“Hi, Penny, this is Alwynne. Do you think because of the storm we could postpone our lunch and sketching at Conwy Castle to Tuesday? I can’t make Monday and the roads should be clear by Tuesday. Let me know. Thanks.”
The Stretch and Sketch Club had planned to hold its annual Christmas lunch at a popular restaurant in Conwy on Sunday, and combine that with some sketching, if the weather permitted, at the castle. If it was too cold, the members would take photographs and paint from them later.
Tuesday it is, then, Penny thought. She looked at the clock on the mantel and, deciding it was too late to ring Alwynne, made a note to telephone her the next day. She drained the last of her cocoa and, licking her lips, suddenly realized how tired she was.
Half an hour later, settled in her new bed, and enjoying the tranquility of her stylish bedroom that overlooked the garden at the back of the house, she picked up her library book. A few moments later, realizing she had read the same paragraph three times without any recollection of it, she put the book down and switched off the light.
She lay there in the dark thinking about the courting couple she had seen in the churchyard.
But were they courting, she asked herself. Something about their body language, the way they couldn’t seem to resist each other, the way he pulled her back to him, suggested something different. There had been an unfulfilled eagerness there, a reluctant yearning. She closed her eyes and visualized the scene. And a moment later it came to her.
At least one of them, she thought, is married to someone else. What she had seen was the excitement, the furtiveness of forbidden passion.
She’d had a classmate at university who had been swept up in a mad affair with a married professor. She’d come upon them one morning during Reading Week, when the campus was relatively deserted, kissing passionately in an empty classroom, unable to keep their hands off each other. They’d had that same look about them, except that pair had noticed her. They’d jumped apart, their faces filled with guilt and, in his case, fear. The professor had gathered up his briefcase and, avoiding Penny’s eyes, had hurried out of the room. That relationship had ended badly, as most relationships built on the sandy foundation of deceit tend to do. By the next September a new intake of impressionable female students had provided the professor with lots of new girls to choose from, and her former classmate did not return to school.
She wondered what lies the married one she’d seen earlier that evening had told his or her partner to get out of the house in the middle of a snowstorm. And then she realized it didn’t matter. There would always be enough lies to cover up an affair. At the beginning, anyway. But only for a while.
Ten
And still it snowed. Tree branches bowed under the weight of the snow and deep drifts made the rural roads almost impassable. On the hill farms above the valley the sheep had sensed the approaching storm and taken shelter in the hollows. But there lay danger, so the shepherds, helped by their trained and eager dogs, moved the ewes and rams onto more exposed land so the drifting snow would not bury them. The flocks huddled together beside the stone fences, vague silhouettes, almost invisible against the cold landscape of endless snow.
In the town, the primary school was closed, shelves in the food stores had been stripped bare, and travel was almost at a standstill.
Many were forced to stay home from work, but those who could, plowed bravely through the snow to open their businesses. Among this hardy group was Huw Bowen, who held the keys to the bank. And not only did the bank open as usual, it opened on time.
At ten past ten his assistant knocked on the door to his office.
“Come.”
“Morning, Mr. Bowen. Just wanted to let you know that there’s been a request from the branch in Chester to transfer funds out of an account that was recently opened with us. It’s a large sum.” She glanced down at the slip of paper in her hand. “Yes, quite large, actually. Twenty thousand pounds. It all seems in order, but I thought you’d like to know.”
“Quite right, too, Gaynor.” He let out a long sigh. “Now don’t tell me. We’re talking about the Lloyd-Saunders joint account.”
“Yes, Mr. Bowen, that’s right. That’s the one.”
“Right. Chester, you say. Thanks very much.”
He waited until she closed the door behind her and then reached for the telephone.
Mrs. Lloyd put the phone down and stood in the hall, unseeing. She had been ringing Saunders on his mobile for two days and had not reached him. At first she had been able to push back the rising tide of anxiety that kept creeping into her awareness, but as the days and nights passed, the mild anxiety had turned into a dawning realization, with an undercurrent of disbelief, desperation, and cold, gripping fear that clawed at the very centre of her.
And just now, Huw Bowen had called from the bank to tell her that the bank had released twenty thousand pounds to Saunders. Well, they’d had to, hadn’t they? It was a joint account with his name on it and only one signature had been required to make a withdrawal. He was entitled to what was essentially his money because she had given it to him. Everything had been done by the book. Oh, if only she’d listened to Huw.
She tried to reassure herself for the thousandth time that Saunders had been trapped in the storm over the weekend and today had taken out the money to invest, just as he’d said he would. But the little voice inside her, that she was wishing she’d paid more attention to earlier, would not be silenced. And it was telling her something different.
When the phone rang again, she picked it up eagerly. Oh please be him, she breathed.
“Hello? Is that you, Harry?”
Her shoulders sagged.
“Yes, I figured you were trapped in the storm, so I wasn’t worried about you at all, Florence.” She listened. “Oh, meant to clear up, is it? You’re taking the train. Yes, well, I’ll see you sometime tomorrow then. Thank you for ringing. Must get on. Good-bye, now.”
She replaced the telephone receiver and then immediately headed to the drinks table in the sitting room to do something she had done only once before in her life at ten o’clock in the morning. She poured two fingers of whisky into a glass, hesitated, then added another two. She took a small sip, then a large gulp. A moment later she set the empty glass on the tray and, fueled by a surge of alcohol-laced adrenaline and anger, strode back to the hallway and opened the closet door. She pulled out her warmest coat and scrabbled around in the back of the cupboard to see if she could find her old pair of winter boots. She found one boot, covered in dust with a broken lace, but it would have to do. She dove back in, tossing out pairs of shoes, a lost glove, a long-forgotten dog lead, and a hairbrush, until she found the mate to the boot she held in her hand.
She shook the dust out of them and, hoping no spiders or mice were living inside, put them on. She pulled on a warm hat and let herself out of the house. As she plowed along Rosemary Lane, clamping her hat to her head with one hand, her wind-bitten face was taut with distress.
She wasn’t sure if there was anything to be done, if anything could be done, but she desperately needed to speak to Huw Bowen. As she turned the corner into the town square, she glimpsed a patch of blue sky over the church tower and realized it had finally stopped snowing. Maybe now, she thought, maybe now he’ll be able to get here and everything will be fine. It’ll all have been much ado about nothing.
A half hour later, she left the bank. She took her time walking home, knowing there was nothing more she could do, except wait to see if Saunders, as she was beginning to think of him, would contact her. Her conversation with Huw Bowen had not gone well. There had been no hearty reassurance, no attempt to comfort her, just a hard cold dose of reality. Yes, he’d had his suspicions. Yes, he had tried to talk her out of it. Yes, he had recommended two signatures on the joint account. But it was too late to put that right, the question was what could she do now.