Kissing Toads (48 page)

‘Is he gay? Was he gay? Has he ever been gay?' I wanted to know.

‘Nah,' said Cedric. ‘Straight as a plumb line. Hell of a waste. With that face, he could be pulling in droves.' He was dicing vegetables as he talked, tossing them into a large pan. There was a gorgeous smell of frying garlic. ‘He fancied Ruthie right from the start; I could see that. Kept asking about her when she wasn't there. Always a giveaway. Still, I had hopes. With my charm and my looks I figured I was in with a chance.'

Cedric has all the looks and charm of a malevolent garden gnome, but I didn't say so. You should never shatter people's illusions about themselves.

‘Course, Ruthie was right, it's my teeth what let me down,' he went on. ‘I'm going to get them fixed. HG's giving me a fucking great bonus for routing them Narzis.'

‘You had help,' I reminded him.

I thought I'd been pretty amazing the way I'd handled the situation, and I never got tired of people telling me so.

After hearing Cedric's expert opinion, all I had to do was find out the name of the magazine Ash worked for (HG told me) and pump someone there. But by the time I got his story confirmed, I knew it wasn't really necessary. Once you saw him with Roo, it became clear that Ash was that rare creature, a Nice Man. There are so few of these with sex appeal, and Roo hardly ever showed an interest in them, so it was difficult for me to believe that she had actually landed one at last.

‘Marry him,' I told her, the day I presented her with the dress from Maddalena. ‘You can wear this. It may not be white, but white's not your colour and you'll look ravishing in these mauvy-blue tones.'

‘Don't be silly. Anyhow, I can't take it – it was meant to be for your bridesmaid.'

‘You've been promoted.'

‘Ash and I aren't getting married,' Roo said, adding unconvincingly: ‘We've only just started seeing each other.'

‘He's okay,' I said. ‘I vetted him.'

‘You
vetted
him?'

I explained about sounding out Cedric and talking to someone on the magazine. I wasn't sure how Roo would take it, but she became very thoughtful.

‘You know your trouble?' she said. ‘You're missing Harry. You miss suspecting him, and picking fights with him, and being able to ring for him any time you're bored, and—'

‘Don't say it! Anyway, that's nonsense. It was just a – a casual fling – a one-night-and-an-afternoon stand. A bit of rough trade.'

‘For you or for him?' Roo said, unforgivably.

Beyond the perimeters of Dunblair, the tabloid army was trickling away. The flurry of exclusives from Basilisa and Brie had run out, HG and I had primed our respective lawyers, and other scandals had come along to push us off the front pages. We said nothing about Attila 33 – that was Harry's story, and, anyway, it was all
sub jaundice
, or whatever they call it when the case is going to come to court at some point. There was an inquest on Attila, but they managed without us, bringing in a verdict of accidental death after extensive local evidence about the dangers of fog on the mountain and the Cauldron.

There were no more skeletons or sinister strangers or cheating lovers or sudden divorces. Things were getting rather dull. That was probably why I seemed to be missing Harry. I wasn't
really
missing him, I told myself: it was just a trick of the mind, a flash of creativity on the part of my underworked imagination. I threw myself into gardening, actually planting things and getting soil under my nails and grass stains on my DKNY skirt. But gardening, though physical, doesn't use up your thoughts, so I devoted every spare moment to the mystery of Elizabeth Courtney. The DNA tests came back to confirm that the skeleton was her, and Nigel in Sherlock Holmes mode expounded several theories as to how she got into the underground chamber, who put her there etc. There was no way of telling exactly how she died, but Nigel came out with long dissertations on how she
didn't
die (
not
Colonel Mustard in the Library with the Blunt Instrument – no skull damage). I listened to everything, even when he got sidetracked into talking about his novel, which now included the mysterious death of one of the characters and a plot device where the body turned up in the twenty-first century, and an academic genius was able to work out every detail of the crime. I wasn't being a good listener – well, not deliberately – but he
does
know his stuff and I thought that somewhere in the ragbag of information there might be a useful pointer. In between, I communed with the portrait – maybe it hadn't been moved; maybe it was the
sun
which had shifted, on account of summer – and painted my toenails emerald green. Not that anyone noticed. That's the awful thing about singledom. (One of the awful things.) No one notices the colour of your toenails.

