The Silver Bough (43 page)

“They weren’t real.”

She turned on him indignantly. “They were so! I knew them—well, I knew
him
—at least, I thought I did.” From her expression he guessed that the unknown man had been her lover. He looked away, embarrassed, and noticed the Porsche again.

“Was that his car?”

She followed his gaze. “That? Ronan’s? God, no, he didn’t have
anything
. Not enough for a cup of coffee. I had to buy him lunch.”

“Who was he?”

“Ronan Lachlan Wall. My grandmother’s fiancé.”

He must have looked astonished, because she laughed. “True. It’s a long story.”

“I’d like to hear it.”

She nodded at the road, looking back toward town. “I could tell you while we walk. I’m guessing you’re going that way.”

His urgent desire to leave had vanished. “Sure.”

“Do you think any of the shops will be open?” she asked. “I’m dying for something to eat.”

He smiled. “I can help you there. I have the keys to the chip shop. Come with me. I’ll cook you whatever you like. On the house.”

“You mean it?” Her face lit up. “OK, then, you’re on!” She gave him her wonderful smile again, like a gift.

S
OMETHING SOFTER THAN
a whisper woke her; the sound was deeply familiar, yet felt rare, entirely unexpected. She opened her eyes, and there was Dave, head pillowed beside hers, gazing at her with fond, sleepy eyes.

A rush of happiness made her forget everything else.

“Do you hear something?” he asked.

“Mmm-hmm. I was just wondering…” As she spoke, she knew. “It’s raining!”

“Not that. Something inside—closer—a humming…” He rolled onto his other side and reached up to the bedside table. A moment later, music entered the room, a cascade of high, bright piano notes.

“Well, well, we have electricity,” he said. “And broadcasts from the BBC.” He gave her a wistful look. “Something tells me we’re not in Oz anymore, Dorothy.”

“I guess that means I have to go to work today.”

“No hurry, surely?”

She smiled and snuggled into his arms, then winced as she remembered, “My car! I left it on the road—I don’t even know if it’ll go. You don’t have a car here, either, do you?” She sat up. “I’d better move—it’s a long walk into town.”

“Easy.” He sat up, too, and put an arm around her. “Assuming the phone’s working again, it won’t take long to get this sorted. Why don’t you go and have a shower, and I’ll find out whether it’s too early to make a few calls?”

When she emerged from her shower, the radio announcer was giving the time as half past eight, and the rich aroma of fresh coffee filled the kitchen.

Dave put two slices of bread in the toaster and turned to smile at her. “Jamie McKinnon—he and his wife look after this place for me—is going to find your car. If it’s running, he’ll drive it here; if not, he’ll come here and pick us up and take us to where I left
my
car. Either way, you won’t be late for work.”

“Thank you.”

He sketched a bow. “Ever at your service, ma’am. Now: would you like eggs with your toast?”

“Just toast is fine. And some of that coffee—it smells wonderful.”

“It’s made from magic beans,” he said, handing her a plain white mug.

“Dave…”

“Hmmm?” He plucked two pieces of toast, hot from the toaster, put them on a matching white plate, and gave her that as well. “Butter, jams, marmalade on the table. Tuck in. I’ll be with you in a second.”

When he had joined her at the table, she began again. “What happened? I mean, what do you think has been happening over the past few days?”

He looked searchingly into her eyes. “You have to ask?”

“I don’t mean to
us
.”

“But I don’t know what’s happened to anyone else.” He grinned. “They should all be so lucky!”

“Telephone lines, TV reception, electricity.” She ticked them off on her fingers. “We were cut off—Appleton was cut off from the world, starting with the landslide and spreading. I don’t know,
maybe
there will turn out to have been logical explanations for why nothing was getting through, but it seems to me that this whole place genuinely disappeared. People outside either forgot we existed, or simply couldn’t get through the—whatever it was, invisible barrier, fog, or magic that surrounded the Apple. I think this whole little spit of land moved into another dimension, another layer of reality, something—it sounds like science fiction, but—”

“More like a fairy tale, and I agree with you, by the way. The kind of fairy tale people long ago used to believe about this place. We were taken out of the modern world and set adrift in another sort of reality, where the normal rules don’t apply. And then the fog…when that came in, I thought things were going to get a
lot
more unpleasant. I thought it might be the end.”

“Maybe it was. The fog was a curtain coming down on this little play—like
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
—”

“And returning us to our regularly scheduled reality?” He shook his head. “Why? I think we were headed for a much more permanent end. Until somebody did something to stop it. Maybe whoever started it off?”

“Something happened while we were asleep…”

He held up his hand. “I didn’t sleep. I just lay there and watched you.”

She felt heat rise in her face. “All night?”

“Not that long. An hour, hour and a half. I didn’t want to risk going to sleep not knowing what I was going to wake up to find. I thought that as long as I didn’t lose sight of you, at least we’d still be together, whatever happened.”

She felt as if something inside her that had been broken—all jagged fragments that had jostled painfully in her chest, making it difficult to breathe comfortably for so long—had been joined together, each piece slotted smoothly back where it belonged. For some reason, she thought of the wooden apple, imagining that it was not solid, but had been constructed in two parts that fit so well it seemed only one.

“Maybe what happened was
you
,” she said softly.

“Us?” His eyebrows rose and he looked at her tenderly. “You changed
my
world, for sure.”

“What happened overnight?”

