Mr. Flood's Last Resort(33)

Renata writes: TALK TO MARY.

“There are no such thing as ghosts,” I point out.

St. Valentine raises his eyebrows.

Renata snaps the lid on her marker pen. “Of course there are; mediums see them all the time.”

“When you pay them.”

“That’s not true, Maud. They grow up seeing them. They see them everywhere. Even at the supermarket.”

Why wouldn’t the dead be found roaming in supermarkets? Death, like life, is probably quite routine. Not unpleasant, just a bit dreary, the best any of us can hope for.

*

I SEE Sam to the door. Keeping my voice low, I ask him the two questions I’ve waited all evening to hear him answer, memory loss or no memory loss.

Question 1: “Did anything odd happen to you up at the house?”

He pushes his feet into his trainers and straightens himself up. “Not at all.”

I think about this. No bobbing bottles and flickering lights, strange noises and sentient rubbish? Then I remember that denial is the cornerstone to mental health.

Question 2: “Why did Mr. Flood go for you with a hurley?”

“He just turned; I’ve no idea what set him off.”

“You didn’t provoke him in some way?”

Sam laughs. “Of course not.” He studies me closely, his face suddenly serious. “Look, I love Renata, I think she’s fantastic, but she’s a great one to spin a tale, create a drama.”

I feel suddenly defensive. “She’s got a point though: that place is odd and he’s odd—”

“Humor your friend, if you want; let her solve an imaginary case, but don’t take this any further, Maud.”

I look at him.

“Leave the old man alone. Don’t go prying into his business.” He kisses me on the cheek. With his breath in my hair and his mouth against my ear he murmurs, “You don’t know what you’re dealing with.”

I feel his low notes heating the base of my spine. I smell soap, citrus and expensive, tinged only slightly with cigarette smoke.

He pulls back and squeezes my arm.

I watch him walk down the path. He shuts the gate, raises his hand, and then he’s gone into the night, turning up his collar, lighting a cigarette.

*

AS I go to close the door I see St. Valentine sitting on Renata’s dustbin, illuminated by the light from the hallway and his own unearthly glow.

He looks at me with one eye; he has the other trained on the garden gate. “Your man’s very vigorous,” he says, his voice high and giddy with delight. “Is he a hopper and a leaper? Is he an honest cowboy? Would he be any use in the sack? Would you say he’s a definite ride?”

St. Valentine will ask four questions to one when he’s overexcited. If he were close enough and not incorporeal he would fleck my face with saliva. Small mercies. St. Valentine waits, wet lipped, grinning.

I frown at him in disgust. “Now, that’s crossing the line.”

He holds his hands up and chuckles. “All I’m saying is I’d watch meself if I were you; compatibility-wise this is a difficult match.”

“Who said anything about a match?”

St. Valentine snorts. “He’s a stallion, a hot-wired, fierce-blooded, honest-to-goodness stallion. You should know, you’ve had the full of your eye on him.”

“Whereas I’m?”

“A fervent donkey at best.”

I narrow my eyes. “And I asked for your opinion?”

“You didn’t, but where love is involved—”

“Then with all due respect, we’ve no further business.”

St. Valentine roars laughing. “Oh, there’ll be further business all right, Twinkle, just you wait.”

I quickly close the door.





CHAPTER 13




A storm is coming in over the Atlantic. Above me the sky is sheet metal. With the thunder the rain falls in quick needling bursts, hardly enough to wet the dunes and hardly enough to make me put my hood up. But still, I zipper my anorak and shove my book up the front to keep it dry. This gives me a big square tummy.

And that’s when I see them breathe, the dunes.

I watch in horror as their sandy skirts begin to buzz and waft. They start to move, floating towards me like hovercraft, churning up the beach in their path, ripping out the marram grass.

I never took my eyes from them, I never nosed around them, I never ran over them—they have no right to attack!

To my left: sinking sand; to my right: horseflies; before me: the sea; behind me—

*

MORNING HAS happened. Weak light shines through my curtains. St. Dymphna is sitting on the end of my bed. She cradles a lamp in her lap. It is slipper shaped, pinched and smoothed from clay, a thing of loveliness that perfectly fits her little white hand. She blows on it and it sparks with a sudden flame. Her face is illuminated, her eyes glittering, a half smile on her lips.

She glances up at me. “It’s all fiction you know, what you think you remember about that day.”

“I know what I remember.”

“You know better than to trust your memory, Maud. What have I told you?”

I don’t answer.

She sets the lamp on the bedside table. The flame lengthens and flickers. “What were you? Six, ten?”