Once, last week, when Matt had found out they were at the same school, he had said, 'Why don't you take Kitty out one night, boy? You could go into town, show her the sights.' Just like that. Like it was nothing. Anthony had sort of shrugged as if he might, but she wasn't sure if he'd done it because he wanted to, or if he was trying to keep his dad happy. 'I bet you're finding life out here a bit slow after London,' Matt said, when she brought them a mug of tea - as if she'd always been out clubbing and stuff like that. She could have sworn Anthony had raised his eyebrows, which had made her blush again.
Byron, who had only come for the first two days and then gone back to working outside, hardly said anything. He had seemed awkward in the house, as if he were built for outdoors. He was taller than Matt, and quite handsome, but he never met anyone's eye. 'Byron's our great conversationalist, aren't you, mate?' Matt would joke, but Byron smiled as if he didn't find it funny.
Mum was a bit stressed most of the time. She didn't like the builders' radio always being on. She didn't get pop music and Dad had always said that having it burbling on in the background was just another form of pollution, but she didn't seem able to ask them to turn it off. She had been forced to move out of the master bedroom, as it needed too much structural work, and into the box room, so she went on to the battlements to practise - the only place, she said, that she could find silence. When Kitty went outside and heard the violin up top and Matt McCarthy's radio down below it sounded like a competition.
Thierry seemed not to notice. He spent most of the time he wasn't at school in the woods, and Mum said to let him be. Kitty had collared him to ask him what he did out there, but he had just shrugged. For the first time Kitty could see why Mum and Dad had found shrugging irritating.
On the floor above Kitty, Matt McCarthy unrolled the architectural plans Sven had drawn up eighteen months previously, and held them to the light from the landing window, trying to decide which parts of their carefully thought-out renovations he could legitimately use. Some things, such as the extension at the rear, were not possible yet, but others, such as the resited bathroom, the master bedroom and the new windows in the upper floors, could be considered part of any straightforward repair work. There was little point in trying to do anything in the kitchen until he knew whether planning consent would be forthcoming for the extension, but there was plenty of basic structural work to be taken care of before then. In fact, thought Matt, it was fair to say there were months of remedial works to do. At significant expense.
He breathed in the familiar scents of the old house, grateful suddenly for this turn of events. It was a pleasure to be working here. Within the walls of the old place, he felt he had been given back control of his life and of something that had been snatched away from him.
He rolled up the plans, and placed them carefully in the cardboard tube, put on the lid and slipped it back into his holdall as Byron emerged at the top of the stairwell. For a man of his size he moved quietly - too quietly for Matt's liking.
'Right,' said Byron. 'Where do we start today?'
'Good question. And there are a million possible answers.'
'How's the house coming along?' Asad was polishing apples, his long, dark fingers working the soft cloth. Kitty sat on the crate by the freezer and sipped her tea. 'I see Mr McCarthy's there most days.'
'And his son. And Byron, but he doesn't come every day.'
'Are things improving? Are you more comfortable?'
'I wouldn't say that exactly.' Kitty inhaled - Henry had been making olive bread and it smelled delicious. She was half hoping they might offer her some. 'They've ripped lots of stuff out, though.'
'I've heard there's not much worth saving.' Henry appeared and put two loaves carefully in the bread basket. 'Does it have any original features?'
Kitty grimaced. 'I don't know. I think spiders are the main one. I found one in my sock drawer last night. It was so big I thought it was looking for some to wear.'
Asad tilted his head to one side. 'And how is your mother?' He said it as if there might be something wrong with her.
'She's okay. She's worried about how much it's all costing. She says it's a lot more expensive than she thought it would be.'
'I don't suppose Matt McCarthy comes cheap,' said Henry, and sniffed.
'Oh, Mum says he seems to be doing half of it out of the goodness of his heart.'
Henry and Asad exchanged a glance. 'Matt McCarthy?'
'She says we're lucky to have such good neighbours and if this had happened in London we'd be in terrible trouble. He's doing everything he can to keep costs down.' She stood a little closer to the bread. It was ages since breakfast.
'Would you like one? You can pay when you next come in if you like.' Asad gestured to the loaf.
'Really? I'll bring the money tomorrow. I can't face walking all the way back to get my purse now. And Mum's stopped me using the car.'
Asad shook his head, as if it were of no consequence. 'Tell me, Kitty, has Matt . . . mentioned anything about the history of the house?'
Kitty was too busy sticking her thumb into the bread to notice the way Henry looked at his friend. 'No,' she said absently. Why were people so obsessed with history around here?
'Of course not,' said Asad. 'Let me get you a bag for that.'
Byron had been coppicing the wood for almost half an hour when he discovered what Elsie had been looking at. She had been unsettled since Meg, his collie bitch, had whelped the previous week and he had put down her constant whining to that, but as he brought the axe down on the ash sapling, then hauled the fallen trunk into a pile with the others, he caught a flash of blue and saw what the dog had been watching.
The boy had been following him for several days. When Byron tended the pheasant chicks, fixed the electric fencing, or now when he was thinning out the wood that stood between Matt's place and the Spanish House, he had discovered he had a small, pale shadow. The boy would watch for fifteen, twenty minutes at a time, half obscured by trees or bushes, then disappear when Byron gave even a hint that he might move towards him.
