‘What are you afraid of? Losing a job may be a bad blow, but it won’t make her suicidal unless she’s neurotic.’
‘You don’t understand. Keira…has a problem…’
Gerard’s mouth twisted contemptuously. ‘I see. Drugs.’ His tone was scathing now. ‘You’re afraid she’s taken an overdose?’
‘No!’ the girl said explosively. ‘She’s ill; she has bulimia…Now do you see?’
He looked blank. ‘Bulimia? That isn’t life-threatening. It’s just the opposite of anorexia, isn’t it?’
‘I thought you were a journalist?’ It was Sara’s turn to be scornful. ‘You should know about bulimia; it can be just as serious as anorexia. She eats and eats, and then deliberately makes herself sick. Eventually that can cause internal bleeding; she could be unconscious in there, could have choked to death. Since I moved out I haven’t been able to keep an eye on her; I don’t know what’s been going on.’ The girl stared at him, her face angry and desperate. ‘Look, if you won’t help, can I use your phone to call the police? There isn’t time to argue with you. I have to get to her.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Gerard said. ‘OK, then, why don’t we ring the owner? Isn’t he her stepfather?’
Sara’s face tightened. Gerard got the feeling she didn’t like the owner of the cottage. ‘He’s in Tangier.’
‘Hasn’t she got any other family?’
‘Not in this country.’
‘Oh. Well, we could ring the agent and ask if he has a key.’
The dark girl’s face lit up. ‘I should have thought of that! He’s just around the corner. I’ll go right away.’
‘Hang on, we should ring first—I’ll find his number.’ Gerard went back into his own cottage, with the dark girl on his heels, looked up the number, rang the agent’s office and spoke to his secretary.
‘He’s out at present. We do have a key, of course. Did you say Sara was there? Could she come here to pick it up?’
The dark-haired girl had been listening. ‘I’ll go,’ she said, and was gone, running.
He told the secretary she was coming and rang off. The fax machine was chattering again; he let the latest screed from his editor drop into the tray awaiting it, glanced at it, sighing. It was another refusal to send him abroad on a story. ‘Come into the office. I need to talk to you,’ it ended.
Gerard screwed it up and threw it across the room, then went out into the cobbled mews.
A hundred years ago horses had been stabled in these little gabled buildings which had been built at the back of gardens belonging to the big Victorian houses lining the streets on either side of the alley. After the Second World War the stables had all been converted into dwellings. They were highly sought after; painted in bright colours, each one had a window-box for a garden. Gerard’s house had a scarlet-enamelled front door with a brass lion’s head knocker. The brick walls had been painted cream, and he had planted geraniums in the window-box.
It was a warm afternoon in early summer. The mews was drowsy with heat, the scent of flowers and trees in the gardens behind. Most of the other occupants of the tiny cottages were at work; there were no families here—the houses weren’t suitable. Tenants were either single or couples without children.
Gerard climbed on to the windowsill of the ground-floor front room of the cottage next door and peered in at a pretty sitting-room, furnished in spring-like pale green and white. It was empty, and immaculate.
He hoped he wasn’t being made a fool—Sara Ounissi might have got the whole thing out of proportion…On the other hand, what if she hadn’t? What if the redhead was seriously ill?
Just for once he could actually do something, save someone. He had been helpless when he was covering the civil war; he could observe, report what was happening, but do nothing useful. That was one reason for the nightmares he had had ever since he got back. He was ridden with guilt.
He had barely spoken to the redhead—what had Sara Ounissi called her? Keira, he thought—unusual name; it suited her.
He had noticed her, though; who could help it? That lovely face, the mane of wild red hair, the grace of her body made her unforgettable.
He jumped down, banged on her front door. ‘Keira? Keira, are you there? Open the door.’
There was no reply, just an echoing silence, but he was beginning to have a weird feeling, a gut instinct that there really was something wrong. His instincts had been honed by his job. Constantly being around sudden death made you quicker to pick up on danger.
It didn’t always work, of course. Sometimes you got caught out. The villagers he had been with that last night before he was shot were now either dead or homeless. It had been a pretty, white-walled, redroofed little village with apple blossom on the trees in the gardens when he’d first arrived there. He had been enchanted by it, had thought of it as an oasis of peace in the midst of turmoil.
Perhaps the very arrival of him and his camera team had drawn the enemy’s attention to the village. They had only been there a short time before the first shells had hit. Within days it was just a mass of smoking rubble, a hole in the ground, and there had been nothing he could do to stop the destruction, to help the people, except to tell the world what was happening to them, and to do that he had had to risk his own life, and that of his team, by staying with them.
The others had survived intact—the cameraman, the sound man, the young director with them on his first war coverage. Only Gerard had been wounded. He had been got out finally by some British soldiers serving there with the United Nations force, flown back to London by his newspaper, given the best possible treatment. His head wound was healing well. It had been a scalp injury, nothing serious; a bullet had ploughed a path across his head, a bloody parting in his hair. The wound in his leg had left him with a limp, most noticable when he was tired. He had been assured that it would gradually pass off altogether. The injuries to his mind were longer-lasting and made him sensitive to atmosphere.
He was sure he wasn’t imagining the sense of disaster he was getting now.
‘Keira! Open the door or I’m coming in!’ he shouted. The builders who had converted this small cottage had used pretty flimsy materials; he was sure he could kick this door in without trouble.
But he hesitated—maybe he shouldn’t risk a physical assault on the door in his present condition? His leg wasn’t yet fully recovered. He wouldn’t want to undo the work of his doctors.
He could try a little light burglary, though. He had once interviewed a professional criminal who had cheerfully demonstrated his own skill at opening hotel doors with a credit card. Gerard had never yet got around to testing what he had learnt. Now was his chance to do so.
He got out his credit-card wallet, extracted a card; a photograph fell out and he picked it up, frowning down at the image of himself in diving equipment against a background of blue sea and sky. It had been taken on his first visit to the country which, unknown to him, was about to be dragged down into civil war. He had spent several holidays there before the conflict began. Gerard had loved the place, gone diving, lazed in the sun, visited the beauty spots, admired the archaeological sites, drunk the local wine, eaten peasant food, strongly flavoured