(Roo says Alex was a foot-fetishist and therefore exceptional and most men never notice anything much below mid-thigh. She may have a point.)

Despite all the fresh air and digging and stuff, I didn't sleep too well. I'd heard about depression, but it had always been something that happened to other people, not to me. Now I could feel it out there, waiting for me, like this big black hole that was trying to suck me in. Once I was in there, I was afraid I'd be falling and falling into nothingness for ever. I tried to be positive, but it wasn't much use: when I was alone in the dark, all these horrible truths would come crawling out to confront me, like every bad thing in my life was marching round and round carrying a placard. I was nearly thirty-five, I'd been publicly and hideously humiliated by the man I was supposed to marry, a huge international rock star
wasn't
in love with me (despite what the papers said), and I'd had the shag of my life with a piece of rough trade whom I'd probably never see again, and I didn't want to see again, only I couldn't stop thinking about him.

There were nights when I got fixated on my father, and started worrying that Mummy was right, I was like him, maybe too like him, and I would end up like him, self-centred and alone and unloved. Then I would resolve to be kinder to him, whatever he'd done, and ask him to give me away at my wedding, only there wasn't going to be any wedding, and there was nobody to give me away
to
. When you've planned something for ages, and looked forward to it so much, it's hard to let go: your brain gets stuck.

So my thoughts went round and round in circles, and the circles would get smaller and smaller, until at last, when I was worn out, they would disappear into the dot which was sleep. I had vivid, disturbing dreams which I couldn't remember and didn't much want to, though there were moments of lucidity, not like my dream in the gallery but similar. Moments less like a dream than a glimpse into something – another life, another time. But as I said, I wondered about Elizabeth Courtney a lot, to distract me from the personal stuff, so it wasn't surprising.

I dreamed I was coming to Dunblair for the first time, driving along the private road – it was very rough, much bumpier than usual – and pulling up outside the castle. I don't remember the vehicle I was in, but I had to step down from it, not up like you do from most cars. A woman came to greet me; she had a tired, kindly face and anxious eyes. I was taken to my room. There were servants – many more servants than nowadays; I could feel them peering at me, whispering behind my back. The room was large and airy, though I couldn't help noticing the curtains were shabby and there were liver spots on the mirror. I remember thinking: I'll change all that. I went to the window, and there was the garden, sort of formal but going wild around the edges, and the loch to my left, silver under a grey sky, and rain clouds blurring the mountains.

Then I saw the maze. It wasn't a square or a rectangle, more a kind of kidney shape, so it looked organic rather than man-made, almost as if it had grown there by itself. Yet at the same time it was unnatural, the monstrosity I had always imagined it to be. The hedges were too dark and too tall, the paths were narrow and secret, and at the centre I could just make out the top of a horned statue, like some ancient demon lurking in its lair. In my dream I was afraid of it, though I didn't know why. Not the legends and the ghost stories: the dream-me was an educated woman who didn't believe in such things. I was afraid of
it
, the maze itself – the menace of the hedges and the mesh of pathways like a snare waiting to entangle its next victim. And at its heart the demon, old as sin and altogether evil.

I shivered, thought the day was mild, and made as if to draw back. That was when I noticed the girl. She was down in the garden, looking up at the window, looking at
me
. She was very young and I thought her beautiful, with raven hair hanging loose and, even at that distance, a curious intensity of expression. My dream-persona didn't know who she was, but
I
knew. Iona Craig.

The next time I found myself in the dream, I was walking in the garden, close to the loch. It was sunset, but the long rays couldn't penetrate the hedge-wall: the maze was like a blot of permanent darkness on the sunlight of my world. I was supposed to be happy – blissfully happy – but the maze was waiting for me, and I knew that one day, somehow, I would be drawn in.

