Night Music (40 page)

‘Probably not.’

‘Can you tell me where you will be? At the Spanish House, perhaps?’ She was unable to keep the anguished note from her voice.

He brushed past her and was gone, back down the hallway, as if she were of no more importance than the milkman. Laura listened to him whistling and closed her eyes. When she opened them, she saw that the soft white towel, which he had jammed back on to the rail, was streaked with blood.

‘Napkins. You need napkins. Unless you have those lovely damask ones.’

‘Do we really if we’re going to be sitting outside?’

Henry indicated left and pulled the car into the nearside lane. Kitty sat in the back and scribbled another entry on her lengthening list. She had never held a party before. She hadn’t known quite how much organisation it would take.

‘We used to have some proper ones,’ she said, ‘but they disappeared in the move.’

‘And my roller skates,’ said Thierry, beside her. ‘We never found them either.’

‘You’ll find the napkins in two years’ time. Probably just after you’ve bought new ones. They’ll be in a cardboard box somewhere,’ Henry said.

‘I don’t want to wait two years for my skates.’ Thierry lifted his foot so that it rested against the back of Henry’s seat. ‘They’ll be too small. Is there going to be breakfast when we get there?’

She hadn’t intended to bring Thierry, but when she’d got downstairs, she’d found her mother asleep on the sofa, still wearing the previous day’s clothes. She had probably been up all night, practising. It wouldn’t be the first time. If she had left Thierry and Pepper behind, she reasoned, Mum would have been awake within five minutes and she’d looked as if she could do with a rest.

‘Cola. All the young people drink cola. They have good deals at the cash-and-carry,’ Henry mused. ‘And fruit juice. You could mix it with sparkling water.’

‘I don’t think I can stretch to fruit juice. I’m going to make more elderflower.’

Asad was humming along with the car stereo, one hand tapping a rhythm on the dashboard. ‘Ice cubes,’ he said. ‘A big bag. You still have no fridge, so you can borrow our cool box to put them in.’

‘And who’s going to carry them?’ Henry enquired. ‘They weigh a ton.’

‘We will,’ said Thierry. ‘I’ve grown an inch and a half in six weeks. Mum marked it on the door.’

‘You need to set yourself a budget,’ said Henry. ‘You’ll find your money will go a lot further here but you’re still trying to feed a lot of people. How much have you got?’

‘Eighty-two pounds,’ she said. It would have been sixty-two but her French grandmother had sent her a birthday cheque that morning.

‘Barbecue,’ said Henry. ‘What do you think, Asad?’

‘Too expensive. Just hot dogs,’ he said. ‘And lots of lovely rice and pasta salads for the vegetarians. I can do those for you. Is your mother still doing berries for pudding?’

It was going to be the best party ever, Kitty thought. Nearly everyone from her class was coming. When she had told them about the lake, they had been really excited. One of Anthony’s friends was going to bring a blow-up dinghy, and Anthony had a Lilo. ‘We’ve got some old bunting in the store room,’ said Henry. ‘We could drape that around, disguise the scaffolding.’

‘It’s so long since we cleared out that store room it’s probably marked “Silver Jubilee”,’ said Asad.

‘And tea lights,’ said Henry, ‘leading down to the lake for when it gets dark. We could put them in old jam-jars. You can get a hundred for a couple of pounds.’

It had taken a while, but Kitty, sitting in the car with the two men chatting in front, decided she no longer felt homesick. Six months ago, if someone had told her they would still be here, that her idea of fun would be visiting a cash-and-carry with two elderly gay men, she would have cried for a week. Now she thought she probably didn’t want to go back to London. She missed Dad still – she didn’t think there would ever be a time when she thought about him and didn’t get a lump in the back of her throat – but perhaps Mum had been right. Perhaps it really had been better to make a fresh start here, away from all the reminders of him.

‘Some kind of syllabub or fool. Strawberry or gooseberry.’

‘How do you make a gooseberry fool?’ said Asad.

‘Put her in a car with two old queens, eejit,’ said Henry, and burst out laughing as the children stared blankly from the back seat.

‘But what exactly did he say?’ He clamped his phone between ear and shoulder. ‘Hang on, I’m going to pull over on to the hard shoulder.’ He gestured an apology to the driver he had inadvertently cut up, ignoring the bad-tempered blast of a horn.

