Straight on Till Morning Read online

  Straight On Till Morning

  Lynne Barrett-Lee

  Published by Accent Press Ltd – 2006

  ISBN 1905170572

  Copyright © Lynne Barrett-Lee 2006

  The right of Lynne Barrett-Lee to be identified as the

  author of this work has been asserted by her in

  accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  The story contained within this book is a work of fiction.

  Names and characters are the product of the author’s

  imagination and any resemblance to actual persons,

  living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be

  reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted

  in any form or by any means, electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape,

  mechanical, photocopying, recording

  or otherwise, without the written permission of the

  publishers: Accent Press Ltd, PO Box 50, Pembroke Dock,

  Pembrokeshire SA72 6WY.

  Printed and bound in the UK by

  Cox & Wyman Ltd,. Reading

  Cover Design by Anna Torborg

  The publisher acknowledges the financial support

  of the Welsh Books Council

  This one is for my beloved children

  Luke, Joe and Georgia

  xxxxxxx

  Acknowledgements

  Accepted wisdom has it that writers should always write about what they know.

  Rubbish. If I did that, all I’d have to show for my endeavours would be several lengthy tomes of unbelievably dull twitterings, plus the odd exposé, for which I’d probably get sued. The trick is to cheat; to look upon your friends as a research archive, and to write about what they know instead.

  My first thanks, therefore, go to Rachel Hurford, who, as well as being a dear friend, is also an optometrist, which handily provided Sally with a sensible job. To Kiran Kapur, Anne Catchpole and Adrian Magson, who, unlike me, have all done that ‘Outward bound’ thing and who sent all the emails that informed chapter seven. Thanks, mates. To the 8 Penge and Beckenham North Venture Scout unit, which may well be no more, but lives on in my heart. To Della Galton, who first posted the Sherlock Holmes email – okay, so almost everyone in the world has now heard it, but it stays because – well, because it made Sally laugh. To the lovely folk at both Labour Party Headquarters and Charing Cross Police Station – I’m so, so sorry I didn’t write down your names. To Merlin, wherever you are these days – woof woof! To Philips, for inventing the Planisphere – so clever. And finally, (though he doesn’t, as yet, even know it) to Patrick Moore, who wrote Philip’s ‘Night Sky’ and so gave authority to my ill-informed passion for looking at the stars and going ‘Wow! Look at that!’. How spooky that it should have a photo of the Pleiades on the cover. Must have been written in the stars…

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Prologue

  It is five twenty seven in the morning. And some thirty-nine thousand feet over the north Atlantic, an aeroplane is heading swiftly and silently towards Gatwick airport. Aboard it, and crick-necked beneath his itchy red blanket, Nick Brown has spent much of what passes for night on this flight path trying, and failing, to sleep. His legs, which are long, are rammed hard against the seat-back in front of him, and his head, which feels woolly, against the cream cabin wall. He should be in business class. He should be in an aisle seat. But life, as it seems to a lot for Nick lately, has conspired to relieve him of any expectations of comfort: the plane he should have boarded is grounded at LAX, and this one, on which he has just scraped a passage, could only offer him row twenty-seven, seat A. Thus he has shared ten or so tortuous hours with a small boy called Luke, and his sister, Georgina. And sporadically, their mother, plus ripe smelling baby, who are seated, when seated, in Row twenty-six.

  The plane heaves on eastwards. The captain announces their imminent descent. Resigned now, Nick abandons his blanket, but the sleep that’s eluded him since tea-time on Thursday now engulfs him with a sudden and irresistible force. He is a chronic insomniac, and this is its pattern. His eyelids are heavy now. Closing despite him. Ensuring that, come the long wait in Arrivals, he will move as in treacle and feel like the pits. The small child beside him has a foot in his groin and one sticky hand on his new silk tie. He’d like to remove it but doesn’t want to wake him. He looks so very like his own son did at that age.

