Midnight is a Lonely Place by Barbara Erskine Read Free Book Online Page B

shoulder at the room and shivered. It had lost its appeal somehow. Her lap top computer and printer lying on the table rebuked her; the boxes of filing cards, the notebooks, the cardboard boxes full of books. She glanced at her watch. It was eight o’clock. She was hungry, she was tired and she was cold. A boiled egg, a cup of cocoa and a hot bath, if the wood-burner could be persuaded to work, and she would go to bed. Everything else could wait until morning. And daylight.

VII
    It was bitterly cold and barely light. Well wrapped up in a Shetland sweater and thick jacket with two pairs of socks inside her boots and a pair of her younger brother’s gloves, Alison Lindsey stood staring at the cottage from the shelter of the trees. It was in darkness. Downstairs the curtains were drawn, but upstairs both the front windows which looked down across the garden appeared to be uncurtained. She frowned, then plucking up her courage she sprinted across the grass. Heading straight for the log shed she ducked inside and groped around in the darkness. After a second she gave an exclamation of annoyance. Her tools had been moved. She kicked crossly at the firewood and leaped back with a mixture of fright and malicious satisfaction as one of the piles began to slip. Dodging the cascading logs she watched until they had stopped moving, waiting for the noise to die away. The dust settled, but there was no sound from the cottage. ‘Lady Muck’s asleep,’ she whispered to herself and she gave a superior smile. She turned to the doorway again and then she saw her spade. It had been propped up in the corner.
    Picking it up she peered out into the silent dawn. It was well before sunrise. The morning was damp and ice cold and there were still long dark shadows across the sea, stretching out into the black mist.
    Running lightly she headed across the shingle and leaped down into the hollow on the seaward side of the dune. Her dune.
    The tide in the night, she saw with satisfaction, had not been very high. The sea wrack on the shore, still wet with spume, was several feet short of her excavation and had come nowhere near the place where she was digging. Her tongue protruding slightly from between her teeth she set to, cutting the soft sand into sections and scooping it away from the side of the dune. From somewhere in the darkness along the shore she heard the scream of a gull.
    Her hands were frozen after only a few moments in spite of the thick gloves and already her headache had come back. With an irritable sigh, she paused to rest, leaning on her spade as she blew on her wool-covered knuckles. The sand was crumbling where she had attacked it and as she watched, another section fell away by itself. With it it brought something large and curved and shiny. Throwing down the spade she bent over it and gently worked the object free of the sand. It was another section of pottery. Much larger this time. Large enough to hold the curve of the bowl or vase of which it had once formed a part. Through her gloves, as she dusted away the damp sand fragments, she could feel the engraved decoration. She stared at it for a long time, then carefully she put it to one side and attacked the sand with renewed vigour. Minutes later something else began to appear. It was thin and bent and a corroded green colour, like a rusty bit of old metal. Forgetting the pain in her temples she pulled at it in excitement. Thick as a man’s thumb it was several inches long, with a rough knob at one end. Turning it over in her hands she stared at it for a long time, then, scrambling out of the hollow of her sheltered digging place she ran over the shingle towards the sea. The shingle was wet and smelled of salt and weed, the night’s harvest of shells and dead crabs lying amongst the stones. Nearby she could see the gulls picking amongst them. Crouching down, her feet almost in the water, she swished the object back and forth in the edge of the tide and then she stared at it