‘Are you hurt? Did he touch you?’
‘I locked myself in the bedroom. He tried to get inside. Then just as I phoned you, he was gone!’
‘Let’s take a look,’ he said firmly, clutching her hand tightly in his, cricket bat ready. She was glad of his strength. ‘Ground floor first,’ he said.
They opened the kitchen door and Buster burst out, yapping frenziedly with his tail tight between his legs. ‘Look at him,’ Mandy said as she tried to calm the dog. ‘I’ve never seen him so nervous.’
As they checked each room in turn, she described in a shaky voice exactly what had happened, from the beginning. ‘You have to believe me. Someone was here.’
Todd said nothing until they’d checked every room in the cottage. Finally, he turned to her. ‘Mandy, there’s no sign of any intruder having been here. Are you really certain you didn’t just imagine it?’
‘Yes! I—’
‘Please, listen. Let’s be logical about this. It’s pissing with rain outside. The front path and garden are all muddy. If someone had got in here, they’d have left a trail of footsteps across the hallway, up the stairs, along the passage to your bedroom. But there’s nothing. How did they get in? And who would break into a place where there’s a dog barking its head off?’
‘But—’
‘I know it’s hard to accept, but isn’t it possible you just had a nightmare?’
‘It was real! It happened!’
‘Maybe it only seemed real,’ Todd said. ‘Especially for an overimaginative writer living all alone in an old house, with a head full of horror stories. A writer who’s written a whole novel in a week, driving herself half nuts with overwork, and probably hasn’t been eating properly.’
Mandy stared at him. Her lip began to tremble.
‘Don’t be angry with me, Mandy,’ he implored her. ‘Please. I care deeply about you.’
She burst into tears and fell into his arms. ‘Oh, Todd, please don’t go away tonight. Please, stay with me.’
‘Of course I will,’ he replied, holding her. ‘Get me a blanket and I’ll kip on the sofa.’
She looked at him with wide, wet eyes. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I mean stay with me. I want you with me tonight.’
ELEVEN
As they sat at breakfast the next morning, Mandy and Todd couldn’t stop glancing at one another and breaking into smiles. She’d slept soundly that night, all right, though not quite for the reason she’d initially thought when she’d gone to bed alone. For the first time in days there was a rosy glow in her cheeks.
‘I like to see you eating with appetite,’ Todd said. ‘It’s what you need.’
‘Now, I wonder why it could be that I’m so hungry,’ she said, and her smile widened. They held hands across the table, leaned closer and kissed.
‘Listen, I had an idea for your book cover,’ he said, buttering another slice of toast. ‘If you’re still up for me doing it, that is.’
‘Of course. Tell me.’
‘Oh, I can do better than that. I can show you.’
In her study after breakfast, she stood next to him as he sat at her computer and logged onto a password-protected online storage facility where he backed up a lot of his photographic images. ‘Now let’s see… there it is.’
‘You’ve already done it?’ she asked, amazed.
‘More or less. Just needs a bit of touching up. Assuming you like it, of course.’
‘When on earth did you find the time?’
‘I like to work fast, and work late. It’s what I was doing when you called me last night.’ He opened up the PDF file. ‘Et voilá. Now, be honest.’
Mandy looked at the image on the screen, and gasped.
‘You hate it, don’t you?’ he said, seeing her wide-eyed expression.
The image showed a grinning decapitated skull with the handle of a cutthroat razor protruding from its empty eye socket. The title and the name Jessica Lomax screamed out from the page, in stark, blood-red Gothic script.
‘Hate it? I think it’s brilliant. It’s exactly what I’d imagined.’ Which, she thought uncomfortably, was disturbing in itself.
Todd looked pleased. ‘Now, you remember I was telling you about that Cornwall shoot I have coming up? Well, the client called and it’s been brought forward, but I still have a couple of free days before I leave. Gives me time for other things I want to do with you.’
‘Do tell,’ she said, raising her eyebrows, leaning her elbows on the desk with her chin on her hands.
He grinned. ‘Well, that too. But I was talking about your new image.’
‘New image?’
‘You have a new persona now, so you need a new look. Give the right kind of impression for the Jessica Lomax website.’
‘But there isn’t a—’
‘There soon will be. I’m going to build it for you.’
Later that morning, Todd fetched a couple of aluminium cases full of lighting equipment that he kept in his car, and set up a makeshift photography studio in the living room of Summer Cottage. Mandy did her own makeup and hair and put on a black dress, and for a couple of hours they experimented to get the ideal shot of the new author, Jessica Lomax. The end result was a striking series of shady, moody images of an unrecognisable Mandy with her black hair covering half her face, her one visible eye heavily made up to look as little as possible like the Mandy Freeman her regular readers knew. The lips were startling red, her cheek and neck as white as chalk. With a few digital embellishments added at the computer, Todd managed to make her look deathly and sexy at the same time. It was the perfect image. Jessica Lomax was suddenly a reality.
‘Not a bad morning’s work,’ he said, looking at his watch. ‘Now, to make a perfect day even better, I’m going to run out to the village and get us some goodies for lunch.’
‘Sounds wonderful. Meanwhile, I’m going up to scrub all this makeup off me and change into some proper clothes.’
‘Shame. I kind of like you like that.’
She nudged him. ‘Pervert. Listen, grab the spare front door key off the hook in the hall, will you? In case I’m still in the bathroom when you get back.’
Upstairs, she hummed a little tune to herself as she crossed the bedroom. She smiled coyly at the sight of the rumpled bed and the recent memories it evoked. After her night with Todd she’d managed to virtually forget what had happened before. She was willing to believe he’d been right — that what she’d experienced had been some kind of waking dream concocted by an anxious mind. It was very possible, she’d decided, that all this had been brought on by the shock of being dropped by her publisher. Stress could play all kinds of malevolent tricks. She resolved to take it easier from now on.
From the window she watched Todd’s Volvo snaking away up the road towards Fairwood. Last night’s deluge had given way to another radiant autumnal morning. Buster was outside in the garden, foraging near the hedge and looking happy enough. Maybe he didn’t need to see a vet after all, thank God.
Feeling buoyant, Mandy went into the ensuite bathroom, leaving the door ajar. She took her time changing out of the black dress and back into her regular uniform of jeans and jumper. Taking a little bottle of makeup remover and a packet of cotton balls from the bathroom cupboard, she stepped across to the mirror over the washbasin and started dabbing away the eye makeup. When she was starting to look like her normal self again, she reached for a brush and began rearranging her long black hair to the way she usually wore it.
She paused, sensing a presence in the bedroom behind her. In the mirror’s reflection, she thought she saw a flitting movement through the gap in the slightly-open bathroom door.
‘Todd?’ She put down the brush with a smile and turned away from the basin, heading back into the bedroom. ‘You were quick. What goodies have you got us this t—’