Did you bring it? What I asked for?” she said. Zach fumbled in his bag for the well-wrapped heart, and held it out to her.
“I wrapped it in newspaper, to keep it cool until I got here.”
“Good, good. Can’t have it gone bad,” she said, almost to herself, and then murmured under her breath as she unwrapped it, wordless sounds that might have been a tune. As soon as the heart was unwrapped, she sniffed it. Not a quick, cautious sniff like Zach would have given it, but a long, deep inhale. The sniff of a connoisseur, like an expert would sniff wine. Zach fidgeted a little, uneasy in his deception. Dimity poked the heart with her index finger and watched the flesh return slowly, refilling the dimple she’d made. Then she stuffed the paper bundle back into Zach’s hands with a shake of her head. No irritation, just something like disappointment. “No more than a day old,” she said, and shut the door.
Speechless, Zach knocked on the door again, but Dimity clearly had no intention of opening it. Cursing, he went to the window and put his face up to it with his hands on either side to block out the light. He was well aware that this was unlikely to aid his case.
“Miss Hatcher? Dimity? I brought the pins you asked for, and I can get you a… newer heart, on Tuesday the butcher said. I’ll bring it to you then, shall I? Would you like the pins now, though? Miss Hatcher?” He peered into the gloom within and was sure he saw movement. As a last-ditch attempt, he pulled a copy of Burlington Magazine-a glossy art-world periodical-out of his bag, opened it to a drawing of Dimity and Delphine together, and held it up to the glass. “I was going to ask you about this picture, Dimity. If you remembered when it was drawn, and what game you were playing? And what Aubrey’s daughter Delphine was like?” He thought of the drawing of Delphine, hanging in his gallery, and all the long hours he’d spent gazing at it. Again came that frisson, that sense of the unreal, that here was someone who had seen his idol made flesh. Had touched her skin, held her hand. But there was no sound from within, no further movement. Zach dropped his hands and stepped back from the window, defeated. In the glass he was a black reflection, an outline, and behind him the sea and the sky were shining.
He walked past the cottage and down to the cliff top, where he sat cross-legged and squinted out at the water. The breeze moving over the sea made the surface smooth and then puckered; alternately matte and then incandescent with light. There were great swells on it, seeming to rise up from beneath the surface; long trails, which might have been the ghostly wakes of boats that had moved out of sight or the telltale sign of a current pulling away from the land, all unseen. Imagining its strength, the inescapable pull of all that water, gave Zach a shiver. Faintly, just behind his eyes, came the urge to try to paint the dazzling scene in front of him, but then a flash of something pale and moving caught his eye. Hannah Brock had appeared on the beach below him. He couldn’t see how she’d got down there, since she certainly hadn’t come past The Watch and there didn’t seem to be any other way into the little cove below. But there she was, and as he watched, she stripped off her jeans and shirt and picked her way to the water’s edge in a faded red bikini. Her hair, free of the green scarf this time, flew about in the wind, and she was soon up to her ankles in the water. Zach saw her fingers extend, spread wide, and then clench into fists. It must be cold. He smiled slightly. Hannah propped her fists on her narrow hips and stared out to sea, just as he had done a moment before. Such a long, flat horizon always drew the eye; it was irresistible. Zach hunkered down as low as he could, and shuffled as far back from the edge as possible while still being able to see her. To be caught looking again would be the death of it, he warned himself seriously. No coming back from that. The thought caught him off guard-the death of what?
Eventually, Hannah turned to her right and moved along to the edge of the cove. Her skin was light brown, not the ghastly white Zach knew was hiding under his own clothes. Her spare frame looked pared down, with nothing superfluous. Flat breasts and thin arms, only a narrowing at the waist to stop her being boyish. But at the same time she seemed as far from frail as was possible. Every inch of her looked poised and vital. Poised for a fight, perhaps. He remembered the challenge in her eyes when she’d spoken to him in the pub. What do you want with her? She climbed up onto the rocks at the far edge of the beach, and walked along them where they jutted out into the sea. When she got to what looked like the edge, she kept going for another fifty feet or so, wading through lapping water up to her knees. Zach watched, fascinated. There must be a shelf under the water, a rock flat enough and wide enough to walk along even if the water meant you couldn’t see your footing clearly. She paused at the end for a second, tensed, and dived in with one clean movement.
She didn’t come up for a long time. Zach had a horrible vision of concealed rocks, and an undertow, but of course she must know the beach, and the water, far better than he. She surfaced a long way east of where she’d gone in, virtually opposite Zach as he perched on the cliff. She raked her hair back from her face, trod water for a moment, and then, with a splash, was gone again. For fifteen minutes or so she swam, over the water and under it, sculling idly on her back, and Zach stopped worrying about her spotting him, since it seemed she wasn’t going to. When she climbed out, her shoulders were high and tense, and he could see she was cold in the breeze. He wanted to go down to the beach and meet her, just then. With her hair streaming water and a drip hanging from her chin, and goose bumps all over her body. She would taste of salt. She dressed quickly, pulling her clothes over her wet skin with careless ferocity, and then she vanished from view, too close to the cliff for him to see where she went.
He was down by the cliff edge a long time. Dimity could see him from the kitchen window, and she returned to check every few minutes. Technically, it was her land; technically, he was trespassing on it. Valentina wouldn’t have had it-she’d have been out in a flash to chase him off with her violent eyes and that voice of hers that could carry a half mile if she wanted it to. She hesitated at the window for a while, wondering if she should have asked him in after all, wondering if she still should. But she had been so hoping to make the hearth charm today, so hoping to stop any more unwanted visitors getting in. And maybe to get rid of one who’d already come back and let herself in. She peered out at him again. That fleeting first resemblance he’d borne to Charles had gone completely. This man’s hands and head were still instead of moving, glancing, switching fast like Charles’s had. He had none of the fire, none of the energy. The young man on the cliffs looked more like someone walking in their sleep, and she was half afraid he might fall forwards and tumble over the edge.
In her head was a simple tune, circling itself again and again. A tune from childhood, beating a rhythm she couldn’t shake off. A sailor went to sea sea sea, to see what he could see see see, and all that he could see see see, was the bottom of the deep blue sea sea sea… At first she thought it was the drip of the kitchen tap that had conjured up the ghost of this song; the steady plink of water onto the chipped porcelain. She stood in the kitchen and shut her eyes, and at once the smell of the place grew stronger-a stale smell of bread crumbs and milk, the tang of burning on the hob, the sickly smell of a century of greasy food remains, hiding in cupboards and in the cracks in the floor. A flash of Valentina’s perfume, the violet water she dabbed behind her ears when a guest was due to arrive. If she opened her eyes, she might see the woman, Dimity thought. Catch her standing close to her daughter, smiling. Mitzy, my girl, you’ve a fortune waiting to be made. Tucking Dimity’s bronze hair behind her shoulders for her, woozy and affectionate with wine on her breath and her eyes half closed.