He had realised pretty quickly who he must be. Now he turned back to the stump and drilled a few holes into it with his cordless electric screwdriver, preparing to poison the roots. These ash saplings were buggers for coming back. 'You fancy giving me a hand?' he said quietly, without turning.
There was silence.
Byron drilled six more holes. He could feel the boy's eyes on him. ''S all right. I don't feel like talking much of the time, either.'
He still didn't turn, but after a moment he heard light footsteps behind him. 'Don't pet the dog. She'll come to you when she's ready. And if you want to help, grab some of those smaller branches. Careful, now,' he said, as the boy bent and gathered an armful.
Byron dragged three of the young trees out into the field. He had planned to collect them later and cut up the larger ones to season for firewood. But there was no point in chopping logs if he didn't know where he would be living.
He thought of the pile of floorboards they had removed from the Spanish House and stacked by the big barn. Most were dry, as far as he could see, but he had learned better than to question Matt.
'Just leave it there,' he said, pointing to the pile. The boy heaved a sapling through the grass at the edge of the field and, with a grunt, dropped it.
'What to help some more?' The boy's eyes, beneath dark lashes, were solemn. He nodded.
'What's your name?' The boy looked at his feet. Elsie sniffed at his trainers, and he glanced up at Byron, as if he was checking that it was okay, then bent down to rub her head. Elsie rolled on to her back, shamelessly exposing a pink stomach. 'Thierry,' he said, so quietly that Byron barely heard him.
'You like dogs, Thierry?' He kept his voice low, casual.
The boy nodded shyly. Elsie grinned at him upside-down, her tongue lolling out of her mouth.
Byron had seen him in the house a couple of times, a shadow even in his home, stuck in front of a compute
r game. He wasn't sure why he had spoken. He was a man who preferred his own company.
'You help me with a few more of these and when I'm done we'll ask your mum if you can come to see our new pups. Would you like that?'
The child's smile caught him unexpectedly, and he returned to the fallen trees, already unsure what he had agreed to. Unsure whether he wanted to be responsible for so much of someone's happiness.
*
'Bright as the new, new day.' Those had been Thierry's last fluent words. His voice had rung out, confident and piercing, closing in a smile with the last line of his poem. He had won a prize for it, read it out to the parents in his class performance, and Isabel, freed for once from the demands of the orchestra, had sat and clapped madly in her moulded plastic chair, wondering now and then why the one beside her had remained empty. Laurent had sworn he would make it in time. She had not been irritated by his absence, like the other women whose husbands had not appeared, but had instead felt vaguely superior that for once she had been the parent to get there.
'He was very good, wasn't he?' muttered Mary, on her other side. A mother in front of her turned and grinned.
'Perfect,' said Isabel, beaming. 'Absolutely perfect.'
She had caught Thierry's eye as he walked off-stage, and he had given her a little wave, trying not to let the pride on his face shine through. She had wondered whether to get up and meet him behind the curtain to tell him how proud she was, but respectful of the other performers - and well versed in what an intrusion it could be when people randomly negotiated their way out of an audience - she had stayed in her seat. She had regretted that decision. She had wished so often that she had reached him before the police arrived backstage, so that she had heard him, just once more, repeat the poem he had rehearsed a thousand times. His beautiful, carefree eight-year-old voice, full of schoolboy gripes and Star Wars and demands for sweets and counting the days till his best friend came for a sleepover. Telling her he loved her, surreptitiously, so that his friends couldn't hear. 'Bright as the new, new day.' That voice. Instead of those few, crushing words from the sombre policeman. Yes, she had said, clutching Thierry's shoulder, her physical self somehow already grasping what her mind could not. Yes, she was Mrs Isabel Delancey. What did he mean, an accident?
'Sorry - I didn't catch that.' Isabel stood in the middle of the kitchen with the man who had brought Thierry home, his hands green, his jumper studded with tree bark. She repeated what he'd said. 'You want my son to go to your house to see some puppies?'
'My bitch had a litter last week. Thierry thought he'd like to see them.' He pronounced it 'Terry'.
'Your puppies.'
Byron's face darkened as he heard the underlying question in what she'd said. 'My sister and her daughter will be there,' he said stiffly.
Isabel blushed. 'I didn't mean--'
'The boy's been helping me. I thought he'd like to meet my niece and the pups.' His voice hardened.
'Hello, Byron. You finished?' Matt appeared behind her, making her jump. He was one of those men who radiated something far beyond the confines of their physical selves.
Byron's jaw had clenched. 'I've taken out about forty saplings, ash mainly. I'd like you to have a look before I take any more.' He gestured to his dog, which left the kitchen. 'I was just telling Mrs Delancey that her son was welcome to see our new litter. But perhaps it's best left.'
She could see he was furious. They had barely spoken during the two days he had worked at the house. He had nodded a greeting and she, remembering their exchange over the gun, had felt too awkward to raise the matter again.
Thierry looked pleadingly at his mother.
