The Buried Circle - Jenni Mills [197]
Then the phone in my pocket sounds again, with a sick, stuttering trill, and all the luck runs out.
‘Go,’ says Michael. ‘I’ll finish up here with the police, and make things tidy.’
I race up the high street, dashing across the junction without a glance in either direction, breath rasping in my throat and a pain in my chest.
‘Get to the hospital fast as you can, Indy,’ John’s message said. ‘The bleeding started up again and they’re taking her into theatre tonight, after all.’ I tried calling back, but he must have driven to the hospital already, phone turned off as soon as he went inside. I keep thinking of her eyes, scared and pleading. I don’t want to go to hospital. People die in hospital.
The car is parked in the lane on the verge, but my car keys are inside the cottage. The lamplight through the curtains gives the place a homey glow. The key skids on the lock’s faceplate; somehow my shaking hands manage to push it into the keyhole and turn it, shoving open the door. Yellow lamplight washes out onto the path–
I turned the lamps off. I remember switching off all the lights before I left the cottage.
‘Ed?’
Can’t be Ed. He’d have no way of getting in because I have the door key, the only door key as far as I know…
‘Martin?’ He must have a spare.
Hovering uncertainly in the porch, peering over the threshold. No one in the sitting room. The Keiller biography lies open where I left it on the table, my rain jacket hung on the post at the foot of the stairs, my spare cardigan on the back of the sofa. Across the room, on top of the chest, my car keys glint under the lamp, next to my abandoned coffee mug. The fireguard is no longer in place, and flames lick the sides of a fresh log on the fire. A fat white candle is alight on a saucer, on the tiled corner of the hearth. Another candle burns on the window ledge, its flame swaying in the draught from the open door.
It is Martin, isn’t it? What’s he doing here? Is he upstairs? He’s supposed to be staying with his friend in Bath.
The log shifts on the fire as a lump of coal collapses, and my heart jumps, but the house is otherwise silent. This feels wrong. But all I need are the car keys, and I can be out of here, have to be out of here, whether or not Martin’s back, because there’s no time to mess around–time’s leaking away at the hospital in Swindon. There’s no one in the room. Go for it.
I’m halfway to the chair when there’s a blur of movement in the corner of my eye. He comes barrelling out of the kitchen and has an arm crooked round my throat before I’ve had a chance to turn more than my head. My handbag falls off my shoulder, while his other hand closes on the muscle at the top of my arm, forcing a squeak out of me, and the door key drops out of my fingers onto the carpet. Somehow he gets a knee into the small of my back, arching my body and pressing me against the back of the sofa so the air is forced out of my lungs. We must look, absurdly, like some sort of pornographic temple carving.
Then his voice sighs in my ear, ‘Indy,’ and I understand exactly who this is.
You stupid, stupid girl.
I can’t believe I’ve been so blind. I can feel tears pricking, panic clawing at my lungs making it even harder to breathe than it already is. He has complete control, sliding me down to the floor, my T-shirt rolling up and my exposed abdomen pressed against the rough hessian carpet, the mobile phone in my pocket digging into my hip, his knee pinning me down while his arm is yanking up my chin, making my neck and shoulder muscles scream.
On thy belly thou shalt go
‘Indy…’
I let myself go as limp as I can.
‘That’s better. Don’t fight me.’ The pressure on my throat eases fractionally.
‘I’m…not…’ He’s allowing me only enough airway to force out a whisper.
‘No point