The Devil's Feather - Minette Walters [36]
Please don’t worry. I am fine. I’ve tucked myself away in a valley in the south-west of England where soft winds blow and people are scarce. It’s very pretty and peaceful—rolling fields of golden corn, a chocolate-box village half a mile away and a tumultuous sea just out of sight beyond an upland. I spend most of my days alone, and I really do like it that way. The house is quite big, but very basic. There’s even an old well in the garden—heavily disguised as a woodshed—though thankfully I’m not expected to use it. I do have running water and electricity, although the rest of the mod cons leave a lot to be desired. Hence the telephone problem. I’ve made friends with some sparrows. I’ve found that if I scatter birdseed around my feet, they appear out of nowhere to feed. It’s only now that I realize I never saw a single bird in Baghdad. There’s also a fishpond with no fish. I’m thinking of buying some so that I can sit and watch them in the evening.
As for Jerry Greenhough and the stick you’re getting, can you please keep stonewalling for me? I honestly don’t care what the Baghdad police and an unknown Yank think about me. It’s all so far away and unimportant at the moment. They won’t sack you, Dan, because you’re too important. Also, you have broad shoulders, and I can’t think of anyone better qualified to say “get stuffed” to the men in suits!
I realized on the plane going home that it was going to be worse talking about it than not talking about it. I know you believe counselling worked for you but you’re much stronger than I am and you don’t mind admitting your weaknesses. It’s a form of bravery that you and Adelina have…and I don’t. Perhaps I’ll feel differently in time, although I doubt it. My nightmares are never about what happened, only about the way I’ve gatecrashed other people’s lives in seach of a story. Nothing is ever straightforward, Dan. I’m far more troubled by my conscience than a few forgettable events in a cellar.
I’ll always be pleased to hear from you as long as you stick to other subjects and shelve your concerns about my mental state. If you don’t, I won’t answer! Let me thank you one last time for your care and kindness and end with love, Connie.
8
OF COURSE I looked for scars on Jess’s wrists and of course I found them. They were only obvious if you knew they were there, and I did it as surreptitiously as I could, but she must have noticed my interest because she took to buttoning her cuffs. I compensated with over-friendliness, which made her even more suspicious, and she stopped coming after that. The odd thing is, her absences didn’t register at first. Like a toothache that suddenly stops, it only occurred to me at the end of the week that the niggling irritation had gone.
It should have been a relief, but it wasn’t. I started jumping nervously every time my parents phoned, and peered cautiously out of the windows as soon as darkness fell. For the first time since my arrival I felt anxious about being alone, and my mother picked up on it one evening when I refused to speak until she did. “What’s wrong?” she asked.
I told her the truth because I didn’t want her imagining something worse. She was quite capable of populating Dorset with Iraqi insurgents and al-Qaeda terrorists. She listened without interrupting and, at the end, said simply: “You sound lonely, darling. Do you want me and Dad to come down next weekend?”
“I thought you were going to Brighton.”
“We can cancel.”
“No,” I said. “Don’t do that. You’re coming at the end of the the month, anyway. I’ll be fine till then.”
She hesitated before she spoke. “I expect I’ve got it back to front, Connie—I usually do—but from the way you describe them Jess has been a better friend to you than Madeleine. Do you remember Geraldine Summers…married to Reggie…they had two boys about your age who went to university in America?”
“Vaguely. Is she the fat one who used to turn up out of the blue with cakes that no one ate?”
“That’s her. They lived about thirty miles from us.