Thorn in the Flesh by Anne Brooke Page B

might be. Such a small word encompassing so much. “Handling” too was his word, not hers. It was not something Kate would say.
    Placing the phone back on its base, she stretched, feeling the tingle of her muscles, then walked to the living room, sat down and stared out of the window. However, she saw nothing. After a while, she picked up the letter, post-marked London, which she’d read, devoured almost, only after Nicky had left two days ago.
    Its message was no different to the ones she’d already received. She would put it with the others, in the lockable drawer of her office cabinet, where no-one else would see. She would never read it again.
    She had no need; she already knew all the words. She wondered again whether she should have told the police about the messages. Four times, perhaps five, it had been on her tongue to say it, but each time she’d drawn back from what seemed like a cliff-edge. Beyond that cliff was only the distant roar of an impossible sea and, buried somewhere in the horizon, the unclaimed memory of her past.
    No, she couldn’t visit it again or, at least, not yet. She wasn’t ready for the consequences.
    She would have to be, and soon. She had less than a week to make her other, unimaginable call before work wrapped itself around her once more. After that time, the familiar framework of her old life would hem her in and she didn’t know then whether she would ever have the courage to do it. Or perhaps, on thinking it through, it was best after all that way; perhaps she would leave her past alone.
    That night she dreamt of windmills; great swathes of them like vast black monsters across the landscape, pulsating with a deeper darkness. The ground too seemed to undulate beneath her feet. The sky was light, but fading as if it might be evening, with no sun. She wanted to run, but each time she swung round to try to find a path out from the field where she stood, another dark monster confronted her and then another and another. She could sense her breath coming in short bursts and could hear the wild beat of her own heart. Each windmill was larger than the one before it and, as she darted her gaze here and here, the sails began to turn, faster and faster until they filled up the whole sky. They were wrapping themselves around her body; she could feel the rough coldness of the slats against her skin. Fighting them off in vain, her hands felt like small, useless birds trying to push back a mountain. They were suffocating her, she couldn’t breathe.
    And then suddenly she was awake, a stifled cry in her throat and her hands lashing out at the sheets as she struggled upright in her bed. While the dream still clung to her senses, she thought – one breath, two – someone was there with her, someone deadly, but when her trembling fingers switched on the bedside light, nobody was there. She was alone.
    In the morning, she chastised herself for her own foolishness but, even then, didn’t sit down to breakfast until the house had been searched and the reassurance of being alone recovered.
    The same dream came for four nights, but on the last night it was different. On the last night, as she turned to run from the pulsating, strange windmills, a figure stood in front of her. Taller than she, his eyes were blue and for a wild moment she thought of the young man and wanted to scream. But it was not him. The knowledge of this one lived far deeper in the secret layers of her history. When she reached out her hand to grasp him, he was gone. She woke then, her face wet with tears.
    On the Sunday, the day before she was due to return to work, she had lunch with Nicky and her family. In spite of the fact that it had been Nicky’s birthday during the week and therefore she should have been relaxing, her friend was determined to cook.
    ‘How’s it going?’ David asked as Nicky was out of the room and the twins were engrossed near the window playing what seemed to be a complicated dressing-up game involving