A Deep Deceit

Seven

‘This can’t go on,’ I told Carl the next day. ‘I think we should go to the police. We’re both living my nightmare now. Anything would be better than that...’

He looked at me as if I had slapped his face. ‘No!’ he said emphatically. ‘No. I cannot risk losing you.’

I sighed. I was no longer a frightened twenty-year-old girl. Nowadays I was a frightened twenty-seven-year-old woman. Nothing had changed, really, except that I was beginning to believe that nobody could run for ever.

Carl cuddled me and told me stories, as he always did when he knew I was upset. He told me again about growing up in Key West in the Sixties and early Seventies when the artists and writers were there with a vengeance, and the whole place existed in a cloud of scented smoke from marijuana and joss sticks, and he as a small boy used to go hunting for clams on the beach accompanied by a chorus of songs from guitar-playing hippies.

Sometimes he made his growing up sound forsaken and lonely. It depended on his mood, I knew that. Sometimes he resented the haze of drugs and booze, which had engulfed his parents to the extent where they could hardly be bothered with their only son. Sometimes he romanticised it all. This was one of those days. He was trying to lift me, of course. ‘Did I ever tell you about Crabman Killenny?’ he asked.

I shook my head.

‘They called him Crabman because he could sing the crabs off the beach.’

I laughed.

‘No, really, every night he’d go to the beach and sing to the sunset. His voice was so bad even the crabs couldn’t stand it. A great procession of them would make their way across the sand and up into the streets. All we kids used to go and watch. We reckoned they’d rather be squashed underneath the Conch Train than listen to old Crabman Killenny singing.’

‘Yuk,’ I said. And I laughed again dutifully.

‘No truly, I saw it with my own eyes.’

And Carl stared at me, arms outstretched, hands palms up, a picture of offended innocence.

Nobody could make me forget pain like Carl. He was just so easy to be with somehow. I loved his gentle sense of humour. He had a way of jollying me out of myself. It didn’t quite work on this occasion though, and the tranquillity of our day-to-day existence never quite returned. Any chance of that was wrecked by a series of three or four nightmares, brought on, I knew all too well, by the letters.

Carl and I still didn’t have a clue who might be responsible. For a start, there was no one whom we could possibly imagine knew anything about us that might lead him or her to behave in such a way.

‘Who could hate us that much?’ I asked Carl one Sunday morning.

He shrugged. ‘I wish I knew, Suzanne. The most hateful person I know around here is that damned Fenella Austen.’

It wasn’t the first time he had mentioned her name and I wished he wouldn’t. There was no logic in focusing on Fenella and I told him so.

‘But what if we’ve got it wrong; what if we’re being threatened because of something that has happened here in St Ives? Maybe Fenella resents us, resents me. You know what artists can be like. I sell better than she does nowadays.’

‘Carl, you’re not exactly Damien Hirst, thank God. We barely get by. And there is absolutely nothing about either of us since we’ve been in St Ives that anybody could use against us, you know that.’

Carl grunted his agreement. But he seemed to be totally preoccupied, perhaps even obsessed, with finding the letter writer. And it was that, probably, which led him to behave later that day in a rather hot-headed manner, which was quite out of character.

I understood that Carl could not bear anything that threatened our lives together. But I had had no idea of his intentions when he suggested we visited the Sloop, and indeed, still do not know for certain that he had actually intended to do what he did.

I was trying not to think about our problems when we walked down to the pub at lunch time. It was a wet and blustery February day, and there were virtually no holidaymakers around. The bar was jam-packed full of locals, most of whom we knew at least a little and who knew us.

I might have guessed that, one way or another, something was going to break soon. Although Carl did not have nightmares, he seemed possibly to be more disturbed by the anonymous campaign against us than I was. He insisted that he was upset only because he knew what it was doing to me, that he wasn’t worried himself, but I knew very well just how on edge he was all the time.

We shrugged off our wet coats and propped our umbrellas in a corner among a pile of them, which were already steaming gently. Predictably enough, Fenella Austen was at the bar holding court. She did the rounds of all the pubs in St Ives, but recently seemed to have been using the Sloop more than any other, much to the irritation of Carl and me who had a big soft spot for the place. Equally predictably, she was already well oiled even though it was only just one o’clock. As Carl approached the bar to buy our first round of drinks she paused in mid flow, took a deep draught from her glass, which was filled almost to the brim with a substance that looked suspiciously like only very slightly diluted whisky, and put her free arm round his waist.

‘Ah, my favourite boy wonder,’ she drawled, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

At first Carl did quite well. He gave her a small, icy smile. ‘Some boy,’ he said mildly.

