9 Chapter 9

Sarah woke with a start at four-fifteen in the morning. At first she felt confused, not sure what had woken her. For a while she just lay there, hardly daring to breathe, frightened that there was someone in the house. But it was probably just a siren or a squeal of brakes on the Coast Highway. As the policeman had suggested, she had locked up everything securely, including the outside gate to the beach. She lay still and listened for ten minutes.

Nothing. All she could hear was the ceaseless rolling of the waves and her own heart beating too loud and too fast. When she was certain she could hear no one else in the house, she got out of the bed and walked over to the sliding glass doors led to the second- level deck. She left the lights off, just in case there was anyone watching her, and slid the doors open slowly and quietly.

If he was out there, either, only the ocean rippling and rolling under its pale blanket of moonlight. She thought she was something further up the beach, the sudden movement of a flashlight, perhaps, but it was gone before she could be certain. She wondered if she should phone the police, but decided they would think she was getting paranoid. After all, she had only received three weird letters.

As Stuart said, there was nothing special about that in Hollywood. Still a little nervous, she knew she wouldn't be able to get back to sleep. She was also thirsty from the red wine she'd had with Jack at dinner that night, and Italian food always gave her heartburn. First, she padded to the bathroom, where she drank a large glass of water and took a couple of Maalox tablets.

Then she went downstairs to the kitchen and put the water and ground beans in the coffee-maker. She would have to watch the drinking, she admonished herself, feeling weight of mild headache as she moved . For over a year now she had hardly on to one rum and Coke for the entire evening. But last night at dinner, she had drunk four glasses of red wine and laughed too loudly. Bad signs.

It was her habit most mornings to get up around dawn. First she would make coffee, then, while it brewing, she would go for run. It was too early yet, though. She liked to wait until she could sense the first light before she set off. She put on her tracksuit, drank coffee, ate toast, did a little housework and read J.B, Priestley's The Good Companions for a while.

It was the third time she had read the book, and it always made her feel homesick. Then, when she felt the light growing outside, she stood up and stretched. After her warm-up exercises, she set off. Originally a chore, the morning run had soon become compulsion, and now it was a pleasure. She liked to run in the damp sand by the shore and feel the foam wet her feet. As she ran, she would watch the sun coming up behind the mountains, the light growing in the water, and breathe the ozone that crashing surf seemed to exhale into the atmosphere.

This morning, as she ran, her reading of The Good Companions made her start thinking about her own childhood and how she began playing parts to escape the grime and the coal dust, the suffocating aura of defeat, poverty and broken dreams all around her. She remembered the time she organized a couple of her friends and, with sheets borrowed from the washing-line, they improvised the story of Ruth among the alien corn that they learned in Sunday school the previous week.

Sarah's mother had been livid. Not only had her daughter been participating in the trivialization of a Bible story, she had also dirtied freshly washed sheets. In her mother's mind, Methodism and theatre weren't as close as cleanliness and godliness. Sarah hadn't run more than a quarter of a mile when she noticed something about hundred yards ahead of her in the sand. It was an odd, humped shape she couldn't quite make out. Probably driftwood.

It had been an odd relationship, she thought, the one she had with her mother. Alice Bolton's religion had been deeply enough ingrained to make her theologically opposed to most forms of human artistic endeavour, even if they were dedicated to the praise of God, yet she had been proud of her daughter. More so than her father. If only- Sarah stopped dead in her tracks as another childhood memory thudded into her mind with the force of a hammer blow.

Let's bury Daddy in the sand. It was a game they used to play on seaside holidays in Blackpool, on the rare warm days. She and her older sister, Paula, would dig a hole in the sand and Daddy would lie down in it, then they would cover him with sand and it pat it down. In the end, only his head would be showing, He would stay there for a while, then all of a sudden he would jump up and chase them, as they giggle and screamed, into the cold, grey Irish Sea.

The figure that lay in front of her now hadn't been quite so well buried. The hands and forearms stuck out, as did feet. The face was above the surface, but it was covered with a light dusting of sand, as if blown there by the breeze, and she couldn't make out the features. She couldn't even tell if it was a man or woman. Sarah stood and stared, hands on her knees, panting for breath.

She didn't know what to do. In panic, she looked around but there was no one in sight. There never was at this time. Only the gulls screeching and squealing overhead in the pale morning light. Was the person dead? She thought so. Should she run back to the house and phone an ambulance? Maybe she should make sure first? Gingerly, she learned forward and grasped one of hands.

She braced herself for her weight, but soon as she exerted the slightest pressure, she fell back on the sand. Then she saw it. In her hand, she held a human arm, severed just above the elbow, where she could see the dark, clotted blood and issue matted with sand. She dropped it and got ito her feet. Blood roared and waves pounded in her ears. Just before she turned away to run back to the house, she saw something else, something that made her blood freeze.

The image looked as if it had been drawn in the sand with a sharp stick. It showed a heart pierced by an arrow, like the ones teenage lovers used to carve into trees or chalks on walls. Inside the heart was her name: Sally. Sarah put her hand to her mouth and staggered back a few paces before turning to run back to the house.