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  She began to dry her eyes and said, “It seems a little strange to me, Thaddeus."

  "What's so strange about it?” he asked with a shrug of his shoulders. “We're both a little strange if you think about it. We can make a good team. You've got nothing to go back to, and I've got nothing up here all on my own. What do you say?”

  Winnie stared at him for a long moment. Half of her felt unsure of him, but there was another part of him that fascinated her, and she didn’t know why. If he had wanted to have harmed her in some way - wouldn’t he have done it by now? Okay, so he was pissed off with the whole fish finger thing, but she could tell by the size of the house, the material wealth, he was used to finer things. Maybe it was just one of his eccentricities he had warned her about. Besides, what was there to go back to? Getting into an argument about her cooking skills was nothing compared to what she had left behind. She knew in her heart that Ruby Little wouldn’t have thrown away the chance, if she had been offered it.

  Finally, she whispered, "Okay, I’ll stay.”

  “Thank you,” Thaddeus whispered and turned away.

  He scraped their uneaten meals into the trash. Placing their empty plates into the dishwasher, he looked back at her and said, “Get a coat. I’m going to take you out for dinner.”

  Winnie was just about to leave the room, when Thaddeus said, “Wear the grey coat with the hood.”

  Looking back at him, she cocked an eyebrow and said, “Why that particular coat?”

  “It has a hood,” he said right back. “It’s raining. Besides, I like the coat.”

  As she left the kitchen, he plucked a waterproof coat from the hook on the back of the door. Flicking off the kitchen light, he made his way to the front door. He took the silver cigarette case from his trouser pocket and smoked while he waited for Winnie. She hadn’t been gone long when he heard her footfalls on the stairs. Thaddeus looked back to see Winnie step off the bottom stair and into the huge hall. The long, grey coat swished just above her ankles. She almost seemed to float towards Thaddeus who stood by the front door, the cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. As she came towards him, Thaddeus noticed that she had daubed the faintest hint of green eye shadow above her eyes, a smudge of blusher on each cheek, and a deep, red lipstick now coated her soft lips.

  He could hardly mask his smile as she stopped before him. “You look stunning,” he breathed.

  She let out a little laugh of embarrassment and blushed. “I found the makeup on the dressing table in my room,” she said. “It’s okay to use it, isn’t it?”

  “Use whatever you like,” he smiled, and pulled the hood of her coat up so it covered the back of her head and the sides of her face.

  “Whose is it?” she asked.

  “It’s yours,” he said, hooking a long length of her hair out from beneath her hood so it hung against the right side of her face. “Perfect,” he whispered, looking at her.

  “Perfect for what?” she smiled.

  “For dinner,” he winked back and led her out into the night.

  Chapter Eight

  The small coastal town of St. Ives was quiet during the winter months. There weren't any tourists and they wouldn’t arrive until Easter, when all the little tea shops, ice cream parlours, and shell shops would open, eagerly awaiting the rush. Tonight was cold, and the rain drove into them as they walked huddled together down the meandering cobbled streets to the harbour. The smell of the sea was strong as it wafted on the wind and salted their lips. Boat rigging whipped vigorously against the masts of the boats moored in the harbour.

  They came across the restaurant that Thaddeus had eaten in twice before since coming to live in the town. It was aptly named the Light House. On entering, their wet coats were taken from them, and they were ushered to a quiet table for two at the rear of the eating area. Thaddeus requested that Winnie be seated with her back to the restaurant window, which looked out onto the harbour. Their cutlery and wine glasses twinkled with a warm orange brilliance from an open fire that roared and spat a few feet from them. Thaddeus ordered a bottle of white wine, while Winnie gazed in awe about the restaurant.

  "What are you having, Thaddeus?" she asked over the sound of the snapping wood in the hearth.

  He rested his hands beneath his chin and spoke, "You were cooking dinner tonight, so you can choose."

  She looked down at the menu and said, “I wouldn't know where to start. You choose.”

  He grinned at her across the table. “Let me see,” he said reading the menu.

