The Woman Who Walked Into the Sea

The Woman Who Walked Into The Sea

‘Lyrical and compelling, an emotional journey into dark family secrets.’

Lin Anderson, author of the Dr Rhona MacLeod series

Praise for The Sea
Detective

‘The Sea Detective is extremely moreish, as much for its calm, open prose – a hard trick to pull off – as for its solid storytelling.’

Chris Dolan,
The Herald

‘The final twists of the novel satisfy the craving for a suitable ending, serving notice that this is one Scottish crime writer to watch.’

Jen Bowden,
The Scotsman

‘Cal’s plausibility and contemporary edge make him a likeable and engaging protagonist. A highly successful debut novel from Mark Douglas-Home.’

Mouth London

‘An unusual background for a thriller and an unusually good debut to boot.’

Calum MacLeod,
Inverness Courier

‘By the end, we’ve come to see the engaging Cal as a viable lead for an ecocrime series.’

David Pitt in
Booklist
,

journal of the American Library Association

‘This is a real page-turner where you can hear the characters, see the landscape and keep reading late into the night; you can’t ask for much more from a thriller.’

Southern Reporter

‘I couldn’t put this book down till I’d finished it!  The way Basanti’s story unfolds is a shocker…and kept me on the edge of my seat with what she had gone through.’

Clover
Hill Book Reviews

‘Beautifully written and expertly constructed.’

Crime
Fiction Lover

Also by Mark Douglas-Home

The Sea Detective

THE WOMAN WHO WALKED

INTO THE SEA

Mark Douglas-Home

First published in Great Britain by

Sandstone Press Ltd

PO Box 5725

One High Street

Dingwall

Ross-shire

IV15 9WJ

Scotland.

www.sandstonepress.com

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form without the express written permission of the publisher.

Editor: Moira Forsyth

©
Mark Douglas-Home 2013

The moral right of Mark Douglas-Home to be recognised as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patent Act, 1988.

The publisher acknowledges subsidy from Creative Scotland towards publication of this volume.

ISBNe: 978-1-908737-33-5

Cover design by Chris Shamwana

Ebook by Iolaire Typesetting, Newtonmore.

For Colette, Rebecca and Rory

For this book, as with its predecessor,
The Sea Detective
, I have invented a coastal settlement in the north of Scotland. My reason for doing so is the same: to avoid imposing a fictional story on an existing Highland community which has a rich and interesting history of its own.

I am very grateful to Toby Sherwin, UHI Professor of Oceanography at the Scottish Association for Marine Science, for his guidance and advice. If there are errors concerning the movement of the sea or any oceanographic detail they are mine alone. Others who have given me time and knowledge include Ronnie MacKillop and Patrick Maclean, former coxswains of the Oban Lifeboat; David Dick, former rescue coordination manager at Forth Coastguard (sadly, the Fife station has closed since we met); and Brona Shaw, who assisted with her midwifery expertise. I am indebted to them all.

My thanks also go to Maggie Pearlstine, my agent, for all her support; to Colette, my wife, Rebecca and Rory, my children, for reading the drafts and being encouraging as well as good critics; to Moira Forsyth, my editor at Sandstone Press, for her insight and unfailing patience.

A vase of blue African lilies, Diana’s favourite, filled the alcove in the church vestibule. Mary Anderson stopped to appreciate it before carrying on to the nave where she selected a prayer book from the oak table by the open inner door. Glancing about her, she expected to find other early arrivals already seated, but the church was empty, despite the lights being on. How fitting, she thought. It would allow her a few moments of private reflection to remember Diana before the family gathered, and to take her seat without having to encounter anyone from Poltown and the unpleasantness that always brought.