Then, as ever, her hand slipped down to his backside, which she squeezed in her customary familiar manner. The bloody woman seemed to have a fixation with Carl’s bottom and I suspected he was not in the mood to put up with it. I was right. There was a brief moment of calm before the storm and I found myself wondering if it was much the same kind of thing as Mariette and her waiter’s bum. Just as I was deciding that there really was no comparison all hell broke loose.

‘You are a p-poisonous old woman and if you d-don’t take your hand away from my a-arse I’ll stuff it up your own,’ I heard Carl say.

I could hardly miss it. He shouted at the top of his voice. Carl hardly ever raised his voice, hardly ever swore and was never crude or uncouth. I had never even heard him say ‘arse’ before. The stammer, which occurred only very rarely by then and under extreme stress, somehow made his outburst all the more devastating. I was flabbergasted. The silence was suddenly deafening. All eyes were on Carl and Fenella. Apart from anything else, taking on Fenella was unheard of. She had not achieved her almost legendary status in St Ives without good reason.

Slowly she put her drink down on the bar and turned to face Carl directly, quite deliberately keeping her left hand on his bottom, so that her face was just inches from his although a little above. Fenella was exceptionally tall, particularly for a woman of her age. She was well over six foot and on that Sunday morning was wearing high-heeled shoes. Carl had to peer up to look her in the eye. ‘You silly little man,’ she said eventually and for her quite quietly, and certainly very calmly.

Then and only then did she remove her hand from Carl’s bum, swing back round on her heels and return her attention to her glass of whisky. Not a bad performance for someone who was definitely at least half cut, I remember thinking.

There was a strangled giggle or two here and there but conversation had started to begin again when it became apparent that Carl was not going to be dismissed so lightly. ‘I said you were a p-poisonous old woman,’ he yelled and this time there was almost a note of hysteria in his voice. ‘Poisonous, as in p-poison pen.’

With a weary sigh Fenella turned towards him again. ‘What the fuck are you talking about?’ she asked, her voice only very slightly slurred.

‘You know d-damned well what I’m talking about,’ said Carl, still yelling.

‘Really,’ countered Fenella, who sounded dangerously calm. ‘Well, then, why not at least enlighten the rest of the bar. I’m sure everyone else is bewildered even if I, allegedly, am not.’

‘She’s been sending poison pen letters to me and my wife,’ shouted Carl.

Fenella raised her eyebrows. ‘And what did I say in these letters, pray?’ she asked.

‘You know what you s-said,’ he told her.

‘Now let me think,’ replied Fenella and tapped a finger against her pursed lips as if she were musing. ‘I know. Perhaps it was something devastatingly truthful like how you are a no-talent no-hoper married to a silly bitch with no personality?’

The words were devastating. Her voice was one of polite enquiry. I tried to stop Carl taking this any further, but it was too late. He rose to the bait. ‘You’re a vicious old has-been,’ he bellowed at her. ‘You’re jealous of me and Suzanne, that’s why you’re doing this to us...’

A collective gasp echoed around the bar. I knew that Carl had gone too far.

The barman, hearing the danger signals, came belting round from the lounge bar just in time to see Fenella throw her whisky in Carl’s face. She was not even pretending to be calm now. ‘Don’t you ever speak to me like that,’ she stormed. ‘This is my bar in my town and I want you out of it.’

Carl began to wipe whisky from his face with the back of one hand. God knows what might have happened next but I didn’t wait to find out. I knew I had to be decisive for once in my life. I grabbed Carl by both hands and, pulling with all my strength, dragged him towards the door.

His legs started to move in the right direction before he became aware of what was happening. Nonetheless he opened his mouth to protest.

‘Don’t argue; for once do as I say,’ I commanded. ‘We’re leaving.’

Suddenly overcome by the scene, perhaps, he complied almost meekly.

When I got him outside I realised, or rather the driving rain made us both realise, that we had left our coats and umbrellas in the bar. Cornish weather is not always as benign as summer visitors think. The weeks since Christmas had been bleak. On this occasion the wind and rain were blowing directly inshore, carrying with them an icy saltiness that chilled to the bone. A particularly vicious gust caught us full in the face, quite taking my breath away. ‘Just don’t move,’ I managed to gasp to Carl, as I dashed inside to fetch protection from the foul weather.

By the time we had pulled on our coats and abandoned even the thought of trying to erect our umbrellas, I had gone off the idea of a lunchtime drink completely.

Unfortunately, Carl had not.

‘Let’s go up to the Union,’ he said, brushing aside my protests.

‘Just don’t go accusing anybody else, will you?’

‘I’m not a c-complete damned fool, Suzanne,’ he snapped, still stammering slightly.

‘Then why are you behaving like one?’ I heard myself counter before I had time to think.

