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 GUILT

Abigail Allen’s dark secret is that when she was

thirteen years old, she was responsible for killing
her parents and boyfriend in an accident. Now a
cellist with a modest career, guilt has become
Abigail’s most constant companion. Charming,
persuasive Silas Graves is a photographer who
knows about her past but loves her in spite of it -
maybe even because of it. The women he’s loved
most in his life, his mother and his sister, have
both, in his eyes, betrayed him. Abigail is
different. Abigail won’t betray him. She’d better
not.
GUILT
 For David,
with love and pride
 GUILT
by

Hilary Norman

Magna Large Print Books

ion Preston, North Yorkshire,
30RSET COUN
B D23 4ND, England.
2005
LIBRARY MT
 i
i

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

Norman, Hilary
Guilt.

A catalogue record of this book is

available from the British Library

ISBN 0-7505-2372-7

First published in Great Britain in 2004 by Piatkus Books Ltd.

Copyright © Hilary Norman 2004

Cover illustration © Anthony Monaghan

The moral right of the author has been asserted

Published in Large Print 2005 by arrangement with

Piatkus Books Ltd.

All Rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise
without the prior permission of the Copyright owner.

Magna Large Print is an imprint of Library Magna Books Ltd.

Printed and bound in Great Britain by

T.J. (International) Ltd., Cornwall, PL28 8RW
All the characters in this book are fictitious
and any resemblance to real persons,
living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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My gratitude to the following for their kind help:

Sarah Abel; Howard Barmad; Peter Beal; Jennifer

Bloch; Howard Green; Sara Fisher; Foote’s of
Golden Square; John Gibson; Gillian Green; Ann
Hogan; Peter Johnston; Jonathan Kern; Dr
Norman Litvin, FCS(SA)Ophth FRCSEd;
Moorfields Eye Hospital; Joanne and Des Moran;
Herta Norman; Judy Piatkus; David Risley and
Folly Rescue; Helen Rose; Dr Jonathan Tarlow;
Sue Watkins.

And most especially: Mr Rhodri D. Daniel,

BSc(Hons) FRCS FRCOphth DO; Rhiannon
Jones; and Josephine Knight, Principal Cello,
English Chamber Orchestra and Professor at the
Royal Academy of Music. All experts in their
fields, all generous enough to give precious time
and to share a little of their knowledge - in all
cases with remarkable patience.

As always, all characters and situations are

entirely fictitious.
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 Chapter One

‘Tell me,’ Silas Graves said to Abigail Allen during

their first dinner together, ‘your deepest, darkest
secret.’
It was a beautiful spring evening, and he had
brought her to the San Carlo in Highgate High
Street in north London, had chosen one of his
favourite restaurants, wanting to please her,
wanting her to feel relaxed.
‘If I tell you that,’ Abigail answered, ‘you’ll
never want to see me again.’
‘I doubt that very much,’ Silas said.
‘Don’t doubt it,’ Abigail said.
Silas shrugged. ‘Tell me anyway.’
She laid down her fork, rested it beside the
carpaccio on her plate, and gave a small sigh.
‘Please,’ Silas said.
A sunburned young man two tables away gave
a raucous laugh.
Abigail shuddered, then said, quietly, rapidly:
‘When I was thirteen, I killed my parents and a
boy named Eddie Gibson.’
She glanced to her left, then her right, then
forced her eyes back to his face.
Waited to be left alone again.
Silas’s eyes were intently, avidly, on hers.
‘How on earth,’ he asked, ‘did you manage
that?’

11
 Chapter Two

When Silas was five years old, he had become a

brother.
‘Look/ his father, Paul Graves, had told him
outside the hospital nursery, holding him up so
that he could see the new infant in her cot on the
other side of the window. ‘That’s your little sister.
Isn’t she just the most beautiful baby you’ve ever
seen?’
Silas had looked down.
Ugly^ he thought, his stomach clenching.
Wrinkly and blotchy and squirmy, with tufts of
dark hair, wholly unlike himself, with his pale
skin and hay-coloured mop.
He looked up at his father. ‘Mummy says I was
the most beautiful baby.’
Paul Graves smiled. ‘So you were,’ he said.
‘And now your sister is.’
Silas looked back down at the cot.
‘Feel sick,’ he told his father.
And was.

‘You must tell us, darling,’ Patricia Graves, his

mother, had said next day, cradling the new baby
in her arms, ‘if there’s anything you want to
know, or don’t understand.’
Silas had looked into the gentle brown eyes in
which he had, until yesterday, had perfect faith,
and asked the question now crowding his mind,
12
gobbling up and spitting out all other thoughts.
‘Who do you love more. Mummy?’ he asked.
‘Me or her?’
‘We love you both equally, Silas,’ Patricia said,
placidly, oblivious to the tumult in her son.
Silas frowned. ‘You used to say you loved me
more than anything in the whole world.’
‘And it was true.’ Still tranquil. ‘I did love you
- and your daddy - more than anything or
anyone else.’
Silas felt his world shift. His mother had never
qualified that declaration before, had never so
much as hinted that her love was like a cake, to
be cut into slices.
‘And now,’ Patricia went on, ‘I - we - love you
and Julia that way.’
Julia.
Ugly Julia.
His mother must have seen something in his
face, for the calm - the smugness - wobbled just
a little in her eyes.
‘It doesn’t mean I love you any less, Silas,
darling,’ she said. But it did. He knew it meant
exactly that.
Three slices now.
He looked at his baby sister’s sleeping face, and
wanted to rip her apart.
‘Do you understand, Silas, my darling?’ Patricia
asked, anxiously.
Silas blinked, then turned his sea green eyes
back to her face.
‘Yes, Mummy,’ he said.
He understood very well.

13
 Chapter Three

When Silas was ten years old and Julia was five,
Paul Graves had left their big old red-brick house
near the foot of Muswell Hill one November
morning - ostensibly to go to his law office in
High Holborn - and had not returned.
‘Is Daddy dead?’ Silas had asked his mother
after several weeks.
‘No, darling,’ Patricia had answered. ‘I’m sure
he isn’t.’
Silas supposed that was true, since they had
neither buried nor burned him.
‘Is he in prison?’ he asked.
‘Why on earth would you ask that?’ His mother
was wide-eyed.
‘One of the boys at school’s father’s in the
Scrubs,’ Silas replied.
‘Well, your father is not.’ Patricia paused. ‘And
please don’t say things like that in front of Julia.’
‘I wouldn’t,’ he said. ‘I know better than that.’
‘Yes,’ his mother said. ‘I know you do.’

For the first fortnight after Paul Graves had

gone, Patricia had wept a good deal of every day,
but then she had, with a great effort, brought
herself under control, and had taken to weeping
only at night in her bedroom.
Lying sleepless in his own room, Silas had
heard her, night after night, and had felt both
14
desolate for, and angry with her. Angry because
he knew that, given the opportunity, he could
have comforted her, could have more than made
up for the absence of the man who had - so far
as Silas could see - done little more for his wife
than leave early each morning and come home
for dinner before going to bed.
Let me in, Mummy, he yearned to say to her,
listening to her quiet sobbing through the wall.
Let me help you. But he did not dare say those
things because he was afraid that she might laugh
at him, push him away.
Reject him.
She did not. On the night when Silas had finally
summoned the courage to leave his room and go
to hers, to turn the handle and actually go inside,
Patricia, lying in the dark, a handkerchief pressed
against her mouth, had turned on her bedside
light and asked, in a semi-strangled voice, if
something was wrong with either him or Julia.
‘Nothing’s wrong with us,’ he had said. ‘Except
I can’t bear it.’
‘What can’t you bear, Silas, darling?’
‘You crying in here, all alone, when...’
‘When what?’
Silas had taken a deep breath. ‘When I could
help you,’ he said.
Let me in.
Patricia had pushed back the bedcovers and
had let him in.
‘You’re cold, darling,’ she said.
He was cold, freezing, so she let him wrap
himself around her, and he was tall for his age,
almost as long as she was, and she was warm and
15
soft and smelled of flowers^ and Silas laid his
head on her shoulder and breathed her in, and
felt her body relax, just a little, against him.
‘You won’t need him anymore now,’ he told
her.
Patricia sighed.
‘You won’t need anyone but me,’ Silas said.

When Silas had been sleeping in her bed for

about two weeks, Patricia woke up in the middle
of the night to a curious sound.
She lay quite still for a moment before realizing
it was coming from her son.
He was humming softly under his breath.
Breathing strangely, too.
Rhythmically.
Patricia sat up suddenly.
‘Silas, stop that this instant.’
She reached for the light switch, threw back the
covers.
‘For God’s sake,’ she said sharply. ‘Don’t be so
disgusting.’
Silas smiled up at her, a lazy, rather proud smile.
‘Stop it ’ Patricia told him again.
The smile vanished, his hand fell away from his
erect, not quite grown - quite grown enough^ she
thought, despite herself - penis, and he frowned
at her sulkily.
‘Cover yourself up,’ his mother told him.
Silas moved hastily, put it back in his pyjama
trousers, his cheeks flushing.
Patricia laughed. ‘All the same.’
He was still frowning. ‘What’s the same?’
‘Males,’ she said, her tone disparaging. ‘If you
16
only knew.’
‘Knew what?’ Silas asked.
‘How ridiculous you look.’
His green eyes narrowed, and the pink in his
hot cheeks became a flush of humiliation and
anger. ‘Don’t laugh at me. Mother.’
He had never called her that before.
Patricia supposed that laughing at a prepubes-
cent boy might have been the wrong approach,
but then again, she had expected him to jump
guiltily, rush to cover himself up, and instead he’d
looked pleased with himself, which had shocked
her more than a little.
‘I’m sorry, my darling,’ she said. ‘But you must
understand that if you’re going to do disgusting
things like that-’
‘I thought,’ Silas said, ‘that’s what all men do.’
Now Patricia’s face was hot. She wondered if
she should get up or tell him to go back to his
room; was, once again, rather surprised that he
had not got out of bed of his own accord.
‘Firstly,’ she said, ‘you’re not a man.’
Her son’s eyes grew colder.
‘Secondly, don’t answer me back.’
‘Sorry,’ Silas said.
‘As I was saying-’
‘You don’t want me to do disgusting things like
that.’
Patricia glared at him, trying to gauge how
cheeky he was being.
‘If you find that you absolutely must-’ she man¬
aged to speak coolly ‘-from time to time, then
kindly do it in private, in your own bedroom.’
‘Don’t you like me sleeping with you. Mother?’
17
 She thought, but was not quite certain, that he
might be feeling hurt.
‘It’s nice,’ she answered, carefully, ‘to have the
company. But you’re not a little boy any more, so
maybe-’
‘No,’ he broke in, firmly, clearly, ‘I’m not.’
‘Silas, I’m trying-’
‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘I understand.’
‘Do you?’
His expression was suddenly full of sympathy.
‘You look very tired. Mummy.’
‘I am,’ Patricia agreed.
‘Why don’t you lie down again?’
She hesitated, briefly, then lay back against her
pillows.
‘Now close your eyes,’ Silas said.
‘Silas, maybe you should-’
‘Close your eyes. Mummy-’ he was gently
insistent ‘-and let me stroke your hair, the way
you like, till you fall asleep again.’
Patricia knew she was too tempted, too weary,
to resist.
‘No more of that,’ she said.
‘Of course not. Mummy,’ he said.
It only took about a minute before he felt her
relax again, felt her actually letting go, falling
asleep. For a moment or so, continuing to stroke
her hair, he felt good about that, about himself,
about the power of his gentle hands, of his love
for her, and hers for him.
But then her words sprang back into his mind.
Ridiculous. Disgusting.
Silas took his hand away.

18
 Chapter Four

They were perfect together.

Silas had known they would be from the very
beginning.
It had been a mild April afternoon and he had
been sitting in a taxi in heavy traffic on his way to
a bread-and-butter rag trade shoot when she had
caught his eye. Not because of her clothes - very
undesigner T-shirt and jeans - or even her looks,
but because of the way she was carrying her cello.
Big and cumbersome as it was in its ancient
looking case, the young woman was conveying the
instrument out of the Wigmore Hall with the kind
of tenderness a mother might have shown an
overgrown and clumsy, but greatly loved, child.
Silas, sitting in the back of the stationary taxi,
had watched her set her burden down on the
pavement and push her hair out of her face, and,
without taking his eyes off her, had felt on the
seat for his camera, opened its case, raised it and
zoomed in.
Long, blond, heavy, almost butter-coloured
hair, just a shade or two darker than his own.
Oval, pale face. Nose not quite straight, all the
finer for it. Wide, grey eyes. Sad, intriguing eyes.
Silas loved intriguing.
He took a few shots, then, grateful for once for
the gridlock, examined the rest of her. Nice
breasts, good shoulders and strong, but feminine
19
arms, slim waist. Pretty skinny all over, he
thought; not model-skinny but almost underfed.
He thought she looked tired.
‘Shat upon,’ he murmured, and took another
photograph.
She began to lift the cello again.
Tull over, driver, please,’ Silas said sharply.
‘Just for a moment.’
He opened the door.
‘That looks very heavy,’ he called.
She looked up, startled, saw the taxi, the young
man getting out, realized he was talking to her,
set down the instrument case again.
‘It’s fine,’ she said, warily.
Silas kept distance between them. ‘I thought
you might like to take my taxi.’ He saw her brow
crease. ‘Don’t worry,’ he added quickly. ‘I’m not
expecting to share it.’
‘I couldn’t possibly steal your taxi,’ she said.
Her voice was accented. Scottish. Low, husky,
sexy.
‘I’m offering it to you, so it wouldn’t be stealing,
especially not—’ he was suddenly desperate not to
lose her, —if you do something for me in return.’
He saw doubt on her face, found a visiting card in
his jacket, held it out to her like an offering. ‘Like
get in touch sometime, if you wanted to.’
She wrapped her arms around the cello, her
eyes darting down at the card, then up again into
his face.
‘Just take it,’ Silas said, urgently. ‘And the taxi.
Please.’
All right. She took the card, slid it quickly into
her jeans.
20
 ‘Good.’ He felt intense relief. ‘Thank you.’
She smiled, began to lift the cello into the taxi,
and Silas suppressed the urge to help her, waited
till she was in, then stooped to talk through the
window to the driver.
‘I’d like to pay for-’
‘No,’ she said, swiftly, from the back. ‘Please
don’t.’
Silas smiled at her. ‘Just my own fare,’ he said.
‘Don’t worry.’
The driver took his money, waited to be told
where to drive to.
‘Chalk Farm, please,’ she said.
Silas shut the door. The driver indicated,
checked his wing mirror.
Quickly, impulsively, she leaned forward and
dragged down the window.
‘My name,’ she told Silas, ‘is Abigail Allen.’

He had only just managed, three work-jammed

days later, to locate her manager - a man named
Charlie Nagy who had, entirely properly, refused
to give out information, but said he’d be glad to
pass on any message - when she telephoned him.
‘Is that Silas Graves?’
‘It is.’ He knew, instantly, that it was her.
‘This is Abigail Allen,’ she said. ‘You might not
remember me.’
He smiled, looking up at his photographs of
her, enlarged to poster size and mounted on
every wall of his Crouch End studio.
‘I remember,’ Silas had told her.
They had spoken for several minutes. He had
asked her what she had been doing at the Wigmore
21
Hall, and she had explained that she had been
filling in for a cellist who’d come down with flu,
and then Silas said he’d only been there once, but
had greatly admired the mural over the stage.
‘Something to do with the Soul of Music, isn’t
it?’ he asked, though he knew precisely what the
work symbolized, having looked it up that morn¬
ing.
‘And Psyche,’ Abigail said, ‘transcribing music.’
‘And Love,’ Silas said, ‘with roses in her hand.’
And the rest had followed just - almost - as
sweetly.

Chapter Five

Every day of every week, unless she was in rehear¬

sal or playing or working at her other job, Abigail
practised the cello in her room in Chalk Farm.
It was a small, claustrophobic, unprepossessing
room on the top floor of an old, narrow, off-white,
dingy house near the station, and the floor
vibrated each time a tube train on the Northern
Line passed beneath the building. But her win¬
dow was blessed with a view of a lovely old chest¬
nut tree which, in all seasons, helped, together
with her music, to blot out the ugliness of her
immediate surroundings.
Helped, too, to blot out other things.
Things.
Abigail managed the business of living well
enough. Waiting on tables part-time in a
22
Finsbury Park cafe in between going to auditions
and rehearsals and engagements - anything that
she and Charlie Nagy (whose small artists’ man¬
agement company looked after a number of far
more accomplished and successful soloists, but
who still found time to manage Abigail’s in¬
significant diary commitments) could secure for
her. And she’d certainly played a hotchpotch of
engagements since coming down to London
from Glasgow; over the past several months she’d
played at two weddings, a funeral, as background
music for the afternoon tea customers at a
Thames-side hotel, and once even in the window
of a newly-opened furniture store in South Ken¬
sington.
To an outsider, it might have seemed that a
talented young woman with such a hectic life
must have any number of friends, but despite
outward appearances, Abigail lived her life, for
the most part, alone.
Alone, she knew, was what she deserved.
The music infinitely more than she deserved.
She was like a lover with her cello. She sur¬
rounded it with herself, gripped it with her knees,
let the back of it rest against her breasts, curving
the fingers of her left hand over its four strings,
bowing with her right, her hair sweeping down
and across her face with each motion. Her guilt
aside, the cello - her mother’s, made more than
fifty years before somewhere in Bavaria - was the
only true constant in her life. Alone with it,
Abigail felt able to release her innermost emo¬
tions into her music; and physically, too, the beau¬
tiful smoothness of the spruce and maple woods
23
 of which it was made so comforted her that on
warm summer days and evenings, she played
wearing just a slip or even less.
There was no one to see her; there had been no
one close to Abigail for many years. There were
acquaintances, naturally: musicians and her
colleagues and regulars in the cafe; and of course
there was Charlie, who might, Abigail realized,
have liked to become more to her than friend and
manager, but who had long since accepted in his
kind, easy way, that she was not interested in
anything more.
Not with Charlie, nor with anyone else.
Alone was what she deserved.
She thought, from time to time, that she ought
perhaps to have killed herself years ago. Drunk
bleach, or tied a sack of rocks around her waist
and drowned herself in some dirty, cold canal. A
painful, ugly end.
The end she deserved.
She had no right even to her music, to its riches
and companionship. No right to the sounds and
sensations and glory of it. No right to the instru¬
ment that enabled her to achieve those things.
No right to anything.

They had all said it was an accident, and that she

was a victim.
Not her fault.
The Sheriff’s determination.
All my fault,’ Abigail had told her mother as
she lay dying.
‘You mustn’t say that,’ Francesca Allen, passion¬
ate at the last, had told her. ‘Never say that, not to
24
anyone... Swear it.’
Her mother’s last words.
Setting her daughter free.

Chapter Six

When Silas was fifteen, on a Wednesday night in

May, Patricia Graves had brought home a stran¬
ger named Graham Francis, had made a special
dinner (something, Silas remembered years later,
to do with veal and mushrooms and rice that he’d
hated) for their guest and her two children, and
had then announced that she was going to be
married again.
Silas and Julia - who was ten now, and tall,
skinny and dark, like their mother, and who was
no longer (had, Silas had long since realized,
never been) even remotely ugly - had stared at
each other helplessly while Patricia had held
tightly to Graham Francis’s hand.
Silas had waited, his jaw growing painful from
clenching, to see if Francis would leave or stay.
And then, after the stranger had finally left,
having bestowed a discreet, but tender kiss on his
fiancee’s cheek at the front door, he went on
waiting until after Julia had gone to bed.
‘What about our father?’ Silas asked his mother,
as she loaded the noisy old dishwasher in the large,
comfortable kitchen of which he was very fond.
‘Your father’s been gone more than five years,
darling.’
25
 ‘He’s still your husband^ though^ surely?’
‘Not after the divorce goes through.’ Patricia
poured powder into the dispenser^ and glanced at
him sideways. ‘We’ve talked about this, Silas.’
He was silent for a moment.
‘What about us?’ he said, tightly. ‘If you marry
him, what about you and me?’
‘It won’t change anything about us, darling,’
Patricia said.
Silas had enough experience to know that if that
wasn’t exactly a lie, it was certainly his mother’s
way of not facing up to reality. Any remotely sig¬
nificant change led to turmoil and upheaval,
sometimes short-term, sometimes with greater
ramifications, like having to give up the place he’d
been promised at Highgate School because his
father’s desertion had left his wife a whole lot
worse off, and if they were to be able to stay in the
house they all loved - Patricia had told her child¬
ren at the time - other economies would have to
be considered. Which was why both Silas and Jules
(as she was now known to most people) were at
local authority schools, Jules happy enough, Silas
not exactly w;2happy, but resentful nonetheless.
‘Won’t'want to sleep with you?’ he asked his
mother now.
‘Of course he will.’ She closed the door of the
dishwasher.
‘We sleep together,’ Silas said.
His mother straightened up, put out her hand,
touched his arm. ‘Obviously that will have to
change, darling, she said, kindly. ‘But nothing
else will.’
‘But that,’ Silas said, ‘is everything.’
26
 Chapter Seven

When Silas was eighteen and Jules was just

thirteen, Patricia and Graham, on a January
holiday in Andorra, had gone skiing off-piste and
been killed by a comparatively minor, but locally
lethal, avalanche.
‘That’s it now,’ Silas said to Jules. ‘We’re on our
own.’
There was no one else. No uncles or aunts, and
the only living grandparent - Paul Graves’s
mother (who had, like Patricia and the children,
never discovered what had happened to her son
after his disappearance eight years earlier) - now
had some kind of dementia and lived in a nursing
home, and Graham’s parents were (thankfully,
Silas felt, and said, to Jules) both dead.
Which made him the head of the family.
‘You’ll be all right,’ he comforted his sister. ‘Pll
look after you.’
‘I know you will,’ Jules said, and wept in his
arms.

Silas made the arrangements, had the bodies

flown home, instructed the undertaker that his
mother was to be buried, in accordance with her
own wishes, and his stepfather (who had left no
such directions) cremated, and that if anyone ob¬
jected to that on Graham’s behalf, then they were
welcome to make their own arrangements.
27
 ‘Shouldn’t they be together?’ Jules, shocked,
had asked him.
‘I don’t think so,’ Silas had replied with finality.
‘But it seems so...’ She wavered, her eyes
miserable. ^
‘What does it seem?’ Silas asked coldly.
‘Unkind,’ Jules said. ‘Not right.’
He refused to speak to her after that for more
than a week. Silas was good at making his soft¬
hearted sister suffer, knew how to punish her by
simply freezing her out, knew it would invariably
not be long till she begged him to forgive her.
Which, of course, he would, because he loved her
and because she was, after all, all he had left now.
The pardon came, on that occasion, the follow¬
ing Sunday, after she’d cooked him his favourite
roast pork and fresh apple sauce lunch, and even
if her crackling hadn’t been a patch on Patricia’s,
it hadn’t been too bad either, and Silas recog¬
nized what a great effort she’d made, considering
her grief.
‘You won’t ever let me down again, will you,
Jules?’ he asked, after lunch.
‘Again?’ She looked distressed.
‘You questioned my decision about Graham ’
Silas said.
‘Only because I thought Mummy would have
been unhappy about it.’
‘Mummy isn’t here any more,’ Silas said, gentle
now. ‘Just you and me now, Jules, and I need to
know you’re on my side.’
‘Always,’ Jules told him fervently.
She gave him a big hug, almost crying with
relief at being forgiven, and for a moment or two,
28
holding her^ Silas felt it was almost like having
their mother back again. Their real mother, pre-
Graham-the-stranger.
‘Would you mind-’ he felt choked with sudden
emotion ‘-if we slept in the same bed tonight?’
He had taken over Patricia’s and Graham’s bed¬
room within a week of their deaths, had boxed his
stepfather’s belongings and dumped them in one
of the two spare bedrooms, and brought his own
clothes and personal paraphernalia in from his
old single room. It felt right to him, returning to
the bed where he and his mother had been per¬
fectly content until Graham’s arrival in their lives,
but he had still felt lonely, had not slept really well
lying in the big bed all on his own.
‘Of course I wouldn’t mind,’ Jules said, ‘if it’ll
make you feel better.’
‘Good,’ Silas said, and drew away.
Jules saw tears in his eyes, reached out and
stroked his cheek tenderly.
‘Poor Silas,’ she said.

He woke, one night, lying inches from his sister

in his mother’s bed, with an erection.
Disgusting.
Patricia’s voice was so clear she might have
been standing beside the bed.
Silas took a breath, edged carefully from beneath
the duvet, grabbed his dressing gown, and made it
into the bathroom.
Still hard.
Ridiculous.
He told himself, even while he was in the bath¬
room, masturbating under a towel, wishing he’d
29
 remembered to get the lock on the door fixed^
that his mother was gone, and that even if she
were not, he was a grown man now, a maw, for
fuck’s sake, and all men wanked now and then,
and there was nothing wrong with it. But still he
felt angry with himself, for his inability to control
the impulse, felt ashamed, afraid in case Jules
woke up and heard him or, worse, came into the
bathroom and saw what he was doing, in case she
was disgusted, the way their mother had been, or
worst of all, in case she laughed at him.
Even that wasn’t his greatest fear, he realized.
His greatest fear was that if she knew what he was
doing, Jules might not want to sleep with him any
more, and he didn’t want to sleep alone again.
He finished jerking off into the towel, his free
hand jammed against his mouth to muffle his
involuntary cry.
No more^ he told himself, getting over it, folding
the towel back over the rail, confident at least that
Jules seldom used this bathroom, so that he would
be able to get back to it in the morning, toss it in
the washing machine without her knowing.
It wasn’t right, anyway, getting a hard-on in
that bed, certainly not next to his little sister.
That bed, that bedroom - whatever Patricia and
Graham had got up to in the three years they’d
spent together - was meant for perfect love, the
kind he’d shared with his mother until he had
come along. The kind he shared with Jules now.
Not for sex. Not now, anyway. Maybe, some
day, in years to come, with the right woman, a
wife maybe, someone who loved, really loved him.

30
In the meantime^ there was no shortage of girl¬
friends, many of them coming Silas’s way via John
Bromley, a guy from school who was a bit of a
legend where women were concerned, and while
Silas liked to think he didn’t actually need anyone
else’s leftovers, he also accepted that he was
somewhat lazy when it came to pulling. If it
weren’t for John, Silas sometimes thought he
might not bother at all. As it was, he was certainly
only interested in seriously good-looking girls, or
at least girls interesting looking enough for him to
want to photograph.
Some of them liked having their pictures taken,
some found it a bit odd, because though there was
no burning passion in him to take ground-break¬
ing or even simply very beautiful photographs, he
did tend, when he was in the mood, to get a bit
obsessive about getting shots exactly the way he
wanted them, playing about with backgrounds, or
making backgrounds vanish altogether, so that the
women looked like they were flying or floating,
stuff like that, cool stuff, all good practice for when
he got to college and studied photography full¬
time.
As for sex itself, Silas thought he might enjoy it
more if he were better at it. He had always
preferred, wherever possible, to be good at what¬
ever he did and not to bother too much about the
rest, and he wasn’t sure that he was outstandingly
gifted on the sexual front. Bromley claimed (not
that Silas exactly believed him) that he could
make it go on and on till his women were scream¬
ing with pleasure. In Silas’s case, it all tended to
be a bit speedier and more urgent than that. Not
31
 that he’d any real complaints. Except that red¬
head, Sonia Something-or-other who he’d met
when he and John had gone to the Spaniard’s one
Sunday, and Silas hadn’t madly fancied her, but it
was obvious John had his eye on her, and he was
in the mood that day for competition.
Anyway, Sonia-the-redhead had been a good
five or so years older than him, and she’d also had
a great body and been decidedly up for it, and
when Silas had gone back to her place off
Parliament Hill he’d suddenly felt incredibly
horny, and photographing Sonia undressing (she
hadn’t minded that one bit) had made him
harder than he could ever remember having been
before. But then they’d done it, and he hadn’t
been able to wait for her, hadn’t really been all
that fussed about even trying to wait, if he was
candid, because the best part had been the build¬
up and he generally liked the preliminaries more
than the main event.
Selfish bastard,’ Sonia had called him, because
he’d come before her, and Silas had considered
walking out straightaway, but then he’d relented
and given her a hand-job instead, partly because
he figured if he didn’t make the effort she might
bad-mouth him to Bromley or some of her sirl-
friends. ^
Not that he cared that much. Sex served a
definite purpose, he’d decided a long while back,
but it was strictly physical, nothing more. Messy
and - unlike the fakery in most movies - not
especially beautiful.
Alasturbation, at least, he thought now, creeping
out of the bathroom and going back to the bed in
32
which Jules was still thankfully sleeping peace¬
fully, got it over and done with without fuss.
Disgusting. His mother’s voice in his head again.
Ridiculous.
‘Piss off. Mother,’ Silas said, also in his head.

Chapter Eight

When Patricia’s will was read to Silas and Jules

by her solicitor Stephen Wetherall in his office in
Lincoln’s Inn, it transpired that their mother had
left legacies of five thousand pounds to Silas and
ten thousand pounds to Jules. More cash to his
sister, Patricia had written in a side letter,
because Silas was handsome, clever, charming,
and a man to boot, and would therefore, she was
sure, find life easier than Jules might. Patricia had
bequeathed the house on Muswell Hill and the
remainder of her estate to Graham who, she
wrote, had made her very happy; but in the event
of his failing to survive her, the house was to go
to Jules, the residue to Silas.
Silas did not wait for any pleasantries after the
reading, picked up his grey winter coat, stalked
out of the office, jumped into Patricia’s Ford
Escort and gunned away. By the time Jules got
home in the taxi summoned for her by the kindly
solicitor, her brother was upstairs in the big
double bedroom, packing.
‘What are you doing?' She was distraught.
‘I’d have thought that was obvious.’ He picked
33
 up a tumbler of malt whisky from his bedside
table, held it up. ‘Decided the Glenlivet was
probably his^ so I figured you wouldn’t mind too
much.’ He tipped the pale liquid down his throat.
‘Silas, stop it!’ Jules, who had wept for a good
part of the drive home, now began again. ‘I know
you’re upset, but you don’t-’
‘Upset’s a bit of an understatement, sis.’ He put
down the glass, tossed two cellophane-packed
shirts and a black sweater into the open case on his
bed.
‘You don’t understand.’ Jules darted forward,
pulled out the sweater, clutched it to her. ‘I’ve
already asked Stephen about changing the will. I
think it’s awful of Mummy to have done that to
you, and in a way it was quite insulting to me,
too, saying I need it all more because I’m a girl
and not very pretty and always reading.’
‘She didn’t say any of that,’ Silas said.
‘You know it’s what she meant,’ Jules said,
which was true, because Patricia had always been
nagging at her daughter to make more of her
looks and to get her head out of the books she
loved so much. ‘But anyway, she only wrote what
she did about the two bequests, didn’t she? The
house wouldn’t have come to me if Graham
hadn’t died, too, and at least she left you all the
rest, and Stephen says it’s quite a lot.’
‘I don’t care about the money,’ Silas said,
though he was not quite certain that was true.
‘But let me guess what Stephen said about you
changing the will.’ He turned to one of the open
wardrobes. ‘Big fat no, right?’
He said no to that.’ Jules still clung to the
34
sweater. ‘But apparently I could write over half
the house to you if I wanted.’
Silas turned around. ‘I wouldn’t ask you to do
that/ he said. ‘Anyway, you’re too young, surely?’
‘Now I am,’ Jules admitted. ‘But when I’m
older-’
‘When you’re older-’ Silas cut her off ‘-I could
be long gone.’
‘Silas, donhr She threw down the sweater on the
nearest chair. ‘Please don’t talk that way!’
He shrugged. ‘I’m sorry, but it’s hardly my fault.’
‘Not mine either.’ Jules came closer, put out a
tentative hand, touched his arm. ‘Silas, you can’t
leave me, I couldn’t bear it.’
Silas stepped away, took two pairs of jeans out
of the wardrobe.
‘And I’m only thirteen-’ Jules fought on
desperately ‘-so if you went, someone else, some
outsider^ would have to come and live here with
me, and surely you’d hate that too, and it doesn’t
matter what it says in Mummy’s will, this is still
owr house, isn’t it? Yours and mine.’
Silas folded the jeans, laid them on top of the
shirts, picked up the sweater Jules had dropped
on the chair.
‘I could write a letter now,’ Jules said, desper¬
ately, ‘promising you the house when I’m
eighteen or whatever age I have to be.’
‘Half of it, you mean.’ Silas picked a bit of fluff
off the sweater.
‘Half, or all of it,’ Jules said. ‘I don’t care about
the house. All I care about is you not leaving me,
Silas, darling.’
He watched her scrub away tears with the back
35
 4
of one hand.
‘What if we had half each/ he said, slowly, ‘and
you wanted to sell your half?’
‘Same if you wanted to,’ Jules said.
‘No,’ Silas said. ‘If this was my house, I would
never sell it.’
‘Nor would I,’ his sister said.
‘You might if you fell in love with some stranger
and he wanted you to.’
‘I wouldn’t,’ she said, passionately.
Silas sat on the bed beside his case. ‘You might,
Jules. You’re not as tough as me. You might be
persuaded.’
Jules looked at him for a moment, then came
and sat beside him.
‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘I’m not as tough as
you.’
Silas chewed his bottom lip, then smiled. ‘All
right, sis, you win. All to me, then, so we can be
sure of keeping it in the family.’
‘And you’ll stop packing?’
He nodded, smiled again.
‘Thank you.’ Jules was eager. ‘Help me write
the letter.’
‘I’ll help you draft it,’ Silas said. ‘But you’ll have
to make sure Wetherall knows it’s your idea, and
he’ll have to word it properly.’ He paused. ‘And
I’ll write a letter too-’ he was easy now, confident
again ‘-promising to always look after you.’
Jules moved closer to him. ‘We’ll always look
after each other.’
Silas looked at her.
‘You say that now,’ he said.

