‘Wow,’she laughed, hanging on to her hood. ‘What a view. I’m so glad you brought me to Beachy Head.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Jonathan said, aggrieved, shouting over the howling gale.
She just laughed again, leaning into the wind to stagger over to the smooth, round compass rose set into the ground.
‘Careful,’ he said, catching hold of her shoulder. ‘Don’t wander off. You can’t see the edge in this fog.’
She grinned back at him, holding her hair off her face. ‘Ah,’ she said, pointing, ‘over there is Eastbourne. And there’s the lighthouse.’ She could barely see the end of her own finger.
‘Ha. Ha.’
She let out a peal of laughter at his tone.
‘This is not what I imagined when I planned this,’ he said.
‘Oh, and what had you imagined?’ she teased, but when she turned he wasn’t smiling. There was some dark, strong emotion twisting his face. ‘Jonathan?’
‘I imagined you here, happy, never knowing…and then…’
A gust of wind made her stagger. When she looked again, his face was clear, his eyes smiling.
‘Then what?’
‘Then maybe this,’ he said, pulling her close. ‘Catherine,’ he said, against her lips. ‘Catherine.’ It began to rain, but it was a long time before they returned to the car.
Later, he’d asked her if he could see her again, and where.
‘It’s my turn to choose,’ she said, flushed, breathless. ‘Text me on Friday morning. Are you free all day?’
He glanced away and back, his face still, his eyes watchful. An expression she thought might be anger twisted his face, but it was gone so quickly she couldn’t be sure. He took a deep breath and some of the tension seemed to flow out of him.
‘Sure,’ he said. ‘I’ll text you,’ and smiled, just a little.
She lived on that smile for a week.
Catherine hunkered down on the lea side of a cairn, crying and shivering while the mist plastered her hair to her skull.
Jonathan was…was a killer. And he’d been sent to kill her.
She tried not to sniff, tried not to sob, but all she could hear was wind, water, and the crackling rustle of her own waterproofs. Yards away, the edge of the mountain dropped down hundreds of feet. She could see nothing. She wasn’t sure how long she’d been here. She felt stiff, cold. All she wanted was to curl up, fall asleep and never wake up.
She’d fallen in love, deeply in love, with a man who was supposed to kill her. Shame curled in her gut, making her nauseous.
She sank into herself, hating her choices, hating her instincts, letting thought fall away into nothing. Thought receded, but memory wouldn’t leave her: touches, kisses, moments of absolute connection. When she’d looked into the eyes of a man she thought loved her. When she’d looked into the eyes of a killer.
Yes, Jonathan had meant to kill her. And hadn’t been able to.
Concentrating, she took deep breaths, feeling as if she was surfacing from a deep pit, trying to push back hysteria, the awful sense of unreality. The cold, wet air got to her chest, hurting her throat. But it cooled and calmed her, too.
She held her breath a moment, straining to hear any sound of pursuit. Nothing. She could barely see the hand in front of her face. She couldn’t move in case she fell, couldn’t call for help unless she attracted a killer…or her husband.
‘Catherine…’ The voice was disembodied, barely a whisper, divorced from any direction. She opened her voice to answer, then realised she had no idea who was calling.
A chink of stone on stone, a footstep. There, away to the right? ‘Catherine. It’s me.’
Not good enough, she thought.
Another scuffing sound, a click of something on rock, and a huddled shape loomed out of the fog for a moment. The scream choked in her throat. It was only a sheep, shaggy and grey, stopping to look at her with dark eyes before slipping away like a ghost into the gloom, treading carefully along the edge of the crags. The mist shifted and streamed.
‘Catherine. I know you’re there.’
She lay still.
‘Doesn’t this remind you,’ the whispered voice said, a familiar thread of laughter running through it, ‘of our third date?’
Moments of absolute connection.
‘I’m here,’ she called softly, and got to her feet, facing the direction of the voice. She heard Jonathan coming, saw his shape loom out of the mist.
‘One down,’ he said.
Close to, she could see blood on his cheek, and under his fingernails, and he wouldn’t meet her eyes. She faced him anyway, studying the face of husband, lover and killer.
And heard running footsteps behind her.
Jonathan dragged at her with both hands, hauling her out of the other man’s path as he ran them down. She fell, rolling, hearing the sickening thud as the two men collided, scrabbling in the stones. She heard hard breathing, blows, the sounds of fierce struggle as she came to her knees, pushing herself upright on bloodied hands.
‘Catherine…’ Jonathan gasped. ‘Run.’
She wouldn’t. She couldn’t. But as she hesitated she saw Jonathan buck and strain, rolling both men over and over, out towards the grey gulf and over the jagged edge of the crag.
She crammed her fist into her mouth against the scream, shaking so violently she thought she’d fall.
The mist was drawing into patches now, streaming past in moments of blindness and sight. The empty cragside, the jagged ridges that rose between the gullies like buttresses.
White blindness, then the dark shape of a man heaving himself over the edge of one of those buttresses, bulky in tailored jacket and jeans.
Catherine moved almost without thought, running a wavering path diagonally towards the neighbouring ridge, sickeningly aware of the wind rising vertically up the yawning gulf either side of her. She steadied herself, turned back to face the survivor. The figure straightened, and some chance flicker of the mist showed her a stranger’s face, ugly with triumph.
‘I’m here,’ she said. Calm Catherine. Sensible Catherine. She saw the gleam of teeth as he smiled at her.
She smiled back, and he stepped forward, reaching for her.
She saw the exact moment he realised he’d stepped out into air, the twist of his features. He clawed towards her, his fingers brushing her face as he fell, chill and slick. She heard the scream, and the thump, long after. Then nothing, until a raven croaked, far down the valley, like the laughter of a stone golem.
Eventually she sat, curling carefully down onto the close-growing turf over gravel and slate. A tiny pom-pom of a dusky pink flower bobbed madly in the weakening wind. It had shifted, she thought. She could smell wood smoke and the softer, valley flavours. She thought there was a tang of something citrus, and the indefinable scent that was simply his body heat.
Catherine looked down, and saw the hand, bloodied across the knuckles, gripping the stone by her feet.