It was about as near as we had ever got to a quarrel. Certainly my sharp answer, every bit as uncharacteristic as Carl’s outburst in the pub, had stopped him dead in his tracks. ‘Is that what you think?’ he asked.

I turned to look at him directly, his shoulders hunched against the wind and rain, his hair sodden, droplets of water running off his nose and chin, the expression in his eyes full of concern. Everything Carl did was governed by his huge capacity for love and loyalty. I knew that, and adored him for it, but I decided not to capitulate. I had gone this far, I would have to see it through. ‘Yes, I do,’ I said. ‘You’re not a fool, Carl, anything but. You have just behaved like one, though.’

He stared at me for a second or two, then his face broke into a grin. ‘You’re right, of course. It’s just that I am so worried and we had to meet that goddamned woman, didn’t we. She really gets under my skin.’

‘I noticed,’ I said with feeling.

We had reached the Union by then, a comfortable little pub away from the sea front. Carl managed a smile in answer to my slightly acid response as he stepped to one side and quite flamboyantly ushered me into the bar.

At first I thought things were looking up. Old Dan Nash was ensconced in a corner and, quite unlike the dreaded Fenella, Carl and I were always pleased to see him. He was one of our favourite characters, one of the last of the pilchard fishermen St Ives used to be full of before the fish stopped coming. Dan’s stories of the good old days were always worth listening to and invariably beautifully told in his low Cornish burr, which added great charm and even a kind of authority to his tales.

On this day, though, he seemed agitated and at first uncommunicative, barely responding to our greetings.

‘What’s wrong with old Dan, then?’ Carl asked the barmaid as he ordered a pint of bitter for himself and a glass of white wine for me.

‘Reckons he’s seen the Lady with the Lantern,’ replied the girl, raising her eyes heavenwards. ‘Silly old fool; think he’s losing his marbles...’

‘I ’eard that,’ said a voice from the corner. There was certainly nothing wrong with Dan’s hearing.

The girl, a new face behind the bar as far as I was concerned although Carl seemed to know her, didn’t appear to care that the old man had heard her being so unkindly rude about him. She shrugged her shoulders and headed for the other bar.

‘Don’t worry, Dan,’ said Carl. ‘That one’s too young and stupid to have any marbles to lose in the first place.’

Dan chuckled his appreciation and gestured for us to join him. ‘I did see the Lady, though,’ he insisted. ‘Clear as I can see the pair of you.’

Now I was vaguely aware, from my reading of local books and archives, of the legend of the Lady with the Lantern and I wasn’t entirely sure that it was a story we wanted to hear that day. But Carl, probably thinking we were in for a good yarn that might make us forget our troubles, had already sat down on the wooden bench alongside Dan. One of the really nice things about Carl was what a good listener he was and the way he always had time for people. Normally I too was more than happy to listen to the old fishermen’s tales, and ultimately, in spite of my reluctance, I felt I had little choice but to join the pair of them.

‘There was a shipwreck, you see,’ Dan began. ‘Oh, two, three hundred year ago. A big ship driven on to thigee rocks beyond the island...’

He paused and gestured vaguely in the direction of St Ives Head.

‘Many of ’em on board perished right away and as the wreck began to disintegrate still more of ’em was swept into the sea. ’Twas a filthy, dirty night. The waves came in right over thigee harbour wall and the wind was blawing a gale – bit like today, only one of the worst storms in ‘istory, they say. Nonetheless some brave St Ives lads went to the rescue. Fishermen, they was, and they manned their boat and rowed out to the stricken ship. It weren’t possible to get alongside but they approached as near as they dared and, using a rope strung between the two vessels, managed to rescue several sailors.

‘Then a woman appeared on the capsizing deck of the wrecked ship. ’Er seemed to be weak with fear and was supported by a group of sailors, but she clutched a child tightly in ’er arms, which she refused to pass over to any of the sailors while the fishermen attempted to rope her to safety, even though they entreated her to. Eventually, with the ship approaching its death throes, ’er was lowered into the water still holding on to thigee child. ‘Owever, as the fishermen dragged ’er through the raging sea she fainted and let go ’er grip on ’er child, which was lost.

‘The Lady was successfully pulled into the boat and delivered to the safety of dry land where ’er regained consciousness all right. But when ’er learned of the fate of ’er child she lost the will to live and died within hours.

‘’Er was buried in the churchyard over yonder, but shortly afterwards was seen to cross over the churchyard wall on to the beach and walk out to the island.

‘There she spent hours an’ hours searching them terrible rocks before eventually returning to ’er grave.

‘And ’er’s never given up, ‘asn’t the Lady. ’Er still does it to this day, you see. And when the nights be stormy or particularly dark, like they’ve bin all bleddy week, ’er carries a lantern...’

