Fear In The Sunlight Part 13

'You couldn't have known, and that's exactly my point. It isn't a film set, Hitch. You don't get to decide what happens. People have emotions that didn't start in your head. They have jealousies and attachments and grudges that you have no idea about. We all do.'

'Oh yes?' He winked at her and tried to soften her mood, a sure sign that he knew he was in the wrong. 'And what might those be, Mrs. .h.i.tchc.o.c.k?'

'I was talking generally,' Alma said firmly, remembering her brief exchange with Bella Hutton, out of character for both of them but symptomatic of the way in which petty jealousies could escalate. 'And don't try to joke your way out of this.' She walked over to the bed and kissed the top of his head, then sat down next to him and took his hand. 'There's already enough in our life that's unsettled, Hitch, things that are beyond our control. Why go out of your way to make trouble?' It was his chance a one of several she had given him lately a to talk honestly about everything that was worrying him: the colleagues he was losing; the mounting financial crisis at Gaumont which threatened them all; his disappointment with the response to his last film and his doubts about the one that was scheduled for release at the end of the year. Even though she knew he was only doing it to protect her, it hurt her when he hid his anxieties from her, internalising his darkest fears just like the characters in his films. More than anything, she wished that he could shrug them off as easily as he pretended to.

'Things will work out.' It was no more convincing now than the last time he had said it. 'And we can do something about America.'

Alma nodded, although she sometimes wondered if she had the energy to start all over again, when the pressure would be so much greater. If Hitch were to succeed in the States, he would need to command a salary which covered their taxes and enough respect to fight a system which placed power in the producer's chair, not the director's a and to do those things, he had to have another hit here as soon as possible. But that wasn't why she wanted this particular project so badlya and, having met her, Alma guessed that she would have got Josephine Tey's approval much faster if she had simply been honest. It was too personal, though a almost too personal to admit to herself. She saw in A s.h.i.+lling for Candles the possibility of a different sort of film, one through which Hitch could rediscover a boyish delight in the simplest of things, a film of suns.h.i.+ne and innocence and tenderness a all the qualities that she loved about him but which had been lost somewhere along the way. For months now, Alma felt as though they had been fumbling about in the dark, playing a game of blind man's buff with their lives and their careers, and she mourned a more carefree time. She wanted her husband back. For very different reasons, they both needed this film to work.

5.

Branwen stood at the edge of the coastal path and watched as forked lightning ran down the sky. The flash lit up the great ma.s.s of cloud that had gathered ominously over the estuary during the course of the evening, a declaration that the rain was likely to continue for some time now that it had started, and she was glad that she had had the foresight to bring an umbrella. There was an old stone hut behind her, marking Portmeirion's most southerly point, but she was reluctant to take shelter inside for fear of missing her rendezvous with Bella Hutton. As it was, she cursed the weather. This meeting was important to her and to her alone, and she doubted that anyone with less of an incentive would venture out at all. But still she waited, her hand clutching the note in her coat pocket as if her faith in it could bring her what she wished for. Her bond with her mother consisted of one fragile memory, an image of a young woman bending over her to say goodbye. Branwen had no idea if it was the final goodbye or simply an everyday parting, but she knew that her mother had been wearing bright red lipstick, that her clothes and hair had seemed somehow different. It was a fleeting impression, and she had played it through so often now that there was no way of knowing for certain how much of it was real and how much her own invention, but it had spread like a dye over the blankness of the years before and since, colouring her life without ever really giving shape to it.

'h.e.l.lo?' At last, she thought she heard someone coming. She called out a second time, less tentatively now, but the rain was pounding down on the umbrella and she could barely hear her own voice. The lightning darted into the water againa and Branwen waited for the thunder to respond, counting the seconds to judge the storm's distance just as she had when she was a child. She got to three before someone grabbed her from behind and she felt a man's hand over her mouth, his arm around her waist. The umbrella clattered uselessly to the ground and rain stung her face like a thousand tiny needles. Too shocked to resist, she allowed herself to be dragged roughly backwards. By the time they reached the hut, the intensity of the downpour and her own growing panic had combined to bring her to her sensesa and she clung to the sides of the doorway, dreading what might happen to her if she let her attacker pull her inside, away from any hope of rescue. The pain as he slammed his fist into her fingers was almost unbearablea and she let go instantly, but at least he had had to remove his hand from her mouth to do ita and from somewhere she found the strength to cry out. It was a pathetic, half-strangled sound, m.u.f.fled even more by the enclosed s.p.a.ce, and Branwen knew she was deluding herself if she thought anyone was nearby to hear her.

