Missing Joseph Part 15

"It's all right."

"Sh'll I leave them here?"

"Not if you've just put them on at the vicarage."

He returned to the sitting room with the dog at his heels. The fire was still burning, and he added another log to it, watching fresh wood settle into flame. He felt the heat reaching out in waves towards his face. He remained where he was and let it bake his skin.

Behind him, he heard Polly's hesitant footsteps. Her boots squeaked. Her clothing rustled.

"Haven't been here in a while," she said diffi dently.

She would find it considerably changed: Annie's chintz-covered furniture gone, Annie's prints off the wall, Annie's carpet torn out, and everything replaced helter-skelter without taste, merely to meet need. It was functional, which was all he'd required of the house and its furnishings once Annie had died.

He expected her to remark upon it, but she said nothing. He finally turned from the fire. She hadn't removed her coat. She had only come three paces into the room. She smiled at him tremulously.

"Bit cold in here," she said.

"Stand by the fire."

"Ta. Think I will." She held her hands out towards the flames, then unb.u.t.toned her coat but didn't remove it. She was wearing an overlarge lavender pullover that clashed with both the rust of her hair and the magenta of her skirt. A faint odour of mothb.a.l.l.s seemed to rise from its wool. "You all right, Colin?"

He knew her well enough to realise she'd go on asking the question until he answered it. She'd never been one to make the connection between refusal to respond and reluctance to reveal. "Fine. Would you like a drink?"

Her face lit. "Oh, yes. Ta."

"Sherry?"

She nodded. He went to the table and poured her some, taking nothing for himself. She knelt by the fire and petted the dog. When she took the gla.s.s from him, she stayed where she was, on her knees, resting on the heels of her boots. There was a substantial crust of dried mud upon them. Speckles of it had settled on the floor.

He didn't want to join her, although it would have been the natural thing to do. They'd sat with Annie in a ring before this fireplace many times before she died, but their circ.u.mstances had been different then: No sin made a lie of their friendship. So he chose the armchair and sat on the edge of it, resting his arms against his knees, his hands clasped loosely like a barrier in front of him.

"Who phoned them?" she asked.

"Scotland Yard? The crippled man phoned for the other, I imagine. He'd come to see Mr. Sage."

"What do they want?"

"To re-open the case."

"They said?"

"They didn't have to say it."

"But do they know something...Has something new come up?"

"They don't need anything new. They just need to have doubts. They share them with c.l.i.theroe CID or Hutton-Preston Constabulary. They start nosing about."

"Are you worried?"

"Should I be?"

She dropped her gaze from him to her gla.s.s. She had yet to take a drink of the sherry. He wondered when she would.

"Your dad's a bit hard on you is all," she said. "He's always been that, hasn't he? I thought he might use this to ride you rough. He looked real cheesed off when he left."

"I'm not worried about Pa's reaction, if that's what you mean."

"That's good then, isn't it?" She pivoted the small sherry gla.s.s on her palm. Next to her, Leo yawned and settled his head on her thighs. "He's always liked me," she said, "ever since he's a pup. He's a nice dog, is Leo."

Colin made no reply. He watched the flames dance the light against her hair and cast a golden hue on her skin. She was attractive in a quirky sort of way. The fact that she didn't seem to realise this had at one time been part of her charm. Now it served as the key to a memory he'd long tried to forget.

She looked up. He moved his eyes away. She said in a low, uncertain voice, "I cast the circle for you last night, Colin. To Mars. For strength. Rita wanted me to pet.i.tion for myself, but I didn't. I did it for you. I want the best for you, Colin."

"Polly..."

"I remember things. We used to be such friends, didn't we? We'd hike out by the reservoir. We'd see films in Burnley. We went to Blackpool once."

"With Annie."

"But we were friends as well, me and you."

He gazed at his hands so that he wouldn't have to meet her eyes. "We were. But we made a mess of it all."

"We didn't. We only-"

"Annie knew. Directly I walked into the bedroom, she knew. She could read it all over me. And I could see that reading on her face. She said, How was your picnic, did you have a nice time, did you get some fresh air, Col? She knew."

"We didn't mean to hurt her."

"She never asked me to be faithful. Did you know that? She didn't expect it once she knew she was going to die. She reached for my hand one night in bed and she said, Take care of yourself, Col, I know how you're feeling, I wish we could be that way again with each other but we can't, dear lover, so you must take care of yourself, it's all right."

"Then why don't you see-"

"Because that night I swore to myself that whatever it took, I wouldn't betray her. And I did it anyway. With you. Her friend."

"We didn't intend it. It wasn't like it was planned."

He looked at her again, a sharp movement of lifting his head that she apparently didn't expect him to make because she flinched in response. A bit of the sherry she held slopped over the side of her gla.s.s and onto her skirt. Leo sniffed at it curiously.