‘What was that noise? Where are you?’

Laura had told him she was at the bottom of the garden. He could picture her there, her hair lifting in the breeze, a hand pressed over her other ear. ‘I’m on the motorway, junction twelve.’

‘But Matt’s here,’ she whispered.

‘I’m not coming to see you,’ he said, glancing into his mirror. God, there was a lot of traffic this morning. ‘Much as I’d love to.’

‘You’re going to speak to her today?’

Nicholas braked to allow someone to change lane, then slid to a halt on the hard shoulder, leaving his engine running. ‘I can’t wait any longer, Laura. The money’s in place . . . Laura?’

‘Yes?’

The length of her silence had unnerved him. ‘Are you all right?’

‘I suppose so. It’s just . . . odd. An odd feeling. That it’s all finally going to happen.’

His car shook as a lorry roared past. ‘Look, change is always . . .’

‘I know.’

‘I understand, Laura. Really. I’ve been through it myself.’

She hesitated a little too long.

‘You still want that house? Is that it?’

‘It’s not—’

‘I’ll scrap the Spanish House development.’

‘What?’

It had left his mouth before he realised what he’d said. ‘I’ll scrap it,’ he repeated, ‘if you really want that house.’

‘But that’s your great project. How would you move on without it? You told me—’

‘I’ll manage.’

‘But all those plans. Your backers—’

‘Laura! Listen to me!’ He was shouting into the phone now, trying to make himself heard above the noise of the motorway. ‘If you really want that house, I’ll make sure you have it. We can still turn it into the home of your dreams.’

This time her silence was of a different tenor. ‘You’d do that for me?’

‘Do you need to ask?’

‘Oh, Nicholas.’ There was gratitude in her voice, but he wasn’t sure what she was thanking him for.

They were silent for a few moments.

‘He may be there, you know. You won’t say anything, will you?’

‘About us?’

‘I think it should come from me.’

‘You mean I’m not allowed to say, “Mr McCarthy, I’ve been sleeping with your wife. And, incidentally, she has a bottom like a fresh peach.”’

She couldn’t help laughing. ‘Please,’ she said. ‘Let me tell him later.’

‘Your husband, Laura, is a fool, and I’d be delighted to tell him as much. But at a time of your choosing. Look, I’ve got to go. I’ll ring you after I’ve spoken to the Delancey woman.’ He cancelled the call and sat there as the traffic rushed by, hoping she hadn’t meant he must make the choice he had promised.

Matt pulled the little leather box from his inside pocket, and opened it, allowing the ruby ring with the seed pearls to glint in the sunlight. It had been so easy to spot what had been hers. ‘Nice ring,’ the jeweller had said. ‘Victorian. Unusual.’ It had glowed in the little shop, stood out from other jewels. Like she did.

Matt suspected he had been charged twice what Isabel would have received for it, but he didn’t care. He wanted to see her face when she opened the box. He wanted to see her gratitude when she saw what he’d done for her.

What did the money matter now? He and Laura had had money sitting in the bank for years, and what good had it done them? He had not yet managed to convey to Isabel how he felt. The ring would prove to her that he understood what she wanted and what she had lost. He liked the fact that no one else knew about her ring but him. A ruby: the colour of passion, of desire, of sex. Holding it had felt like holding part of her.

He was about to drive his van out of the woods and on to her driveway when he saw another car pull up. A man in a suit got out.

Matt watched him glance up at the house. Some old friend, perhaps. Or an official. His sense of anticipation evaporated. He had wanted to pick his moment carefully, make sure the children weren’t there. It would only work if the two of them were alone.

He put the ring back into his pocket. He was a patient man. He had all the time in the world.

‘Yes?’

For a moment he was stumped. He had knocked on the door for nearly ten minutes, then decided that nobody was in so had taken a few steps back to get a comprehensive view of the house that had occupied his thoughts for so many weeks.

There was a large crack running from the upper window diagonally downwards – subsidence or heave, which was perhaps not surprising when the house bordered a lake and woods. A new window had been poorly fitted, daylight visible in the gap between wood and brick where no one had filled it. A piece of pale blue plastic flapped listlessly over the glass. The roof was unfinished, plastic guttering unfixed. The walls were partially clad in scaffolding for which he could see no obvious purpose.

