CHAPTER 33
Back in her room, Meredith was too wound up to sleep.
She ran the conversation between them over in her mind, remembering what she’d said, what he’d said. Trying to interpret what lay between the lines.
She stared at her reflection in the mirror as she brushed her teeth, feeling desperately sorry for him. He seemed so vulnerable. She spat the toothpaste into the basin. He probably wasn’t interested in her at all. He probably just needed a little company.
She climbed into bed and turned off the light, plunging the room into a soft and inky darkness. She lay staring at the ceiling awhile, until her limbs went heavy and she started to drift off to sleep.
Straight away, the face Meredith had seen in the water, then the weird experience on the road, came rushing into her mind. Worse, the tortured, beautiful face of her birth mother, crying, begging the voices to leave her in peace.
Meredith’s eyes snapped open.
No. No way. I will not let the past get to me.
She was here to find out who she was, about her family, to escape the shadow of her mother, not bring her back, more real than ever. Meredith pushed her childhood memories away, replacing them with the Tarot images she’d been carrying around in her head all day. Le Mat and La Justice. The Devil with blue eyes, the Lovers chained, hopeless, at his feet.
She replayed Laura’s words in her mind, let her thoughts wander from card to card, slipping down into sleep. Her eyes grew heavy. Now, Meredith was thinking of Lilly Debussy, pale and with a bullet lodged for eternity in her chest. Debussy scowling and smoking at the piano as he played. Of Mary sitting on the porch in Chapel Hill, her chair rocking back and forwards as she read. The sepia soldier framed by the platanes in the Place de Deux Rennes.
Meredith heard the slam of a car door and the crunch of shoes on the gravel, the hooting of an owl setting out to hunt, the occasional judder and rattle of the hot water pipes.
The hotel fell silent. Night wrapped its black arms around the house. The grounds of the Domaine de la Cade lay sleeping beneath a pale moon.
The hours passed. Midnight, two o’clock, four.
Suddenly, Meredith jolted awake, her eyes wide open in the dark. Every nerve in her body was vibrating, alert. Every muscle, every sinew, pulled as tight as a violin string.
Someone was singing.
No, not singing. Playing the piano. And real close.
She sat up. The room was cold. The same penetrating chill she’d felt under the bridge. The darkness was different too, less dense, more fragmented. Meredith felt almost as if she could see the particles of light and dark and shadow breaking down in front of her. There was a breeze coming in from somewhere, even though she could swear all the windows were shut, a light breeze brushing over her shoulders and neck, skimming without touching, pressing, whispering.
There’s someone in the room.
She told herself it was impossible. She’d have heard something. Yet she was gripped with an overwhelming certainty that someone was standing at the foot of the bed, watching. Two eyes burning in the darkness. Trails of sweat slid cold between her shoulder blades and into the hollow between her breasts.
Adrenalin kicked in.
Now. Do it.
She counted to three, then, with a burst of bravado, rolled over and flicked on the light.
The darkness was sent scattering. All the regular everyday objects rushed back to greet her. Nothing out of place. Closet, table, window, mantelpiece, bureau, all just as they should be. The cheval mirror, standing by the door to the bathroom, reflecting the light.
No one.
Meredith slumped back against the mahogany headboard. Relief washed over her. On the nightstand, the clock blinked the time in red. Four forty-five. Not eyes at all, just the flashing LED of the radio alarm, reflected in the mirror.
Just a regular nightmare.
She should have expected it after the stuff that had happened today.
Meredith kicked back the covers to cool herself down and lay still awhile, hands folded on her chest like a figure on a tomb, then got out of bed. She needed to move around, do something physical. Not just lie there. She grabbed a bottle of mineral water from the minibar, then walked over to the window and looked down over the silent gardens still in the moonlight. The weather had broken and the terrace below glistened with rain. There was a veil of white mist floating in the still air above the line of the trees.
Meredith pressed her warm hand against the cold glass, as if she could push the bad thoughts away. Not for the first time, doubt at what she was getting herself into slipped in. What if there was nothing to find? All the time, the idea of coming to Rennes-les-Bains, armed with only a handful of old photographs and a piece of piano music, had kept her going.
But now she was here, and could see what a small place it was, she felt less certain. The whole idea of tracing her birth family back here, without even having proper names to search for seemed crazy. A stupid dream that belonged in a feel-good movie.
Not real life.
Meredith had no idea how long she stood there, just thinking, working things through at the window. Only when she realised that her toes were numb with cold did she turn to look at the clock. She gave a sigh of relief. It was past five o’clock in the morning. She’d killed enough time. Chased away the ghosts, the demons of the night. The face in the water, the figure on the road, the intimidating images on the cards.
This time when she lay down to sleep, the room was peaceful. No eyes staring at her, no shimmering presence in the darkness, just the blinking electric numbers of the alarm clock. She closed her eyes.
Her soldier melted into Debussy, became Hal.