Dan paused, looking agitated again. ‘I saw ’er last night,’ he said. ‘Saw ’er making her way across thigee beach and off to the island, awful big sea there was an’ all, but ’er never takes no heed of that, just carries on looking for that child, searching, waving that lantern every which way...’

Dan lifted his pint of Guinness to his lips and I noticed that his hand was shaking. ‘Something mighty bad’s going to happen,’ he insisted. ‘It always does when you see the Lady. There’ll be a disaster, ’tis fate, nought you can do about it.’

He stared at us, his eyes wide with horror. I felt a shiver run down my spine. Carl was very still beside me.

‘Look at thigee weather,’ continued Dan, gesturing through the steamed-up window. The howl of the wind and the dashing assault of the rain could be heard clearly enough inside the bar. “Twill not abate now till ‘tis ‘appened, whatever ‘tis...’ His voice tailed off.

‘Take no notice.’ The voice from behind us breaking the spell belonged to Rob Partridge, a local policeman who spent most of his off-duty hours in one or other of St Ives’s many hostelries. Not a man to be impressed with Cornish legend, the orange-haired Partridge’s only real interests in life were reputed to be beer and horse-racing. ‘Bleddy load of tosh. I’ve told you before, Dan, about frightening the horses...’

Carl and I were barely listening. Somehow the Union no longer seemed so cosy and welcoming. Without having to discuss it we emptied our glasses and stood up.

‘Load of tosh, you know,’ said Rob again as we left. He leaned unsteadily our way and breathed beer over us. We were not particularly reassured. Rob Partridge was not a man who inspired confidence in any direction. In fact, in spite of his uniform, he was regarded as a bit of a joke in the town.

‘Of course,’ said Carl.

We barely spoke as we trudged up the hill towards Rose Cottage and that was very unusual for us. I knew Carl wasn’t quite back to normal. It might seem trivial but I suspected that the Lady with the Lamp story was still preying on his mind. He was strongly inclined to be superstitious. He believed in omens; he said he had been brought up to. He had his paints and his brushes all arranged in a certain order and if anybody ever changed anything he was convinced it was unlucky. I knew better than to touch anything, but once Will had visited us and, before Carl or I realised what he was doing, had idly moved some brushes around while chatting in the studio.

As soon as Will left, Carl had plastered a thick layer of paint right over the top of the painting he had been working on. ‘I may as well start over again,’ he had said and I was never quite sure if he was being melodramatic or if, quite simply, he was just dissatisfied with his work.

As soon as we were indoors Carl disappeared straight upstairs. I went into the kitchen to heat soup and make toast. Maybe some warming food would make us both feel better. The torrential rain had found its way through the roof again, and water was leaking steadily, forming an already quite substantial puddle on the floor. The sight depressed me further. I mopped up the worst of it, stuck a bucket under the leak and turned my back on it. I poured the soup into big mugs, put them on a tray along with a plate of hot buttered toast and followed Carl upstairs.

He was sitting in one of our two window armchairs. I sat myself in the other and passed him a steaming mug. ‘The Lady with the Lantern, the bad fortune is supposed to happen to the one who sees her,’ I said eventually.

‘Really,’ said Carl. ‘Why did you turn so pale, then?’

I shrugged. ‘Sometimes I think Cornwall does it to you. I do love it here, you know that. But the place is full of ghost stories. As if we don’t have enough of our own...’

I shivered again. The window was so steamed up and the cloud so thick and low that you could barely see our wonderful view over the harbour. The rain continued ferociously and the sound of it driving against the window-panes was almost like the rat-a-tat-tat of a machine-gun.

Carl didn’t speak again. For once he didn’t seem to have any words of comfort.

‘We mustn’t let it get to us, not any of it,’ I said stoically.

With what appeared to be a considerable effort of will, he found his voice then. ‘I know, and I’m sorry, Suzanne, I just can’t bear to think of our happiness, our life together being wrecked by some sicko who’s trying to destroy us.’

‘We’ve just got to get through this,’ I consoled. ‘We don’t even really know what any of it means, do we?’

‘I suppose not,’ he replied in an unconvinced sort of way.

‘And you really can’t bounce around the town accusing people like you did Fenella Austen,’ I remonstrated.

He sighed. ‘I know. I’ve never liked that woman, though.’

‘That doesn’t mean she’s writing us threatening letters, or that she scratched the van.’

‘She’s capable of it, I’m sure.’

‘Maybe. But I’m not certain it would be her style. She hasn’t got the subtlety.’

Carl almost glowered at me. ‘Subtlety. You call those letters subtle?’

‘More subtle than throwing insults at a living, local legend in front of half of St Ives,’ I commented.

