Barbara Erskine - Hiding From the Light

‘I’m here, my duck.’ Liza was standing there, wrapped in a warm woollen cloak against the mist. She stepped into the room and glanced round, smiling as she saw the gifts lying on the table. ‘That’s kind. I’ll enjoy that.’

‘Where were you, Liza?’ Sarah frowned, still uncomfortable. ‘The water was nearly boiled dry and everything is spilled.’

Liza shook her head. ‘I ran outside. There was somebody in the lane.’ She shrugged. ‘Somebody I didn’t want to see.’

Behind her a cat appeared in the doorway. It mewed and walked up to her, jumped on the table, asking to be petted. She stroked it absently. ‘Sarie, my dear, if anything happened to me, you’d look out for the cats, wouldn’t you? See they was fed and had a home?’

‘Of course I would.’ Sarah caught her hand. ‘What is it, Liza? What’s wrong? Why are you talking like this?’

Liza shrugged. ‘There’s folk out there mean mischief, Sarie. Hopkins’s men. Someone has been bad-mouthing me to him.’

Sarah let out a little cry of anguish. ‘Oh, no! No, Liza. I’d never let that happen. Never. Besides, they would never come for you. Too many people love you.’

Liza gave a toothless grimace. ‘Well, that’s as maybe.’ She put her head on one side. ‘You remember all I’ve taught you, don’t you, Sarie? Never forget it. Never.’ She shrugged. ‘I’ll be all right. I’ll keep out of their way. But,’ she laughed hoarsely, patting the cat again, ‘I worry about these two. They were my babies, just like you.’

‘Don’t, Liza. Don’t talk like that!’ Sarah clung to her hand. ‘No one would hurt you. Or the cats. No one …’

‘No one would hurt the cats! No one!’ Emma woke to find she was shouting the words out loud. Piers was bending over her. ‘Emma! Emma, it’s OK. You’ve been dreaming!’ He was holding her hand.

‘The cats!’ She sat up staring round. ‘Where are the cats?’ Suddenly she was crying.

‘The cats are fine.’ Piers stepped back as she swung her legs to the ground.

‘Where? Where are they?’

‘Inside. Max was cuddled up with you. Then you began to shout and he was frightened. They’re both inside somewhere. Em –?’ He watched as she ran across the terrace. She had kicked off her shoes before she lay down and her feet were bare; her hair was dishevelled.

In the living room she stared round. ‘Max?’ She spotted the cat sitting under the coffee table, his tail swishing from side to side. ‘Oh, Max!’ She dived on him, trying to scoop him up into her arms, but he turned towards her, hissing. Lashing out at her in a panic he scratched her viciously across her wrist and the back of her hand before diving out of reach into the kitchen.

‘Leave him, Em. He’s thoroughly frightened. And so are you.’ Piers’s voice changed suddenly as she threw herself down on the sofa, sobbing. ‘What is it, darling? What’s the matter?’

She shook her head. ‘I don’t know! It was the dream. I was so worried something awful was going to happen to them.’

Piers sat down beside her and put his arm round her. ‘They are both fine. Just leave him for a moment. You frightened him when you started to shout. Here, I’ll get something to put on that scratch. It’s bleeding everywhere.’

By the time he had dabbed her wrist with antiseptic and put a sticking plaster over the worst of the laceration, Emma was calm again.

‘So, what was the dream about, can you tell me?’

She shrugged. Leaning back against the sofa cushions she closed her eyes. ‘That’s the silly thing. It’s gone.’

Piers paused, watching her. ‘Em? Aren’t you feeling well? I wondered why you had come home.’

She frowned and put her head forward into her hands for a moment. Then she shrugged. ‘My head is spinning. I think I’ll go and take a shower, Piers.’

‘Perhaps I’d better remind you,’ he said quietly, ‘or are you just not planning to tell me? You gave in your notice this morning.’

She looked up slowly. ‘I hadn’t forgotten. How do you know?’

‘David rang me. He was really worried. He thinks you’re ill. That was why I came home.’

‘Well, I’m not ill.’

‘Then perhaps, just perhaps, you’re off your head.’ His voice had become hard.

She stood up, looking curiously vulnerable in her navy suit skirt and silk shirt with her hair dishevelled and her feet bare. ‘Perhaps I am.’

The atmosphere was suddenly electric. They were on the brink of shouting at one another, saying things they didn’t mean, things that could never be unsaid, and as if sensing it, neither spoke. It was Piers who broke the silence at last. ‘I don’t want to lose you, Em.’

‘No.’ She said it so quietly he barely heard her.

‘You can’t really want to give up your career. All you’ve worked for.’

‘No.’

‘You love that job.’

‘Yes.’

‘Then why? Why, Em?’

She shrugged her shoulders, sniffing. ‘I don’t know why.’

‘What are you planning to do?’

‘Run it as a herb nursery.’

Piers stared at her. ‘You mean we are still talking about this darn cottage? I don’t believe it. You were even having nightmares about it just now. That is what you were shouting about, Emma. You were shouting “Liza” when you scared Max. Please, Emma, you can’t do this!’

‘I have to.’

‘You are prepared to throw everything up, everything ! To go and live there?’

She nodded.

‘Then you are mad. Totally, completely and utterly off your head.’

She gave a watery smile. ‘On that at least, we agree. I don’t want it to be the end of us, Piers. I really don’t.’

‘How can it not be? I’m a City person, Emma. My life, my job, my friends are all in the City. I can’t … I won’t commute. And I don’t want to spend my weekends somewhere miles out in the country.’

‘People do commute from there. It’s only –’

‘I don’t care how long it takes, or how far it is. I don’t want to do it. I won’t do it.’

‘Then it is the end for us.’ Her tears had dried and her face was white. ‘It has to be. I’m moving down there as soon as the paperwork is done. I’m sorry. I really am. But I have to do it. I have to. It’s mine. It’s where I belong.’

‘You belong here!’ Suddenly he was crying.

‘No. No, I don’t. I don’t, Piers. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’ Tears were pouring down her face, too. Pushing past him she ran towards the door, leaving him staring after her, sobbing like a child.

It was as she was sitting on the bed, cradling her pillow in her arms, having slammed the door on Piers and run to the bedroom, that she realised both the cats were in there already. Pressed tightly together in the five-inch space under the chest of drawers they were staring at her with huge, terrified eyes.

‘You’re scared,’ she murmured at them miserably. ‘And I’m scared. I don’t know why I’m doing this. I don’t understand anything any more. I don’t understand anything at all.’

Wednesday morning

Flora Gordon was waiting for Emma at Planet Organic. She was already drinking an orange juice. Her wildly frizzy blonde hair was if anything more dishevelled than usual, and she had a pile of shopping bags around her feet as she sat on the high stool at the counter.

‘Em?’ She slipped down and gave Emma a hug. ‘What on earth is the matter? You sounded like hell when you rang me. Why aren’t you in the office?’ Flora was one of Emma’s oldest friends. They had been at school together but after that their paths had diverged, Emma to university and City job, Flora to a career in alternative medicine which had led her to study all over the world before she returned to set up a practice in London.