He sees her now in his sleepless confusion, as the light changes and silver ghosts her face. There is a body in his house. He lives in a tower on a hill. He lives alone in the tower and there is a body in his house. There is a husband out there looking for a wife, a furious husband shouting for his wife. There is a body in his house. In his knackered state, in his up-late, day–night delirious state of mind, body, spirit, he feels panic. He should call the police. The rain sounds angry, like it wants to come in, like it knows she is here. Like Jack. He should ring Magda – she will know what to do. There is no signal on his phone. It is like that up here, particularly on stormy nights. The last place in the country to be so inaccessible. Magda would know what to do. She will be back from patrol, alone in her bed in the back room while Tony sleeps and snores elsewhere. She would know what to do, but he can’t call Magda. Or anyone. There is a body in his house and nobody to call. Stepping closer, he peels back the edge of the blanket and reaches out with the softest movement to touch the marble flesh. To be sure. And as he does so, stressed and breathless, leaning over the woman, she moves.
Her breath is on his fingers. She shifts and sighs in her sleep. What to do? The lock is useless. That would be imprisonment. She’s not a burglar. He is not afraid, having seen her. He has looked into the eyes of women who would have killed him without flinching – women to be scared of – and she is not one of those. She is sleeping and therefore not dead in his tower, and for that he is very, very grateful. Okay, so. If she needs shelter for the night, let her shelter. Let her sleep. What choice does he have? In the morning she will be gone, hopefully. So he turns back up the stairs to the kitchen, to make tea and sit in the dark, waiting for sleep or for her to wake, or the morning, whichever comes first. Soon there is music from the speaker. A solo piano. The notes dropping softly among the sounds of the storm.
*
He wakes in his armchair, shuddering with the cold, into the sickly light of dawn. Hot water from the kitchen tap eases the stiffness in his hands and brings his face back to life. Then he remembers. He takes the stairs carefully, barefoot for stealth, toes frozen. Listening, as he reaches the ground floor. Nothing. The bedroom door is open. The blanket has been folded up and put back in the box; there is no sign at all of a visitor except for a slip of paper half hidden under the bed, an envelope with no name on it that he tosses on the bed. There’s nothing wrong in the room. He must have left the door open when Jack came, when he was rattled. The front door, too, unless she came in through the window. Jack left it open a crack when he threw out his fag.
‘Hello?’ His voice cracks at the first attempt, brittle in the early morning. ‘Hello? Are you here?’
The wind sighs, a long, sceptical sound as if to say, Really? You’re asking that question? You want to know? You want me to tell you? Well . . . no. She’s gone.
There’s a fire in his blood, a sickness from so little sleep, a shot of relief that she has gone and a burst of energy like a high, so he feels the need to run again. To get out there into the simplicity of morning and run through the lilac light. In shorts, a T-shirt and running shoes he slugs juice from the carton and crunches a cereal bar, looking down through the window to the new lighthouse, winking in the dawn. Let’s go. ‘Move on up.’ The drums and bass kick in as he closes the front door and the rhythm pushes him forward, over the paving stones, over the gravel, vaulting the wall. Slipping on the dew, reclaiming the beat, running down the whale’s back.
Far away beyond the Gap, the waves advance in long, sweeping lines towards the Seven Sisters. He might go for a swim, he’s thinking – elated again by the raw pleasure of this place: the wide sky, the storm-cleared air, the rush of oxygen – when he sees her. Standing on an outcrop, close to the edge. Very close. Arms wide. Face up towards the sky. Good for her, he thinks. Quite right, enjoy the place. He’s running on, running on, when a thought makes him turn and look back, and he stumbles and his foot catches in a rabbit hole, and he curses and he sees the wind jerk her back suddenly, like a push. She twists forward, tries to adjust and goes down hard on her side. Get up, get back, he thinks, get away – and she’s trying to do that but there’s something else: the lip of the cliff is coming away. Underneath her. He can see it from here, the crack in the creamy white, the landslip and the fall. She’s going to fall. He can see that and he’s running, lungs burning. Running, stumbling, running. Reaching out, fingers stretched, too far. Grabbing air. Come on! Flailing, finding, feeling her coat in his hand, pulling hard. Yanking her away. Wrenching his shoulder, going down with her, hip to the ground, breath gone, dizzy but fighting, reaching, pulling. Saving.
In the moment that follows, as his head thunders and his bones burn, he looks at her. She looks at him. A moment of recognition. Nothing to do with the wind, the racing clouds, the ambitious sky, the shimmering, snakeskin sea. Nothing to do with the crumbling chalk, the breaking cliff, the clattering stones, the fleeing birds. Two people, each looking into the other’s eyes and seeing something they recognize. Something they understand, for a moment. Then it’s over.
This time he isn’t interfering. This time he has actually done some good. But what to do now? He’s panting like a dog, she’s lying here beside him. Get up, come on. Get up. His legs are shaky, they give way as he tries to stand, then the blood seems to surge back down through the knees and he’s okay. Breathless, dizzy, but okay. ‘Let me . . .’
She won’t take his hand.
‘All right, all right.’ He backs off, palms up. Here we go again. Leave her, he thinks. Walk away. Let it be.
She looks up at him, quickly, then back at the edge. She’s not getting up, but staying down on her back. Closing her eyes and seeming to sink into the grass. A tangle of curls. A face he sees upside down, the chin where the forehead should be, the hair like a beard. Then a black top zipped up to the throat, a bright scarf and a long, almost ankle-length, black greatcoat twisted underneath her. Black boots up to her knees and rusty red jeans. She’s lovely. The thought flares and dies like a match flame in the wind. Her fear is more powerful, he can sense her distress.
‘Are you okay?’ Stupid bloody question. Stupid, stupid.
She doesn’t answer.
What’s he going to do? Get down on the ground. Kneel down, lie down beside her. Not touching, he makes sure of that. Above them a wisp of high cloud is unravelling. Coming undone.
‘What’s your name?’ he asks, although he’s sure he knows, and waits. And waits. A bird passes over them, a predator. ‘You were in my house.’
She glances at him sharply, then rolls away, on to her side.
‘It’s okay,’ he says as softly as he can manage and still be heard. Now what, though? There is nobody up here, it is still too early for walkers. The Guardians will be along, but after yesterday he doesn’t trust them. If they see him lying here, with a young woman who is obviously in some kind of trouble, they’ll call the police. Or she might end up like Frank, God help him. She must be the one the ragged boy is looking for. He scans the broad back of the hill all the way down to the Gap, looking for Jack. How long has she been sleeping in the bedroom? Surely he would have noticed before now? It was closed up, he thought it was locked, he hadn’t looked into the rooms for months, and when he opened that one for Jack there was no sign of her, no sign of anything. Jack. That boy really worries him.
‘Will you come back inside and get warm?’
She doesn’t respond.
Okay, so. ‘I’m going to put the kettle on. The door is unlocked. But you know that, don’t you? Come up the stairs. There’s a fire.’ He keeps going, without encouragement. ‘Right then. That’s me. In the lighthouse. Come and get warm. Have some breakfast. When you’re ready.’ And as he walks away, not looking back, he is thinking, I will turn around when I get to the lighthouse and she will be gone over. Christ have mercy.
The walk is no more than a hundred yards but it takes a while. When he reaches the wall and turns, she is still there, lying on the grass. Facing the tower. Facing him.