36
It wasn’t just hurt or wounded pride, or even
especially the need to own the house that had got
to Silas so badly. Their house was genuinely far
more important to him than it was to Jules, who
was still pretty much a kid, for God’s sake, a girl
who was, at heart, a romantic, and who would in
time, he was absolutely certain, think about
moving to some other home.
Silas would never do that. This was his family
home. No big fancy pile, no estate, just a good,
solid, handsome and rather valuable house. One
that had already stood the test of many years,
that might throw up the odd crack or problem
now and then, but would not easily crumble.
TTz^/r house. That was what mattered to Silas. It
was ‘the Graves house’, in the same way that the
house next door was ‘the Brook house’. Con¬
tinuity and constancy mattered to Silas. The
house having belonged to his parents and then to
his mother, and continuing to belong to him and
Jules.
To Jules alone now, if Patricia had her way.
Though that, he was fairly confident after his
chat with his sister, would change in time.
What would not change, would never now
change, was that he hated his mother for doing
this to him. He had known, of course, since the
stranger, that she was not a person to be depended
upon, that she had no real loyalty, but her will...
He clenched his jaw at the mere thought of it.
Her will had finished Patricia for him forever.

Once Jules had written her letter - once that side

of things was settled, morally if not yet strictly
37
 legally - Silas was certain that they would rub
along very nicely. His sister was not a fussy child,
very clean, thank Christ, but not obsessively
hygienic or tidy or wanting to alter things for no
good reason. Jules was, all things considered, a
practical and sensitive person.
Which was what their house was suited to, Silas
felt: practical, sensitive people who would take
care of it and not change things unnecessarily. Its
overall size and shape, and the construction of its
rooms were in need of no alteration; the house
had cool, shady rooms for summertime and
warm, cosier spots for winter. It was a bit dark in
places, but that was a small price to pay for being
shielded from a busy road by beautiful old trees;
and anyway, most big old houses had dark nooks
and crannies, and their house had lovely bay
windows in the living room and master bedroom
and an elegant staircase.
Silas had never realized until his mother had
tried to rob him of it how much he cared about the
house. Had never been aware, as he now was, of
it being an almost living thing, a kind of organism
in its own right, like an outer, protective skin.
Just an overcoat, he’d tried telling himself when
he’d walked out of Stephen Wetherall’s office. A
shelter at most. But he hadn’t really believed it. It
was much more than that, would always be more,
so long as it remained their house. The Graves
family’s house.
His house.

38
 Chapter Nine

Until she met Silas, the best times of Abigail’s life

had taken place back on Allen’s Farm, her parents’
home in the Pentland Hills, south of Edinburgh.
From first awareness to around age twelve, she
had, she believed, been almost completely happy.
School in the village. Regular drives with
Francesca - born in Glasgow to a passionately
musical Italian mother and Scottish father - to
West Linton to buy provisions and treats.
Lambing, the hardest working time of year for
her parents and the farmhands, but the sweetest
for Abigail because Douglas, her daddy, let her
help in the pens when homework and music
practice permitted, and even her mother, on rare
occasions, had been known to let her help bottle
feed the more helpless, weest ones. And that had
been followed, all too soon after they were
weaned, by trips to Lanark with her father, and
that had been sad, of course, even horrible - sort
of, though not exactly^ knowing what was going
to happen to the lambs - but even at an early age,
Abigail had been told by Dougie that market was
a vital part of farming and what put food on the
table, and she’d never seen her daddy lay rough
hands on any of their creatures, and she trusted
him and understood what had to be.
Twice each year - once for a Festival concert,
once for the Christmas lights - the Allens went
39
 on a day trip to Edinburgh. Abigail liked the
lights well enough, but a boy at school named
Jamie Cochrane had warned her once that the
rocks beneath the castle were crumbling away,
and that it was only a matter of time till the whole
pile came crashing down onto Princes Street.
‘Right onto your head,’ he’d said.
Her parents had both laughed when she’d
shared that fear with them, had told her not to
fret, that the castle was and would remain
perfectly solid and exactly where it was, but still,
after what Jamie Cochrane had told her, Abigail
had done her best to try to persuade them to stay
on the shopping side of the street.
Allen’s Farm was where she had felt safest. Just
them and the labourers and the sheep and the
gorgeous colours and smells of the land and the
grasses and wildflowers, and the snug freedom of
the timeless landscape wrapping around them.
Allen’s Farm was where Abigail had wanted to,
had felt sure she would be able to, stay forever.
When some of her school-friends talked about
their longing to be in bigger, more exciting cities
like Edinburgh or Glasgow or even London,
Abigail found she could picture no place or
lifestyle more perfect than her own.
‘When I grow up,’ she told Jeannie McEwan at
school, ‘Fm going to be a farmer, just like mv
daddy.’
‘But your Ma wants you to do music,’ Jeannie
pointed out.
‘That’s just silliness,’ Abigail dismissed. ‘If I go
round the world playing her cello, who’ll take
care of the farm?’
40
 ‘Maybe you’ll get a brother,’ Jeannie suggested.
‘They can’t have any more babies,’ Abigail said,
frankly, for that was something else that her father
had explained to her a long while back, that there
was something the matter with her mother’s
womb, and that they had been lucky to have her.
She’d found it easy enough to understand
because her daddy had said it was just like what
had happened to one of the ewes the previous
spring - except, of course, that the ewe had gone
to the abattoir after that, which, to Abigail’s mind,
made her mother’s predicament rather less sad by
comparison.

‘There’s so much more to life than Allen’s Farm.’

If her mother had said that to Abigail once,
she’d said it at least a dozen times. Important and
necessary as it was, farming, Francesca Allen said,
not untruthfully, was poorly paid, frequently
virtually t^wpaid, drudgery.
‘There are wonders in the world away from the
hills, away even from Scotland,’ she told her
daughter. ‘Things you’ll be able to see for your¬
self, live for yourself, if you listen to me.’
‘But I love the farm, Ma.’ Abigail always re¬
sponded simply, steadfastly. ‘I love it more than
anything.’
‘Now you do,’ Francesca said. ‘But when you’re
older-’
‘I’ll be the same,’ Abigail insisted.
Usually at such times her mother smiled wearily
but knowingly and let the subject rest, though
there was no capitulation in that, for there was a
strand of cast-iron resolve inside Francesca. She
41
 might have stamped on her own mother’s dreams
for her; might have given up the place that could
have been hers at the Glasgow Conservatoire for
love of Douglas Allen; might have made the
decision to become a farmer’s wife rather than a
concert cellist; might have learned to regret that
as she had lurched with Dougie from one farming
crisis to the next. But Abigail, by age eight, had
already shown more musical potential (in Fran¬
cesca’s opinion as her teacher, not just as her
mother) than she ever had, and so she would be
damned if she’d see that squandered.
Dougie, for his part, said as little as possible
about it. Thrilled by his daughter’s love of the
land, it saddened him considerably to contemplate
the farm passing, ultimately, into the hands of
strangers, but he knew how deep his wife’s pas¬
sions ran, how much she’d given up for his sake,
how fervently she believed in Abigail’s musical
talent, and, being a peaceable man, found it
frankly easier, as a general rule in their everyday
lives, not to antagonize his wife.
'What if she refuses to go on playing?’ he had
once asked.
'She will not refuse,’ Francesca had replied.
And Abigail had not, for, like Dougie, she
disliked confrontation and loved her mother. And
playing the cello ('violoncello’, her mother called
it sometimes, in her most serious moods) had
been a pleasure from the age of six, when Fran¬
cesca had first sat her down with the beautiful old
instrument, reducing the length of the extendable
spike at its base to make it a little less formidably
tall, and allowing her to get used to its shape and
42
construction, and its feel too — smooth wood first,
then the strings - watching her daughter’s expres¬
sion as she created her own first sounds with her
fingers - and then with the bow.
‘Touch it,’ she had told Abigail. ‘It’s horsehair.
All bows for stringed instruments are made of
hair from the tails of male horses.’
‘Does it hurt them?’ Abigail had promptly
wanted to know.
‘No more than it hurts you when I cut your
hair,’ her mother had answered.
‘Why male horses, Ma?’
Given that her daughter had already observed
on the farm, with interest and plentiful questions,
a few years of ewes in season being covered by
rams, Francesca saw no reason not to explain that
mares’ tails tended to become wee-soaked, where¬
as a stallion’s, for obvious reasons, did not.
‘Now-’ Francesca had moved smartly along
‘-sit nice and straight, Abigail, and see if you can
hold the cello firmly with your knees.’ She
paused, watched for a moment. ‘If we had more
money,’ she said, ‘we might have been able to find
you a smaller instrument, but-’
‘No,’ Abigail had jumped in swiftly, struggling to
find a position where she might be able to feel
some degree of control over the body of the instru¬
ment and its long neck. ‘I like this one, Ma, really.’
Her mother had watched, smiling, satisfied
with the beginning.
‘When you’re ready,’ she said, ‘take the bow
again - with your left hand, not your right, sweet¬
heart - and hold it here-’ she showed her ‘-almost
at the end, just below what they call the frog-’
43
 ‘Frog?’ Abigail’s grey eyes were round.
‘I’ve no idea why it’s called that/ Francesca
said, ‘but it is.’
She showed Abigail how to prepare to use the
bow, placed her right thumb against the stick,
curved the middle finger around the first joint,
then arranged her other fingers, and waited for
the child to either fidget or drop the bow or grow
bored with the fussiness of it.
It was a tribute, Abigail realized a long while
later, to her mother’s teaching and to Francesca’s
own talent as a cellist, that she had not, for the
most part, grown bored with her lessons. She
found the music that her mother played very
beautiful, felt a great desire to emulate her, experi¬
enced, almost from the very beginning, a true
thrill when she managed to produce warm, some¬
times rich sounds from the precious instrument.
And even if she might, quite often, rather have
been out in the fields or sheep pens with her
daddy, if practising regularly was what it took to
keep her ma in a good mood, then, certainly for
the time being, Abigail was happy to comply.

Much later on, looking back on the latter part of

that early life, Abigail found it hard to identify
exactly when she had be^n to change from that
contented, amenable child into the increasingly
stroppy, often sullen creature who had, finally,
destroyed everything that had been wonderful in
her life. Puberty, perhaps, teasing so-called
maturity into her body and mind.
No excuse.
‘A terrible accident,’ they all said.
44
 Her fault, whatever they said.
But Ma had told her never to say that, so she
had not.
And so, instead of being shut away from decent
people, Abigail had been free. To go and live with
her Auntie Betty, Bougie’s sister, and her
husband. Bill Innis, in their poky terraced house
near Ravenscraig, with no garden to speak of, and
no real air to breathe, and no animals to play with,
which was all, of course, the very least of what
Abigail deserved. And for a while, after she went to
them, her aunt and uncle had done what they
could to love their depressed and depressing niece,
but Abigail had not been able to endure anyone
being nice to her, so in the end the best Betty and
Bill had found themselves able to do had been to
put up with her until she was old enough to leave.
Francesca’s cello was what had saved Abigail
from total self-destruction. It was the only solace
she had permitted herself in the months and
years after the tragedy, the only item of value she
had asked to take away from the farm. Because
keeping the cello, and taking care of it, and prac¬
tising on it every moment she could, was all she
could do for her mother now.
She wasn’t allowed to play at home any more
because of the neighbours, and Auntie Betty had
never really understood her sister-in-law, had
thought Francesca’s love of classical music a
symptom of what she called her Toreignness’. So
Abigail had asked Miss Howe, the music teacher
at her new school, if she might keep the instru¬
ment and practise there, and Gwen Howe, who
had a special love of the cello, and who had found
45
herself moved in equal parts by her pupil’s great
tragedy and by her dedication^ had volunteered to
take over where Francesca had left off, teaching
her privately, after school hours, for no payment,
and had managed, in time, to encourage Abigail
all the way into a place at the Glasgow Conserva¬
toire.
The place that ought, by rights, to have been
her mother’s. The place that she felt ashamed to
accept, but knew she had to, for Francesca’s sake.

Sometimes, in the three years that followed,

surrounded by so much life and prodigious talent
and by the noisy, busy city, and by the music itself,
Abigail found that for just a little while she almost
forgot Allen’s Farm and her parents and past
contentment, even, very seldom and fieetingly,
succeeded in pushing that day to the back of her
mind. But then, almost immediately, she would
drag it back to the forefront, slap it back across her
mind’s eye, where it belonged in all its agony.
The agony was all she had a right to.
It served a purpose sometimes, gave her playing
an edge and depth that others noticed and were a
little impressed by. No one ever felt, when Abigail
played, that they were in the presence of any kind
of greatness, but her tireless commitment and that
dark edge lifted her above some of her contemp¬
oraries, led her first into a professional string
quartet in Glasgow and then (after a long period
of introspection, during which she made her deci¬
sion to abandon Scotland for the vaster anonymity
of London) onto the books of Nagy Artists
Where, despite Charlie Nagy’s enthusiasm and
46
kindness^ Abigail came to see the harsh truth of
what she had regularly been warned about: that
the greatest problem faced by the vast majority of
cellists was lack of work.
Harsh truths suited Abigail. What few engage¬
ments did come her way were more than she
deserved. She played, still, for Francesca, had
intended it, at the outset, merely as a kind of
penance, but then the music had brought her a
measure of contentment which, in turn, had
heaped yet more guilt on her. And Abigail, not
knowing what else to do, had accepted both the
music and the guilt, and rejected everything and
everyone else.
Had kept herself isolated. A secret leper.
Until Silas.

Chapter Ten

When Silas was twenty and nearing the end of a

photographic course at City of Westminster
College, his father had come home.
Almost a decade had passed since he had walked
out on his wife and children without a word, but
Paul Graves looked more like twenty than ten
years older. What hair he had left was grey, his skin
was pasty and lined, his chin appeared, his son
observed, almost to have caved in, and, though it
was only September and quite warm, he looked
very cold.
‘Bit of a shock for you,’ Graves had said to Silas
47
 on the doorstep.
Even in those first moments of pure, hard
shock, Silas had found himself hoping that when
it came to his own ageing process his mother’s
genes would be stronger than this man’s; Patricia
had of course been comparatively young when
the avalanche had killed her, but had she lived,
Silas could not picture her ever having grown as
gracelessly old as the first of her husbands.
‘What do you want?’ he asked, at last.
‘Not going to ask me in?’ Paul Graves said.
Silas shrugged, opened the door and let his
father in.
‘You’re lucky to find me here,’ he said. ‘I’d
normally be at college.’
‘Studying to be the new Bailey or whatever,’
Graves said.
‘Whatever,’ Silas said, anger already quietly
rising.
He wished, he thought, walking ahead of
Graves into the living room, that he could have
gone to find Jules, warn her, perhaps try to stop
her coming home, but she’d have left school by
now, and anyway, he’d be damned if he was going
to leave this man alone in the house.
‘Julia on her way home?’ Graves asked.
Silas turned, glanced at him with distaste, said
nothing.
‘Want to go and meet her? Make it a bit less of
a shock for her?’
Silas sat down in the armchair that, even now, he
remembered had been his father’s. Armchair, cigar¬
ette, scotch, newspaper or telly or both, every evening
Until he’d fucked off.
48
 ‘You can leave me for a bit,’ his father said. ‘I
won’t steal anything.’
‘You might,’ Silas said. ‘How should I know?’
‘If you prefer. I’ll wait out in the street.’
They both heard the key in the lock.
Silas got swiftly to his feet. ‘Wait here.’
He shut the living room door behind him just
as Jules was coming in.
‘What’s up?’ she asked, seeing his expression.
‘You won’t believe it,’ Silas said, and told her.
‘God.’ Jules had turned very pale.
‘You okay?’ Silas took her arm, ready to sup¬
port her. ‘Sis?’
She nodded. ‘What about him? Is he all right?’
‘He looks like shit,’ Silas said. ‘Down and out in
Muswell Hill.’
‘God,’ Jules said again.
She tried to start towards the sitting room, but
Silas kept hold of her arm, held her back for
another moment.
‘Don’t put out the welcome mat, Jules. He’s a
bastard, remember.’
‘But we don’t know,’ she said, ‘what he’s been
through.’
‘He’s not dead, is he,’ Silas said.

Graves appeared sorry, in a mournful, self-pitying

fashion, for deserting his family, but circum¬
stances, he told them, had been difficult.
‘What circumstances?’ Silas asked.
His father had sat down wearily, heavily, on the
sofa, when bidden, and Jules - having seen how
cold he looked, and having gone, without telling
Silas, to switch on the central heating - was sitting
49
 stiffly in one of the armchairs^, while Silas was now
up on his feet^ choosing physical superiority.
Graves answered his son with a vague, helpless
shake of his head. ‘Pointless going over it all now.’
Silas looked away from him with disgust,
looked at Jules, saw, with dismay, that patently
she was feeling sorry for the man who was, he
supposed, still their father in the biological sense,
but who seemed, at least to him, as much a
stranger as Graham Francis had been when their
mother had first brought him home.
‘I heard what happened to your mother,’
Graves said. ‘I was very sorry.’
‘Not sorry enough to come back for her
funeral,’ Silas said.
Jules had still not spoken. She was tall for
fifteen, still slim but strong-limbed from netball
and swimming, though sitting there now looking
back and forth between her brother and father,
she looked, Silas felt, a little smaller, diminished
by shock, he supposed.
BcLstcLvd^ he thought again, violently, for doing
that to her. Stinking bastard.
‘I can imagine,’ Paul Graves ventured, ‘how
bitter you must be.’
Jules opened her mouth to speak.
‘Can you?’ Silas got in first, cuttingly.
‘I think so,’ Graves said quietly. ‘You both look
marvellous.’
‘No thanks to you,’ Silas said.
‘No,’ his father agreed. ‘But still, it makes me feel
proud to see you like this.’ He went on quickly.
You have your mother’s bone structure, Julia ’
‘She’s called Jules,’ Silas said.
50
 ‘Sorry.’ Paul Graves smiled at his daughter. ‘I
didn’t know.’
‘You knew about my photography course,’ Silas
said.
‘I’ve tried to keep an eye on you both.’ Graves
flushed. ‘From afar.’
‘Where have-?’
‘You haven’t said what it is you want.’ Silas cut
in on Jules’s question.
‘Silas,’ she said, reproachfully.
Her father darted her a look of gratitude.
‘So?’ Silas said. ‘What do you want?’
Paul Graves swallowed hard. ‘I was wondering,’
he said, ‘if you could see your way to putting me
up for a day or two.’
Silas stared down at him, then turned on his
heel and left the room.
‘I’m sorry,’ Jules said to her father, then got up
and followed her brother out into the hall. ‘Silas,
don’t be too hard-’
‘He’s kidding, right?’ Silas said.
‘Of course he’s not kidding,’ his sister said. ‘Just
look at him.’
‘He looks like a tramp,’ Silas said. ‘He’s a
bloody disgrace.’ Jules reached behind her, shut
the living room door. ‘We have to help him.’
‘For God’s sake, Jules, you have to be the soft¬
est touch in the world. We do not have to help
that man.’
‘He’s our father.’
‘Ten years, Jules.’
‘I know,’ she said, softly. ‘I know, but-’
‘You were only five.’ When Silas was angry, his
sea green eyes seemed darker, pupils dilating
51
 dramatically, spreading pools of black into the
colour.
‘I know,’ Jules said again. ‘And I understand it’s
partly for my sake you feel so angry with him-’
she touched his arm ‘-but I still don’t see that we
can just kick our own dad out into the street.’
‘Don’t call him that.’
Jules said nothing.
‘I’m aware-’ Silas withdrew his arm ‘-that this
is still, technically, your house, Jules, but I would
like to point out-’
‘Please don’t start all that again, Silas.’
‘But I would like to point out, if I may^ that I
am still the adult here, the one who’s been taking
care of you and running this household for the
last two years.’
‘Yes, of course you have, but-’
‘The one you’ve made certain promises to.’
Yes,’ Jules said, ‘I have, and I’m not forgetting
any of that.’ She stood her ground. ‘But I don’t
really see what it’s got to do with putting our
father up for the night, letting him get cleaned
giving him a decent meal.’ She paused for
breath. ‘He looks ill, Silas.’
‘You’ll have to cook it,’ Silas said, after a
moment. ‘I won’t.’
^I cook most of our meals, don’t I?’ Jules asked.
‘And I won’t have him using my bath.’ Though
Jules still shared the master bedroom most nights,
she still maintained her own bedroom and bath¬
room. ‘And you can turn off the heating again It’s
only September, for God’s sake.’
Jules glared at him. ‘At least we should find out
what he s come for.’
52
 ‘Money, I expect,’ Silas said.
‘We’ve got plenty, haven’t we?’ Jules said.
Silas gave her one of the cold looks he knew
made her wretched, saw, with satisfaction, the
bolshie glare dwindle away.
‘Please,’ she said. ‘At least let’s tell him he can
stay tonight.’
‘He’ll want to stay longer.’
‘He might not,’ she said.
‘The more we do for him,’ Silas said, ‘the more
he’ll want.’
‘I’m not saying we have to do more,’ Jules said.
‘Just please let him stay here with us this one
night.’
‘So long as you accept,’ Silas said, ‘that’s all.’
‘I do,’ Jules said.
He knew she was lying.

The next morning, when Jules went upstairs to

the spare room with a cup of tea, there was no
answer to her knocking.
Tentatively, she opened the door.
The cup and saucer trembled in her hand.
Paul Graves was in bed, his face a strange, ugly
colour, his eyes open and staring. Unseeing.
Jules bent down, put the teacup and saucer on
the carpet, backed out of the room and went to
find Silas, still sound sleep in the bed that Graves
had once shared with their mother.
‘He’s dead,’ she told him, shaking him awake.
‘Silas, he’s deadj'
‘Huh?’ He was bleary.
‘Silas, wake up. Our father’s dead:
He got out of bed, pulled on a T-shirt over his
53
 shorts, came with her to see.
‘He’s dead, all right,’ he agreed.
Jules had begun to cry. ‘He looks so ... odd!'
‘Dead looks odd sometimes, I suppose.’ Silas put
his arm around her. ‘Don’t upset yourself, Jules.’
‘He’s our father,’ his sister said.
‘Not any more,’ Silas said.
Jules gave a strangled sob and turned to leave.
‘Where are you going?’ Silas asked.
‘To phone,’ she answered, ‘for help.’
‘What for?’ he said. ‘Too late for an ambulance.
Or Doc Isaacs.’
Peter Isaacs had been their family doctor since
they were small.
‘We’ve still got to call someone.’ Jules scrubbed
at her eyes. ‘We have to have a thingie.’ She
scrambled for the words. ‘Death certificate.’
‘I don’t think so,’ Silas said.
‘We have to do something!
Silas held out his hand, and she came to him.
He drew her close, pulled her gently back to the
bed. Look at him, sis,’ he said. ‘You said yourself
he looks odd, and you’re right.’
She took one more look and closed her eyes,
tears spilling down her cheeks.
I m sorry, darling— Silas persisted ‘—but what
do you suppose the ambulance men or even Doc
Isaacs would say? Think they’d just say: oh, right,
he s dead, here s the certificate, go bury him?’
Even if they don’t-’ Jules’s eyes were open
again -what does that matter? They’ll still come
and take him away and examine him or whatever
and then-’ ’
Jules, Silas said sharply. ‘Shut up.’
54
He led her from the room^ closed the door^
fetched a sweater for her to pull over her nightie
because she was shivering, then brought her down
to the kitchen, boiled the kettle, made her a cup of
strong, sweet tea and waited till she’d had a few
sips.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘I need you to listen to me
carefully, Jules, okay?’
She nodded, still shivering.
‘Drink your tea.’
‘I am.’
‘What we are not going to do here-’ Silas sat
down, pulled his chair close to hers ‘-is phone
anyone for any kind of help.’
‘Why not?’ Jules asked.
‘Because it would stir up all kinds of compli¬
cations.’
‘What do you mean?’ She paused. ‘Tell me you
don’t mean the house.’
‘I hadn’t thought about the house, though
that’s a good point.’
‘Silas, please.’ Jules was disgusted.
‘What I was thinking is that there’s every chance
that whoever we call might feel that because he
looks the way he does - odd - maybe his death
might have been a bit odd too.’
‘What do you mean?’ she asked again, bewil¬
dered.
‘Don’t be naive,’ Silas said. ‘Our father dis¬
appears a decade ago, comes home, spends one
night in the spare room in his old house — now
our house - sorry, still your house - and you find
him dead, looking odd, next morning.’
55
 ‘But that’s what happened,’ Jules said.
‘Maybe so.’ Silas paused. ‘But that might not
stop them thinking one of us might have done
something to him.’
Jules looked aghast. ‘That’s mad. No one would
think that.’
‘They might.’ He watched her face. ‘There’s
only one way to be sure that doesn’t happen.’
‘How?’
‘No one else knows he came back,’ he said,
simply. ‘Or even, necessarily, that he was still
alive. We’re his own children and we didn’t know,
did we?’
A frown was forming between Jules’s arched
eyebrows. Silas put out a finger, tried to stroke it
away.
‘So all we really need to do,’ he said, slowly, ‘is
bury him.’
Jules didn’t speak.
‘In the garden.’ He saw her expression change,
grow appalled. ‘We can’t risk taking him out, sis
- I don’t think I’m up to coping with the body-
in-plastic-bag-in-car-boot routine, and I’m sure
you’re not.’
Jules stared at her brother for a long moment.
‘This is a joke, Silas. Please tell me it’s a joke?’
'Our father just died,’ he said. ‘Would I joke at
a time like this?’

He steered her through his plan, told her, with

steadily-increasing conviction, that it was the
right — the only remotely sensible — thing to do in
the circumstances, and though Jules did not
think, at any point, that she truly believed him,
56
she did not know what else to do.
Silas had been, for the last two years, everything
to her, as she had, she realized, been to him. He
had been her protector, had nursed her through
illness, had comforted her through her first,
startlingly painful, period. He’d paid the bills,
seen to repairs, bunked off from school to cheer
her on in netball competitions, helped her with
prep, read her essays, regularly brought her home
books he thought she might enjoy. He drove her
to friends’ homes or to the cinema or wherever
she wanted to go after dark or when the weather
was bad, collected her again to bring her home
rather than letting her take the tube or risk
travelling with a bad driver.
He was, had always been, the strongest influ¬
ence in her life.
And so now, as she had so often in the past, she
gave in.

They waited until nine, when it was dark, before

Silas commenced work on a patch near the back
of the large garden where, each spring, daffodils
sprang up; a rough, grassy area which was, in day¬
light hours, well-shaded by a large oak tree and
which ought therefore, Silas had calculated, to be
reasonably obscured from the Brook family next
door.
‘Surely we should wait till much later?’ Jules had
panicked at the early start, realizing even as she
said it that she’d feel similarly whatever time they
-he - chose to begin. ‘Till they’re definitely fast
asleep.’
‘Better earlier,’ Silas had said, ‘while they’re
57
 i

watching TV.’
‘What if they’re not?' she asked. ‘What if they’re
reading or just quiet?’
‘If they hear us/ Silas said, ‘they’ll come to their
windows, and we’ll see them and stop for a bit.’
He had stroked her hair, tried to soothe her. ‘It’ll
be okay, Jules.’
‘Let’s not do this,’ she had said, for at least the
fifth or sixth time. ‘Please, Silas, let’s just not do
it. Let’s phone someone instead.’
‘Too late now,’ he told her. ‘We found him this
morning.’
‘We might not have,’ Jules reasoned. ‘We might
have just come home.’
‘We haven’t just come home,’ Silas said. ‘And
that’s something the Brooks or any number of
other people might know.’ He’d given her one of
his gentle, reassuring smiles. ‘All you need to do
is keep watch, darling. I’ll do all the work.’

Finding the ground much too hard to dig with the

spade he’d found in the garden shed, he began
with a tool he thought their former gardener (a
man named Archie, who’d quit several months
back, for which Silas was now grateful) had called
a pick. It had a curved steel head, pointed at both
ends, and Silas found, after a few practice mishits,
that if he swung it the way one might swing an axe
for wood-chopping, it drove quite deeply into the
hard earth, breaking it up well enough for him to
begin properly digging, soon after, with the spade.
He was already painfully aware, by the time he’d
dug about two feet of raggedy-shaped grave, that
he’d be unlikely to be capable of getting out of bed
58
next day, let alone going to college. His back,
shoulders, arms and hands seemed ablaze with *
pain, and yet he found that he was, simultane¬
ously, almost relishing an unfamiliar sense of
strength; for Silas had never been a natural sports¬
man, was slenderly built, a young man attractive to
women for his graceful, lazy movements rather
than muscle-power, and there was something
about digging his father’s grave that was bizarrely
invigorating.
Jules stopped him, once, with a soft, strangled
sound and a frantic gloved hand around his wrist
to halt the digging, because an upstairs light had
been switched on next door, and the silhouette of
a man - presumably Max Brook - was clearly
visible behind the net curtains.
‘Don’t worry.’ Silas was gasping, breathless and
sweat-drenched, but calm. ‘He’ll probably draw
the heavy curtains any minute now.’
A few seconds later, they were drawn, blacking
out the house.
‘We’ll have to wait now,’ Jules said, ‘till they’re
asleep.’
‘They’re probably watching TV up there,’ Silas
said.
‘You can’t be sure,’ Jules said, anguished.
Silas eased her grip from his wrist. ‘I need to
carry on, sis.’
‘You can’t,’ she said. ‘Please, not yet.’
‘If I wait,’ he told her, ‘my back’s going to seize
up, and then I’ll have to stop digging, and we’ll
have a bloody great hole to explain tomorrow.’

