“How the hell are we going to find them?”
“Just like I found you. We’re going to use a little bit of intelligence and a little bit of insight. You’ll have to take a break from selling washing powder or whatever important thing it is you do.”
“I can’t take time off from work! What will I tell them?”
“Tell them you’re ill! Tell them you’re mentally disturbed! That’s something like the truth, isn’t it? Our hold on reality is a little tenuous at the moment, isn’t it? What do I care what you tell them?”
“Are you getting angry with me?”
“I’m just trying to give you a sense of urgency, though God knows why. This morning when I phoned you were hardly able to speak.”
“I don’t need reminding.”
“Lee, we could simply do nothing about it. We could just forget it. Until tomorrow morning, that is, when you’re going out of your mind because you don’t know if you’re awake or you’re dreaming. Until you want to scream, and then you open your mouth and wake up. Or think you’ve woken up, so you want to scream again. Yes, we could do that. Then you could wonder if this conversation was all a dream.”
“You can see right into my mind, can’t you, Ella Innes?”
Ella softened. “Remember that psychological test the professor gave us? You’re walking through the woods? You see a bear. What do you do? You always go around it. I always approach it.”
“Sometimes to get a mauling.”
“That’s life,” said Ella. “But sometimes the bear turns into a prince. You need me here, Lee. To push you on. To make you face up.”
“Thanks all the same but I never had any use for a prince.”
“Only for a princess, eh?”
He hated the way she reasserted her position so easily. She always seemed able to guess his thoughts. More seriously, she was already in the driving seat. He had planned not to let that happen.
He looked at her as she gazed into the grate, her skin reflecting the firelight. Yes, the years had left their mark here and there. Her face was touched with faint runes, lines of personal history he wanted to read but couldn’t. As for himself, he had stopped pretending. These few hours with Ella had stripped him bare. The scaling-over of the years had been uncovered, old feelings made new, leaving him exposed, inferior, in love with her. How did she do that?
He leaned forward and kissed her neck. He felt her stiffen, but she didn’t pull away.
“What are you doing, Lee?”
“I’m kissing you.”
She turned around. “Let’s not add confusion to a bad situation, eh?”
It seemed to Lee that he had been, on the contrary, trying to straighten things out. He said nothing. Ella closed the issue by standing up.
“I’m very tired. Can we say that it’s settled? You go after one of them, I go after the other?”
Lee shrugged.
“As of tomorrow?”
“As of tomorrow.” He looked unhappy.
“Dreams won’t wait, Lee.”
“No; they won’t, will they?”
“I think it would be better if I went for her. I can talk with her. You go after him.”
“You make it sound like a bounty hunt.”
“It won’t be as easy as that. Now, show me my room. It’s late.”
THREE
She had to move fast to be on time for the ferry. With about twenty minutes to spare she drove the Midget on to the boat at Stranraer, and was glad to get out to stretch her legs. After spending the night at Lee’s flat she had driven back to her house in Cumbria, had a second bad night’s sleep before driving hard to catch the boat to Larne.
Slipping out of the harbour at Stranraer, with the dockside diminishing with each blink, she felt the sea breeze stir around her and along with it came her first misgivings about what she was doing, doubts about her Northern Ireland mission. All her energies had gone into persuading Lee to trust her instincts and follow her lead. She hadn’t thought to stand back and question her convictions.
She thought about Lee, at his house, wanting to kiss her. She had no illusions about it. It was an act of desperation. He thought that a renewal of their relationship would be a way of holding off terror; he wanted to distil from intimacy the bitter-sweet salve which offers protection.
Lee, stolid Lee, had lowered his eyes in an attempt to disguise a disappointment that would have been no more obvious if he had cried out loud and smitten his brow. He was too gentle to do anything but accept her rejection and retire to his bed, where he would curl up with his confusion. But in the night, when Ella had felt the bad dreams thickening around her like storm clouds, she had thought of Lee, lying asleep and vulnerable in the darkness of his room. So she’d confused him even further by going to him and slipping into his bed.
Lee had woken up to feel her next to him.
“I’m cold; go back to sleep.” Which was what he did, happily; and for which Ella was thankful.
In the morning Ella had felt the muscular warmth of Lee’s arms wrapped around her waist, though he slept on. She could feel his erection becoming hard against the back of her thighs. Sliding out of his unrestraining arms, she pulled on some clothes and opened the blinds. She put coffee on to brew and walked out of the flat, leaving the door open.
Lee was woken by the telephone. He looked around for Ella. He could smell the fresh coffee brewing.
“It’s me.”
“Where are you?”
“A hundred yards down the street. Thought I’d pull you out of it with the telephone. We don’t want any bad starts to the day.”
“You’re a life saver, Ella.”
“One day you might save mine.” Click.
Lee had showered by the time Ella returned, clutching a bag of croissants. “It’s good,” he said. “I feel more confident this morning. There’s a clarity which I haven’t felt for a while. The smell of the coffee and the croissants. This is awake.”
Lee’s confidence brought a lot of things back to Ella. But if she suspected that it was neither coffee nor croissants that made Lee feel stronger, she didn’t say anything. Anyway, she had to agree with him. It was true; there was a kind of sharpness, an extra definition about things today. Outside in the street she had sensed a crackle in the morning air, and she had been confident that this morning they would be untroubled by the nightmare procession of false awakenings.
Experience told her not to waste hope on this respite. Yet it was in that morning’s spirit of optimism that they had drawn up their campaign to contact the others. They had already agreed that it should be Ella who would go to Northern Ireland.
Which was how she came to be standing out on deck on the ferry to Lame. It was the last day of February, too cold to spend more than a few minutes outside, too cold altogether for most people, which left her with the deck to herself. Ella loved it, huddled in her flying jacket, a bitter wind raking her hair, and the ferry dipping through the spume of the waves.
But when the sky darkened to the colour of a bruise, and the sea turned black, her doubts started to thicken. She knew that the voyage would reawaken the one thing that she least wanted. The thought sickened her. Then the wind picked up a foul stench off the water. It was a whiff of corruption; a secret known only to the sea.
The boat rose and fell. Over the stern a ragged company of grey-backed gulls wheeled and dived. But it was neither cruel beaks nor talons, nor the gulls’ greedy eyes that fascinated and terrified Ella as she stared out to sea. It was the hovering nameless thing that went scavenging and sucking at the wake of her journey, and in the wake of the bad dreams that would come to threaten them all.