'You do it,' she said, trying to hand him the gun.
He pushed it back to her. 'No.'
'What if I miss?' She was afraid to cause hideous pain.
She felt his presence behind her as she raised the gun again and took aim. He smelled mossy and sweet, like summer earth. He did not touch her. 'You won't miss,' he said quietly.
Isabel closed her eyes, opened them again, and fired.
It had been some time since she had been to London, even more since she had been in a restaurant like this. At home Laura's linen trousers and low court shoes would have been considered smart, but here they declared her provincial status. I look like someone dressed up to go to town, she thought.
'You have a booking?' a bored-looking girl said, from under her precision-cut fringe.
'I'm meeting someone,' Laura replied.
The restaurant was full of dark-suited men, monochrome against the grey granite walls.
'Name?' the girl prompted.
Laura hesitated, as if saying it aloud might be construed as evidence. 'Trent. Nicholas Trent.'
He had been so touchingly pleased to hear from her. So happy to hear about her unscheduled trip to London, so keen to organise his day to fit in lunch.
'Don't you work?' she had said, trying to remember what he had said he did.
'I've just given notice,' he said cheerfully, 'which means I can take as long a lunch break as I choose. What will they do? Sack me?'
The girl set off briskly towards the tables under the atrium, apparently expecting Laura to follow. Everyone in London seemed so young, she thought, so fashionable and groomed. Although she had taken trouble to look smart and do her hair properly, she felt middle-aged and out of place. These days she had no idea how she appeared to anyone. Not old, but no longer young. Loved, unloved. Desired . . . not desired. Laura took a deep breath, then let it stall in her chest as she saw him rising from a table with a smile breaking across his face.
He was handsome in these surroundings, as if they reflected something of himself. More than that, he seemed brighter, less beaten down. Perhaps younger too. Or perhaps that had always been something she only imagined she had seen in him; compared to the unstoppable force that was her husband, all men had seemed less vital.
'You came,' he said, taking her hand.
'Yes,' she said. And that word, she knew, was tantamount to admitting she would sleep with him. That she had crossed a line. The touching thing was that he didn't seem to see it like that. He took nothing about her for granted.
'I wasn't sure you would. I thought perhaps last time . . .' His voice trailed away.
'He doesn't love me any more,' she said, as she sat down. It was a phrase she had rehearsed so often in her head that she could say it now as if it meant nothing. 'I heard him on the telephone. I know who it is. So,' she made her voice bright, 'there's little to stop me doing whatever I want.'
As tears came into her eyes, she picked up the menu. She heard Nicholas ordering her a drink, asking the waiter if he could give them a couple more minutes. By the time her gin and tonic had arrived, she had recovered her composure.
'I'll tell you the bare bones of it, and we won't speak about it again,' she said calmly. 'I'd like us to have a lovely lunch and not think about it.' Her voice was unrecognisable to her, tight and brittle. His hand rested on the table, as if he wanted to take hers but was afraid it might be an imposition.
'It's the woman who owns the big house,' she said. 'The house across the lake, the house you thought beautiful.' She thought she saw him flinch and was moved by his unconscious display of solidarity.
'My husband is doing the renovations there so I suppose they--'
'Your husband?' It was odd, the way he said it, but she forged on. If she stopped now she might never get the words out.
'All this time he's told me he was working on the house for us. We wanted it, you see. We'd been virtually promised it by the old man who lived there. We had looked after him for a long time. When the widow moved in, Matt offered to do the renovations for her. He said - in private - that she would never be happy there, that she couldn't afford the work that needed doing, that she would be gone by Christmas. He let me believe he was doing it all for us.' She stopped for a sip of her drink.
'Well, I overheard a conversation. And guess what? He's planning to move in with her. So that woman gets not just my house but my husband too.' She laughed, a sharp, unhappy sound. 'He's been using the plans we drew up together. All the little touches I'd thought out. He even wanted me to be friends with her. Can you believe that?'
She had thought Nicholas would take her hand again then, that he would offer words of comfort, tell her again what a fool her husband was. But he was apparently lost in thought.
