The Keeper Read online

  The Keeper

  Diane Saxon

  To Skye, my Dalmatian, without whom the real hero in this book may never have come to fruition.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Acknowledgments

  More from Diane Saxon

  About the Author

  About Boldwood Books

  1

  Friday 26 October, 15:45 hrs

  Felicity Morgan jammed her car into third gear and took the tight bend down the hill to Coalbrookdale with fierce relish.

  ‘It’s not right! It’s just not right. I’m twenty-four years old, for God’s sake, and still being told what to do!’ She pounded the palm of her hand on the steering wheel and whipped around another curve.

  ‘Not even told.’ She glanced in the mirror, her gaze clashing with Domino’s. ‘Nope, she didn’t even have the decency to speak to me.’ She floored the accelerator and snapped out a feral grin as the car skimmed over the humps in the narrow road.

  ‘She texted me. A freakin’ text!’ She shot Domino another quick glance and took her foot from the accelerator as the car flew under the disused railway bridge, past the entrance to Enginuity, one of the Ironbridge Gorge Museums.

  Guilt nudged at her. ‘I know. I know, Domino. We’ve barely seen each other since I moved in because of her shifts and my workday, but for God’s sake. A text? Really? She must have been so peed off to send me a text. It’s her version of not talking to me. She’s done it all our lives.’ Fliss blew out a disgusted snort. ‘What the hell did you eat this time? Her bloody precious steak? One of her fluffy pink slippers? Hah!’

  She appealed in the mirror to her silent companion. ‘She said, “Don’t forget to walk the dog.”’ She pressed her foot on the brake and came to a halt, sliding the gears into neutral as the traffic lights halfway down the hill changed to red. They always did for her. Every bloody time. With a rebellious kick on the accelerator, Fliss revved the engine.

  ‘She called you a dog, Domino. She couldn’t even be bothered to write your name.’ She stared at the big, gorgeous and demanding Dalmatian in her rear view mirror. Her lips kicked up as a smile softened her voice. ‘How could I possibly forget to walk you?’

  An ancient Austin Allegro puttered through the narrow track towards her just as the traffic lights turned to green on her side.

  ‘Bloody typical.’

  Domino raised his head to stare with aloof disdain at the passing Allegro and Fliss sighed as the driver’s wrinkled face, as ancient as the car, barely emerged above the steering wheel.

  ‘There was only once, a few weeks ago, I forgot to walk you. You’d have thought Jenna would have understood. I was hung-over from my break-up drinking bout. You, my darling, were suffering the consequences of a broken home.’ She let out a derisive snort as she put the car into first gear and glided through the lights, back in control of both her temper and her vehicle.

  ‘Not that you ever really liked Ed. You were just being empathetic. You sensed my…’ she drew in a long breath through her nose, ‘… devastation. You sympathised with me. How was I to know you’d eat your Aunty Jenna’s kitchen cupboard doors off while I was sleeping?’ They still bore the deep gouged teeth marks. ‘We didn’t have any choice but to move in with Jenna. We couldn’t stay with him. He was too mean. He wanted me to get rid of you. Said it was him or you.’

  She flopped her head back on the headrest. Ed. The perfect gentleman, tender, gentle, an absolute charmer. To the outside world. Insidious, controlling arse to her. It had taken so long to realise his subtle intention to separate her from her mother, her sister, eventually Domino. The slick manoeuvres to keep her to himself. Unnoticed until her mother fell ill, when, in a flash, it all became clear.

  ‘Poor Domino.’ She glanced in her mirror to share the sympathy between herself and her dog as she slowed down to pass the stunning Edwardian building she worked in on her right. Coalbrookdale and Ironbridge School dated back more than two hundred years and had firmly entrenched roots at the centre of the Industrial Revolution. With the imposing cooling towers of the Ironbridge power station behind, they shared domination of the skyline from that angle.

  She blew out a breath, making her over-long honey-blonde fringe flutter away from her eyes, just for it to land back again in the same place as she pulled the car to a virtual standstill to take a closer look at the school. Closed for the day, except the few lights in the left side of the building still burning for the after-school club.

  A flutter of anxiety filled her chest. It hadn’t helped that she’d had such a dreadful day at school. The kids had run her ragged as she held on to her sanity with barely a thread of control left.

  Who would have thought teaching would be so hard? Yes, she’d appreciated, before she started fresh from university a year gone September, that teachers worked long hours, but who knew children could be affected by the phase of the moon? Until year six teacher, Sarah Leighton, mentioned it to her at the end of their particularly fractious and demanding day.

  Why did they have to have a full bloody supermoon in term time?

  She cruised to the bottom of the hill.

  Perhaps she should have taken a leaf out of Sarah’s book, gone home, poured a glass of wine and sulked in front of the fire until she was obliged to mark homework.