As she progressed along the aisle she admired the other displays of flowers: a cascade of reds and burnt oranges beside the pulpit and another, smaller arrangement of similarly rich colours to the left of the altar. She recognised chrysanthemums and dahlias, almost certainly cut from the herbaceous beds on either side of the bench in the walled garden where Diana and Mrs Anderson often used to take tea. Late summer flowers were Diana’s preference. If she had to pass away, Mrs Anderson reflected with a tremble at the prospect of her own mortality, then wasn’t this the season for it to happen, for dressing up the church with the blooms and colours Diana would have liked? She consoled herself with this thought as she approached the pews near the front to choose a place to sit. The third, or even second, row would be appropriate, in her opinion, considering how close she was to Diana as well as to the family. But across the entrance to each of the front four pews, on both sides of the aisle, was silk rope and hanging from it a printed notice. ‘Reserved’ was written in black and its boldness and its unexpectedness temporarily threw Mrs Anderson. A gloved hand went uncertainly to her mouth. She turned around in case anyone had followed her in, an usher perhaps, someone of whom she could ask guidance, but she was still alone.

Inspecting each of the front four pews in turn she decided to sit at the aisle end of the last of them, on the left hand side. She lifted the rope off its brass hooks and replaced it behind her. Once seated, she felt relief at having taken the weight off her swollen feet – her shoes were pinching – as well as some satisfaction at the decision she had made. Being where she was, the family would easily be able to move her forwards, as she was sure they would once they saw her. And if it happened late, when the church was full, everyone would witness it. Mrs Anderson felt a brief but enjoyable frisson of pleasure at the prospect of such a public display of favouritism. She settled herself, placed the prayer book with its stiff maroon covers on the wooden ledge by her knees and bowed her head.

After reciting the Lord’s Prayer in a whispered undertone, she stared sightlessly at the stained glass window above the altar and became quite lost in memories of Diana; how she was that first weekend at Brae House; already Mr William’s fiancée, the romance (if that was the word for it) having taken place over the preceding months in Edinburgh. How Mrs Anderson hadn’t pulled her punches when Diana had sought her out in the kitchen on the pretext of offering to help with lunch but really to mine her for information about her husband-to-be. ‘He’ll bully you,’ Mrs Anderson had said in her matter of fact manner, ‘because you’re a pleaser.’ Well, wouldn’t it have been obvious to anyone after five minutes in her company? Diana was one of those women who, having been abandoned by one husband, (Mr William had forewarned Mrs Anderson of this fact), settled on smiling compliance as the strategy to prevent it happening again. ‘Stand up for yourself, or he’ll walk all over you,’ Mrs Anderson encouraged her. Didn’t Mr William need people to bully him back sometimes? The marriage would be all the stronger and happier for it, she’d advised.

Mr William was forty nine, eleven years older than Diana, and in need of someone taking him in hand for his own good. Not that Mrs Anderson had said so at the time, but hadn’t it also been obvious that love didn’t come into it? Oh, Diana liked him well enough, but in Mrs Anderson’s opinion the partnership had been an unspoken trade-off: financial security for Diana and Alexandra, her six-year-old daughter, and in return Mr William acquired a social secretary, someone presentable and long-suffering who would organise his life in Edinburgh and accompany him to legal parties without making many, if any, emotional demands on him. There were worse foundations for a marriage, as Mrs Anderson used to tell Diana when she rang tearfully from Edinburgh after more of Mr William’s fault-finding with her appearance, her weight, the way she laughed, the handbag she carried (there was a green one to which Mr William took particular exception) and her incomplete education (she hadn’t attended university).

Under the circumstances, Mrs Anderson liked to think of herself as the glue which held the marriage together. She’d ‘done’ for Mr William at Brae, his weekend and holiday house, near Ullapool, for so many of his bachelor years that she had learnt to rub along with him despite his preference for distance and to manage his moods. She had passed on her knowledge and experience to Diana. Hadn’t she deserved the rewards of making Diana her project? The cottage beside Brae’s walled garden, her home now for 35 years, had been one. Diana had persuaded Mr William to let Mrs Anderson move into it soon after the marriage. But there had been others, presents from Diana as well as innumerable kindnesses in recognition of Mrs Anderson’s loyalty and friendship. There had also been the privilege (in Mrs Anderson’s view) of belonging to a family like the Ritchies. Sometimes, she liked to think, Mr William and she shared a character trait. Each in his or her different way recognised weakness and took advantage of it. A rich man like Mr William could do it by bullying and temper, a housekeeper by making herself indispensable, and that was what she had become, to Diana.

