Under a Watchful Eye(8)
Seb had been reduced to darting to and from the nearest shop to fetch essentials, all the time certain that a predator watched him while planning its next strike. To prepare for Becky’s visit, he’d resorted to home deliveries from a supermarket chain.
‘God, I love your place . . . The view. Look at it! . . . How’ve you been? . . . I finished your book about the ship on the way down. It’s different . . . Are you sure you’re okay?’ She’d said this as soon as they arrived at his house, while throwing her coat down and reacquainting herself with his home.
Seb’s place was a modernized twenties townhouse, redesigned by the previous owners in a style that now resembled a picture in a Scandinavian design magazine: open-plan upstairs, light and airy, wood and right angles, bedrooms on the first floor and the living space on the second, all powered by solar energy. The ground floor had a garage for three cars and a reception area.
When Seb first saw the house, he’d liked the idea of going downstairs to sleep, but had never been able to account for the attraction beyond the novelty value.
‘Any news on the new film?’ Becky had asked, distractedly. ‘When’s it out? Can we open the doors? I want to go on the balcony.’
‘There’s a cold wind coming off the water.’
‘It’s nineteen degrees.’
Seb had maintained the stiff smile that made his face ache. His nerves constantly jumped and the most innocuous sounds made him flinch. Though it was the departure of sound that he dreaded most of all, the unnatural silence that accompanied the harrowing presence.
Becky opened the balcony doors. Eyes closed, she inhaled deeply, savouring the coastal atmospherics in the way he’d forgotten how to. After a few minutes outside, she came indoors to sit beside Seb on the sofa. Glass of wine in hand, she’d sat tight against him and slipped a hand over his restless paws. ‘You don’t look that pleased to see me.’
‘Don’t say that. I’ve been counting the days.’
‘Then what is it? You hiding a ring behind you?’
He blanched enough to make Becky shriek with laughter.
‘I’ve . . .’ He had been unable to finish the sentence. He’d made the decision to tell her about Ewan and had rehearsed an explanation. But what he needed to unload had suddenly seemed preposterous and left him feeling awkward, a bit ridiculous too, and even craven.
Becky had stretched out one leg and raised an eyebrow, coquettishly. ‘I can’t believe you haven’t commented on these. I bought them for the weekend. You haven’t even looked at them yet.’ She was referring to the boots, spike-heeled and shining like eels to her knees. She’d worn them with a pencil skirt that had given her progress across the train platform a faint but enticing hobble. The susurration between her thighs would normally have electrified him. He should have been pleasantly uncomfortable with arousal, even greedy for her. After all, it had been a while, but now there was nothing normal about his existence and state of mind.
‘They’re great.’ He’d unintentionally sounded unimpressed, and caught a shade of dismay in Becky’s expression. It registered in a lowering of her satin eyelashes over the green eyes that had first attracted him to her.
‘And you should see what else I’ve got on.’ She’d stroked knees that appeared slippery with a sheen created by the afternoon sun that fell across the seat.
Seb had reached for her then and held her tightly. Not with desire but with affection and relief. He held her like the friend that he so desperately needed – this pretty girl whom he’d always kept at an arm’s length, and with whom he’d been unable to drop an act of indifference. He suspected she’d fallen for him during the six months in which they’d been lovers, without strings, and living in different places.
Becky found his ear. ‘I want to go for a walk and a paddle in the sea. And I want to get pissed. But I’m not going out dressed like this. So let’s get reacquainted properly in your room and then I’ll get changed.’ She’d reached between his legs and applied a gentle pressure. ‘I thought you’d be a rock by now. Am I losing my touch?’
She wasn’t and he’d wanted to say as much. She was as lively and cheeky, playful and sweet smelling, as kind and just as lovely as she had been, since the first time they’d met at a literary festival. Seb had wanted to tell her all of these things but he didn’t, and not because of his reticence about taking an intimate friendship one step further. He’d remained quiet because he was cornered and muted by wretchedness. He was a man who felt twice his age and had no mental capacity for the erotic. Because of him, Ewan, or whatever it was that he was seeing.
During the previous week, Ewan had come for him again, and then again. And he was getting closer with each ‘visit’.
Two days after the episode near the pier, and after the onset of a series of ghastly persecution nightmares, Seb had been compelled to leave the house. Needing to immerse himself within crowds during daylight hours, he’d driven to Plymouth. And while wandering the broad precincts of the town centre, he’d seen Ewan standing before St Andrew’s Cross, at the bottom of the Royal Parade.
His clutch of shock had been instant, followed by a sense of being swallowed by a vacuum, or strange absence, his thoughts unravelling and transported somewhere else. Traffic, gulls, the crowd’s chatter, a pushchair’s wheels on cement, a ship’s lonesome horn, and the clanking of a delivery van’s door, all withdrew as if his hearing had lost its power source. But the face and murky mouth confronting him were distinct enough to reveal a most unpleasant smile, one triumphant and sneering.