"What does it matter?" he said. "Annie was dying. You and I were f.u.c.king in a barn on the moors. We can't change either one of those facts. We can't make them pretty and we can't tart them up."

"But if she told you-"

"No. Not...with...her...friend."

Polly's eyes grew bright, but she didn't shed the tears. "You closed your eyes that day, Colin, you turned your head away, you never touched me and barely spoke to me ever again. How much more do you want me to suffer for what happened? And now you..." She gulped for breath.

"Now I?"

She dropped her eyes.

"Now I? What now?"

Her answer sounded like a chant. "I burnt cedar for you, Colin. I put the ashes on her grave. I put the ring stone with them. I gave Annie the ring stone. It's sitting on her grave. You can see it if you want. I gave up the ring stone. I did it for Annie."

"What now?" he asked again.

She bent to the dog, rubbed her cheek against his head.

"Answer me, Polly."

She raised her head. "Now you're punishing me more."

"How?"

"And it isn't fair because I love you, Colin. I loved you first. I've loved you longer than her."

"Her? Who? How am I punishing you?"

"I know you better than anyone ever could. You need me. You'll see. Mr. Sage even told me."

Her final statement brought gooseflesh upon him. "Told you what?"

"That you need me, that you don't know it yet but you will soon enough if I just stay true. And I have been true. All these years. Always. I live for you, Colin."

Her avowal of devotion was less than important when the implication behind Mr. Sage even told me demanded exploration and action.

"Sage talked to you about Juliet, didn't he?" Colin asked. "What did he say? What did he tell you?"

"Nothing."

"He gave you some sort of a.s.surance. What was it? That she would end things between us?"

"No."

"You know something."

"I don't."

"Tell me."

"There's nothing-"

He stood. He was three feet from her but still she shrank back. Leo raised his head, his ears perking up, a growl in his throat as he sensed the tension. Polly set her sherry gla.s.s on the hearth and kept her eyes and one hand on its base, as if it might take flight should she not keep watch.

"What do you know about Juliet?"

"Nothing. I told you. I said that already."

"About Maggie?"

"Nothing."

"About her father? What did Robin Sage tell you?"

"Nothing!"

"But you were sure enough about me and Juliet, weren't you? He made you sure. What did you do to get the information from him, Polly?"

Her hair sailed round her shoulders as her head flew up. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Did you sleep with him? You were alone with the man for hours in the vicarage every day. Did you try some kind of spell?"

"I never!"

"Did you see a way to ruin things between us? Did he give you an idea?"

"No! Colin-"

"Did you kill him, Polly? Is Juliet taking the blame?"

She jumped to her feet, planted them apart, punched her fists to her hips. "Just listen to yourself. You talk about me. She's got you bewitched. She put you in place, got you eating from her hand, murdered the vicar, and got away with it clean. And you're so blinded by your own stupid l.u.s.t that you can't even see how she's used you."

"It was an accident."

"It was murder, murder, murder and she did it and everyone knows she did it. No one can think you could be such a fool as to believe a single word that she says. Except we all know why you believe her, don't we, we all know what you're getting, we even know when, so don't you imagine she might have been giving our precious little vicar just a bit of the same?"

The vicar...the vicar...Colin felt it all at once: bones, blood, and heat. His muscles coiling and his mother's voice shouting No, Ken, don't! as his arm soared up right palm to left shoulder and he made the primary lunge to strike. Lungs full, heart raging, wanting contact and pain and retribution and- Polly cried out, staggered back. Her boot hit the sherry gla.s.s. It flew towards the fire and broke on the fender. The sherry dripped and sizzled. The dog began to bark.

And Colin stood there at the ready, aching to strike. With Polly not Polly and himself not himself and the past and the present howling round him like the wind. Arm raised, features twisted into an expression he'd seen a thousand times but never felt on his face, never thought to feel, never dreamed to feel. Because he couldn't actually be the man he'd sworn to himself would never exist.

Leo's barking turned to yelps. They sounded wild and fearful.

"Quiet!" Colin snapped.

Polly cringed. She took another step backwards. Her skirt skimmed the flames. Colin grabbed her arm to draw her from the fire. She jerked away. Leo backed off. His nails sc.r.a.ped on the floor. Aside from the fire and Colin's torn breathing, they made the only sound in the room.

Colin held his hand up at the level of his chest. He stared at the shaking fingers and palm. He'd never struck a woman in his life. He wouldn't have thought he was even capable of doing so. His arm dropped like a weight.

"Polly."

"I cast the circle for you. For Annie as well."

"Polly, I'm sorry. I'm not thinking right. I'm not thinking at all."

She began to b.u.t.ton her coat. He could see that her hands were trembling worse than his, and he made a move to help her but stopped when she cried No! as if with the expectation of being struck.

"Polly..." His voice sounded desperate, even to himself. But he didn't know what he wanted to say.