Part 22 (1/2)

'I can't be responsible for you I don't knoe ended up together like this It seems like fate and that alorries me You're a wonderful man, and I'm attracted to you, but if you don't believe a word I've told you, not only do I lack your respect, I know you won't protect yourself by taking this seriously If you lure him, Charles, he'll kill you Simple as that'

'Nicole, you have my respect, of course you do'

'But you don't believe a word of this hosszu eletek craziness'

'I' decidedly odd happened to Erna Novak and Eric Dubois And ' he took a breath, wincing as he heard the lie escape his lips but knowing it was the only way to keep her 'I'm prepared to keep an open mind about the rest of the diaries'

Nicole blinked, tears glittering in the corners of her eyes 'You are?'

'Scout's honour I'd still like to read the rest of the extracts you've translated'

'Of course'

'And I'd like to continue my own research'

'You'll be discreet?'

'I will And, in return, if we discover anything else that ht explain these events, I want you to at least consider it'

'Charles, I'd like nothing more than there to be a simple explanation for all of this I doubt you'll find one'

He shrugged 'So we're agreed?'

'On what?'

'I'll keep an open mind So will you We'll both do our research, and we'll be careful e unearth In themy very existence in my efforts to continue to see you, we'll take our pleasures wherever and whenever we can'

He stopped, aghast at the way the sentence had spilled fro on Nicole's cheeks

'Is your hotel within walking distance?' she asked, raising an eyebrow

'Not really'

She laid her hand on his 'Let's get a taxi then'

After -size bed listening to the h the openThestripes of shadow on to the wall

They spent the following day i his hotel roo crimson streaks across the sky

Charles remained in Paris for another four days before he returned to England Shortly afterwards he e for Nicole This ti of 1980, he proposed Nicole cried and refused, telling him that she could not take responsibility for hier see hier a mask for his hurt Over twenty years had passed, he reasoned, since so that could or could not have been due to Jakab Balazs Surely the fact that she would be married to hi her even land, disconsolate

Threeof 1981, when he asked her to marry him a second time, she accepted There were conditions The ceremony would be discreet, with no official announcement Charles would continue to lecture at Balliol and record his documentaries, but he would court no publicity, and would say nothing in public or otherwise of his wife, except to his most trusted friends

Nicolea warmth and vitality to the place that had never before existed She converted the sht herself how to paint She picked out new furnishi+ngs and renovated the old Just before the Christhter, whorew thicker around the waist, happy in his work and his family He sold another plot of land to a private developer for a fortune, and invested the money shrewdly As they reached the end of that decade, it became clear they would not be blessed with ht theirl's tenacity and fire, clearly inherited from both parents, was nised as a quality of their own

In '97, Hannah celebrated her fifteenth birthday, Nicole commemorated thirty-nine years since her mother had set fire to the family home where a hosszu elet had taken up residence, and Charles celebrated two publishi+ng achieveret for the rest of his life

The first was his first full-length hardback, Legacy of the Germanic Peoples The book was reviewed favourably by a nuher than hereputation as a broadcaster also helped

When Nicole opened the book, she was stunned to discover that the inside back cover of the dust jacket featured ain his study The photograph had been taken by Hannah a year earlier A caption read: Professor Charles Meredith relaxes with his wife at their Oxfordshi+re home

Charles had not been prepared for her fury He had thought that the years of hosszu eletek paranoia had ended So disturbed was he by her reaction that he neglected to tell her of the second piece he had published, an article in a little-known quarterly called The Mottray

The piece, just over five thousand words, was buried towards the back Its title, Hosszu eletek: the birth and death of a Hungarian legend

Charles was credited as its author

CHAPTER 14

Snowdonia Now The thunderstorm that had threatened for the last three days had not descended; for now, the heavens had brokered an uneasy truce Clouds tu purple underbellies at the valley floor At their tattered edges, shafts of sunlight winked in and out, transforreens and mauves before the thunderheads closed in and the colours bled away

In the fare fires in each of the rooms, determined to chase away the damp before the storloves and scrubbed the tiny bathroolinted She mopped the kitchen floor and bleached the sink, scoured the cooker and stacked the reht thes she found planks, nails and a hammer, and used the roo for him in one of the cupboards, washed and aired it She ran Leah a bath and washed her hair, then settled the girl in Llyn Gwyr's dining roohter occupied, Hannah counted again the shotgun cartridge boxes and double-checked the contents of each box She found three new hiding places for the a each time that it was either not sufficiently close or that it was too convenient for Leah's curious fingers She loaded and unloaded the shotgun, decided to clean it with a can of gun oil she found under the stairs, and reloaded it when she had finished She tried not to think about her father

Nate watched her, his face unreadable Three days had passed since their arrival at Llyn Gwyr She still found it difficult to believe that he could have lost as much blood as he had and survived

But survived he had The kitchen sofa by the fire had become his convalescence bed, fro requests for food, drink, and e he had insisted she help him shuffle to the toilet so that he could attend to himself in private Despite her fear that the ed it A habitual optimist, that small success spurred him on, and when he playfully swatted her rear three times within an hour as she passed his couch, she kneas recovering

Twice she caught herself dwelling on ould have happened, what life would have been like, had he died Both times her vision swam and her hands shook as she considered how lost she would have been The prospect of trying to establish a new life for Leah without Nate's presence was so shattering she found it iht Without hi a storreater than the one that threatened overhead?

She knew that Jakab would find them, felt it at her core Yet despite her belief that she could not face that confrontation alone, with Nate virtually immobile and her father most likely dead, the burden fell upon her to protect all three of them

Meet me Just you, and just me Anywhere you want Out in the open

The recollection of Jakab's voice filled her with revulsion She knew better than to believe a single word of his poison Bizarrely, even though she knew that Jakab was a monster, a broken mind consumed by its own dark obsessions, she had felt unaccountably pulled by that voice

You name the place Just let me see you once Talk Explain There have been soconfused

It disturbed her to admit it, but perhaps after all these years, a tiny part of her was attracted to the thought of relinquishi+ng control, of surrendering herself to fate She had watched predators hunting in the wild, had been fascinated at the way their prey kept running until exhausted, expending every last trace of energy to avoid capture Yet when hunter at last brought down hunted, its victi its end Those final moments, while horrific in one sense, were intimate in another Perhaps when you finally realised you were beaten that there was really no hope soe, accept

In the farh their supplies It was only , but she would need to feed everyone soon As she passed Nate's couch, he stretched out an arun rounds a fourth tis Twenty-five in a box Two full boxes and one box with six spares That's fifty-six cartridges plus the two in the breach Fifty-eight in total Fifty-eight last tiht the ti eyes 'I' up that chair,' he said, indicating the aro of her wrist and she pulled it over 'Sit'

She complied