0007464355 (15 page)

Only the truly great could ever achieve that.

Paris was quiet, that night. Winter settling in. A couple of tables of locals and that was it. The tourists began to vanish at the point it became too cold to huddle under a heater at a pavement table, holding a Gauloise in frigid fingers and looking convincingly like it passed for fun on Facebook.

It was only when silence crowded in that she looked up from her omelette. Art’s steak was running red on his plate, a familiar cloud darkening his face. He laid down the serrated knife and looked at her. Blood pooled with oil in a lake of Dijon. He didn’t speak. Just stared, his face expressionless, cold and hard. Nothing human behind the eyes that she could see. As though she had devalued his entire life’s work in a single sentence. It didn’t occur to him for a second she might have been talking about herself, her work, her dreams.

‘I …’ she started. ‘I wasn’t … I didn’t mean …’

But he just stared, face white, lips a tight, narrow line, silencing her.

15

It wasn’t Gil’s imagination. When he next went into the shop, Mrs Millward was definitely giving him what could only be described as a
look
. If anyone should be bestowing ‘looks’, thought Gil as he bought his daily pack of B&H and made a point of ignoring her questioning gaze, it was him. Looks in his repertoire this morning might have included, How did you get my mobile number? Who the hell do you think you are, handing it to a total stranger? What made you think this was a good idea anyway? He was being old-school, Gil knew that. But mobile numbers weren’t things you gave to just anyone. Not like landlines. Mobile numbers were personal.

Friends, families, colleagues.

Mind you, then no one would ever call him. The sourness of that thought made Gil feel better, but it didn’t solve his problem. What to do about the Liza woman? He’d liked the look of her well enough. What he’d managed to remember, anyway. She’d been friendly, well turned out. It had been a while since he went out with anyone. Truth was, he couldn’t think of a good enough reason not to.

Hi Liza, he tapped, once he was safely outside. That sounds nice. Gil. Pressing send, he immediately regretted it.
Nice?
That sounds
nice?
He shook his head, vaguely aware he looked like a mad man muttering to himself in a shop doorway. Less than five steps further down the street his phone buzzed.

Great, how about dinner Thursday? 8 p.m. at Genarro’s? I can pick you up if you like? Lx

Was it too late to pull out? He could always say he was busy this week, maybe next. Find an excuse next week to postpone it …

Oh, what the hell.

Sounds good. I’ll pick you up. What’s your address? Gil.

He pressed send. The message bar was only three-quarters gone when he realised that in the space of three texts, an invitation for a drink had turned into a dinner date, with ‘picking you up’ and, therefore, ‘dropping you off afterwards’ on the menu. For the first time since Jan left, he felt the cold chill of the single man of a certain age on the rocky shores of dating. Gil shuddered.

It wasn’t that there hadn’t been other women.

There had, several. Donna, Meg, Maureen, Linda, the temp who’d covered in HR (that had been drink for both of them), Angela, Chrissie … He stopped running through the list in his head. More than five, less than ten. Only Donna and Angela had been more than a couple of drinks and a warm bed for two lonely people of a certain age. It had surprised him, at first. Not to be too pleased with himself, but he’d expected to be beating them off with a stick. Single, not bad-looking, decent job, own place … He wasn’t short of offers. Just not like that. Most of that list were even less keen to settle down again than he was.

‘God no,’ Maureen had said. Or was it Linda? ‘Got my house, my kids are gone. Eat what I want when I want; watch what I want when I want. If I have my way, I’ll never do anyone else’s washing again.’

This, Liza, felt a bit different. It didn’t feel like a drink, dinner and a bit of what Donna had euphemistically called companionship. It felt like she was after more. It felt like she meant business. Gil wasn’t sure he was in the market for business. He’d just reached his front door when a thought occurred to him.

‘Back so soon, Mr Markham?’ said Margaret Millward, when the bell above the door brought her from the stockroom.

‘Forgot to pick up some bits.’ Gil ducked down an aisle to escape her beady stare. It wasn’t easy, his head towered a good foot over the top shelf. He scanned the shelves, trying to remember what Helen Graham had picked up last time he saw her. Milk … the red label, he thought, skimmed stuff. The stuff that didn’t taste like milk at all, changed the colour of the tea but that was all. Bread. Fresh loaves had just been delivered so he picked something crusty. She didn’t seem the sliced white type. Earl Grey. She hadn’t bought tea bags so he would … And nice chocolate. Well, as nice as the General Stores could provide. Then he scoured the fruit and veg and settled on a bunch of purple grapes.