Oh, God, I've bored him, she panicked. He thought he was getting lunch with a vivacious woman, and I've given him a bitter, betrayed wife.
'I'm sorry--' she began.
'No, Laura. I'm sorry. There's something I must tell you. Something you need to know . . . Please. Don't look so afraid. I just . . . Oh, for goodness' sake.' He waved away the waiter, who had been hovering beside them.
'No,' said Laura, keen to delay this moment. She called the waiter back. 'Let's order, shall we? I'll have the bream.'
'The same,' said Nicholas.
'And some water,' said Laura. 'Still, please. No ice.' Now she was fearful of what Nicholas would say. He was married, after all. He had changed his mind about her. He had never been interested in her, not in that way. He was dying of a terminal illness.
She turned back to him. His eyes had seemingly not left her face. 'You were saying?' she said politely.
'I don't want there to be any secrets between us, any misunderstandings. It's important to me that we're open with each other.'
Laura took another sip of her drink.
'That day we first met in the lane, I wasn't lost.'
She frowned.
'I wanted to have another look at the Spanish House. I'd come across it by chance a couple of weeks before, had been told its history, and I thought it would make the most superb development.'
'Development?'
'That's what I do. What I used to do. I'm a property developer. I take - well, settings, really, and try to create something wonderful.' He leaned back. 'And, if I'm honest, something that will make a lot of money. I thought that house had potential.'
'But it's not for sale.'
'I know. But I'd heard about the state it was in, and that the owner had little capital, and I thought I might make her an offer.'
Laura folded and unfolded her napkin. It was a beautiful, heavy thing, starched white. About to be soiled. 'So why haven't you?'
'Timing, I suppose. I wanted to make sure it was right. And I wanted to find out as much about the house as I could. I thought perhaps if I waited until she was in dire straits, she'd accept the lowest price. It sounds ugly, but that's how development works.'
'How handy for you to have met me, then,' said Laura, tightly. 'Someone who knew so much about it.'
'No,' he said emphatically. 'You distracted me from it. Think back - we never talked about that house, Laura. You never said anything about it. I didn't know you had a connection with it. I just thought you were this - this vision in the forest.'
She had become so distrustful, she realised, that she found it hard to believe anyone could have a straightforward interest in her.
Now his hand reached out for hers and she took it. It wasn't such a great leap. His fingers closed round hers, soft, elegant hands with perfect nails. So unlike her husband's.
'All my adult life I'd wanted that house,' she said. 'We've never been a real family, and I thought living there would somehow make it better.'
'I'll make us a fortune. We can build an even better house.'
Her head jerked up.
'I'm sorry,' he said. 'That was probably a little premature. It's just that I haven't felt like this since I met my wife, my ex-wife, and that was a long
time ago. I wanted you to know the truth.'
An ex-wife. She tried to digest this. Why should it be a surprise that he had been married? 'I don't know very much about you, do I?' she said.
'Anything,' he said, leaning back in his chair. 'Ask me anything. I'm a middle-aged man who has spent years in the doldrums, believing himself an utter failure, who suddenly has a sense of great things happening. My career's back on track, I'm feeling better than I have done for some time, I have money in the bank, and I have met this beautiful, unappreciated woman who doesn't know how utterly wonderful she is.'
It took Laura a beat to grasp that he was referring to her.
'You're amazing, Laura,' he said, lifting her hand to his lips, 'you're smart and kind and you deserve so much more. Of everything.'
Their hands separated as the food was set before them with a dramatic flourish. Laura stared at the fish, roasted, on a bed of vivid green spinach in some endlessly reduced sauce. She realised that the distant sensation of absence she felt was not caused by hunger. She was missing the gentle pressure of Nicholas's hand. She looked at him as he thanked the waiter, taking in his aquiline features, the self-knowledge in his face. And as the man moved away, she stretched out her hand to his.
'What time did you say you had to be back at work?' she asked, as his fingers closed over hers. This time her voice was confident, familiar.
'I didn't. I'm here for as long as you want.'
