The Bitter End Read online

  ‘It won't, sweetheart. It’ll be terrified of us.’ He laughed at her startled expression. ‘It won't hurt you – honestly. It's just trying to get away from us.’

  She grimaced. ‘Do you think there’s more?’

  ‘Probably. But it’s unlikely you’ll ever see another one. Think yourself privileged seeing an adder in the wild.’

  She shuddered as she dragged him back in the direction of the path. ‘Privileged? That’s not how I’d put it! And stop laughing at me.’

  10

  Juliet, practically fell over herself to snap up his efforts. She was about ten years older than Sally, with wild auburn hair and a smattering of freckles that turned a rather plain face into something slightly cute. Her clothing reminded him of the old hippy style of the seventies, cheese-cloth and sandals. She looked the part of a craft shop owner. Her shop smelled of incense and candles and had the air of an Aladdin's cave with all its handicrafts, treasures and ornaments. The lighting was dim, and the room felt warm and heady.

  ‘They’re fabulous, aren’t they, Juliet?’ Sally raved on, her blue eyes flashing I told you so glances every two seconds.

  ‘I love the feel,’ said Juliet, smoothing her bejewelled hand over the curves in the wood. ‘There's a vibrancy to them. You’ve captured the essence of the wood, of nature. I love them.’

  Paul narrowed his eyes, not sure whether she was for real or maybe high on something. And then it dawned on him. He led Sally to the rear of the shop. ‘Is this a cunning plan you two have cooked up to make me feel good?’

  ‘No!’ she answered indignantly.

  ‘Yes, you have. You didn’t want to lose fifty pence. I’m onto your little game, young lady.’

  She groaned. ‘Be told, will you. Your stuff is good.’

  ‘You sure she’s not just taking the piss, raving on about them?’

  ‘It’s her way,’ Sally murmured. ‘She’s a bit weird but that’s because she’s a witch. And you can wipe that smirk off your face. She's a white witch.’ She went back to her friend. ‘So, what do you think, Juliet, honestly? If they’re crap, say so.’

  Juliet was holding the mouse and cheese. ‘They're alive! Wonderful. You have a unique style.’

  ‘Style? Just how much is Sally paying you?’

  She’s not paying me a bean,’ Juliet said, levelling her grey eyes at him.

  The look she cast him was slightly unnerving. White witch, black witch – any sort of witch made him uneasy. People – even the worst sort, he could handle, but this supernatural shit was disconcerting. Something he could do without. He guessed it stemmed from his childhood. Some fairy story that had scared him.

  ‘But I’ll pay you,’ Juliet continued, bringing his thoughts back to the present. ‘If I wrote you a cheque now for fifty, would you be happy?’

  ‘Fifty?’ he puzzled.

  ‘All right, sixty.’

  ‘No, no, fifty's fine.’ He looked at Sally's beaming face. ‘If Sal's happy, I'm happy.’

  ‘And I'd be glad to take anything else off your hands.’

  Sally threaded her arm through his. ‘See I told you they were good.’

  True to her word Juliet wrote him a cheque. He was putting it into his wallet still totally bemused when another customer came in. Juliet greeted him with a kiss. The action endeared her to Paul, making her seem less witch-like. But then his attention switched to the man himself. He was stocky, about his age, shorter, gingery coloured hair going thin on top, and a complexion that was slightly ruddy. It was a face that sent bells ringing in Paul’s head.

  Sally smiled at the man. ‘Hi there! How are you? I've not seen you in a while.’

  ‘Overworked, under-paid. Oh yes, and I bought one of your leather wallets the other week and my money still keeps disappearing out of it.’

  Sally laughed, then hauled on Paul’s arm. ‘Right, now here’s someone who will definitely speak his mind. Owen, what do you think of these wood carvings?’

  Owen! No wonder he had looked familiar. No wonder …

  It really was Owen, forty years older, a hundred pounds heavier, a few lines and creases, but it was him, all right.

  Owen paid him no attention and Paul stared fascinated at seeing his old pal again after so long – especially when he’d just been thinking about him. He’d forgotten how pale his eyes were. They’d been pale blue, now they looked pale grey – the boyish colour washed away. Paul watched him pick up the carving of the horse and had the distinct feeling that he was going to deliberately snap its tail off. He didn’t.

