Storm Force

She said quickly, ‘It’s all right. I don’t mind. Anyway, it’s rather too late to start changing sheets.’

‘Yours having been hopelessly contaminated by my fleeting presence, I suppose,’ he said, too evenly.

‘Not at all,’ Maggie protested unconvincingly, a betraying blush spreading up to her hairline.

Jay gave her a bleak look. ‘You, lady, are something else,’ he said.

He turned away and went up the stairs, and presently she heard the bedroom door bang.

She went round the living-room, tidying things, extinguishing all the candles except the one she would take upstairs with her.

And in spite of Jay’s avowal, she would still lock her door, she thought defiantly.

She supposed grudgingly that he had been kind enough, after the accident, but it didn’t change a thing. She still despised him and everything he stood for. And although she might be obliged to give him sanctuary tonight, there was no way she was going to share a roof with him again tomorrow.

Another fierce gust shook the house, and she shivered. Always supposing, she thought wryly, that there was any roof left to share.

She paused as a further thought occurred to her, then crossed to the sink unit. Opening the drawer, she extracted the sharpest long-bladed kitchen knife she possessed. He had already shown he couldn’t be trusted, she told herself. And she was entitled to protect herself.

She went slowly and gingerly up the stairs, protecting the candle-flame. Her room—his room—was in darkness, and she paused for a moment at the door, listening, wondering if he was safely asleep, anaesthetised by whisky.

His voice reached her, quietly and mockingly, ‘Goodnight, Maggie Carlyle. Pleasant dreams.’

She started so violently she nearly dropped the knife, and the candle-flame wavered and went out.

Cursing under her breath, she felt her way along the landing to the spare room. She found a match and relit the candle, putting it on the small chest of drawers, before turning the key in the lock.

The narrow single bed looked singularly uninviting. And there was a small solid hump in the middle of it.

Maggie pulled back the duvet and found herself staring down at the stone hot water bottle. For a moment she stood, motionless, then she sat down on the edge of the bed, buried her face in her hands, and began to cry.

It was an uncomfortable night. The noise of the storm was unabating, and several times Maggie was terrified that the window was going to blow in.

In spite of the reassurance of the knife under her pillow, she was still uneasily on tenterhooks, wondering what she would do if he forced an entry to her room and she was actually obliged to use it.

She was still debating the issue when she fell into an exhausted sleep just before dawn.

It was daylight when she finally opened bleary eyes on the world. The sky outside the window looked grey and angry, she realised shuddering, and the wind was still blowing fiercely.

She crawled out of bed and dragged on the trousers and sweater she had been wearing the previous night. Along with her bed, she had also sacrificed the washbasin, she realised crossly. She would have to perform her morning ablutions downstairs in the sink.

She had a lot to do today, she thought sombrely. She would have to notify Mr Grice about the fallen tree, and get him to phone the local garage to take her car away. She would also need to contact her insurance company.

And taking absolute priority over all these was the necessity to get Jay Delaney out of the cottage, and out of her life.

He wasn’t in the living-room when she went downstairs, and she seized the opportunity of the unexpected privacy to wash her face and hands and clean her teeth. When he had gone, she decided, she would lock the door, draw the curtains and get out the tin bath.

She was ashamed of the crying jag she had embarked on last night, she thought, as she filled the kettle and set it to boil, but in a way it was understandable. She had built such hopes and such dreams on that trip to Mauritius—and on her first night alone with Robin—that the situation at World’s End seemed a brutal anti-climax.

And if she was honest, finding the hot water bottle like that had been the final straw. An unlooked-for kindness from an unexpected source. An unwanted kindness, too, she reminded herself. If Jay Delaney thought he could creep into her good graces by such means, then he could think again.

He said from the doorway, ‘Have you got any weedkiller?’ making her jump all over again.