She hadn’t screamed out loud...or at least she didn’t think so. Her room was a fair distance from James’s and there was no sound of him stirring. There was no sound of a door opening. No footsteps running down the passage. No voice calling out to see if she was all right.
She waited in the darkness, poised, tense, agitated.
Long minutes passed.
She lay back down and closed her eyes but it was impossible to relax, let alone sleep with those horrible images flickering behind her eyelids like an old black-and-white film set on permanent replay.
Aiesha threw off the bedcovers and reached for her wrap. A hot drink with a shot of brandy would have to do as James might not appreciate hearing her running through her scales at this hour. She hadn’t seen him since he’d found her playing Archie’s song earlier that day. But she could still feel the impact of his kiss reverberating through her body like the humming of a tuning fork.
When she got to the kitchen, Bonnie got up off her bed and looked up at Aiesha with a sheepish look in her brown eyes, her feathery tail slowly wagging back and forth like a metronome on three-two time.
‘Don’t even think about it,’ Aiesha said and reached for the fridge handle. ‘You’ll have to cross your legs or something.’
The dog gave a little whine and padded towards the back door, looking back over her shoulder as if to say, Come on—what’s taking you so long?
Aiesha closed the fridge and put the milk carton on the counter with a muttered curse. ‘How come you don’t use a pet door? I thought golden retrievers were supposed to be smart? You’re the dumbest one I’ve met.’
She opened the back door, wincing as a blast of the icy wind whipped it back against the wall. The dog ambled out, sniffing the ground as she went, looking as if she had all the time in the world. ‘Will you hurry up?’ Aiesha said, shivering as the wind skirted around her bare ankles. ‘Hey, don’t go out of sight. I’m not going looking for you.’
The dog disappeared behind the low hedge that surrounded the vegetable garden. Aiesha swore under her breath as she reached for a jacket hanging by the door. She could smell Louise’s perfume on it and for a moment she felt as if it were Louise herself wrapping her arms around her as she slipped her arms through the sleeves.
She stood for a moment in the darkness, wondering what life would have been like with Louise as her mother. Her music would have been celebrated, encouraged, nurtured... She would have been loved, celebrated, encouraged.
She would have been safe.
She looked up at the night sky, the sprinkling of stars and planets like peepholes in a dark blue velvet blanket. How many times as a child had she looked up there and wished upon a star? Wished for her life to be different? For everything to change?
She sighed and stuffed her feet into a pair of Louise’s boots by the door. But before she had taken two steps the howling wind whipped around again and slammed the door behind her.
‘Shoot!’
* * *
James woke to the sound of a door slamming. He thought he’d locked up everything securely on his last round downstairs. But the house was old and the wind was gale force so it didn’t surprise him that a catch had come loose. He shrugged on a robe and went downstairs. Aiesha’s bedroom door was closed and there was no light on, which meant Sleeping Beauty was fast asleep. He hoped.
When he got to the back door off the kitchen he could hear frantic knocking and swearing. He opened the door to find a shivering Aiesha on the doorstep. She was dressed in one of his mother’s jackets with the hood pulled up over her head. Her body was quaking with cold but her eyes were blazing. She pushed past him with a savage imprecation. ‘Took you long enough.’ She stomped snow all over the floor. ‘That stupid dog needs a tracking device. You go and find her. I’m frozen stiff.’
James caught the jacket midair before it landed on the floor where she’d kicked off the boots. She was in a towering rage, which seemed out of proportion to the circumstances. ‘She won’t stay out long in this wind,’ he said. ‘I didn’t hear her barking to be let out. Did she wake you?’
‘No, I was...already awake.’
Something about her expression was suddenly furtive. Secretive. What had she been doing downstairs in the middle of the night? He narrowed his gaze. She was backed against the kitchen counter, her chin at that defiant height, her cheeks pink from cold or guilt, or both. Suspicion crawled along his skin. Was she putting away a stash of his mother’s jewellery or other valuables for when she left? A little bit here, a little bit there, hiding it away in incremental bits so as not to be detected.