  ‘Yeah, not bad,’ Owen finally said to Sally. ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘Because my boyfriend made them, and he has no idea how talented he is.’

  Paul wondered how long it would take his old pal for the penny to drop. As far as he could remember, the last time they'd set eyes on each other, Owen had been building a bonfire.

  ‘Owen, this is Paul,’ Sally introduced him. ‘Paul, this is Owen, Juliet’s partner.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you, Paul,’ Owen said before his eyes narrowed and he really looked at him. ‘Paul? Crikes! Not Paul Christian?’

  ‘The very same,’ Paul beamed, grabbing Owen’s hand and shaking it madly while Owen stood there dumbfounded.

  ‘You know each other?’ Sally exclaimed, looking quite stunned.

  ‘Best friends,’ Paul said, his grin stretching from ear to ear.

  ‘Were we ever!’ Owen roared, throwing his arms around Paul and practically bouncing him up and down on the spot. ‘Paul Christian! Paul! My old mate. Where the hell did you go?’

  Owen stood, waiting for an answer. Paul didn’t even understand the question.

  ‘I came to see you,’ Owen babbled on. ‘Every week I sat and watched you lying there, tubes coming out of every orifice.’

  Sally touched Paul’s arm. ‘The crash?’

  He shook his head.

  There was a catch in Owen’s throat as if at some time in the past he’d shed a tear or two over his pal. ‘I heard you’d woken up after God knows how long but I couldn’t get to see you. I’d got chickenpox or some bloody thing. When I finally made it to the hospital, you’d gone. There was never anyone at your house either. I thought you must have died and they’d lied about you waking up.’

  ‘We moved to London,’ Paul explained, quite touched that Owen had waited all that time for him to come out of his coma. ‘But to be honest it’s all such a blur.’

  Sally’s voice was sharp. ‘Am I to gather you were unconscious for a time? Before the crash? After the crash, what? When?’

  ‘What crash?’ Owen asked, frowning.

  Juliet intervened. ‘Shall I tell you what I think? Well, I will, anyway. I think the three of you should get yourselves over to the Crow and Feathers, have a beer and a good old chinwag. It strikes me you have a lot of catching up to do.’

  Owen’s expression relaxed. ‘That sounds a pretty good plan of action.’

  ‘Absolutely!’ Paul agreed, catching Sally’s eye and seeing the hurt look inside them. ‘Sal, fancy a drink?’

  Her eyes told him she wanted him alone, so he could explain this traumatic period of his life that she knew nothing about. Paul saw her anger – or was it sadness?

  She sort of grimaced. ‘Yes, I could do with a drink.’

  Following Owen out of the shop, Paul wanted to hold Sally close and explain that there were some things in his life that were too painful to talk about, and other things that he just couldn’t remember. But she marched along the pavement, avoiding all of his attempts to take her hand; and Owen strode along in that old swaggering gait he remembered so well. He glanced back, his expression saying that he just couldn't believe his luck at finding Paul again. Like he had come back from the dead.

  Owen ordered a round of drinks at the bar while Paul and Sally sat opposite each other at a small table.

  ‘I feel such a fool,’ she murmured, her eyes lowered.

  ‘Why do you?’

  She took a deep breath.
‘Because I’m supposed to be your girlfriend and I know nothing about your past.’

  He touched her hand, it was trembling. ‘The past is gone. It’s the present that matters and our future.’

  ‘But you’d obviously had some major accident, and this is the first I’ve heard of it.’

  ‘It’s not important.’

  ‘It was important to Owen,’ she said drawing her hand free. ‘There were tears in his eyes. And Owen is such a … well, believe me, he’s not the sort to shed tears.’

  Owen returned with the drinks, silencing them both. ‘I got you a half, is that all right, Sally?’

  ‘It’s fine. Thank you.’

  Owen drew up a chair, shuffled nearer to Paul, took a swig of beer and wiped the froth from his mouth. ‘So where do we start, my old mate? Where do we start?’

  Paul took a mouthful of ale, delighted that it actually tasted of something rather than the insipid chemical tang of the lager he was used to. ‘This is really good.’

