Rosamunde Pilcher - September

Without Lottie. Horrible Lottie was back in hospital. The news had been relayed to Henry by Mr. Henderson, and the relief of knowing that Edie was safely on her own again had filled Henry with courage and finally precipitated his illegal flight. It made all the difference, knowing that he had somewhere safe to go. Edie would take him in her arms, ask no questions, make him hot cocoa. Edie would listen to him. She would understand. She would be on his side. And with Edie on his side, surely everybody else would take notice of what she had to say and would not be angry with him.

The lights still burned in Mrs. Ishak's supermarket, but he kept to the far side of the road, so that Mrs. Ishak, by chance, would not see him as he passed by. The rest of the street was dark, lit only by the curtained windows of the wayside houses. From behind these windows Henry could hear muffled voices or music from people's television sets. Edie would be sitting in her armchair, watching television, busy with her knitting.

' He came to her little cottage with its thatch, crouched down between its neighbours. The window of her sitting-room was dark, which meant she wasn't watching television. But from her bedroom window, light streamed brightly out, and it seemed that she had forgotten to draw her curtains.

She had other curtains, lace ones, for privacy, but it was perfectly possible to see through these. Henry went close to the window and peered inside, cupping his hands to the sides of his face as he had seen grown-ups do. The lace curtains veiled the interior a bit, but he saw Edie at once. She was standing at her dressing-table, with her back to him. She was wearing her new lilac cardigan and looked as though she was putting powder on her face. Perhaps she was going out. Dressed in her best lilac cardigan…

He balled his fist and rapped on the glass to catch her attention. She turned from the mirror with a start and came towards him. The overhead light shone down on her face, and his heart leaped in a spasm of horror, because something dreadful had happened to her. She had got a different face, with staring black eyes and a mouth red with lipstick, all smeared as though it were blood. And her hair was wrong, and her cheeks pale as paper…

It was Lottie.

Those staring eyes. A revulsion, stronger than fear, jerked him away from the window. He backed off across the street, out of the patch of yellow light that lay across the wet pavement. Every exhausted limb in his body was shaking, and his heart thumped against his chest as though it were trying to fight its way out. Petrified with terror, he thought he would probably never be able to move again. The terror was for himself, but mostly it was for Edie.

Lottie had done something to her. His very worst nightmare was true, was happening. Somehow, Lottie had come creeping secretly back to Strathcroy and burst in on Edie when Edie wasn't looking.

Somewhere in the cottage Edie lay. On the kitchen floor perhaps, with a meat chopper in the back of her neck and blood all over the place.

He opened his mouth to scream for help, but the only sound that emerged was a trembling, faint whisper.

And now Lottie was there, at the window, raising the lace curtain to peer out into the street, her horrible face pressed against the glass. In a moment, she would go to the door, she would be after him.

He forced his legs to move, backed away up the road, and then turned and ran. It was like running in a dreadful, treacly dream, but this time he knew that he would never wake up. His ears were filled with the thud of his own footsteps and the rasping of his breath. It was difficult to breathe. He tore the Balaclava helmet from his head, and the cold air streamed down on his head and cheeks. His brain cleared, and ahead, he saw his refuge. The bright windows of Mrs. Ishak's shop, stacked with the usual colourful display of soap powders and cereal packets and cut-price bargains.

He ran to Mrs. Ishak.

Mrs. Ishak's long day was winding itself down. Her husband, having emptied the till of the day's takings, had disappeared into the stock-room, where each evening he totted up all the cash, and then locked it away in his safe. Mrs. Ishak had been around the shelves, replacing tins and goods, and filling up the gaps left by the day's customers. She was now busy with her broom, sweeping the floor.

When the door burst open so suddenly and with such force, she was a little startled. She looked up from her sweeping, her brows raised over her kohl-rimmed eyes, and was even more startled than ever when she saw who it was.

"Henree."

He looked terrible, wearing a mud-stained tweed coat sizes too big for him, and with his socks falling down and his shoes covered with dirt. But Mrs. Ishak was less concerned by his clothes than the state of Henry himself. Gasping for breath, ashen-white, he stood there for a second, before slamming the door shut and setting his back against it.

"Henree." Mrs. Ishak laid down her broom. "What has happened?" But he had no breath for words. "Why are you not at school?".

His mouth worked. "Edie's dead." She could scarcely hear him. And then again, only this time he shouted it at her. "Edie's dead."

"But…"

Henry burst into tears. Mrs. Ishak held out her arms and Henry fled into them. She knelt to his height, holding him close to her silken breast, her hand cupped around the back of his head. "No," she murmured. "No. It is not true." And when he went on crying, hysterically asserting that it was, she tried to soothe him, speaking to him in katchi, that intimate and unwritable dialect that all the Ishak family used when they spoke among themselves. Henry had heard the soft sounds before, when Mrs. Ishak comforted Kedejah, or sat her on her knee to pet her. He could not understand a word but he was comforted too, and Mrs. Ishak smelt musky and delicious, and her lovely rose-pink tunic was cool against his face.

And yet he had to make her understand. He pulled away from her embrace and stared into her confused and troubled face.

"Edie is dead."

"No, Henry."

"Yes, she is." He gave her a little thump on her shoulder, maddened that she was being so stupid.

"Why do you say this?"

"Lottie's in her house. She's killed her. She's stealing her cardigan."

Mrs. Ishak stopped looking confused. Her face sharpened. She frowned.

"Did you see Lottie?"

"Yes. She's in Edie's bedroom, and…"

Mrs. Ishak got to her feet. "Shamsh!" she called to her husband, and her voice was strong and urgent.

"What is it?"

"Come quickly." He appeared. Mrs. Ishak, in a long stream of katchi, gave him instructions. He asked questions; she answered them.

He went back to his stock-room, and Henry heard the sound as he dialled a number on his telephone.

Mrs. Ishak fetched a chair and made Henry sit on it. She knelt beside him and held his hands.

She said, "Henree, I do not know what you are doing here but you must listen to me. Mr. Ishak is telephoning the police now. They will come in a patrol car and fetch Lottie and take her back to hospital. They have been warned that she left the hospital without permission, and have been told to watch out for her. Now, do you understand that?"

"Yes, but Edie…"

With her gentle fingers, Mrs. Ishak wiped away the tears that dribbled down Henry's cheeks. With the end of her rose-pink chiffon scarf, which she wore draped around her shining black hair, she dabbed at his snivelling nose.

She told him, "Edie is at Balnaid. She is staying there for the night. She is safe."

Henry stared in silence at Mrs. Ishak, terrified that she was not telling him the truth.

"How do you know?" he asked her at last.

"Because on her way there, she dropped in to see me, to buy an evening newspaper. She told me that your granny, Mrs. Aird, had told her about Lottie, and also that Mrs. Aird did not want her to stay alone in her own cottage."