A Trick of the Mind (26 page)

‘I’ll eat where I like and with whom I like,’ Patrick said, taking a step towards the man. ‘You may think you can mess with Patrick McIntyre but you’re mistaken. No
one insults Patrick McIntyre.’

I flinched.

‘Patrick, stop . . .’ He was beginning to sound ridiculous now, I thought, and his face, contorted into one of menace, his teeth clamped down on his lower lip turning the flesh
white, gave him a crazed look.

‘Hey, hey. That’s enough of that.’ The publican had come out from behind the bar, grabbed the other man’s white-knuckled hand mid-flight, stopped him from landing one on
Patrick’s face.

The other diners, realising the spectacle wasn’t coming to anything, returned to their plates of food.

‘This isn’t the last of it!’ the other man snarled as the publican dragged him away.

When he’d gone, Patrick sat down. His hands were trembling.

He stared down at the dregs of cider in his glass.

Then he stood up and swung on his crutches to the door.

I followed him, leaving our unfinished drinks on the table.

‘Patrick?’

He didn’t reply.

‘What is it? What did he mean? What should you pay for?’

He didn’t answer.

I was beginning to think I knew.

Of course I knew.

Outside, the man had reached a battered red van. He climbed in and revved it hard. It sent gravel flying up as he drove it past us. Its front was battered, dented, and it was
thick with dirt. He drove it away up the track. And I knew where I’d seen that van before. Parked on the roadside in the dark. The night I’d gone back to see if I’d knocked a man
over. Knocked Patrick over. That man, with the wide-set eyes, was the one who had come after me as I’d got into the car. He’d looked in the window at me, and said something, and
I’d driven off. What was it he had mouthed? I tried to visualise the way his lips had moved, what he might have been shouting. I’d assumed he was threatening me.

Now it occurred to me he might have been warning me.

Not to get involved?

Clouds had gathered while we were eating lunch, dark over towards the horizon, threads of lightning flickering in the distance.

‘Is it coming this way?’ I asked Patrick. I knew better than to refer to what had just been said in the pub, Patrick had that closed-off look on his face. A look that told me to
tread with care. This tiny village by the sea was full of forboding, the woodlands on one side, the sea on the other. The macabre remains of corpses waving from the cliff sides. We were marooned.
But I was here with no means of getting home except on his boat.

At last he turned, took my arm.

‘It’s miles away. We’ll be back by the time it presents any threat. But we’d better get going.’

‘Patrick. I’m afraid of going back in the boat. Isn’t there some way we could go by road?’

‘NO! Get in. It’ll be much quicker sailing round the coast.’

‘But—’

‘Ellie, have you any idea how far it is by road? We haven’t got a car here and to walk would take you all night. Get in.’

I stood knee-deep in water helping Patrick re-rig the boat, fumbling with the soggy ropes, not knowing what to do with them, trying to look as though I did.

‘Just hold the hull tight,’ Patrick said after a while, realising how useless I was. I did as he said, fighting to keep it from running off without us into the waves. I could see it
was urgent that we got the boat set up so we could get back before the storm got any closer. The sails beat so hard we couldn’t hear each other. Eventually we were off, and I gave in to
Patrick’s superior knowledge and experience at sea. What choice did I have?

He was steering the boat further and further out.

We were heading towards heavy black clouds. Thin forks of lightning touched the sea in the distance. We hurtled along until the boat no longer seemed to be riding the waves, but was leaping up
and slamming into them. I went into automatic, bailing water from the boat, my eyes screwed up against the salt spray, my fingers numb. When I looked up all I could see was the dark horizon dipping
and rising before us. The photo the man had waved at us, of Patrick’s wife, came in focus for a second, before fading away. We were going further and further out to sea.

‘Can we turn back now, Patrick? I’m frightened.’ I had to shout for my voice to be heard over the wind and the waves. It was as if he couldn’t hear. Wouldn’t hear.
Patrick’s face was screwed up, a yellowish blur in the lowering light, and his eyes were fixed on the horizon and I knew then that the man I had believed I might have loved wasn’t there
any more, this was someone I didn’t really know at all.

