A Finer End

building perched on the summit like a Christmas cracker paper crown. ‘Did somebody make it?’ Gemma asked.
    ‘No. The hill itself is a geological formation. The contouring of the sides could possibly be man-made, but if so, it’s so old that no one knows who did it, or why.’
    ‘And the building on the top?’
    ‘St Michael’s Tower. All that’s left of a twelfth-century church, destroyed by an earthquake. The remains of the last Christian stance against the pagan, legend has it.’
    ‘You don’t believe that?’
    He shook his head. ‘I’ve been up there. The wind blows through the tower like a knife, and that stone is colder than death. I doubt anything Christian ever stood a chance on that hill.’
     
    ‘Are you sure you won’t go in and sit with her for a few minutes?’ Suzanne Sanborne asked. ‘I think it would help you—’
    ‘No!’ At the startled glances of the other visitors, Andrew lowered his voice to a snarl. ‘You don’t understand. Our parents—’ He stopped, unable, even after so many years, to relate the horror of being made to stand at his unconscious mother’s bedside. She’d been in the water too long before they’d fished her body from the wreck of their sailing boat off the Dorset coast. And now Winnie...
    ‘Then you’ve got to get some rest. You’re not doing Winnie any good by getting yourself in such a state.’
    ‘I can’t sleep.’ Andrew clasped his hands between his knees to stop their obvious trembling. They sat in the visitors’ area outside the ICU, waiting for the nurses to allow Suzanne another ten-minute stint by Winnie’s bedside.
    ‘Then go to the surgery and have David prescribe you some tablets. I’ll stay here with Winnie until Jack comes. There’s no need for you to—’
    ‘What right does he have to be here?’ The rage that had been eating at him for months burned in his throat like acid. ‘Arranging your schedule, ordering the nursing staff about—’
    ‘Jack’s here because Winnie would want him to be.’ Again the light touch of Suzanne’s fingers on his arm, and the direct gaze he couldn’t meet. ‘Andrew, we’ve been friends for a long time. Jack’s a good man: he cares for your sister very deeply. What more could you want for her?’
    ‘Someone who wasn’t a crank,’ he replied bitterly. He had read the papers she left lying about the Vicarage, as if communications from a dead monk were nothing to be ashamed of. Oh, he knew all about their little Arthurian group, and it sickened him.
    But that wasn’t the whole truth. He had never wanted to share his life with any woman other than his sister, and Jack Montfort had stolen that from him. The rhythm and pattern of their days together had provided him with an anchor, a touchstone, and her absence had left him adrift.
    And as if that weren’t enough, he thought as he took his leave of Suzanne, he knew now that Montfort had brought Winnie too close to things she had never been meant to know... things that must be kept from her, no matter what the consequences.
     
    After a morning spent at home, lingering over coffee and newspapers, Bram Allen could no longer put off going into the gallery, but he disliked leaving Fiona on her own.
    If he’d been at home yesterday afternoon, he might have prevented Jack Montfort from stirring up the horror of Winnie Catesby’s accident all over again. Why did it have to be Fiona, of all people, who’d found Winnie lying in the road? And why had Winnie been coming to see Fiona — if indeed that were the case — without warning or invitation?
    Frowning, he buttoned his crisply pressed shirt, chose a tie, and went to find his wife.
    She was in her studio, sitting on her stool, but to his relief her easel was empty and her hands idle in her lap.
    All right, darling?’ he asked, slipping his arms round her. He had thought, once, that he had the makings of an artist. Then he’d met Fiona, seen canvases come to glowing life beneath her brush, and he’d known that gift would never be his. So he’d nurtured her work as best he could, shielding her from life’s vicissitudes and taking a vicarious pride in her achievements — until she’d begun to paint the one thing he couldn’t bear to see.
    Fiona sank back against his chest. ‘It’s just... there’s this tension in things. I thought when I started painting it would dissipate; then when I found Winnie I felt sure it had been in anticipation of that. Precognition of a sort, perhaps.