Where Everything Seems Double by Penny Freedman (popular romance novels .txt) 📕

car. She looked around. She supposed this was where she might try to do a runner but she had no idea where she was, and he would outrun her in a moment, wouldn’t he?

Back in the car, he pulled a bottle of water out of the glove compartment and offered her a swig. It was warm and not refreshing but she gulped some down. Then he pulled out a bar of chocolate, broke off some of it and handed it to her. ‘Still far to go,’ he said. She took the chocolate but as she lay down again under her stifling cover the nausea returned and she decided that chocolate was not the best idea. She wriggled about and got a tissue out of her jeans pocket, wrapped the chocolate squares in it and pushed them away from her. Maybe later, she thought.

Chapter Fifteen A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH

Tuesday

I don’t think I really sleep at all because when I come to full consciousness in the early morning light bouncing off the lake I know exactly why I am sitting here in this chair and why Annie is lying on my bed in her clothes. I know too that hours have passed and there has been no news. And I know that a few hours more will bring Ellie here. I want oblivion but short of throwing myself into the lake, where a kindly passer-by would probably rescue me, I can see no route to it, so I haul myself stiffly out of my chair and go to the bathroom to fill the kettle.

My movements have woken Annie – or perhaps she has not really been asleep either. I am not fair to Annie, I know. I see her emotions as shallow and I believe that much of what she does and says is directed against me. Last night she lambasted me in much the same terms as Ellie had – self-centredness, arrogance, thoughtlessness, irresponsibility, recklessness. Annie’s version had more expletives in it but otherwise it was the same, and I pleaded guilty as charged, but a bit of my mind was still telling me that Annie was finding this a welcome opportunity to trash me. Now, looking at her pallor and the dark smudges under her eyes, even that last defence crumbles. She loves Ellie and she loves Freda just as I do, and I am a despicable woman to have thought anything else.

She looks at me and half raises a hand in a sort of greeting.

‘Tea?’ I ask. ‘Did you sleep at all?’

‘I don’t think so,’ she says. ‘Is there coffee?’

I make the drinks and she gets out of bed and sits with me looking out of the window. We sip and look at each other and eventually she asks, ‘What now?’

‘I’m going to ring the police station and David. And then we’ll go across to the car park where there’s a signal and see if there are any messages on our phones.’

‘Who from?’

‘I don’t know. Anyone.’

What I hope for, of course, is some miraculous message from Freda, and we both know that.

‘There might be something from Ellie,’ Annie says.

‘There might,’ I say, and my stomach lurches dangerously.

I get nothing from the police station but the bland reassurance that they will let me know of any developments, and David’s phone offers nothing but his terse ‘David Scott, Leave a message’. In the car park my phone remains resolutely uncommunicative, while Annie has several messages from the world beyond this nightmare, none of them helpful here.

As we are walking through the hotel foyer on our way back, Annie responds to the clatter and aroma from the restaurant.

‘Are you having breakfast?’ she asks.

‘Don’t think I can face it.’

‘I think I’ll have some toast or something,’ she says. ‘My last meal was lunch yesterday – apart from chocolate on the train.’

‘Go on,’ I say. ‘Eat. You should.’ And glad of the time on my own, I go back to my room.

I am tempted to slump back in my chair and gaze blankly at the lake but I should do better than that. I have a friend whose Polish grandmother survived in one of the concentration camps. Her mantra in any time of stress was ‘You must eat and you must wash’. If I can’t eat, I can at least wash, so I go and take a shower and clean my teeth and then put clean clothes on. I don’t feel any better but I have passed fifteen minutes and now I can slump. I pick up the sketch of Freda, which is lying on the coffee table, and I am looking at it as though it could give me an answer when Annie thunders on the door. She bursts into the room as I open it, and says, ‘I think they’ve found a body by the lake.’

‘No, no, no, no…’ I am shouting this over and over again, my arms flailing, beating at Annie, who has my wrists in a powerful grip. She is saying something but I can’t hear it above the sound of my own wailing. Finally, she gives me a hard shove, so that I stumble back and fall onto the bed.

‘It’s not Freda!’ she shouts. ‘It’s a woman.’

Now I want to batter her all over again.

‘Why did you let me think…? How could you?’ I yell.

‘You didn’t give me a chance,’ she yells back.

And then I start to sob and I can’t stop. I lie on the bed and I weep tears and snot into the ornate satin bedspread while Annie presses handfuls of tissues into my hand and urges me to pull myself together.

Eventually I ask, ‘Do they know who it is?’

‘The people at the next table to mine said the rumour was that it’s Ruby Buxton’s mother, but the police haven’t got a proper identification because they can’t find her husband.’

‘He’s missing?’

‘Apparently.’

I see the two of them, so pale and insubstantial, standing in Eve’s studio. I was surprised, I remember, that they didn’t seem more distressed,