Instead of fear, all I felt now was a dull sense of the inevitable. There was nothing I could do but cling to the sodden jib sheet and clutch with one hand the slippery side of the boat as the
waves sloshed over.

I don’t know how long we were out on the waves before Patrick seemed to come back into himself, pushed the tiller right over and turned the boat back towards the shore. We rounded the
headland and Southwold came back into view. I was so relieved to see the lighthouse, the beach huts, the terracotta-coloured pan-tiled roofs, I wanted to cry or whoop with joy. Patrick hadn’t
spoken or looked at me and I didn’t know what was more frightening.

The storm or his silence.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

We were back on the jetty. Patrick took the sails down and unhooked the mast and was packing the boat away, glancing about, though the esplanade was deserted now the rain had
set in, apart from Larry, who was wobbling along on his bike past the fishing huts. He stopped, holding the bicycle between his knees when he came in line with us. He stood for a while, watching
Patrick pull the tarpaulin back over the boat, his face lit by a lurid ray of sunlight that had slipped out from beneath the storm clouds, turning it a peculiar shade of green.

‘That not your boat,’ Larry said. ‘Not your boat. That boat Arnie’s.’

Patrick kept his back to him, ignoring him.

Larry shook his head and after a while lost interest and pedalled off towards the sea.

‘Patrick,’ I said, before I could stop myself, ‘I just wondered why both the man in the pub and Larry seem to think this boat we were sailing doesn’t belong to
you?’ The minute I’d spoken I wished I hadn’t.

He swung round to face me, his face hard. My heart began to race. I had probed too far again.

‘Are you telling me you trust a potato-head and a country bumpkin over me?’ he said.

‘Of course not.’

‘Then why are you asking?’

‘I just wondered.’

‘Well don’t. It makes me feel you don’t trust me. Talking of which, I have to ask you something I don’t understand, Ellie. You led me to believe you had sailed before.
You agreed, that night in the pub before my accident, to spend the weekend sailing with me. You told me you loved sailing. What’s going on? You didn’t know what a jib sheet was, or a
shackle key. You’re confusing me – after my accident! Taking advantage of my amnesia to act as if you’re quite a different woman to the one you led me to believe.’

He turned and began to limp away up the track towards May’s house.

‘Patrick,’ I called after him. ‘Please. Look! I’m not trying to confuse you. There are things we need to talk about. Things we both need to explain. Wait for
me.’

I caught up with him at Aunty May’s front door. I turned the big key in the lock and we fell in. Pepper rushed to the door and leapt up at us, wagging his tail, beside himself with finding
we hadn’t abandoned him forever.

I stood in front of Patrick, determined to clear the air.

‘I’m here to help you, you know I am, and to get you back on your feet . . .’

He laughed a bitter laugh.

‘OK, sorry, that was a bad turn of phrase. But you know I’m here for you. I would never
choose
to confuse or mislead you. It’s just there are some things which have
got overlooked since you lost your memory that I need to explain.’

He didn’t answer, but stripped off his waterproofs, sitting to pull the leggings off his prosthetic, and flung them on a kitchen chair, then limped into the sitting room and began to pile
logs on the wood-burner, his back to me.

‘Look,’ I said, following him. ‘There are things you have to tell me too! Whose boat did we take out today? Was it yours or not?’

He didn’t answer.

‘And what really happened to Stef? Tell me that! Please, Patrick. We have to be honest with each other. You tell me stuff, and I can explain why I can’t actually sail and why you
thought I could.’

He wouldn’t reply, wouldn’t look at me.

‘OK. I’m going to change.’ I was shivering, my clothes were sodden. ‘And then, we need to talk,’ I said to his back.

I went upstairs, put the immersion heater on, wishing the house had constant hot water. I stripped off my wet clothes in my bedroom, which I still thought of as Aunty May’s, my hands numb
and raw. I pulled a towel out of the pile, rubbed myself down and stared out of the window at the stormy sky.

The picture the man in the pub had waved at us slid back into my mind’s eye.

If Patrick had had something to do with his wife’s death, as the man had implied, then was he more dangerous than I’d let myself believe? I shuddered. And here I was, miles from
anywhere, alone in a secluded house on the shore with him, a house that he had said all children wanted to live in – but I now suspected from what the diaries revealed – he had been
rejected from.