  Before long, the waiter had arrived beside them.

  "We would like two avocados for starters and for our main course, chicken stuffed with mushrooms, a side order of roast beef, and a mixture of vegetables."

  Thaddeus looked up at the ruddy-faced waiter and smiled. "Thank you."

  "Very good, sir," the waiter nodded and disappeared into the kitchen.

  “Better than those fish fingers, huh?” Winnie smiled at him.

  But it was as if Thaddeus hadn’t heard her. He was suddenly staring over her right shoulder and out of the window and onto the street outside. It was as if someone or something had grabbed his attention.

  “Is everything okay?” Winnie asked.

  As if being snapped out of a dream, he looked at Winnie and said, “Everything is just fine.”

  “What were you looking at?” she quizzed him.

  “It was nothing,” he said back.

  Thaddeus sat and watched the burning embers of the fire cast their golden reflections in her copper hair. The silky curls looked as if they were alight. Then a sudden urge came over him to reach out and lose his hands in its soft texture, to soak up its seething light through his fingertips. He stifled the temptation and spoke to her.

  "So if you don’t mind me asking, where is your family? Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

  She looked squarely at him. “I’ve never known my father. He did a bunk before I was even born. My mum was only sixteen herself when she fell pregnant with me. I guess that’s why she gave me up.”

  “Gave you up?” Thaddeus asked. “Adoption, you mean?”

  Winnie could sense what she believed to be genuine concern in his voice for her.

  "My mother had an older sister and she dumped me on her when I was barely two years old,” Winnie explained. “But my auntie didn’t really want me. She had three kids of her own. Her husband was hardly ever around. So she kicked me out into the care of the local authorities. I was bounced from one family to the next. Missed lots of school and stuff like that. When I was thirteen, I ended up living with this family called the Martins. The dad was a real pig, he made me unhappy. So I ran away when I was fourteen. Got picked up a few times by the cops and ended up back in care, but I never hung around for long. In the end, the cops stopped looking for me. They had more important stuff to deal with, right?”

  The waiter reappeared and opened the bottle of wine. Thaddeus seemed annoyed by the interruption. The waiter poured half a glass for Thaddeus.

  "Would you like to taste, sir?"

  Thaddeus kept his eye on Winnie and just waved his hand at the waiter, who acknowledged this by saying, "Very good, sir.” He poured a glass for Winnie, placed the bottle on the table, and left.

  "Where do you come from?" Thaddeus inquired of her.

  "All over the place,” she half-smiled. Then looking up at Thaddeus, she said, “I haven’t always been homeless since running away.”

  “How come?” Thaddeus asked, taking a sip of wine.

  "When I was about fifteen, I was with this guy called Simon. He was older than me - not by much - but enough. Old enough for the council to pay his rent, so he had his own place. He was really good to me at first. You know, like real thoughtful and understanding,” she said. “I stopped wanting to run away because he made me feel special inside. For the first time, I felt needed.”

  "What went wrong?" Thaddeus asked, now regretting how he had patronised Winnie earlier that evening.


  "I guess he knew how much I needed him and he kinda took advantage of the fact,” Winnie explained. “I think he got to thinking that he could treat me however he wanted, because I needed him so much. You know, he thought because I didn't have much else going for me, I'd let him get away with whatever he wanted."

  "Did he mistreat you?"

  "No, not really,” she said, and briefly looked away.

  In that moment Thaddeus knew that this Simon had hurt her and probably badly, but he didn’t want to push her into telling him something that she was uncomfortable talking about.

  “He never laid a finger on me,” Winnie insisted as if being able to read Thaddeus’s thoughts. “He knew I was insecure, and he played on that. To tell you the truth, Thaddeus, I would have preferred a good thump. At least you know where you stand, but when you’ve got someone playing with your heart all the time, boosting you up one minute and knocking you down the next, you never know where you stand. Believe me, that hurt a lot more than a good thump."

  Thaddeus sipped at his wine as the waiter reappeared and placed their starter before them. The waiter was gone as quickly as he had arrived. Thaddeus and Winnie tucked into their avocados.

