The Mistletoe Bride(50)

‘You could have been killed.’

She stepped back, as if now only noticing me for the first time, and raised her head. Dark eyes, dark. No light in them.

‘Yes,’ she said. A quiet voice, barely audible.

‘Well,’ I said. She looked such a sorry little thing. I waited, thinking she’d explain why she was there or where she was going, but she said nothing more.

‘Here,’ I said, taking off my jacket and draping it over her thin shoulders. ‘You’re shaking. You’re cold.’

She didn’t thank me, merely stood there as if barely aware of the action or the weight of the material.

‘Are you trying to get home? Did your lift let you down?’

She didn’t look the type to have a boyfriend, but what did I know? I pulled the branch out from under the car.

‘Well,’ I said again. ‘No harm done, I suppose.’

Although I wanted to press on, I knew Bill wouldn’t worry and I couldn’t leave her.

‘You’d better let me drop you home,’ I said. ‘Where do you live, nearby? Harting?’

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘Harting it is,’ I said, hoping the car would start. ‘I’m Tom, by the way. And you?’

At first, I thought she wasn’t going to answer. Then, softly, she did.

‘Mary. Mary Starr.’

‘Pretty name,’ I said, more to fill the silence than anything else. ‘Come on then.’

With surprising speed, Mary seated herself behind me. I was conscious of her dark eyes on the back of my head as I found reverse and turned to go back down the hill. She didn’t make a sound. I glanced at her in my driving mirror.

‘Won’t be long,’ I said.

It was cold inside the car and I fiddled with the dial on the heater, but it didn’t seem to be working. I could feel the weight of her sadness pressing down on me too. I wished the whole business was over and I was sitting in Bill’s brightly lit sitting room with a whisky in one hand and a cigarette in the other.

‘Smoke?’

Mary gave no sign she’d heard me.

‘You won’t mind if I do?’

I shrugged and lit a cigarette anyway.

The drizzle had stopped and there was no fog at the bottom of the hill, but I was relieved all the same when I saw the lights at the edge of the village. I glanced again in the mirror. Mary was still, motionless, fingers twisting the shabby material of her dress, swamped by my jacket. I drove past the church, with its copper spire, past the houses, waiting for her to give me directions to where she lived. I was forced to brake as a fox shot across the High Street in front of us.

‘Will this do?’

When she still didn’t answer, I pulled over by the telephone box, where I’d parked earlier, killed the engine and twisted round in my seat.

She wasn’t there. The car was empty.

I got out, at that moment more annoyed about my jacket than worried about the girl.

‘Mary?’ I called out to the empty street.

I strode into the Ship Inn, determined to find out where Mary’s family lived. After everything I’d done for her, I wasn’t inclined to let it go. It wasn’t just the jacket, but my wallet and pocket diary too.

‘Anyone know where the Starr family lives?’

Again, is it memory playing tricks that recalls an intake of breath in the public bar, the sharp glances crossing from the landlord to the old men on the table beside the fire?

‘It’s Mary I’m after,’ I said.

‘Again,’ someone muttered, but a glare from his companions silenced him and he hunched back into his beer.

‘Ten yards up to the right,’ said the landlord. ‘End of the path.’

Moments later I was back on the street and walking up a narrow lane to a row of cottages. I knocked on the door, then stood back to wait for someone to answer.

‘Mrs Starr, is it?’ I said, when a woman appeared. ‘Sorry to disturb you so late.’ Thin and with an air of abject defeat, she had the look of someone old before her time. ‘I gave a lift to your . . . to Mary,’ I said.

A flash of alarm in her eyes, then despair.

‘Oh no,’ I thought I heard her say.

From inside the small house, a man’s rough voice, slurred with drink.

‘Who is it?’

‘Go away,’ she whispered, trying to close the door. ‘Leave us alone.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, a little nettled by her rudeness. ‘I haven’t explained myself properly. I picked up Mary on Harting Hill not five minutes ago. I’m sure it’s a mistake, but when she got out of the car, she forgot to give my jacket back.’

‘She’s not here,’ the woman said. ‘How could she be?’