  ‘Locally brewed and it’ll knock your socks off,’ said Owen. He grinned broadly. ‘God, it’s bloody good to see you again.’

  ‘So how long is it since you two saw each other?’ Sally asked, a sharpness to her voice that Paul didn’t recognise.

  ‘I was ten, he was nine, that's right, isn't it?’ Owen said. Then he glanced at Sally. ‘This poor sod spent his tenth birthday in a coma.’

  ‘A coma!’ she gasped, grabbing his hand, almost spilling the drinks. ‘How long were you in a coma? What happened, for God’s sake?’

  ‘Nine months,’ Paul said, knowing this only because his parents had told him, and because by then he could work it out for himself.

  ‘Nine months!’ Sally actually swayed, and her hand tightened around his.

  ‘And before you ask me how, what and why, I can’t tell you and that’s the truth. It’s all a blank. A total blank.’

  Owen looked steadily at him, his expression guarded, as if working out whether he was telling the truth or not. ‘You don’t remember being in the woods, and running?’

  ‘Nope!’

  ‘You don’t remember tripping and smashing your head on a rock?’

  ‘Nope!’

  ‘You don’t remember the ambulance men stretchering you off?’

  ‘Not a damn thing,’ Paul said, wishing with all his heart he had the same memory block over the crash that took Helena’s life. What he wouldn’t give to lose all memory of seeing his wife die.

  Owen sat back and took another gulp of ale. Placing his glass back on the table he said, ‘So how far back do you remember?’

  ‘Well, I’m fully compos mentis from when I came out of the coma. Fit as a fiddle, in fact. There were no lasting effects. Which was lucky considering the career path I took. But up until then, hardly a thing.’

  ‘But you remembered me,’ said Owen. ‘Otherwise you wouldn’t have recognised me in the shop.’

  Paul patted his old pal on the arm. ‘The docs did say that things might come back to me in time, and it's since moving back to this area that I’ve had little flashes of those days and, funnily enough, you’ve been in every one. So, either something pretty traumatic took place that’s trying to piece itself together, or we were a couple of best mates always hanging around together.’

  ‘That’s what it was. You and me against the world! So, Paul, my old chum, what line of work did you go into?’

  Paul stared down into his beer. ‘I went into the Royal Navy, reached the rank of Rear Admiral. Now I'm just biding my time in the Civil Service.’

  Owen's pale eyes widened. ‘Rear Admiral Christian! Well, I'll be damned! Good on you, my old mate. And now you're stuck behind a desk.’

  ‘Something like that.’

  Sally's eyebrows arched. ‘Paul, you're being very modest …’

  Paul's glance silenced her. He'd love to be able to talk about the things he'd experienced, but working in MI5 wasn't something he spoke about.

  They spent the next hour chatting with Paul, learning that Owen ran his own engineering company and that his first wife had died of lung cancer which he admitted was down to her smoking. He'd met Juliet a couple of years ago and while they didn’t live together, they lived practically in each other's pockets.

  Paul said little about the crash. Only that he’d also been married before and he’d lost his wife in a road smash. He didn’t offer any details and Owen didn’t ask for any.

  It was only as they left the Crow and Feathers and had exchanged mobile numbers and promised to meet up for a meal, that Owen really opened up.

  ‘You know mate, when my first wife died, I thought I’d never get over it, never ever feel any happiness or comfort. I bet you felt that too. Yeah, I thought so,’ he added, looking into his eyes without Paul saying a word. ‘But then I met Juliet and you met the lovely Sally. And here we are – all happy again.’

  ‘Don’t I know it,’ Paul said, holding Sally close.

  ‘We’re a couple of lucky sods y’know, Paul?

  Paul nodded. ‘You read my mind. Damn lucky!’

  * * *

  Sally wanted to take a taxi back home. She was still unusually quiet, but Paul felt they needed time to talk. So, as they walked back through the woods he told her all he could remember of the events leading up to him falling into a coma – and even stole himself into telling her how Helena had actually died.

  ‘Oh my God!’ she uttered, stopping dead on the forest path and throwing her arms around him. ‘You’ve been through hell.’

  ‘I won't argue with that, and there's been some pretty hairy work situations over the years, which as you know I can't talk about.’

