STARSHINE, THE OCEAN AND THE UNICORN
Chapter Four                                                                                                                     Part Two




                   Downstairs Joe put more logs on the dying fire and they turned black and glowed red from their insides before Clare awoke.  She did not stir or yawn, she simply opened her eyes and was awake.  She looked at Joe and saw a change in him.  He sat on one of the faded pink chairs and stared deep into the fire.  He knew that Clare was awake without having to turn to look back at her gaze.
" What's the picture on the jigsaw puzzle ? " he asked.
" I've no idea.  What difference does it make ? " and Clare knew that it was the round room that had started the change in him.
" I don't know. " he answered.
                      Nothing more was said for a while and as Joe kept his eyes and his thoughts on the dancing flames in the hearth he could feel Clare's impatience grow.
" I want to be left alone to die. " she said.
                   Joe heard her words but made no sign of having heard them.
" Why are you leaving everything to me ? "
" Why not ! "
" Don't you have children ? "
" No."
                Clare got up from the chair.  Her joints were stiff and her face tightened with the pain a she walked across the room.  She opened the ornately carved doors of the drinks cabinet and reached inside for a bottle, a glass and something else.  She moved over to Joe and put the bottle of brandy, the glass and a corked phial half filled with a cloudy moss green liquid on a table beside him.  Joe looked at it. 
" Go and get me my glass ! " she said.  He fetched it from a table beside the window where she had been sitting.  Clare poured brandy into both glasses.  Joe sat down again and picked up the phial.  He held it in front of the fire, but no light could be seen through the dark, murky green.  He looked at Clare.
" It's a poison. " she said.  Joe put the phial carefully back on the table, looked at her again and she answered all his questions.
"It's for me.  George prepared it.  He knew he was going to die, he thought hat my following him might be easier this way.  It's a death potion, leaf of henbane and root of hemlock.  A gentle stupor, a numbness and then a sweet and painless death.  So I have a choice to sleep or to starve.  And you have a choice too ! "
                 Joe knew that he could put the poison into her brandy now and she would sleep and die peacefully without any pain and he would inherit the house and three million pounds.
" But I don't want you to die. " he said
"But I will die and I want to be alone to die."
" I don't want you to go."
" It was only ever Joe and I. "
" I don't want to go."
                         Joe was speaking quickly from somewhere inside that did not let him think first, somewhere that spoke the truth, a place Joe did not understand, but Clare could see his heart and wondered whether he was part of everything and was meant to stay.
" Why didn't you take the poison when George died ? " he asked.
" I wanted this time to remember him, to remember my life. "
" So tell me, " said Joe and again his words were fast like a plea.  There was a need in him to know and Clare could no longer turn him away.
                So Clare and Joe sat with the night, the fire and the brandy and her story began.