  Instead, she’d been forced out of her own house by a text. Not that it was her house, and therein lay the problem.

  ‘I love her to bits. I really do, Domino, but I’m not sure we can live together. Six weeks is probably the limit.’

  Fliss glanced in the mirror as she drew up to the mini-roundabout while Domino sat bolt upright in the boot, his proud head close to the rear window as he gazed out at the driver in the car behind. The woman smiled at him, just as everyone did when they caught sight of him, compelling them to give him the attention he was convinced he deserved.

  Attention Jenna never gave him as she’d never forgiven him. Nor Fliss.

  The constant reminders wore thin.

  As her temper surged again, Fliss whipped the car around the pimple of the mini-roundabout and then indicated left into the Dale End car park parents used when they dropped their children off at school.

  Despite her annoyance with her sister, she spared the school building another quick glance, the side view hindered by trees, but nonetheless stirring an affection in her. Steeped in history, it lent itself nicely to the quiet Victorian Town. She loved it, with its small community and less than two hundred pupils. Pupils who on a normal day were wonderful. They’d chosen not to be today.

  ‘We need to find our own place, Domino.’ His ears twitched, and he cast an unconcerned glance over his shoulder at her use
of his name. ‘One closer to here, so I don’t have to travel twenty minutes to get to work. It means I could spend more time with you. If we lived on our own, I’d need to get home earlier because Jenna wouldn’t be there to see to you.’

  She stopped the car in the middle of the car park to allow the elderly couple to cross over from the wrought-iron gates leading to the Victorian tearooms and smiled at them despite the mix of lingering annoyance and melancholy.

  ‘I hate living on my own.’ It made her nervous, for no particular reason. It just wasn’t right to live alone. She needed someone to protect her from her unreasonable fear of the dark and her own vivid imagination.

  Fliss’s irritation cranked up again at the whine in her own voice as she circled her car around the almost empty car park and swung it with careless abandon into a space. She cut the engine and flicked the seat belt undone. Before Ed she’d never had such reservations. She was strong. She was capable.

  Her shoulders sagged. She hated to be alone.

  She shook off the self-pity, flung open the driver’s door and slammed it behind her before she strode to the back of the vehicle. She wasn’t alone. Not entirely. She had Domino. He was company enough. Surely.

  ‘Wait!’ she commanded as she opened the boot. She sensed the dog’s urgency, his desperate desire to run free, but he’d do as he was told, she had no doubt.

  She drew in a deep breath before she clipped the lead onto Domino’s harness. She pressed her lips to his forehead as she fondled one silken, floppy ear before she stepped back to allow him out.

  Bright and alert, all bunched muscles and restrained excitement, he bounded from the boot of the car and stood to attention, quivering in anticipation while she glanced at the people in the tree-lined park.

  She zipped her coat up to her chin against the chill wind and hunched her shoulders, determined to move and keep the cold out.

  ‘Which way shall we go, lad?’

  Muted voices floated across, an open invitation for her to join the others in Dale End Park. She chewed the inside of her lip, undecided for a moment, before she turned from the company of the twilight walkers with their idle chit-chat which she normally relished. They wouldn’t miss her, their unofficial dog meet was transient. If you turned up, you mingled. If you didn’t, no one questioned it. A nice crowd, but she needed her privacy.

  ‘This way, Domino.’

  If she allowed herself into their sympathetic fold, she’d be tempted to whine about Jenna, and if there was one thing she couldn’t stand, it was disloyalty. She huffed out a breath. Her anger with Jenna would pass. Until then, she’d keep to herself. Allow the solitude to blanket her.

  She turned right out of the car park and strode out up the hill, past the small Co-op at the mouth of the Museum on the Gorge. It would be open until ten o’clock. Perhaps she’d nip in on her way home and buy that bottle of red wine.

  Sodium lights illuminated the town to spread their warm golden glow as she lengthened her stride and marched along the narrow footpath, puffing out small bursts of vapour as her breath hit the cool evening air.

  The Council had readied the flood barriers for erection along the Wharfeage, as the River Severn continued to rise after an unusually long, wet autumn. It threatened to break its banks early in the season, leaving a dull sense of foreboding for what the rest of the winter would bring. The town wallowed in an eerie quietness. The windows of almost all the premises overlooking the river dark, but for an occasional upstairs light on.

  Breathless from her overexerted stride, she paused halfway up the hill before crossing the Ironbridge. A town in the summer overflowing with tourists keen to witness the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, the Ironbridge dominated the landscape with its iron structure pioneered by Abraham Darby in the eighteenth century. The plethora of museums drew people from all around the world. Somewhere for the locals to avoid. As a tourist town, however, devoid of visitors during the winter months, most of the shops had already closed for the evening.

