The Mistress - Jill Childs Page 0,76

my neck, rolling the knots out of my shoulders, the landscape became dark and brooding, the wind chill.

I turned to the back seat. ‘Anna! We’re here!’

She stirred, heavy with sleep, and groaned. She struggled to see out of narrowed eyes into the darkness.

‘I’m cold, Mummy.’

‘That’s okay. We’ll soon get cosy in bed.’ I climbed out and went around the back of the car to help her. She was slow to move. I had to reach in to unbuckle her, then prise her from the seat.

In the car park, she stood uncertainly, lost. She looked at the hotel. ‘Is this our house?’

‘We’re just staying here tonight. We’ll explore the house tomorrow, as soon as it’s light.’

I grabbed our overnight bag, then took her hand and led her across the cobbles to the main entrance. A lion was carved in the stone above the door. The air was fresh and sharp and carried the smell of sheep, of peat, of the moors.

I rang the bell on the deserted reception desk until a young man came running through from the bar. His hair stood up in clumps, raked through by his fingers.

‘Mrs Mack,’ I said. ‘I’ve booked a room for tonight. Twin beds.’

I winked at Anna. She stared at me, still unsure. We were starting a wonderful game, I’d told her when we’d stopped at the motorway service station on the way up the M1. Like pretending to be foxes or puppies or princesses or any of the other games we played together.

‘We’re new people now,’ I told her. ‘With new names. Anna Mack. What do you think of that?’

She’d hesitated, her lip wobbling. ‘I want to be Anna Wilson,’ she said. ‘Or Princess Celestia.’

I’d considered. ‘We’ll call you Anna Celestia Mack, then.’

Now, the young man opened up a ledger and ran his finger down the columns, then plucked a printed form from a drawer and handed me a pen. I filled in the details I’d learned. The new address, here in the village. The new name. The phone number of the cheap pay-as-you-go mobile I’d swapped for my old, easily traceable one.

I left the credit card details blank. ‘Okay if I pay cash?’

‘Sure.’ He peered at the form. ‘I’d need you to pay now though, for tonight.’

‘No problem.’ I rummaged in my handbag and counted off notes from the large wad there.

He handed over the room key, attached to a heavy leather fob.

‘I see you’re not going far. Craven Barn. You booked in there for the week, Mrs Mack?’

‘Longer than that.’ I tried not to let Anna see how anxious I felt. ‘It’s our new home.’

Once the pub closed, the hotel fell silent.

Anna was curled tightly in her bed, duvet and spare blankets piled on top of her. The thick iron radiator was dusty. The room carried the dank chill of old stone walls.

I sat on the window seat in the darkness, with my coat wrapped around my knees and the curtain drawn back, keeping watch. The trees along the riverbank shuffled their branches in the wind. When I pressed my face against the window, the glass was cold and solid. I breathed a circle of condensation and wrote ‘Anna’, then enclosed her with a heart. The night outside was intense. The only relief were the microscopic threads of moonlight that flashed on the fast-moving surface of the river.

The smells here stirred memories for me. I thought back to the sense of strangeness I’d felt on holiday here as a young child. The small differences. The soggy cornflakes at breakfast, in a shallow china bowl. The thick creaminess of the milk. Farm eggs and greasy sausages. Being urged to try black pudding and feeling revolted by it. It’s blood, I’d remembered. Pig’s blood.

A crunch of gravel, down in the car park. Someone was there. I stiffened and drew back a little from the window, still looking but better concealed. I waited, straining to see and hear.

Silence. Then it came again. Not animal but human. Footsteps. Stealthy and slow.

I narrowed my eyes in the gloom, trying to see. A dark figure eased its way around the car park, keeping to the shadows. It crept along the ragged row of vehicles as if it were sniffing them out, then stopped at mine. I held my breath.

A man. Crouching to look at my car. His shape shifted and I had the sense that he’d turned to look up, his eyes scanning the darkened windows of the hotel, searching for someone. Searching for me.

I shrank further