The hut was dark and claustrophobically small, the sort of place that an animal crawled to die. She struggled to get away, sickened as much by the damp, fetid air as by his presence, but he swung her round and pushed her against the back wall, holding her there with the weight of his body while he tied a blindfold over her eyes. The slate was cold and rough against her sunburnt cheek, but she struggled to speak: 'Please don't hurt me. I'll do whatever you want. It doesn't have to be like this. You'll hurt the . . .' Angrily, he grabbed her hair and jerked her head backwards to stop her talking, but there was no longer any need: shame and fear were powerful anaesthetics. He forced her legs apart and her body froze as she felt him pulling up her skirt, tearing at her underclothes, his hands all over her, hurting her again and again and again as the tears ran silently down her face.

When it was over, she was too frightened to move. For what felt like an age they stood locked together in a parody of the peaceful embrace that follows love; Branwen closed her eyes, trying to blot out the shame of his body against hers. Eventually, he pulled away from hera and she heard him readjusting his clothes. Without saying a word, he stroked her hair as though he were sorrya and she tried not to flinch at his touch, wary of angering him again by showing how much he disgusted her. His manner was calm now a affectionate, almost. Only when she caught the faint scent of leather and felt the strap tightening around her throat did Branwen realise that her suffering was far from over. It was actually just beginning.

6.

When Gwyneth came round, it was already dark outside. She lay on the first-floor landing, listening to the rain pounding against the windows on every side of the house, and tried to work out how she had got there. Her aching head told her what her memory would not. She put a hand to her face, and winced with pain when she found the tender places on her jaw and cheekbone. Then she remembered Henry, standing at the edge of the trees in the afternoon sunlight, staring up at the attic window. At first, she had thought her mind was playing tricks on her, had closed her eyes to get rid of the image a but he was still there when she opened them, and this time he was moving towards the house. Terrified, Gwyneth had run to the stairs to check that the ground-floor windows and doors were locked, even though she never left them any other way a but she must have tripped before she got therea and now, hours later, she couldn't be sure. What if Henry had found a way in after all? What if he was still there?

A clap of thunder shook her from her indecision. She dragged herself to her feet with the help of the banister and hurried down the landing, trying the lights in one room after another, but there was no electricity at all in the housea and, as the storm arched its back and roared, it seemed to Gwyneth that every bit of energy had been absorbed into its fury. As if to taunt her, a streak of brilliant white sizzled down the sky. Mesmerised by its power, she stood at her bedroom window and watched as the black, swirling storm made a stranger of the landscape she knew so well, obliterating the silhouette of the mountains opposite and giving a dark, unearthly quality to the water below. The thunder came again, impossibly close this time, and a second crash followed before the first had even died away, then a third and a fourth. She put her hands over her ears, but the noise spoke straight to her heart, shaking her whole body with its force. Not to be outdone, the lightning flashed more vividly than ever, piercing the gap in the curtains and s.h.i.+ning directly onto Taran's face. Gwyneth picked up the photograph from her bedside table and clutched it to her chest, speaking softly to her child as she had always done at the first sign of trouble. She locked herself in and cowered by the bed, longing for it to be over, but it was hard to say now which she was more frightened of: the undeniable force outside, or the possibility of an intrusion from her past. The house felt suddenly vulnerable to both.

Eventually the storm was exhausted. Its outbursts became less violent and more sporadic, and, with a final shudder of thunder, it crawled away to sleep, leaving the landscape to recover quietly from its rage. Gwyneth opened the door and stood at the top of the stairs, listening for the telltale footstep or creak of floorboard which would confirm her worst fear, but there was nothing. The electricity chose that moment to return and, as the landing filled with a comforting light, she caught sight of herself in the full-length mirror on the far wall and stared at the madness and fear in her own eyes, the striking family resemblance which she had tried so hard to ignore. Quickly, she lunged for the light switch, wanting nothing more now than to hide from herself.

7.