The more surreal the night grew, the more grisly

59
the burial became, the more Jules retreated to
somewhere deep inside herself and the easier it
became, for the most part, for Silas to control
her, guide her through the process.
He would have liked, truly, to have spared her
certain things - every bit of it, if he’d been able —
but though he did manage the wrapping of the
body (sheets first, then black plastic bin liners,
stapled and taped together for extra strength) by
himself, and might even have found the strength
to drag it single-handedly along the corridor,
down the staircase and out into the garden, he
knew that Jules would have been even more
appalled had they not carried their father’s body
bag with at least some small measure of dignity,
trying not to bump him on the way.
‘Careful,’ he said as they heaved Paul Graves
through the kitchen towards the back door. ‘I
don’t want you hurting your back.’
‘I don’t care-’ Jules’s voice was desperately
strained ‘-about my back.’
‘I do,’ Silas said, panting. ‘I love you, Jules.’
They paused for breath, and she bit her lip, said
nothing.
‘What?’
She shook her head.
‘What did that look mean, sis?’
‘You say you love me.’
‘You know I do,’ he said. ‘You know that.’
But I hate what we’re doing.’ Jules’s eyes were
swimming with tears again. ‘I hate it so much,
Silas, and you’re making me...’ Her voice choked
up.
‘Because I have to,’ Silas said. ‘It has to be
60
done, you know that.’
‘Does it?’ She shook her head violently, looked
down at what they were carrying, gave another
short, furious sob, took a breath. ‘Come on then.’
She began to lift her end again, the feet end, her
fatherfeet.
‘Jules, wait a-’
‘If it has to be done,’ she said, ‘let’s get on with
it.’

Chapter Eleven

He had tried, afterwards, when it was all finished,

to make it up with her, to find a path back to the
way it had been before, but it was impossible.
Nothing, he knew, would or could ever be the
same again after that night.
His fault. Their so-called father’s.
Coming back like that. Wanting things.
If he’d lived, Silas knew, too. Graves would have
been a vicious thorn in their flesh for ever, would
have gone on wanting, demanding, expecting,
and Jules would have gone on wanting Silas to
give in. Their father would have come between
them then for certain, really spoiled their relation¬
ship, their pure brother-sister love.
‘How will we ever forget it?’ Jules asked him a
few weeks after the burial, looking out of the
kitchen window at the oak tree, shedding leaves,
like great golden toasted tears, over and around
the grave. ‘How will we ever be able to forget
61
what we’ve done?’
‘All we’ve done,’ Silas said, ‘is lay our father to
rest.’
Jules was silent for a while.
‘What if someone comes looking for him?’ she
asked.
Silas looked through the window, then back at
her.
‘They won’t,’ he said.
‘You can’t be sure.’
‘I think I can,’ Silas said. ‘He had no one, did
he? Not at the end. Or else he wouldn’t have
come back to us.’
‘He might.’

He lay awake all that night, his sister sleeping

huddled beside him, thinking.
‘I’ve decided,’ he said next morning, in the
kitchen, ‘we should have a pond.’
She looked up from her cornflakes. ‘What do
you mean?’
‘A fishpond,’ Silas said, waiting for his toast to
pop up. ‘Something vaguely ornamental and
attractive, something distracting, with a paved
surround.’
Jules stared at him.
‘Near the oak,’ he said.
He took her into the garden to show her where.
Not that she hadn’t already understood.
‘It’s because,’ Silas explained, ‘of what you said
last night, about people coming to look for him.
It was you that made me think of this.’
She wished she’d said nothing. ‘You said there
wasn’t anyone to come back.’
62
 ‘And I don’t think there is,’ he reiterated, ‘but
better safe.’
Jules looked down at the place. It did not look
much like a grave now, even to her, muddied by
rain, littered by leaves. Yet still it made her feel sick,
both physically and, deeply, vilely, emotionally.
‘We’ll do it together,’ Silas told her. ‘It’ll be
almost fun, and then we can stock it with fish and
you can take care of them.’
She thought, abruptly, that he had gone quite
mad. Her nausea was not dissipating. A pond
meant digging again, and she felt certain that just
hearing the sound of a pick or spade striking,
sliding, scraping through dirt and soil would
make her want to scream, would drive her mad.
‘I’ll get a manual,’ he went on. ‘A DIY thing:
how to dig your own pond. Or just go to a garden
centre, ask them - or you could find the right
thing, if you like, since you spend half your life in
bookshops. It’s not all that hard, apparently - I
read about it in one of the Sundays. You dig a
hole, put some kind of liner in it, line that with
something else, like carpet, then fill it with water.’
‘I don’t understand,’ Jules said.
She felt suddenly peculiar, muzzy-headed, as if
this were not real, as if she were not actually
standing out in the garden at breakfast time in
her school clothes in autumn drizzle with her
brother talking about...
She shook her head in an effort to clear it. ‘How
can you talk about digging?’ she said. ‘Digging
anything at all, ever^ after what we’ve done, let
alone saying it could be almost fun?’
‘Calm down, sis,’ Silas said.
63
 ‘And anyway, surely-’ she spoke more slowly, as
if that might help make him see sense ‘-the very
last thing in the world we should think of doing
is to dig here, of all places?’
Silas shook his head. ‘Not right here.’ He
looked at the grave, then raised his right arm,
pointing. ‘The pond would go over there, okay?’
Jules didn’t answer. Nothing was okay, and her
brother was still mad.
‘We’d dig the pond - just a small, pretty thing -
and around it we’d lay this paving or whatever -
that’s what would be covering it"
Our father^ Jules thought. It.
‘And apart from knowing all about building
ponds,’ she said, ‘do you know about paving,
too?’ The muzzy sensation was going, though she
wasn’t sure she hadn’t preferred it to clarity. ‘Do
they teach you that between photography
lectures?’
Silas was not accustomed to his little sister
using sarcasm with him, and he didn’t care for it.
‘I’m not a complete fool, Jules.’ He waited for
her to say that of course he wasn’t, but she didn’t
say anything, just stood waiting. ‘I know enough
to find out how to do things, to work it all out
properly. I know we’ll have to dig down a little
way to make the paving even.’ He saw her face
change. ‘Don’t start freaking out.’
‘Too late,’ she said. ‘I’ve freaked, and I think
you have, too.’
‘Shut up, Jules,’ Silas said, ‘and listen.’
Can’t I listen inside?’ Jules spread out her
hands, palms up. ‘Out of the rain?’
‘In a minute.’ He returned to his plan. ‘We dig a
64
little way, no more than a couple of feet, and then
we pour concrete, enough to make sure things are
nice and even, as I said, and don’t crack up later.’
In her mind, Jules could already see a zigzag
crack. ‘Wouldn’t it be better just to leave it
alone?’ She forced herself to look down at the
grave. ‘It looks okay now, doesn’t it?’
‘The leaves have helped,’ Silas said. ‘It won’t
always be autumn.’ He shook his head, deciding
to forgive her, understanding her anxieties. ‘I’ve
decided it’s not quite safe enough, sis. You never
know who might come poking around sometime
in the future. We might even want to sell up one
day, who knows?’
‘We couldn’t,’ Jules said. ‘Not now.’
‘Because our father’s buried here,’ Silas asked,
‘or because you’re scared someone might find
out?’
‘Both, I suppose.’
‘I’m trying not to think about the first thing,’
Silas said. ‘But practically speaking, if we do this,
we could leave some day. The pond, and some¬
where nice to sit nearby, could be a selling point.
Not to anyone with little kids, obviously, because
they’d want to fill it in or dig it up.’
‘Who’s going to buy a big house unless they
want children?’ Jules asked.
‘Not many young couples could afford a place
like this,’ Silas said easily. ‘This would go to a
family with older kids. I’d imagine.’
‘You’ve really thought this through, haven’t
you?’
Silas saw the way she was staring at him.
Didn’t much like it.
65
 ‘Right through/ he* said^ coldly.

They had done it, actually made their pond, and it

had been back-breaking work for both of them,
and Silas asked for Jules’s help all the way through
this time. This was daylight work, after all, in full
view of the neighbours, nothing illicit about it,
according to Silas, something to be proud of.
Max and Tina Brook came to call one Sunday
afternoon in mid-December to say how impressed
they were with what they’d done.
‘Are you going to keep carp?’ Max Brook asked.
‘Koi,’ Tina Brook said. ‘Lovely things.’
‘Bit pricey,’ Silas said.
‘So brave,’ Tina Brook said, in the living room,
drinking the coffee that Jules had made them,
‘doing it yourselves.’
‘Most people employ builders,’ her husband
said. ‘Landscape firms.’
‘Or whoever’s supposed to build ponds,’ Tina
said.
‘Anyone can do it,’ Silas said.
‘Helps if you’re young,’ Max Brook said,
smiling at Jules. ‘And strong.’
Jules flushed, a deep, hot red.
‘Are you all right?’ Tina asked.
‘She’s fine,’ Silas said.

It was, when it was finished, a lovely pond. Silas,

driving to every garden centre he could find
between Muswell Hill and points north, all the
way to Welwyn Garden City, had found, for the
centre of the pond, a grey carved stone Cupid that
looked just sturdy enough not to be too kitsch, and
66
a ruggedly handsome stone bench seat, which they
had concreted to the crazy paving they’d laid all
round the pond and right over the top of their
father’s grave. There were plants in the water,
which Silas had read were essential for oxygen¬
ation, and half a dozen fat goldfish, though he had
been warned that predators - cats or foxes or even
herons - were likely to steal them unless pre¬
cautions were taken. Silas had taken the view that
if the fish went, frogs would probably take over,
and so long as the pond was kept looting reason¬
ably attractive, it didn’t really matter.
‘It’s actually quite a nice memorial, don’t you
think?’ he said, looking at the finished project. ‘If
it makes you feel better thinking of it that way.’
Jules looked at the bench, thought about what
lay beneath it.
‘Memorial to what?’ she said, quietly, and then
shuddered.
‘In a way,’ Silas said, gently, ‘it’s really not all
that sad, sis.’
‘I don’t know,’ Jules said, ‘how you can say
things like that.’
‘He wanted to come back, didn’t he? Come
back to his old house, to us.’
‘We don’t really know what he wanted,’ Jules
said. ‘Do we?’
Silas saw her brown eyes searching his face for
a moment.
‘I suppose we don’t,’ he answered evenly. ‘But if
staying here was what he wanted,’ he went on,
‘then he’s got his wish, hasn’t he?’

67
 Chapter Twelve

When Silas was twenty-five and Jules was twenty,

she fell in love with Ralph Weston, a zoologist at
the Natural History Museum. Sufficiently in love,
for the first time in her life, to want, passionately
and unhesitatingly, to live with a man other than
her brother.
More significantly, to face up to the inevitably
unenviable task of telling Silas she wanted to
leave home.
Leave him.
It was remarkable, Jules sometimes thought,
what one could get over. Not forget, but at least
put away. For love. For peace of mind. For fear of
losing the person closest to you.
For fear itself.
She had to remind herself, periodically, when
she was feeling angry or frustrated with Silas, of
all he still did for her, was to her. The plentiful
ways in which he had gone on, for all these years,
encouraging her, praising her cleverness, wanting
good things for her. The things from which he
&couraged her - like going to university, as she
had, for a while, hoped to do until he had finally
convinced her that it was not right for her, that
she was not the adventurous kind, that she
thrived on consistency, on home and familiarity,
and, of course, books.
‘Why not consider skipping a degree,’ he had
68
suggested to her, ‘and go straight into what you’d
probably end up doing if you did bother with
university?’
It was two years now since he had stood as
guarantor for Jules so that she might open a book¬
shop in Crouch End - in the main road between
Shanklin Road and the clock tower, just a small
distance from the photographic studio he had
created in the basement of a terraced house in
Edison Road off Crouch End Hill. Two years since
Jules had kept her word to him and written over
their home to Silas - ‘in natural love and friend¬
ship’, as directed by his own solicitor, to empha¬
size that no money had changed hands. Jules had
been grateful to him for making Jules’s Books
more easily possible, even if she was perfectly
aware that the shop, like the dampening of her
university ambitions, had sprung from his wish to
stop her going farther afield. Away from home.
From him.
Not going away to study was a small disappoint¬
ment to her, but an extension of the bargain
they’d struck after the unpleasantness about their
mother’s will. Jules knew what damage Patricia
had done back then, how deeply wounded Silas
had been.
Had been wounded, too, by Paul Graves, eight
years earlier.
About whom Jules tried not to think.
Tried.
The bargain had been that they would take care
of each other, never betray each other, would
remain loyal to each other. Jules thought, was
almost sure, that if called upon to do so, Silas
69
would probably have laid down his life for her.
He had said as much, once.
‘I would die for you, Jules,’ he had told her.
She had believed him. He was, when all was
said and done, her beloved big brother. No less
so because he was flawed.
She recognized the flaws more readily now that
she was older and just a little wiser. But those
flaws - the neediness, the demands, the tendency
to freeze her out as punishment when he did feel
let down by her - were, because they demon¬
strated his vulnerability, in some ways what made
her love him even more.

‘So where,’ Silas enquired after she had told him

about her plans to live with Ralph Weston, ‘were
you thinking of doing that?’ He paused. ‘In my
house?’
Hurt and irritation flared inside her.
Stay calm^ she told herself.
‘No.’ Her reply was steady. ‘As I’ve told you,
Ralph has a flat in Camden Town, so we’ll be
living there.’
‘Leaving me then,’ Silas said.
Jules heard the flatness. ‘Not leaving you, Silas,
not really.’
‘You’ll be moving out,’ he said.
‘Yes, but-’
‘You’ll be sleeping with him instead of me,’
Silas said.
He remembered having much the same conver¬
sation with Patricia, after she had broken the
news about her plans to marry the stranger.
‘Of course I will,’ his sister said.
70
 ‘Just like her,’ Silas said.

There were still no special women in his life. His

eye for beauty and the nature of some of his
photographic business - freelancing for advertis¬
ing agencies and catalogue work, which slotted in
comfortably with the actors’ portraits and the
bread-and-butter weddings and baby commis¬
sions - meant there was no shortage of good-
looking women, a fair proportion of whom were
attracted to him.
Still no great love affairs, however. There had
been one spell of something a little special with a
model from Stuttgart named Kate, that might, he
supposed, have come close to love, in that the
relationship had combined decent sex with
affection on both sides. But Kate had fallen
harder than Silas, had wanted more than he had
been willing to give, and so it had ended, and that
had been fine too. The fact was, he could get sex
almost any time he pleased. And for affection, he
had always had Jules.
Till now.

Ralph Weston was a tall, untidy-looking man

with curly, slightly receding brown hair and dark
eyes, who wore round spectacles, quite ancient¬
looking corduroy trousers and an assortment -
all almost identical - of blue shirts and V-necked
pullovers. He had met Jules at a book launch
party at the Africa Centre and had fallen wildly
in love with her, finding her strikingly attractive,
intelligent, sensitive and - with the exception of
what seemed a rather complex and private
71
 relationship with her brother - very open.
‘It’s unusual,’ Ralph had remarked during an
early date in a small fish restaurant in Kentish
Town where, as he’d already briefly explained,
they knew about a food allergy of his that made
random restaurant dining a dangerous lottery, ‘to
find a brother and sister still as close as you and
Silas at your age.’
Jules had agreed that it probably was unusual
and had changed the subject, asked about his
allergy.
‘Nuts,’ Ralph had replied. ‘Quite common, but
a hell of a nuisance.’
‘I knew a girl at school who was so sensitive she
had to carry adrenalin.’
Ralph had patted his jacket pocket, smiled.
‘Scary,’ Jules said.
‘Not too often, thank God,’ he said. ‘So long as
I’m careful.’
He waited until their waiter had poured their
wine.
‘So you’ve never moved out?’ He sipped from
his glass. ‘No travel bug?’
‘Bit of a homebody, I suppose,’ Jules said.
‘Pretty dull, really.’
‘Hardly,’ Ralph said.
She noticed how warm, almost velvety, his eyes
were.
‘Compared to you,’ she said. ‘Zoology. Exotic
travel.’
‘Not that often,’ he said.
‘And didn’t you say you keep snakes?’ Jules
asked.
Just a handful,’ Ralph said, and grinned.
72
 Jules tried to remember what he’d said at the
party.
‘Some kind of python, wasn’t it?’ she said, and
shuddered.
‘A burrowing python.’ Ralph elaborated.
^Calaharia reinhardti. ’ He saw the expression on
her face and grinned again. ‘Nice, harmless little
chaps, stay hidden most of the time, or actually
all the time if they’re left in peace.’
‘Sounds sensible,’ Jules said wryly.
‘I suspect,’ Ralph said, ‘that you might prefer
Asali.’
‘Asali?’
‘It’s Swahili for Honey,’ he explained. ‘She’s my
dog.’
‘Aren’t you allergic to fur?’ Jules asked.
‘Thankfully not to Asali,’ Ralph said.

She had thought, when he’d first mentioned the

snakes and his fondness for them, that perhaps it
might be wise to keep her distance, but then she’d
found that, pythons aside, Ralph really did appear
to be a perfectly rational, sane man. His flat (if she
overlooked the room in which the tank, with its
accompanying timers for lights, micro-climate
heating and humidity controls, was housed - and
he was right, the snakes were not visible beneath
the deep litter - not that Jules had looked for
long) was cosy, simply furnished, the only exotic
touches coming from African paintings and
sculptures he’d collected over the years.
‘I certainly like Asali,’ Jules had said on her first
visit to Ralph’s flat, fondling the ears of his
honey-coloured wire-haired dachshund. ‘But I
73
don’t think I could ever warm to your other
flatmates.’
‘I don’t expect you to,’ he had assured her.

‘Sounds like a weirdo,’ Silas had said when he

first heard about the snakes.
‘Not at all.’ Jules remembered her own reaction,
and tried not to overreact. ‘He’s perfectly normal
and extremely nice. He just loves his work and
animals.’
‘Reptiles,’ Silas said.
‘He has a dog, too,’ Jules pointed out.
‘Still,’ he’d said, ‘I think you ought to be
careful.’
‘About what? His snakes are perfectly harmless.’
‘So he says.’ Silas paused. ‘And there’s this
allergy, too.’
‘It’s his allergy,’ she said. ‘It’s not contagious.’
She looked at his face, saw real anxiety in his eyes.
‘We’re only dating, darling.’
‘But you haven’t exactly been around, have
you, sis?’
‘Not as much as you,’ Jules said, ‘but more than
enough to know my own mind.’

However extensive his experience with women

might be, Silas still never brought any of them to
the house on Muswell Hill. He went to their
homes, took them, sometimes, to hotel rooms or
back to the studio, but though Jules had told him
several times that she would gladly keep out of
their way if he did want to bring someone home,
Silas had steadfastly refrained from doing so.
‘This is our house,’ he had said. ‘I share it with
74
you^ no one else.’
Which was, as Jules realized, neither normal
nor healthy. There was no more to their bed¬
sharing than there had ever been, nothing more,
of course - of course - than comfort, but it was
decidedly more Silas’s comfort than her own. On
the whole, Jules slept quite peacefully in the big
bed, but there were nights when she lay there
sleepless, craving privacy - though when she did
creep out and go to her own room, she was all
too often woken by Silas tapping on her door,
seeking company.
‘I understand,’ he had said on one of those
nights, hf you need space, sis, but I wish you’d
warn me, and then I wouldn’t bother going to
bed till I’m exhausted, and at least I’d stand a
chance of getting a bit of sleep.’
‘I know you say you don’t sleep without me.’
Jules felt exasperated. ‘But what you don’t seem to
understand is that I can’t always sleep with you.’
‘You’re still awake now,’ Silas said.
‘Because you’re talking to me,’ Jules replied
testily.
After which he’d gone off in a huff and neither
of them had slept.
Now, thanks to Ralph, the habit was finally
going to be broken.

‘Does he know we sleep together?’ Silas asked on

the last Saturday afternoon of March, the day
before Ralph was due to come to the house for
Sunday lunch - two Sundays after he and Jules
had made their decision to live together.
‘No.’ Jules was already dreading the first meeting
75
between the two men.
‘Because you think he might not understand,’
Silas said.
‘I’m not sure that anyone would really
understand,’ Jules said.
‘Dirty minds,’ Silas said.
‘Ralph doesn’t have a dirty mind,’ Jules said.
‘Ralph sounds perfect,’ Silas said coldly.
‘No one is perfect, Silas,’ Jules said.

The roast having slipped pleasantly down, the

washing up having been quite companionably
shared by all three of them and conversation
having been easier than Jules had feared, Ralph
carried Asali - who didn’t care much for walking
- outside into the garden and put her down on the
lawn.
‘Mind the pond,’ Silas said.
And watched his sister’s face grow strained as
the dachshund trotted over the crazy paving
towards the oak tree.
Jules still hated it, went out there as seldom as
possible, had long ago developed a technique,
when working near the kitchen window, of turning
her body at an angle to the worktop so that she no
longer needed to look out in that direction.
For the most part, Silas took care of the pond.
The fish had, as predicted, only survived a few
months, thanks to a local black and white tomcat
who could regularly be seen sitting at the edge,
gazing intently into the water. For a while, after
the fish had gone and frogs and toads had arrived
to take their place, Silas had become interested
from the photographic viewpoint, experimenting
76
with different lenses and techniques. Then, grow¬
ing bored with frogs, he had restocked the pond
and connected Patricia’s old sprinkler for when
the cat came back.
‘I know you don’t much like going near it,’ he
had said to Jules when the pond was a year old
and in need of cleaning. ‘But I am going to need
your help with this job, sis. We have to get the fish
out first, then drain it and get all the muck out.
Bit much for one person.’
‘Can’t we get someone else to do it?’ Jules had
felt ill at the notion.
‘Getting strangers involved?’ Silas had shaken
his head. ‘Not the best idea.’
And now, there was Asali sniffing around the
pond, and Ralph sitting down on the stone
bench, holding out his hand to Jules.
‘Come and sit with me,’ he said.
‘It’s too cold,’ Jules said, wretchedly.
‘I’ll give you my jacket,’ Ralph said, taking it off.
It was the first time she had ever sat on the
bench.
First and last, she swore to herself.
Saw Silas watching her face.

‘You do know, don’t you,’ he said later, when they

were alone, ‘that you can never, ever tell him
what we did?’
Ralph and Asali had gone back to Camden
Town, because Ralph had an urgent paper to
write, and Jules had said that she might start
packing up some of her things for her move.
‘But we didn’t actually do anything,’ Jules said,
slowly, thoughtfully. ‘Nothing terrible, anyway.
77
 i

That’s what you said back then, Silas.’

When he was in one of his particularly cold
moods, Silas’s eyes seemed to become flatter,
more opaque, like pebbles. They were, in general,
to Jules, who knew him so very well, like a temper-
barometer: the spreading blackness of anger, the
stony, less readable, quality of chilliness.
They were very cool now.
‘Whatever I said back then,’ he said, ‘someone
else might not understand.’
‘Ralph isn’t just someone else,’ his sister said.
‘I know you’ve never been the brightest, Jules,’
Silas said, ‘but you’re not stupid, so don’t pre¬
tend to be now.’ He saw her hurt. ‘And don’t look
wounded, not when I’m the one here who’s being
betrayed.’
‘How am I betraying you?’ Jules asked, though
she did, of course, know.
‘You know how,’ Silas said.
‘Maybe...’ She hesitated, then pushed on.
‘Maybe it’s all for the best, my going to live with
Ralph.’
‘I daresay you think it is, for you.’
‘I meant for you,’ Jules said quietly.
‘How could you possibly work that out?’
‘Maybe it’s time,’ she ventured, ‘you found
someone for yourself, Silas.’
The eyes were pebble-flat again.
‘You said,’ he reminded her, ‘that we’d always
be together.’
‘And we will be.’
Jules reached for his hand, but he pulled it away.
Distancing now, rather than merely cold.
‘So like her,’ Silas said.
78
 Chapter Thirteen

Abigail was a virgin when Silas made love to her

for the first time.
‘An anachronism,’ she told him, readying herself
for mortification. Twenty-six years old and still
intact.
‘A miracle,’ Silas said.
‘A freak,’ she said.
‘Never,’ he told her, fiercely, ‘say that again.’
Her mother’s adjuration on her deathbed came
back to Abigail. Never say that. Francesca loving
her enough, even then, to want her to have a
future.
And now, all those years later, here was Silas,
with his remarkable eyes that looked right into
her soul, who had already plucked the pain out of
her heart and flung it away and taken her over.

She fancied, that first night, in his house, less than

two weeks after their chance meeting in Wigmore
Street, as he undressed her, ran his hands over
her, possessing her, that he was more than just a
man, something more exotic and transforming.
Like an eagle, she thought, as he wrapped
himself around her, or maybe a phoenix that had
swooped down and was now folding her in its
wonderful wings, and Abigail had never been
especially fanciful before, her music the only
escape she had ever allowed herself.
79
 No longer.
‘You know; Silas told her softly, ‘that you’re the
first woman Fve ever brought here, to my bed.
The first woman Fve ever truly wanted to make
love to.’
Even in the midst of her rapture, she found
both those statements hard to believe.
‘Don’t doubt me, Abigail,’ Silas said, urgently.
He knew she couldn’t begin to understand the
importance of what he had told her. The im¬
portance of the lovemaking itself - he had never,
never^ experienced this before, the extraordinary
sense of confidence and strength that real love
had given him. And of the second thing, of his
bringing her here, to this bed. He had almost
changed his mind at the last minute, had found
himself suddenly hearing his mother’s words
again - ridiculous - disgusting — had fleetingly
considered taking Abigail to another bedroom,
but then he’d realized not only how pathetic he
was being, but how strange that would have
seemed to her, perhaps even tawdry, and that was
the last thing he wanted now, and he had man¬
aged to thrust Patricia’s words away into the
void, to focus on Abigail alone.
‘Please don’t doubt me,’ he said again to her
now. ‘Not ever.’
Abigail shook her head, stared up at him. ‘I
won’t.’
She felt such power in him - and in herself, too,
as her body made its new discoveries - and for a
few moments, as he made love to her, she felt
almost as if a boulder had crashed onto her, was
constricting her breathing, obliterating her
80
thought processes, halting everything, and was
then lifted away, leaving her brand new, remade,
all burdens removed.
Silas’s now.
She had made her confession to him, had told
him everything, and he had not rejected her, had
embraced it as part of her.
She felt born again.

‘Tell Jules what you did,’ he said, the first time he

introduced her to his sister.
It was the end of May, and they were in the
house, in the kitchen, sitting at the table drinking
the Colombian coffee he’d had fresh ground at
W. Martyn earlier in the day because Abigail had
said she liked it last time.
‘No,’ Abigail said, startled, and a little wounded.
‘It’s perfectly all right,’ Silas reassured her.
‘Jules knows how to keep secrets.’
Abigail noticed Jules flush slightly. She had
experienced a sense of instant liking for the tall,
strong-featured, dark-haired young woman who
was such a physical contrast to her brother, but
at that moment she saw that Silas had a degree of
power over Jules too, and Abigail realized, with
another of those thrills, that there had to be
something very special about a young man who
could exert that kind of loving power.
‘Tell her, Abigail-Abeguile,’ Silas said.
It was the first time he had called her that, and
oh, God, she loved it.
‘I’ll tell it for you then,’ Silas said, not waiting
for her.

81
It had happened - Silas began telling her tale
with such confidence and accuracy that Abigail^
half-appalled, half-bemused, thought it might
almost have been a story he’d heard many times
over, perhaps even invented himself - on August
the fifteenth, her mother’s thirty-fifth birthday.
Her parents had been ready to leave for
Edinburgh in time for lunch at the George Hotel
before the afternoon concert at the Usher Hall to
which Francesca Allen had been looking forward
for many weeks. Francesca, wearing the primrose
silk suit that Douglas Allen had bought for her
thirtieth birthday at Jenners, her long, butter-
coloured hair (the same colour as Abigail’s,
almost the same as his own, Silas told Jules, as if
he had seen Francesca Allen’s hair for himself)
up in a French pleat; Dougie handsome in his
best suit and tie, already yearning for the
moment, several long hours away, when he could
hang it all away again in his wardrobe.
Both checking their watches, waiting for
Abigail.
Always waiting for Abigail these days, it seemed
to them.
Abigail, now thirteen and in the grip of her
recently acquired, hormone-driven rebellion, sick
of being acquiescent, fed up with being a goody-
goody, letting her parents know that at every
available opportunity, and thinking, almost all
the time, about Eddie Gibson.
Eddie Gibson, sixteen, slim-hipped, with a shiny
cowlick of dark hair and strong, sunburned arms
from working on the forecourt of his dad’s garage
four miles from Allen’s Farm. Filling Abigail’s
82
mind ever since she had met him, confusing her
body, pushing out most of the contentment that
had been hers until lately.
Eddie had a lot of opinions to share.
Eddie said that farming was crap. Eddie said
that taking care of lambs, when they were just
going to be turned into chops, was hypocrisy.
Eddie said that he’d heard a cello once, and that
it had sounded to him like a cow in labour, so
Abigail practising, just to keep her mother happy,
was a waste of time.
‘Living’s what counts,’ Eddie said.
Francesca and Dougie had only seen Abigail
and Eddie together once, had both been struck
by the same foreboding and had promptly told
their daughter that under no circumstances was
she to see him again.
‘It’s the bike,’ Eddie told Abigail. ‘They’re
prejudiced because of my bike.’
The bike was an old black Triumph that he and
his dad had rescued from a breaker’s yard and
restored till it gleamed.
‘My beastie,’ he called it, and kissed Abigail.
The kiss melted her.
He melted her.
And the bike too, its power, the sheer violence
of its roar.
Eddie kissed her again.
Only kisses, never anything more, not yet, at
least
‘You’re too young, Abby,’ he told her, ‘for
more.’ .11.
‘I’m not,’ she told him back, tossing her hair.
‘You’re gorgeous,’ Eddie said, ‘and you’re a
83
grand kisser, but you’re thirteen.’
‘Why should that matter?’ Abigail asked.
He laughed. ‘Ask your ma and dad.’ He ruffled
her hair, grinned again, wickedly. ‘Or maybe better
not.’

The birthday outing had been planned months

ago, and even Dougie - stiff collar and tie
notwithstanding - was looking forward to it.
Not Abigail, who had other plans.
A once-only invitation from Eddie to ride the
Beastie.
‘Does it have to be that day?’ Abigail had asked
him.
It did, Eddie had told her, because his father
would be at a meeting with his bank and if
Abigail wanted this as much as she had said she
did, then if she got out of going to Edinburgh,
this would be her big chance to catch the bus to
their place early and hang around the house with
his ma till she went shopping.
‘Of course,’ he had said, ‘if you don’t really
want to...’
‘You know I do,’ Abigail had said. ‘More than
anything.’
‘Or if you’re scared,’ Eddie had said.
That was something else that had come along
with periods and melting kisses and bloody-
mindedness. Courage, or at least, bravado.
‘Not me,’ Abigail had told him.

‘Where is she?’ Dougie asked at five to eleven,

after they’d both called Abigail’s name several
times without reply.
84
 ‘I’ll go up and chivy her along,’ Francesca
offered.
She came back down a moment later.
‘She’s not there, and her dress is still hanging.’
Dougie frowned. ‘So where is the girl?’
Francesca’s mouth was taut with anger. She
was warm from waiting around, could feel a line
of perspiration on her forehead, her day already
spoiled.
‘One guess,’ she said.

When Eddie Gibson’s mother put down the

phone, she, too, was angry at having been made
to listen to a jumped-up spaghetti-eater reading
her the riot act because she didn’t know how to
control her own daughter.
‘Take her home,’ she ordered her son. ‘Now, or
there’ll be hell to catch.’
‘I don’t want to go home,’ Abigail said.
Mrs Gibson ignored her.
‘And this is the last time you see her, Eddie,’
she said.

Abigail wept most of the way home, sitting on the

pillion of the Triumph, arms clasping Eddie’s
hard body for what might, if the parents had their
way, be the last time, and by the time they
reached the broad gate at the end of the long lane
that led to the farmhouse, and she saw her
mother’s distant, rigid figure waiting outside the
front door, Abigail was so upset and so furious
that she rapped Eddie smartly on his shoulder
and shouted at him to stop.
‘What?’ He stopped the bike, twisted around to
85
 i

see her.
‘Let me/ she said^ and began to dismount.
‘More than my life’s worth/ Eddie told her.
‘Who’s the scaredy cat now?’ Abigail, her face
flushed from heat and anger, put her hands on
her hips, glared towards the farmhouse and her
mother, then back at Eddie, still sitting astride
the bike. ‘I have to show her, Eddie - she has to
see she can’t control every second of my life!’
Eddie grinned at her. ‘You sure?’
‘Of course I’m sure.’
He kissed her then, with real admiration. ‘You’re
quite something, you know, Abigail Allen,’ he said,
and dismounted too, changed places with her.
Abigail twisted the throttle, revved up the
Beastie, then suddenly reached up, pulled off her
helmet and threw it away, sent it spinning into
the long grass, and Eddie gave a whoop and did
the same with his, and Abigail twisted the throttle
again, and the Beastie roared and shot off
through a cloud of midges and on down the lane.

