Dreams of Fear

Nineteen

In Instow Anne Barham woke at seven a.m., almost exactly an hour after Amelia Ferguson. At first she felt better than she had at any stage since discovering her neighbour’s body. She had slept well. She felt rested, as if she might be beginning to recover. Just a little.

She reached out with one languid hand for Gerry. He was no longer in bed beside her. She was mildly surprised, because he rarely rose before her now that he was retired, but it was another glorious morning. The sun was shining through the windows. Yesterday’s storm had passed over during the night. She propped herself on one elbow and listened to see if she could hear him moving around the house. There was no sound except the tick of the bedroom clock and the occasional drip of the tap in the en-suite bathroom, which they really must get fixed. Gerry, like her, was a keen gardener, but he was no handyman. He had probably made tea and gone out into the garden for a potter. More than likely he would soon bring her up a cup.

Once Gerry had finally arrived home the previous day he had been profusely apologetic and promised Anne his full attention for the rest of the evening. A promise he had delivered absolutely. He’d prepared supper, scrambled egg and smoked salmon, one of her favourites. Then they had sat together on the sofa watching an old movie. They hadn’t talked about Jane Ferguson and her terrible death. They hadn’t needed to. Gerry and Anne were good at companionable silence, and in Anne’s opinion they almost always knew what each other was thinking, anyway. Although she hadn’t been entirely sure of that yesterday afternoon.

By bedtime she had not only forgiven her husband for worrying her so, but made herself at least begin to forget all about it. She was just as determined to forget the terrible scene she had been confronted with at number eleven. And Gerry, who by then really had seemed like her Gerry again, had come up to bed only ten minutes or so after her, although she did think she had heard him on the phone again. And for her to be able to do that from upstairs, when he was in his study, meant that his voice must have been raised considerably. Which in itself was unusual for Gerry.

She hadn’t asked him about it though. She hadn’t wanted to risk upsetting him again. She just wanted things to get back to normal. And, after all, she trusted him, didn’t she?

Anne still felt deliciously sleepy. She thought she would give herself another ten minutes or so. In fact, she drifted off into a deep sleep again and did not wake for well over an hour.

When she did wake, she sat up in bed at once. This time completely without her feeling of renewed wellbeing. The clock on the wall told her that it was eight thirty-five a.m. There was no cup of tea on her bedside table. And when Gerry was up first he always brought her a cuppa. She was also surprised he hadn’t woken her. He knew it made her feel rotten if she lay in for too long.

She got out of bed, pulled her dressing gown over her shoulders, and trotted downstairs, calling out Gerry’s name as she did so. There was no reply.

Could he perhaps still be in the garden? The conservatory off the hall afforded a pretty good view of most of their little plot. She could see no sign of him, nor of the gardening paraphernalia, from wheelbarrow to spade and fork, which he was inclined to leave all over the place when he was at work.

She opened the garden door and called out. Still no reply. Where could he be? Feeling distinctly anxious again she headed for the kitchen. There was a note on the kitchen table.

‘Just popped out for a walk, darling. You were sleeping so peacefully I didn’t want to wake you. I’ll do a bit of shopping and pick us up something nice for dinner tonight. Gx.’

Anne reached for her mobile phone at once and tried to call her husband. The call went straight to voicemail.

For God’s sake, not again, she thought, as she left a brief, somewhat curt, message asking him to call her back.

Half an hour or so passed during which she tried his number twice more, each time getting no response.

She made tea for herself and took it into the conservatory, all the while keeping her phone close by. Her anxiety was growing. Where was he and what was he doing?

She went upstairs, showered, and dressed. There was still no word from Gerry.

She tried telling herself she was worrying unnecessarily. He could be somewhere without a mobile signal, particularly if he were walking along the cliffs. He could have run out of battery. He’d done that before. The worst-case scenario, surely, was a repeat of the previous day, when he had just wanted to be alone and get away from everything and everybody. Including his wife. She hadn’t liked it yesterday. She didn’t like it today. But was it really so difficult to understand? Perhaps she just had to accept that Gerry had been much more deeply affected by what had happened than he’d let on. Possibly more affected than her. She told herself she should not bother him anymore, that she should leave him to get over it all in his own way. Meanwhile she should concentrate on keeping herself occupied, mentally and physically. And that, she determined, was exactly what she would do.

She hadn’t even made the bed. She did so, tidied the bedroom, and cleaned and tidied the bathroom. Then she went downstairs into the kitchen where she emptied the dishwasher and scrubbed and polished the white stone worktop until it shone like opaque glass.

Finally she heard the little bleep from her phone which indicated that she’d been sent a text. The time was eleven forty-seven a.m. The text was from Gerry:

Anne was both surprised and alarmed. Gerry had bought his small second-hand, two-berth motor cruiser soon after they’d moved to the North Devon coast from their previous home in the London suburbs, not far from where their daughter and son-in-law still lived. He’d said that he wanted to feel as if he were really part of the seaside community of Instow. And he liked the idea of joining the yacht club.