Astrid pulled the garage door open and went inside, dragging her umbrella behind her without bothering to close it. Bad luck, in this case, meant getting even wetter than she was already. It was barely a two-minute walk from the hotel, but the wind had blown the rain in under its defencesa and the water gus.h.i.+ng down the steep incline had soaked her shoes and splashed her dress. Perhaps it was G.o.d's way of telling her that meeting a stranger at midnight with an important day ahead of her was not the most sensible idea she had ever had, but Astrid had never set much store by G.o.d's rulesa and the evening had left her feeling troubled and lonely. Danny a although she didn't know him very well a was the nearest thing she had to a friend, and spending an hour or two with him couldn't do any harm. Too honest to let herself get away with that, Astrid smiled; the more she saw of Daniel Lascelles, the more attractive she found him, and friends.h.i.+p was only part of it. The invitation to meet him somewhere private in the middle of a storm had not taken much consideration.

She was a few minutes late, but everything was in darkness. The garage smelt faintly of oil, rubber and wood, that peculiarly masculine combination, and she wondered why a of all places a he had suggested they meet here. Folding the umbrella and leaning it against the wall, she was surprised by how acutely the scent took her back to the suburbs of London where she had grown up. Her adoptive father had owned a series of unreliable cars, each boasting something more seriously wrong with it than the last, and he seemed to spend most weekends alone in the garage of their semi-detached house, trying to make something roadworthy. On rainy afternoons, when she was bored and the day seemed to stretch out in front of her, she would wander in and watch him, silently absorbed in his task. He was a kind, shy man a not an easy talker, even with his wife a and he had no idea, really, how to engage a child, but he never gave up trying. He'd smile at her, and she would do her best to follow what he was doing so that the two of them had something in common, as if by learning where each small piece of metal went and what it did she could somehow teach herself how to fit into their lives.

Hurried footsteps outside brought her back to the present, but they were accompanied by voices and laughtera and they carried on towards the hotel. Wondering where Danny had got to, Astrid fumbled for a light switch and eventually found it by the door. She flicked it, but nothing happened. Impatiently, she switched it on and off repeatedly as if she could trick the light into working, but it refused to pander to her bullying. Just as she had decided that no man was worth sitting in the dark for, she heard more footsteps outside a along the side of the building from the Piazza this time, and slower. They stopped, and she thought for a moment that whoever it was had turned right up the hill towards the stable block, but then she heard the twist of the door handle and, through the c.h.i.n.k of moonlight, saw the silhouette of a man slip quietly inside and close the door behind him. 'Danny?' she whispered, instinctively moving further back into the garage.

'I'm sorry I'm so late.' When she heard his voice, she sighed with relief and cursed herself for allowing her imagination to get the better of her. 'I went for a walk after dinner to clear my head and got caught in the storm. I had to go and change.'

'It's all right. I haven't been here long myself, and I suppose it is difficult to know what to wear for a garage rendezvous. I'm not sure there's a recognised etiquette on the subject.' She heard him laugh and relax a little. 'It's an interesting choice of venue.'

'But at least it's private.' There was an awkward silence, and Astrid guessed that he was blus.h.i.+ng. 'Is there a light switch?' he asked.

'Near where you're standing, but it doesn't work.'

He tried it anyway, and she smiled at the typically male refusal to accept a woman's a.s.sessment of anything mechanical. 'Hang on a minute.' She waited while he felt his way round to the front of the car, then opened the driver's door and switched on the headlamps. The room a if hardly flooded with light a was now at least navigable, and she noticed that what looked like an individual garage from the outside was actually a larger s.p.a.ce for two cars, divided down the centre by stone pillars and accessed through separate entrances. Danny pointed to the ceiling, where the light flex hung impotently down, stripped of its bulb. 'I would have thought this place attracted a better cla.s.s of clientele than that,' he said. 'Cutlery and crockery I can understand, bathrobes are worth it if you've got the nerve, but walking off with the light bulbs smacks of desperation.' He walked over to the other car, an open-top Morris, and flicked on its lights. 'That's as good as it gets, I'm afraid. Dingy or moody. Take your pick.'

'Moody. I'm the gla.s.s half-full type.' In fact, the understated lamplight was not unpleasant. Objects hanging down from the rafters a ropes and metal cans for petrol, tools and other paraphernalia used by Portmeirion's gardeners a cast larger-than-life shadows on the ceiling, but the yellow glow from the headlamps was strong enough to give the room a welcome warmth. She cast her eyes admiringly over the sleek lines of the Alvis. 'Which is more than Leyton Turnbull will be in the morning when he finds out he's got a flat battery.'

'I think that'll be the least of Turnbull's troubles, don't you? If it were me, after what went on at dinner, I'm not sure I'd even hang around until the morning.'