‘Visiting the sick, are we?’

‘What makes you …?’ Gil looked at his pile on the counter. The bloody woman didn’t miss a trick. It was like some long-forgotten memory had kicked in. Not the bread and milk, so much as the fruit and chocolate. He was only short of a bunch of flowers. ‘Not really,’ he muttered. ‘Just short of a few things.’ As if to prove the point, he picked up a can of beans he didn’t need and wouldn’t eat from a nearby shelf and added them to the pile.

Wildfell House looked exactly as it had last time he was there. Silver Peugeot at 45 degrees to the front, tyre marks a tidal wave in gravel behind it. Curtains pulled part way across the front windows, like half-closed eyes. Not so much deserted as not yet awake. No light that he could see. No noise but crows wheeling above the trees in the field behind him, and the growl of an occasional lorry on the road behind.

Almost eleven. Not too early to knock. Not on a weekday.

There was a bell to the right of the heavy black door. Round, metal, ugly. Old-fashioned wasn’t in it. It looked almost as old as the house, which was obviously not possible, since the Elizabethans didn’t have doorbells, so far as he knew. Although it was certainly stiff enough.

Leaning on the bell, Gil thought he felt it shift slightly. He couldn’t be sure if it budged, but in case it did he leaned on it again and listened. Was that an answering ring he heard inside? It was equally possible it was his imagination supplying the noise. He gave it ten seconds, made himself add another ten and leaned again. Still nothing. No movement from inside. No lights going on. He stepped back and stared up at the first-floor windows.

Most likely the bell wasn’t working.

He rapped three times with the knocker, the tarnished face of a lion dead-eyeing him as he did so. Could she have gone for a walk? Gil tried to imagine her limping towards the Scar. Perhaps she healed quickly. Perhaps you had to be his age before injuries took their toll. If you could get over a hangover twice as fast when young why not everything else? He gave one final knock, bent down to put the provisions on the doorstep, cursing his wasted walk and wasted opportunity. Not to mention wasted money. As he unconcertinaed himself, he heard locks rattle on the far side of her door.

‘Mr Markham?’ Helen Graham opened the door just wide enough to stand in the gap. She was wearing what probably passed for pyjamas. Grubby grey jogging bottoms, an even grubbier T-shirt with a slogan too faded to read, beneath a slightly cleaner towelling robe once belonging to a Premier Inn.

‘Mademoiselle Graham, Helen, I’m sorry. Did I wake you?’

A wry expression crossed her face. Not a smile but not exactly unfriendly. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ she said, but she didn’t open the door further. ‘Went to London for a couple of days. Tired myself out. Also I don’t sleep well. So when I do I just go with it.’

She certainly did look tired.

‘I wondered how you were. I thought …’ Gil picked up his offerings, feeling naïve, like a boy bringing an apple for the teacher and fearing it might be rejected. Gil Markham, sixty-odd going on six. Her gaze flicked from his eyes to the things in his arms and back again. Something flashed across her face. Irritation, maybe. Sadness, confusion. He’d overstepped the mark. Gil knew that already.

Then she did smile and her pallor lifted.

‘Baked beans?’ her mouth twisted.

‘Isn’t that what sick people eat, beans on toast?’

‘Some sick people maybe. I’m not sick. I’m barely injured.’ She took the tin and turned it round in her hand as if examining an exotic object. ‘Can’t remember the last time I ate baked beans.’

‘Don’t children live on baked beans?’

She frowned. ‘Maybe. Not my specialist subject, I’m afraid … Fish fingers and beans sounds familiar though. I’m pretty sure I ate that as a child.’ She looked at him. ‘When I was in England, I mean. Visiting. I’m more of a black coffee and whatever’s cold in the fridge person now.’

On the road behind him, a truck rattled. ‘Shall I carry them in for you?’

‘No need. I’ll take them …’

Then she stopped, seemed to relent. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be unfriendly. Yes, of course, come in. You must be cold standing there. I’ll make tea.’