‘Bougie!’ Francesca cried out in alarm.

Douglas came running out of the house with
Nell, one of the border collies, at his heels, and
Sammy, the other collie, Nell’s brother, who’d
been lazing in a puddle of sunlight over by the
barn, stood up and trotted over to join them at
the front door.
Abigail, her hair whipping around her face, saw
them gawping, her mother irate but scared at the
same time, shouting something at her, and her
daddy, all done up in his suit and tie, and he was
looking afraid, too
86
 Eddie spotted the mud slick on the cobbles
first, smacked her on the shoulder.
‘What?’ Abigail twisted her head and shoulders.
‘Slow downP Eddie yelled.
Too late.
The Beastie began to skid, tilting as it went, and
starting out it might have looked, to a spectator,
like a bike at a motocross rally, shooting away
through the mud to gain position, but Abigail had
lost control, had never really had control to begin
with, and they were moving so fast, moving
towards the farmhouse, and even before the bike
began to flip, it felt as if they were flying.
The Beastie looked almost graceful as it left the
ground.
Abigail began to scream.
Behind her, Eddie was yelling, and either side of
them the collies were barking, and the Beastie’s
motor was screeching, grinding, and right in front
of them, seeming to come closer, closer^ Francesca
stood, both hands clapped over her mouth, and
then Dougie was running towards them, his arms
outstretched.
‘Na'’Abigail screamed. ‘Daddy, noP
They landed.
Eddie’s yell cut out at exactly the same time as
the motor.
Ceased to be.
As the hem of the left leg of Abigail’s jeans
caught on a jagged dagger of broken chrome, and
the Beastie went on sliding, skating, sparking, over
the ground. Francesca, seeing it was going to hit
Douglas, threw herself suddenly forward to try to
save him, and the bike slammed into them both,
87
rammed them hard into the wall to the left of the
front door, spraying blood over Francesca’s prim¬
rose silk suit and Bougie’s white shirt, and over
the doorstep and the lemons on the little tree in
the terracotta tub that Francesca had bought three
years earlier because it made her think of Italy.
'Oh, my God!’ Abigail, on her back on the
cobblestones, face up to the blue sky, screamed.
Nell and Sammy stopped barking, backed away
from the scene, whining.
'Oh, my God, oh, my God,’ Abigail went on
screaming to the sky.
The only other person left living to make any
sound at all was her mother.
Still just alive, an endless half-hour later, as
they put her in the ambulance, reaching for her
daughter’s hand.
'All my fault,’ Abigail sobbed, her tears diluting
her mother’s blood, turning it pinker. 'Oh, God,
Ma, it’s all my fault.’
'You mustn’t say that,’ Francesca, dying, pulled
her close, hissed into her ear. 'Never say that, not
to anyone. It was Eddie riding the bike, not you.’
She struggled for breath. 'Promise me that’s what
you’ll tell them, Abigail. Swear it on all the saints.’
'But Ma-’
'Swear it,’ Francesca whispered.
So Abigail did.

'Her mother died in the ambulance,’ Silas told

Jules, finishing the story. 'Her father was already
gone, and Eddie - dead, too, broken neck - took
the rap posthumously, thanks to Abigail’s mum.’
He lifted his wine glass. 'Praise God for Fran-
88
cesca Allen.’
‘My God/ Jules said. ‘What a tragedy.’ She got
up and put her arms around Abigail, tears in her
brown eyes. ‘You poor, poor girl.’
Abigail stared at her. ‘Don’t you think I’m a
terrible person?’
‘For a few moments’ rebelliousness?’ Jules said.
‘You were only thirteen, and my God, all the pain
you must have suffered.’
‘But what about Eddie?’ Abigail asked. ‘Putting
the blame on him.’
‘I’ve told you,’ Silas said. ‘It made no difference
to Eddie.’
‘But to his parents,’ Abigail said.
‘No real difference to them either,’ Silas said.
They were all silent for a moment.
‘At least, thank God,’ Jules said then, ‘you’ve
got Silas now.’ Abigail looked at him, at Jules’s
brother, her slender lover with his hair the colour
of hay, that regularly flopped over his forehead
and had to be pushed back off his lean face, out
of his beautiful eyes.
‘I know,’ she said.

She turned the niggle over in her mind for a

while before she said, after Jules had gone home:
‘My story was for you, Silas.’ Soft reproach. ‘Not
to share.’
‘But telling Jules,’ he said, ‘is like telling me.’
‘Not really,’ Abigail said.
‘Of course it is. Jules is part of me.’ Silas
paused. ‘As you are now.’
‘Am I?’ she asked him. ‘Am I really?’
‘For ever,’ Silas said.
89
 Chapter Fourteen

For a long, long time after they had all died, after
the Procurator Fiscal’s investigation and the
funerals and the Sheriff’s inquiry, after the selling
of the farm and the livestock and the endless
horrors of sympathy and comfort, Abigail had
prayed, alone in her room in her Auntie Betty’s
house and on Sundays in church:
‘If you bring them back. I’ll be good and play
the cello and not see Eddie and not want to be a
farmer and do whatever they want me to do.’
And then, years later, long after she had given
up on that childish prayer, after she had moved
out of her aunt’s and uncle’s home, and only at
those times when her loneliness had become
temporarily more overwhelming than her guilt ~
and then, never in church, for she had only con¬
tinued to go there for as long as Betty and Bill
Innis had taken her with them - she had prayed:
‘If you send me someone to love again. I’ll be
good to them, and I’ll do whatever they want me
to do.’
She had never really believed that anyone
would be sent.
She had known, with absolute certainty, that
she did not deserve it.
And then, there he was. Her phoenix.
She had looked up the word, to be quite sure it
was fitting. She disliked the first definition,
90
because it referred to the legendary bird that set
fire to itself every five hundred years and then rose
from the ashes, and fire meant pain, and she didn’t
want to associate Silas with anything painful.
The second definition was, as she had thought,
perfect: A person or thing of surpassing beauty or
quality.
That, without a shadow of doubt, was Silas.
So the next time he called her Abigail-Abeguile,
when they were lying naked in bed after making
love, she responded by calling him Phoenix.
‘I love it,’ he said, and thanked her, as if she had
given him a gift.
‘How can you thank me?’ she asked.
He looked at her then with more love than she
had ever seen in her life.
‘You have no idea,’ he told her.
‘Of what?’ Abigail asked.
‘Of what it means to me to have you,’ Silas said.
‘I know,’ she said, ‘what you mean to me.’
‘What’s that?’ he asked.
‘Everything,’ Abigail said.
The green eyes grew even more intense,
seemed almost luminous.
‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘that I’ll always be able to
trust you.’
‘Always,’ she told him.
‘I’ve been terribly betrayed,’ he said, ‘in the
past.’
‘I’ll never betray you,’ she told him.
‘I love you, Abeguile/ Silas said.
‘I love you, Phoenix,’ Abigail said.

91
 I

Chapter Fifteen

She came to live with Silas that July, less than

three months after their meeting, in the house that
had belonged first to his parents, then to his
mother alone, then to his sister, then entirely to
him. They slept in the big bedroom, in the double
bed in which Silas had slept first with Patricia,
then with Jules - though he never told Abigail that,
nor did he tell her about the grave in the back
garden, because he felt that she might not under¬
stand those things, that even if she could under¬
stand, they might still diminish her adoration of
him, and he didn’t want anything ever to do that.
He spent as much time with her as he could,
introduced her to his favourite shops and cafes
and restaurants around Muswell Hill and High-
gate and Crouch End. He took her with him to
work at the studio in Edison Road, encouraged
her to assist him during portrait sittings, saw from
the outset that there was no need to dzscourage
her from messing with equipment because she
was patently afraid of damaging anything, had
learned young from Francesca about protecting
precious possessions - namely the cello. And for
that side of Abigail’s life, Silas had a local builder
convert one of the spare upstairs rooms into a
music room, encouraging her to play, loving to sit
and listen to her, sometimes for hours at a time.
‘Don’t you get bored listening to me grind on?’
92
Abigail asked one September afternoon when
she’d been concentrating on scales and studies.
‘No more than you get bored watching me work
at the studio,’ Silas said. ‘And you don’t grind.’
The partially soundproofed room he’d com¬
missioned had three biscuit-coloured walls and
one that had been handpainted as a tangle of
dark green and russet foliage out of which
peeped a pair of gleaming golden eyes.
‘I think they belong to a fox,’ Silas had
suggested whimsically, the first time Abigail had
seen the room, locked till then so that he could
surprise her. ‘Escaped from a hunt and now living
in the sanctuary of your very own private forest.’
He had broken off. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘It’s so beautiful.’ She took in the straight-
backed chair and music stand in the centre, the
Regency style chaise longue, two more chairs and
two small tables, one near her chair, all in pale
wood. ‘I don’t deserve it.’
‘Nonsense,’ Silas said. ‘Is there anything more
you need? I thought maybe one of those metro¬
nome things?’
‘Nothing,’ Abigail said. ‘It’s perfect.’
‘Don’t you think it’s time,’ Silas asked, ‘you
stopped being so hard on yourself?’
‘I don’t know if I can,’ she had said.
‘Even if you’d told the truth,’ he said, gently,
‘and taken the blame - even if they’d charged you
with something, even manslaughter, you’d have
served your time long ago, been free and clear.’
‘I’d still have done it though,’ Abigail had said.
‘Still have killed them.’

93
‘I hope you’re not over-practising,’ Silas said at the
end of October, ‘just because of the room. After
all, there’s no real need to go overboard now, is
there? Since you’re not professional any more.’
‘Aren’t I?’ Abigail asked.
Silas smiled. ‘You don’t need to play for money
now. I have enough.’
Which was true, with much of Patricia’s estate
still tucked away in tax-efficient places, and with
no mortgage, thanks to her life insurance.
‘Money isn’t everything,’ Abigail said.
Silas frowned. ‘I thought you said you had no
great ambition. That you only really played for
your mother’s sake.’
‘At the beginning,’ Abigail said. ‘But in a lot of
ways, after a while, it was playing that saved me.’
‘I thought you said that I saved you,’ Silas said.
‘You did,’ she said. ‘You have.’

‘Charlie Nagy phoned me today,’ she told Silas

less than a week later over dinner at the big old
oak table in the kitchen. ‘Remember him?’
Silas remembered Nagy’s refusal to pass on
Abigail’s contact details, remembered accepting
that it had been correct behaviour by the artists’
manager, but recalled too a brief flaring of anger
because Nagy had been an obstacle, a trip-wire
to be jumped in order to reach the woman he’d
known he wanted at first sight.
‘Of course I remember.’ He put down his fork.
‘What did he want?’
‘He said he’s hardly heard from me.’
November had brought rain and wind, and so
Abigail had cooked Irish stew, which she had
94
never much liked, but which Silas had told her he
adored. His tastes in food, she had discovered,
were eclectic but erratic. He liked Japanese food
almost any time, Chinese only occasionally,
Indian never. He’d seemed to enjoy Hungarian
goulash at a restaurant in Hornsey one week, but
when Abigail had tried cooking it a month later,
he’d said she was mistaken, that he hated any¬
thing with paprika, and then, having told her that
the only fish he liked were what he termed
‘elegant’ - dover sole or monkfish or turbot -
he’d contradicted himself by stopping his black
VW outside Toffs on Muswell Hill Broadway and
going in to buy cod and chips.
Abigail didn’t care if he was capricious about
food or occasionally difficult to cook for. She
loved cooking for him, loved making him happy,
remembered, often, her old prayer asking God to
send someone for her to love, and was im¬
measurably grateful.
‘Why should Charlie Nagy be expecting to hear
from you?’ Silas asked now.
‘He said there might be some work, if I’d like it.’
Silas said nothing, picked up his fork again, but
did not eat.
‘What’s the matter?’ Abigail asked.
He thought about it for a moment. ‘Jealousy, I
think.’
‘Why?’ She was amazed. ‘Why on earth should
you feel jealous of Charlie?’
‘Not of him.’
‘I don’t understand,’ Abigail said.
‘Orchestras,’ Silas said, ‘are filled with attractive
men.’
95
 Abigail laughed.
‘Audiences too,’ Silas added. ‘All looking at
you.’
‘I’d never look at them,’ she said. ‘Not when I
have you.’
‘I’m not joking,’ Silas said.

Abigail telephoned Nagy Artists next day to tell

Charlie she’d decided not to work for a little
while longer.
‘That’s a pity,’ Nagy said.
She told him she was sorry, and he told her
that, work or not, if she was ever an3where near
his office in Bayswater, he’d love it if she dropped
in for a cup of something, and she told him she
certainly would.
One week later, he telephoned again.
‘Your other half was here,’ he said.
‘What do you mean?’ Abigail asked.
‘Silas came to my office today to see me,’ Nagy
said.
Abigail was silent, confused, Silas having told
her that morning he was going to spend most of
the day at a photo shoot in Berners Street in the
West End.
‘He told me that I’m not to take any notice of
what you said last week,’ Nagy went on, ‘and that
if any suitable engagements come up, you are
available, after all.’
‘Goodness,’ Abigail said.
‘So which is it?’
She told him she’d get back to him.

‘Why did you do that?’ Abigail asked Silas that

96
 snuggling beside him under the snowy
white duvet cover he’d taken her to Harrods to
buy the day after she’d agreed to move into the
house.
‘Because I felt I’d disappointed you,’ he replied.
‘And I couldn’t bear that.’
If I was a bit disappointed,’ she said, thought¬
fully, ‘it was only because I thought you didn’t
trust me, and I thought you knew you could.’
‘I do,’ Silas told her. ‘I’m just a very jealous
man.’
‘I know that now, Phoenix,’ she said.
‘So you’ll beware, Abeguile?’
She half closed her eyes in a sleepy smile,
pushed away the duvet, reached for his hand, laid
it on her left breast.
‘You didn’t tell me,’ Silas said, ‘how good-
looking Charlie is.’
‘I never thought about it.’
‘So you do agree he is good-looking?’
‘Nice looking,’ Abigail allowed.
‘He isn’t married, is he?’ Silas asked. ‘Or with
anyone special?’
‘Not so far as I know.’
‘Gay?’
Abigail smiled. ‘No.’
‘Why does that make you smile?’ Silas wanted
to know. ‘Do you have some particular reason for
knowing that Charlie isn’t gay?’
‘You really are jealous, aren’t you?’ Abigail said.
‘Don’t ever try finding out,’ Silas said.

97
 Chapter Sixteen

‘What’s Ralph really like?’ Abigail asked one day

at the studio late the following March^ after a
session with two-year-old twin boys that had
drained everyone present except for the children
themselves.
‘You’ve met him often enough,’ Silas said,
slumped on the couch.
‘Not that often, and never properly,’ she said.
‘The longest I’ve spent with Ralph was at our
wedding.’ She thought. ‘And once at that dinner
party, and once when I was in Jules’s shop and he
dropped in.’ She had, on several occasions since
she and Jules had found out how well they got
along, spent a few hours at a time helping out at
Jules’s Books as well as at the studio. ‘Other than
that, he always seems to be working.’
They had married, at Marylebone Register
Office, shortly before Christmas, had honey¬
mooned in Venice, which had been cold and wet
and grey, though Silas had said that made it less
like a corny backdrop and had taken countless
rolls of film, and Abigail had found every moment
thrilling. Jules had asked her, when they’d been
planning, if perhaps she might not rather have
gone somewhere warm, but Abigail had told her
not in the least, for she had never much liked
heat, and tended, in any case, to associate it with
the hot August day of her mother’s last birthday.
98
 ^Ralph doesn’t like me/ Silas said now.
You ve never said that before.’ Abigail was
surprised. ‘Why shouldn’t he like you?’
Silas shrugged. ‘You’ll have to ask him at the
party.’
Jules was throwing a surprise bash for Ralph’s
thirtieth birthday^ had told Abigail that if it were
left up to Ralph to consider a real celebration for
himself, they’d have to wait forever.
‘I wouldn’t dream of asking him,’ Abigail said.
‘If Ralph’s stupid enough not to like you, then he
doesn’t interest me.’ She paused. ‘Except,
doesn’t it make Jules sad?’
‘I expect it does,’ Silas said.
The party was good fun, though Abigail could
see, now that she was taking time to actually look,
that whatever Ralph Weston’s feelings might be
about his brother-in-law, Silas unquestionably
disliked Ralph a good deal. Jules, on the other
hand, seemed quite blissfully content whenever
she was around her husband - to whom she had
now been married for almost three years - and
the gentle-looking zoologist, keeper of snakes
(though the tank room was strictly out of bounds
at the party), patently adored his wife.

Three days after the party, having just closed the

bookshop for the evening, Jules parked Patricia’s
old Escort on a yellow line in Edison Road and
ran down the steps into the basement studio.
Silas was in the room that doubled as reception
and office, sitting at his desk, going over contact
sheets with a magnifier.
‘Nice surprise,’ he said, looking up.
99
 ‘No Abigail today?’ Jules asked.
He shook his head. ‘She’s been in town,
rehearsing for the Berlioz at All Souls.’
Jules took a moment, looking around at the
walls covered, as always, with photographic
prints. For some time after Silas had first fallen
in love with Abigail, he had taken to plastering
every wall in the place with enormous enlarge¬
ments of her pictures - until Abigail herself had
seen them and begged him to take them down.
Now, at least, one had to actually look to realize
what a disproportionate number of photographs
of his wife still hung among those of his clients.
‘What did you want her for?’ Silas went on
looking over the contacts.
‘I didn’t,’ Jules said. ‘It’s you I’ve come to see.’
‘My,’ he said, dryly. ‘Something wrong?’
‘On the contrary.’ Jules hoped she was appear¬
ing calmer than she was feeling. ‘It’s been a very
long time since I’ve felt this good.’ She paused.
‘Though you may not agree with the reason
when I tell you.’
Silas put down his magnifier and waited.
‘I’ve told Ralph,’ Jules said, ‘about our father.’
Silas didn’t move.
‘He’s off to Johannesburg soon-’ Jules felt un¬
nerved by her brother’s absolute lack of reaction
‘-for the symposium he told you about the other
night, and we were talking about how much we
were going to miss each other-’ still not a flicker
on his face ‘-and I don’t remember exactly why,
but we got onto the subject of secrets, and I’ve felt
for so long that it was wrong of me to be keeping
something so important from him, and...’
100
 ‘And?’There was the chill. No mistaking it.
‘And he was fine about it.’ Jules went straight
on^ regardless.
‘Was he?’ Silas’s eyes were pebble-flat.
‘He was very shocked, of course,’ Jules said.
‘But after a bit, he told me he felt almost
relieved.’ She paused. ‘He said he’d often thought
you and I had some big secret, that wondering
about it was sometimes worse than knowing.’ She
took a breath. ‘He says he’s glad I love him
enough to have shared it with him.’
‘Yes,’ Silas said. ‘I think I can understand that.’
‘Can you, Silas?’ Jules felt a flare of hope.
‘Really?’
‘I’m married myself now, sis,’ he said. ‘Of
course I understand.’
‘Yet Abigail doesn’t know, does she? About our
father.’
‘No.’ He was definite. ‘Nor do I want her to.
Ever.’
‘Don’t you think she’d feel the same as Ralph if
she did?’ Jules asked, gently. ‘She’s shared her
own past with you, after all, and she loves you so
much.’
‘I know she does,’ Silas said. ‘But Ralph doesn’t
have to live in our house. Abigail does.’
Jules forced herself to think about the fishpond.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I suppose I can see how that’s
different.’
‘Very different,’ Silas said.
‘So you really don’t mind?’ Jules asked. ‘That
I’ve told Ralph?’
‘Not really,’ Silas said. ‘So long as he doesn’t
start discussing it with anyone else, or with me,
101
come to that.’
‘He won’t tell anyone,’ she said swiftly. ‘He
wouldn’t do that to me.’
‘Good,’ Silas said.

Two days later, when Charlie Nagy telephoned

with a last-minute offer to take one of the cellists’
places playing Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony on
the Western Symphony Orchestra’s guest engage¬
ment at the annual Easter Festival in Deauville,
Abigail, excited as she was by the prospect, told
Charlie that Silas was out taking wedding
photographs and that she needed to speak to him
before agreeing to anything.
‘Silas has been fine with your working, hasn’t
he?’ Charlie said.
‘I know,’ she agreed. ‘But this is ten days
abroad.’
‘Only the other side of the Channel,’ Charlie
said.
‘I’ll phone you back.’
‘Twenty minutes, or it’s gone,’ Charlie told her.
Silas responded promptly to her urgent mess¬
age on his mobile.
‘If you want it, my love, you take it,’ he told her.
‘I do want it,’ Abigail said. ‘So long as you don’t
mind.’
‘Not one bit,’ Silas said, ‘so long as you don’t
mind my coming too.’
‘I can’t think of anything I’d love more,’ she said.

Silas made the plans in consultation with

Charlie, arranging for the two of them to spend a
fortnight in Deauville. For the duration of the
102
engagement at Salle Elie de Brignac, they were to
stay with the other WSO musicians, after which,
Silas told Abigail, he’d reserved the last four
nights at the Royal Hotel.
‘It’s near the Casino,’ Silas said, ‘very luxuri¬
ous, overlooking the sea.’
‘I don’t need luxury,’ Abigail told him, ‘so long
as we’re together.’
‘I like luxury,’ Silas told her, ‘so you’ll just have
to put up with it.’

Abigail usually enjoyed rehearsal sessions, but

having Silas with her, she found, made it
especially pleasurable. Given permission to
observe as the orchestra worked, he remained in
the background, silent and well-mannered; then,
back at the hotel, he helped with her own
practice, turning sheets for her, humming her
sections with her in the bath, telling her, as she
washed her hair, that he thought her the finest
musician in the orchestra.
‘Don’t be silly,’ Abigail said.
‘I only hear you,’ Silas said. ‘Even when you
play with a hundred others, I only hear you.’ He
paused, bent and kissed her mouth. ‘Your mother
would be very proud of you.’

Afterwards, when the music was done with, the

applause a memory, new colleagues bade fare¬
well to, Abigail and Silas had barely changed
hotels and enjoyed just a day and a half of private
time when Silas - in the midst of ordering a
lavish dinner at Le Yearling - received an urgent
call from Lily Tree, a contact of his at Sleek
103
 magazine^ telling him she had a fashion shoot
that three big names had turned down and which
was now Silas’s for the takings so long as he could
get back to London by morning.
‘I told her no, of course,’ Silas said, back at the
elegant table with its small red-shaded lamp,
overlooked by equestrian prints.
‘But it sounds so great,’ Abigail said, dismayed
for him.
‘Lily said it could be quite a boost for me.’ He
picked up the menu again. ‘But it’s out of the
question. I’m not walking out on our holiday.’
‘You have to,’ Abigail told him.
‘I don’t have to do anything, especially not
leave you.’
‘It’s just a holiday,’ she pointed out. ‘S’/^e^’s
really important, surely.’
‘Sure,’ Silas said.
‘Call her back,’ Abigail told him.
‘She may already have passed it on,’ he said.
‘All the more reason to call her noz4;,’she said.
He returned again after more than fifteen min¬
utes, apologized to Abigail and their waiter, went
back to the matter of ordering dinner.
‘Well?’ Abigail searched his face. ‘Have you got
it?’
‘I have,’ Silas said, ‘and I’m very pleased with
myself.’
‘Good,’ she said. ‘That’s great.’
‘I’m especially pleased with myself because I’ve
organized things so that you don’t miss out on
the rest of your holiday.’
Abigail was dismayed. ‘I’m not staying without
you.’
104
 You won’t be alone, darling.’ Silas’s hair flopped
over his forehead and he pushed it quickly back.
‘That’s what’s so lovely. Jules is coming to join
you.’ He grinned at her startled expression. ‘She’s
lonely with Ralph still in South Africa, and she
said she’d love to take my place. If you don’t mind,
that is.’
‘I’d rather be with you.’ Abigail felt uncertain.
‘Want me to call her back, tell her it’s off? She
said she was going to make arrangements with a
neighbour to take Asali.’
‘Then you can’t stop her - it would be
horrible.’
He lowered the menu again, reached for her
hand. ‘I shouldn’t have spoken to her without
asking you first,’ he said.
‘Don’t be silly,’ Abigail said. ‘You only did it for
me.’
‘I hope you know that’s true,’ Silas said, seri¬
ously.
‘Of course I do,’ Abigail said.
‘That’s settled then.’ He picked up the menu
again. ‘Better order before they boot us out. All
this planning’s made me absolutely ravenous.’

The warmth that already existed between Abigail

and Jules grew as they explored Deauville itself
and the Normandy coast and countryside, with
plenty of time to chat more freely, though Abigail
couldn’t help noticing that at some point during
almost every conversation, Jules seemed com¬
pelled to reaffirm her loyalty to Silas.
‘Without Silas,’ she said in their rented Peugeot
on the road to Honfleur the first morning, ‘I’d
105
 never have been able to open Jules’s Books.’
‘Silas and I were close before our mum died/
she said, drinking cafe au lait in a small bar near
the harbour, ‘but afterwards, he became mother
and father as well as my big brother.’
‘I know he was hurt when I moved out to be
with Ralph-’ over brioches and melon next
morning, bundled up in sweaters in early sun¬
shine on Abigail’s balcony ‘-but once he got used
to the idea, he was very supportive.’
‘I think Ralph occasionally finds our closeness
a bit much-’ later the same day, strolling back to
the car after buying Calvados at a farm near
Pont-l’Eveque ‘-but he doesn’t have any family
now except me, so it’s hard for him to under¬
stand that Silas and I were everything to each
other for so long.’
‘I think I can understand that,’ Abigail said.
She had been hesitant, till then, to mention
what Silas had said about Ralph not liking him,
but now, tentatively, she did so.
‘He’s quite wrong,’ Jules said.
‘I couldn’t help noticing,’ Abigail went on, ‘that
they did seem quite strained with each other at
the party.’
‘Ralph has nothing against Silas,’ Jules said,
firmly, as they reached the Peugeot, and she
unlocked the doors.
I suppose, Abigail said, not wishing to upset
her, ‘they’re just so different.’
‘Worlds apart,’ Jules agreed, getting into the
car. Nothing at all in common.’
‘Except you,’ Abigail said.

106
 Chapter Seventeen

'Something wrong?’ Abigail asked Jules the next

afternoon - the last of their holiday - while they
were sheltering from a sharp downpour in the
doorway of an antique shop on the quai de la
Touques in Deauville.
Jules shook her head and smiled. 'Just thinking
about Ralphs trying to imagine where his plane
might be now.’ She checked her watch. 'Maybe
somewhere over the Pyrenees, maybe a little
closer to home.’
'And you won’t be there to greet him when he
arrives.’ Abigail was suddenly ashamed. 'Because
of me.’
'We’ll be back tomorrow,’ Jules said, easily.
'Silas should never have made you come.’
'He didn’t. I wanted to come, and Silas only
did it because he adores you.’ Jules linked arms
with Abigail. 'And I’m very grateful to him for
giving us this time together.’

As evening approached, Abigail suggested they

eat in the hotel so that Jules would be on hand if
Ralph happened to phone - and as they were
finishing their first course, there was a call for
Jules, and when she returned to the table her eyes
were brighter because Ralph had landed safely,
had assured her that he didn’t mind too much
her not being at home because he was exhausted
107
 from his long journey, but was very much looking
forward to meeting their train when it got in from
Portsmouth Harbour next afternoon.
Arriving at Waterloo, however, it was not Ralph,
but Silas waiting for them on the platform.
‘I didn’t realize,’ he said, embracing both
women, then taking the cello and Abigail’s suit¬
case, ‘that he was meant to be coming.’
They looked around.
‘I’m going to wait,’ Jules said. ‘You two go on if
you like.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ Abigail told her. ‘We’ll all wait.
He’s probably stuck in traffic somewhere.’
They walked slowly to the barrier, Jules
repeatedly checking back over her shoulder to be
sure they hadn’t missed Ralph in the crush of
passengers, but there was no sign of him.
‘Here,’ Silas said after several minutes, fishing
his mobile phone out of his jacket pocket and
handing it to his sister. ‘May as well try the flat,
just in case.’
Jules keyed in the number, frowned. ‘Engaged.’
‘Might be the lines,’ Silas said.
Jules tried again, shook her head.
‘Maybe he’s trying to leave word for you,’
Abigail suggested. ‘Maybe there’s a message desk
here.’
They all looked up and down the concourse.
‘There’s an information sign,’ Silas said. ‘I’ll go
and ask.’
^ He was back minutes later, shaking his head.
‘Nothing.’ He looked at his sister. ‘Phone still
busy?’
Jules nodded, handed the mobile back to him.
108
 ‘There could be a fault on your phone line at
home/ Abigail said.
‘Even if there is/ Jules said, ‘that doesn’t
explain why Ralph isn’t here.’
‘So what do you want to do, sis? Wait a bit
longer or go home?’
‘I suppose-’ Jules wavered ‘-assuming he’s
actually using the phone...’
She waited tensely while Silas tried the number
one more time. It was a mild enough afternoon,
but she felt very cold.
Silas shook his head.
‘You two go home/ Jules said. ‘I’ll take a taxi.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous/ Silas told her.

‘I wish you’d sat in the front.’ Abigail, in the

passenger seat of the VW, twisted around to look
at Jules. ‘Your legs are much longer than mine.’
‘I’m fine.’
Abigail heard the tension in her voice. ‘Don’t
fret too much,’ she said. ‘I’m sure something
urgent must have come up.’
‘Zoologists don’t have urgent things come up,’
Jules said.
‘They must do sometimes,’ Abigail said lamely,
glanced at Silas, saw that his sister’s mounting
anxiety was starting to make him nervier too.
‘This isn’t like him/ Jules said.

Ralph’s old blue Mini was parked in a resident’s

bay near the flat, two cars away from Jules’s
Escort.
‘Doesn’t mean anything,’ Jules said shortly,
getting out of the car. ‘He takes tubes and buses
109
 i

most of the time.’