The following night, or the night after, I was back in the dream again, but this time I was standing by the entrance to the maze. It was evening, and the hedges were way above my head, and the path in between was a narrow slot plunging into darkness. Someone was holding my hand, pulling me on, laughing at my fears – the girl, the girl in the garden. The dream-me knew her name but nothing more, nothing of the danger, and I let her draw me on while inside my mind the tiny little speck that was the
real
me screamed vainly in warning,
Don't go with her . . . don't go . . .
I passed into the maze, turning this way and that in her wake, until she let go my hand, running ahead – she knew every twist, every path – disappearing into the twilight. I called, but there was no answer. I was alone, trapped in the maze.

I stopped, telling myself there was nothing to fear. The hedges were too thick to force a passage through and far too high to see over, but I could find the way out, if I took my time and didn't panic. I made myself go slowly, backtracking from every dead end, trying to remember my route – first left, second left, first right. I lost all sense of direction. The maze didn't look that large from the outside, but inside it seemed enormous, an endless labyrinth of convoluted pathways with no exit and no ingress, taking me inexorably further and further inward. I didn't see the girl again. My terror grew, but I didn't know if it was the terror of the dream-me or that other me, deep inside, the one who knew what happened next.
You'll never get out . . . never get out . . .
Then the path I was on opened up and I'd reached the centre, and there was the statue, bull-horned and goat-legged, and in the growing dark I thought it moved, it was alive, and I started to scream . . . but no, someone stepped out from behind it, human not monster, and a wave of new emotion rushed through me. Sudden, overwhelming relief . . .

I woke, and felt my heart beating hard, knowing I was almost there.

But the dream didn't come again.

It was Morty who suggested the séance, probably by way of having a go at Ash. Roo hadn't made any announcements and they didn't hold hands or anything, but it was generally known they were together. HG, if the rumour reached him, took it in his stride. Morty couldn't really have thought Roo's sympathy would get him anywhere, but he evidently felt upstaged. Behind Ash's back, he made references to phoneys who capitalise on superstition and credulity, clearly contrasting that with the serious role of a presenter of makeover TV. (I may have an inflated idea of my own importance, according to some people, but I know what I do isn't
serious
, just lots and lots of fun.)

Ash said he had seen few séances where participants got in touch with anything other than their own subconscious, which wasn't always an uplifting experience. Russell said séances were bullshit but it might make good TV. I didn't tell Roo, but I wasn't keen on the idea. I'd got so close to Elizabeth Courtney, dreaming myself into her head; supposing she was able to
possess
me? I don't believe in that stuff, of course, it's just for horror movies, but the castle was definitely getting to me. After Basilisa's behaviour, and the skeleton, and Attila 33, anything was possible. Ash was right: there were too many ghosts, memories or spirits, echoes of the past that lived on, or died on, never quite fading away. Being possessed would put me at the centre of the action, which is where I like to be, but I didn't fancy it at all. I might have to relive being murdered, which would
really
traumatise me.

The first hedges had been imported and were being planted in the garden. They were only three feet high, but they spooked me. My latest dream was getting much too close.

It was HG who decided us on the séance idea. ‘What have we got to lose?' he said. ‘If it doesn't work, never mind. I've always wanted to try something like that here.'

‘Do we hire a medium?' Morty asked. ‘Or can Ash roll his eyes and foam at the mouth?'

Ash rolled his eyes, but not in quite the way Morty envisaged.

He said, at his most non-committal: ‘Most mediums don't like being filmed. They say it spoils the vibes.'

‘I've got a ouija board,' HG said. ‘Tyndall bought it ages ago in Tangiers. She was a great believer in . . . well, almost anything. She once claimed to have got in touch with Charles II.'

‘
Everyone
does Charles II,' Ash said with the hint of a smile.