  The car park in the little square opposite the Ironbridge was empty except for a single red car outside the Tea Emporium as the last of the patrons left for the day. If she’d been earlier, Fliss could have indulged in a fruit scone with jam and cream, accompanied by a cappuccino, or one of their thick, creamy hot chocolates. A treat both she and Jenna often indulged in as they watched the world go by from underneath the fluttering umbrellas outside all year long.

  Her stomach let out a protesting wail as she turned her back on the café. She’d not eaten since lunchtime and couldn’t wait to get back to Jenna’s. She’d fling together a quick stir-fry in time for Jenna’s return. Not that her sister deserved it.

  The torrid waters of the Severn swirled beneath her as she crossed over the Ironbridge, deserted since the end of the summer and tourist season, much to her relief. Fliss wasn’t in the mood for mad holidaymakers leaping at Domino just because they’d seen 101 Dalmatians and believed they were all cuddly animations instead of big dogs who could give a powerful bite if provoked. Not that Domino would bite anyone. She reached down and scrubbed the top of his head and made his tail go wild. The big softie.

  With high, prancing steps, Domino’s strong muscles bunched and flexed as he matched his pace to hers, happy just to be with her.

  Snatches of bad temper still curdled in her stomach and Fliss barely paused as she turned right off the bridge and hit the flat of the wide, disused railway track which led straight to the cooling towers, before unclipping Domino’s jaunty red lead. She coiled it around her neck, clipped the end onto one of the metal loops along the lead, so it couldn’t slide off, and headed after the dog.

  As he veered off to the left, taking the narrower offshoot from the main path up into the woodland, Fliss automatically followed. She put on a spurt to get her up the first steep incline, blowing out white puffs of breath as the path rose in undulations until she was thirty feet above, and parallel to, the main drag. Glancing around, Fliss considered her mistake taking that route as dense vegetation crowded out the light to make it even more difficult to see where she was going.

  She hesitated and peered down through the dimness at the wider trail. Already twilight, it would soon be an impenetrable black in the woods.

  With a sniff, Fliss burrowed her nose deeper into her fleece-lined coat against the chill wind whipping through the Ironbridge Gorge and shrugged. Sure-footed, she was so familiar with the walk, the thought of negotiating it in the dark never bothered her. She wouldn’t be too long, and where the paths merged at the base of the cooling towers, she’d return along the wider, safer path.

  As the peace and quiet of the Gorge settled on her, she slowed her pace and breathed deep, allowing the rich, pungent aroma of the undergrowth to encompass her. Sharp scents of wet pine and dark wood smoke rose with snatches of damp soil and musky fungus to invade her senses.

  Never one to hold onto her temper, she let it go and took in her surroundings. She squinted above her, way up the hillside into the thicket, in the hope she’d spot deer picking their way through. Too dark to make out any shapes, she turned her attention back to the narrow pathway.

  Thrilled at the fresh crunch of leaves underfoot, she swiped at the piles of them with her boots, like she had when she was a child. Only the thick slide of mud underneath gave her a moment’s pause. Perhaps it wasn’t wise to kick the protective layer of leaves aside and end up on her backside, or worse still, at the bottom of the steep incline. Jenna would only give her hell. What were you doing up there at that time of night? How come you slipped? Trust you to get into trouble. Her sister’s lecturing voice trailed through Fliss’s mind, slowing her down still more.

  Disappointed, she curled her fingers into the palms of her hands to keep them warm and ambled onward, her eyes straining to catch the quick bursts of Domino as he pounded in mad leaps up and down the hillside, the scent of deer in his nostrils.

  A wild flash of white shot past her, so close the whip of air stroked her bare ha
nds. The merry jingle of Domino’s collar let her know exactly where he was as he tore through again, almost taking her off her feet.

  ‘Slow down, slow down, you barmy dog.’ God, but she loved him.

  She laughed out loud as he charged by one more time. It wasn’t worth calling him back. He wouldn’t take any notice and it just made her feel stupid when she shouted for a dog that wasn’t going to obey. Anyway, he was having fun.

  She cast a quick glance up at the umbrella of trees and pushed away the regret of coming out here. It was good for him. He needed the exercise, and even in the dark, she was sure-footed, she knew the pathways. Besides, another twenty minutes and she’d be back onto the main track. Although it wasn’t lit either, it didn’t have the heavy layer of branches canopied over it to draw the night in.

  ‘It’s bloody freezing.’

  She dug icy hands into her pockets and regretted leaving her gloves in the car in her haste and bad temper. She hunched her shoulders up to her ears as the bitter chill seeped bone deep. Mean and sneaky, it found the gaps in the neckline of her coat and filtered through to send ripples of goosebumps over her flesh. Damn, but she should have worn more layers. She kept enough of them in her car, but her temper had got the better of her.

  She brought her nose out of where she had it tucked in her coat as Domino shot by once more and breathed a sigh of relief that she’d had the sense not to follow the even steeper route up to Patten’s Rock.