Initially the child resisted, but when Allegra gently stroked her soft peachy cheek, she almost instantly closed her eyes. Amazingly, it wasn’t long before she was asleep. Feeling tired herself, Allegra lay down beside her and stared up at the blue sky through the fluttering leaves of the beech tree.
She was grateful for the chance to rest; she had hardly slept last night, having spent most of it talking to Elijah. It was his insistence on wanting to know all about her life in Italy that had done it, and once she’d begun to talk, the words had just poured out of her. It had come as a huge relief, an unburdening of herself, but the next thing she had known, daylight was streaming in through the window, the birds were singing and she realised she was covered with a blanket in the chair where she must have fallen asleep. Opposite her Elijah was sleeping soundly, his head tilted to one side, his mouth slightly parted.
Her reaction was not one of gratitude that he had been so kind as to put a blanket around her so she could sleep more comfortably, but one of anger – why had he allowed this to happen, and how on earth was she going to explain why she had stayed the night here? Her only thought was to leave at once in the hope she would get back to Island House before anyone noticed she wasn’t there. She was almost at the door to make her escape when Elijah stirred. ‘Where are you off to?’ he asked, rubbing his eyes, his voice thick with sleep.
‘I have to go.’
‘Let me walk with you.’
‘No! I can’t be seen with you. Not at this time of day.’
He’d frowned. ‘In that case, you’d better go.’
‘I didn’t mean it that way,’ she’d said, regretting her choice of words.
‘Just go,’ he’d muttered. ‘You’re good at that.’
The cold accusation in his voice had followed her back to Island House. She could hear it now as she succumbed to exhaustion and drifted off to sleep.
When she woke, feeling pleasingly refreshed, she stretched her arms above her head and turned to check on Annelise.
But Annelise wasn’t there. She was gone.
Allegra leapt to her feet and looked around her, frantically scanning the garden, but there was no sign of the child anywhere.
With her blood running cold and her heart beating fast, she ran to the edge of the pond where they’d been playing before.
‘Annelise!’ she called desperately. ‘Annelise!’
Chapter Twenty-Eight
‘I was asleep for no more than a few minutes!’ Allegra wailed, the tears streaming down her cheeks. ‘I just don’t know how she could have moved so fast! She can’t even walk!’
‘But how could you fall asleep when you were responsible for looking after her?’ screamed Hope wildly, her face contorted with petrified horror and furious disbelief. ‘I don’t understand, how could you do that?’
‘Shouting at one another is not going to help us find Annelise,’ said Romily firmly, trying hard to hide her own fear. ‘Now please, just calm down, the pair of you.’
‘Calm?’ screeched Hope, ‘You expect me to be calm when Annelise has probably drowned!’
The three of them were up to their waists in water, desperately searching amongst the pondweed and reeds for the little girl, and God help them if they did find her, thought Romily with sickening dread, because by now, if she had fallen in, the poor wretch must surely be dead. Allegra had no idea how long she’d been asleep, so it was anybody’s guess how long the child had been crawling around on her own.
When Allegra had come running up to the house, wild-eyed and soaked to the skin, and screaming like a banshee, Romily had resorted to slapping her face to get some sense out of her. The second she realised what the girl was saying, she’d shouted to Hope and Florence to help with the search, and to Mrs Partridge to call for Dr Garland. Then she’d raced down to the pond with the others chasing after her.
But now she was forced to accept that nothing would come of them thrashing about in the pond. If Annelise had fallen in and been trapped under the water by weeds, she was long since dead. As gruesome as it sounded, and it would be a grisly discovery indeed, they would have to wait for her body to float to the surface.
‘I think we have to hold onto the hope that she didn’t come anywhere near the water,’ Romily said, clutching at the only straw she could. ‘It’s possible Florence and Mrs Partridge may find her playing happily somewhere on her own.’
She started to move towards the edge of the pond, willing the others to follow. Allegra did, but Hope remained where she was.
‘We can’t give up,’ she said, her voice tight with shock. ‘We have to keep looking.’ She started to wade out towards the middle of the pond.
‘Come back,’ Romily said. ‘The water’s deep there.’
‘I have to keep looking for her. I can’t let Sabine and Otto down. I have to find …’ Romily didn’t catch the rest of what Hope was saying, as she suddenly ducked beneath the surface of the water and disappeared from sight.
It was then that Dr Garland appeared, calling across the lawn to them. ‘I came as fast as I could,’ he said, breathing heavily, ‘but I was over at Lower End Farm. Have you found her?’
Allegra began sobbing hysterically again, dropping to her knees dramatically, invoking God to have mercy in a stream of English and Italian. And though a part of Romily wanted to scream and shout at the stupid girl for allowing this to happen, she simply shook her head in response to the doctor’s question.
