I’m reluctant to leave the next morning. I feel close to Layla here in Devon. Yet reason tells me this isn’t where she’s hiding. The Russian dolls that she’s been able to leave with such ease mean she’s more likely to be somewhere nearer to Simonsbridge, Cheltenham maybe. The fact that Ellen saw her there lends weight to this, and I wonder about stopping off on my way home and spending a couple of hours walking around the town. But I doubt I’d see her in the street, or through a shop window, or sitting in a café.
I don’t remember much about the drive home. I must have driven to Exeter and got onto the M5 because I suddenly find myself driving down the road towards the house. I slam the brakes on. It’s too soon, I’m not ready to face Ellen, pretend it’s just another ordinary day. But much as I want to, I can’t sit here. If I don’t go in, it will seem strange.
I shift the car into gear and drive through the gate. I’m still not ready so I take out my mobile and pretend I’m on a call. I hear Peggy barking and out of the corner of my eye, I see Ellen at the window. I turn my head, showing her my mobile, and understanding, she gives me a little wave and disappears.
I sit with the phone clamped to my ear until I can’t delay any longer. I get slowly out of the car and make my way to the front door. As I open it, Peggy wraps herself around my legs, and I crouch down and bury my face in her neck, telling her how beautiful she is.
‘If I didn’t love her as much as you do, I’d be jealous,’ Ellen says, and for a moment, I wonder who she’s talking about. I feel a sudden rush of guilt. This is my life, I tell myself fiercely. Ellen is my life now, not Layla.
‘You’re my life,’ I tell Ellen, taking her in my arms. Surprised by the urgency in my voice, she laughs softly and tells me that I should go away more often. Peggy scrambles up onto her hind legs, trying to get between us. ‘I’ll take her for a walk,’ I say. ‘I need to stretch my legs after all that driving.’
‘How’s the migraine?’
‘Gone.’
‘Good. I don’t suppose you could pick up some milk, could you? And something for tonight?’
I set off, Peggy at my heels, and as I walk I wonder how Layla traced me to Simonsbridge, and when. Maybe she’s been looking for me for years, maybe it was the article in the newspaper about Ellen moving in with me that finally led her to me. How must that have made her feel, to know I was with Ellen?
I buy milk at the village store then go to the butcher’s to get some steak, and some homemade paté for lunch. Suddenly hungry, I ask Rob to cut me a few slices of German sausage, realising I haven’t eaten since lunchtime yesterday. A lifetime ago. I almost ask him if he’s seen anyone hanging around the village. But the newspaper article last year had been accompanied by a photograph of Layla, her distinctive red hair flashing like a warning sign. If I give a description, he might guess I’m talking about Layla. I can’t risk it.
At the river, I share the sausage with Peggy, and allow my mind to wander. If Layla turns up, what will happen? Ellen is her family, we couldn’t turn our backs on her. And I wouldn’t want to. So where would that leave me and Ellen?
I call Peggy from where she’s rooting under a bush and head home. As I walk past The Jackdaw, Ruby comes out.
‘You look as if you could do with a coffee,’ she says, so I follow her inside and sit at the bar while she pours me a mug from the glass jug that sits on the counter.
‘Thanks,’ I say, closing my hands around the mug, appreciating the warmth.
‘Rough night?’
‘You could say that.’ The need to confide in someone is overwhelming and anyway, Ruby already knows most of it. ‘I misunderstood the email address—’
‘No kidding,’ she says dryly.
‘Layla is alive, Ruby.’ The words sound strange on my tongue.
‘What?’ She looks at me, stunned.
‘Did you see anybody with red hair in the pub last Friday, at the bar?’
She shakes her head, still trying to process what I’ve just told her. ‘Not that I noticed. Finn, are you sure?’
‘Yes. I went to St Mary’s to meet her.’
Ruby’s eyes grow wide. ‘You’ve seen her?’
‘No.’ I shake my head. ‘She wasn’t there.’
‘So how do you know she’s alive?’
I take the little Russian doll from my pocket. ‘I found this on a tree stump on Pharos Hill.’
‘Pharos Hill?’
‘It’s near where we used to live in Devon, not far from St Mary’s. Doll number five.’ I stand it on the table between us. ‘This, coupled with the email address, can only mean she’s alive. Rudolph Hill. Russian doll, Pharos Hill.’ She frowns, not getting it. ‘I found the doll on Pharos Hill, standing on a tree stump Layla used to say looked like a Russian doll,’ I explain. ‘Nobody else would know its significance.’
‘It could be somebody pretending to be her,’ she points out carefully.
‘No. She was there, Ruby, I know she was.’ Something must show on my face, maybe the frustration I feel at having arrived too late to see Layla, because she lays a hand on my arm.
‘I think you’d better start at the beginning,’ she says, giving me the benefit of the doubt.
So I tell her everything, even what I’ve never told her before, the truth behind the holiday in France when it all went so drastically wrong, right up to the letter I left for Layla asking her to marry me, the letter that has now gone.
‘If what you say is true,’ she says slowly when I get to the end, ‘it’s horribly creepy.’
It isn’t the reaction I expected and I open my mouth to defend Layla, then realise that Ruby’s right. Just because Layla is behind the trail of Russian dolls, it doesn’t mean that there isn’t something sinister about it.
‘I think the Russian dolls were a way of getting my attention,’ I say, making excuses for her anyway. ‘Now that she’s got it, I don’t think I’ll be finding any more. What I’m trying to do is piece everything together. What made her come back now, what prompted her to leave that first Russian doll? What prompted her to start sending emails, luring me to St Mary’s?’
She thinks for a moment. ‘Because of the timing, I’d say she – if it is Layla – isn’t happy about you marrying Ellen. Maybe she saw the wedding announcement.’ She pauses, calculating backwards. ‘She started to leave the Russian dolls not long after it appeared in the newspaper, didn’t she? If she’s been keeping tabs on you all these years from wherever she’s been hiding, she must have been pretty shocked to learn that you were with Ellen. Maybe, at first, she thought the only reason you were with Ellen was because she’s her sister, that you were trying to find her – Layla – in Ellen. But to go as far as marrying her means something different altogether. It means you love Ellen for who she is, not because she reminds you of Layla. I know, because that’s how I felt.’ She looks at me ruefully. ‘I thought your relationship with Ellen was because you needed to get Layla out of your system and that once she was, you’d come back to me. It was quite a shock when I heard you were going to marry her. So I kind of get where Layla is coming from.’
‘But I was free for years! She could have come back anytime! Why didn’t she?’
‘Maybe she was scared of you – you know, after that night.’
‘But to stay away for twelve years?’
‘Maybe she couldn’t come back before.’
‘Why not? I doubt she was being kept prisoner. I used to think that she was, I used to torture myself imagining that she was being kept against her will. But I don’t think that now.’
Ruby shrugs. ‘Maybe she was ill.’
‘For twelve years? So what does she think will happen now? What is she expecting?’
‘Maybe she isn’t expecting anything.’ She pauses. ‘On the other hand—’
‘What?’
‘You said that the letter had gone from the cottage, and only recently.’
‘That’s right.’
‘And that in it you told her to come and find you, that you would always love her. Isn’t that what you told me you wrote?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, maybe, in her mind, she thinks it still holds true.’
‘What – that if she comes back, I’ll fall in love with her all over again?’
‘Perhaps.’
‘And leave Ellen?’ I pick up on something she said. ‘What did you mean, “in her mind”?’
‘She’s disturbed, Finn.’
‘Disturbed?’
‘Fragile. And maybe a little unbalanced.’ I stare at her. ‘Balanced people do not go round leaving little Russian dolls for people to find,’ she goes on.