The Winter Sea (Slains, #1)(24)

‘Insecurities,’ she said again.

‘I can’t help it.’ It came with the job—all the time that I spent on my own, with that blank stack of paper I had to turn into a book. Sometimes I felt like the girl in the fairy tale, Rumplestiltskin, locked up and told to spin straw into gold. ‘I’m never sure,’ I said, ‘if I can pull it off.’

‘But you always do,’ Jane pointed out. ‘And brilliantly.’

‘Well, thank you.’

‘All you need is a break. I could take you to lunch.’

‘That’s all right, we don’t have to go out. I can make you a sandwich.’

She looked round. ‘With what?’

I hadn’t realized, till I looked around myself, that I had nearly used up the supplies that Jimmy Keith had stocked my kitchen with. I was down to three slices of bread and an egg. ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘I guess I need to do some shopping.’

‘We can do that,’ said Jane, ‘on our way back from lunch.’

After lunch, though, I managed to talk her into walking up to Slains with me, again. We went from the village this time, by the footpath that led from the Main Street. It took us through a wood of tangled trees behind Ward Hill, where a small and quiet stream ran through a gully to the sea. The footpath crossed the stream by way of a flat bridge, then climbed the further hill that changed from coarse, shrub-covered ground into a proper cliff as we came up above the level of the trees. Another steep turn and we stood at the top, with the sea far below us and Slains in our sights. The walk here wasn’t difficult, as coast paths went, but it was slippery in spots, and twice Jane nearly lost her footing near the edge.

‘You are not,’ she said, emphatically, ‘to come up here alone.’

‘You sound exactly like my mother.’

‘She’s a sensible woman, your mother. I mean, look at this, will you? What kind of a madman builds his home right at the edge of a cliff ?’

‘The kind of a madman who likes good defenses.’

‘But they’re not such good defenses, really, are they? If your enemies came overland, they’d have you trapped. There’d be nowhere to go.’ She glanced down again at the foaming sea striking the rocks far below, and I could see that it affected her. I hadn’t expected that she would be bothered by heights. After all, she’d flown with Alan, and the two of them were known to do some crazy things on holidays, like climbing into caves and parasailing in the Amazon.

‘Are you OK?’ I asked.

‘I’m fine.’ But she did not look down again.

I felt completely in my element, myself. I liked the sea sounds and the crisp wind in my face, and my feet placed themselves with confidence upon the path, as though they felt quite certain of the way.

There were no other footprints ahead of our own, and no tracks of a dog in the soft, muddy places. Which wasn’t too surprising, since it stood to reason that the man I’d run into that first day in the parking lot, the man I’d asked directions of, could hardly spend his whole day, every day, up here. He might not even be a local man. I hadn’t seen him round the town—and, for no reason other than the fact I’d liked his smile, I had been looking.

I was looking for him now, but when he wasn’t at the top, I took care not to show my disappointment. Jane didn’t miss much, and she always had been quick to take an interest any time I took an interest in a man. I didn’t want her asking questions. After all, there wasn’t anything for me to say, I’d only met him once. I didn’t even know his name.

Jane asked me, ‘What’s the sigh for?’

‘Did I sigh?’

‘With feeling.’

‘Well, just look at this,’ I said, and spread my hands wide to the view. ‘It’s all so beautiful.’

The ruins felt much lonelier this afternoon, with us the only visitors. The wind wept round the high pink granite walls and followed when we walked along the grassy floors of what had once been corridors. I had wanted to see if, from what still remained, I could make out the floor plan, and Jane, her equilibrium restored now that we’d stepped a little further from the edge, was keen to join me in the game.

‘I think,’ she said, ‘this might have been the kitchen. Here’s a bit of chimney stack, and look at the size of that hearth.’

‘I don’t know.’ I walked further along. ‘I think maybe the kitchen was somewhere down here, near the stables.’

‘And what makes you think those are stables?’

She wasn’t convinced, and I knew I was letting the house I’d imagined last night, when I’d written the scenes of Sophia at Slains, shape my judgment of where things should be. There was nothing at all at this end of the house to suggest what the rooms might have been—only roofless rectangular spaces with crumbling walls, nothing more. But I still spent a happy few minutes meandering round, playing at fitting my made-up rooms onto the real ones.

Sophia’s bedchamber, I thought, could be within that tall square tower standing proudly at the corner of the castle’s front, against the cliffs. I couldn’t see a way to get inside it, but my mind could fill the details in, and guess at what the views might be. And down there, at the end of this long corridor with all the doors, could be the castle’s dining room, and this, I thought as I stepped through a narrow arching door into the soaring room I’d liked so much my first time here, the one where I had seen the tracks of man and dog and where the gaping window gave a wide view of the sea, this surely must have been the drawing room. Well, under the drawing room, actually, since I was standing in what would have been the lower level of the house, the floorless main rooms being all above me, but the view would be the same from the great window I saw higher up the wall. A person could have stood there and looked out towards the east along the glinting path of sunlight on the waves to the horizon.