She unlocked the street door, then stopped,
standing still on the threshold.
‘Jules?’ Abigail said, gently.
‘Something’s wrong,’ Jules said.
‘Let’s go up.’ Silas took control. ‘Want me to go
ahead?’
Jules shook her head, took a step onto the
doormat, looked towards the stairs, made a small,
strange sound, like a tiny, constricted moan, then
went upstairs quickly, jerkily, looking, Abigail
thought, almost like a marionette.
Her hands shook as she unlocked their front
door, pushed it open.
It was dark inside, all the inner doors closed.
‘Ralph?’ Jules’s voice, unanswered, hung in the
silence.
Silas reached past her, found the light switch,
flicked it.
The small rectangular hall looked normal,
everything in place: a painting of an elephant that
Jules had bought Ralph for a previous birthday;
the carved mirror they’d found together a year
ago in a market in Ravenna, a yellow Post-it note
with shopping reminders - notepads, pencils, pasta
- written on it stuck to the glass; the pine hat-
stand in one corner, a raincoat and hooded jacket
hanging on two of its hooks.
Jules glanced automatically down, saw a litter
of envelopes on the floor.
‘Oh, dear God,’ she said, very softly, and then
swiftly, suddenly, she moved to the bedroom
door and thrust it open.
The curtains were not drawn, and in the late
no
afternoon light it was apparent that the bed had
not been slept in, though Ralph’s steel suitcase
lay open on the floor in the middle of the room,
a blue shirt sleeve hanging untidily out, a plastic
laundry bag on the top, books and a notepad
beside it and, next to that, half-hidden by a white
T-shirt, a leather-framed photograph of Jules.
Standing behind his sister, observing the room,
Silas turned, looked at Abigail, saw that she was
looking intently at the closed kitchen door.
Their eyes met, and then, without a word, he
went to that door.
Opened it.
‘Jesus,’ he said, softly.
Behind him, Abigail gave a small, constricted
gasp.
‘What?’ Jules’s voice was harsh, sharp, as she
pushed past her sister-in-law and brother, and
then halted, briefly frozen, just inside the kitchen.
‘Jules,’ Silas said.
She took another step forward and sank onto
her knees.
Beside her husband’s body.
Nothing to be done, that much was instantly
clear.
Ralph was wearing a blue T-shirt and jeans, his
feet bare. His face was slightly mottled, looked
puffy, slightly swollen, his round spectacles askew,
his eyes behind them staring, bloodshot; his
mouth was open, as if he had been gasping for air,
perhaps choking, and his lips were bluish with
traces of something that looked like foam in the
corners. He was wearing his MedicAlert bracelet,
his left hand was at his throat, the right, its fingers
111
 splayed, looked as if he might have been reaching
for something.
Jules touched his face, the quivering oval tiger’s-
eye ring that Ralph had bought her from a pre¬
vious trip to Africa accentuating the trembling of
her hand. Her breathing, which had seemed
virtually to cease, began again, harshly, rapidly,
and the trembling spread from her hand along her
arm to the whole of her body. She touched his
cheek again, stroked it with her open palm, then,
abruptly, bent lower over him, slid her arms
around his body and raised him a little off the
floor, holding him to her.
‘Sis,’ Silas said.
Jules’s lips were moving, though no words were
audible.
‘Darling,’ Silas said.
He felt Abigail’s hand, icy cold, clutching his
own, stopping him, looked at her, saw the shake
of her head, knew she was telling him to leave
Jules, and for an instant he resisted, but then he
knew his wife was right, drew her close instead,
let her lean against him.
They stood that way for several moments
before Silas noticed the small black cordless tele¬
phone on the floor a few feet away.
‘Look,’ he said, very softly.
Abigail reacted first, drew away from him, went
to pick it up.
That s why it was engaged,’ she said, very
softly, and handed it to Silas.
He pressed a key. ‘Must have been trying to call
for help, and dropped it.’
Jules made a choking sound.
112
 ‘Darling.’ Silas put the phone on the small pine
kitchen table^ turned, bent down again, laid a
hand on his sister’s shoulder. ‘Let me-’
‘No.’ She shook off his hand, shrank lower, still
cradling Ralph.
Abigail was staring at the table.
A foil carton sat close to the phone, full of food.
Something with rice - chicken, perhaps, or mush¬
room, all too congealed to identify.
A fork lay at the edge of the table, rice grains
still clinging to its prongs. Abigail remembered
Jules once telling her about the dangers of
anaphylactic shock, the speed with which it could
strike people with severe allergies.
Like Ralph.

‘It makes no sense,’ Jules said in her new, harsh

voice.
‘Try and sip that, sis.’
Silas had called the doctor, poured brandy for
all three of them, found two blankets, one to
wrap around Jules’s shoulders, the other to cover
the body, though she had snatched that from
Silas, laid it gently over Ralph herself, refusing to
cover his face.
They were all on the floor, waiting, sitting vigil.
‘I wonder,’ Jules said, abruptly, ‘if he fed the
snakes.’
‘I shouldn’t worry about them,’ Silas said.
‘Ralph cared about them,’ she said sharply.
‘I know, sis,’ Silas said.
‘We can check on them later,’ Abigail said.
Jules looked up at the table, at the foil carton of
food. ‘Whatever that is, Ralph wouldn’t have
113
 bought anything suspect.’
‘Try not to think about it now,’ Abigail said
gently.
‘He never went anywhere he wasn’t well
known.’ Jules was still trembling, her face ashen,
though she had not yet wept. ‘He understood his
allergy much too well for that.’
‘Perhaps,’ Silas said, ‘if he was very tired.’
‘Even so,’ Jules said.
Abigail recalled the previous evening in Deau¬
ville. Jules coming back after her phone call from
Ralph - their last conversation - saying how
exhausted he’d told her he was after his flight.
She looked at Jules again, saw in her eyes that
she, too, remembered.
When the doc’s been,’ Silas said, ‘I think you
should come home with us.’
‘I won’t leave Ralph,’ she said.
‘I know, darling,’ he said. ‘But afterwards.’
Jules stared at him. ‘They’ll want to take him,
won’t they?’
‘I expect so,’ Silas said.
Abigail bit her lip, waited for the other woman
to protest, maybe refuse.
Jules stroked Ralph’s hair, bent her head, kissed
his forehead.
Where is that bloody man?’ Silas said, sud¬
denly, angrily.
‘There’s no hurry,’ Jules said.
The tears came then, silently at first, and then
opened in a great, ugly, gasping sob,
and Silas put his brandy glass down on the floor,
moved closer, put his arms gently around her, and
Jules, still clinging to Ralph, let her brother hold
114
her as she wept, howled against his shoulder. And
Abigail, watching, remembering the way her eyes
had glowed less than twenty-four hours before,
after she’d talked to Ralph for the last time, began
to cry too, quietly, for Jules.
And then another feeling came back to her, an
old, sick, horribly familiar feeling. Because if
Jules had not been with her last night in France,
if she had been here with Ralph, then this would
not have...
Stop she told herself.
She stopped crying, blanked out her guilt, and
that was familiar, too, Abigail knew, almost a
reflex. And then she grew angry with herself again,
for this was about Jules and Ralph, not about her.
More guilt.
Her greatest talent.

Chapter Eighteen

Everyone who knew Ralph agreed with Jules that

it was inexplicable, that he had been far too aware
of the dangers of his allergy to make such a fatal
error of judgment. And yet the pathologist’s post¬
mortem report was irrefutable. Ralph had eaten a
small amount of rice, chicken and mushroom
cooked with peanut oil, and his death had resulted
from cardiopulmonary arrest resulting from h3^o-
tension and hypoxia caused by anaphylactic
shock.
Natural causes.
115
 Ralph’s mistake stemming from fatigue.
‘I don’t believe it,’ Jules kept on saying to every¬
one who would listen. ‘It makes no sense^, not if
you knew how careful he was.’
Denial, they said - she knew they must be
saying - behind her back.
She supposed, in the end, that they were right.

Finding the flat unbearable to live in - even more

so, strangely, she thought, once Ralph’s snakes
had been removed - Jules had come, with Asali,
to stay with Silas and Abigail.
‘Just till after the funeral,’ she’d insisted at first,
but then, with them both encouraging her to stay
on - and since she had decided by then, in any
case, to sell the flat - she remained with them
until late July, when she moved again into a top
floor flat in an old terraced house between
Highgate and Crouch End. The rooms were
reasonably spacious and bright, there was a York-
stone fireplace in the sitting room, the kitchen
was modern and well-fitted and - all that really
mattered - it was not the kitchen in which they
had found poor Ralph.
‘Will Asali be all right,’ Abigail had asked when
Jules had first told them about it, ‘on the top
floor?’
‘We’ll have access to the back garden,’ Jules
explained, ‘and I’m buying a share of the free¬
hold, and no one in the house minds dogs.’
‘It’s too far from us,’ Silas had said.
‘Much closer than Camden Town,’ Jules had
pointed out. ‘And now we’re all going to be
driving, it’s no problem.’ She’d smiled at Abigail,
116
to whom she had given Ralph’s old Mini (Silas
having had his garage check it over), and who
was now having driving lessons.

‘You do know, don’t you-’ Abigail took her aside

the day before Jules exchanged contracts on the
purchase ‘-that we both really love you being
here? That we’d love nothing more than for you
to stay.’
‘I do know,’ Jules replied, ‘and I thank you for
it, but I do really need my own place again.’ She
paused, looked intently at Abigail. ‘You do
understand that, don’t you, darling?’
‘Of course we do,’ Abigail answered.
‘Not we,’ Jules persisted. ‘Do you understand?’
‘Of course I understand,’ Abigail said.
Her answer seemed wholehearted, but Jules
knew, with a sense of sadness, that it was not
entirely truthful, because Abigail still partly
blamed herself for Ralph’s death. Jules had told
her that it was pointless to think that way, that if
anyone was going to take that line of thought it
should be her, as his wife, but it had been clear to
Jules that Abigail had remained unconvinced.
Which meant that her sister-in-law, still so
permanently immured in older guilt, probably
believed that Jules was moving out because she
did, privately, blame her for the tragedy.
While the truth, in fact, was very different.
The truth was that since Jules had returned to
the house in Muswell Hill, Silas had asked her, a
number of times, to come into their room and
share their bed.
‘It’d be like old times,’ he had said.
117
 V

‘You weren’t married in the old times,’ Jules,

startled, had pointed out.
‘Abigail won’t mind,’ he had told her.
‘I think Abigail would mind very much.’ Jules,
more shocked now than startled, had tried to
force a light note into her response. ‘God, Silas,
what a weird notion to come up with.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he had said.
Jules had heard the cool tone and shaken her
head, because Silas’s hurt feelings were not, these
days, her uppermost consideration. Existing
without Ralph, getting through each successive
day and night without going mad thinking about
the lonely, frightening way he had died - not that
remembering all the goodness that had gone
before, all the warmth and fun and companion¬
ship and sexiness and tenderness, was any better,
not yet at least. Those things were what she was
struggling with for the time being, not her
brother’s rather perverse whims.
‘I’m only offering you love,’ Silas had said, ‘and
warmth.’
‘But it’s not a normal thing to offer,’ Jules had
told him. ‘Can’t you see that?’
‘No, I can’t,’ he had answered. ‘Having the two
most important women in my life sharing my
bed, cuddling up for comfort, strikes me as the
most normal, natural thing in the world.’ He had
paused. ‘It’s everything I could wish for, Jules.’
That was when Jules had known that she had to
go.
She thought, in fact, at that point, that if it had
not been for her shop - and she thought she did
need Jules’s Books quite badly now, both for
118
occupation and for hanging onto one thing that
was solid and familiar - she might have gone
much further away.
But she did not.

She waited until the end of August, when she was

altogether settled in her new flat - she and Asali,
who waited on the rug by the side of her bed each
night for Jules to pick her up and place her on her
duvet, where the dachshund would snuggle down
and watch with her warm, sharp little eyes until
Jules turned out the light - before she invited
Silas and Abigail around for a light supper of
cold salmon, and broke her news to them.
‘That’s wonderful.’ Abigail, thrilled, jumped up
and came to put her arms around her. ‘I can’t
believe it.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ Silas had not moved
from his chair.
‘I am telling you,’ Jules said.
‘Before,’ Silas said.
Abigail looked at him, startled by his coldness.
‘You must be at least four months’ gone,’ Silas
said.
‘Spot on,’ Jules said, calmly, though her cheeks
were flushed. ‘I didn’t say anything because I
wasn’t certain exactly how I felt about it. And
because, I suppose, I wanted a little time alone
with it.’ Her flush grew, and she smiled. ‘With
him.’
‘A boy?’ Abigail forgot Silas’s strangeness. ‘Oh,
Jules, I’m so happy for you.’
‘Silas?’ Jules looked at her brother. ‘Aren’t you
happy for me?’
119
 He waited another moment, then got to his feet
and held out his arms in answer, and his sister
stood up too, came to him, into his arms, and
began to cry.
‘Fm sorry,’ Silas said. ‘I love you, Jules.’
1 love you, too,’ she said, her voice muffled
against his shoulder.
Abigail stood, a little apart, relieved and joyful
for them both.
‘You’ll make a wonderful uncle,’ she said softly
after a minute or two.
And father^ came into her head.
‘What will you do about the shop?’ Silas asked,
drawing away from Jules.
‘Do?’ she said. ‘Nothing.’
‘But you can’t run a business and be a mother.’
He took his sister’s hand and led her to the
couch, where Asali was lying on a soft cushion.
‘Of course I can,’ Jules said. ‘Especially now I
have Drew.’
Though Abigail still came to help in the book¬
shop now and again, Jules had decided, during
the period of her greatest need, to take on a full¬
time assistant, and Drew Martin, a kind-hearted
young gay man who had not long since been
dumped by his lover and who tended to care for
Jules like a mother hen, had proven a godsend.
Silas, not especially keen on Drew, lifted an
eyebrow. ‘You’ll at least come back to the house,
live with us again.’
Jules drew away from him, smiled. ‘No, darling.’
|But you’ll have to,’ he said. ‘You can’t be alone.’
‘I won’t be,’ Jules said, and put a hand on her
belly.
120
 Something in Silas’s expression cooled again.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I suppose not.’
Abigail frowned.
Silas noticed. ‘What?’ His tone was short.
‘Nothing,’ she said.

He made love to her with extra passion that

night.
‘You’ll never betray me, will you, Abeguile?’
He hadn’t called her that for a long while, she
realized. Had not asked her that question for even
longer. She had almost forgotten how vulnerable
he could be.
‘Never,’ she told him with a rush of love.
‘Swear it,’ he said.
‘On our unborn children,’ Abigail said.
Silas pulled away, looked hard into her face.
‘You’re not pregnant, too?’
‘No,’ she said, smiling. ‘Of course not.’ She was
on the Pill; they had talked about it after the first
time, and had agreed to wait, to enjoy what they
had.
‘Good,’ he said.
Something in Abigail went cold. ‘Why good?’
she asked.
‘Because if you were,’ Silas said, ‘I’d have to
share you.’

Abigail, having a sandwich lunch in the shop with

Jules the following Wednesday, the first in Sep¬
tember (Drew took Wednesday afternoons and
alternate Sundays off), told her what Silas had
said.
‘That doesn’t really surprise me,’ Jules said.
121
 ‘I thought he liked babies.’ Abigail had seen
him on various occasions smiling at infants and
at toddlers with such warmth that her heart had
turned over just thinking of the future.
‘He does,’ Jules said. ‘But he is, as you know, a
very jealous man.’
‘But he wouldn’t, surely, be jealous of his own
child?’
‘I think he might.’ Jules saw the naked dis¬
appointment on Abigail’s face and felt pity for
her. ‘You must have realized how possessive he is.
It’s because he loves you so very much, darling,
that he might not be in a rush to share you, not
even with a baby.’
‘But in time?’ Abigail said. ‘He hasn’t ever told
you that he doesn’t ever want to have children,
has he?’
The door opened and a woman, shaking and
closing her umbrella, came in.
Jules stood up to greet the customer, glanced
quickly back at Abigail, saw her concern and
longing.
‘Of course he’s never said that,’ she said.

Chapter Nineteen

As Jules’s pregnancy developed, Abigail found

herself thinking increasingly about having babies
of her own. The thoughts came with an urgency
that surprised her, for if, in the past - before Silas
- she had thought about having children, she had
122
always pushed the idea away, had instantly con¬
demned herself for allowing herself such desires,
told herself she did not deserve children, that
they did not deserve such a mother.
Now, though, surrounded by love, observing
her sister-in-law at every stage, hope became very
real, turning into a kind of hunger. Having a
child - children - with Silas seemed suddenly to
Abigail the zenith of everything; the potential
perfecting of the second chance he had given her.
Except that he still did not want to know, became
irritated, even annoyed, when she pressed him on
the subject.
Patience^ she told herself.
Yet sometimes, she couldn’t resist pushing a
little further.
‘You are looking forward to being an uncle,
aren’t you?’ she asked one mid-October afternoon
in Edison Road, while they were in the midst of
sorting out the studio’s third-quarter VAT return.
‘Of course I am,’ Silas answered.
‘You don’t see your nephew being any kind of
threat, do you?’
‘Who put that in your head?’ he asked sharply.
‘It was you,’ she said. ‘When you said you
didn’t want to share me.’
‘You used the word “threat”,’ he said.
‘Wrong word, maybe.’ Abigail paused. ‘But
Jules thinks you may feel my having a baby might
somehow take me away from you.’
‘You don’t want to listen to Jules,’ Silas said.
‘She’s always had odd ideas.’
‘You adore Jules.’
‘Do I?’ Silas said oddly.
123
 Abigail frowned. ‘Don’t you?’
‘Jules let me down,’ Silas said. ‘You’re the only
one I trust now.’

That exchange left Abigail feeling unsettled.

It was not the first time she had felt that, were
such a thing possible, her husband might not have
minded isolating her from the rest of the world.
Having encouraged her to take the engagement
with the WSO, Silas had since become discour-
agingly negative about the jobs Charlie had
steered her way, saying the work was beneath her,
not challenging enough, leading nowhere.
Being still far more content in her marriage
than she had ever dreamed of being, Abigail had
no great urge to spend much time with other
people, but she had hoped, now of all times, to
see as much of Jules as possible, and though she
had taken and passed her driving test and was,
therefore, freer than ever to go where she pleased
in the Mini, Silas was being a bit petty even
about her seeing his sister.
‘Jules and Drew are stocktaking one night next
week-’ she had mentioned a few weeks earlier, as
they were driving home after dinner at Benihana
in Swiss Cottage ‘-and I said I’d go and lend a
hand.’
‘Bad idea,’ Silas had said.
‘I’d enjoy it,’ Abigail had said, gazing out of the
window into the dark.
‘I’ve been thinking, in fact,’ he’d gone on as if
she hadn’t spoken, ‘that now that Jules has
Martin-’ he seldom used Drew’s first name ‘-you
should give up working at the shop altogether.’
124
 ‘Why would I want to do that?’ She’d turned to
face him, startled.
‘Working for relatives is never a good idea,’
Silas had told her.
‘I work for you at the studio.’
‘That’s very different.’
‘I don’t think it’s at all different.’
‘I’d have thought,’ Silas said, a little coolly, ‘that
working with me while you wait for the right kind
of engagements would be enough for you, but if
it isn’t, why don’t you start teaching music?’
‘I’m not qualified to teach.’ Surprised again,
she thought of the jobs he’d discouraged her
from accepting. ‘Anyway, according to you, there
are no “right” engagements.’
‘Of course you’re qualified. You went to the
Conservatoire.’
‘I didn’t study to be a teacher.’
‘I’ll bet the average parent round here wouldn’t
care about that.’ Silas had flashed his lights at the
car in front. ‘You have the music room - it would
be perfect.’
‘I don’t want to teach.’ Abigail had felt sud¬
denly irritated. ‘I do want to go on working at
Jules’s Books.’
‘Then you must do-’ Silas was frosty ‘-as you
please.’
‘I shall,’ Abigail had told him.

When Jules telephoned Abigail one morning at the

end of October to ask if she would consider com¬
ing along to her weekly natural childbirth classes
at the hospital, with a view to acting as her birth¬
ing partner, Abigail, deeply touched, answered
125
immediately and unreservedly that she would be
honoured.
‘How could you say yes—’ Silas was at his desk
in the studio when she came in to give him the
news ‘-without asking me?’
Abigail, still taking off her rain jacket to hang
on the hatstand in the corner, glanced at him in
surprise. ‘I didn’t imagine you’d need asking. I
thought you’d be as thrilled as I was.’
‘You’re not,’ Silas said, ‘always as sensitive as
you claim, are you?’
Realization struck. ‘You thought Jules would
ask you.’ Instantly she was filled with shame. ‘Oh,
God, I’m sorry, I should have thought.’
‘No, you shouldn’t,’ he said coldly. ‘Jules
wouldn’t have asked me because she knows I’d
refuse.’
‘Then what-?’ Abigail sat down on the couch,
perplexed. ‘I don’t get this. How can you possibly
be objecting to your sister asking your wife to
help her with something so wonderful, especially
after Ralph?’
‘For God’s sake,’ Silas said, ‘be her damned
birthing partner if it’s that much of a big deal to
you.’
‘Why are you being so nasty?’ Abigail felt bewil¬
dered.
‘You know why,’ Silas said.
Abigail stared at him. ‘You can’t possibly still be
angry with Jules for wanting to stay in her own
home.’
‘Angry’s not the word I’d use,’ Silas said.
‘Don’t be so pompous.’ She was incredulous.
‘Jules is your sister, and we’re all she has now.’
126
 ‘She’ll have her child,’ Silas said.
‘Oh, for God’s sake.’ Abigail got up, pulled her
jacket from the stand and went to the door.
‘Grow up, Silas.’

The intensity of her disappointment with him,

the pain of arguing with him when she loved him
so much, the fear that her standing up to him
might damage their marriage, began to prey on
her mind, destroying the peace that had been so
hard-won.
She began to practise more regularly in the
music room, the old memories haunting her
again: flashbacks to the yard at Allen’s Farm, the
roar of the Beastie, the mud and blood and the
screaming.
She drew her bow back and forth across the
cello’s strings too violently, her hair falling wildly
about her face; making noise rather than music,
fancying she heard her mother’s reproach for
doing so, and instantly, despising herself, ceasing
her raucous abuse of the instrument and holding
it closer, cradling it, reminding herself that she
loved it, had to love it, for Francesca’s sake.
Abigail was frequently aware, had always been
aware through the years, that her focus at such
times was all on her mother, all her atonement
revolving around Francesca, though she had killed
her daddy, too, and Eddie - and then blamed poor
Eddie. But almost always she would thrust such
thoughts away, thrust them away, her victims,
slamming them back again into the stone wall,
into the ground, into the space deeper inside her
head, because she could not cope with them too.
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 Her mother was more than enough to bear.

She was shopping with Jules for baby things at

Peter Jones on the afternoon of the third week of
November when Jules - aware that Abigail’s
sporadic work hours at the bookshop and studio
were leaving her deeply unfulfilled - suggested
that she get in a taxi and go to see Charlie Nagy
in Bays water.
‘He may not be there/ Abigail said.
‘Phone him/ Jules said.
‘I can’t just leave you high and dry.’
‘You won’t be/ Jules assured. ‘I’ll go home -
I’ve had more than enough.’
‘There you are then/ Abigail said, mindful that
Jules was now seven months’ gone. ‘You’re too
tired to manage all these bags.’
‘You take the bags then.’ Jules grinned. ‘And I’ll
snooze on the tube.’ She patted her large bump.
‘One more good thing about this little chap,’ she
said. ‘At least he usually gets me a seat.’

The offices of Nagy Artists, just off Queensway,

consisted of one large room on the top floor of an
old building with a slightly sloping floor, timber
ceiling beams, two desks - one for Nagy, the other
for his part-time assistant, Toby Fry - and an aged,
cracking brown leather couch. Framed photo¬
graphs, posters and programmes covered the
walls, and the air smelled of coffee and the small
panatella type cigars that the thirty-two-year-old
enjoyed.
Nagy, alone in the office, not troubling to con¬
ceal his pleasure at Abigail’s visit, had welcomed
128
 her with a hug and set to brewing fresh coffee.
‘I know I’ve turned down a few things lately,’
she said now, sitting on the couch facing a photo¬
graph, among various others, of herself on the
platform at the Wigmore Hall.
‘More than a few,’ Charlie said, hovering over
the coffee maker.
Abigail flushed, fingered a split in the leather. ‘I
know,’ she said. ‘Sorry.’
‘Doesn’t matter,’ he said.
He poured into two mugs, added milk, handed
her one and sat down at the far end of the couch.
‘So,’ he said. ‘What’s up?’
Abigail regarded him for a moment. He had a
roundish face, a small, neat beard, rather less
dark curly hair than when they’d first met,
twinkly brown eyes that turned down at the outer
corners, and he was wearing the kind of clothes
he often favoured, crisp white shirt, colourful
embroidered waistcoat and jeans.
‘Thing is,’ Nagy said, ‘are you still sure, about
wanting work?’
‘Very sure,’ Abigail answered positively.
‘I just thought-’ He stopped.
‘Thought what?’ she asked.
He fiddled with the cuff of his left shirt sleeve.
‘Nothing.’ He smiled. ‘I must have got the wrong
idea. I’ll be glad to go on keeping my ear to the
ground for you.’
‘Thank you.’ Abigail paused. ‘Wrong idea
about what?’
He shook his head. ‘Nothing at all,’ he said.
‘How’s Silas?’
‘He’s fine.’ She felt the awkwardness lingering in
129
the air, frowned. ‘Has he been to see you again?’
‘No.’ He leaned over the coffee table, withdrew
a panatella from a tin.
‘Are you sure?’ Abigail asked.
Nagy took a dented silver cigarette lighter from
his trouser pocket.
‘Why wouldn’t I be?’ he said.

She raised the subject that evening, while she was

checking the bolognese sauce for their spaghetti
and Silas was preparing a salad.
‘Have you seen Charlie lately?’ she asked as
casually as she could manage.
‘Charlie Nagy?’ He had already rinsed the ice¬
berg lettuce, but now he was inspecting each leaf
in the colander. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘I just wondered,’ Abigail said, tasting the sauce.
‘Do I take it you’ve seen him?’
He often answered questions with questions,
putting her on the defensive, though she
supposed it was silly for her to feel that way. Still,
she found herself now explaining to him about
being in Peter Jones, and Jules urging her to take
the opportunity to drop in on Charlie, and then
waited for him to ask why she hadn’t simply told
him that she’d seen him.
‘Hardly round the corner,’ was all Silas said.
‘Closer than here or Crouch End,’ Abigail said,
and added black pepper.
‘Any work going?’ Silas asked.
‘Not at the moment.’ She stirred the sauce
again, then laid the wooden spoon over the top of
the pan. ‘He seemed a bit odd about my asking
about it.’
130
 ‘How so?’ His eyes flicked in her direction,
before he turned back to the sink, shook the
colander and tipped the lettuce into a big ceramic
bowl. ‘The sauce smells good.’
‘Almost done,’ she said.
Silas took olive oil, balsamic vinegar and
mustard from a shelf and began making dressing.
‘I wish you hadn’t gone to see Nagy.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because-’ he whisked with a fork ‘-as a matter
of fact, he and I have had a few chats lately, and
because - though I’d much rather not be telling
you this now - we’ve been collaborating on some¬
thing for you.’
‘What sort of something?’
‘A bit of a plan.’ Silas tasted his dressing. ‘Too
early to talk about.’
‘But if it concerns my work,’ Abigail said.
‘It’s a surprise, my darling,’ he said. ‘And
there’s no point trying to wheedle it out of me or
Nagy. You just keep up your practice.’
‘What-’ her jaw felt tight ‘-am I supposed to be
practising?’
‘Just your usual stuff for now,’ Silas said.
‘This is silly,’ she said.
‘Humour me, darling,’ he said.

He began to spend even more time than usual

with her in the music room, listening, observing
and frequently - a little compulsively, Abigail
thought - photographing her as she played. When
she said, lightly, that he’d surely taken enough
pictures of her, Silas replied, good-naturedly, that
he could never have enough. When she said,
131
more emphatically, that the clicking and flashes
were putting her off the music, he said it was a
good exercise in concentration, though he did
stop for a while after that, urged her to go on
practising harder.
‘What/or.^’ she asked regularly, still to no avail,
until finally, one evening in the second week of
December, she grew exasperated enough to
throw down her bow and say she wasn’t going to
play another note until he’d explained himself.
‘I’m fed up,’ she said, ‘with being treated like a
child.’
‘What was that-’ Silas got up from the chaise
longue, picked up the bow ‘-if not a tantrum?’
He gave it back to her.
She took it, glared at him, stood up.
‘What are you doing?’ he asked.
‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘As I told you.’
Silas watched her start the process of loosening
the bow hair in readiness for putting it and the
cello away.
‘I suppose you leave me no choice, but to tell
you,’ he said.
‘About time,’ Abigail said.
‘It’s my anniversary gift to you,’ Silas said.
She said nothing, guilt already rising, cheeks
growing warm.
‘A one-woman recital,’ he went on, ‘at the
Jerome Hall. Post-anniversary, actually - I had to
wait till the end of January to get a booking.’
Now she was incapable of speech.
‘It’s in aid of three children’s charities.’ Silas
smiled at her expression. ‘WTien I say one-woman,
Nagy’s found you an accompanist.’
132
 ‘You are joking,’ Abigail said. ‘About this whole
thing?’
‘I would never joke about something so import¬
ant.’The smile had faded. ‘You know I’ve wanted
something more worthy of you. This is it.’
She sat down again on her chair. ‘Silas.’
‘What, my darling?’
‘Silas, there’s no way I’m good enough for this.’
‘Of course you’re good enough. Or you will be,
if you start working harder.’ He smiled again. ‘If
I didn’t believe you were good enough, do you
imagine I’d have spent a small fortune putting
down the deposit for the hall?’

She went, after a sleepless night, to see Charlie

again.
‘You have to stop this,’ she told him as soon as
Toby Fry, Charlie’s assistant, had observed her
distress and taken himself discreetly off on some
outside chore.
‘You, of all people-’ Charlie was smoking one
of his little cigars and wearing a blue waistcoat
with racing cars woven into the pattern ‘-must
know it’s not exactly easy to stop Silas Graves
from embarking on something he’s set his heart
on.’ He paused. ‘It must be nice having a
husband with such great faith in you.’
‘But you don’t, do you?’ Abigail had heard the
wryness in his tone.
‘I have considerable faith in you,’ Charlie
answered.
‘But you know - honestly - that I’m just not up
to this terrible idea.’
‘I think-’ he strove for kindness ‘-it’s going to
133
be tough on you.’
Abigail, sitting on the couch, dropped her face
into her hands, then raised it again. ‘He says it’s
too late to cancel, but surely it can’t be?’
‘I’m afraid it can,’ Charlie confirmed, ‘insofar
as the charities would lose out and the insurers
wouldn’t stump up unless you were seriously ill
or worse.’
‘Great,’ Abigail said flatly. ‘Just great.’
Charlie leaned back in his chair and blew
smoke into the air.
Abigail’s panic rose again. ‘What’ll I play?’ Her
pause was frantic. ‘Couldn’t I at least share the
platform?’
‘You will be,’ Charlie reminded her.
‘I’m not talking about an accompanist.’ She
was scrabbling for ideas. ‘A quartet - I could
cope with that - I might even enjoy it.’
‘Too late.’ He looked sympathetic. ‘Tickets and
programmes underway, charities already advertis¬
ing.’
‘But they’d have a much better deal with more
musicians.’
‘Except that Silas,’ Charlie told her gently, ‘has
got people believing you’re the most exciting
thing since du Pre.’
The sound Abigail let out was half-snort, half¬
wail. ‘He can^t have.’
‘Okay then,’ Charlie said, ‘try Hai-Ye Ni.’
‘Silas hasn’t even heard of Hai-Ye Ni, and if
you’re trying to make this better, Charlie, you’re
not succeeding.’ Her horror was magnifying. ‘He
doesn’t have a clue about what makes a good
cellist, let alone a genius.’ She leaned forward in
134
a gesture of pure appeal. ‘Please tell me no one
really believes such nonsense.’
‘I’ve exaggerated,’ Charlie said.
‘Have you really?’
‘A bit,’ he said.
‘Oh, God,’ Abigail said.
Nagy got up from behind his desk, came over to
the couch, sat down beside her and put one arm
around her.
‘Do the Bach Adagio,’ he said, pushing her hair
out of her still-appalled eyes. ‘And maybe the
Mendelssohn - Lieder ohne Worte.^
‘God,’ Abigail said. 'God'
‘I know,’ Charlie said.
‘No, really,’ she said. ‘This is a nightmare.’

Chapter Twenty

‘You’ll be wonderful,’ Jules said a week later in

the shop.
‘I will not be wonderful.’ Abigail was up on a
ladder, dusting the Christmas decorations which
had already been up for a month. ‘I will be, at my
absolute best, adequate.’ She stopped dusting, her
face morose. ‘More likely, the way I’m feeling. I’ll
be crap.’
‘Silas thinks you’re wonderful.’ Jules stretched,
rubbed her back.
‘Silas,’ Abigail said bitterly, ‘is turning into Mrs
Worthington.’ She looked down at Jules. ‘You
okay?’
135
 ‘Fine.’ Jules paused. ‘If you really believe what
you’ve just said - if this is really going to be so
hellish for you - maybe you should cancel.’
‘How can I,’ Abigail said, ‘with starving, abused
children involved?’ She reached for a tinselly
garland, flicked the duster at it. ‘I suppose at least
it won’t matter to them if I’m a lousy cellist so
long as they get something to eat.’
‘You’re not lousy,’ Jules assured her. ‘You’re
very good.’
‘I’m not too bad,’ Abigail allowed, ‘playing as
part of a group, but I’m no soloist.’
‘I thought there was going to be a pianist.’
‘To accompany me.’ She grimaced. ‘Her name’s
Sara Ellis, and she’s very good and very kind, and
she’s done nothing to deserve this.’
‘I think,’ Jules said, ‘you’re starting to over¬
dramatize.’
‘I don’t,’ Abigail said bluntly and began her
descent. ‘They may not actually lynch me,’ she
said, ‘but if you ask me, we’ll be lucky if the audi¬
ence and charities don’t sue under trades
descriptions.’