His left shoulder rose and fell. “There wasn’t a night. While you were asleep, say it was an hour, the light hardly changed at all—it was the same murky foggy glow from the window. Then, maybe it got just a little bit darker, and it started to rain. It was about then that I heard the humming of the radio alarm clock, too; normally I wouldn’t notice it, but after no electricity, the sound caught my attention. You opened your eyes a few minutes later.”

“Thanks for watching over me.”

He smiled. “It was no hardship, believe me. There’s nothing else I’d rather do.” He stroked her arm and cleared his throat. “Now, eat your toast. I don’t want you going to work on an empty stomach.”

A few minutes later, Kathleen heard the familiar friendly growl of her car’s engine in the yard outside.

“There’s my man,” said Dave, springing up. “Are you ready?”

Jamie McKinnon was a wiry, freckled little guy accompanied by a black-and-white sheepdog.

“Hope you don’t mind Meg being in your car, missus,” he said immediately, before Dave had even introduced them. “I put a blanket down for her, and she behaved herself.”

“That’s fine, I don’t mind, I’m very grateful to you for getting the car started,” she said, scratching Meg behind her ears.

“There was nothing wrong with your car at all. Started sweet as a whistle.”

He went on to explain that he’d left his vehicle parked beside the road where hers had been, and they dropped him and the dog back there on their way to Appleton, with grateful thanks. Kathleen stole a quick look at the lochan as she drove past. It was as silvery-grey and still as ever beneath the cloudy morning sky, but it no longer appeared as sinister. Was that because the world had changed, she wondered, or only her personal situation? The last time she’d come by here, searching for Dave, could have happened in another lifetime. Already in her memory those strange events—the old women at Ina McClusky’s house, the ghost of Emmeline Wall, the water-horse—had taken on the quality of remembered dreams, and she didn’t know how long she’d be able to believe they’d really happened.

They drove into the changed, familiar town. The holiday atmosphere had vanished with the sunshine. The people on the streets this morning wore their sober, everyday clothes: hats and waterproofs against the expected return of rain, or scarves and sweaters against the first, faint touch of winter on the wind from the sea. She turned on to the main road, heading out.

As she caught sight of the faded, leaning sign for Orchard House, she made a split-second decision and swung right, turning into the long, uphill drive to Nell’s house.

“I hope you don’t mind if we make a little detour—I’m just thinking about a friend of mine. I told you about Nell. I’d like to know she got home safely.”

“Hey, would you look at that!” Dave was turning in his seat, winding down the window, craning out for a better view.

“What is it?” Nearing the top of the drive, she slowed. Something about the house ahead didn’t seem quite right, but his excitement distracted her from thinking about it.

“You can see the roadblock from here.”

She pulled up on the level, paved area in front and stopped the car. He got out immediately, his attention caught by the view of the road at the bottom of the hill, and she followed him.

“Your car’s still there,” she said, catching sight of the bright red Porsche and thinking he must be concerned about it.

“Yes, yes, but look at the
other
side.”

She raised her eyes beyond the mass of rock and earth, looking farther, and could just see part of the road on the other side of the blockage, her first glimpse of the greater world beyond Appleton since she’d looked down from this very spot on Sunday evening. At that time, the road on both sides had been deserted. Now, the other side presented a very different picture. There were trucks, cars, and a huge, orange earthmover, as well as at least a dozen men scattered about on foot, oddly insectlike in their bright yellow reflective jackets and shiny domed hard hats.

Dave seemed fascinated by the distant scene. “Wonder if they’re using dynamite? I think they’ll
have
to blow it, no other way to shift it. You don’t happen to have a pair of binoculars with you?”

“Sorry, no.” She smiled, amused by his boyish enthusiasm, and left him to it. She turned back to the house and, as she really took in the sight of it for the first time, felt a cold hand clutch her heart.

Nell’s house had been painted a subtle, elegant shade of moss green with cool grey on the trim; it had looked fresh and immaculate. This house, although it was the same solid, two-story wooden building, had been neglected for years. It was a worn and faded white, with a darker, greyish undercoat showing through, and on the shabby front door and crumbling window frames, ancient black gloss paint had cracked and peeled. The windowpanes were filthy, and one had been replaced with a piece of thin board. Several of the paving stones at the front of the house were broken, and all sorts of weeds grew in the gaps between them.

She stared at the evidence of desolation and mentally retraced her route, trying to convince herself that she’d taken a wrong turning, driven up the wrong hill, but knowing she had not.

Dave put a hand on her shoulder. “Your friend lives here?”

“She did on Sunday. But it wasn’t like this.”

“Shall we try the door?”

“Let’s go around the back.”

She could almost have convinced herself that she’d misremembered the front of the house, fooled by the lovely interior redecoration into thinking the exterior was in better condition than it actually was, but about the gardens there could be no mistake. They were Nell’s pride and joy, and she remembered eating dinner on a little patio, close enough to the herb garden to inhale the varied, heady scents…

There was no patio, no table, no herb garden, no vegetable garden, no greenhouse, nothing but waste ground turning rapidly to wilderness. Where the paved area had been were clumps of stinging nettles and giant hogweed; instead of carefully tended roses, a tangle of brambles; cow parsley and dandelions flourished where the vegetables for their dinner had been grown, and a pile of old bricks, rotten timbers, and odd bits of scrap metal took up the rest of the space.