Robert Goddard - Borrowed Time

Then the alarm was buzzing angrily close to my ear. With a jolt, I sat up and stabbed at its button until silence returned. The trees were still visible to my mind’s eye, the patch of shadow she’d stepped into still tantalizingly close. But as the ghostly shapes of the shrouded furniture emerged from the darkness around me, the trees slipped away, until only the faintest trace of a memory-the lightest breath of a breeze between their leaves-remained.

A blank canvas. Ready to picture the future she’d never lived to shape. Like her diary. An empty space that would never be filled. “ Can we really change anything, do you think? ” I could remember the words, but couldn’t re-create the voice. There seemed to be nothing I- Then it came to me, so suddenly and forcefully it was as if somebody had struck me in the face. The diary. Of course. If Paul was lying, then every detail of his obsessive pursuit of Louise was also a lie. Even his meeting with her in the Covent Garden café. It hadn’t happened. Yet Sarah had shown me the proof that it had happened. In her mother’s own handwriting. Thursday April 5: Atascadero, 3.30 . A forged entry? Or a clever manipulation of a genuine one? Either way, Paul couldn’t have had access to Louise’s diary without- “Sarah.” I spoke her name aloud as I rose from the sofa and headed for the door.

It was a cold wet dawn in Bristol, too bleak and early, I’d have guessed, for Sarah to have gone out. But there was no response to my persistent prods at her bell in Caledonia Place. And only a recorded answer when I tried her number on my car-phone. I went back to the door, intending to use the keys Bella had given me to go in, but a well-dressed middle-aged woman emerged as I approached and fixed me with a suspicious glare.

“Are you the person who’s just been ringing Sarah Paxton’s bell? I live in the flat below and couldn’t help wondering when you were going to give up.”

“Well, it was me, actually, yes. I’m a friend of Sarah’s.”

“Really? Well, I know for a fact that she’s gone away. So you’re wasting your time, aren’t you?”

“Apparently so.” I smiled uneasily. “Any idea where she’s gone? Or for how long?”

“None at all, I’m afraid. Excuse me.”

She bustled off to her car, but lingered ostentatiously after opening the boot, clearly reluctant to leave while I was lurking around her front door. In the circumstances, there was nothing for it but to retreat to my own car and drive away.

I could have doubled back straightaway of course, but I decided to wait and see what I could glean from Anstey’s first. I parked on the circular road round Clifton Down and gazed along the gorge at the suspension bridge, its familiar shape blurred and distorted by the runnels of rainwater on the windscreen. How often did Sarah come up here, I wondered, and study the same view? How often did she imagine she could see Rowena leaning against the railings in the middle of the bridge and staring back at her? As now I almost did myself.

By nine o’clock, I was at Anstey’s offices in Trinity Street, explaining to a bemused secretary that I was a friend of the Paxton family, trying to contact Sarah on a matter of extreme urgency. The news that Sarah wasn’t at home clearly embarrassed the poor woman, who until now had been happy to believe her absence was due to flu. “She phoned in sick on Monday morning. As far as I know, we haven’t heard from her since.” She wanted me to wait for the senior partner, who usually arrived by nine thirty, but her confirmation that Sarah had lied to me about the course in Guildford made such a delay unthinkable. Did she know where I could find Sarah’s boyfriend? Yes, she did. “You mean Rodney Gardner. He’s a solicitor too. But not with this firm. Haynes, Palfreyman and Fyfe. In Corn Street.”

I’d met Rodney just once, at The Hurdles a year before. He remembered me as well as I remembered him: not very. Which turned his natural caution into acute wariness when he received me in his office at ten o’clock that morning.

“Why exactly are you looking for Sarah?”

“A family matter.”

“But you’re not family, are you?”

“Does that make a difference?”

“I don’t know.”

“Look, I may as well tell you. Her father’s died.”

“Good Lord. How?”

“Do you know where she is?”

“Well, not really, no.”

“She’s not been at work since Monday. She told them she had flu. But she’s not at home either. So, where could she be?”

“I’ve no idea.” He fiddled with the ribbon marker of his desk diary for a moment, then said: “To be honest, I’m the last person you should be asking. Sarah and I had a… disagreement… about a month ago. We haven’t spoken since.”

“What did you disagree about?”

“It was a stupid business really. But… baffling. I’d been getting a bit resentful of the number of times she couldn’t see me. She always seemed to be working. Even at the weekends. Well, the parents-in-law of one of the partners here, Clive Palfreyman, have retired to the Isle of Wight. Clive and his wife went to see them one weekend and met Sarah on the car ferry back. When they asked what had taken her to the Island, she said she’d been visiting a client in Parkhurst Prison. Clive mentioned it to me and asked if the client was some local villain we might have heard of. Sarah had been pretty tight-lipped, apparently. Well, she’d said nothing to me about it. Not a thing. And when I raised it with her, she was too quick to plead confidentiality for my liking. I had a quiet word with one of her colleagues later. We play a weekly game of squash. He was more or less adamant that Anstey’s had no client banged up in Parkhurst. She had to be lying. But why? When I confronted her, she flew completely off the handle. Accused me of spying on her and God knows what. Said if that was how I was going to behave, it’d be best if we stopped seeing each other. And that’s what we did.”

“You haven’t seen her since?”

“No. As a matter of fact, I was going to try and patch things up this week. I’d bought her some rather expensive earrings for Christmas. But then I heard about Shaun Naylor’s appeal. And something clicked. I remembered which prison they’d said he was in. Albany. On the Isle of Wight. Just down the road from Parkhurst. And I wondered if…”

“That’s who she’d been to see.”

“Yes. That’s exactly what I wondered. Which would be weird, wouldn’t it? I mean… why should she?”

If Sarah had helped Paul concoct his confession, as I was beginning to think she must have done, maybe she was hiding-though what from I couldn’t imagine-at his house on Bathurst Wharf. I walked from Corn Street back through the unrelenting rain to Queen Square, where I’d parked the car, then on to the quay where I’d seen Rowena for the last time six months before and across the swing-bridge to her former home.

By the time I reached the door I was sure something must be wrong. It stood open to the wind and wet and a grey-haired woman in housecoat and wellingtons was peering in over the threshold. As I approached, a man appeared beyond her in the hallway: Inspector Joyce.

“Mr. Timariot,” he said, spotting me immediately over the woman’s shoulder. “What brings you here?”

“Well, I…”

“Looking for Mr. Bryant?”

“Er… yes. Obviously.”

“You’re out of luck.” He stepped onto the pavement and erected an umbrella. “My sergeant will lock up, luv,” he said to the woman. “He’ll drop the key back to you. Thanks for your cooperation.” Then he moved past her and walked slowly towards me, frowning suspiciously. Until the brim of his brolly snagged on mine and he pulled up abruptly. “That’s the next-door neighbour,” he said. “Bryant leaves a key with her. When we couldn’t raise him, we thought we’d better take a peek inside.”