  In a way he was glad he’d told her about Helena. He doubted it would ease any pain or banish any dark memories, but at least now she knew. Wanting to lighten the mood, he told her about his early commando training days and the manic Sergeant Johnston who'd bellow at all the cadets, spraying them with spittle, and forcing them to do press ups in the mud.

  They spent the rest of the afternoon working – Sally cutting and stitching while he worked on the security arrangements for the Peace Conference. All leave for the Metropolitan Police and emergency services had to be cancelled for the duration of the Conference, and armed military would be on high alert and making their presence known around the Capital. Then there were the overseas intelligence agencies he needed to coordinate with. Without a doubt, this was one hell of a big deal. Lives depended on him and his team getting it right.

  That evening, Sally cooked a meal of poached salmon, but an air of melancholy seemed to have settled over her. It was like she was stepping on eggshells. Now she knew his dark and distant past, she seemed afraid of upsetting him. God alone knew why. The worst was over. Because of her he was happy again. She didn’t need to pander to him like he was still ill or suffering.

  After dinner she went to light the fire. He hadn’t told her what he’d seen in the embers and he had no intention of telling her. But he didn’t want the fire lit. He told her that instead.

  She didn't argue but went upstairs for a bath. She came down wearing a thick heavy dressing gown, fleecy and dark burgundy in colour. He hadn’t seen it before and it dwarfed her.

  ‘I didn’t realise you were that cold,’ Paul said as she curled up in the far corner of the sofa.

  She pulled the folds of the gown around her. ‘I thought a hot bath would warm me, but I feel chilled to the bone. Perhaps I’m coming down with something.’

  Paul put down his brandy glass and wrapped his arms around her. He kissed her forehead. ‘I’m sorry. I was being selfish. Shall I light it?’

  She leant towards him. ‘No, I’m warming up now. It’s just that it’s been a … a strange kind of day.’

  ‘For me, too. I can’t believe I’ve bumped into Owen again, and that he’s your friend’s partner. Talk about coincidence.’

  Her fingers entwined between his. ‘I’d never have put you two together.’

  ‘Wouldn’t you?’


  ‘No, he’s so brash and … well, I think, a bit pushy and opinionated. He’s the sort who likes to be top dog. Although he seemed very enamoured with you.’

  ‘I guess there are times when we all get pushy and opinionated.’

  ‘Well yes, but you're never unkind. But I think he could be if he wanted.’

  ‘You probably know him better than I do now. I was just a kid.’

  Sally looked steadily at him. ‘Was he a bully?’

  Paul gave a sharp laugh. ‘No, I don’t think he bullied me. Can’t remember him ever hitting me or anything.’

  ‘There are other ways of bullying.’

  ‘No doubt …’ he stopped at the sound of something scraping in the kitchen. ‘Sounds like Bluebell is putting in an appearance.’

  ‘Yes, she'll be wanting a fuss.’

  On cue, the cat strolled in, head and tail high. Sally patted her thighs, inviting the cat to curl up in her lap as it often did. For once it wasn’t interested. It looked at the unlit logs in the grate, then turned its head and looked right at Paul with such a look of contempt on its face that he burst out laughing.

  ‘See that look? You aren’t the only one who wants the fire lit, Sal.’

  ‘Poor Bluebell,’ Sally said, reaching to pick the cat up.

  With a screech it lashed out wildly with its claws, sank its teeth into her hand and shot back through to the kitchen.

  Sally screamed, both in shock and in pain. The damn thing had drawn blood.

  ‘What the hell’s got into her?’ Paul said, jumping to his feet. It was already out of the cat flap. ‘It was Bluebell, wasn’t it? It wasn’t some feral imposter?’

  Sally dashed into the kitchen and ran her hand under the tap. ‘I … I must have startled her with these big baggy sleeves …’

  ‘Here, let me see,’ Paul said, taking her hand. There were tears in her eyes, and when he wrapped his arms around her and she fell sobbing against his chest he knew her anguish wasn’t just because of the cat’s scratches.

  When she'd stopped crying, he found some antiseptic and plasters. ‘I'll do a field dressing for you,’ he said tending to her wounds. ‘There … all better.’