The White House - Book 6, The Porth Kerensa Series

Chapter Twenty-Three

James sat at the end of the bar and drank pints of lager, steadily, throughout the afternoon. When the early evening brought the darkness he moved to an armchair near the fireplace and switched to whisky. He was aware of the woman behind the bar watching him, keeping an eye on his alcohol consumption, and he was pleased when she finally finished her shift and Jace Lewis took over.

The pub emptied out around six pm, apart from a couple of regulars at the bar and James nursing his whisky by the fire. He looked up, surprised, when Jace joined him with two cups of coffee.

“I’d rather have another whisky,” he grumbled.

Jace sat down opposite him and smiled, good-naturedly. “Humour me and have the coffee first. I’ve ordered you a ham sandwich too.”

“I’m not hungry,” James said, truculently. “And you’re not my bloody wife.”

“No, you’re right,” Jace agreed with a laugh. “I’m just a concerned landlord who wants a good customer to sober up a bit before I send him home to his bloody wife.”

James smiled, thinly, and picked up the mug. “You’re probably right. It will only make things worse if I roll up back at the damn house ten sheets to the wind.”

“Have you got far to go?”

“The white house on the outskirts of the village,” James replied, morosely. “I wish we’d never moved there. It was meant to be a new start, somewhere to forget the past and change our lives, but if anything it’s made everything worse.”

“You’re not going to improve things by sitting here getting drunk, James,” Jace said, quietly. “Drink the coffee, eat the sandwich and go home, my friend.”

James thought of Elise alone in the white house and all her expectations and the disappointment that crushed him the second he walked through the front door. He thought of Amy Collins in her cosy little home and the pleasure she would give him if he went there instead. He contemplated it for a few moments…imagined knocking on her door and the kiss she’d greet him with then he dismissed it from his mind. He was too drunk and she deserved more than a pissed confused middle aged man searching in the wrong place for things he had no business wanting.

He would go home to Elise and the white house. He had to forget about Amy Collins.

      ******

Night had fallen and a storm had blown in from the sea when Elise drove, slowly, back into Porth Kerensa. The wind howled, viciously, and the heavy rain battered, relentlessly, at her windscreen affording her little visibility. Her heart sank when she approached the white house and noted that none of the lights were on. James was obviously still out and the thought of going back into the house at night, all alone, terrified her now.

She had driven for miles, across the county border into Devon, and filled her day with new sights and sounds. However, she hadn’t managed to shake the memory of the horrifying growling laughter that had chased her out of the white house. She had been nervous and jumpy all afternoon, as if it was tailing around after her, waiting for an opportunity to hurt her again. The scratches across her shoulder burned and stung every time she moved, reminding her that she was dabbling in things she didn’t understand; things that suddenly seemed more realistic than she liked.

She parked her car and sat for a few minutes looking up at the house. She had loved the look of it, instantly, the day they had arrived, despite her reservations about whether she could save her marriage. Now, in the dark with the rain lashing down, the white house looked forbidding and unwelcoming.

She almost jumped out of her skin when someone tapped, sharply, on the passenger side window. It was Ben Lancaster, smiling apologetically and getting increasingly wetter in the rain. Elise gestured for him to get in the car and he did so, quickly.