Unknown by Unknown Page A

his movements, and when the door opened and he came back into the room she couldn’t help turning.
    Of course he hadn’t shaved. He looked like a hairy ape, and her face clenched and he said, ‘You look pretty rough yourself,’ and Pattie thought, not as rough as I feel. Tonight after he’s gone upstairs I’ll wash my underclothes and dry them in front of the fire. She said nothing, and the sound of his typewriter soon filled the silence.
    She didn’t mind that. It was a familiar sound, she had always worked among clattering typewriters. The wind was rising. She could hear it howling in the great chimney, and she read her magazines very slowly, not missing a word, trying to put herself into the pictures.
    When she was a child she had expected to travel all over the world. Her father was an overseas radar expert for an international engineering firm, although most of his trips were brief he was sometimes away for months on end, and when Pattie was through with school he had promised to take her along. She had always wanted to write. She had sold short stories to children’s magazines when she was quite young, monopolised the school magazine and got glowing reports from her English teacher. She was going to travel with her father, meet people, write real books, but it hadn’t happened.
    She couldn’t complain about her life. She had been lucky to get the breaks she had had, but it could have been different, she could have been different. She had never been afraid of anything while her father was alive, and look at her now, hardly daring to breathe for fear of the man at the other end of the room. Of course he wouldn’t touch her. He was no fool, he would know what the consequences would be and as he had pointed out, she wasn’t worth the fuss. He wouldn’t harm her. Not physically. Mentally she could harm herself, and perhaps she was heading for a breakdown.
    She hadn’t been herself for some time, and now she had nothing to do but sit and think she faced the fact. She longed for Michael now, and the soft easy life he represented, but before she came here she had sensed something missing in their relationship. She had been restless, she had wanted to break out in some way, but she surely hadn’t bargained for what she’d got. It had been like taking a stroll on your own down a country lane, and ending up in a jungle.
    By the roaring log fire it was as hot as a jungle, but out there was a frozen world. She had to keep the log supply high and dry, so she put on the sheepskin coat and went out through the back door. The flakes were still drifting down, not heavily, but that was no guarantee that the worst was over. The colour of the sky hadn’t lightened much. The way the snow stopped, then started again, was enough to snap your nerves. Like opening a prison door by a tiny crack and banging it shut.
    I’m full of little fancies, Pattie thought. Next thing I’ll be mumbling them aloud to myself for company, and when he says, ‘I told you to be quiet,’ I’ll say, ‘Who, me? I never said a word,’ and I’ll believe it.
    The log pile was buried under deep snow, but there was a shovel in the kitchen, and she scraped and dug down to the soaking wet wood. She would have given a lot to have been wearing gloves when the car crashed. Even thin leather ones would have been a godsend. Her hands were frozen, and she carried in the logs three at a time—which was as many as she could manage—and stacked them neatly, a safe but drying distance from the fire.
    Duncan Keld never looked at her. He was in his own little world and although she was going about her task as quietly as possible she still resented his concentration. If she wondered off into the snowy wastes he wouldn’t notice she’d gone until night fell and he lit the lamp. He wouldn’t go looking for her then. The ego of the man! All he thought about was himself. The way her getting stuck here had inconvenienced him. Well, it was no birthday party for