'Yes, it's been a strange evening. After all the unpleasantness, it was nice to get your note.'

Danny looked confused. 'I didn't send you a note.'

'Of course you did. I picked it up from reception.'

'No. I picked yours up from reception. Look.' He put his hand in his breast pocket and pa.s.sed her a piece of blue paper.

'I don't understand,' Astrid said. 'Except for the signature, this is exactly the same as the one I had.' She took her own from her bag to compare. 'See a the handwriting, the wording a they're identical. "Meet me in Garage No. 1 at midnight. I'll bring the champagne."' They looked at each other. 'It's obviously someone's idea of a joke, but I can't imagine what it means.'

'It means we've got no d.a.m.ned champagne,' Danny said matter-of-factly. 'I'll go and get some from the hotel.'

'No, Danny, it's fine. You can't go racing about for champagne in this weather.' The joke seemed harmless enough, but Astrid was reluctant to be left alone when someone obviously knew exactly where to find her. 'Look, as neither of us seems to be particularly attached to these garages after all, why don't we go to the hotel and have a drink there?'

'Or we could go back to my apartment,' Danny said. 'I've got some brandy.' Astrid hesitated, remembering what Bella Hutton had said. Danny was staying in Government House, just a stone's throw from the Hitchc.o.c.ks' apartment, and she didn't want to be seen. He sensed her dilemma and began to apologise. 'I'm sorry, Astrid. I wasn't suggesting . . . of course you don't want to do that.'

His embarra.s.sment won her over. She put a finger to his lips and saida 'It's fine, Danny. I know you didn't mean anything by it. Let's go.'

'Are you sure?'

'Yes, I'm sure.'

He grinned and went over to the door. Astrid walked round to switch the car's headlights off, but hesitated when she heard him swearing under his breath. 'What's the matter?'

'The door won't open.' He put his shoulder to the wood and pushed harder, but still it resisted. 'It's jammed with something. I'll try the other one.'

She watched him walk over to the other side of the garage, but something told her that he wasn't going to have any more luck there. 'I don't believe it,' he said angrily, giving the door a kick. 'I didn't have any problem getting in, did you?'

She shook her head. 'No, but somebody's idea of a joke obviously doesn't stop at sending us bogus notes.'

'You think someone's done this deliberately?'

'Of course they have, and don't you think it smacks of our host? He's been having a laugh at someone's expense all night, and now it's our turn.' She cast her eye around the garage, then looked inside Turnbull's car. 'There you go. I knew it.' On the back seat was a large parcel, extravagantly wrapped and half hidden under a blanket. 'Doesn't that look too precious to be left out here overnight?' she asked, reaching for the label. 'See? It's got our names on it.' Danny watched, bewildered, as she bent down to listen. 'And it seems to be ticking.'

'What the h.e.l.l are you doing?' he asked, but Astrid was already ripping the box open. When she turned round, she was holding a toy dog with an alarm clock tied to its collar.

'I have no idea what this is about,' she said, making an effort not to smile, 'but the look on your face was priceless. Our champagne's here, too, and caviar, chocolates, cigarettes: everything you could possibly need if you're locked in a garage with a stranger.'

Relieved, Danny laughed and joined her by the car. 'Hang on a there's a card.' He took it out and read it in an exaggerated impersonation of Hitchc.o.c.k's voice. '"Well, boys and girls, time is ticking and the audition has begun. Good luck.'" The card was signed with the director's familiar caricature of himself.

She smiled. 'Perhaps. .h.i.tchc.o.c.k doesn't object so strongly to fraternisation after all.' He looked questioningly at her. 'It was something Bella Hutton said to me: he doesn't like his stars to get too close to each other.'

'Could have fooled me. What else did Bella tell you? I noticed you talking to her.'

'Oh, just that Leyton Turnbull destroys young women, so nothing new, really.' He didn't laugh as she had expected him to, so she addeda 'She may be as wrong about that as she is about Hitchc.o.c.k, though. It seems to me that he positively encourages fraternisation a unless this is a test, of course.' She smiled. 'Perhaps we're supposed to scream the place down in moral indignation until someone rescues us.'

'Is that what you'd like to do?' She shook her head. 'Then make yourself at home, Miss Lake.'

He gave a mock bow and held the door of the Alvis open for her, and she climbed into the pa.s.senger seat, noticing that the lamps on the Morris were already beginning to fade. 'I bet this is down to David Franks,' she said. 'No wonder he gave me such a cheery goodnight.'

