“Are you insane?” Adam didn’t sound remotely amused. I suppose it was Mary’s way of proving the cost of following her sister’s orders to ensnare her man; it was just unfortunate for her that her sister wasn’t watching to learn the lesson and we were. I watched Mary sashay around to the driver’s door and found myself alternating between fascination that anyone could really act like that and make it seem such a natural part of herself, and watching the road for any of the men who might be after me. There was also a part of me – the wiser part – that was adding Adam to the list and contemplating scuttling off while he and Mary were distracted. In the road, Mary had come to a rest with her hand laid artlessly along the top of the driver’s door. Her coat was trailing from her other hand onto the grimy tarmacadam.
“Yes, I’ve gone mad,” she admitted firmly. She’d noticed the coat’s plight and draped it carelessly about her shoulders with about the same elegance as a millionaire with a fox fur. “As I’ve been telling everyone who’ll listen, I’m at a loose end and acting like a five year old.”
“Most five year olds that I’ve met have learned a little road sense.”
Mary was unsquashable. But she did at least moderate her voice so that it was a glimpse of her real self. It had the bizarre effect of making her whole appearance – clothes, make-up and all – seem like borrowed plumage applied under the strict supervision of another. “Where are you going? You promised to take me with you.”
I saw him suppress a smile as he shifted the car out of gear. “A castle.”
“I love castles.” The idea that her charm was a front was gone again. She chose to be this way too. A finger ran along the top of the doorframe and I swear she actually simpered.
Adam only raised an eyebrow. Mary laughed. “All right, I don’t like castles; they’re boring. I was going to catch a bus to the beach but it’s hardly the time of year for it and perhaps you’d let me come with you instead? It’d be so nice to actually go somewhere, even if it is a castle. Please? We’ll be quiet, I promise; won’t we Katie?”
I baulked at this sudden inclusion. Now I really did wish I’d taken the opportunity to slip away. She jerked her head and beckoned me closer to add weight to her plea but I gave a quick silent negative and remained where she had left me, hovering foolishly on the edge of the pavement. His gaze followed hers to fix on me for the first time and as a respite from the usual terrors, the embarrassment was excruciating.
I made it worse by saying; “If he’s got things to do, I’m sure he’d much rather be on his own.”
Mary rolled her eyes. “Oh, ignore her; she just doesn’t want to admit that she’d much prefer your castle to my beach. And she’s got to come. She’s playing the part of the maiden aunt to my youthful heroine. Please?”
Adam’s resigned sigh was carried on the light breeze. With a triumphant smirk at me, Mary darted round to the passenger door and slid in. She fixed me with an expectant stare but Adam was already climbing out and dragging open the rear passenger door for me. He gave a brief jerk of his head. “Come on,” he said with that slight smile of his that might have been teasing, or it might not.
I moved towards the open door. He wasn’t looking at me any more but that may well have been because he too was noticing the approaching bus. It was squeaking huffily to a halt behind the stationary car instead of running me down. All the same I flinched aside instinctively. And then I gave a self-conscious laugh that couldn’t help turning into a lift of my eyes to Adam’s face when I realised he’d been sharing the thought too. But he’d already suppressed his own reaction and was chivvying me into the back seat so that he could press the door shut on me and release the impatiently idling bus. Then, with an apologetic lift of his hand, he climbed in and prepared to send the car cruising away down to the promenade.
He didn’t even get as far as releasing the handbrake. Mary exclaimed ‘Jim!’ and a hand met the door handle to my left as a different male voice said cheerfully, “Room for one more?” Then Jim Bristol was sliding in beside me to share the cramped confines of the ridiculously small back seat and smiling at me while I was fumbling with the door catch on the other side with every intention of getting straight out again. Unfortunately Adam had already sent the car on its way and Jim was distracting me with an idle pleasantry on the delight of meeting friends until I got confused between the impulse to escape and the impulse not to be rude. And then it was too late.
Our escape from the town was a lurch into a different kind of tension. The wide curve of the Victorian seafront promenade vanished at the turn beneath the vast art deco King’s Hall with its amusements and tea dances, and it seemed only a moment later that we were emerging from the crowded crush of shopping streets to trace a course inland. With these two men in the car it felt like I was a captive but I couldn’t be. I couldn’t be. Not really.
If I told myself that enough times perhaps I would believe it.
Beside me, Jim was leaning slightly forwards so that he could join Mary’s animated conversation in the front. I think he’d guessed pretty quickly that all he was going to get from me was a thin-lipped smile. We were literally inches apart – the car was so narrow that his knee kept knocking mine. I had felt trapped by him at Devil’s Bridge but the muscular presence I’d experienced there had been nothing compared to the inescapable closeness to him here. He seemed insufferably strong in this tiny space. It wasn’t hard to see that this was a man who had taken a firm grip upon the trials of army life during the war and found he was more than capable of meeting them. He was also truly very handsome. He was, as I have said, leaning forwards slightly and it cast his profile into elegant relief so that his jaw was perfectly defined with just the barest grain of a fair shadow beginning to show. His mouth was mobile and the brief gleam of teeth as he smiled in response to something Adam said was very engaging. None of this really fitted the part of sinister collaborator to those two men. I also wouldn’t have expected their only weapon to be the well-thumbed tourist guide now held in his right hand. I permitted myself a glance at the reflection of Adam’s face in his wing mirror. Where Jim shone with amusement, Adam’s expression was calm and concentrated, and I couldn’t tell what either man was thinking.
I did at least recognise the road we took. We crossed the river at Machynlleth and traced the winding road northwards into deep craggy valleys that had long since settled down for the coming winter. I began to feel a vague nervous excitement about where we might be going. My trips with Rhys had only rarely taken me inland. Rain-soaked mountains oppressed him he had said and our filial visits to the area had only really reached as far as busy towns and fishing ports where he might be able to steal some shots of the locals.
Wherever Adam was taking us today, it was safe to say populated areas were not his target. The car swung left off the main road and rolled gingerly down an uneven lane as Adam navigated his way without needing to refer to a map. I briefly toyed with the idea of panicking but I didn’t do it and eventually, with a wide valley below us and the distinctive sweep of the lower range of Cadair Idris above, the car drew into a wide gravel lay-by and the engine was silenced.
It wasn’t a popular destination. There was no house, and no prison to match my imagination either. Only two other drivers had managed to conserve enough fuel for the trip to this remote spot; a blue Morris and what looked like a farmer’s run-about. Nothing moved. The hush was sudden and very intense, and I sat there in a questioning stillness, listening for any sound at all, until Mary tugged on her door handle with such a clunk that I believe Jim and I both jumped.
Jim laughed. She climbed out, shaking the creases out of her skirt. She gave a little turn. “Well.”
“Well indeed.” Adam was out and dragging open my door. I think Jim had expected me to slither meekly out after him at his side but I didn’t. I climbed out through the door Adam opened for me and stood there while he locked up the car feeling absurdly like I was expecting him to shield me.
I