This is my final message. I am coming for you all.
So now they will have to find the Viking. Find him before he finds them. Stephen looks over towards her.
‘Trouble?’
‘Joyce can’t get her thermostat to work,’ says Elizabeth.
‘You have to reset it,’ says Stephen. ‘Losing battle otherwise, mind of its own.’
What did Elizabeth know? Precious little. She has seen the Viking, of course. That is an advantage. But that he has let himself be seen suggests he is very safe and secure. He’s somewhere in Staffordshire, for reasons best known to him. And in a very big house. The house has a library. That’s about the extent of her knowledge. She remembers Stephen’s eyes, widening as he scanned the library.
‘What did you make of the Viking’s library?’
‘Come again?’ says Stephen.
‘The Viking’s library? You seemed taken with it. Any reason?’
‘Not getting your drift at all, dear,’ says Stephen. ‘Vikings? Libraries? You been on the gin?’
‘You were looking at his books,’ says Elizabeth.
‘You’ve either got the wrong stick, or the wrong end of the right one,’ says Stephen.
Elizabeth sits up and looks at him. ‘Stephen, the other night. The van, the man with the beard? You do remember?’
Stephen chuckles. ‘Even for you this is a strange one. What are we up to tomorrow? Thought I might pop over and see my mum. You know how she gets.’
Elizabeth tries to control her breathing once more, but she is unable to. She feels like she is going to sob. Stephen puts his arm around her.
‘What’s got into you all of a sudden?’ says Stephen. ‘I’m here, silly one, I’m here. If something’s broken you know I’ll fix it.’
Elizabeth swings her feet out of bed and hurries to the bathroom. She locks the door and slumps back against it. The tears come now. Not easily, because tears never come easily to Elizabeth. Even now Elizabeth remembers crying when her dad would hit her. Because he loved her, because he loved her so. How he would keep hitting, and keep hitting until she stopped. Until one day she stopped crying forever.
She remembers too sitting by her dad’s bedside, many years later, she on leave from Beirut, he dying of cancer in a Hampshire hospice. She held his bony, vicious hand, and thought of everything this man might have had in life. Everything she might have had. But still she didn’t cry, frightened of what he might do if she did.
Will she be holding Stephen’s hand in a hospice someday soon? Of course she will. But she will laugh with him, and she will love him, and she will give thanks for him, and for the woman he has made her. And she will cry the lifetime of tears she has denied herself.
48
Bogdan is in love. There are no two ways about it. He is certain.
Or is he?
It feels like it.
But should you ever trust feelings?
They are off to see Jack Mason. With Viktor in tow this time. Bogdan is driving Ron’s Daihatsu.
Bogdan wishes somebody would just tell him how to handle this. He had been in love at school, he remembers that, but there has been nothing that simple since. He needs to play chess with Stephen soon. Stephen will know.
He certainly likes Donna very, very, very much. But how many ‘verys’ turn ‘like’ into ‘love’？ Four? Five? Bogdan wishes there were a definitive answer. There are six bullets in a gun, you can fit twelve bricks on a hod, there are thirteen grams of protein in an egg. But love? Try Googling it. There aren’t any answers, Bogdan has tried.