He took another step back. An assortment of mismatched and ramshackle garden furniture stood on the lawn, but even that could not detract from the beauty of the setting. The lake made up for everything. This beautiful, peaceful place had an atmosphere he had rarely encountered, the kind of ambience one expected to find around a Scottish loch or somewhere much further out in the wilds. This part of Norfolk was commutable – Mike Todd had told him so.
Work in London and live in the heart of the countryside
. He could almost see the glossy brochure now. Perhaps he and Laura would take one of the houses – there was something so seductive about the place.

And then he saw her: a tousled woman in a crumpled linen shirt, squinting at him. ‘Yes?’

For a moment he forgot what he wanted to say. He had had his opening prepared for so long and her unexpected appearance had wrongfooted him. This was the woman who had caused Laura such unhappiness.

‘I’m so sorry to disturb you,’ he said, striding forward and extending a hand. She allowed him to shake hers. ‘Perhaps I should have rung first. I’ve come about the house.’

‘Oh. Gosh. That was fast,’ she said. ‘What time is it?’

He pulled back his cuff. ‘A quarter to ten.’

This appeared to surprise her. When she spoke it was to herself. ‘I don’t even remember dropping off . . . Look, I need to make a cup of coffee. Would you like one?’

He followed her in. She walked a couple of paces ahead of him into the kitchen. He tried to suppress his instinctive dislike. He was not sure what he had expected – someone less chaotic-looking perhaps, someone a little more calculated.

‘In here,’ she muttered. ‘Do sit down. This may sound a silly question, but have you seen any children around?’

The kitchen was badly in need of updating. It had not been touched for decades. Nicholas gazed at the cracked linoleum, the faded paintwork, which had been decorated with odd photographs, dried flowers and a piece of painted clay – an attempt to bring domesticity into an environment that, frankly, he would have considered uninhabitable. Around the outside of the house, visible through the windows, fruit and vegetables hung in orange nets in the shade of the eaves, like multicoloured teardrops.

She ran water into the kettle and placed it on the stove, then opened the larder, reached in and sniffed at a carton of milk. Still okay. Just. ‘We have no fridge.’

‘I’ll take mine black, thank you,’ Nicholas said stiffly.

‘Probably sensible,’ she conceded, placing the carton back inside. She handed him the coffee, then picked up on his surprise at their surroundings. ‘This is the only room that hasn’t been touched. I don’t suppose it’s any different from when my great-uncle lived here. Do you want to take a look round?’

‘You don’t mind?’

‘I guess you’ll need to see everything.’

Who could have told her he was coming? He had thought she might be defensive, suspicious, even, but she seemed to be anticipating whatever he had to say.

She picked up a piece of paper from the table, and studied its scribbled contents for a minute. Then she glanced out of the window at the lake. ‘Do go ahead,’ she said, taking a swig of coffee. ‘I’ll follow you up in a minute. I need to pull my head together.’ She smiled apologetically and gestured to some steps. ‘It’s all right. There’s no one here to disturb.’

He didn’t need telling again. Nicholas took his mug and went to re-examine the house that would be his future.

It was almost twenty minutes before she reappeared. She had changed into different clothes, a fresh T-shirt and loose skirt, and had tied her hair back.

He glanced up from his notes. From the landing, he had been staring in through the door of what must be the master bedroom. ‘Are you knocking these rooms through?’ he asked. Rubble and plaster dust lay on the bedlinen.

‘That,’ she said carefully, ‘is a long story. But no. We won’t be knocking through.’

‘You need to repair that hole quickly, or get someone to fit an RSJ. It’s a major gap in a load-bearing wall.’ He inspected a crack in the corner, but when he turned back to her she was peering out of the window. ‘Mrs Delancey?’

‘Yes? I’m so sorry. I . . . haven’t slept much. Perhaps we should discuss all this later.’

‘Do you mind if we go outside? I’ve seen everything I need inside.’

He had certainly seen enough to clarify his thoughts. Laura’s husband was a cowboy. The house was a bizarre mixture of high-quality craftsmanship and demolition job, as if two separate tradesmen had carried out the work, almost in opposition to each other. What was clear, however, was that repairing the house would be a greater challenge than even Laura could have imagined. When he had last come here, it had seemed merely tired, a series of jobs that needed doing. What he had seen today had confirmed his belief that the best thing for this building would be to bring it down and start again. But how to put that to Laura?