  "How did he knock you down then?" he pushed ever so carefully.

  "Bit by bit, he ate away at my confidence by sleeping with other women. He would tell me about them - how much better they were than me. He wanted me to try stuff that I wasn’t comfortable with. My confidence got more and more knocked, and each day I continued to stay with him, I felt that little bit less special.”

  Thaddeus pushed his empty plate away and took to his wine again. Winnie continued to eat.

  "So what did you do about this Simon?" he asked her.

  Winnie chewed over her last mouthful, and then continued her story. “I did what I know best, and ran. I went back to London. At first I kidded myself that I would only stay a day or two. I fooled myself into believing that I would find work somehow. One day leads into another, then into weeks and months. You get dirtier; the tiredness drains you along with the hunger and the sleepless nights. Then the despair sets in. You end up staying - you become trapped.”

  Their empty starter plates were whisked away and their main course was laid before them. Curls of steam rose up off the chicken’s golden and crisp meat, and the beef looked almost raw as it sat in a pool of its own juices, red with blood. The vegetables were in a side dish and they looked soft and bright in colour. Thaddeus picked up a large knife and began to cut away at the chicken. The knife slipped through its succulent body as easily as cutting butter. He laid several thick slices on Winnie's plate, as she in turn heaped a spoonful of vegetables onto Thaddeus's plate and then her own. Thaddeus helped himself to a large portion of the chicken, tearing both its legs off and placing them on his plate alongside a thick slice of the bloody beef. They both sat and forked the food into their mouths.

  Thaddeus watched her while she ate, and something she had said played over and over in his mind. Winnie had said that what she did best was run - that’s all she knew what to do. She had run from her aunt, run from the care homes, run from Simon to London, and had now run away from there to be with him. Winnie never seemed to hang around for too long and he knew that he would need her to stay a while longer - a lot longer. Thaddeus found himself captivated by her energy, her anger, the fire that seemed to burn brightly inside of her. She was alive and she wasn't stupid. He hadn’t expected that - but he liked it. Those feelings he would have to bury somewhere deep inside. He couldn’t afford to let himself care about her.

  Winnie looked at Thaddeus, the crossed words they’d had back at the house now seemed like a far-off memory. Nobody had ever bothered to sit and listen to her before. Nobody had ever cared enough. Thaddeus was already on his second helping of chicken when he noticed Winnie watching him over the rim of her glass as she sipped her wine. "What about you, Thaddeus?"

  He looked straight at her as he refilled her glass again and said, "What about me?"

  “Tell me about your life,” she said.

  He turned and looked into the fire. His voice was soft, almost a whisper. “I wouldn't know where to start, Winnie."

  The world swam lazily back and forth as the wine relaxed her and strengthened her confidence. “How about at the beginning,” she said.

  Thaddeus looked away from the fire and back at Winnie. “The beginning,” he said thoughtfully. “Life is full of beginnings and endings. I wouldn’t know which one too chose.”

  “Start from the day you met your wife,” Winnie found the confidence to ask him. “You said you knew you loved her from the very first moment you saw her. I’d like to hear about that. It sounds romantic.”

  Again, Thaddeus looked away and said, “I’d rather not talk about that. I still find the death of my wife hard to come to terms with.”

  “I’m sorry,” Winnie whispered. “I didn’t mean to...”

  "Let’s go home,” he said, suddenly standing. “It’s getting late and I have work to do."

  He held out his hand and Winnie took hold of it. She swayed slightly and Thaddeus steadied her. The wine had clouded her mind, and Winnie failed to notice that there wasn't any cut on Thaddeus's hand. If she had noticed this, Winnie might have wondered where the blood had come from, the blood which had stained her top on the train as she ran away with Thaddeus to his home in Cornwall.