  In twenty or so minutes the plane will touch down. He’s not only not slept, he has not eaten either. As the plane begins to make its final approach, his stomach lurches unpleasantly. He feels for his shoes with cold, sluggish feet and because they have told him to, squirms very gently, retrieves the warm buckle from under him, and does up his belt. He rubs his eyes and looks down at the quilt of landscape beneath him, bisected by a seaside rock ribbon of traffic, and punctuated, here and there, with small huddles of trees. Far beneath him grow clumps now of roofscape and garden. The odd swimming pool, stable, and pale, gravelled drive. The faux-rural backdrop of this part of Sussex. Scenery all at once familiar yet strange. They sink lower still. The rock splinters. Becomes car lights. The gardens get flowerbeds. The windows get curtains. He stretches his arms, scans the houses below him. It is five fifty two. Dawn is coaxing the sun up. He sees, very clearly, a light snapping off.

  As the plane swoops silently over the north Sussex countryside, carrying Nick Brown to his tryst with a crisp cotton pillowslip in the North Terminal Meridien Hotel, Sally Matthews, chilly in a T-shirt and knickers, switches off the light and pads back to her bed. She has lain wide-eyed on the single bed in the spare room since three thirty, but must return to bear witness to the alarm clock, which will buzz its sharp greeting in seventy-eight minutes. By which time, she knows, she will be deeply asleep.

  ‘Nnnnggch,’ says her husband, Jonathan, exhaling. He has spiralled the duvet, swiss-roll style, around him.

  Sally eases the remaining flap over her goose-pimpled legs. There is no duvet inside this bit of cover because the two are incompatible, the former a generous John Lewis cover, the latter a rather scant Debenham’s quilt. The resultant deficit – a good twelve-inch strip along one side (always her side) – barely covers one leg. Were she to move across the bed and snuggle her cold body up to that of her husband, she could have filled duvet cover aplenty. But she can’t do that or she will wake him. And if she wakes him he will be in a mood. And if he gets in a mood he will stay in a mood. So she stays where she is at the edge of the mattress, breathes lightly and quietly and tries not to fidget.

  She lies there and looks out. Their bedroom, which is cool, spacious and full of heavy old pine furniture, has a large picture window. It doesn’t afford quite the view of the skylight in the spare r
oom, but from her place on the left of the marital bed, Sally can still see a big chunk of the night sky. It’s cloudless and black and peppered with stars. Stars and planets and, presumably, comets. There’s movement now, up there. Tiny, but actual. She fancies, as she tends to most nights, that she’ll see one. A shooting star, shooting… to wherever stars shoot. But, no. Not tonight. There’s a red light. An aircraft. Making arrow-straight progress across her window pane vista. A jumbo, she guesses. On its way into Gatwick.

  It winks at her now as it passes.

  Chapter 1

  It was magnificently starry, that Friday-night sky. A sky so densely studded with twinkles and sparkles and heavenly bodies that even the most dour and unimaginative person might find themselves pausing to draw breath in wonder. To marvel at the miracle of the universe before them. To muse on the breathtaking brilliance of space.

  And there was me, Sally Matthews, forty one, very sleepy, slightly damp, somewhat peevish, forging my weary way along the B-roads of the Sussex countryside, to retrieve my darling daughter from her friend’s house. Stargazer that I was, heavenly body I was not. Pausing to wonder I most definitely was not.

  I remember I was very tired. Tired and rather irritable, to be honest, as I had been rudely interrupted from one of those aromatherapy candlelit baths magazines are always banging on about, and was not very pleased to be trolling across the county with still-soggy hair, a whiff of burned wax about me, and the remnants of a passion-fruit exfoliating face pack still clinging like bogies to all the chinks in my face.

  I had taken Jonathan’s car. Not because it made any difference, but partly because mine didn’t have a lot of petrol in it, and mainly – OK, wholly because he didn’t like me to drive it. It was an act of irritable defiance, because the two of us had just had a row. The sort of row you have when your teenage daughter phones you at God knows what hour in the morning and entreats you, in that special way daughters have, to please please please please please please pleeeease come and fetch her. Like now. You know the kind of thing.