Mrs Anderson closed her eyes and her head shook a little, a tremor from the past.

How long into the marriage had it been that Diana broke the routine of accompanying Mr William for every weekend at Brae? Eight or nine years, Mrs Anderson thought. By then Alexandra was fifteen and out of control. She was seeing an older boy from Poltown, and Diana had been determined to break it up. The only way of keeping Alex–andra from him was for Diana to remain in Edinburgh with her daughter most weekends instead of going to Brae. Mr William would love it, Diana had insisted, having Brae more to himself, Mrs Anderson looking after him, just as it used to be. The truth, as Mrs Anderson knew, was that by this time Diana needed the separation from her husband just as much as she desired to prise Alexandra away from an unsuitable boy. Mr William’s irritability with his wife had translated across the years into constant unpleasantness and complaints. Diana thought (or was it hoped?) that weekends apart might improve his temper during the week when she and Alexandra were restored to him on his return to the city. If Mrs Anderson had an opinion on Diana’s strategy, she considered it more likely that Mr William would grow to enjoy his solitude, a reversion to bachelordom, and would resent its temporariness as well as Diana when the family was reunited in Edinburgh on Sunday nights. As it happened, both were wrong.

What hadn’t entered their thoughts was Mr William’s susceptibility to a seductress. Mrs Anderson’s neglect of the possibility was mostly practical – that type of woman being as rarely seen in coastal north-west Scotland as pure-blood wild cats – and also conditioned by observation. William Ritchie QC had never been a romantic or a womaniser. By disposition he was comfortable in the company of men, preferably other lawyers like himself. By nature he was a sexless creature who was awkward even at the prospect of social kissing and who adopted all manner of avoidance techniques to keep women out of range. (Diana had confided to Mrs Anderson that intercourse more than once a month when they were trying for a baby was regarded by him as an unreasonable imposition.) Then there was his age, 58, surely too old for a mid-life crisis, especially for a man like that who found pleasure in respectability and routine as well as in disapproving the incontinence and mistakes of others.

Mrs Anderson still referred to that time as his ‘madness’.
The trouble the affair caused; the agonies, for all of
them, while it was on-going as well as in
its aftermath; the mess that had to be cleared up;
desperate times, difficult decisions to be made. Even after the
passage of so many years Mrs Anderson disliked dwelling on
it. What was done was done, she said to herself
with a wondering shake of her head. Not only Mr
William’s madness; hadn’t insanity infected them all to
a greater or lesser degree? Afterwards, Diana had been so
frightened he would kill himself she sat all night outside
his locked bedroom door. Mrs Anderson remembered his crying. Such
emotion, it made her wonder where he’d kept it
all this time. Diana forgave him of course, blaming herself
for leaving him alone, as a pleaser would. For his
part, Mr William appeared as regretful for the distress he
had caused as for his moral lapse. From Mrs Anderson’
s observations, the shell of the man made a better
husband; a better man even, certainly a nicer one. Hadn’
t he and Diana another twenty years together before his
death, good years which Mrs Anderson remembered with affection, with
each change of the calendar moving her closer to the
centre of the family like a leaf caught in a
vortex.

Suddenly she was overcome by a sense of loss: Mr William gone; now Diana too. She found a handkerchief in her bag and dabbed it against her eyes.

Of course, she’d offered to go to Edinburgh to nurse Diana but Alexandra had turned her down, saying her mother was too proud to let anyone but a stranger do
those
sorts of tasks for her, and anyway wasn’t Mrs Anderson too old and decrepit herself now? Mrs Anderson’s reply had been sharp – justifiably so. Then there had also been the hurt over the cremation which had been arranged so quickly and in Edinburgh too. The lack of notice had made it impractical for Mrs Anderson to attend. Alexandra apologised in the breezy, insincere way she had and said neither she nor Matt, that weak creature she had for a husband, thought it mattered. Couldn’t people like Mrs Anderson attend the memorial at the church by Brae? Mrs Anderson snapped back that
she
wasn’t
people
. Sometimes she wondered how Diana had managed to have such a spoilt, inconsiderate child.
Miss
Alexandra, Mrs Anderson had taken to calling her, though only under her breath and through gritted teeth.