He smiled wryly. ‘I suppose you’re right,’ he acknowledges. ‘I know you’re right, I’ve already admitted that.’

‘Carl, I thought the idea was that we would always keep a low profile, that we didn’t want to be noticed too much, didn’t want to get involved...’ I let the words tail off.

He smiled again, in a rather more relaxed way this time. ‘Never again, I promise.’

He held out his hand. I took it. I felt his fingers squeezing mine.

‘I’ll tell you this, though, Suzanne,’ he continued, and his voice sounded strong and determined again. ‘I won’t have you hurt by anyone.’

For the first time in my life with Carl I found myself afraid. Not of him, of course, but for him and what he might do to protect me.

I had to convince him that I could cope, that I was not being destroyed by what was happening to us. So I had somehow to keep the nightmares at bay, because I could not conceal what they did to me.

The only way I survived at that time was by burying my head in the sand. I didn’t have one-hundred-percent success, of course, but I was surprised to find just how well I seemed able to cope once I had put my mind to it. It was a bit like pulling the blankets back over your head on those mornings when you really feel unable to face the world. It seemed to come to me quite naturally – maybe that was my background.

One way and another I managed another two-and-a-half-month spell without a nightmare. In spite of Dan Nash’s insistence on the meaning behind his sighting of the Lady with the Lantern, the storms, which indeed raged throughout most of February, did eventually subside without any major disaster hitting either us or, in fact, anyone we knew in the town. Life returned to some kind of normality. We did not go back to the Sloop, preferring the Union or the Golden Lion, or almost any of the others now that Fenella Austen seemed to have turned the old waterside inn into ‘her bar’.

Only one or two of those who witnessed Carl’s outburst and his reference to poison pen letters even mentioned it to us again and we made light of it, both of us muttering something about a joke that had gone wrong and been misunderstood.

Mariette heard about it, of course, and I spun her a yarn about an old friend of Carl’s who had thought he was being funny. I wasn’t quite sure she believed me, but she seemed to accept it.

St Ives seemed to forget quickly, but we never quite could. Shopping in the town one day, we saw Fenella coming towards us and I dragged a reluctant Carl into a store in order to avoid her.

He was quite angry with me.

‘You owe her an apology, Carl, you know that,’ I remonstrated.

‘Well, I’ll be damned if she’s getting one and I’ll be damned if I’ll skulk around town because of her,’ he snapped.

He could admit to me that he had been wrong to accuse Fenella in such a manner, but he certainly wasn’t going to admit it to her, it seemed. He could be very stubborn, could Carl.

When I was out and about on my own I kept my eyes well peeled for Fenella and managed to dodge her successfully for weeks on end. I was more embarrassed than anything else but I also knew I was no match for her in the verbals department. I would never willingly take on the likes of Fenella Austen.

The idea of getting a job had gone completely out of my mind right from the moment our van had been vandalised, but as Carl buried himself in his work – that had always been his main way of dealing with our problems – my lurking desire for some kind of outside activity rose to the surface again. And one beautiful early April day, when the sun was shining brightly and every patch of garden in the town seemed to be ablaze with daffodils, my spirits were so uplifted that I was moved to mention to Mariette that if ever there was an opening at the library I would be interested. After all, following a winter that had been unusually bleak for Cornwall, it seemed as if the whole world were being reborn, so why shouldn’t I be too?

‘Sooner than you think,’ she replied. It transpired that the young man who had the most junior job was employed only on a temporary basis and was soon leaving to go to university.

I decided I would again mention to Carl the possibility of my taking a job and I would do it that very evening, probably over supper. But just as we were about to dish up the pan-fried dabs Carl had bought from our lovely fishmonger, while I had been at the library chatting to Mariette, there was a knocking on the front door.

‘Bound to be Will, probably inviting himself to dinner again,’ remarked Carl in an unconcerned kind of way. ‘It’s OK, there’s plenty for him...’ We were used to Will turning up unexpectedly, after all we had no telephone, nor had we ever found any real need for one.

I opened the front door and, as Carl had predicted, there stood Will. Nonetheless, I had not the slightest intention of inviting him in, in spite of what Carl had said. I really wanted to talk to Carl alone before it was once more too late.

Will waved a bottle at me. ‘Pink champagne, how about that?’ he announced. ‘Won it in a raffle. Thought maybe I could persuade you both to share it with me?’

He grinned at me confidently. Too confidently. I was vaguely irritated by his presumption. ‘I’m sorry, Will, we were just sitting down to supper and we really do need to be on our own tonight,’ I heard myself say. If he hadn’t irritated me and if I hadn’t been so intent on talking to Carl, I might have been a little more gracious.

The grin froze on Will’s face. For a moment he looked dumbfounded. Well, we always made him welcome. But his features quickly relaxed. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry about it. I was just passing. Another time, aye?’