Patrick was calling me from the sitting room.

I pulled on some dry clothes and picked up Pepper, gaining some comfort from his wriggling form.

‘What is it?’ I called out, trying to keep my voice bright and normal.

‘Come quickly! My leg, it’s hurting like hell. I don’t know what I’ve done to it.’

I ran down, saw straight away the contortion of pain on his face.

‘I must have strained it on the boat.’

‘Can I get you anything? Paracetamol?’ A plan was hatching in my mind. If I could get hold of the paper the man had cut the photo from, I could find out what they really thought had
happened to Stef.

But how would I get hold of a paper from two years ago? There was no internet access here. I needed a library. There was one in the town. It would still be open if I hurried.

‘Yes, please. And a strong whisky.’

My heart was pounding against my chest as I rummaged in the kitchen, my mind searching for an excuse to go into town without setting off his suspicions. I couldn’t find any pills but
poured a small measure of whisky and took it to him. He was sitting by the fire now.

‘Ellie, I’m sorry about earlier. About being impatient with you about your sailing,’ he said. He was doing it again. Turning on the charm. It was so convincing!

‘It’s OK,’ I said. ‘I understand, you thought I was more experienced than I am.’

‘Yes. But I was thinking that of course, we never actually got round to sailing the weekend of my accident! I made assumptions when you said you’d come with me and it was unfair of
me. I’ve been thinking as I was sitting here and I’m sorry. I get a bit impatient when I’m out at sea. It’s the sailor in me, we all get like that when conditions are hairy.
When we’re at the command of our superiors. You know who they are, don’t you?’

‘Who?’

‘
At the command of our superiors
– it’s a waterman’s motto. It means the wind and the tide.’

‘I see. Yes, I understand. I can see that when it’s stormy like that you have to concentrate, that nothing else matters.’

‘Exactly. Oouch! I’ve definitely pulled something.’

‘Where does it hurt?’

‘Here,’ he said, taking my hand, placing it on his stump.

‘It’s so weird how sometimes I can still feel pain even though it’s not there any more. As if it’s being crushed all over again. Please would you massage it?’

‘Like this?’ I asked, taking his thigh between my hands, rubbing it, thinking all the time about how I might get away, get out of here, get home.

But where was my home now?

‘The water should be hot by now,’ Patrick said. ‘Let’s run a bath and take some wine up. And then we’ll eat supper by the fire. I think that’ll be enough to
make me feel better.’ He leant forward, took my face between his hands, pushed a piece of hair back behind my ear.

He was looking at me tenderly, his eyes shining, with his most disarming boyish expression, his head on one side.

‘OK,’ I said. ‘Yes. That would be nice. But I need to get you some paracetamol. I’ll nip into town with Pepper. You run the bath while I’m out.’

‘There’s no need.’

‘No, it’s fine, really.’ I stood up and pulled on a coat then made for the door.

‘Come on, Pepper.’ Pepper sprang after me. ‘I won’t be long,’ I told Patrick.

‘Don’t be,’ he said.

I took the car.

I drove along the front and up into the square and parked on the high street.

The town was deserted, the shops closing apart from the Co-op, which was always open. I found the library, though it, too, was about to close.

I went to the young boy at the desk and told him I needed to see newspaper reports for a speedboat accident that happened two years ago.

He opened the big old computer laboriously and it clicked and whirred.

I prayed for him to hurry.

‘Don’t you have newspaper archives?’ I asked. ‘Perhaps that would be quicker?’

An older woman came over, and told him there were copies of all the papers in a file downstairs, that she would go and get them and I should follow her.

‘You’d better be quick though. It’s almost closing time,’ she said. I went with her, down into the dark basement, and she flicked on the fluorescent lights and hauled out
some files of newspapers.

‘I won’t be long,’ I told her, and began to rummage through.

Once I’d found the papers for two years ago it didn’t take long to find reports on the accident. It was headline news in several papers in the May of that year, how the speedboat had
gone out of control, just as Patrick had said.

One report stated that forensic evidence showed the safety cord had not been fitted. Again this tallied with what Patrick had told me. That Stephanie McIntyre, nee Gilligan, had died in a tragic
accident.