CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

DON'T TOUCH me, Jon, please!

Sylvia tensed, every nerve in her body rigid, tried to think of a plausible reason which she could put into words. I've got a headache. Husbands had given up believing that one twenty years ago. It's the wrong time of the month; he knew already that it wasn't. I'm too tired. She'd once told him that sex was better when you were tired because you were more relaxed.

She bit her lip, resisted the urge to knock his hand away. Please don't touch me. I don't want you, I want my own husband back because he's out there in the dark and cold. Alive. Oh God, Eric's alive.'

Jon wanted her tonight and there was no way short of a determined physical resistance that she was going to stop him. She groaned, eased her legs apart. Shut your eyes and think of England. No, think of Eric.

It was Eric in the darkness of her bed. It had to be; everything else had just been a bad dream. No, it wasn't Eric's feel, not his way. Her mind flipped back to the other morning and suddenly her whole body began to prickle and tingle. There had been no fear because it was Eric ail right. Not even rape because she had been more than willing. So strong, so fierce, every thrust so meaningful.

Jon was lying with his full weight on top of her now. His naked flesh was repulsively smooth, his strength barely that of a callow youth. She turned her head away, tried to avoid his lips. Screw me then and get it over with; let me be back with Eric.

No way was she going to make it to an orgasm. She let him ride her, her feelings beginning to slip away like a piece of driftwood going out with an ebbing tide. Sobbing softly to herself. Oh, Eric, I want you. I don't care what they've done to you, I just want to be with you.

j3imly she was aware that they were no longer coupled, that he was lying facing away from her. Oh how I hate you, Jon Quinn. This is all your fault. If it wasn't for you I wouldn't be here now, I would be out there with Eric; like him\

Her mind was made up. She would go to her husband. Not now, maybe not tomorrow. But before the winter set in and trapped her here with this man who only wanted her body.

Day after day Eric Atkinson had squatted up on that slope watching the smallholding below him, virtually an aerial view, the cottage a matchbox house, the two people dots which he scarcely recognised. Only the woman.

He had moved further back up the slope almost to the fringe of the big forest. Fear ate into him day by day, the knowledge that the hairless male had the means to kill him instantly if he got close enough, indeed he had almost done so already. He saw him shoot a rabbit on the edge of the patch of ground where he grew his vegetables. Unbelievable, terrifying.

The coney had been grazing a row of cabbages, had not heard the man's approach. Its ears went up and it bounded away, a blur of grey at full speed.

Bang!

The report echoed, the hills taking it up, magnifying it. Atkinson started, almost fell back, clutched at his ears trying to shut it out.

Bang. Ba..ng...ba..aaa...ng. Like thunder rolling before a storm. But he could not take his eyes off the scene below. The rabbit stopped as surely as if it had run into an invisible barrier, rolled over on to its back, the white of its belly uppermost, legs kicking, the motions growing weaker and weaker until finally it was still.

The man walked forward, not hurrying^ confident, the death-stick cradled under one arm, reached down and retrieved the dead creature by its back legs, carried it back towards the house.

Eric watched him until he disappeared inside. Still heard the killing sound.

Bang.. .baa-ng...

The same would happen to him if he ventured too close to the building. The other had already tried to kill him once. He could run now, escape, leave this place. He would have done so had it not been for the woman. His woman.

Instead he would watch and wait from up here. Incapable of forming any other plan, he could think of nothing else.

The days were shorter, colder. The leaves had begun to fall from the trees leaving the branches stark, no longer a protection against the chill westerly winds, and the dense bracken lay brown and flattened by the rain and sleet storms.

Eric had attempted to make himself a shelter out of dead branches and bracken because the thorn bushes no longer shielded him from the elements. He had worked on it for a whole day and that night a gale had demolished it. He would have to move on up to the forest, find himself a place amongst the thick firs. The idea did not appeal to him. The forest was alive at night, wild dogs that howled and bayed as they hunted their prey. And people who had moved up here crept stealthily through the trees and fled at the first sign of a stranger. He did not seek any company other than his own and that of the woman down below.

He was permanently hungry too. The wild fruit was becoming mildewed and sour and he was having to rely almost solely on rowan berries. He had long since given up setting deadfall rock traps for rabbits because it was a waste of time. He never caught anything.

Grey skies stretched to the furthermost hills and beyond, low cloud that brought hill-fog and fine drizzle. He shivered, knew that he would have to go into the forest. First, though, he had to find some food of a more substantial nature.

During the summer months he had feasted ravenously on the small tubers which grew at the base of the long-stemmed plants with the white flower. They were scarce now, harder to find because the flowers had died down. Armed with a knife, one he had taken from the Quinn workshop, he embarked upon another, more desperate, hunt for the bulbs.

It was painstaking work, his stomach urging him on. Scrabbling with his fingers, hacking until he broke the knife blade; finding one or two, cramming them into his mouth, spitting out the soil, obsessed with his task.

So obsessed that he did not see the snake until it was too late! The adder had burrowed deep into a pile of dead leaves, its hibernation already begun, its colouring rendering it almost invisible. Something awoke it, a sharp pain as the jagged knife nicked its body. It turned, spat, struck blindly and instinctively.

Eric Atkinson screamed, dropped the knife, stared in horror at the wriggling reptile which was now visible, a black zig-zag on its back. Excruciating pain and terror, revulsion. His fear of snakes went back further than his memory; to that day when his parents had taken him to Whipsnade Zoo. He had virtually had a fit in the reptile house, gone hysterical, angered his parents because they did not understand, had tried to force him to overcome his phobia, had held him there, pinioned his arms, dragged him from glass cage to glass cage.

And now, thirty years later, that fear came to its peak. He stumbled, fell, crawled, could not put his full weight on his poisoned hand. Gibbering, sobbing, blind to direction. Flee. Anywhere.

A dim realisation that he was in the forest. It had to be night because it was dark. Crawling until he collapsed from exhaustion, edging himself up against the bole of a huge fir, its branches dripping condensation steadily. Drip . . . drip . . . trickling . . . the kind of sound a pursuing snake would make . . .

Wide-eyed, staring into the blackness, seeing innumerable moving things, pushing his back hard against the tree trunk. Eyes; green ones, red ones, things moving about, twigs crackling. Circling him. Watching.

Waiting for him to die!

His hand throbbed. He held it up before his face, tried to see it, could just discern its outline. It was huge, throbbing with pain, so swollen that he could not lift it for more than a few seconds.

You're going to die!

Whimpering. He heard those animals snuffling again. They weren't in any hurry.