  ‘What the hell is she doing calling us at this hour?’ he’d said.

  ‘She wants me to go and pick her up.’

  ‘What? Now? At this hour?’

  ‘At this hour. She’s had some sort of row with Amanda and wants to come home.’

  ‘Well, she can’t. I’m not having you traipsing off out at this hour.’

  ‘So you go, then.’

  ‘Me go? I’ve had best part of a bottle of claret!’

  ‘Well one of us has to. I told her I would.’

  ‘Well you can just go and untell her. She’s nearly seventeen, for God’s sake. She can stay there and lump it.’

  ‘But I can’t just leave her. She sounded upset.’

  ‘Well tough, frankly. Sal, she’ll get over it.’

  ‘But I can’t –’

  ‘Yes you can. She runs rings round you. Why on earth did you say yes? She’s got to learn that she can’t expect –’

  ‘I know I know I know! But she sounded really upset, and I don’t want to think of her –’

  ‘And doesn’t she know it! Don’t you realise –’

  ‘Don’t you care? Jonathan, don’t you care that –’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, don’t start! Go, then, Sal. Go. Do what you like!’

  That kind of thing.

  So I had thrown on pyjamas and a pair of battered Reeboks, and, pausing only to snatch up Kate’s dreadful black cardigan, had stomped off into the night feeling martyred and angry while Jonathan stayed put and huffed in his chair.

  The road was big, wide, empty, dark. All the sorts of things country roads generally are at night. It was flanked by tall trees, almost all in full leaf now, a dense black filigree against deep inky blue. I passed the garden centre, the garage that sells those dreadful flapjacks, and Mr Chip’s olde worlde rocking-horse factory, before pulling off on to the long sinew of road that connected the real world to the chocolate-box village where Amanda’s family lived. It’s a road I’ve travelled many times over the years. Kate and Amanda having been friends all their lives. Hmm. Yeah, right. Until now.

  I took the dog, of course. If I had to go galumphing about the countryside in the small hours on my own, it made sense to have something more ferocious on board than just the smell of Jonathan’s sweaty cricket kit.

  So there I was, muttering the sort of things mothers mutter when they know they’ve been slaves to their kids because they’re slaves to their hormones, and fastening vaguely mutinous thoughts on my recalcitrant husband. And I didn’t see him coming. Didn’t see it coming. And if that sounds ambiguous and slightly portentous that’s because, looking back, it’s just how it was.

  I had rounded a bend in the road, the trees giving way to an undulating hedgerow, and the tarmac now climbing, it seemed, right to the horizon and beyond. So much so, in fact, that at first I mistook the light on the brow of the hill for a star. I blinked at it. No, no. Not light. Lights. Another car, then. I flipped my headlights to dipped. The lights burned brighter, blotting the world out. Squinting now, I eased off my speed a little and waited for the other driver to switch their full beam off as well. But they didn’t. Didn’t seem to, at any rate. The illumination grew stronger. Whiter. The damp hair at my neck began to prickle. What on earth were they doing? I slowed even more. I could not see the road now – could not see a thing bar the twin orbs that were rapidly approaching, their halos growing brighter and increasingly blinding, second by shimmering second.

  It was then that it struck me, with terrifying clarity: I was going to die. I was going to die at any moment. I was going to die, moreover, in a pair of tartan pyjamas and a grubby black cardigan. For whatever was attached to the headlights in front of me was actually driving on my side of the road.

  I don’t recall quite what it was that I did, only that self preservation must have kicked in and wrestled some sort of sense from the flapping of my arms. At any rate, a squeal, a swerve and a couple of bumps later, and I’d come to a shuddering ABS-enhanced stop, amid the wide swathe of lush and exuberant foliage that formed the verge that ran down the side of the road. The lights ahead vanished, having slewed off themselves now, and the carriageway appeared again, way over to my right.