'Well, it's fine by me,' she said uncertainly. She stepped aside to allow Matt into the kitchen.
'Your boy will be all right with Byron. Going to see someone's puppies means something different in the city.' He let out a bark of laughter. 'You'll have to be careful how you word that in future, Byron.'
'I didn't think for a minute--' Isabel's hand was at her throat. 'Byron, I didn't mean to imply--'
'Don't worry about it,' said Byron, head down as he left. 'Best leave the pups for now. I've got to get on. I'll see you tomorrow, Matt.'
Thierry tugged at his mother's sleeve, but Byron was gone. He stared at the space where the man had been, then shot his mother a look of furious disappointment and ran out of the kitchen. She heard his footsteps all the way to the door, which slammed emphatically.
'Don't listen too much to what's said about Byron,' said Matt, his eyes twinkling. 'He's a good man.'
Isabel had barely time to consider this as she rushed past him, took the steps two at a time, and tore out of the front door in time to see Byron stalking towards the far hedge. 'Byron!' she yelled. And when he didn't turn, she shouted again: 'Please! Please wait!'
She was out of breath by the time she caught him. 'I'm sorry,' she said, her heels sinking into the wet clay. 'Really. I'm so sorry if I offended you.'
His expression, she saw, was of resignation rather than anger. 'Please let Thierry come.' She dropped her hands to her sides. 'He's had a difficult time . . . He doesn't speak very much. At all, really. But I know he'd love to see your dogs.'
Byron's terrier had run to the edge of the garden and was waiting expectantly for him.
'I'll get him,' she said, taking his silence as acquiescence. 'I'm sure I can find him if you'll wait five minutes. There are just a few places he tends to go.'
'No need.' Byron nodded towards the far hedge, where a blue sweater could be seen through the yew. 'He was following me home anyway.'
Laura McCarthy painted the sixth tester colour on to a strip of her bedroom wall and stood back. It didn't matter what combination of lights she used, it didn't look right. None of the colours had worked. None of the fabric swatches she had brought home for new curtains, none of her classic combinations. She had decided to freshen up her and Matt's bedroom to take her mind off the loss of the Spanish House. But somehow the joy had gone out of the task. The walls were just their old walls, and the curtains would not adorn the huge bay windows of the master bedroom at the Spanish House, with its view of the water.
She had wanted that house. She hadn't said so to Matt, not wanting to aggravate his own sense of grievance, but she felt as if it had been stolen from her, as if a squatter had moved into her family home. She was not prone to melodrama, but it was almost like the loss of a child. And trying to pretend it didn't matter in front of the other women had required superhuman effort. She had made plans for every inch of it, could see so clearly the best way forward for each room. It would have been beautiful. But it was not so much the house that she mourned. It was the prospect of what it might have been, what they might have become as a family within it.
Laura sighed and put the lid back on the little tin, her eyes on the patchwork-painted wall as she listened to the distant sounds of hammering that signified Matt's working day. He had been upbeat for several weeks but a little detached, as if his mind was permanently on other things. That morning he had handed her a cheque from the Delancey woman. 'Better pay it in soon before they start bouncing,' he said, cheerfully. She hoped that it was the prospect of this, and not some other preoccupation, that had brought about his cheeriness.
The woman was so odd, so vulnerable. She plainly didn't have a clue about living in the country or renovating a house. She wasn't even very good at talking to people. She had stood in Laura's front room in those odd clothes like a fish out of water, and while Laura found herself relaxing as she saw the depth of the other woman's mistake, she could not help imagining what it must be like to be her, with two children to bring up alone in that house. She had seemed lost, but oddly fierce too, as if she might have turned on them for the slightest reason. The Cousins said she was a breath of fresh air, but they were nice about everyone, even if she suspected they didn't always mean it. Whenever she went into the shop Asad's hooded brown eyes would settle on her in a way that suggested he knew about Matt,
which made her uncomfortable. He would smile in a way that managed to be both kindly and pitying. Perhaps he saw her as she had found herself regarding Isabel Delancey at the coffee morning. Matt had urged her to visit, but had stopped now. Perhaps he had picked up on how reluctant she felt. Laura had found it easier to keep her distance. She was not deceitful by nature. If Mrs Delancey had asked her her true opinion of the house, what on earth would she have said?
From the Spanish House she heard a creak and a muffled crash and wondered what Matt was doing. He says it will be ours in the end, she thought. That's all I have to keep in mind. That woman is not suited to living there. And all is fair in love, war and property.
Laura McCarthy straightened a curtain. She had a heap of ironing to finish and Ruby, the cleaner, could never do creases in Matt's shirts the way he liked them.
Ten
As spring morphed into early summer, Isabel's day had settled into something like a routine - not one she had ever expected, but little of her life now resembled anything she might have foreseen. Each morning she would send the children up the track to the school bus. Then, after a restorative cup of coffee, she would make the beds, scrabble under them for stray socks, haul a basket down to the new washing-machine in the kitchen and then, if the weather was good enough, peg the laundry on the line. She would clear the breakfast things, answer the mail, try to work out what to cook the children for supper, then sweep or vacuum the endless trail of footprints that led in and out of the house.