Transgressions by Sarah Dunant Page B

taken during the first winter they were together: stupid but telling.
    They’d gone to Corfu, too early for the tourists and too cold for the beach, and to keep themselves amused they had visited a set of caves in the north of the island. They and a German couple had had the guide to themselves, but the commentary had been so lousy that they contrived to lose him halfway through, negotiating their own route through the primeval landscape and dense silence.
    They had been underground for about half an hour, wandering through the deepest part of the caves where the surface was pitted by potholes and underground lakes, when suddenly the lights had gone off. The blackness had been instant, total, like death. He’d been right beside her when it happened but as she reached out to touch him he was gone. She’d found it funny at first, whispering to him in the black, until she had heard the most dreadful screech somewhere to her right, as if someone had stumbled and fallen into one of the chasms. She had been groping her way blindly toward the sound, screaming his name, when an icy hand had slid around her neck. The fear had lifted her an inch off the ground.
    “Oh, come on, Lizzie. It was just a joke,” he had said later as he held her to his chest, trying to stem her hiccupping sobs. “Anyway, at least now I know how much you’d miss me.” The remark had turned her tears into fury. The row that followed had gone on for days, until eventually the early spring sun and his little-boy contriteness had forced her into forgiving him. But not forgetting.
    She grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge and gulped down half of it. On the console, Van was now into track five. She gave it another two minutes then picked up the portable phone.
    The number rang six times, then connected.
    “Hello?”
    She slid the receiver away from her ear and held it up to the speakers as she flicked up the volume. For a man who didn’t like Van Morrison it would have been a painful experience. Not painful enough. She pulled it down again. “Hello, Tom,” she said steadily.
    “Lizzie? Is that you? God, you took the top of my head off. I . . . er . . . was that the album?” He sounded distinctly shaky.
    “Yeah. Van the Man. Your choice.”
    He gave a little laugh. “Well, you know what I think of him. But the guy at the record store in Vancouver thought it was a good one. A collector’s item, he said. I rang the doorbell but you weren’t in.”
    “Oh, and which time was that?”
    “What?”
    “The first visit or the second?”
    “Uh . . . I don’t know. I dropped it by after work. It must have been—”
    “Don’t lie to me, Tom.” And the explosion of her voice took even her by surprise. “Just don’t do it, okay? You creep. What do you think it feels like, being so scared that your gut seizes up? What is it with you that you can’t leave it alone? You wanted out, too, you know. It was mutual, remember. Or was that just more of your bullshit?”
    “Hey, hey, what is this?” he said, his anger rising up to meet hers. “I bring you back your key. As a way of apologizing I buy you an album, and now you blow my head off. You know, I think—”
    “I don’t give a fuck what you think. I want you to stop it, right now, do you hear? I want you to stop it, or . . . or I’ll call the police.” And she heard the crack in her voice.
    “Wait a minute,” he said, quietly now, more carefully. “Stop what exactly? What are you talking about?”
    “I’m talking about you coming ’round here tonight and putting on the stereo, so that I’d come in to find it still playing. This is my house and nobody, nobody is going to make me feel scared about living in it. D’you hear me?”
    “But—”
    “And don’t bother to deny it. I know it was you, okay? I saw you. I saw your car. It was outside the house.”
    “What car?”
    “The bloody Mustang.”
    At the other end of the line there was a slight pause. Someone or something made a