She looked down at her fish, then back at Nicholas. She let her eyes linger on his. 'I'm not hungry,' she said.
She had been so excited when she hit it. 'Did you see that?' she said. 'Oh, my God! Did you see it?' She had clutched at his arm, then ripped the scarf off her face and scrambled to her feet.
Byron had stood up. 'Clean as a whistle,' he said, walking over to the rabbit. 'Couldn't have done it better myself. There's your dinner.' He held it up, still warm. 'We should go and pull up some garlic now.' He checked that it was dead, then brought it to her, holding it by the back legs. She reached out to take it from him, then snatched back her hand when she felt the warmth of its fur. Her face fell. 'It's so beautiful,' she said.
'I don't see them like that,' he said.
'But its poor eyes . . .' She tried to close the lids. 'Oh, my goodness, I really killed it.'
Byron frowned.
'I know . . . It's a strange feeling, knowing that it was alive and now it's dead because of me. I've never killed anything before.'
It was indeed a shocking thing to hurt a living creature. To alter the course of a life. Byron sought an explanation that would make her feel better. 'Think of a battery hen,' he said, 'and then think of this rabbit, its whole life spent doing what it was meant to do, experiencing everything it was meant to. Which would you rather be?'
'I know it sounds silly. I just hate the idea of inflicting pain.'
'The end was so fast,' he said, 'that it wouldn't have known a thing.' He saw her flinch. 'You okay?' he asked, when she didn't move. 'Isabel?'
'That was what they said about my husband,' she said, her eyes fixed on the dead rabbit. 'Driving up the motorway, looking forward to seeing his son perform at school. Singing, probably.' She smiled. 'He had a terrible voice.'
Around them, the birds had started to sing again. Distantly, Byron was aware of a blackbird, and the insistent rhythmic pronouncements of a wood-pigeon. And Isabel's words, low and soft: 'A lorry crossed the central reservation and hit him head on. That's what they said when they came to tell me. He wouldn't have known a thing.'
Byron heard the bleakness in her voice. He wanted to speak, but sometimes he felt he had held things in for so long that he didn't have the words any longer.
She was trying to smile again. 'He had been listening to Faure's Requiem. The ambulance man said nobody could turn off his stereo while they cut him out. It must have been the last thing he heard as he died . . . I don't know why that made me feel better, but it did.'
She gave a deep sigh. 'It was us who felt everything. He knew nothing.'
'I'm sorry,' he said.
She looked at him then, and he couldn't tell if she thought him stupid. Her eyes were almost questioning, as if she was searching for something. She was so strange, one minute laughing, striding, vital, the next like nothing he had seen before. One minute a grieving widow, the next a woman who would let Matt arrive at her house in the dead of night . . .
She seemed to haul herself back into the present. She kicked something off her shoe. 'You know what? I don't think I'm much of a predator. I'm very grateful, Byron, but I might have to stick to executing potatoes.' She handed back the gun, ceremoniously, with both hands. He noticed that her palms were freckled with paint, and studded, at the point where they met each finger, with callouses. He wanted to draw his thumb across them.
'We'd better get back. You've got work.' She touched his sleeve, then moved past him, treading back confidently towards their path. 'Come on. You can have breakfast with us before Matt arrives.'
Keep your head down, Jan had warned him, when he had confessed his suspicions to her. You need every penny and employers don't grow on trees. Not when you have a prison record, was the silent addendum. Byron watched Isabel striding ahead of him, humming quietly to herself as she moved carefully through the trees. That was what prison did to you: it reduced your choices, took away your ability long afterwards to behave like a normal human being. He would spend a lifetime suppressing his feelings, having to ignore the behaviour of people like Matt McCarthy, just so that he did not confirm what they suspected to be true.
'You half asleep, Byron?' He had been dozy all morning, his expression closed as if his thoughts were far away. 'I asked you to pass me that pipe. No, not that one, the plastic. And shift that bath to the side of the room. Where's Anthony gone?' For some reason his son wouldn't talk to him. He walked out of any room Matt entered.