‘Yes, as ever. Another time.’

He gave a kind of half-salute with his free hand and turned away.

I felt guilty then. ‘Sorry, Will, you don’t mind, do you? Just bad timing tonight, really...’ My voice tailed off.

‘No problem,’ called Will over his shoulder. “Course I understand. I’ll keep the champagne for the next time you pop round to the gallery. How’s that?’

I muttered my agreement at his retreating back and closed the front door.

Carl was just putting a big platter of dabs on the table. ‘Why did you turn him away?’ he asked mildly. ‘I told you there was plenty. I thought you liked Will.’

‘I do, but he does take liberties,’ I said, perhaps a little grumpily. ‘In any case, there’s something I want to tell you.’

‘OK.’ He gestured me to sit down and help myself. ‘Fire away.’

‘You know I mentioned once before that I liked the idea of getting a job?’ I began tentatively as I ladled a dab on to my plate.

He nodded but did not say anything.

‘Actually there’s one going in the library,’ I went on. ‘Mariette seems to think I could get it if I wanted...’

I didn’t quite finish all that I had intended to say and there seemed to be a long silence before Carl replied. ‘Well, I think that’s a wonderful idea,’ he said.

My heart soared. If, upon reflection, his smile was strained, I did not notice it at first. I just knew I was beginning to really yearn for outside stimuli. But before I could tell him how delighted I was with his reaction, Carl started to speak again. ‘I’m just so sorry that it’s not possible,’ he said very quietly.

It was almost like a slap in the face. ‘What do you mean?’ I asked him haltingly.

‘Suzanne, you know very well it won’t be possible,’ he repeated.

‘I don’t. Why not? Carl, please, oh please, Carl.’ I heard myself imploring him.

‘Suzanne, how can you have a job?’ he asked. ‘You’d never cope and you don’t even have a National Insurance number...’

Worse than that, I realised I didn’t even quite know what a National Insurance number was.

Carl put down the forkful of dab he was about to put in his mouth, reached out with his hand to squeeze mine, and said again how sorry he was. He leaned across the table and kissed me gently on the end of my nose. For once I found him patronising more than anything else.

‘It’s not the end of the world, my Lady of the Harbour,’ he coaxed. ‘Anyway, aren’t I enough for you any more?’

His voice was gentle and teasing. Nonetheless, I heard myself reply very seriously and very honestly, putting into words thoughts I had never mentioned to him before: ‘Sometimes I do want more, Carl, yes I do.’ I touched his face with one hand in order to soften the blow of my words. ‘I just want a job and friends, the normal things, the ordinary things...’

Then I saw the pain flash across his eyes, this man who had given me a whole fresh start in life, a new identity. And fear. Maybe even fear. Carl, too, could be afraid, I knew that, although he seemed to have only one fear, really: the fear of anything disrupting our love and our life.

I could not hurt him. ‘It’s OK, Carl,’ I said, before he even spoke again. ‘I know you are right. I suppose I always knew it wouldn’t really be possible. Maybe one day, aye?’

Carl smiled and kissed me again. This time on the mouth. ‘Yes, darling,’ he whispered. ‘One day.’

I knew he didn’t mean it, though. And sometimes I wondered how long you could keep a secret.

A couple of days later Carl decided he would make bouillabaisse for supper and we paid a visit to our favourite local fishmonger. Steve was a young man with film star good-looks, totally incongruous in a fishmonger’s apron yet apparently enviably content in his work, who somehow contrived to be quite passionate about fish and frequently waxed lyrical about his product.

True to form he produced a monk-fish which he proclaimed to be particularly splendid. ‘Just look at the shine on that,’ he enthused. ‘You’ll not get a healthier looking fish than that one...’

‘Steve, I think I should point out that the fish is dead,’ Carl interrupted dryly.

‘Good Lord!’ countered Steve. ‘So it is.’

On the way home we dropped in at the Logan Gallery to visit Will Jones and find out how the sales of Carl’s paintings were going.

I was anxious about visiting Will for the first time since I had turned him away from Rose Cottage, but to my great relief, he was as friendly as ever to both of us. He didn’t seem to be harbouring any grudge at all and our visit to the gallery really cheered Carl up, because we learned that his paintings were selling exceptionally well. So well, in fact, that Carl invited Will to share the bouillabaisse with us that night as a kind of thank-you.

