The Wife Before Me(99)
She grasps the keys to prevent them jingling and pulls them out. The glass hand that struck him lies at an angle to his neck. The palm with its beckoning curve is finely lined, head and heart lines, a life line that has changed much since Leanne traced Amelia’s fate in glass.
The light flickers. Her senses are alert to the danger of another outage but the flickering stops and the room remains bright. She is about to rise when she registers the position of the hand. It had fallen close to his left shoulder but it is now positioned to his right. Too late, she tries to stand but Nicholas has grabbed her wrist. He jerks her so violently that the keys drop to the floor and she, overbalancing, is brought to her knees. His free hand closes over one of the fallen logs, chosen, Amelia knows, because he can clasp it with ease and swing it unerringly at her head.
Easily, as if she is feather-light, he carries her in his arms from the cottage. Glass breaks under his feet as he walks across the shards. Stunned but still conscious, she is unable to see if Elena is still in the jeep. He lowers her into the back seat of the BMW and lifts a length of rope from the floor. He deals easily with her struggles, faint as they are, and when he has bound her hands behind her and tied her ankles, he walks back to her jeep. He opens all the doors then slams them closed. Unable to move yet desperate to see what he is doing, she lolls helplessly and falls forward, banging her face off the back of the passenger seat. He returns to the car alone and pushes her roughly into a sitting position.
‘Did you really believe I’d never find you?’ He holds her face in his hand and forces her to look at him. ‘Answer me, you whoring bitch.’
* * *
Her lips are puckered from his pressure and when she refuses to answer him he leans forward and kisses her. ‘That’s the last time you’ll ever be kissed by anyone,’ he says. ‘I hope it brings you comfort when you’re drowning.’
He slams the back door and gets into the driver’s seat.
‘Where are you going?’ she asks as he drives over the rutted trail towards the junction where a smoother road leads to the summit.
‘To the edge of the world.’ He stares at her in the rear-view mirror, his eyes marbled with hate. ‘Isn’t that where you went to escape from me?’
Sixty-One
Something is wrong. Elena is too familiar with the signs to ignore them. The prickling feeling on her skin, the cold air that comes with a warning. From where she is sitting, she watches the flickering light above the porch. It steadies again and shines over Nicholas as he emerges from the cottage with Amelia in his arms.
Elena slides painfully to the floor and hunkers down to avoid being seen by him. As soon as he has passed the jeep, and she is sure he has reached his car, she peers over the passenger seat. The interior bulb in his car flashes on when he opens the back door. Unable to see what he is doing, she reaches upwards and switches off the jeep’s interior light and opens the door. Her ears seem to be ringing, as they often did when Nicholas struck her, but when she is outside, hunched at the side of the jeep, she realises that the tinkling sounds are coming from the direction of the studio. The door must have been torn open by the gale and the butterflies are dancing.
She avoids the broken glass in the hall and enters the living room. Crossing to the window, she watches Nicholas search the jeep for her. The knife that Amelia failed to use is now in her hand. She will not hesitate if he enters Clearwater. But he returns to his car. The headlights sweep over the hulking bluffs and the lopsided rocks that gleam like the scales of prehistoric reptiles, rising on their hind legs.
Elena waits until he is out of sight before she turns on the engine and reverses the jeep onto the road. She can only see from one eye and the jolting road intensifies the pain in her head. The BMW is out of sight but she drives with dipped headlights in case he sees her. Unable to steer a straight course, she veers off the road. The wheels sink into spongy grass. She straightens the jeep, her hands clenched on the wheel. At the junction she hesitates, unsure of the direction he has taken. Unable to see his rear-view lights winking on the downward slope, she negotiates the narrow turn and drives upwards towards the summit. The road twists continuously. She catches an occasional glimpse of his headlights before his car disappears round another bend. Sections of the hedgerows have been cut away to provide an area for cars to pull in and allow approaching traffic to pass. Before the final ascent to the summit, Elena parks the jeep in one of these, gets out and moves forward on foot. She carries a torch in one hand and grips the knife in the other.
* * *
Amelia wriggles her hands, but they are too tightly bound to allow any leeway. The moon shines on the white rim of the ocean below them. Nicholas is driving erratically, veering from one side of the road to the other. She doesn’t know if he is doing it deliberately to add to her panic or if he is unaware of how close they are to the edge of the headland.
A stone hits the windscreen. The glass cracks but doesn’t shatter. Nicholas curses as the cracks widen and multiply into a web of many strands. Unable to see in front of him, he struggles to bring the car under control. Amelia opens her mouth to scream but only a whimper emerges. The same anguished whimper that always brought her father to her side. Nicholas’s knuckles whiten as he brakes on the viewing platform on the summit of Mag’s Head.
The cracks in the windscreen have formed a shape. A face appears. Amelia recognises her reflection in this distorted mirror. She blinks but it’s still there, clearer now. The pale cameo made visible convinces her that she is staring not at herself but at Leanne. Windswept hair and feline eyes, that strong, concentrated gaze that looked with love upon her so often.