Walking in Darkness

He looked startled for a second, as if her smile changed things, and smiles did, didn’t they? A smile could be defensive, an attempt to placate, as well as happy.

‘Sure?’ he smiled back.

She nodded, recognizing then how much charm he had – maybe Anya was not so crazy, after all? He was certainly not a wallpaper person, he made quite an impact, didn’t he? She could see why Anya had fallen for him.

He glanced round the room, as if he didn’t know it very well, or perhaps just checking that everything was OK, then he drew her bedclothes up over her shoulders. The bed was covered with an antique American quilt; an early Homestead pattern, abstract geometric shapes in pastel pinks and greens.

‘Are you quite comfortable in here?’

‘Yes, thank you.’ She had been too dazed last night to notice much about the room, but it was elegantly furnished, with Georgian furniture, highly polished, flowers on the dressing table, pretty pale green lamps trimmed with silk fringes. A delightful room.

He watched her intently; she was very aware of his stare although she was looking at the room – what was he thinking? That she was nothing like his wife?

‘How old are you?’

She was taken aback, eyes widening. ‘Twenty-eight. Why?’

‘Twenty-eight?’ He was frowning. ‘What month were you born?’

‘September. 1968.’

He sighed, met her puzzled eyes and grimaced. ‘You look much younger. Well, good night, no more bad dreams.’

‘I’m sorry I woke you up,’ she said shyly. ‘Goodnight.’

She watched him walk back to the door; he clicked off the light and closed the door behind him.

Sophie lay, frowning, in the dark, thinking that it was strange that it had been him who came when she called out. Why not Anya? Hadn’t she woken up? Maybe she had taken a sleeping pill and was sleeping too heavily to be disturbed by anything short of an earthquake. Anya was unhappy and desperately worried. And it was all Sophie’s fault.

She shouldn’t have come here, should never have told Anya the truth, should have kept her mouth shut.

Oh, but she had promised Mamma to find Anya and talk her into going to see her before it was too late.

Her mind went round and round in circles, trying to work out what else she could have done and finding no answer.

In her bedroom, feeling cold and small and lonely in her vast kingsized bed, Cathy Brougham listened to the voices and movements, hoping Paul would come to her when he left Sophie, but silence fell and he did not come.

She had heard the scream, been on the point of getting out of bed to run to comfort Sophie, when she heard Paul’s tread on the landing and a pencil-beam of yellow shone under her door as he switched on Sophie’s light.

Cathy’s eyes were red-rimmed with weeping, her hair tousled from tossing and turning. She did not want Paul to see her looking like that. She stayed in bed, listening, half afraid he would shout at Sophie, or bully her, yet why did she care? Sophie had ruined her life. She wished she had never even heard her name.

She heard their voices but too low to make out words until Paul’s voice came again from near the door.

‘Good night, no more bad dreams,’ she heard him say, and then Sophie’s softer, foreign-accented vo

ice murmuring.

‘Sorry I woke you . . .’

The yellow beam of light vanished; there was a click as the door shut, and she tensed, waiting to see if he would come to bed now, but his footsteps softly moved away. She tracked him like a bat tracking prey, her ears sharp as radar, identifying where he was going and understanding with a pain of the heart what it meant.

He was sleeping in the room at the end of the corridor, the room kept for unimportant visitors, a little cell of a room, barely furnished and remote.

He would not come to bed tonight. It was the first time they had slept apart since they were married, except when Paul had to go abroad and couldn’t take her. She knew it was a dangerous corner in their lives. Would he ever come to her bed again?

From Sophie’s room there was silence. I hate her, thought Cathy, her teeth meeting. I wish she was dead. I should have let those men take her tonight; why did I stop them? I could kill her myself. If I killed her and we never said a word about all this, we could go back to the way it was . . . we could be happy again.

Her heart ached. She shut her eyes, wishing. We were so happy before she came. Oh, I wish . . . I wish I could have that time back, is it too much to ask?