  For some seconds I stared at it, fish-eyed and speechless, then swivelled my head around and braced for the sound of an impact. The other car, for car it was, careered wildly but briefly, then came to an untidy stop at the edge of the other carriageway. Its tail lights burned a ruby glow on to my retinas. Merlin, displaced but apparently unmoved by his near-death experience, had hoisted a leg up and was scratching his ear.

  ‘Jesus!’ I squeaked to him. ‘Ohmygod! Crikey! Jesus!’ and lots of other stuff along the same lines. The car had stalled and I fumbled for the ignition. The headlamps both flickered as the engine roared briefly but, try as I might, I couldn’t make it go. I could hear the wheels whizzing but the car wouldn’t go. My hands and my legs had begun to shake uncontrollably. I looked back down the hill again. Nothing. No movement. No sound.

  What should I do? I craned my neck to see. No impact. No visual evidence of a crash. Should I do something? Phone someone? Get out and go see? In my pyjamas? On my own? No, no. Phone someone. That was best. Call the police. God alone knew what sort of maniac was out there. A drunk driver most probably. That was it. So this was best. Don’t get out. Getting out very stupid. Call the police. Stay in the car. Lock the car. Wait till they come. I unbuckled my seat-belt with trembling hands and groped in the passenger footwell for my bag. Call the police. That would be best. I rummaged in my bag in the darkness for my mobile, but my fingers were all wibbly and wobbly and useless. Where was the damn thing? I hauled my bag on to my lap. I was sure it was in there. I had definitely had it in there earlier. I looked behind me again. Still nothing. No movement. No sound. I threw the bag on the seat in disgust. And no phone. What now, then? Oh, God. What next? What next with no phone and a car that wouldn
’t go? And then a new thought popped up to fuel my rising panic further. Supposing the other driver was injured or something? Dead, even? Yikes. Supposing it wasn’t a maniac at all? Supposing it was an old person? Supposing it was a septagenarian in a flat cap? Who’d had a heart attack? Or an epileptic fit? Or a stroke? Oh, God.

  I could see the headline. ‘Heartless Woman Leaves Injured Pensioner For Dead’. ‘Merlin,’ I said, reluctant but decided. ‘We’ve got to get out. We’ve got to go and see if they’re all right. Act fierce. Just in case. Fierce, OK? Dangerous.’

  Merlin, ears pricked enquiringly, cocked his head to one side. I opened the car door. ‘Go grrr. OK? Got it? “Grrrr”. Nice and loud. Show your teeth.’

  The night air was chilly and damp against my bare shins. Merlin, clearly pleased with the development of this unscheduled adventure, bounced out and sniffed the ground appreciatively. How I envied him his easy confidence. His complete lack of worry. So it was night time. What of it? Same as day time only darker. Oh, to be a stupid dog. I’d driven this road a thousand times before but for me it seemed suddenly unrecognisable. More bleak. More Jurassic. More remote. More dark.

  More scary. I could see another headline: ‘Defenceless Woman In Questionable Nightwear Raped and Pillaged and Left to Die in Lane’. A weapon. I should at least have a weapon. I remembered Jonathan’s cricket bat would be in the car too. His bat would do it. That would knock them for six. I ran around and hauled it from the boot.

  ‘Right,’ I hissed, clamping one hand around Merlin’s collar and the other round the neck of the bat. ‘You stay right by my side, OK? Heel and all that.’

  It was only when we’d started off down the fifty or so yards of roadway to the other car that I noticed that something tangible had changed: the driver’s door, previously closed, had swung open, and that the person inside seemed to be thrashing about. Person? Or persons? It was too dark to tell. There could be a car load. Of drug addicts, criminals, people having sex. I closed my fingers tighter still round Merlin’s collar. He was straining against it and pulling me with him – keen to get to his quarry and lick them to death, no doubt. The thrashing continued. I could make out an elbow. Maybe, I thought, in appalled fascination, the driver was having a heart-attack now.