Danny got in beside her. 'What do you make of him?'

The question was expressed casually as he opened the bottle, but Astrid knew that he was more interested in her answer than he cared to admit and she considered it carefully. 'I think he's dangerous,' she said, holding out her gla.s.s. 'Just from that conversation out on the terrace, you could tell he was the type to bleed people dry and move on, whether it's Bella Hutton and her connections or Hitchc.o.c.k and his expertise.'

He poured his own drink in the dwindling light and stood the bottle on the floor. 'There goes our ambience,' he said as the Alvis followed the other car's example. 'Nice while it lasted. Cheers.'

'Cheers.'

'Franks has surely met his match if he's going to take Hitchc.o.c.k on, though?'

'Probably, but I'm not sticking up for him either. Schoolboy stuff like this is all very well, but some of the things he did tonight were completely out of order.'

'I know what you mean. I dropped in on Turnbull when I went back to change, just to see if he was all right and apologise again for what I said, but he was either out or just not answering.' Astrid was quiet. She had been shocked by her conversation with Bella Hutton, but had also seen a different side to the actress later which reinforced her original instinct to trust only herself. Film wasn't an industry that took any prisoners: at dinner, as everyone a herself included a responded to Hitchc.o.c.k's goading, she had felt dirty all over. As if the thought had transferred itself, Danny saida 'Thanks for speaking out tonight. I began to think that Hitchc.o.c.k had set me up to be the only one to talk.' It was true, Astrid realised: the whole evening had been geared around encouraging people to turn on one another, leaving each of them isolated in their own way. 'I didn't know you were adopted,' Danny continued gently as she said nothing. 'All the time I spent during that last film complaining about my relations.h.i.+p with my father, and you never had the chance to know yours at all. I'm sorry. It was selfish of mea and you were so kind, but you should have said something.'

She ignored his apology because to acknowledge it would have meant talking more about her own life than she cared to. 'The thing you were wrongly accused of,' she said, deflecting the attention back to him. 'Is that what you and your father fell out about?'

He said nothing, and she thought at first that he was avoiding the question, but he put his finger to his lips. 'I think I heard the door,' he whispered. 'Someone's coming in.'

Instinctively, they slid down in their seats, hoping not to be caught. They were in luck: rather than coming right into the garage, the visitor stayed at the back of the cara and, after several attempts, eventually managed to unlock the boot. 'It must be Turnbull,' Astrid whispered. 'You don't think he is leaving, do you? What are we going to do?'

Danny shrugged. 'Sit tight and blame Hitchc.o.c.k if we're caught.' There was a noise that sounded like the zip being drawn back on a bag or suitcase, and then the lid of the boot was firmly closed. 'Perhaps he's just packing his career away,' Danny said softly, and Astrid had to struggle to contain her laughter. Anxiously, they waited for footsteps to come round to the front of the car, but there was nothing. Instead, they heard the creak of the garage door again, and then silence.

'Christ, I thought we'd had it there,' Danny said when he was sure it was safe to speak. 'All that moralising I did at dinner, only to be found taking advantage of a helpless young woman in someone else's car.' He wound the window down and looked back towards the entrance. 'He's left the door ajar, though. Rescued just when it was getting interesting. That's my luck all over.'

'There's no hurry,' Astrid said. 'We may as well finish the bottle while we're waiting for this rain to stop.' He smiled and refilled her gla.s.s. 'So are you going to tell me what it was, this childish prank you mentioned at dinner?'

Danny held up his lighter and took longer than was necessary to select a chocolate from the box. 'That was a lie, I'm afraid,' he admitted, still avoiding her eye. 'It was rather more serious than that. I told you my parents were entertainers?'

'Yes. You said you were virtually brought up on the road.'

'That's right. We went from one set of digs to another, each dingier than the last. I could write a guidebook on miserable guest houses in miserable towns. There's scarcely a resort in England where I haven't picked the pattern off a candlewick bedspread.' She smiled, but didn't interrupt him. 'It was music-hall stuff, very old-fas.h.i.+oned and virtually obsolete after the war, but it was all they knewa and they clung to it, even while the audiences dwindled along with their fees. It's funny, but I never noticed how faded everything had become. At the time, it was all still magical to me, but I can see now that the coming of film was the final nail in the coffin.' He sipped his drink thoughtfully. 'Every summer, they'd do one of those seaside end-of-pier jobs because there was still a market for that. For some reason, people seem to enjoy things on holiday that they can't stand at home. Must be the sun.'