By the evening itself, after a Christmas and New

Year entirely spoiled, from her point of view, she
was a sick, trembling wreck.
I can t go on,’ she told Silas, resplendent in
black tie.
‘Don’t be silly,’ he said.
Tell them I m ill,’ she begged. ‘Tell them I’m
dead.’
^ ‘Abigail Allen Graves-’ he gripped her shoulders
‘-you’re not only alive and well, but you’re going
136
to go onto that platform in-’ he glanced at the
clock on the dressing room wall ‘-twenty-three
minutes, and you’re going to play like a dream.’
‘What I’m going to do-’ Abigail took a step
back, out of his grip ‘—in less than one minute, is
throw up again.’

The audience - a diverse crowd, Silas, Charlie,

Jules (now heavily pregnant) and the charities
having flogged tickets with every tactic they
could come up with - settled themselves into the
Jerome Hall’s rather uncomfortable red seats and
applauded with generous enthusiasm when
Abigail and Sara Ellis took to the platform and
readied themselves to begin with Saint-Saen’s
The Swan. But though Abigail made no monu¬
mental errors and though, on the three occasions
when she did falter, the accompanist managed to
cover for her, she felt, by the end, a palpable and
acutely embarrassing sense of relief flowing up to
the platform.
‘Thank you,’ she said, struggling against tears
as she embraced Sara before making her escape.
‘You saved me.’
‘Nonsense,’ the kindly younger woman said.
‘You were very good.’
‘I was dreadful,’ Abigail said. ‘I warned them I
would be, and I was.’

‘You were brilliant.’

Silas swept into her dressing room with a bou¬
quet of roses and lilies and a bottle of champagne.
‘Never-’ Abigail took the flowers and dumped
them on the dressing table ‘-do anything like that
137
 to me again.’
She was standing in her slip^ having ripped off
the gorgeous dove-grey silk long dress he’d
insisted on buying for her the week before. Now^
seeing the startled pain in his eyes^ she thought
for one second about stoppings but knew that she
could no more^ at that instant, have stopped wind
from blowing.
‘Maybe you really did mean well-’ her cheeks
were still burning with humiliation ‘-and it’s very
nice you think I’m talented, and maybe I am the
most ungrateful cow on earth, but do you have
any idea what I felt like on that platform?’ She
shook her head, stormed straight on. ‘Like some
wretched child shoved on stage by a ghastly,
pushy parent from hell.’
She saw the pain turn to anger, thought, for a
brief moment, that he might be about to hit her,
or maybe smash the bottle. But then, suddenly,
the heat was gone and distaste took its place.
‘Ungrateful,’ he said, ‘just about covers it.’
And without another word, he turned and
walked out.
Abigail let out an ugly, strangled sob, took a
step towards the door, then remembered she was
undressed.
‘Silas,’ she said.
She stood staring at the door, willing it to open
again, and shame had already doused her own
anger, and what did any of it matter, for Christ’s
sake, if she ended up hurting the man who loved
her enough to have done this for her -^br her, not
to her.
‘Oh, God.’ She turned, found the jeans and
138
sweater she’d arrived in hours earlier, tugged on
the jeans, realized she was still wearing the long
slip, dragged it up over her head and pulled on
the sweater, her hair flying with static.
The door opened.
‘Silas, I-’
It was Charlie, looking uncomfortable because
he had just seen Silas grabbing Jules by her arm
and all but dragging her with him towards one of
the exits.
‘Only me,’ he said. ‘Sorry, darling.’
Abigail turned to the mirror, brushed violently
at her hair, tried not to cry.
‘I think Silas has gone,’ Charlie said. ‘Taking his
sister with him.’
Abigail burst into tears.
‘Darling.’ Appalled, Charlie put his arms
around her. ‘I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to upset
you. Maybe they’re coming back.’
‘No,’ she sobbed against his jacket.
‘That’s right,’ Charlie said, helplessly. ‘Let it out.’
Abigail pulled away, wiped her eyes with the
back of her hand. ‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘I’m
sorry.’
‘What for?’
‘For being so pathetic.^ She dragged some tissues
from a box on the dressing table, wiped her eyes
again, then blew her nose and found, suddenly,
that she was still furious. ‘You know what I’d like
to do, Charlie?’
‘Go home,’ he supposed. ‘I’ll take you.’
‘No.’ Abigail threw the tissues in the bin. ‘He
puts me through this whole terrible farce^ and
then, because I finally tell him how I feel, he
139
 walks out on me.’ She took a breath. ‘I do not
want to go home.’
‘It wasn’t a farce/ Charlie said. ‘You were fine.’
‘I was not fine/ she said. ‘But it’s done with^
thank God, and at least the charities have made
some money, and hopefully all those poor people
in the audience will soon have forgotten how awful
I was.’
‘You were far from awful,’ Charlie maintained,
‘and you looked wonderful.’
Abigail smiled at him, turned to the mirror,
picked up another tissue and wiped away the
mascara smudges beneath her eyes. ‘I’m still not
ready to go home yet,’ she said. ‘What I’d really
like to do, if you’re up for it, is go out to dinner
with you.’
Charlie looked dubious.
‘You’re worrying about what Silas will think,’
she said.
‘I am,’ Charlie said ruefully. ‘A bit.’
‘Which is exactly what he’d like you to do/
Abigail said, ‘and I’m a bit fed up right now with
him always getting his own way.’
‘He does seem very good at that/ Charlie
admitted.
‘Not tonight,’ she said.
The beautiful grey dress caught her eye, gave
her a swift pang of regret, but quickly and deter¬
minedly she picked it up and folded it into the
large carrier she’d brought it in.
Please, Charlie, she said. ‘Let’s go out for
dinner.’
‘There are very few things in the world I’d like
more, he said, than to take you out to dinner right
140
now.’ He sighed. ‘But no one knows better than I
how much effort Silas put into organizing this
evening.’ He reached for her hand, squeezed it.
‘Not to mention time and money. The man adores
you, Abigail, and I can’t blame him for that.’
All the anger left her, another, far more familiar
emotion taking its place. ‘Oh, God,’ she said. ‘I
was so horrible to him.’
‘Just emotional,’ Charlie defended. ‘Every right
to be.’
‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘I was vile, Charlie.’
‘Can’t imagine that.’
‘Can’t you?’ She paused, grimly. ‘You should.’

The drive in Charlie’s ancient MG back to Mus-

well Hill seemed endless; more like rush-hour, he
said - for want of anything better to talk about,
with Abigail silent and miserable beside him -
than late evening.
‘I’m sorry, Charlie,’ she said, when they were
almost home.
‘What for?’ he asked.
‘It’s only just occurred to me that Silas isn’t the
only person to have spent a lot of time and
trouble organizing this evening.’ Her face was
flushed, her eyes agitated. ‘I’ve behaved badly to
you, too, for weeks and weeks, so ungratefully. I
don’t deserve you any more than I do Silas.’
Charlie braked at the traffic lights more sharply
than he’d intended. ‘You stop that,’ he told her.
‘No, Charlie, I mean it.’
‘So do I,’ he said forcefully. ‘You’re a valued
client who performed well tonight, under difficult
conditions, and you’re also, so far as I’m con-
141
cerned, a friend.’
‘That doesn’t mean-’
‘Yes, it does.’ The lights changed to green, and
the MG growled back into motion. ‘I know Silas
meant this as a huge compliment, but he should
have consulted with you first, and since he
didn’t, maybe I should have done it instead, but
it’s certainly not your fault that neither of us did.’
‘Thank you.’ She paused. ‘Do you think he’ll
forgive me?’
‘The man’s not a complete prat, is he?’
‘Anything but,’ Abigail said.
‘Well, then,’ Charlie said.

Though Silas’s VW was parked in the drive, the

house was in darkness, but no sooner had Charlie
drawn up at the kerb beyond the trees and got
out to open Abigail’s door than the front door
opened and light spilled out onto the pathway,
framing Silas.
Thank you, Charlie.’ Abigail gave him a swift
kiss on the cheek.
‘Good luck,’ he said and watched her walk up
the path.
Silas, still in his tuxedo, bow tie dishevelled,
hair rumpled, did not move.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Abigail said, stopping a foot away
from him, uncertainly.
‘I should have listened to you,’ he said, ‘instead
of bulldozing you into something you didn’t want
to do.’
‘But you were doing it for me,’ she said, ‘and I
acted like a spoiled brat.’
‘You were very upset,’ Silas said. ‘I shouldn’t
142
have walked out on you.’
‘I can’t really blame you/ Abigail said.
He held out his arms, and she came into them,
felt nothing but relief as he held her close, let her
lean against him. He smelled of whisky, and his
body was tense and very warm, and she thought
she had never loved him more.
‘Goodnight, Charlie,’ she heard him call, over
her shoulder.
‘Night, all—’ Charlie’s voice called back from
the road ‘-God bless.’
Abigail attempted to turn around so that she
could wave, but Silas’s arms tightened around
her, and she gave in, relaxed against him.
‘I love you so much,’ she said.
‘I love you too.’ He held her even tighter, closer.
Too close for her to see that his eyes had turned
pebble flat, and that the look he was giving
Charlie, as he got back into the MG, was ice cold.

Chapter Twenty-One

One week after the recital at the Jerome, on the

fourth of February, Jules’s son was born.
She had begun having contractions two days
earlier and had phoned Abigail, who had shot over
to Highgate in the Mini and whisked her straight
into the Whittington Hospital, before skulking
foolishly back home with her to the flat two hours
later.
‘I blame Braxton Hicks,’ Jules had said, sinking
143
 heavily onto the sofa beside Asali, while Abigail
was in the kitchen making tea.
‘He only named the contractions/ Abigail
called. ‘He didn’t invent them.’
‘I’d better phone Drew.’ The dachshund rolled
onto her back, offering her soft stomach to be car¬
essed. ‘Tell him he doesn’t have to pick up Asali.’
‘I’m still not sure why she isn’t coming to us.’
Abigail brought two mugs into the sitting room.
‘So much easier with the garden.’
‘Drew’s really looking forward to having her,’
Jules had said.
The fishpond, which had, for a long time, first
because of her great happiness with Ralph and
then in the face of his loss, almost ceased to bur¬
den Jules, now came regularly back into her mind.
Her child, their son, would soon be in the world.
A mother ought not to keep ugly secrets from
her child.
A child ought not to be exposed to ugliness.
Jules remembered, suddenly, that first time
with Ralph in the garden at Muswell Hill, Asali
sniffing around the pond, Ralph sitting on the
stone bench holding out his hand to her.
It s all right.’ Abigail’s voice broke into the
memory. ‘Don’t worry about it.’
Jules looked up at her, startled.
‘If Asali’s happy at Drew’s-’ Abigail sat down in
an armchair —that’s fine, isn’t it. No need to look
so troubled.’
‘I’m not troubled,’ Jules lied.
Abigail lived in that house, had helped Silas
clean the pond, had sat in that garden, probably
on that bench, many times, and was in total
144
ignorance of what lay beneath. Abigail, who, for
all the dark sadness of her own history, was, Jules
thought, the most trusting person she had ever
known.
That was very wrong, too. A deep, abiding
wrong that Jules could not imagine ever being
able to put right. Certainly not while Silas had no
wish to do so.
‘Sure you’re okay?’ Abigail had asked Jules.
Jules had nodded, mustered a smile.
‘No more pains?’
‘Not yet,’ Jules had said.

Plenty more pain two nights later, when the real

thing got underway.
Jules had taken herself by taxi to the Whitting¬
ton at eight in the evening, had waited to be
certain before calling her brother’s house again.
‘Drive safely,’ she told Abigail. ‘No need to rush.’
‘You sound very calm,’ Abigail said.
‘Before the storm, I expect,’ Jules said.
Silas came to the phone to wish her luck.
Abigail waited till he’d finished.
‘Are you sure you won’t come too?’ she asked
him.
‘What for? Jules asked you to be her partner,
not me.’
‘You told me that was because she knew you’d
refuse,’ Abigail reminded him.
Silas raised an eyebrow.
‘Phone me when it’s all over,’ he said.

He did come then, at around noon next day,

bearing blue and white flowers from Moyses
145
 Stevens^ and bunches of fat blue-black grapes^
and an exquisite silk and lace christening gown
which had to have cost the earth and about
which Abigail had known nothing.
The baby was beside Jules’s bed, but Silas made
straight for his sister, looked at her long and hard,
as if seeing her in an entirely fresh light, and then
stroked her bedraggled hair with great tenderness
before, finally, turning to his nephew.
‘He looks,’ he said, ‘like our mother.’
‘I think he looks like Ralph,’ Jules said.
‘No.’ Silas was decisive. ‘Just like Mother.’
Jules and Abigail both looked closely at him,
trying to judge whether or not that was, in his
heart and mind, a good or a bad thing, saw tears
swimming in the sea green eyes, and were more
than a little relieved.
‘What’s his name?’ he asked.
‘Oliver,’ Jules said. ‘Ollie.’ She smiled. ‘Ralph
liked it.’ ^
‘Is that it?’ Silas asked.
Jules knew what he meant. ‘Oliver Ralph Silas
Weston,’ she said.
‘Just scraped in then,’ Silas said.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Just over a fortnight after Ollie’s birth, three weeks

and two days after the recital, Silas turned to Abi¬
gail immediately after hitting the button to turn off
IS alarm clock s buzzer, and told her that he

146
wanted her to drop Charlie Nagy as her manager.
‘Why on earth-’ she felt as if she’d been shaken
roughly out of sleep ‘-would I do a thing like that?’
‘For one thing,’ Silas replied, pushing away
their duvet, ‘I don’t think he’s ever been much of
a manager.’
‘He’s been a very good manager and friend.’
Abigail sat up, rubbed her eyes, pushed the hair
out of her face, forced herself to wake up.
‘Be that as it may-’ Silas got out of bed ‘-it
seems he’s been lining his pockets.’ He picked up
the glass of water from his bedside table, drank
what was left of it, saw the confusion on her face.
‘Syphoning off some of the charities’ proceeds, to
be exact.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ Abigail was stunned.
‘Charlie would never do anything like that.’
‘I hope you don’t think I’d invent such a thing?’
‘No, of course not, but...’ She shook her head,
stared up at him. ‘It’s a mistake, Silas. Who’s told
you this?’
‘The accountants.’
‘Let me talk to them,’ Abigail said. ‘I’ll tell them
they have it wrong.’
‘I doubt, somehow, that they’ll believe you.’
‘But I’ve known Charlie for years.’
‘Not that well, surely?’
‘Well enough,’ she said, stoutly.
‘Your loyalty becomes you.’
‘It’s nothing to do with loyalty,’ Abigail said. ‘I
just believe in him.’
Silas smiled, stooped and kissed the top of her
head.
‘Fire him,’ he said.
147
 She waited, in painful suspense, for three days,
until a morning when Silas was fully occupied at
a shoot, then went to Bayswater.
‘I take it he’s told you,’ Charlie said, ‘what he’s
accusing me of?’
‘He says it’s the accountants,’ Abigail said. ‘Not
exactly him.’
‘I’ve spoken to the accountants.’ Charlie’s face
was drawn, his hands, as he lit one of his little
cigars, not entirely steady. ‘They don’t appear to
be all that sure about it. They said if I want any
more information, I should speak to your hus¬
band.’
‘It’s all a stupid, dreadful mistake.’ Abigail sank
down onto the couch, then wondered if she was
still welcome. ‘Do you mind my being here,
Charlie?’
‘Why should I?’
‘Like you said, he’s my husband.’
‘But you don’t appear to agree with him on this.’
Of course I don’t.’ Abigail, too restless to sit,
got up again. ‘I know you’d never do such a
thing. It has to be a simple misunderstanding.’
‘Hardly simple,’ Charlie said dryly.
‘No,’ she admitted.
She accepted his offer of coffee, stayed a while
longer, did her best to assure him that her faith
in him was rock-solid, thought she succeeded.
ut even as she was chatting, reassuring
reaching out to him in friendship, Abigail was
also registering the fact - to her very great dismay
that if she really believed Charlie, then that
meant she did not believe Silas.
148
 That was something she didn’t want even to
think about. Not just her own lack of belief in her
husband, but the fact that she thought he might
possibly have invented something so nasty about
someone.
Yet that fact - or at least, the possibility of that
fact - she realized as she left the agency and
made her way to the tube station, did have to be
examined.
Why would Silas do such a thing?
Jealousy, perhaps, she considered, waiting for
the Central Line train?
The train pounded in and she got on, found a
seat facing a man eating a cheeseburger, closed
her eyes to blot out the sight, wished she’d
brought the Mini into town. Her mind returned
to the night of the recital, to the scene in the
dressing room at the Jerome, to Silas’s storming
out. Could it be, perhaps, that he had expected
her to chase after him? Had he seen Charlie going
into the dressing room, and might it have
bothered him that Charlie had brought her home?
Daft.
Except that Abigail knew, from the way he’d
been about Jules not telling him immediately
about her pregnancy, then refusing to move back
home, that Silas had an unforgiving streak in his
nature.
Still, giving a friend - a client - a simple lift
home was hardly something that merited forgive¬
ness. And Silas couldn’t have known that Abigail
had wanted to have dinner with Charlie that
night, that she would have done just that had
Charlie not insisted on driving her straight home.
149
 The thoughts went on nagging at her while she
walked towards the Northern Line at Tottenham
Court Road, waited for a train to Highgate. That
other, older conversation came back to her again,
the one in which Silas had wanted to know if
Charlie might be gay, and she’d said, light-
heartedly, something about him really being a
jealous man, and he’d said: ‘Don’t ever try find¬
ing out.’
So maybe jealousy could be behind this, after
all. Perhaps Silas’s mood had been darker than
she’d realized after the dreadful way she’d
behaved after the recital, the way she’d let her
humiliation, her temper^ get the better of her, the
way she’d berated him instead of thanking him.
Though she’d thought he’d been as relieved to
see her as she had been to see him when Charlie
had dropped her off - though she’d kissed Charlie
first - just a kiss on the cheeky for goodness sake...
Maybe it wasn’t sexual jealousy, she thought,
getting on the High Barnet-bound train. Maybe
it was more of a loyalty issue — maybe Silas had
been stewing over the possibility that she’d been
talking about him to Charlie — and that was true,
after all, wasn’t it? If Silas believed she’d actually
criticized him to the other man, then perhaps this
accusation, the demand that she fire Charlie, was
all down to that unforgiving streak.
If It was jealousy, though, Abigail supposed she
ought, up to a point, to be flattered. It was, after
all, an ongoing symptom of his love for her And
love, in her very limited experience, was often
linked with control. Her mother had wanted to
control her, hadn’t she?
150
 Not like this.
Nevertheless, she thought as the train drew into
Euston, it was love, and Silas had saved her from
a life of loneliness, and she did love him too,
desperately, and there were things you had to do
for the people you loved.
Play the cello.
Fire your manager.
Beware of your own anger.
Especially when you knew - better and more
agonizingly than anyone - that you had a knack
for destruction.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Things might have been all right at the christen¬

ing, early in April, if Jules had not asked Abigail
if she would consider playing, unaccompanied, in
the church.
‘This is something,’ she said, ‘that I really, badly
want.’
‘Are you sure?’ Abigail asked.
‘Never more so,’ Jules said.
After that - Jules told Abigail later - it seemed
only right and proper to invite Charlie Nagy, who
she liked and who, she realized - even if Silas did
not appear to - had been a good friend to Abigail;
and in Jules’s opinion, Abigail had far too few
friends, which was at least partly due to Silas, so
she had determined to seek neither Abigail’s nor
Silas’s opinion about extending the invitation.
151
 Arriving alone at St Barnabas Church on High-
gate Hill on the day in question (Abigail having
arrived early so that she could be sittings ready
and waiting with her cello, near the font), and
catching sight of Charlie in a pew three rows
from the front, Silas strode straight over to where
Jules stood waiting with Oliver in her arms.
‘You’ll have to tell Nagy to leave,’ he told her.
‘Forget it,’ Jules said.
‘I won’t have him at my nephew’s christening.’
‘God.’ Jules reddened slightly, smiled at the
vicar. Stop being so pompous, Silas, and kiss
Ollie instead.’
‘As soon as that man leaves,’ Silas said.
‘Darling-’ Abigail’s left arm cradled her cello,
her right hand was clenched around the bow
^-please. Not now.’
‘I think maybe we might begin,’ the vicar asked.
Silas ignored him.
I suppose you knew about this,’ Silas said to
Abigail.
‘Abigail did not know,’ Jules told him. ‘For
heaven’s sake, Silas, get a grip, for Ollie’s sake, if
no one else’s.’
In the third row, Charlie stood up.
No. Jules threw a look of abject apology in the
vicar’s direction and walked swiftly down the aisle
to the third row. ‘I’m so sorry about this, Charlie.’
‘Best if I go,’ he said quietly.
‘Absolutely not.’ Jules stroked her son’s dark
hair. ‘Please, Charlie.’
Charlie nodded, sat down again.
‘Right,’ Silas said to Abigail. ‘That’s it We’re
leaving.’

152
 ‘Don’t be silly.’ Abigail stood up, hampered by
the cello. ‘Silas, forget Charlie and focus on
Ollie.’ Jules was coming back to the font. ‘See
how gorgeous he looks in your lovely gown.’
‘Yes, Mr Graves,’ the vicar said. ‘He really is a
beautiful baby.’
‘Abigail.’ Silas ignored the other man again.
‘Come on.’
‘I don’t believe you, Silas,’ Jules said angrily,
and Ollie began to cry. ‘Now see what you’ve
done, acting like some tyrant.’
‘That really is it.’ Silas turned to Abigail again.
‘Are you coming or not?’
‘Not.’ Abigail sat down again, clung to her
cello, and determined not to cry.
As Silas stalked out of the church.

She played the Prelude from Bach’s Cello Suite

No. 1, playing, curiously, she thought, more beau¬
tifully than she ever had in her life, her misery, she
supposed, flowing out of her into the music.
‘You made the whole thing,’ Jules told her
afterwards, back at the flat, while her guests ate
and drank and chattered. ‘You cut right through
the bad atmosphere, made it so moving.’
‘It must have been very hard for you,’ Charlie
said, then turned to Jules. ‘You should have let
me leave. I wouldn’t have minded - at least, I
would have understood.’
‘I wouldn’t,’ Jules said.
Charlie watched her move away to talk to some
of her other guests. ‘She really is very nice, isn’t
she?’ he said to Abigail.
‘Jules is the nicest person I know.’ Abigail shook
153
her head. ‘I just don’t understand what got into
Silas.’
‘Want me to drive you home?’ Charlie asked
gently.
Abigail remembered the last time he’d done
that.
‘No;, thank you,’ she said. ‘I’m not leaving yet.’
‘Have you spoken to him since church?’
She shook her head again, clenched her jaw.
‘Maybe you should phone,’ Charlie said. ‘Make
sure he’s all right.’
‘I expect he is,’ she said, tightly.
‘Phone anyway,’ he said. ‘For Jules’s sake, if not
his.’
‘You’re a very nice person too, aren’t you?’
Abigail said.
‘Not according to Silas,’ Charlie said, and
grinned.

She phoned from Jules’s bedroom, where Asali

had burrowed her way into the pile of coats on the
bed, found Silas not at home, but at the studio.
Are you okay?’ She almost hoped he would say
that he was not, that he was unwell, anything to
at least slightly mitigate his behaviour.
As well as can be expected,’ Silas replied.
Abigail took a breath. ‘Will you come to Jules’s?’
Tm not sure that would be a very good idea.’
‘It would be the best possible idea,’ Abigail said.
Jules would certainly enjoy the party far more.’
She paused. ‘And you’d be making me happy.’
There was a pause.
‘Is he there?’ Silas asked.
‘Yes,’ Abigail answered.
154
 He hung up.

‘If you’d like to stay here tonight,’ Jules said

almost two hours later, ‘Ollie and I would be
more than happy to have you.’
‘I don’t know about Ollie,’ Abigail said, ‘but
you look absolutely shattered. And I think I’d
probably be a bit of a downer.’ She paused. ‘One
downer per family’s enough for any christening.’
‘You made it perfect,’ Jules reminded her. ‘And
my brother’s a perfect fool.’
‘I still can’t believe he did that to you.’
‘You, too,’ Jules pointed out.
‘I don’t matter, not today. This was your day,
and Ollie’s.’
‘All the same to Ollie,’ Jules said. ‘But I have
wanted to think of this as Ralph’s day, too, in a
way, and Silas did his best to ruin it.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ Abigail said.
‘Not your apology to make,’ Jules said.

In Edison Road, Silas was sitting at his desk

browsing over the most recent shots he’d taken of
Abigail during a stroll they’d taken on the Heath
last Sunday. She was laughing in some of the
pictures, but in others she was calm-faced, her
features in repose.
He examined those, trying to see if the young
woman he had first seen outside the Wigmore
Hall - the skinny, tired girl who’d lifted her cello
as if it had been a huge child - was still visible.
The fragility was still there, the vulnerability in
the beautiful grey eyes.
Not there earlier that day, in church.
155
 i

Disappointment, embarrassment. Even anger.

Abigail, the stroppy wife.
Something well and truly missing, and here in
these photographs too, he suddenly saw. The
wonder, the gratitude with which she had so
often gazed at him, because she loved him so
much and because he loved her, and because he
didn’t mind the terrible thing she had done.
It was a long time since she had called him
Phoenix.

In Jules’s sitting room, Abigail sat on the sofa

beside Charlie, who was gently scratching the
dachshund’s ears.
‘Jules says she seems to like the baby,’ he said.
‘Asali is a wise dog,’ Abigail said.
‘Whenever you’re ready,’ Charlie said, ‘if you
like. I’ll give you a lift.’
‘Thank you,’ Abigail said. ‘But I’m still not
ready to go home.’
The doubts she’d felt earlier when he’d offered
to drive her had gone. The call and Silas’s
bloody-mindedness had seen to that.
‘Would you like-’ Charlie was tentative ‘-to go
to a restaurant?’
She shook her head. ‘I’m not very hungry.’
Too upset to eat. Too fed up to go home and
even think of forgiving Silas.
‘You’d be very welcome, if you wanted, to come
to^ my place for a cup of something,’ he said.
‘Make it a glass of something strong,’ Abigail
said, ‘and you’ve got a deal.’

Silas, just arrived and looking for a parking place

156
outside his sister’s flat, saw them emerge together,
saw that Abigail was not carrying her cello, was
unencumbered, stepping lightly.
He stopped, turned off his lights, reversed into
a resident’s bay.
Watched them get into Nagy’s MG.
Waited till the old sports car growled into life.
Waited till it had moved off to the end of the
road, then turned his lights back on and followed
the other car as it turned left into Hornsey Lane.
If Nagy turned left at the next main junction,
Silas realized, that probably meant they would be
going to Muswell Hill.
The MG turned right into Hornsey Rise.
South.
Silas waited a moment, and followed.
All the same.
All so easily influenced by other men. Graham
Francis first, robbing him and Jules of Patricia;
then Ralph, luring Jules away from him.
Now Nagy was trying to steal Abigail, he knew
it, knew it.
Silas’s jaw clenched so hard he could hear his
back teeth grind.
Donh let him.
Easier said.
She ’5 your wife.
But if Abigail was tiring of him, doubting him.
If Nagy tempted her...
Let no man put asunder.
The MG was three cars ahead, speeding on.
Silas’s head ached.
He thought of Nagy touching her, taking
advantage of her, and Christ knew Abigail was
157
 vulnerable^ more than most...
No man.

In the kitchen of his garden flat in Notting Hill^

Charlie Nagy opened a bottle of red wine and
emptied a pack of dried fusilli into a pan of boiling
water, and told Abigail, sitting at his counter, that
even if she thought she had no appetite, some¬
thing warming and simple might make her feel a
little better.
She drank the wine, played with some pasta,
drank some more wine.
Not being, ordinarily, a big drinker, the alcohol
went to her head, suddenly, while Charlie was
answering the telephone.
Know what I need, Charlie?’ she said when
he’d finished.
‘Tell me,’ he said.
‘A cuddle,’ Abigail said. ‘That’s what I need.’
‘Perhaps,’ Charlie suggested, ‘you need to go
home.’
‘Not yet,’ she said. ‘Cuddle first.’
Charlie thought about Silas’s seriously nasty
side, and hesitated. And then he looked at Abi¬
gail, swaying slightly on one of the stools at his
breakfast counter, and found it impossible not to
give in and put his arms around her.
‘Oh, God, Charlie,’ she said.
Her hair, its wonderful pale gold, tickled his
chin, smelled of shampoo.
He wanted to bury his face in that hair.
‘Oh, God, Charlie-’
She pulled away, got clumsily off the stool, ran
from the kitchen.
158
 ‘Abigail?’
He went into the hall, saw that she’d vanished
into the bathroom, heard, from the sounds
behind the closed door, that she was being sick.
He winced in sympathy, thought of following
her, holding her head, helping.
‘Not a great idea, Charlie,’ he murmured to
himself.
He waited, instead, in the hall, for her to emerge.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she said when she did, plainly
embarrassed.
‘Don’t be silly.’ He took her arm, circum¬
spectly, helped her into the sitting room. ‘Poor
you,’ he said. ‘What a bugger of a day.’
‘It’s not,’ she agreed, weakly, ‘been too great.’
She sank into an armchair. ‘I shouldn’t really say
that. The christening was beautiful, and the
party, and you making supper for-’ She stopped
abruptly at the thought of food.
‘Here.’ Charlie handed her a glass of water. ‘Sip
it.’
‘I should never have drunk so much.’
‘I shouldn’t have let you.’
‘I’m not a child,’ she pointed out. ‘I ought to
have known better.’
They sat for a little while longer, and then
Abigail, feeling stronger, told Charlie she was
ready now to go home.
‘High time anyway,’ she said, ‘for you to get a
bit of peace and quiet.’
‘I’m in no rush for you to go,’ Charlie said. ‘But
I suppose you ought to.’
‘Silas will probably be worrying.’ She shook her
head. ‘I daresay I shouldn’t be letting that trouble
159
me, but Fm afraid I can’t help it.’
‘Of course you can’t,’ Charlie said. ‘You love
him.’
She nodded.
‘Let me get my keys,’ he said.
‘No,’ she said quickly. ‘You’re not driving.’
‘I haven’t had that much-’
‘Fll get a cab.’ She smiled. ‘If you don’t mind
calling for one.’
‘It’s not necessary,’ Charlie said.
‘It’s totally necessary,’ Abigail insisted. ‘I won’t
let you drive all that way.’

They emerged into Jasper Gardens fifteen min¬

utes later, arms linked as they walked down the
short pathway and just along the road to the
Vauxhall parked by Garden Walk in which a man,
presumably her driver, sat reading by the car’s
small interior light.
‘You going to be okay?’ Charlie asked Abigail at
the kerb.
‘Course,’ she said. ‘Quite sober now.’
The driver leaned back to open the rear door,
checked she was his fare.
‘Thank you, Charlie,’ Abigail said.
‘Nothing to thank me for,’ he said.
‘You’re a very good friend,’ she told him.
‘Means such a lot.’
‘To me, too,’ he said.

