ticking sonorously from her sitting room, the hum of electricity from the kitchen, and from the trees in the garden a whispering of autumn leaves, the sound of birds.
On tiptoe she went from room to room upstairs, but there was no sign of him, so she stole downstairs and began to search there, but he was nowhere in the house, and nothing seemed to be missing. She didn’t have anything very valuable in the way of antiques, of course, but her electrical equipment was all still in place—TV, video player, stereo equipment—none of it had gone.
The kitchen was spotless, the dishes he had used washed up and put away, the sink cleaned, the hob as clean as if he had never been there, and there was no sign of his clothes in the tumble dryer. He must have waited for them to dry properly, then put them on and gone.
Her car! she thought, hurrying to open the front door, but it still stood there, on the drive, where she had left it; the rain was drying on the glossy surface now, the chrome flashing in the sunlight.
She shut the front door again. He had gone, leaving no trace. She might almost have imagined the whole incident. She wished she could believe she had.
But the phone was still unplugged; she hadn’t invented him pulling it out of the wall! She bent to plug it back in, then went back upstairs and showered, got dressed, like a zombie, moving automatically in her usual routine before leaving for work, but with brow furrowed, eyes blank in deep thought.
He had carried her upstairs, taken her clothes off and put her into her bed. Was that all he had done?
Had he got in bed with her? Had he...?
No! she told herself fiercely. She would have woken up if he had tried to have sex with her. Of course she would!
She hadn’t woken up while he was carrying her upstairs, or taking off her jeans, though. It couldn’t have been easy to get her jeans off without disturbing her, could it?
Maybe he had woken her up, though? Maybe she had stirred, becoming aware, woken up? But... if she had, she would remember, wouldn’t she? And she didn’t recall a thing after she’d put her head on her arms and drifted off to sleep.
She didn’t want to think about it. Angrily she ran downstairs, made herself black coffee but didn’t eat anything. Her appetite had gone. In fact, she felt sick.
She stood by the window, drinking her hot coffee, staring out at the bright, autumn morning, making herself observe what she saw instead of thinking about last night. In her job that was vital, the act of observing, seeing, far more important than words, and it helped her to forget herself.
After all that torrential rain the sky was blue and cloudless; the sun shone as brilliantly as if it was summer again. Leaves blew across the damp grass of her lawns; orange, bronze, gold, dark brown, they heaped up behind her garden wall. She must get out there and rake them up on her next day off. There were few flowers around now: a bush of dark blood-red fuchsia, the bells drooping, still heavy with yesterday’s rain, pale blue and pink lace-capped hydrangeas, a few white winter roses. But autumn had other pleasures; she stared at spiders’ webs glittering on bushes, delicate, complex patterns filmed with dew, as bright as diamonds in this sunlight, and fluttering in the wind like ancient flags.
But however hard she tried to think about other things she kept coming back to last night. How was she going to work today? How could she concentrate when somewhere at the edge of her mind was a vague memory, like a dream, half remembered. Warm hands touching her, softly caressing...
Groaning again, she shook her head. No, she didn’t remember that. She didn’t remember anything.
Her nerves jumped as the telephone began to ring. She slowly went to pick it up, her fingers slippery with perspiration.
‘Hello?’ She couldn’t quite make her voice steady. It wouldn’t be him—why should he ring her? Yet somehow she didn’t feel she had seen the last of him. He had left her off balance, nervous, with this worrying feeling that something had happened last night that wasn’t going to be easy to forget.
‘Zoe?’ The voice at the other end was uncertain, but very familiar, and she relaxed. ‘Is that you? Are you okay?’ It was her production runner, Barbara, a lively, eager, hard-working girl in her early twenties, who was normally full of bounce, but this morning sounded faintly anxious.
Pulling herself together, Zoe huskily reassured her. ‘Of course I am—what do you mean?’
‘You sounded breathless. Did I wake you up? Had you forgotten you called an early start, for five-thirty? Or did you oversleep?’
‘Yes, sorry, my alarm didn’t go off.’ They must all be cursing her, getting them there so early and then not turning up, and she couldn’t blame them; she would feel just the same in their shoes. ‘I’m just leaving, Barbara. I should be there in half an hour. Has Will started work? Is he setting up the cameras?’
‘Yes, he’s more or less ready, I think. He just broke to have some breakfast, and there’s a crowd of extras milling around eating sausage baps.’
‘Okay. I’ll get there as soon as I can.’
Zoe hung up, locked the cottage, got behind the wheel of her car and started the engine, pushing away the memory of what had—or hadn’t—happened last night.
She would think about that some other time. She couldn’t afford to be distracted by anything, or anyone, until this film was finished.
With any luck she would never set eyes on Connel Hillier again, anyway.
CHAPTER THREE
THE following Saturday Zoe wasn’t working—she often worked seven days a week, but officially it was six days. The film unions wouldn’t permit their members to work all week without a day off, not that that applied to a director, who could work whenever she chose, planning, rewriting, working out shots in a model of the set. Without her film crew, of course. They usually crashed out for hours, so sleep-starved after working long hours every other day that they rarely surfaced again until the evening when they headed for bright lights and some fun.
Zoe got up at eleven that Saturday, had a real breakfast for once, a bowl of fresh fruit and a boiled egg with toast, listening to local radio. Someone had rung her a couple of times without leaving a message on her answer-machine. Who had that been? she wondered, and hoped it hadn’t been Larry again. He was becoming a nuisance.
Her sister’s voice came on next. ‘Aren’t you ever at home? Look, tonight, six o’clock, don’t forget, or else! Oh, and bring a bottle, preferably red wine. It goes so well with steak.’
After tidying the kitchen and making her bed, Zoe went to the hairdresser, then ate lunch in the local pub, which did a wonderful mushroom risotto, played a concentrated game of dominoes with friends. At two-thirty she drove to the local supermarket and did her weekend shopping, then went home to put it all away before doing an hour’s housework. She enjoyed Saturday; it was peaceful and restful not to have to tell anyone else what to do, and to be able to sleep as late as she liked and be as lazy as she chose.
At four she stripped down to her bra and panties and went back to bed for an hour, setting her alarm to make sure she woke up in time to go to her sister’s barbecue.
The alarm going off was a shock to her system. She was dragged out of a dream, her nerves jangling, but that was normal to her. Eyes still shut,
