A Dedicated Man

FOUR

Sally Lumb was finding it difficult to get to sleep. She had put aside Wuthering Heights because her eyes were getting tired, but sleep just would not come.

First she thought of Kevin. She would have to give in soon or he’d be off after someone more experienced. He was right on the edge and she couldn’t tease him for much longer. She didn’t want to, anyway. The last time they’d been together, the day they saw Penny Cartwright, she had let him put himself close to her sex; she had felt his heat and hardness right at her very entrance and it made her tremble and go all wet, just like it said in the books. It had been cruel to stop him then, she knew, but they had no protection; she didn’t want to get pregnant. There were ways around that, though. Next time…

Turning over and praying for sleep to come, she started thinking about the implications of what she had remembered that afternoon. Not the car on Saturday night – that was nothing – but something she hadn’t fully perceived at the time that now had more sinister far-reaching possibilities. It was her first real clue, and she had to decide what to do about it. She wouldn’t go to the police, that was for certain – a proper fool she’d make of herself if she was wrong! Besides, she was already determined to solve the affair herself. Perhaps she might even become a heroine.

And the police were fools anyway; she could easily one-up them. That man from London had treated her like a silly child. And what had he done that was so wonderful? Given up an exciting metropolitan life for the boredom of Swainsdale, that’s what he’d done. Lord, the man could have been working for Scotland Yard!

And so, as her mind tossed and turned towards sleep, the first step became clear. If she was right, then someone was in danger; a warning had to be given. She would arrange a secret meeting, and maybe after that, if her suspicions were proved correct, she could go about setting a trap. That thought worried her, as she really would be making herself vulnerable. But she could always rope Kevin in; he was a big strong lad, and he’d do anything for her.

As Sally finally drifted into the dream world that usually puzzled and irritated her, she could see the lights of London strung out before her like a diamond necklace. Why stop there? the dream insisted. And the images progressed, built up from magazine photographs and television programmes: Vogue models sashayed down the Champs Elysees, famous actresses stepped out of limousines under the neons of Sunset Strip, and all the well-known television personalities she had ever seen chatted over cocktails at a party in Manhattan… But soon it all faded, and what she remembered in the morning was a rather absurd image of being in Leeds, a place she had visited several times on shopping expeditions with her mother. In the dream it felt like a foreign city. There were uniformed policemen all over the place, and Sally had to push her bicycle because she didn’t have a licence – at least, not one that was valid in Leeds. She was there, she vaguely remembered, because she was searching for a bird, a white one that had flown from her garden, a vast dark expanse like a tilled field after rain. She didn’t know if the bird had been her pet, her responsibility, or just a wild creature she had taken a fancy to, but it was important, and she was there in an alien familiar city pushing her bicycle among the policemen looking for it…