Daidre smiled faintly. “Six or seven,” she said.
“Thought as much.” Cilla cocked her head. “You’ve gone dead white. You best sit down. Put your head…” She seemed to lose the thread of where one’s head was supposed to go. “You want a glass of water, eh?”
“No, no. I’m fine. Haven’t eaten much today…Are you sure you don’t want something?”
“Gotta get back,” she said. “I’ve a date tonight. M’boyfriend’s taking me dancing.”
“Is he?”
“Yeah. We’re taking lessons. Bit daft, that, but it’s summick to do, innit. We’re at that one where the girl gets thrown around a bit and you got to keep your back real stiff otherwise. Stick your nose in the air. That sorta thing. I got to wear high heels for it, which I don’t like much, but the teacher says we’re getting quite good. She wants us to be in a competition, she says. Bruce?that’s m’ boyfriend?he’s dead chuffed ’bout it and he says we got to practise every day. So that’s why we’re going dancing tonight. Mostly we practise in his mum’s sitting room, but he says we’re ready to go out in public.”
“How lovely,” Daidre said. She waited for more. More, she hoped, would consist of Cilla’s leaving the premises so that Daidre could come to terms with the message the girl had brought. Scotland Yard in Falmouth. Asking questions. She felt anxiety climbing up her arms.
“Anyway, got to dash,” Cilla said, as if reading Daidre’s mind. “Lookit, you best think about having a phone put in, eh? You could keep it in a cupboard or summick. Plug it in when you want it. That sort of thing.”
“Yes. Yes, I will,” Daidre told her. “Thanks so much, Cilla, for coming all this way.”
The girl left her then, and Daidre stood on the front step, watching her expertly kick-start the motorcycle?no electronic ignition for this rider?and turn it in the driveway. In a few more moments and with a wave, the girl was gone. She zoomed up the narrow lane, curved out of sight, and left Daidre to deal with the aftermath of her visit.
Scotland Yard, she thought. Questions being asked. There could be only one reason?only one person?behind this.
Chapter Twenty
KERRA’S NIGHT HAD BEEN SLEEPLESS AND MUCH OF HER FOLLOWING day had been useless. She’d attempted to carry on as well as possible, keeping to a schedule of interviews that she’d set up in the preceding weeks: the search for potential instructors. She’d thought she could, at least, divert herself with the hopeful if unlikely pretence that Adventures Unlimited was actually going to open in the near future. The plan hadn’t worked.
This is it. That simple declaration, that coy little arrow from This is it to the great sea cave depicted on the postcard, the implication that conversations of a nature having nothing to do with business had passed between the writer of those words and the reader of those words, what lay behind, beneath, and beyond those conversations…These disquieting and turbulent thoughts had been the stuff of Kerra’s day and the sleepless night that had preceded it.
The postcard now had for some hours been burning a small rectangular patch against her skin from within the pocket where she’d stowed it. Each time she’d moved, she’d been aware of it, taunting her. She was going to have to do something about it, eventually. That dull burning told her as much.