However, she wasn’t ready to give him the benefit of the doubt.
As Ellie stood next to the sofa, wondering what to do and whether Fee had got through to the police yet, another rock came crashing through the beach house’s other front window. Ellie ducked behind the sofa.
‘Come out, bitch!’ Darren slurred.At least if he’s drunk, he might pass out, Ellie thought, aware that it was reasonably unlikely. But at this point, she’d take any unlikely circumstance that would mean Darren would stop battering the beach house, and scaring her to death.
She looked around in desperation for anything that could help her, hearing Darren muttering to himself and pacing around to the side of the house. In the kitchen she grabbed a carving knife from the rack on the counter, then ran back to the sofa with it. She hoped she didn’t have to use it, but she wasn’t about to face Darren empty-handed.
The back door rattled and the handle twisted. Ellie yelped and ran to the bottom of the stairs.
‘Fee! Have you spoken to the police yet?’ she shouted.
Jamey appeared at the top of the stairs, tear-streaked mascara running down her face.
‘She’s talking to them now. They’re sending someone,’ she hissed. ‘Is he down there still?’
‘Yeah.’ Ellie darted a glance at the back door. ‘Stay up there, okay?’
Jamey bit her lip, her arms crossed across her chest. ‘Okay.’
There was a thud as Darren hurled himself at the back door, and then a noise that Ellie couldn’t identify.Thud. Crack. Crack. She realised after a moment that he was hurling the terracotta pots filled with geraniums, roses and delphiniums onto the wooden deck of the porch.
Mara’s going to be so angry when she sees what this lout’s done to her house, Ellie thought. She was scared, but she was also furious that Darren had frightened her, and furious that he was ruining Mara’s beautiful beach house. Ellie looked down at the carving knife in her hand and knew it wouldn’t be enough to scare him off: he was drunk and violent. He’d be just as likely to run at her as run away if she waved it at him.
But she had to do something. She couldn’t just listen to him destroy everything, ranting and raving around the outside of the house like a bear on a rampage.
Just for a moment, Ellie wished she had a gun. Not that anyone in England really had guns, apart from the police, or farmers sometimes had them. Criminals had them, of course. But, in that moment, she imagined going out onto the beach house porch with a rifle or a shotgun, firing a warning shot over his head and inflicting a tiny proportion of the fear that Darren was currently inflicting on her, Jamey and Fee, on him.
However, short of running upstairs and dropping an anvil that she didn’t possess on Darren from one of the bedroom windows, Ellie didn’t have anything that she could use to get rid of him.
It had gone quiet outside. Ellie heard a sound that might have been Darren jumping off the porch, and peered cautiously out of the window. At the end of the beach, the blue lights of the local police car lit up the cove in a spectral glow. She watched as Darren ran off, down the beach and towards the rocky headland opposite. She knew that there was nowhere to go, that way. With the tide in, as it currently was, you couldn’t get anywhere other than up a sheer rock promontory that shielded a few houses on the other side. Ellie doubted that Darren, drunk, would have much chance at it in the dark, and with the rock slick with sea water.
She called Jamey and Fee down, and they watched the two police officers run after him. Yet, oddly, despite them seeming to search the beach for a long time, he seemed to have escaped their grasp.
‘It’s all right. He’s gone.’ Ellie held Jamey’s hand, which was shaking.
‘He’s not going to leave me alone. Even with a restraining order.’ Jamey shuddered. ‘I don’t know what I’m gonna do. I’m so scared.’
Fee went to the cleaning cupboard and came back with a broom and swept up the glass.
‘Well, we’re going to need to let Mara know about the damage,’ she said. ‘I guess she’s got insurance. Just the windows, is it?’
‘I think so.’ Ellie got out her phone. ‘I’d better text her. I don’t want to wake her up.’
‘Okay. I think we need a drink in the meantime. And I don’t mean hot chocolate this time.’ Fee blew out her cheeks. ‘That was scary.’
‘I think there’s some brandy in the cupboard.’ Ellie pointed, walking into the kitchen. ‘I’d feel happier if they’d caught him, though.’
‘I’m gonna call Mark.’ Jamey tapped her phone, wiping her eyes. ‘Thank God the kids were at my mum’s. Thank God.’
There was a knock at the door. ‘Police,’ said a thick Cornish accent. ‘You all right in there?’
‘I’ll get it.’ Fee handed Jamey a tumbler half-full with brandy and knocked one back herself. ‘I think it’s going to be a long night.’