But it had proved to be pretty much the fad Anne had suspected it might be. Gerry barely used the boat. Virtually never, in fact, except when Ralph and Angela visited. Ralph had learned to sail as a boy, and although rather scathing about Gerry’s motorized ‘gin cottage’ as he called it, enjoyed trips around the estuary when the weather and the tides were right.

So why would Gerry want to take the boat out today? Why on earth today?

Anne glanced anxiously out of the window at the sky. The sun was still shining intermittently, and it had indeed been a glorious morning. But there were definite signs that this was not going to last and that once again some pretty grim weather was blowing in from the Atlantic.

She checked the weather forecast on her phone, the hourly regional BBC one. To her horror she saw that heavy rain and high winds were forecast for early afternoon, and there was a coastal storm warning off Bideford Bay.

Gerry’s little boat, with its planing hull and big but single outboard motor, was only really seaworthy in perfect conditions. Certainly, with a sailor as inexperienced as Gerry at the helm. As far as Anne knew he hadn’t taken it out at all that year, although she was aware that he’d arranged for it to be moved from winter storage to its river mooring, and she wasn’t sure if he had ever before taken the boat out on his own. She wondered when the outboard had last been serviced. Maybe it wouldn’t start. That, she thought, would be the best result. What on earth was Gerry thinking of? This was a kind of madness.

She picked up her phone again and once more tried to call him. Once more she got only voicemail.

She left a message: ‘Gerry, have you not seen the weather coming in? The forecast is terrible. Please don’t take the boat out. Just come home, will you? I know you are still upset. We both are. I think we need to talk properly about what’s happened. Just come home.’

A few minutes later she received a second text:

Anne didn’t like it, she didn’t like it at all. But she told herself the best thing she could do was to keep as calm as possible and continue to busy herself about the house. Gerry hated being fussed over. Particularly by his wife. All the while she kept her eye on the weather, both through the windows, and on the BBC weather app. By two o’clock the gentle sea breeze of earlier was approaching gale force. Rain was falling heavily, and the sky was leaden. The BBC was now predicting a force nine gale with coastal winds in excess of fifty miles per hour. And there had been no further contact from Gerry.

Anne could not wait any longer. First she phoned the yacht club. The barman answered. No, Gerry wasn’t in the bar, and he hadn’t seen him all morning. He had no idea whether or not Gerry had taken his boat out. He would see if he could get somebody to find out and call her back.

Anne paced the floors waiting to hear. She was quite sure now that something terrible had happened to Gerry. What other explanation could there be? Just as she was going to call the club again, her phone rang.

‘Hello, Mrs Barham,’ said a voice she did not recognize. ‘I’m Sid Merton, mate of Gerry’s at the yacht club. I’m the chef at The Boathouse, on the front. When I arrived at work about seven thirty this morning, I saw him heading out towards the estuary. I didn’t think much of it. I thought he was just taking an early turn while the weather was good. But we’ve checked, and the boat isn’t back. No sign of Gerry either. I don’t want to worry you, Mrs Barham, but we’ve already phoned the coastguard and the RNLI. He shouldn’t be on the water in that vessel of his in this weather.’

Anne could hardly believe what she was hearing.

‘Are you sure you saw Gerry?’ she asked lamely.

‘Oh yes, Mrs Barham, I’m really sorry to be giving you such disturbing news, but it was Gerry all right. I know the boat. And we waved to each other. Look, try not to worry. He may have put in somewhere, and be riding out the storm. We’ll be in touch as soon as we hear anything.’

She ended the call and took another look out of the window. The wind was howling now.

Could Gerry really be at sea in his little boat in this weather? It made no sense. And if Sid Merton was correct in what he said he’d seen — and Anne had little doubt that he was, he said they’d waved to each other, for goodness sake — Gerry had been aboard his boat for at least seven hours. He must have left the house far earlier than she’d thought, probably before six, and had surely already decided that he was taking his boat out.

As for putting in somewhere to ride out the storm, well, Anne knew even less about boats and sailing than her husband did, but she had learned a little about the coast where they lived. There wasn’t anywhere to put in once a vessel had left the estuary of the Torridge and the Tor. Not within range of Gerry’s boat, that was for sure. Which led Anne onto yet another frightening train of thought. The boat would surely have run out of fuel by now. In fact, probably some time ago.

Anne started to weep. What was happening? she wondered. Until the night before last she and her husband had been living happily in quiet retirement in a beautiful part of the world. Then came the shock of finding the body of a neighbour who had died in the most awful way. And already their lives seemed to have been turned upside down.

Now Gerry was missing. There seemed little doubt about that. He could be in trouble. He could have drowned. Gerry could be dead.

Anne was distraught. She didn’t know what to do or who to turn to.