Pauline Rowson: Blood on the Sand

'Good. I'd like him to find a comfortable home.'

She wouldn't be taking him back to Luxembourg with her then. Would she even be returning there? He guessed so and felt a pang of disappointment. He hoped it wouldn't be too soon. But those were questions for another day. Now he asked the question that had been bothering him.

'Did Jonathan Anmore tell you where to find Owen?' Laura Rosewood had said he'd called Thea, but Thea hadn't answered Terry Knowles' calls so why should she have answered Anmore's call?

She sat down beside him, her pale blue eyes sad and hollow with fatigue. Her hands were shaking slightly. Her chin came up and she held his gaze. 'No, he didn't.'

He knew it was the truth. He took her hands in his. They seemed so small and so thin. She made no effort to withdraw them.

'I couldn't tell you where I was, Andy, though I wanted to.'

He liked hearing her say his name.

The silence hung between them for several seconds. Horton felt reluctant to disturb it but there was still a question he needed to ask. 'Who was the girl, Thea? The one you asked Peter Bohman about?'

She took a breath. 'I kept seeing this girl in my mind just before Arina was killed. She was in a stark white room, wearing a white gown, and she was warning me of evil and danger. She warned my mother too, only she either chose to ignore it or couldn't avoid it. I think the latter, which was why she sent me that postcard of Whitefields. It feels like an evil place, and a sad one. I think the girl was from there and my mother had seen her just before she came across Laura and those men. Oh, this girl isn't real, not now anyway. She lived once. Sorry if this sort of talk bothers you.'

'I never said… Did this girl tell you how it would end?'

'In the sea, but I didn't know whether that was my fate or someone else's. It's all right, you don't have to believe.' She gave a timid smile.

Maybe he did. Suddenly he was back on the old golf course at the Duver but this time as a child. A woman was ahead of him. She turned and called his name, then laughed.

'She's still alive.'

Horton started. 'Who is?' he asked sharply. He knew she wasn't talking about Laura Rosewood. She held his gaze and he saw this was no act.

'The woman you're searching for,' Thea said quietly.

Horton felt sick, then a flicker of hope, then bewilderment.

'You're very angry with her for hurting you.'

He made to withdraw his hands but she clung on to them.

'Listen.' She leant forward with a new urgency in her voice, as the sound of a car pulled up outside. 'You don't have to believe me, that's up to you, but I just want you to know that I felt her presence on that first day we met. When you touched me, she was there so powerfully that for a moment I forgot about Owen and that was incredible. I felt your anger, and her pain. I could hardly breathe.'

Car doors slammed. Footsteps on the gravel drive. His heart was pounding. The blood pulsating in his ears. He had about twenty seconds before Cantelli rang the doorbell. He so desperately wanted to believe her, but could he? Dare he? Ten seconds.

'Is she dead?'

'That's not the question.'

Voices outside. Was she telling him the truth? He took a breath. 'Thea, should I look for her?'

She held his gaze. 'That's for you to decide, Andy.'

'Does she want me to?'

The bell clanged through the house.

'What do you think?'

There was only one possible answer.