‘Welcome back!’ said the man cheerfully, kneeling down and putting his arm affectionately around her brown shoulders.
As soon as I saw his face, I knew that everything was over. I sat up abruptly and our eyes met.
‘Stella?’ he said.
Chapter Twenty-Five
‘So how do you know her?’ said Pamela again, as if she couldn’t take it in.
‘From university,’ said Mark. ‘Actually, I knew Edward better than I did Stella. I haven’t seen her for years. I didn’t recognize her at first. She looks different.’
‘Who is Edward? The ex-boyfriend?’
‘No.’ Mark sounded surprised. ‘He’s her husband.’
I was standing behind the door in the dark ante-room, which I had discovered to be an excellent location for eavesdropping on the events of the kitchen.
‘Her husband!’ shrieked Pamela. ‘How on earth — why on earth didn’t she tell us? Are they divorced?’
‘Not so far as I know. They only got married a few weeks ago.’
‘Mark was supposed to go to the wedding,’ interjected Millie.
‘But then that Egyptian trip came up and I couldn’t make it.’
‘Can you believe it?’ added Millie.
‘Well.’ Pamela sighed dramatically. ‘I must say I’m absolutely astonished.’
‘Isn’t it a coincidence?’ persisted Millie.
‘But does he know she’s here? I mean, why hasn’t he been in touch? Why has she never mentioned that she had a husband squirreled away?’
‘I had heard,’ began Mark doubtfully, ‘that something had happened.’
‘What sort of something?’
‘An accident of some sort. I’m not sure of the details.’
‘Don’t beat about the bush,’ said Pamela briskly. ‘What sort of accident?’
‘No, really, I only heard the vaguest rumours about it. I couldn’t say for sure. I’d hate to get it wrong.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ said Pamela.
‘Come on, Mark,’ said Millie.
‘It happened when they were on honeymoon. That’s all I know. I think she had a bit of a fall or something, and that’s the last anyone heard of her.’
‘What can you mean?’ cried Pamela. ‘What sort of a fall? Do you mean she fell off a cliff and her husband couldn’t find her, and the next thing we know is that she’s washed up here?’
‘Calm down, Mummy.’
‘She fell,’ resumed Mark, his voice constricted, ‘and nearly went over the balcony of their hotel room. In Rome, I think. She wasn’t hurt. But she evidently went a bit funny.’
‘In the head?’ demanded Pamela.
‘Possibly. There was a suggestion that it might have been — deliberate, if you see what I mean. Don’t quote me on that, though. As I say, I’ve only heard the vaguest rumours. In any case, she came back to London without Edward and then disappeared.’
‘Well, perhaps she didn’t like Edward. Perhaps that’s all there was to it.’
I felt a pang of fondness for Pamela as I stood crushed behind the ante-room door.
‘Why would she have married him if she didn’t like him?’ said Millie.
‘Oh, how should I know?’ said Pamela irritably. There was a clatter of saucepans. ‘Pass me that dish, would you? I really must get on with dinner. It’s getting terribly late.’
‘I still can’t understand what she’s doing here,’ said Mark after a pause. ‘Even if things did go wrong with Edward, it does seem rather extreme to pack in your job and leave London and all that.’
‘What job?’ said Pamela. ‘I thought she was temping.’
‘Oh no, I don’t think so. She was a solicitor, as far as I remember. Something like that, anyway. She had a degree, for God’s sake.’
‘I can’t see what having a degree, if that’s what she’s got, has to do with anything. We’re not exactly barbarians down here. You may think country people sit around discussing crop rotation, but—’
‘Mummy!’ said Millie.
‘I’m merely defending myself against the suggestion that we’re some sort of second best. I shouldn’t think Stella would say that she’s been bored. You’d need a degree to keep up with Martin, for Heaven’s sake.’
There was a silence, and more clattering sounds.
‘I should call Edward, I suppose,’ said Mark. ‘He’s been going mad, wondering where she is. So’ve her parents, apparently. And her boss must be furious. I’d say she’ll be lucky to get her job back.’
‘Frankly, I’ll be sorry to lose her,’ said Pamela. ‘Martin adores her, and it’s such a trial for him chopping and changing every other day. Quite honestly’ — a tearful strain entered her voice — I don’t see how we’re going to begin to cope.’
‘Oh, it’ll be fine,’ consoled Millie.
From my shadowy enclosure I began to hear sounds from elsewhere, a sort of scratching noise coming from further along the passage. I stood rigid as a board, not daring to move. The scratching became a scuttling, and then all at once I felt a rush of air and something jostling me about the legs. A shriek of surprise escaped my lips.
‘What on earth was that?’ said Pamela from the kitchen.
A pair of Satanic eyes glared up at me through the gloom. I heard the familiar sound of panting, the unmistakable bustle of canine chops. Roy, or his ghost, had returned to haunt me.
‘The wind beneath the door!’ Mark was saying in a spectral voice, while Millie trilled with appreciation.
‘Don’t you start as well,’ said Pamela. ‘My children think I’m batty enough as it is. Be a dear and go and have a look, would you? Everyone says we’re mad still leaving our doors open, but I’d hate to be barricaded in.’
I heard footsteps approaching across the kitchen floor. In a flash I had bolted silently from the ante-room and into the hall, leaving Roy — the miracle of whose resurrection I had not even had time to appreciate — behind as prime suspect for the unexplained noise. Quietly I ascended the stairs to Martin’s room and stood outside his door.
I was not relishing the thought of an encounter with Martin, even with the weighty matter of Roy off my conscience. After the incident beside the pool, I had fled back to the cottage, where I had sat in my bedroom crouched out of sight beside the wardrobe for a considerable time. Nobody had come to look for me, even after I had heard Pamela’s car pull up in the drive. The absence of a search party had lent weight to my suspicion — confirmed just now by what I had overheard from the kitchen — that Mark and Millie had given an immediate and unsparing account to Pamela of my disgrace, and that I had been outlawed from the society of the family, to be dealt with when the opportunity arose and presumably without mercy. I felt guilty nonetheless that I had been unable to fulfil my promise to Pamela of helping her with the dinner, I had considered the option of presenting myself in the kitchen with this offer as if nothing had happened, and indeed had come over to the house with that aim.
With that expiatory course of action now ruled out, however, I was forced to fall back on the harder truth; namely that my life in the country was to be brought to an abrupt conclusion, and that I was to return to London as soon as possible with few good wishes on the part of those I left behind. I will not go into my feelings concerning this prospect. You may recall the letters I wrote before my departure. I had the sensation, characteristic of the landscape of unrelieved misfortune, that I was rushing very fast downhill, as if through the blackest of tunnels; and that I could neither resist my slide nor indeed feel very much about it at all. There is something almost purifying about this type of loss of control, if one can forget that it will inevitably lead at some point to the most brutal contact with the solid ground of reality.