As ever, on the rare occasions when we actually invited him to our house, Will accepted with alacrity. He was something of a loner and I used to think that sometimes he might be lonely too, but neither Carl nor I knew much about his private life. We were always made very welcome at the gallery and occasionally Will entertained us, invariably most generously, at a local restaurant, but we had never been invited to his clifftop bungalow home out on the Penzance Road. We knew that he lived alone and he had told us that he had never been married. If he had a special woman friend nobody in the town knew of it. Indeed, Will seemed not to make friends easily and I always thought that one reason the three of us were so comfortable with each other was because none of us wanted to probe. I had once ventured to Carl that maybe Will was gay. Carl had laughed and asked me if I had never noticed the way the gallery owner looked at me. Nonetheless I was not entirely convinced.

Anyway, I was glad Carl had invited him partly because it eradicated my remaining guilt about the pink champagne incident, and I welcomed any diversion that might help take our minds off our worries.

The rest of the afternoon passed pleasantly enough. Carl spent an hour or two framing his latest painting and I made a pretence of helping him. As usual, more than anything I just watched. Carl was so deft with his hands that it was a pleasure to watch him choose just the right colour and weight of framing material, and angle the beading so absolutely perfectly. When he had finished he started work on the bouillabaisse.

By the time Will arrived just before seven the whole cottage was full of an aroma of garlicky fish.

‘Delicious,’ Will said as he sniffed his appreciation and handed me a bottle of rather good white wine. We ate around the table in the downstairs room, curtains drawn and candlelit as usual in order to disguise its dinginess. But we had rigged up a single spotlight on the wall, which effectively illuminated my Pumpkin Soup painting.

Supper was excellent.

‘This bouillabaisse is as good as I’ve had in any restaurant,’ remarked Will.

‘What do you mean “as good as”,’ countered Carl. ‘How about “far better”, or “much superior” or something else along those lines...’

‘Why are great chefs always so arrogant, Will?’ I asked.

He shrugged his shoulders. ‘What, Carl arrogant? A talented painter, a brilliant cook and he’s got you, Suzanne? What on earth has the man got to be arrogant about?’

‘And I’m stinking rich,’ said Carl, waving his arm around the dimly lit little room. ‘How do you like my mansion?’

Will grinned and put a hand over one of mine, which was resting on the table. ‘You two have quite enough riches,’ he said. ‘I would swap everything I possess, the gallery, the car, my house, for what you have...’

He spoke lightly enough and his tone was as theatrical as ever, but we had noticed before that Will was inclined to become a bit hyperbolic after a few glasses of wine.

Carl invariably responded with the easy teasing banter which came so easily to him. ‘That can be arranged, Will,’ he said. ‘When do you want to move in? I think you may have to raise the ceilings, though, and God knows how you’ll get on with my old van.’

Will laughed and said that he had forgotten about the van, and the offer was withdrawn.

Very occasionally, particularly if Carl had sold some paintings at a good price, we would go out to supper in a little fish restaurant just a few doors away from our home.

This was a real treat for us, and I was delighted when, later in the week having had such an exceptional run of sales, Carl suggested we celebrate with a meal out in our favourite restaurant.

I washed my hair, trying desperately to blow-dry a little bounce into its lank flamess which was emphasised by then by my half-grown-out layered haircut, and we both put on our smartest clothes – we didn’t need to, but we enjoyed dressing up every now and again. I even considered risking the orange suit, tucked away at the back of my wardrobe – I hadn’t quite been able to bring myself to throw it out – but thought better of it. In the end I settled for the familiar and safe calf-length skirt, cotton print blouse and a jacket.

The Inn Plaice, in spite of its appalling name, was anything but and, because it was in a back street away from the seafront, had to rely on the quality of its food rather than a stunning location with which to tempt diners. Its proprietor, Pete Trevellian, the younger son of a family of fishermen, behaved more as if he were hosting a dinner party for friends in his house than running a restaurant, but Pete had a good set-up. His fish, mostly supplied direct from his family’s fishing boats, was good and fresh, and his father and brothers were able to make a better living than many fishermen in the area partly because of the family restaurant outlet. The Inn Plaice had a big local following and, unlike many eating houses in the town, which relied almost entirely on the seasonal tourist trade, was able to remain open all the year round.

Pete greeted us, as he did most of his regulars, with a complimentary glass of wine. But once we were settled at our table with menus Carl suddenly announced that he had forgotten a quick errand he must run, and jumped up and left before I had time to protest. He was gone for several minutes and, just as I was beginning to wonder where on earth he had got to, he returned clutching a bunch of daffodils. ‘For you with my love,’ he said. ‘Supermarket special, I’m afraid – should have thought of it earlier, shouldn’t I?’

I shook my head and thanked him profusely. Another of the many things I loved about Carl was his spontaneity. It was typical of him to be sitting at a restaurant table, think about buying me flowers, and just rush off and get some. I was as knocked out by my slightly tired-looking daffs as I would have been by a bouquet of orchids.