Standing behind a white van parked on the oppo¬

site side of Jasper Gardens, the VW parked out of
sight in the next road, Silas raised his Nikon and
took a series of photographs of his wife and her
160
former manager embracing.
The pain in his head was intense now.
Observing them through the viewfinder, he
found, did nothing to lessen it.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Getting home, finding the house empty, Abigail

phoned the studio and heard the answering
machine pick up.
She waited for the tone.
‘Silas?’ She paused. ‘Silas, are you there?’
Nothing.
‘Silas, I’m home, and I’m hoping you’re on
your way home too.’
She waited another moment, then sighed, hung
up.
She wondered if she should try Jules in case
she’d heard from him, but that seemed unlikely,
and Jules was almost certainly fast asleep by now,
and either way, this wasn’t the kind of call Jules
ought to be troubled by on the night after her
son’s christening, and then, irrelevantly, she re¬
membered that she had left her cello at Jules’s flat,
and would have to phone her tomorrow, and it was
strange, after so many years, but even now she felt
bad not having the instrument with her, as if she
were still, somehow, letting Francesca down...

It was another two hours before Silas came

home.
161
 Abigail heard him closing and locking the front
door, then coming up the staircase, and she con¬
sidered for a moment pretending to be asleep,
but if he didn’t wake her up, that would just
mean putting off the inevitable unpleasantness
till morning, and there was still, she supposed,
enough of the practical farmer’s daughter left in
her to see no purpose in that.
She sat up in bed and turned on her bedside
light.
He was still wearing the suit he’d come to
church in, though it was creased now, the jacket
grimy-looking, the tie gone. He looked worn out.
'Are you all right?’ she asked.
'Do you care?’ He stayed near the door.
'That’s a foolish question.’
'As a matter of fact,’ Silas said, 'I’m very far
from all right.’
Guilt overcame her, pushed her swiftly out of
bed and across the room to his side. She put out
her hand, afraid of being rebuffed but needing to
touch him, touch his cheek. His skin was cold,
yet his body was giving out waves of heat, and he
smelled - or perhaps it was just his clothes that
smelled - of something that she couldn’t place,
something sour.
'Silas?’ She withdrew her hand, chilled by
something in his eyes. 'What’s happened? Where
have you been?’
He gave no answer, just mirrored what she had
done, put out his right hand and touched her
cheek with his fingertips.
'Silas?’ she said, uncertainly.
He took a breath, dropped his hand back to his
162
side. ‘A drink,’ he said, ‘before we talk. A brandy,
I think.’
‘I’ll get you one,’ Abigail said. ‘You get ready for
bed.’
‘Nice thought,’ he said, ‘but I’ll come down
with you.’ His smile was fleeting and very
strained. ‘Not bedroom talk. I’m afraid.’
The sense of chill in Abigail lingered as she
watched him sit down in an armchair, as she
found the bottle of cognac, poured him his drink
- nothing for herself, God knew she’d had more
than enough to last her - and handed it to him.
‘You’d better sit down too,’ he told her.
‘I will,’ she said, ‘in a minute.’
‘Yes,’ Silas said. ‘I rather expect you will.’
He took a swallow of brandy, shut his eyes
briefly, then opened them again.
‘You appear,’ he said, ‘to have an aptitude,
Abigail, my beloved, for luring men to unfor¬
tunate ends.’ He paused. ‘First, Eddie Gibson.’
Abigail gazed at him, horror beginning to creep.
‘And now-’ Silas drank more cognac ‘-poor
Charlie Nagy.’
She felt her legs going, sat quickly down.
‘Told you,’ Silas said.
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Abigail-Abeguile,’ he said. ‘I don’t think I ever
realized before how apt a name that is for you.’
‘What,’ Abigail asked, ‘have you done?’
‘You might as well ask whatyow have done.’
‘Silas-’ harsher now ‘-what’s happened to
Charlie?’
‘Gone,’ he replied.
‘What do you mean?’
163
 ‘Joined the ranks of those whoVe loved Abigail
Allen.’ His mouth twisted as he smiled. ‘Suppose
I should beware.’
‘Silas, what have you done?''
‘Take it easy, sweetheart.’
Sweetheart.
She stared at him, felt her heart pounding, her
palms sweating.
‘I saw you together,’ Silas told her. ‘Saw Nagy
with his arms around you - my wife - his mouth
all over you.’
‘There was nothing like that,’ Abigail protested.
‘All we did was say-’
‘So I waited till your cab was gone-’ he cut her
off ‘-and then I gave Nagy the kicking he
deserved.’
She was wordless again, staring again.
‘Left him in the alley just along from his flat,’
Silas said. ‘Garden Walk, it’s called, but it’s really
no more than a jumped-up alley. You probably
haven’t noticed it unless you know Jasper Gar¬
dens quite well.’ He paused. ‘Do you know it?’
She thought her heart might be about to burst.
‘No?’ He shrugged. ‘Makes no difference. All
that matters now is that Charlie Nagy’s dead, and
that it looks exactly like a mugging - exactly - and
if anyone asks - not that they will, but just in case
- you’re going to say that I was home, that at the
time of the attack - around the time you were
getting into your cab, you’d only recently talked
to me here. Here, at home, waiting for you.’
Abigail was having trouble breathing, and that
word - the word - was jangling in her ears like
manic tinnitus. Dead. Dead.
164
 She closed her eyes, and the darkness spun
around her.
She remembered Charlie, so kind and gentle,
bringing her water in his sitting room after she’d
been sick.
‘He’d come out with his wallet in his back
pocket, so I took it,’ Silas was continuing, ‘pulled
out the cash - no cards, just thirty or so quid -
and dumped it - the Vv^ay they do - muggers, I
mean - in a wheelie.’
Abigail opened her eyes again. ‘You’re making
it up.’
Hope sprang up like a small creature bounding
up through her chest.
‘And now-’ he went straight on like a well-
drilled soldier on a mission ‘-you and I are going
to burn my clothes and shoes, because I think
there’s a bit of blood and maybe worse on them,
and we’re not going to take any chances.’
‘No.’ Her voice sounded thick, unfamiliar in
her ears, and hope was already dead again, the
small creature smashed.
Not making it up.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Because as you very well know,
this has been your doing.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘No, Silas.’
‘Yes,’ he said again, ‘it has. Because you are,
behind it all, Abigail, behind all that soft vulner¬
able stuff, really quite a dangerous woman.’

‘I want to go there,’ she said, some time later.

She had left the living room, left Silas, had gone
upstairs to be alone, found herself unable to bear
being by herself, to bear being', had begun to
165
pace, first in the bedroom, then along the
corridor up there, moving back and forth, back
and forth, as if being constantly in motion could
stop the thinking, the nightmare horror.
Nothing stopped it.
‘I want to go to where you left him,’ she said,
back in the living room where Silas still sat in the
same position, as if he had not moved a muscle.
‘Maybe Charlie’s not dead, maybe if we get to
him quickly, he could be all right.’
‘Don’t be stupid,’ Silas said. ‘I told you, he’s
dead. Not dying, not injured. Dead. You know
about death, Abigail, and so do I.’
‘But we can’t just leave him.’ An image of
Charlie in a dark alley, on the ground, all alone,
filled her mind, and she put up her hands,
jammed her knuckles in her eyes, trying to blot it
out. ‘He’s my friend.^
‘Was your friend.’ Silas was very hard. ‘Your
former manager, who is now dead and gone and
beyond your help or anyone else’s. And if you go
anywhere near him, you’ll be dropping me - your
husband, remember? - in deepest crap.’ He fixed
her with one of his flat, stony stares. ‘Or is that
what you’d like? To send me to prison? Get rid of
me?’
Abigail stared back at him, not really seeing
him, not knowing, at that moment, what she saw.
Too many things, flashing with blinding painful¬
ness past her mind’s eye: Silas beating Charlie,
Francesca in the ambulance, her father smashing
against the wall, Eddie flying into the air...
She cried out, one long, terrible wail of anguish,
and ran from the room again, but there was
166
nowhere to go in the house, nowhere to escape to,
so she went upstairs and pulled on jeans and a
sweater and shoes and went back down to the
front door. Her hands shook so hard that it was
hard to turn the keys, take off the chain, but she
managed it, he didn’t come to stop her. And then
she was outside in the cool night air, surrounded
by the trees that separated the house from the hill,
and for a moment or two being out brought a
measure of relief, but then that too was gone.
Walk^ she told herself. Leave.
She stood still, on the pathway, feeling
paralysed.
One foot in front of the other, Abigail.
She began to walk.

Exhaustion brought her back, together with the

knowledge that there was no escape from this
anywhere, though she dreaded having to ring the
bell and confront Silas again because she had not,
before she’d left, possessed the sanity to remem¬
ber her keys.
The door was already open, Silas standing
waiting for her.
‘I thought you’d gone,’ he said, his voice soft
and scared, like a boy’s.
Abigail came closer, saw that his eyes were red,
his cheeks wet, but felt not a shred of compassion
for him.
‘Nowhere to go,’ she said.
She passed him swiftly, trying not to touch him.
Silas followed, close, but not too close, like a
wary dog.
‘I didn’t mean it,’ he said, going after her into
167
 i

the kitchen.
‘What didn’t you mean?’ Abigail asked. ‘To kill
a good, kind man for giving your wife a comfort
hug?’
‘You shouldn’t have been with him for comfort.’
Humble dog already in retreat, tears already dry.
‘You should have been with me.’
‘You should have stayed in church, for your
godson’s christening.’ It seemed a lifetime ago,
and trivial beyond belief by comparison, yet still
the words fell from her mouth as if they had a will
of their own. ‘Though since you didn’t stay, I
don’t suppose you are really his godfather now,
and thank Christ for that, at least.’
She thought, as she had once before, after the
recital, that he was going to hit her, and she knew
now he was capable of that and much more.
‘Your doing, Abigail.’ Words instead of slaps.
She turned to the kettle, refuge of the desper¬
ate, to make tea, as her Auntie Betty would have,
and Francesca before her, and...
‘All of it,’ Silas said. ‘You drove me to it.’
She picked up the kettle, gripped the handle
tightly.
‘Your fault Charlie was invited,’ Silas bludg¬
eoned on. ‘Jules might have done the actual
asking, but she still did it for you.’
My fault.
She put the kettle down, trembling again,
sagging inside.
My fault.
‘Your fault for going with him to his flat,’ he
said. You have to admit that, surely?’ He paused.
‘Surely, Abigail?’
168
 ‘Yes,’ she said.
‘You do see that then?’ Silas persisted.
‘Yes.’ The dreadful weariness was returning.
‘Yes, I suppose I do.’
‘No suppose about it,’ he said.
All my fault.
‘Whatever you say, Silas.’
‘So you’ll help me, as I asked.’
She’d forgotten what it was he’d asked her to
do.
‘Burn my clothes,’ he said, reading her mind.
She was the dog now, whipped, cornered.
No^ she said in her mind.
‘Yes,’ she said out loud.

‘Would you like the cash from Nagy’s wallet?’

Silas asked Abigail that as they stood, side by
side, a little way past the fishpond, right at the
back of the garden, burning his cut-up suit and
shirt and shoes in the old bin that the gardeners
- always different, anonymous people these days,
booked periodically through an agency in Fortis
Green - sometimes used for burning leaves and
twigs.
‘You could use it for flowers,’ Silas said.
Abigail’s face pinched in disgust.
‘Just a thought,’ he said.
He added the ten and five pound notes to the
fire, stopped them from being blown out again,
poldng them with a branch he’d picked up from
beneath an apple tree - and watched, with equal
and conflicting amounts of detachment and com¬
passion, as his wife was sick for the second time
that night.
169
 i

Toor Abigail/ he said.

‘You know, don’t you,’ she said, when they were

back in the kitchen and he had switched on the
kettle to boil, ‘that nothing happened between
me and Charlie?’
‘You chose him over me,’ Silas said. ‘At the
christening.’
‘I chose Jules and Ollie,’ Abigail said. ‘Your
sister and nephew, remember them?’
‘You went home with Nagy,’ Silas said.
The kettle boiled, but neither moved to touch
it.
‘Where he cooked me pasta, which I couldn’t
eat, because I was so upset over you,’ Abigail told
him. ‘And he opened a bottle of wine, which I
drank too much of, because of you. And he called
me a cab and walked me to it and gave me a hug.''
She was shaking, feeling sick again. ‘And because
of those terrible crimes, you-’
‘Lost my temper,’ Silas interrupted, his tone
bitter. ‘Lost control.’ He was trembling too. ‘Like
you, Abigail, on the motorbike.’
‘I was a ^zr/,’she said. ‘A young girl.’
‘You were you, Abigail.’
‘And it was an accident,’ she said. ‘Don’t twist
it, Silas. You’ve never done that before.’
‘Your mother twisted it in the ambulance,
remember? Told you to lie.’
‘I hate you,’ Abigail said, and found, to her
great dismay, it was true.
‘How much?’ Silas asked. ‘Enough to hurt me>
Kill me?’
‘Don’t be idiotic,’ she said, violently.
170
 ‘You don’t hate me, Abigail,’ he said. ‘You love
me.’ His eyes filled, abruptly, with tears. ‘That’s
why you’ll keep my secret. Same reason as I’ve
kept yours. Because we do still love each other.’
He wiped his eyes. ‘Need each other.’

Later, during the endless night, Abigail, alone in

their bedroom but unable to rest, let alone sleep,
went to the music room, found Silas there, sitting
upright on her small, straight-backed chair rather
than on the chaise longue where he usually sat.
‘Oh.’ She turned to leave.
‘You left your cello at Jules’s,’ he said, distantly.
‘Yes.’ She steeled herself, turned back to face
him. ‘I don’t think I can do what you want, Silas.’
‘There’s nothing more you’ll need to do, if no
one asks any questions.’
‘You’ve just killed my friend.’ The words still
sounded and tasted unreal. She clenched her fists
tightly, the tips of her fingernails marking tiny
crescents in her palms. ‘And now you want me to
cover for you, and you call that nothing!'
‘You’re my wife. I’d do it for you - have done it
for you, as I keep having to point out. I’ve told no
one the truth about you, have I?’
‘You told Jules,’ she reminded him. ‘Not that I
mind.’
‘Ah, Jules.’ Silas stood up. ‘You trust Jules,
don’t you, Abigail?’
‘Of course I do.’
‘You’re very fond of her.’ Growing sharper now,
less remote.
‘You know I am.’ Abigail’s fists unclenched, her
palms stung. ‘What in God’s name does that have
171
to do with anything?’
‘Maybe a good deal—’ Silas walked over to one
of the biscuit-coloured, sound-insulated walls,
fingered the covering ‘—if you need a better
reason than our marriage to side with me now.’
Abigail felt suddenly drained again, went to her
chair, sank down onto it.
‘Would you say,’ Silas asked, ‘that keeping Jules
safe is important to you?’
‘Of course I would,’ Abigail replied tiredly.
‘Good,’ Silas said. ‘That’s good.’
‘I still don’t see...’ She was too weary to go on.
‘You will,’ he said, ‘when I’ve told you.’
‘Told me what?’ Fresh dread pushed away
some of the fatigue. ‘Silas, what now, for God’s
sake?’
He regarded her soberly, then walked over to
the chaise longue, sat down.
‘Comfort needed,’ he said. ‘Quite a story to
tell.’

He took her, when he had finished, back out into

the garden, carrying a torch, and showed her.
‘We buried him here.’ He stood on the crazy
paving, shone the beam of light onto the moss
now bordering each slab of stone, then directed
the torch to the bench seat. ‘Almost exactly under
that.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ Abigail said.
‘I was twenty,’ Silas said. ‘Jules was fifteen. Ask
her, if you like.’
Abigail felt pressure building in her head.
Too much, she thought, and began to turn away.
‘Tell anyone about Nagy-’ Silas’s voice halted
172
her ‘-or even think about leaving me - and “any¬
one” includes Jules, by the way - and she’ll be the
one I drop right in it. And when they come and
dig up our dad and start asking questions about
how he died. I’ll tell them it was Jules who was
with him at the end.’
Nightmares piling on nightmares.
‘I thought,’ Abigail said, ‘you said he died of
natural causes.’
‘He stopped breathing,’ Silas said. ‘I suppose
that’s natural enough.’

He went to bed and she returned to the music

room, longing for her cello, desperate to transfer a
portion of her despair into something musically
wild and brutal. Charlie’s mischievous, round face
bobbed up and down in her mind like a drowning
man’s, alternated with Jules’s and little Ollie’s.
She found no comfort in the room - even the
golden fox’s eyes peering out of the painted forest
on the wall seemed to mock her now - so she left
again, roamed around the house, began to head
out into the garden, but abruptly stopped, unable
to imagine ever going out there again.
A man was buried out there, or so Silas claimed.
Maybe he was making it all up, after all. Maybe
he was just taunting her. Maybe there was some¬
thing deeply warped inside his brain - warped
brain, better than killer ^s brain — and he was making
up horror stories to scare her, punish her.
She went to the phone, tried Charlie’s home
number, heard it ringing and ringing, felt hope
die completely, felt anger, rage, rise again, ran up
the stairs and into their bedroom.
173
 Silas was asleep^ his face peaceful in the dim
moonlight gleaming through a chink in the cur¬
tains. Abigail stared down at him for a moment,
then stooped, took hold of his left arm, shook him
awake.
‘What?’ He looked sleepy, confused. Innocent.
‘You want me to tell anyone who asks that you
were home, that I talked to you here, but I didn’t.
If they check, they’ll know I didn’t call you from
Charlie’s.’
Silas shrugged. ‘So you won’t tell them that -
they won’t ask anyway.’
‘But when I got back and you weren’t here, I
phoned the studio and left a message.’
‘I know. I deleted it.’ Silas sat up.
‘When? On your way home from murdering
Charlie?’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t believe
you.’
‘I checked the machine by remote,’ he said.
‘Deleted it by remote.’
‘They’ll be able to tell that I called the studio
from here,’ Abigail said.
‘They won’t know who made the call, will
they?’ He looked up at her. ‘God, you really are
quite stupid sometimes. I’ll simply say I checked
my machine. Not that anyone will check, because
Nagy was mugged. Wandering around alone in
the dark in Notting Hill, his wallet on him, what
did he expect?’
She stared down at him, hating him.
‘I do hate you, you know,’ she said.
‘How can you hate me,’ Silas asked, ‘for loving
you so much?’

174
 Chapter Twenty-Five

She felt, all through the next day, like a car out of
petrol yet still rolling on, fuelled by unreality.
She waited for someone - Toby Fry, perhaps, at
Nagy Artists - to phone about Charlie, but no
one did, and of course, since she was just a client
- not even that, really, after Silas’s accusations
about the charity thing - there was no reason
why anyone should call her as any kind of pri¬
ority.
Jules called quite early on, asked tentatively
after Silas, though Abigail knew she was checking
to make sure she was okay, not her brother, and
she knew, too, that she ought to offer to go to the
flat, help with the clearing up, but she could not
face being with Jules today, and so she said only
that Silas had gone to work and that she sent a
kiss to Ollie and no more than that.
‘Are you all right?’ Jules asked. ‘No problems
after Charlie got you home?’
‘None,’ Abigail answered.
She realized, abruptly, that Jules didn’t know
she’d gone with Charlie to his flat after they’d left
her place, thought for a second of saying nothing
at all, but the trouble with lies was that they
tangled you up in the end.
‘Charlie didn’t actually take me home,’ she
said. ‘We had a couple of drinks together at his
place, and then he called me a cab.’
175
 ‘Oh; Jules said. ‘Okay. So long as you’re all
right.’
Abigail said again that she was, and then she said
that she had to go, because her toast was burning,
and she doubted whether Jules believed that. But
then again, Jules was presumably supposing that if
Abigail was not fine today, it was because she and
Silas had probably had a row over his walking out
of church yesterday, and if only that were all.
If only.
She went to the Broadway, bought all the
papers she could carry, sat on the upper floor at
Crocodile Antiques, checking through them all,
letting her coffee go cold, found nothing; went
home and sat through all the London and South-
East news bulletins, watching erratically, like a
child daring to look at something that might be
gruesome, then quickly looking away again
before they actually saw it.
Yet in Abigail’s case, for now at least, there was
nothing to see.
She spent most of her time thinking about Silas
and why he had done — or even claimed to have
done, since she still lived in the hope that he might
have been lying - such terrible things. Perhaps, she
wondered, attacking a pile of ironing in the
kitchen, her back resolutely to the window so that
she might not raise her eyes and see the pond, the
tale about Paul Graves was the clue to it all? Had
Silas’s and Jules’s father been a dreadful man,
maybe an abusive father or husband? Something
must have happened to make Silas - the best, most
precious thing in her life - capable of such...
She pushed it away, pushed the iron back and
176
forth across one shirt after another, creating new
creases, oblivious, uncaring.
It came back again, forcibly enough to make
her want to scream.
To run away, never come back.

Silas came and went, driving back and forth to the

studio, speaking to her with a mixture of kindness
and trepidation, and Abigail saw that despite all
the ugly bravado that night, despite the overlying
coldness and, for the most part, apparent absence
of emotion, there was now a desperate fear in him.
Of what? she asked herself. Of her leaving him,
or of her reporting him to the police? Was he
really depending on her feelings for Jules, if not
her love for him, to stop her informing on him?
She slept out of exhaustion on the second night,
but dreamed that she was lying on the lawn in
their garden wrapped from head to toe in cling¬
film. She could see through it, hear through it, but
she couldn’t breathe, and all the while, Silas was
sitting on the stone bench by the fishpond watch¬
ing her with the most loving of smiles, but she
couldn’t breathe and he made no move to help her.
She woke up gasping and sweating, found him
beside her, watching her.
‘Okay?’ he asked.
‘Nightmare,’ she said, and got out of bed.
‘Want me to make you a hot drink?’ Silas asked.
‘No, thank you,’ she said.

They came next morning, fifteen minutes after

Silas had gone to Crouch End.
Abigail had been up and dressed for more than
177
an hour, had turned down his request that she go
with him, was drinking a third cup of coffee in
the kitchen, trying to summon the strength to go
back out and buy the papers all over again.
No need now.
Two young men in dark suits, one with dark,
wavy hair, the other shaven-headed, both holding
warrant cards, expressions sober.
One made the introductions, asked if she was
Abigail Allen, told her he was Detective Con¬
stable Lowe from Central London AMIT, and
then he told Abigail his colleague’s name, but by
then she’d ceased hearing what he was saying, was
having enough difficulty not crumbling because
they were there, because they had come to see
her, and what did she do now, what did she do?
‘We need to speak to you-’ the first man said
‘-about your association with Mr Charles Nagy.’
‘What about him?’ She heard her voice emerge,
sounding normal.
First opportunity for truth already gone.
Pray for us sinners.
It had been years since she’d said a Hail Mary,
alone or in a church. Even two nights ago, in the
depths of the horror, the words had not come to
her, but now, faced with these men, faced with the
decision she was going to have to make in the next
few moments - seconds^ now that she had already
missed her first chance - the prayer seemed sud¬
denly to fill her mind, blocking out everything else.
Now and at the hour of our death.
Not her death, Charlie’s.
Hail Mary, full of Grace.
‘Ms Allen,’ Detective Constable Lowe said.
178
 Abigail stared at him and the other man, found
that they were in the living room, and she had,
she supposed, invited them in, but she couldn’t
recall doing so.
‘I’m afraid I have some bad news for you,’ he
went on.
‘Unless you’ve already heard,’ the other man
said.
She looked at them blankly, all her emotions,
terror, anger, shame:, concealing themselves - and
oh, Christ, she’d been there before, hadn’t she -
‘Never say that, not to anyone' - she was all-too
practised at the arts of lying about death.
They suggested she sat down while they told her
about Charlie, and there were no more prayers
filling her mind, different words now, clamouring
to be heard:
He did it. Silas did it. My husband did it.
‘Oh, God,’ she heard herself say. ‘Oh, poor
Charlie.’
‘When did you last see Mr Nagy?’ DC Lowe
asked.
They knew that, she realized, that part of her
brain quite clear. If they hadn’t known that, they
wouldn’t have come.
‘The day before yesterday,’ Abigail replied.
‘Sunday.’
‘What time, Ms Allen?’ the second man asked.
‘A long time,’ she said. ‘We were at a christen¬
ing first.’ She shook her head, ran her right hand
through her hair. ‘Sorry, you mean the last time.’
She shut her eyes, opened them again. ‘I’m not
sure. About ten-thirty, eleven. In the evening.’
She shook her head again. ‘I don’t remember the
179
 i

exact time. I’m sorry.’

‘That’s all right,’ DC Lowe reassured her. ‘It’s a
dreadful shock. Please take your time.’
‘Charlie made me some pasta, and then he
ordered me a cab.’ Her heart had begun to pound
so violently, it was hard to believe the men
couldn’t hear it. ‘He saw me out to the car when it
came.’ She closed her eyes again briefly. ‘And that
was it. When we drove away, Charlie was waving.’
‘Yes,’ DC Lowe said. ‘That’s what your cab
driver told us.’
‘Oh,’ Abigail said.
‘Did you notice anyone in the street when you
and Mr Nagy came outside?’ the second officer
asked. ‘Anyone hanging around or just walking
along?’
Last chance.
She shook her head. ‘No one,’ she said.
It was, suddenly, just for a few moments, fright¬
eningly easy for her to lie. She had left Charlie
before it happened, she had seen no one, nothing
suspicious.
She thought back to the scene.
Walking out of Charlie’s front door, turning
towards the cab, parked a little way along the road,
close to Garden Walk, where Silas had told her...
She shuddered.
‘All right?’ DC Lowe said.
Abigail nodded, remembered that the cab driver
had been reading, realized that he’d been unlikely
to have noticed much, could not have been a
reliable witness.
‘There was a van,’ she said.
‘What kind of van?’ the second man asked.
180
 ‘I don’t know/ Abigail said. ‘It was white, I
think.’
‘Was there a driver?’ he asked. ‘A passenger?’
‘No,’ she answered. ‘Not that I noticed. It was
just there, parked across the road from where the
cab was waiting for me.’ She shook her head.
‘There wasn’t anything special about it - the van
- but I’m trying to think what I saw.’
‘Good,’ DC Lowe said, encouragingly.
The men waited.
Abigail shook her head again. ‘That’s all,’ she
said. ‘There was nothing.’
Except Silas, somewhere, watching, waiting.
‘No one,’ she said, and the moments of finding
it a little easier were gone.
‘When you were driving away, perhaps?’ DC
Lowe asked. ‘Anyone parking a car, coming
around the corner, maybe? Any other vehicles at
all that you noticed, coming in the other direc¬
tion, passing your cab?’
‘Nothing,’ Abigail said again. ‘If there was
anyone - I’m sure there must have been other
cars - but I don’t remember noticing anything.’
She paused. ‘I was very tired.’
And drunk.
She waited for them to tell her that the driver
had seen something, someone, a man with
golden hair in a suit, waited for them to say that
they knew she was lying, that they knew she knew
what had happened to Charlie and who had done
it, and maybe they could hear the words going
around her head again.
He did it. Silas did it.
DC Lowe was asking her something, and she
181
 i

realized she hadn’t heard^ forced herself to

concentrate again.
Tea. That was all. He was suggesting tea.
She knew she ought to offer to make some for
them^ but all she wanted, now that she had told
her lies, compounded her sins, was for them to
leave as quickly as possible, and so she shook her
head, told them she didn’t want anything, offered
them nothing, hoped that they would see it as
shock rather than inhospitableness.
And then, abruptly, sickeningly, she heard
herself asking them what exactly had happened to
Charlie, and DC Lowe answering that it seemed
to be a case of a particularly brutal mugging.
It looks exactly like a muggings Abigail heard Silas
saying. Bragging.
Tell them.
‘We’ll need you to make a statement,’ the
second man said.
‘If you’re up to it,’ DC Lowe said.
Abigail hadn’t realized till then that there were
tears in her eyes. Grief, the policemen probably
thought, and that was true enough, except that
the grief was not just for poor, lovely Charlie. She
was grieving for other deaths too. Of her
marriage. Of her belief in her husband.
Of the last remaining shreds of her own inno¬
cence.
‘Of course I’ll make a statement,’ she said.

She showed Silas the card they’d left her, in case

something came to her.
‘How did they know you’d been there?’ he asked.
I don t know, she said. ‘I think the cab driver
182
told them.’
‘You did well,’ he said, ‘from the sound of it.’
‘You think so?’ she asked, ironically.
‘I’m sorry you had to deal with it on your own,’
he said.
‘I got used to dealing with things on my own in
the past,’ Abigail said. ‘I expect I’ll get used to it
again.’
‘What do you mean?’ Silas asked.
He looked afraid again.
Of her leaving him. That was all he had to be
afraid of now, she realized, since she had done
what he’d wanted.
‘You’re not alone, Abigail,’ Silas said. ‘That’s
the whole point, isn’t it? Of what we have. So
long as we have each other, we’ll never be alone.’
‘Funny,’ she said, dully. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever
felt this alone before.’

Jules phoned early that evening.

‘Have you heard?’ She sounded upset.
‘Yes,’ Abigail said.
‘I just saw it in the Standard^ ’Jules said. ‘I can’t
believe it.’
Abigail swallowed. Forced the words out.
‘The police were here.’
‘Oh, my God,’ Jules said.
‘I was one of the last people to see him,’ Abigail
said.
‘I was trying to work it out.’ Jules paused, horror
still sinking in. ‘It must have happened soon after
you left. Oh, my God, suppose you’d been with
him?’
‘I wasn’t,’ Abigail said, almost harshly.
183
 i

‘Are you all right?’ Jules asked. ‘Is Silas there?’

‘No. He’s at the studio.’
He had gone, looking pained, almost bereft,
shortly after their last exchange.
‘Shall I come over?’ Jules offered.
‘I’m all right.’ Abigail looked down at her left
hand, saw that her nails were cutting into the
palm again, made no effort to unclench her fist.
‘You’ve got Ollie, and Silas will be home soon.’
‘I could bring Ollie over,’ Jules said, ‘if you’d
like.’
‘No,’ Abigail said. ‘Thank you, but I’m fine,
Jules.’
‘I’m just so sorry.’ She was very gentle. ‘I didn’t
know him as well as you, obviously, but I really
liked him.’
‘Me, too.’ Abigail was close to tears again,
wanted desperately to put down the phone, put
an end, at least for a little while, to the fabri¬
cation.
‘Have you ever met Charlie’s sister?’ Jules asked.
‘No.’ Abigail remembered, vaguely, his men¬
tioning her once or twice.
‘He told me about her after the christening,’
Jules said. ‘I think he said she’s called Maggie.’ She
thought back. ‘Maggie Blume. She has an art gal¬
lery in Swiss Cottage. Charlie said he adored her.’
Abigail put down the phone, her hand shaking
violently.
It rang again just seconds later. She thought, for
a moment, that she might scream, but she did
not scream and the phone kept on ringing.
‘Darling, are you all right?’ Jules was anxious.
‘Yes,’ Abigail said. ‘Sorry.’
184
 ‘Don’t be daft,’ Jules told her. ‘You’re very
upset.’
‘I’m okay,’ Abigail said.
The urge to scream had gone, a great weariness
in its place.
‘If you don’t want me to come over now,’ Jules
said, ‘how about coming over tomorrow for
lunch at the flat?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You could pick up your cello,’ Jules said. ‘Or I
could drop it off.’
‘I’ll come,’ Abigail said.
She hadn’t known what else to say, could think
of no good excuse, at that second, to refuse.
Besides which, the prospect of seeing Jules and
Ollie was as pleasant as any prospect could have
been.
Except how was she going to spend any time
with Jules, her friend, Silas’s sister, and not tell
her what had really happened to Charlie?