  Chapter Nine

  The rain had started to ease a little, but it was cold, and Winnie pulled her coat tight about herself. With the hood pulled over her head, she peered beneath it and up at the night sky, which was heavy with clouds. The cold night air did little to clear the fog in her mind and she wished now that she had drunk just a little less wine. Thaddeus walked beside her, and every time she stumbled or lost her footing on the uneven dirt road which led up the hill, he would gently take her arm.

  Cold and wet, Winnie glanced at him and said, “Don’t you have a car, Thaddeus?”

  “Why, can you drive?” he asked her.

  “No,” she mumbled.

  “Neither can I,” he smiled back. “I’ve never had the need for a car.”

  “Oh,” she said thoughtfully, but her head felt too woozy to think about it very much.

  They walked in silence until they reached the gate in the wall that surrounded Thaddeus’s huge home. They cut through the crop of trees, the sound of rain drumming against the leaves overhead. Stepping out from amongst the trees, a single shaft of bluey-white moonlight had broken through the clouds and made a pool of light on the ground before the house. Winnie looked up and could see a half moon peering around the edge of a bank of clouds.

  “Isn’t it beautiful?” she heard Thaddeus whisper.

  “Yes,” she breathed, the rain spattering her upturned face.

  “The moonlight makes you look very beautiful,” Thaddeus suddenly said.

  “Aw, you’re just saying that,” Winnie giggled, looking at him. There was a part of her that so much wanted what he said to be true. She had never been told that before by anyone. Although it made her feel slightly uneasy coming from a man she hardly knew, she liked hearing those words. She liked the way he was looking at her.

  Reaching out with his hand, Thaddeus brushed the damp lengths of hair from her cheeks, as if wanting to see more of her face. In the moonlight she truly did look beautiful, he thought, and he tried to push those feelings away. The moonlight made her look like china, fragile and breakable.

  “What’s wrong?” Winnie asked, slowly pulling his hand away from her face. Even through the fogginess of her mind, she could see that his look of wonder at her had changed to one of sadness - remorse.

  “Wait here,” he said, turning and heading towards the house.

  “Where are you going?” she called out, now standing alone in the shaft of blue moonlight.

  “I’m going to get my camera,” he called out as he fumbled for his door keys in his coat pocket. “I want to take a photo of you.”

  “But it’s rai
ning!” she gasped, not knowing whether she should be flattered by his behaviour or not. She couldn’t remember the last time anyone had ever wanted to take a picture of her. “Can’t it wait until tomorrow?”

  But Thaddeus had gone, disappearing inside the house.

  Winnie stood alone in the moonlight and rain. Although she was kind of pleased that Thaddeus wanted to take a picture of her, she hoped he would hurry up. She felt cold and wet through. Not only that, she felt ridiculous standing alone, with her hood up, her hair all bedraggled and plastered to the sides of her face. Winnie doubted that she looked very beautiful at all. With her self-esteem at its usual low, she wondered if perhaps he wasn’t taking the piss - having a laugh at her expense.

  So wanting to make sure that she looked her best, she positioned herself so she could see her reflection in one of the tall bay windows set into the front of the house.

  With her fingers almost numb with cold, she combed them through the wispy lengths of hair that hung limply against her cheeks. She turned quickly sideways, then front again, checking out her profile. The wind suddenly picked up, blowing a flurry of leaves from beneath the trees behind her. There was a snapping noise, like feet treading over fallen twigs. Winnie spun around and peered into the slices of darkness between the black and knotted tree trunks. The sound came again.

  “Hello?” she gasped. “Is there anyone there?”

  The noise stopped, or was it drowned out by another sudden gust of wind? A shower of sodden leaves scattered into the air again, and then settled as the wind dropped. Winnie peered into the darkness once more, then turned back to face the window, and then screamed.

  Reflected back in the window, she could see three pale faces looming out of the darkness behind her. With her heart in her throat, she turned again, but the faces were now gone. Her heart raced so fast and loud, she could hear it beating in her ears. The wind suddenly howled all around her, blowing her hair out from beneath her hood and covering her face. She closed her eyes against the wind, her hair, and the driving rain, and in that moment of darkness, she heard voices.