Nicola Cornick - House Of Shadows

He took her hand. His fingers interlocked strongly with hers, and still she did not know the answer and felt quite faint with the need to know. She stepped over the threshold and gently tugged his hand; he followed.

There was a message from Fran on the mat. It said: ‘I’ve just got back. Call me.’

Holly read it upside down, stepped over it and turned back to Mark. She could smell his skin, the faint scent of fresh air. He was cold to the touch. She pulled him inside, slammed the door and reached up to kiss him. After a second he responded and she felt sharp desire and such relief that she trembled. The loneliness, the fear, faded.

She kissed him again, driving out thought, losing herself in sensation, drawing back only so that she could lead him towards the stairs. She could feel his presence behind her, close as a whisper. She was still holding his hand. The late afternoon sun was streaming in at the big bedroom window, , the line of the hills spread out before them. Mark was watching her face.

‘Holly, what’s this about?’

She felt his breath feather across her skin. She could see the shadow of his eyelashes, spiky against the hard line of his cheek. His lips brushed her jaw. Again she felt that fierce rush of desire. She turned her head and Mark’s mouth was suddenly on hers again, one hand tangled in her hair, the other low on her back. Sensation flared. Mark’s hand brushed the thin cotton of her shirt, his palm against her breast. He was still kissing her. Such urgency. She had never even imagined it could be like that and she was fiercely glad; glad she was not alone any more; glad she could forget for a little while. She pulled him down onto the bed beside her and lost herself in him.

There was a distant ringing sound in Holly’s ears. She struggled awake to find the room full of daylight. Her body felt relaxed for the first time in days and her mind was as clear and sharp as a cut in a piece of glass. She could remember every detail of the night. They hadn’t slept much. They hadn’t talked at all.

She turned over. Mark lay beside her, curled on his side, sleeping peacefully. The lines of his face were softened. Something pierced Holly’s detachment and made her breath catch in her throat. She looked at him for a moment, then got out of bed and tiptoed over to the wardrobe. She almost tripped over the clothes piled on the floor. Turning the key in the door she took out an old paisley robe of Ben’s she had borrowed the last time she had come down.

Light was streaming into the long living room and her phone was full of messages. She ignored them. It was the doorbell that was ringing, on and on. Bonnie was agitated, waiting by the door, tail waving. All Holly could think was that if Ben had timed his arrival back now it would be difficult to work out which of them had the more explaining to do.

She opened the door and found Fran on the step, shivering inside her jacket. It was another sunny morning but they were standing in the shade of the building and the shadows were cold.

‘Holly!’ Fran’s eyes were puzzled, her voice full of concern. ‘Thank goodness! I thought you’d disappeared too. Are you ill or something? I heard about Ben—’

‘You already know?’ Holly blinked in shock.

‘The whole village knows,’ Fran said. ‘You can’t keep secrets around here.’ She bit her lip. ‘Look, I’m sorry if I caused a problem for you but when I couldn’t get you last night I called your grandparents. I thought perhaps you might have gone over to Oxford. Oh, and I rang Guy as well. What the hell happened there? He told me you had broken your engagement—’

Normally Holly could cope with Fran’s ramblings but this morning her head hurt. ‘You rang Gran?’ She felt a sick, swooping sensation in her chest. She could not imagine how Hester and John had felt to hear that Ben had vanished and that Fran couldn’t get hold of Holly either. No wonder she had hundreds of messages on her phone. She was surprised they weren’t there, hammering on the door.

Fran’s gaze dropped to her note, still resting on the mat at the bottom of the steps. She frowned. ‘Didn’t you see my message? We’ve been worried about you.’

Holly drew her robe more closely about her throat. ‘I’m sorry. I’ll ring Gran straight away and let her know I’m OK.’

Fran was watching her as though she knew there was something wrong but could not quite work it out. ‘Are you feeling ill? Has it all been too much for you? I’m so, so sorry about Ben. Has there been no word? I just don’t understand it. It’s not like him.’

There was a sound upstairs. Fran started to say something else but Holly spoke quickly.

‘I’d better go and get dressed. I’m really sorry, Fran. I’m feeling a bit weird about it all to be honest. I’ll come and seem you later.’

Fran huddled deeper in her jacket. ‘You poor thing! No wonder you haven’t got up yet. Look, do you want me to come in and make you a cup of coffee? We could talk—’

There was another sound from upstairs, too loud to ignore. Fran frowned. ‘Holly, is somebody here already? What’s going on?’

Holly shivered. ‘Sorry, Fran, it’s not really convenient to talk right now.’

‘Has Ben come back?’ Fran demanded.

‘No,’ Holly said.

‘Then did Guy come down after all? Because last night he said—’

‘No,’ Holly said again.

She saw the moment that the penny dropped in Fran’s mind, the widening of her eyes, the look of comical shock on her face. Fran clapped a hand to her mouth. Her gaze roved over Holly’s tumbled hair, her bare feet. ‘Oh Holly,’ she said, ‘What have you done – Oh my God, you haven’t … Say you haven’t. What’s happened to you? You never do things like that!’

Holly caught her arm urgently. ‘I can’t talk now. Please, Fran, it’s a bit complicated.’

Fran looked torn between stunned horror and concern. ‘Holly, you’re in shock. I’ve read about this. When people go missing their relatives can suffer from something called suspended grief, not knowing whether someone is dead or not—’

‘Thanks, Fran,’ Holly said. Despite herself she could feel a flicker of a smile starting and some sense of normality returning. Fran’s monumental lack of tact had always been cheering rather than anything else. ‘I’ll talk to you later,’ she said. ‘Really, I will. I’ve got things to sort out.’

‘I can imagine,’ Fran said dryly. Then she looked past Holly’s shoulder. Holly saw her expression freeze before Fran rearranged her face into ultra-casual indifference.

‘Mark,’ she said brightly. ‘Hi. How are you?’

Holly spun around. Mark, fully dressed, was standing in the doorway. He nodded to Fran.

‘Hi, Fran.’

Holly felt her stomach dip as though she were on a roller coaster. The previous day she hadn’t spared a single thought for who Mark was or what he was doing at Ashdown. Now, though, she realised that far from being a random tourist who would disappear in the morning, he must live there and would be going precisely nowhere. Her stomach tightened and panic fluttered in her throat.

‘You’ve heard about Ben?’ Fran had waited for Holly to speak and then, when she hadn’t, had rushed in to fill the awkward silence as best she could.

‘Just now,’ Mark said. His gaze was on Holly’s face, dark and inscrutable. ‘What happened?’

‘He’s missing,’ Holly said. ‘He vanished a couple of nights ago.’ It felt ridiculous, surreal, to be standing here like this politely discussing her brother’s disappearance when she had neglected to mention it before.