By now the church was filling up behind Mrs Anderson, and one or two mourners were taking seats in the reserved pews, presumably members of Diana’s extended family. Mrs Anderson recognised one of them, a man with a florid face and white hair, from Diana’s photograph albums. She nodded in polite recognition and he returned the gesture to her.

How gratifying, Mrs Anderson thought.

Soon the seats behind her were almost full. Some faces she knew from the general store in Poltown returned her stare but she didn’t acknowledge them, nor they her. It was propriety in her case (weren’t they gathered in God’s house to remember Diana?) but jealousy and resentment she liked to think in theirs. Again she felt the frisson of pleasure at the certain prospect of being promoted to a more desirable seat. After turning back towards the altar, she became aware of a group of people progressing down the aisle past her. It was the family: Matt, Alexandra herself in rustling dark blue silk, and the children Richard and Sophia. Weren’t they growing so quickly? Matt’s sister was also there, and Diana’s nephews and nieces, the children of her brother Malcolm, who was accompanied by his wife. Her name escaped Mrs Anderson who was trying to catch the eyes of some of the family party, any of them really. She’d picked up her prayer book and sat on the edge of her seat, primed to move as soon as she was noticed. How frustrating that no one had seen her.

A family she didn’t recognise filed into the pew in front: a mother and father accompanied by two lumpen teenage boys. They blocked her view, rendering it difficult for her to make herself seen, and more to the point, for anyone to see her. She regretted her earlier diffidence about sitting further forward.

Then a little man busied at her elbow, asking to be allowed into her pew. She didn’t know him, nor, it appeared, did he know her, or else he wouldn’t have spoken to her in that condescending tone of voice. He lifted the rope and she stood to let him pass, but instead of coming in himself he ushered forwards four others, two middle-aged women dressed (inappropriately in Mrs Anderson’s opinion) in bright colours, green and pink, and two teenage girls, one so overweight that mottled flesh protruded between her trousers and shirt. Once they were seated there was no room for the man who said in Mrs Anderson’s ear, ‘Are you sure you’re in the right place?’

How was she supposed to answer? Of course, she wasn’t in the right place. She should be further forward but what could she do? She simpered, trying not to take offence at him, when, thank heaven, she saw Matt noticing her predicament and coming along the aisle towards her. ‘It’s all right Henry,’ he said to the man who was still standing beside Mrs Anderson as if he planned to stay there for the duration of the service. Mrs Anderson shrugged at Matt, letting him know that none of this was her fault. He leaned down to her and she could hardly believe what he said, or the abrupt way he said it. ‘Would you mind moving further back?’

What could she do? The congregation behind had gone quiet. She felt faces turning towards her, as if she was the cause of this problem. ‘Please, Mrs Anderson,’ Matt continued. ‘We don’t want a scene.’ He put his hand under her right elbow and suddenly she was being propelled from the pew. She whispered a protest but Matt either didn’t hear her or ignored her. He said to Henry, ‘Sorry about that old man’ and Henry promptly took her place. Before she could explain the misunderstanding to Matt, he tightened his grip on her arm and said angrily in her ear, ‘Diana felt obliged to put up with you for all these years God knows why but we’re not going to tolerate it anymore.’ And then he left her, standing alone half way down the aisle while he made his way back to the front pew. She looked around. People were smiling. They watched her, nudging each other and exchanging whispers. She did the only thing she could. She kept on walking. With every step she was sure her legs would let her down. Instead, her face betrayed her, flushing so red and hot it seemed ready to burst. At the back of the church she found a chair, the last empty one. It was beside the table from which she had gathered her prayer book. No sooner had she collapsed into it than the priest called the first hymn and the congregation rose. Mrs Anderson was too flustered to stand, too dumbstruck to sing. Everything was a whirl of humiliation. The door, only a few steps away, was still open for latecomers.