Daughters of Fire. Barbara Erskine

shook her head. ‘She’s there again,’ she said, her small face screwed into a puzzled frown. ‘That woman behind you.’

      Viv froze, paralysed with terror. The room had grown very still.

      The others fell silent. One by one they turned to look at Viv.

      ‘Tasha!’ Pete was very stern. ‘We told you before.’

      ‘It’s true!’ Tasha stood up. ‘It’s true!’ she wailed again. ‘Look!’ She pointed. ‘Can’t you see her? Pablo can. Look at him.’ The cat had risen to his feet, back arched, and was staring towards Viv, his fur on end.

      There was a further second of utter silence. At last Cathy spoke. ‘We can’t see anyone, Tash,’ she said gently. ‘Pablo is just stretching.’

      ‘I’m not making it up!’ Tash screamed.

      Pablo let out a screech of terror and jumped off the draining board, fleeing out of the door. Tasha paused for only a second before breaking into floods of tears and running from the kitchen after him.

      ‘Wow!’ Pat took a deep breath. ‘Does she often do that?’ She glanced at Viv, who had gone white as a sheet. Cartimandua was here in the room with them. She could feel her.

      ‘She said the same thing last time I was here,’ Viv replied shakily.

      ‘And as before, we all know it’s rubbish,’ Cathy said firmly. ‘Collect up the plates, Pete, would you? She got a wonderful reaction last time and she thought she’d try it again. Let her be. Ignore it.’

      ‘I saw something,’ Pete said quietly. He hadn’t moved.

      The three women looked at him. Viv blanched. Please, no.

      ‘A shadow. Just for a second. There, immediately behind Viv.’

      ‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ Cathy began to gather up the plates herself. ‘Come on, Pete. Let’s have a bit of stark reality here, please!’

      He shook his head. ‘Of course. It must have been a trick of the light.’ He didn’t sound convinced.

      ‘Too right!’ Cathy was cross.

      Pete shrugged. He was watching Viv’s face. ‘You OK? Sorry, I didn’t mean to frighten you.’

      ‘Well, you did!’ Viv stood up. Suddenly she found she couldn’t breathe. ‘I need some fresh air. I’m going home. I’m sorry. I’m all right …’

      Ignoring the anxious voices behind her, Viv ran down the elegant curved stone staircase with its wrought-iron balustrade which climbed up through the house towards an oval skylight above her head. As she reached the entrance hall, she glanced over her shoulder with a shiver of terror. The street door was closed. The vestibule was silent, shadowy and cold, and smelled of pine disinfectant and, faintly, of cigarettes. Scrabbling frantically at the latch, she let herself out into the street. Behind her the light clicked off on its timer and left her in darkness.

      II

      Pat couldn’t sleep. The so-called box room in which she had been installed boasted a narrow pine bed and a duvet decorated with fairy tale princesses, aimed she suspected at Tasha or her friends in earlier, more innocent incarnations. On the small chest of drawers she had laid out her notebooks and laptop. Her capacious red canvas bag acted as wardrobe and her cosmetics such as they were sat on the window sill where earlier she had rested on her elbows puffing the smoke from a guiltily smoked cigarette into the darkness. She left the window open as she turned out the light and climbed into the bed to lie staring up at the ceiling.

      Sleep wouldn’t come. Tense and uneasy, she kept playing back the extraordinary scene at the kitchen table. Tasha and Pete had both seen something. There was no doubt about that. And Pete had not just said it to show solidarity with his daughter. She pictured Viv’s white face. She had often heard people described as looking like rabbits caught in a car’s headlights. That was how she had looked. Disbelieving. Trapped. Terrified.

      They hadn’t wanted her to go home alone. Cathy was worried and cross. Cross with Tasha and with Pete. Protective. Pete and she had had a row after Viv had gone and Pat had left them to it, wandering into the sitting room where she had joined Tasha who was sitting on the sofa in front of the television. The news was just finishing and a map of the next day’s weather was flashed on the screen. Tasha was hugging a large cushion. There were tears in her eyes. ‘I did see something.’

      ‘I know.’ Pat was dying for a cigarette.

      ‘You don’t believe me.’

      ‘I didn’t say that. I didn’t see anything myself, Tasha,’ Pat said cautiously. ‘But your dad said he did.’ They were both staring at the screen.

      ‘It was a woman.’ Tasha’s arms tightened on the cushion.

      ‘Can you describe her?’

      ‘She was looking at Viv. Trying to get her attention. She had reddish hair.’

      Not Medb, then. Pat had felt a surge of relief. And not a shadow either.

      She turned over and punched the pillow. Pete was going to drop her off at Viv’s in the morning on his way to a meeting so that she and Viv could start on the play. Suddenly she was dreading it.

      Somewhere outside a dog barked and she found herself tensing. The sound was eerie in the silence of the city streets.

      She awoke suddenly some time later, aware that she was shouting out loud, her heart thumping in her chest. Staring round the dark room she held her breath, wondering if she had woken the others. There was no sound from the rest of the flat. Perhaps the shout had been in her dream. Groping for her watch, she squinted at it. One a.m. She had been asleep for less than half an hour.

      Lying back on the pillow again with a groan she screwed her eyes up against the darkness, willing herself back to sleep.

      Medb.

      Her eyes flew open.

      Medb must be in the play. She was a key character. Medb who wasn’t in the index. Who wasn’t in the book. Who did not exist at all, according to Viv who had shrugged and then admitted that she had heard of her. Somewhere. Pat saw again the pale clear eyes in her mind’s eye and she shivered. The woman’s implacable hatred was a physical presence in the room with her.

       7

      I

       Vivienne! Help me!

      With a sob Viv shook her head.

      The wind amongst the chimney pots sometimes wailed strangely and it was a windy day. The early morning sun was throwing shadows from corbels and chimneys across the deep window-lined chasms where the wynd sliced back through the tall slab of buildings. Far above she could see the white cloud, shredded and spinning against the vivid blue of the sky. As she watched a gull, messenger of the sea gods, soared past the window, angling its wings as it headed back towards the Forth. What she had heard had been its ringing cry.

       Vivienne

       I need you

       Help me

       Lady, I bring you gifts!

      Turning sharply back into the room she went and stood by her desk, looking down at the notebook where she had scribbled her descriptions of the world of Cartimandua, descriptions from some part of her brain hell-bent on writing fiction and destroying her street cred as a serious