Cambridge Blue - Alison Bruce [2]
Damn, what if it was?
At the Plough public house, the road curved to the right with a tractor-width mud track diverging to the left. She let Bridy off the lead and followed this trail in the direction of the river path, walking between the tyre tracks on the raised strip of stones and divots.
Once clear of the pub and its family gardens, she enjoyed her favourite view of the village: the mercurial Cam flowed on her left, grey and swift today; like cold, molten metal.
On her right, beyond the paddock, stood a telegraph pole fanning out cables to the surrounding houses. Villages were still supposed to be places of community, even if the neighbours didn’t know one another anymore. For the umpteenth time in her adult life, Jackie wondered how different it would have been if her mother had lived; the cottage could have been less of a comfort and more of a joy.
She diverted her attention away from the houses to where, in the paddock itself, a grey and a roan wore matching royal-blue head collars and New Zealand rugs. The grey raised his head and watched the pair of them pass. Jackie paused to pat Bridy.
It started to drizzle, the tiny rain droplets making silent dimples in the river, adding to the waters flowing through from Cambridge and out towards Ely, and eventually the Wash.
Two eight-oared boats nosed around the bend ahead, pulling upstream, rowing back to the college boathouses. They came and went in seconds, each man puffing warm white breath and breaking the peace with grunts of coordinated exertion. The oars skimmed and creaked past Jackie and she knew that they were concentrating far too much to notice the figure she had just glimpsed, standing in the shadows.
The man waited in the drizzle, a quarter of a mile further along the banks of the Cam, leaning on the fence that ran beside the footpath, sheltering under the bare branches of the overhanging trees.
As far as she knew, she was the only one who’d ever noticed him. The first time she’d passed him, she thought he looked strange, standing alone under a tree. He looked like a labourer waiting for the team van. Except there was no road; and she happened to know he had his own van.
That had been three weeks ago, when she’d heard him trying to start it as she walked back home. It had taken several disruptive attempts before the van’s starter motor stopped rasping like a distressed saw and reluctantly allowed the engine to fire. It had driven past her as it whined and pinked its way back out of the village, puffing oil-tinged blue smoke from its exhaust.
She’d written the registration number on her memo board, where it had stayed until she’d overwritten it with the date of her dental appointment.
She was less than 100 yards from him when he glanced at her. Today he had his black woollen hat tugged tight over his cropped ginger hair. In fact, all his clothes were dark and, somehow, that made him loom larger on her path ahead.
She turned to Bridy; it gave her an excuse to look away. Bridy snuffled in the hedgerow, interested in the smells drawn out by the rain.
‘Come on, Bridy.’ Her voice sounded unnaturally bright, brittle even. ‘It’s too cold to stop.’
Britain, she decided, had become a country full of women looking for rapists and muggers down every alley, and she wasn’t about to become the next victim of a nation’s raging paranoia. But goose-bumps still rose on her neck and scuttled up on to her face. Suddenly she wanted to turn round and go home.
He stared at her as she approached; he’d never made eye contact before but, she reminded herself, he’d never done her any harm before either. His face glowed moon-white, punctured by dark, dilated bullet holes for eyes and nostrils exuding short blasts of steam.
She ignored the way her heart was thumping as though it wanted to escape her chest. Besides, she was not prepared to change her routine for anyone.
Jackie forced herself to keep walking, even though every instinct told her to turn and run. She drew deep breaths, hoping they’d calm her, but the harsh chill in the air only felt like an in-draught of