‘Caro! Caro!’
Someone stormed up the stairs.
I ignored the words, staring at the empty space in front of me, the drone of the pear drum still filling my head.
He’d gone. How could he just disappear? I took an unsteady step. The door behind me crashed against the wall and a blast of cold air shuddered up my back. A pair of hands pushed down upon my shoulders, spinning me around.
‘Caro!’
It was Craig, his voice louder.
The drone dissipated, like a tight cloud of brown butterflies bursting apart in my head, flying in all directions, fluttering across the shafts of winter sun until they were gone. I felt weightless. It was Craig that stopped me from falling.
‘For God’s sake, Caro, what’s wrong with you?’
I didn’t answer. The boy had gone, not even a mark upon the floor in the dust where he’d been sitting. And no sign or sound of the pear drum. I couldn’t drag my eyes away from the thin lines of silver moonlight streaking out across the room from the cracks between the shutters. It was moonlight, not sunlight. I threw a confused look at Craig. The cut on my head was throbbing, the skin swollen, more blood trickling over my eyes. What had happened? What had I seen? Had I been hallucinating? The pain in my head was getting worse.
‘Come away, Caro. What’s got into you? Why did you run off?’
Craig’s voice, coming at me from a distance.
I felt his breath upon my skin. I almost flinched. But the spell had broken. I let him draw me from the room. He shut the door behind us, leading me down the stairs into the kitchen. He pushed me onto the hard, wooden seat of a chair and I heard the banging of kitchen cupboards. A minute later, he was thrusting a mug into my hand.
‘Here, drink this!’
I took the mug, expecting scalding coffee, but no, it was cold and the liquid burning my throat was whisky, more of Elizabeth’s whisky. I spluttered, pushing the mug away, but Craig forced it back, holding my hands around the mug, lifting it to my lips.
‘Drink it. Just a little. It’ll do you good.’
I wasn’t sure I wanted to drink alcohol. I remembered what had happened the last time I drank. By now, though, I hadn’t the energy to say no. I let him pour the liquid into my mouth and it scorched a trail into my stomach, leaving me unable to speak.
Craig watched me, the beam from a single torch lying on the table splayed across its surface. It was unnerving now that I was back inside myself, those eyes of his holding mine, probing. They were no longer black. Why on earth had I thought they were black? I pulled away, looking at the mug instead.
Craig sat beside me. As the whisky warmed my belly, I realised I hadn’t been afraid of him. My response to the pear drum, the summerhouse, had overwhelmed everything else. What had I been thinking of? What was wrong with me?
‘What’s going on, Caro?’ Craig’s voice was softer.
I coughed, pushing away the whisky-tightness gripping my throat. What should I tell him? That something was haunting this house? That I was having hallucinations? That I was haunting this house? Or that memories were returning I couldn’t bear to face. Pour out the entire sorry tale of my childhood.
Tell him, a voice was whispering in my ear, just tell him.
‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘It’s nothing.’
‘No, it’s not. Something’s wrong. You come bursting into my workshop in a right state. Having run, it seems, all the way from your house to mine.’
‘It’s not that far!’
I nodded towards the back door. It was far enough in this weather. My eyes drifted towards the windows, the shutters firmly bolted from the inside. Craig followed my gaze.
‘And what’s going on with the shutters?’ Craig seemed too close. ‘Why have you bolted them all?’
‘I thought it would help, you know, keep the house warm. There’s another power cut.’
All these power cuts. Was that normal? How could I possibly explain what I’d just seen? Or heard? What I’d thought. And everything else that had been going on since I’d got here.
I sipped the alcohol. It kicked in a little more, relaxing my limbs. Had it all been in my head? Was I going mad? Or were memories that had always been elusive, inhabiting the unused rooms of the house, re-emerging in fits and starts now that I was back in the place where I grew up?
No, it was concussion from the knock to my head in the summerhouse, or shock, or something like that, a physical thing manifesting as visions and hallucinations. And my overactive imagination reacting to the stories of the commission. It seemed downright daft now, thinking about it, things being moved around by some unknown force, noises in the attic and a broken window. I didn’t believe in ghosts and all that stuff.
Stupid lone female too scared by her own imaginings to cope without a man in the house, that’s what Craig was thinking, wasn’t he?
But what about the boy? He’d been so …
‘And that’s why you came all the way to my cottage? Because of a power cut? Through that weather?’ Craig asked.
I dragged my eyes back to him. Was he like Paul? Not all men were like Paul. One minute I was running to Craig for help, the next minute I was running away – what must he think of me? The whisky must be doing its job: I felt the fog clear, the life slowly seeping into my body, my brain kicking back into focus. I took another gulp.
‘Slowly, Caro, not too much.’ Craig tapped the mug away from my lips, looking amused.
‘I’m sorry. I only went for a walk, to the bottom of the garden. I went inside the summerhouse, it’s a wreck. I think I bashed into one of the panes of glass. They’re broken. Cut my hand. Must have been what cut my head too.’
My lips were struggling to form the words. I’d begun to shiver.
‘Then I was running across the field until I found your workshop. I wasn’t looking for your house, you know.’
I was keen for him to understand that. I hadn’t been searching him out. I wasn’t interested in him. Like hell.
‘Hmmm.’
There he was again, watching me.
‘So, you were in a panic?’ he said.
That made me sound like a foolish idiot.
‘Yes, I suppose so.’
Even to me, my explanation sounded pathetic. Why had I run from the summerhouse? Why had I run from Craig? I knew why. My eyes were caught up by his. Rabbits and car headlights, I was thinking now. Perhaps if he thought I was stupid …
‘And you came looking for me?’
‘No.’
I tried a smile. I barely noticed him taking my hand, the fog was there again. I shook my head.
‘It’s alright, Caro, I don’t mind,’ he said.
His thumb was rubbing the inside of my wrist as if to warm me. I watched it circling my skin, sending trails of fire along my arm, like the whisky down my throat.
‘Can you stop that, please?’ I said.
‘What?’ he said.
‘That thing you’re doing with your thumb.’ I nodded towards his hand.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. He looked at his hand as if he hadn’t realised what he was doing and let it drop.
He stepped away from me and for a moment I felt bereft, as if I really wished I hadn’t said that.