Matt shouted his name, remembering Isabel's visit to the jeweller in Long Barton the previous day. He hadn't meant to follow her. When he came out of the bank he had noticed her parking and, curious, changed his route to see where she was going. It was easy to keep track of her: she stood out in the little town, her clothes too vivid, her hair a wild tumble. He watched her walk swiftly across the road, clutching a roll of velvet, and waited, trying to work out what she was doing. He had gone in afterwards. The man had the velvet roll and was inspecting something through an eyeglass. 'That for sale, is it?' he said, trying to sound casual. He could see a pearl necklace and a flash of something red.
'Will be,' said the jeweller. Matt had taken the man's card and gone to sit in his van. She had not sold her jewellery because of his invoice. It was not his fault. It would be to give herself a fresh start, free herself from her husband's memory, he told himself several times, but he had still felt jittery and bad-tempered.
Matt had made sure that Byron spent much of the morning moving waste from the old drawing room to the skip. The sight of the other man disturbed him at the moment, although he couldn't say why. It was easier to have him working elsewhere. Matt and Anthony had begun in the bathroom. She had harped on about it so much that he had to make it look as if they were doing something. It had taken four of them an hour to get the cast-iron bath upstairs, which Matt had quietly resented. In a few months' time, when he finally owned the house, they would have to move it again. 'When you put the boards back down make sure you hit the nails into the joists, not the pipes, or it'll come out of your wages,' he had warned Anthony, who was wearing his ridiculous woollen hat.
Anthony was straightening up when Matt called him to help move the bath again. 'Over there,' he said, grunting with the effort. 'Where the two feeds are showing through.'
His son began to haul at the cast-iron weight, then stopped. 'Hang on, Dad. You can't put it there.'
'What?'
'The joists. You've fed the pipes underneath. They'll only be a few centimetres thick where the bath sits on them.'
'Well, the bathroom's not going to stay here
,' he muttered.
Anthony frowned, puzzled, and Matt realised he had said aloud what was running through his head. 'I don't understand,' his son said.
'You don't have to,' Matt said. 'I don't pay you to understand. Just get on with moving it.'
Anthony pulled at it again, and stopped. 'I'm not being funny, Dad, but if Mrs Delancey really wants the bath here, surely we should be feeding the pipework round the sides?'
'And you've just done a City and Guilds in plumbing, have you?'
'No, but it doesn't take a plumber to see that--'
'Did I ask your opinion? Did you get a promotion I'm not aware of? The last I heard, Anthony, I employed you and Byron for the heavy lifting. Clearing. Brainless stuff.'
Anthony took a long, deep breath. 'I don't think Mrs Delancey would be very happy if she knew you were cutting corners.'
'Oh, you don't, don't you?'
'No.'
Something scalding washed through Matt's veins. Laura had poisoned Anthony against him. All this answering back--
'I don't want to do this any more.'
'You'll do as I bloody tell you.' He stalked into the middle of the room, blocking the exit, and saw uncertainty in the boy's eyes. At least the boy knew who was boss.
'Matt?'
Byron. He was always there when he wasn't wanted. 'What do you want?'
'I belive this is yours.'
Matt had taken the pet-carrier before he knew what he was doing. The words, and their implication, settled heavily in the silence.
'It was in the far skip,' Byron said. 'Second I've found here. Mrs Delancey won't want any more unexpected visitors.'
Matt glanced at his son, and saw that Anthony hadn't yet grasped the significance of what Byron had said. The boy was edging towards the door, apparently planning his escape.
'I'm going home.' Anthony took off his tool-belt and dropped it on the floor.
Matt ignored him. 'Mrs Delancey, Mrs Delancey. Everyone here seems to be a mind-reader when it comes to her. Well, I don't think Mrs Delancey would like it if she knew your history, do you? Plenty of people round here wouldn't give you the chances I have - wouldn't even employ you.'
He met the other man's steady gaze. 'Your problem, Byron, is that you don't know when you're well off.'
'Matt, I don't want to argue with you but I can't just stand here and--'