Carl ordered more wine. We then turned our attention to the menu and chose crab chowder followed by an assortment of grilled local fish served with a side dish of Pete’s irresistibly crunchy chips, and fresh fruit salad with clotted cream for dessert.

In the end we got through two bottles of wine, as well as Pete’s initial glasses, an unusually large amount for us, but it just turned into one of those sort of evenings. As we said our goodbyes and set out on the short walk home I realised that I was definitely slightly tipsy. I made a concentrated effort to walk straight as Carl could be a bit stiff about drinking to excess, but he seemed easygoing enough that night. After all it was he who had ordered the deadly second bottle and I fancied he might not be stone-cold sober himself. I leaned against him heavily as we turned, perhaps both of us swaying slightly, into the cobbled alley that led to Rose Cottage.

I could see from the light of the street lamp on the corner that there was something strange about our front door. It seemed to have shiny red marks all over it, standing out starkly against the faded, pale-blue paint. I caught my breath. I could feel Carl stiffen beside me. Both instantly sober, we covered the last few yards to the cottage in silence. The shiny red marks were writing, as I think we had both immediately suspected, although we could not see to read what had been scrawled across the door to our home until we were directly in front of it: ‘YOU CANNOT ESCAPE – I’M WATCHING.’

The words were roughly scrawled in thick daubs of bright-red gloss paint which had run and dripped down the wooden panels. I reached out and touched a particularly shiny patch. It was still wet. My hand came away smeared with red. I stared at it. The dripping red paint looked like blood. I felt my vision blur.

Carl’s grip on my arm tightened.

I wanted to cry out, but my voice temporarily deserted me.

Carl found his all right. He bellowed his anger into the cold night air. ‘Son of a bitch!’ he shouted at the top of his voice. And immediately he began to scrub at the paint with his free hand and the sleeve of his good overcoat. I didn’t try to stop him. After a few seconds he seemed to pull himself together and stopped the frantic rubbing. ‘We don’t even have to look at this,’ he muttered, his earlier flash of near hysteria apparently under control.

Swiftly he unlocked the front door and together we climbed the stairs to bed. The joy of our evening out had been destroyed.

We didn’t say much. There wasn’t much to say. But I knew what would happen that night, knew it with dreadful clarity, and so, I am sure, did Carl. I did not have the energy nor the determination to pace the house and keep myself awake, so I just gave in to the promise of misery. Maybe I hoped that the alcohol I had consumed would give me some kind of bizarre protection as I slept. It didn’t.

That night the nightmare was the very worst of all. The blood had seen to that. For that is what I saw on my front door, blood, not paint. And it was blood, I knew all too well, that I was going to see inside my head. Always.

At breakfast the next morning, I finally gave voice to most of what I was thinking. ‘The reality may be that we just can’t hide any more,’ I told Carl sombrely.

‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘Not here, anyway. Maybe we can’t stay here any longer. I think the time has come to move on. What do you say?’

I was numbed by his words. ‘This is our home,’ I protested. ‘I don’t want to move from here, I really don’t.’

‘Anywhere we are together would be our home,’ he countered. ‘That’s all that matters isn’t it?’

I nodded. I didn’t know quite what to say.

‘Let’s give it a few days, see if anything else happens,’ I managed eventually.

But I knew what I truly felt. Not only did I not want to run again, I was not going to run again. The running was over. I also knew I could not expect any more from Carl. He had done too much already to protect me. I suspected that he was drained of energy. I was not going to be a victim any more, not of nightmares nor superstitions nor anonymous threats. I reckoned it was up to me to sort out our lives once and for all, to remove the fear that had always been there in its different ways for both of us.

That afternoon, while Carl was working, I slipped out of the house. I had to creep away stealthily because Carl would never have allowed me to do what I was planning. He loved me too much and I knew only too well how great was his fear of losing me. But I had had enough. It had all gone on far too long.

I found an inner strength I did not know I had. On tiptoe I left the cottage, opening and shutting the old front door with the greatest of care. I was afraid, but my steps were determined as I walked along our little cobbled lane and into the network of narrow streets that led down the hill from our cottage to the harbour, the place that had always been so special to us.

I wanted to be there alone just once more before it all changed, perhaps for ever. Before I took our futures into frightening unknown territory beyond the point of no return.

This was where Carl had given me my new name. ‘You’re Suzanne from now on,’ he had told me softly. ‘Suzanne – my Lady of the Harbour.’

And as I walked alone along the harbour side, inside my head I could hear him singing to me softly from the Leonard Cohen song of the Sixties that he so loved and from which he had named me Suzanne, the song that had been so much a part of his growing up, a growing up so utterly different from my own sheltered childhood:

I turned away from the quayside and headed towards the police station.