The entrance hall was dark and panelled in heavy wood with enough split panels and woodworm to make Gil worry for the rest of the house. A huge painting of a stag at bay over an equally cracked marble fireplace was flaking to reveal canvas beneath. It could hardly be a Landseer original. Someone would have removed it. As Gil crossed in front of the wide stairs a draught tickled his hair, like a window opening above. For the first time he realised he might have interrupted something. Helen might have been with someone. Why wouldn’t she? An attractive and mysterious woman like her. He glanced up, but the stairs doubled back on themselves and there was nothing he could see.

‘Cold, isn’t it?’ she said, glancing over her shoulder. ‘It’s so big, even with three-quarters of the rooms locked up, I can’t seem to get the place warm.’

The kitchen was surprisingly cosy by comparison.

‘Nice,’ he said, unthinking.

She turned, gave him that look again. In a different life, to someone she knew, she might have said ‘Who are you trying to kid?’ Instead, she just said, ‘Really?’ her voice rising in disbelief at the end.

‘Well, yes, you know, relatively.’

Helen raised her eyebrows. ‘I suppose I do spend most of my time in here. I guess that’s why it feels more lived in.’

‘Where shall I …?’ he nodded at his pile.

‘Oh, anywhere is fine.’ She waved her hand in the general vicinity of a chair and Gil took it as an invitation to dump his offerings on the table and sit down. There was a laptop open, but dozing, on the scrubbed table, green light flashing as it almost slept. A mug with the dregs of coffee grounds. A copy of the
Evening Standard
. A
Metro
. As she sliced open the cellophane on the Earl Grey, Gil reached out and touched the mug. Not hot but definitely not cold. Not asleep then. Not even slightly.

Then he leaned over and picked up the
Standard
.

‘Haven’t seen one of these in a while,’ he said, waving it at her.

She glanced over at him, her face suddenly tense. ‘Oh, you don’t want to bother with that,’ she said. ‘It’s days old. Try the
Metro
, it’s a bit more recent. Not much though.’ In one smooth movement she slid the
Standard
from his hand and replaced it with the
Metro
, putting the former out of reach on a worktop.

For a couple of minutes, Gil pretended to flick through it. Both free, both full of nothing. He was buggered if he could see the difference.

‘How’s the ankle?’ he asked as she put a mug in front of him and sat down at the end of the table, in front of the laptop. Her seat, he could tell. The place she always sat. The place he suspected she’d been sitting when he rang the bell.

She shrugged.

They sipped tea in silence. Not exactly companionable, but near enough. The kitchen had the feeling of a room that had known love once. Not recently. Not for a long time. Certainly not this century, maybe not even last … How did she stand it out here on her own? If she was on her own. Gil listened for sounds of someone else in residence. Nothing but scraping from outside the back door. The groan of the occasional pipe.

Helen didn’t seem to notice the noise. She was staring into space, her hands hugging the mug like a hot-water bottle. She bit her nails, Gil noticed. Her cuticles were pink and raw. No rings on her wedding finger. No dent or pale skin to tell him one had been recently removed. Hands that looked older than she did. Faded freckles peppered skin so papery that blue veins showed through. They brought to mind the rumours of her being a famous French actress come here to die. He wasn’t convinced, but something had brought her here.

You didn’t choose to live alone in a ruin like this for no reason.

‘Thank you,’ she said suddenly into his silence. Gil jumped. If his mug had been full he’d have spilt it. ‘Bringing shopping was kind of you. Not necessary. But kind. I’ve forgotten how to recognise kindness recently. To be honest, I was afraid you’d tell that woman in the shop about my fall and she’d turn up …’ Helen caught herself. ‘Not that I mean to be rude. Is she a friend of yours?’

‘Not exactly …’ he smiled. ‘Don’t worry. Your secret’s safe with me.’

As the words left his mouth Gil felt the air ice around him. Her face, which had momentarily softened, shut down again.

‘What I mean is, I won’t say anything to Mrs Millward.’

‘Thank you,’ she said, but all familiarity was gone. ‘I came here to get away … You know? For the peace and quiet. To work and think and … I didn’t expect the gossip. That I would be required to socialise.’

Gil winced. ‘Small towns are famous for gossip. Villages even worse.’

‘So I’ve discovered.’

‘Mind you, who needs a small town when you’ve got the Internet?’ Gil joked, inclining his head towards her laptop, USB flashing in its side.