Danuta Reah - Only Darkness

She ought to eat something. The two beers she’d had with Rob had gone to her head. She wandered round the kitchen, opening cupboards. Buttercup yarped insistently at her feet. ‘I’ve fed you,’ Debbie told the little cat, and, picking her up, took her to the cat dish. Buttercup spurned the food with a burying motion, and hurried back to the kitchen after Debbie, mewing.

Some pasta, some wizened mushrooms, some eggs and some onions were the results of Debbie’s trawl. A mushroom omelette, then. She put some oil to heat in the frying pan, and stirred the eggs in a dish. She washed the mushrooms and chopped them, deciding to fry them in butter as she deserved a treat. The mushrooms were cooking, and she was just pouring the eggs into the pan when the phone rang. Shit. She was tempted to leave it, but she couldn’t stand a ringing phone. She was always convinced it was something serious on the other end. As soon as she picked it up, it stopped. She banged it down in frustration, and it started again. She picked it up and again it stopped. She waited a moment, then just as she was about to pick up the receiver to try 1471, the phone rang a third time. She grabbed it and waited. A voice she recognized well at the other end said, ‘Debbie?’

‘Mum!’ She was relieved. ‘Are you having phone trouble again?’ Gina Sykes had been supplied with a series of jinxed phones by an increasingly apologetic and baffled phone company. The most recent one had behaved itself until, apparently, now.

‘No. Should I have? After all the trouble I’ve had …’ And she rattled off into the long story about inefficient operators and astronomical phone bills. Then she said, ‘Now, love, I’m phoning about that article in the Standard. Why didn’t you tell me about it? It’s a bit much when I’m terrified for my daughter nearly a week too late.’

Debbie sighed. She’d been hoping, rather unrealistically, that her mother wouldn’t see the article, as she rarely read the local paper. She explained what had happened, and, feeling a bit guilty for not having said anything to her mother about the whole business in the first place, she told her about the interview with the police, and a slightly edited account of Rob Neave’s opinion.

‘Well, you pay heed to that,’ Gina advised her. ‘It’s what your dad would have said as well. Listen, Debbie, I’m going up to the grave on Saturday, taking some flowers. Do you want to come too?’

Of course! It was her father’s birthday on Saturday. Debbie, who never remembered birthdays – sometimes including her own – had always relied on her mother to remind her, so she could send her father a card and a present. Now it seemed she needed to be reminded about anniversaries. She felt guilty. ‘Of course I will,’ she said, trying to remember if she’d made any arrangements for the weekend. ‘Shall I try and make it over on Friday night? If I’m not too busy. I could stay Saturday as well.’ Though her mother was only a few stops up the line, Debbie didn’t see as much of her as either of them would like. Debbie’s work schedule got in the way, and Gina’s job, though part time, occupied irregular hours.

After some more desultory conversation, Debbie rang off, and stood by the phone, looking at the photo on the table, her and her father displaying that trophy so proudly. Had her mother been trying to get through or not? Or was there someone else trying to phone her? A smell of burning brought her back, and she rushed to the kitchen to be confronted by pans full of burnt eggs and blackened mushrooms. She scraped the eggs on to a saucer and offered them to Buttercup, who crouched down intently to eat them. She dumped both pans in a sink full of water, angrily ripped a crust off the end of the loaf and ate it dry. It was stale.

Midnight, and again, Neave couldn’t sleep. He drank some beer, listened to some music, read for a while, but he couldn’t get his head to be still. It was all there, just waiting. The smallest thing brought it back. Angie.

The children’s home where he’d spent most of his childhood had been run by people with very traditional views – no political correctness there. Boys were encouraged to boys’ activities and girls to girls’. He hadn’t minded this, except for the book with the pictures in. ‘What are you reading that for?’ Marlisse used to say. ‘You don’t want to read that. You’re a boy,’ and she’d substitute a sports book or an adventure book that she considered more suitable.

But the book with the pictures fascinated him and he went back to it again and again. All the pictures were mysterious, with watery, twisting colours that suggested unseen things lurking in the shadows on the page. The pictures were all supposed to be of fairies and elves – which is why Marlisse thought it wasn’t a boy’s book – but these weren’t pretty little children with big eyes and gauzy wings. Some of them were twisted, ugly and strange, and some of them were wild and dangerous. There was one picture that he couldn’t get out of his mind. In the background of this picture, a figure was half concealed behind some flowers. She had red-gold hair and an expression of glee on a face that had a wild, pinched beauty. He had been in love with her – whatever she was. They had had adventures together where he’d saved her from dungeons, and enemy soldiers, and high mountains and dark caves. She had been a companion in some of the loneliest times. He hadn’t thought about the picture for years, and had certainly never expected to see it again, until she’d run lightly down the stairs in that dressing gown and looked at him with surprise.

He could see Berryman watching her as she knelt in front of the fire. He’d watched her as well. She’d known, and had casually moved the towel that she was using to dry her hair to obscure Berryman’s view. But she had known he could still see her from his position by the mantelpiece, and had sparkled her eyes briefly in his direction. She was playing a dangerous game, and he liked that.

He waited until the end of that shift. It was nearly seven before he left the station. He turned down Berryman’s suggestion of a drink. He had two days free now, and he and Berryman had plans for them, involving a couple of women they’d met the week before and invited over to his flat Saturday night; but first he decided to go back. He wasn’t quite sure what he was going to say – More questions? Forgot to ask …? He’d wing it when the time came. He parked outside the shabby terrace. It was getting dark now. He tried out one or two phrases – Sorry to disturb you again, could you just go over … but it wasn’t how he expected.

He knocked at the door. He could hear music coming from the downstairs room, which stopped as he knocked the second time. She opened the door and looked at him, then she smiled and invited him in. She took him into the room they’d been in earlier and she made some kind of gesture, of welcome, he wasn’t sure. She was dressed now, wearing something that seemed to consist of scarves and swirls, a confusion of shadow colours. Her hair, now it was dry, curled on to her shoulders a vivid red-gold. He couldn’t stop looking at her.

The violin was out of its case, propped up next to the music stand. ‘I was just practising,’ she said. ‘I’ve nearly finished. You don’t mind waiting?’ She picked up the instrument again, smiled briefly at him, and then became intent as she played. He watched the way her body bent and danced with the music, as though she was part of it. She was unselfconscious. He had given himself the right to watch her last time, this time she had given him the right. When she finished the piece she was playing, he asked her about the music. He’d never heard anything like it before. She picked up the violin again and played him pieces as she was talking about them. Then she showed him how to draw the bow across the strings and after a couple of tortured cat sounds, he produced a high, clear note.