'Oh, I don't know. There's a lot to be said for a bit of Punch and Judy. Not everyone would want all this, even if they could afford it.'

'No, I suppose not. Anyway, it was the summer of my fifteenth birthday and we were in Rhyl. I'd seen their act a thousand timesa and the days when they kept me safe by strapping me to a chair at the side of the stage were long gone, so I went off on my owna and I met a girl. She was about the same age as me, or so I thought. We spent the afternoon together on the beacha and I arranged to see her again the next day, but she never turned up. I waited in the same place for three days, just in case, and after that I got the message. The first time you're stood up is always the hardest, isn't it?' He smiled. 'But what would you know about that?'

'You'd be surprised. So did you see her again?'

'No. Not then, anyway. But at the end of the week, just after my parents had finished their act, this man forced his way backstage and began beating seven bells out of me. My father dragged him off, so he started on him instead.'

'Who on earth was he?'

'The girl's father. She told him I'd forced myself on her and gone too far.'

'She accused you of raping her?'

'She said I'd tried, and that was enough for my father. He looked at me with such disgust, Astrid. I'll never forget it.'

'He didn't believe you hadn't done it?'

The unquestioning acceptance of his innocence was not lost on Danny, and he looked at her gratefully. 'No, he didn't. I don't think my mother did either, although she never actually said as much. The man threatened to go to the police, so my dad paid him off. It was all he could think of. I begged him to let me prove my innocence instead, but he said no one would accept my word over hers. He was probably right. She was the b.u.t.ter-wouldn't-melt sort. They'd probably pulled the same trick all over the country.'

'Was it a lot of money?'

Danny nodded. 'Yes. He gave up all their savings, then borrowed to keep them afloat. When he ran out of lenders, he tried his luck at gambling.'

Astrid took the cigarettes out of the box and lit one for both of them. 'You said keep them afloat; did they throw you out because of what had happened?'

'Oh no. We stuck together for about a year after that. Anything else would have made their sacrifice even more senseless than it was already. And in fairness to them, they never mentioned it again. My father said he didn't want to hear another word about it, and he meant it. But that was worse for me because convincing them I hadn't done anything wrong was never an option. In the end, I couldn't stand it any longer. I left them a note when we were in Lowestoft and hitched a lift to London to make my own way. I've never been so lonely in my life.'

It might have been romantic, Astrid thought, had it not been so unfair, and ultimately so destructive. 'Wasn't there anyone else for you to turn to?' she asked.

'No. We had some relatives in the business, but family was outa for obvious reasonsa and we never stayed anywhere long enough for me to make friends. Anyway, I wanted to get on and work. It was the only way I could think of to get my father out of debt and gain his respect back. But perhaps that was too much to hope for. Going into film was a mistake, for a start. It was as if I'd shamed him even more by hammering that coffin nail in myself. But it was the future, and I needed the money.'

'Couldn't you explain why you were doing it?'

'He wouldn't have listened. And I thought it would be better to get my first hundred pounds and send it to him, let the money do the talking that I wasn't able to.'

'But he killed himself before you had the chance.'

'Yes.' Danny downed the rest of the gla.s.s and said bitterlya 'I was nearly there, too. Just four quid short.'

Astrid tried in vain to think of something to say that would make him feel better, but everything sounded either patronising or naive. Instead, she askeda 'What about the girl? You said you didn't see her again then, so have you b.u.mped into her since?'

He nodded. 'This afternoon. I wasn't sure at first. It was a long time agoa and she looked different in a uniform. But tonight, when she'd tarted herself up to sing with that band, I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was her. And G.o.d help me, Astrid, but I wanted to take the little b.i.t.c.h by the throat and show her what pain feels like, how much it hurts to lose someone.'

'And that's why you disappeared so quickly.' She took his hand and gently unclenched the fist, waiting for his anger to pa.s.s. 'I'm so sorry, Danny,' she said eventually. 'I'm surprised you even considered coming back to this part of the world. It hasn't exactly been lucky for you, has it?'

He shook his head sadly. 'No, it hasn't. But if you must know, when I agreed to come I thought Portmeirion was in Cornwall.' They both laugheda and he looked at her gratefully. 'Thank you,' he said. 'You've done it again, when I wanted to talk about you.'

'There's always that brandy,' Astrid suggested. 'I'll take my chances with the umbrella if you will.'