It was horribly easy to keep silent, as it happened,

her ability to lie to Jules even more frightening to
her than it had been with the police. And infin¬
itely easier to pretend, for a while, that life was
sane, than to talk about faked muggings or to ask
questions about allegedly long-buried fathers:
‘Jules, did you really help Silas bury your dad in
the back garden?’
Let alone:
‘Silas implied that you did something to your
father to help him on his way?’
Abigail sat by the summer-bare fireplace in
Jules’s sitting room with Asali beside her, looking
185
at Jules, breast-feeding Ollie in an armchair close
to a photograph of Ralph. She felt sure, suddenly,
that the tale about Paul Graves, at least the part
about Jules’s involvement, had been a lie, a piece
of gratuitous, unspeakably sick nastiness.
Except that she knew now, didn’t she, that
Charlie’s death had been no lie?
Unless maybe - one more meagre hope to cling
to - Silas had just been outside Charlie’s home
obsessing about her being inside, waiting to see
when or z/she would leave. And maybe after she’d
driven off in the cab, there really had been a
mugger, and maybe Silas had simply been a wit¬
ness, had decided to use the fact to punish her?
Cling to that, Abigail.
And to the abusive father notion, too, a peg to
hang his wickedness on.
‘So the police didn’t really seem to have any¬
thing?’ Jules broke into her thoughts, and moved
her son, gently, from one breast to the other.
‘Not that they shared with me,’ Abigail said.
Jules fell silent again, waiting while Ollie
settled, and then she said:
‘I expect someone will call you, about the
funeral.’
Abigail felt sick.
‘I expect they will.’
She stroked the dachshund, managed not to
shudder at the prospect of Charlie’s funeral,
knew that if she was invited, there would be no
way she could bear to attend.

186
 Chapter Twenty-Six

‘You’ll have to go,’ Silas told her, twelve days later,

after Toby Fry had telephoned, at last, to let
Abigail know that the funeral was to take place
that coming Sunday at a Jewish cemetery in Hert¬
fordshire.
‘I can’t,’ Abigail said.
‘I’ll come with you,’ Silas said.
‘You couldn’t. It would be obscene.’ She felt
sick. ‘How could you stand it?’
‘I’ve stood worse,’ Silas said.
Abigail said nothing, chose not to ask - not to
know - what ‘worse’ might be.
She had gone through the last fortnight with the
sense that she was living with a man she had
thought she knew well, but who she now realized
she did not really know at all. Her husband was a
stranger, alien to her. A man who claimed to have
killed because of her, which was, she supposed,
one reason why she had lied to the police for him.
Silas had told her he’d killed Charlie because of
her.
Which was part, she supposed, too, of what was
keeping her from leaving him.
Those three words, still repeating themselves in
her head.
All my fault.

She saw no police at the funeral - neither DC

187
 4

Lowe nor his partner^ nor anyone looking in any

way out of keeping with the other mourners - yet
all parts of the service were horrific to Abigail.
First the gathering of mourners outside the
chapel, then the prayers inside, some in English,
some in Hebrew, and the eulogy, everyone clutch¬
ing little black prayer books, saying Kaddish
together, everyone seeming to know it but Abigail
- though at least, for a while, in the chapel, she
was separated from Silas, who stood on the oppo¬
site side of the hall with the men, and if anyone
would have told her just a few weeks before that
she might be grateful to be apart from him, she
would not have believed them.
‘All right?’ he asked, outside, beginning the
long walk to the grave.
She neither answered nor glanced at him, won¬
dering how she could bear to stand beside him
during the next part, while Charlie’s coffin was
lowered into the ground, and she had been right,
it was an obscenity, and she was as guilty of it as
Silas was.
Hail Mary, full of Grace, the Lord is with thee.
She shut her eyes as mourners took turns
shovelling earth onto the coffin’s lid, and her
mind slid back to her parents’ funeral.
No grace for me.
No forgiveness, for that or for this, then or now.
‘Come on,’ Silas said, softly against her ear.
Abigail opened her eyes, saw that they were all
moving away, back towards the chapel for more
prayers, and the women and men separated again,
and she was no longer listening at all, vaguely
heard the rabbi extending an invitation to go back
188
to someone’s house, telling them about yet more
prayers that evening, and then it was, finally, over.
Silas found her in the crowd almost instantly.
‘We have to file past the mourners,’ he told her.
‘No,’ Abigail said. ‘We can’t.’
‘We have to,’ he said.
She saw that he was right, that a long queue
was forming, that several people were now sitting
with their backs to the wall, shaking hands or
kissing and exchanging a few words with each
person who passed them.
‘I can ’r.’ She felt panic rising. 'We can’t.’
‘Of course we can.’ Silas found her hand, pulled
her into the line. ‘It’s nothing. Don’t think about
it, just do it.’
She took her hand out of his, looked at his face,
saw that he was pale but composed, felt a fierce,
bright flash of hatred for him and looked away
again, straight ahead, through the people ahead
of her, into space.
‘Abigail.’ Silas nudged her, pushed her.
She looked down, saw a woman of about
seventy, red-eyed and exhausted looking, a
younger man beside her, dark-haired, very
strained, and another woman of about forty, Abi¬
gail supposed, wearing a black suit and trim hat.
Maggie Blume, she guessed, quailing.
She did what the man directly before her did,
shook hands with the older woman and then the
man, and then-
‘Abigail?’
The younger woman took her hand and did not
release it.
‘You’re Abigail Allen, aren’t you?’ she said. ‘I’ve
189
 i

seen your photograph in Charlie’s office.’ She

paused. ‘I’m Maggie, his sister.’
Abigail looked down at her, saw Charlie’s warm
eyes looking out of her face, and yearned for the
floor beneath her feet to part, so that she might
descend, as poor Charlie had, down into the
earth, into oblivion.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Abigail said, through lips that felt
numb.
‘I’m Abigail’s husband.’ Silas moved beside her,
extended his right hand. ‘Silas Graves.’
‘Yes.’ The bereaved woman shook it cursorily.
‘We’re both extremely sorry about your loss,’
Silas said.
‘Thank you,’ Maggie Blume said, noticeably
cool, then looked back at Abigail. ‘Will you be
coming back to our house?’
Abigail shook her head. ‘No, I don’t-’
‘I’m afraid we can’t,’ Silas said swiftly.
‘I’m sorry.’ Abigail felt faint.
‘It’s all right,’ Maggie Blume said, looked at the
Still-long queue of people waiting, and beckoned
Abigail closer. ‘I just want to tell you-’ she
lowered her voice to a whisper ‘-in case it’s been
troubling you, that Charlie didn’t blame you for
a second for that nastiness with the charity.’
Abigail stared down at her, tried to find the
right words, came up empty.
‘And I want to make sure you know how he felt
about you.’ Maggie took her hand again, clasped
it.‘I’m so glad he was with you that last evening.’
‘How did you know?’ Abigail asked, stupidly.
‘I phoned him while he was making you supper.’
Behind her, people shifted, politely impatient.
190
 ‘Better move on.’ Silas took Abigail’s arm.
‘Come on, darling.’
Abigail looked down at Maggie again. ‘Thank
you.’
‘Thank you for coming,’ the other woman said.
‘We’re very sorry,’ Silas said again.
Maggie Blume did not answer him.

‘It must have been his sister who told the police
I was there,’ Abigail said when they were back in
the car. ‘Not the cab driver, after all.’
Silas started the engine.
‘You never mentioned her phoning Charlie,’ he
said.
‘I didn’t know,’ Abigail said. ‘And even if I had,
why should I have told you?’
‘Common sense,’ Silas said. ‘In the circum¬
stances.’
He reversed carefully out of the parking place,
joined yet another queue, of cars making their
way out onto the narrow road.
‘Down to her then,’ he said, looking in his rear¬
view mirror. ‘The police turning up like that,
hassling you.’
Abigail turned, stared at him again.
‘Don’t you feel anything?’
He returned her gaze. ‘What do you think?’
‘I don’t know,’ Abigail said.
The car moved forward a few feet, then
stopped again.
Silas took another look into his rearview
mirror.
Saw Charlie’s sister standing outside the chapel
with a group of people.
I9I
 Talking to them, but not looking at them.
She was looking, he was certain, at his car.
Not at Abigail, but at him.
She looked, he felt, even from that distance,
puzzled.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

He had just gone out to the car next morning, and

Abigail, who - needing to be occupied, finding
idleness intolerable - had agreed to assist with a
children’s sitting at ten o’clock, had just returned
to the kitchen to ensure that she really had turned
off the gas hob, when the phone rang and she
picked it up before the answering machine could
take over.
‘It’s Maggie Blume.’
Abigail’s legs went, and she sat quickly down.
‘Abigail?’
Yes. She couldn’t breathe. ‘Sorry, we were just
on the way out.’
‘I won’t keep you,’ Charlie’s sister said. ‘It’s just
that I didn’t get a chance yesterday to ask if the
police have been in touch with you.’
Abigail felt blood drain from her face and hands.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘They came some time ago.’
‘Oh,’ Maggie Blume said. ‘Then I take it you
weren’t able to help them?’
‘No.’ Abigail took a breath. ‘I’d already left
Charlie when it — happened.’ She sounded
almost normal, hated herself for it. ‘So there
192
wasn’t anything I could really tell them.’
Her lips - her whole face - felt numb again.
‘And when you left/ the other woman said, ‘you
didn’t see anyone in the road? No one in a parked
car, perhaps?’
‘No one except my cab driver,’ Abigail said.
‘Though as I told the police, I was very tired after
a long day.’
‘Yes,’ Maggie Blume said. ‘Charlie told me.’

Getting into the VW beside Silas, Abigail told

him about the call.
‘Was she okay with what you said?’ he asked.
‘She seemed it,’ Abigail said.
‘No problem then,’ Silas said.

At eight-fifteen on Thursday morning, while Silas

was taking a shower and Abigail was putting
coffee beans into the grinder, Maggie Blume tele¬
phoned again.
‘I spoke to the police again yesterday,’ she said.
‘I thought you might be interested in an update.’
The numbness returned - the left half of
Abigail’s face this time, and her fingertips, and
she wondered, dimly, if perhaps she was going to
have a stroke.
Make it a large one^ she thought, wryly, then
instantly retracted, asked God to forgive her or,
at least, to make her punishment less horrible
than that.
Perhaps Silas is your punishment.
That thought shook her profoundly.
‘Abigail?’
Maggie Blume’s voice roused her.
193
 ‘Yes,’ Abigail said, and saw that she’d spilled
coffee beans all over the worktop. ‘Sorry. Some¬
thing was about to boil over.’
‘No update to speak of, really,’ the other woman
said.
Abigail didn’t know what to say, said nothing.
‘They’re very kind and polite, but I get the feel¬
ing they don’t hold out too much hope. Someone
told me that random muggers are very hard to
catch.’
‘I suppose they must be,’ Abigail said.
‘That’s the real reason I’m phoning you again,’
Maggie Blume went on. ‘For Charlie’s sake, to
ask you to please, please keep on thinking, trying
to remember, and if even the tiniest thing comes
back to you-’
‘I’ll tell you,’ Abigail said swiftly. ‘Or rather, the
police.’
‘I could give you a number.’
‘No need,’ Abigail said. ‘They left me a card.’

She was still shaking when Silas came down in

his white towelling robe, hair slicked down and
darker-looking from the shower.
‘She called again,’ Abigail said.
‘What now?’ Silas saw the scattered coffee
beans, shook his head, went to wipe them away.
Abigail reported the conversation she’d had
with Maggie.
‘Don’t you think it’s strange,’ she asked, ‘the
way she keeps phoning me?’
‘Not especially.’ Silas put the lid on the grinder.
‘You don’t think she-’ Abigail hesitated ‘-might
suspect something?’
194
 ‘Don’t get paranoid,’ Silas told her.
‘Hardly paranoid,’ she said hotly. ‘Considering.’
‘From what you’ve told me—’ he remained calm
‘-I’d say this is simply a bereaved sister clutching
at straws, and you just happen to have been the
last person to have been with her brother.’
‘Maybe you’re right,’ she said.
‘Anything else,’ Silas added, ‘is just your guilty
imagination.’
Abigail retreated up to the music room.
Played the cello for her mother until her arms
ached.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Maggie Blume, walking from her mansion flat in

Randolph Avenue to Maida Vale tube station the
following Tuesday afternoon in the first week of
May, was just starting to cross Elgin Avenue
when she spotted Silas Graves on the opposite
side of the road.
Watching her, camera in hand.
Raising it.
Taking her photograph.

Silas, looking through the viewfinder, observed

her distraction.
He lowered the Nikon, turned his head slightly,
saw the van - yellow, with large black lettering
blazoned on the side - coming, too fast, towards
her; saw Maggie Blume realize, an instant too
195
late. Saw her stumble and fall.
Saw the van hit her, toss her into the air and
down again, hard, onto the road.
He waited, feeling sick, until the worst of his
nausea was past, and a good cluster of people
had gathered around her, and then he crossed
the road and joined the small, horrified crowd.
‘Poor, poor woman,’ a man beside him said.
‘Didn’t stand a chance.’
‘Dreadful,’ Silas agreed. ‘Has someone called
an ambulance?’
The man nodded, seeming unable to tear his
eyes away from the limp, bloodied rag-doll that
was all now left of Maggie Blume.
‘No go, though, is there?’ he said. ‘She’s had it,
poor thing, hasn’t she?’
‘Dreadful,’ Silas said again.
And raised his camera to take another picture.
Before turning and walking away.

‘Have you seen the Ham & High?''

Jules’s voice, on the phone late on Friday
morning, was terse.
‘Not yet,’ Abigail said, brushing her hair. ‘What’s
up? I’ll be with you soon.’ Drew was taking time
off for a dentist’s appointment that afternoon, and
she’d promised to go to the shop at one-thirty, so
that Jules could relieve Ollie’s babysitter.
‘More awful news. I’m afraid,’ Jules said.
Abigail’s stomach pitched. ‘What’s happened
now?’
‘Maggie Blume’s had an accident,’ Jules said.
‘Knocked down in the street.’
Abigail dropped her hairbrush, opened her
196
mouth to ask how Maggie was, but no words came
out.
‘It’s just so unbelievably horrible,’ Jules went
on. ‘Brother and sister both gone in such a short
space of time.’
‘Gone?’ Abigail echoed.
‘Instantly, apparently,’ Jules said.

Operating on automatic pilot was becoming

second nature to her, Abigail dismally observed as
she worked through her shift at the bookshop. She
had taken care to arrive with only a minute to
spare, so there would be no time for conversation
with Jules, and after that it grew a little easier, with
just books for company and the occasional cus¬
tomer. And maybe her desperate need to occupy
herself had improved her sales technique, because
she sold more than one title to each person who
came in, though the thought that Jules would be
pleased by that shaved not even the smallest edge
off her shame for keeping the truth from her.
Maybe not for much longer.
She had decided that much, at least; had told
herself, vowed to herself as she went through the
motions of bookselling, that if these new worst
suspicions were realized, that if Silas had done
this latest unspeakable thing, she would not only
leave him, but she would also go first to Jules
with it all - all - and then, unless Jules beseeched
her not to (Abigail wasn’t sure what she would
do if that happened, would worry about that if it
did), she would phone the number on that card,
tell DC Lowe everything, and if they charged her
with perjury, so be it.
197
 And if Silas threatened her...
The truth.
All that mattered now.

Maggie Blume’s art gallery in Swiss Cottage was

easy to find; an oasis of calm in the midst of
traffic-pounded Finchley Road between a
Chinese restaurant and a dry cleaners.
A woman in a black suit with very short blond
hair, sitting at a small polished rosewood desk
halfway to the rear of the gallery smiled vaguely
as Abigail approached, then, looking at her more
closely, said:
‘You were at Charlie’s funeral, weren’t you?’
‘I was.’ Abigail, already wishing she hadn’t
come, introduced herself.
‘I’m Yolande Ross,’ the other woman said. ‘Mag¬
gie’s parmer.’ She motioned to a chair on the other
side of her desk. ‘You look in need of a seat.’
Abigail sat down.
‘I think we’re all shell-shocked,’ Yolande Ross
said.
‘I was just across the road-’ Abigail had pre¬
pared her script on her journey from Crouch
End ‘—and I noticed the gallery, so...’
‘You’ve not been here before?’
Abigail shook her head.
‘Maggie’s pride and joy.’ Yolande Ross’s eyes
filled. ‘Sorry.’
‘No, please.’ Shame coursed through Abigail.
‘It’s a beautiful gallery.’
‘Thank you.’ Maggie Blume’s partner paused.
‘Can I get you something to drink? You do look
very pale.’
198
 ‘Nothing, thank you,’ Abigail said. ‘I’m fine.’
She realized that the other woman was waiting
for her to go on.
‘I didn’t really know Maggie-’ she faltered
slightly ‘-at least, not till Charlie’s funeral. It’s
just that, coming so close to his death...’ She took
a breath, forced herself to get to it. ‘Do you know
what happened, exactly?’
‘Yes,’Yolande Ross said. ‘Unfortunately I do.’
Abigail waited for the sword to fall.
‘Two of the witnesses - there were several, I
gather - told Simon - that’s Maggie’s ex-husband
- that it was entirely her fault. That she’d stepped
out into the road, hesitated, for some reason, then
walked on, right into the van’s path.’
Abigail saw she was close to tears. ‘I’m so sorry.
I didn’t mean...’
‘I’m all right,’ the other woman said. ‘It’s just so
unlike Maggie to be scatty, but they all said she
seemed miles away.’ She wiped her eyes with a
tissue she’d been clutching in her left hand.
‘Probably thinking about Charlie.’
‘No one else to blame then,’ Abigail said.
Yolande Ross shook her head. ‘I’m not sure if
that makes it better or worse.’
‘I don’t suppose,’ Abigail said, ‘it makes much
difference.’

That's all right then, she told herself ironically, her

cheeks burning with the ugly flippancy of her
thoughts as she drove the Mini back to Muswell
Hill.
No need to leave Silas now.
Even if poor Maggie Blume had been thinking
199
about Charlie, Silas had only actually killed -
probably killed - one sibling, after all.
So no need to mention it to Jules, let alone the
police.
Only one death.
Unless you counted the father in the garden.

‘Jules phoned me earlier,’ Silas said, as Abigail was

transferring their lamb chops from grill to plates to
table. ‘She told me about Maggie Blume.’
Abigail sat down. ‘Did she?’
‘I can’t help wondering,’ Silas said, ‘why you
didn’t tell me.’
‘I would have,’ she said.
‘I suppose, really,’ he said, ‘I do know why.’
Abigail said nothing.
‘You think I might have done away with her.’ He
paused. ‘Understandable, in the circumstances.’
Abigail looked down at the chops, thought she
might be ill.
‘It’s all quite extraordinarily sad, of course,’
Silas said. ‘But you must admit, in a macabre sort
of way, it is also rather convenient.’
She had wondered if there was anything left
that he could do or say to shock her further.
‘How can you possibly say something like that?’
‘You were the one getting so freaked out by her
calls,’ he said. ‘Just as well for your state of mind
it was so plainly, undeniably an accident.’
Abigail thought about the sparse report in the
paper.
It had given no real details.
|How can you be so sure about that?’ she asked.
‘I can,’ Silas said, ‘because I was there.’
200
 Chapter Twenty-Nine

He had described it to her as the purest of coinci¬

dences - his happening to be on Elgin Avenue at
that moment - but from then on, anything that
had been left of Abigail’s peace of mind had been
blasted away.
‘You’re getting very thin,’ he remarked two
weeks after Maggie Blume’s death. ‘Almost as
skinny as when I first saw you.’
She played the cello every spare moment now,
could no longer bear to face Jules, had told her on
several occasions that she was too busy practising
and working with Silas to come to the shop.
‘That’s just business,’ Jules had said in her easy
way. ‘Couldn’t you at least come over to the flat?
Spend a little time with Ollie and me? We miss
you.’
‘I will.’ Abigail went on lying. ‘As soon as I’ve
mastered the new piece I’m working on.’

There was no piece. Just a jumble of notes now,

sometimes raucous and aggressive, sometimes
painfully beautiful and tender.
No piece or peace.
She went, frequently now, into the garden, gazed
at the pond and the bench, at the place where Silas
claimed he and Jules had buried their father.
When she managed to sleep at night, she
dreamed either of being suffocated in clingfilm
201
while Silas watched, or of the yard at Allen’s
Farm. Of Eddie and the Beastie and her family,
dead and dying.
And finally, feeling that she might very soon
explode with guilt and shame and unhappiness,
no longer able to bear it entirely on her own, she
went to church.
Abigail had no faith to speak of. Her Catholic
mother, having married the vaguely Protestant
but fundamentally irreligious Douglas Allen, had
decided that if he was prepared to accompany her
at least fairly regularly, she would try hard not to
mind too much going to his ‘kirk’, so long as he
raised no objections if she and Abigail went to
Mass at her church when he was not of a mind to
go.
‘God is God,’ Francesca had allowed.
Auntie Betty and Uncle Bill had been Church
of Scotland, so their kirk, for the duration of her
life in their home, had become Abigail’s, after
which, left to her own devices, she had almost
wholly lapsed. She had prayed, off and on,
through her life; usually, during her childhood,
by rote. Hail Marys and Our Fathers; later, after
innocence was gone, out of fear and her daunting
isolation, just in case God really was there.
Though that, too, had brought more fear, for if
He was there, then He had been there in the yard
that day, too, and more recently, through all the
days and weeks of her terrible lies, and then...
Forgive me, forgive me^ forgive me...
Never enough. Ever.
Now, after the shocks upon shocks of the last
several weeks, Abigail had come to the realization
202
that it was not so much God she needed to com¬
municate with, but someone safely bound by their
ministry. A person unable, so long as she made her
approach in the prescribed manner, to betray her.
Or rather Jules.
Increasingly, it was Jules - sensitive, generous
Jules — and, by extension, Ollie, who were on
Abigail’s mind and conscience.

‘I don’t matter,’ she said, on her knees in the

confessional at the end of the third week of May.
‘Not any more.’
She had chosen Saint Peter the Apostle for no
reasons other than because she had passed it regu¬
larly since coming to live in Muswell Hill, and
because it had an old, comfortable looking grave¬
yard and looked to her, in general, more welcom¬
ing than some churches.
‘Bless me. Father, for I have sinned.’
The penitent’s ritual beginning.
‘It’s been-’
Stumbling already, no recollection of when she
had last made her confession.
The priest had been gentle with her, welcom¬
ing, and so she had gone on.
Her own sins only for now. Familiar, well-
trodden ground, God knew.
Forgive me.
She left Silas’s sins untouched. Waiting,
perhaps, to see if this revisiting of her mother’s
beliefs might, after so long, bring the slightest
easing of her beleaguered conscience. Knowing
already that it would not, for it never had before,
and besides, her own sins alone were not, this
203
time, what had brought her here. Her conscience
was not what mattered now.
The man on the other side of the grille sounded
quite young, his voice softly Irish-accented, fleet-
ingly reminding Abigail of a violinist she’d known
at the Conservatoire who’d been raised in Dublin.
The priest was matter-of-fact but kind, seeming to
realize that she had not truly come for the sacra¬
ment of reconciliation, neither for an act of
penance nor even absolution. That she was pro¬
foundly troubled, and, most of all, that she needed
to talk.
‘It’s all right,’ he told her once, when she
paused. ‘We have time.’
He gave her nothing new. She had expected
nothing new. Regarding her parents and young
boyfriend, he said it had been a tragic accident
and she had been very young.
‘What about letting the boy take the blame?’
she said, harshly.
No names. She never used names, not even
here in the confessional.
‘Not too late-’ still gentle ‘-if you wanted to put
that right.’
Silas had said, more than once, that her lying
had made no difference to Eddie or his parents,
but Abigail had always known that, whatever the
case with poor Eddie, the truth might have made
a tremendous difference to his parents.
‘It might help you,’ the priest said.
‘I don’t matter,’ she said.
‘You couldn’t be more wrong,’ the priest told
her. ‘You matter very much.’
‘My soul, you mean.’ She sounded cynical, had
204
not meant to, did not feel cynical. That was Silas’s
department, not hers; hers was guilt, which was
still, when all was said and done, what had
brought her here.
‘Don’t you believe in souls?’ the priest asked.
Her mother and father and Eddie pounded
through her mind again, followed sharply, even
more violently, by Charlie and Maggie Blume.
‘I don’t know,’ Abigail answered, though the
truth was she had often hoped, even prayed, that
there was no such thing as an immortal soul, or
an all-seeing God, let alone eternal damnation -
and all the Hail Marys in the world weren’t going
to help her now, and what was she doing here?
She got abruptly off her knees.
‘I’m sorry. Father,’ she said, and stumbled out
of the confessional, hurrying out the way she had
come through the cool of the church, moving
even faster out through the doors into the
brighter, noisy world of traffic and humans whose
consciences were lighter and cleaner, people who
had not killed or cast blame, who did not live with
a murderer...
‘Oh, Abigail said.
She wiped her eyes, took a breath, and moved
back amongst them.

She went back two days later, sat in a pew near the
back of the church in a dark corner. Not praying
or even really thinking, just sitting, feeling very
tired.
Helpless.
And then the priest - who was, in the flesh,
young, fair-haired and tall - came out from the
205
vestry and glanced her way, and she stood up and
left.
Not ready.

The next time, on her knees again just five days

later, she told him everything.
Let it out in all its ugliness, thought she heard
his intake of breath when she told him about
Charlie - not that she used his or any other
name, or made any reference to her relationship
with anyone concerned, priestly rules or not. And
then, after she told him about the father buried
in the garden, about the woman run down in the
street, about perjuring herself to the police, about
not being able to even think of leaving Silas in
case he carried out his threat to make trouble for
Jules - and in any case, she said, it was all down
to her, of course; everything, if one came to
analyse it, was her fault...
After she had said all those things to the man
on the other side of the confessional partition,
she thought she detected something else, in his
tone of voice.
He thought her mad.

Jules confronted her. Arrived one morning in the

first week of June, unannounced, with Ollie in his
buggy.
The baby was beaming. His mother was not.
‘Fd like to know-’
Why aren’t you in the shop?’ Abigail cut in, to
divert her.
Drew s minding the shop.’ Jules pushed the
buggy past Abigail, waited until the front door
206
was closed, glanced around. ‘He is out, isn’t he?’
‘You mean Silas?’
‘Who else?’ Jules was still grim-faced.
‘He’s in town, at a meeting at one of-’
‘I don’t really care where he is,’ Jules inter¬
rupted again, ‘so long as I get to find out what
I’ve done to merit this treatment.’
‘Jules, won’t you-’
‘And even if I have done something bad-’ Jules
forged on ‘-though I’ve absolutely no idea what
that might be - then what on earth Ollie’s done
to deserve the same?’
‘Nothing,’ Abigail said. ‘Oh, God, Jules, you’ve
done nothing'
‘Then what the hell is going on with you?’
Abigail looked at her friend, her husband’s sister,
into her dark, challenging eyes, and knew that she
wanted, more than anything, to share it all with
her. Told herself that no matter what Silas had said
about making trouble for Jules, surely he would
never do such a terrible thing to his own sister?
A man who could kill another man for hugging
his wife could do anything.
Til tell them it was Jules who was with him at the
end'
Abigail looked down at Ollie, sweet innocent
baby.
Telling Jules might make her feel better. Telling
the police the whole story and leaving Silas might
make her feel even better than that.
Except, of course, that it was all her fault.
Not Paul Graves's death, she reminded herself.
But if she did tell, and if Silas did carry out his
threat and destroy Jules’s life, and Ollie’s, then
207
that would be her fault, too.
Abigail blinked, looked up at Jules still standing
there.
‘Come in,’ she said, ‘and have a coffee.’
Jules stayed where she was. ‘Are you going to
tell me what’s going on?’
Abigail felt her soul sag.
‘There’s nothing to tell,’ she said.
‘In that case-’ Jules turned Ollie’s buggy
around.
‘Please, Jules, don’t go.’
‘I thought-’ Jules opened the door ‘-you and I
were friends.’
‘We are,’ Abigail said. ‘Jules, of course we are.’
‘Friends,’ Jules said, coolly, ‘share problems
with each other.’
And she pushed the buggy out of the house.

Even in the loneliest times of her life before Silas,

Abigail’s isolation had never been quite as painful
as it was now.
He had, since Maggie Blume’s death, done
everything possible to be a good, almost a perfect,
husband. He was kind to Abigail but didn’t crowd
her, gave her time and space to herself. All through
the rest of May and on through June, he insisted
on taking her out, to restaurants and the cinema
and, twice, to concerts; he bought her flowers and
helped out more than usual with cooking and
housework and shopping. When she came to work
at Edison Road, he consulted her more than he
had in the past, began inviting her along, even
when no assistance was needed, on the more inter¬
esting of his shoots.
208
 He even asked her if she wanted him to help
her find a new manager.
‘Why?’ Abigail asked. ‘So you can get jealous
and arrange another mugging?’
‘Don’t be silly,’ he said. ‘If you don’t want to
play professionally any more, that’s fine with me,
though I think it’s a pity.’
‘Pity or not,’ Abigail said, ‘I don’t want another
manager.’
‘You will still play for me, won’t you?’
‘If you insist,’ she said.
‘I don’t insist.’ Silas looked wounded. ‘It just
gives me pleasure.’ He paused. ‘I suppose I have
that in common with your mother.’

Abigail went back to Saint Peter the Apostle. Not

to Mass or to the confessional, for that had not
helped her at all, but she found that she did seem
to find a degree of comfort just sitting quietly
inside the church or wandering among the old
graves outside.
The priest joined her, one warm afternoon,
moving over the grass so lightly and silently that
she had no opportunity to flee.
‘How are things?’ he asked, with no pretence at
not recognizing her. Abigail looked at him, seeing
him close up for the first time. He was, as she had
thought, young and slim, with narrow features
that reminded her, a little, of a greyhound’s.
‘All right,’ she replied, then paused. ‘All wrong.’
His blue eyes were keen. ‘Feel like talking about
it? Or would you rather be left alone?’
‘I feel alone,’ Abigail said, ‘most of the time.
Though, of course. I’m not really. Just in my head.’
209
 i

‘I’m Michael Moran, by the way,’ he told her.

For just a moment, while they shook hands,
Abigail became aware of his calmness as some¬
thing almost palpable, transmitting itself to her.
And then it was gone, and already she regretted
its loss.
‘Would you like to come into the presbytery?’
the priest asked. ‘I’m sure that Mrs Kenney, my
housekeeper, would rustle us up some tea.’
Her hesitation was brief. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I
would like that very much.’
And went with him.

Silas watched from his car, parked between a

Shogun and an old Metro on the single yellow
line on the opposite side of the road.
Watched as they went inside together.
His head ached, and he rubbed the furrow
between his eyebrows, looking down at his digital
camera, at the last shot he’d taken of them in the
churchyard.
The priest was young and attractive.
Silas scrolled back through the previous shots
until he arrived at the one he wanted to see again.
Abigail, at the instant she had first looked up at
the other man.
With her wide grey eyes.
His heart lurched with sorrow, remembering
that other first time.
Their first time.
He couldn t remember if he’d ever seen her
look at Nagy that way.
Couldn’t remember^ because whenever he
thought about Nagy, blood clouded, blasted away
210
the memories, and sounds, too, of groaning and
dying.
So he couldn’t remember how she had looked
at Nagy.
But this was not a man, this was a priest - so it
couldn’t be, couldn^tbt.
He would not let it be.

Chapter Thirty

T’ve arranged something special,’ Silas told

Abigail in the third week of July. ‘Something I
hope will be good for you.’
‘What is it?’ she asked.
‘A surprise.’ He saw the alarm, the suspicion, in
her expression, and smiled. ‘Nothing like the
recital,’ he said. ‘This is a trip.’
That startled Abigail, for they’d travelled
nowhere together since Deauville.
‘Where to?’ she asked.
‘Please,’ Silas said. ‘Allow me to surprise you.’
She heard his polite, gentle voice - he had
many voices, she had come to realize - and felt
too tired to argue. ‘How will I know what to
pack, if I don’t know when or where we’re going?’
‘It’s next weekend,’ he told her. ‘You won’t
need much.’
Abigail asked herself, several times as the week
went on, if she really wanted to travel anywhere
with a killer. Each time her answer was the same:
she had already been living with a killer for
211
weeks, eating, working, sleeping (not making
love, not that, not since Charlie), so why should
travel be different?
And in any case - whatever Father Michael
Moran said - she was still a killer herself. And if it
were not for her, Charlie would be alive, and prob¬
ably Maggie too. And, by having chosen not to tell
DC Lowe, by having stayed with Silas, she had
become, had made herself, his accomplice. And
whether she had done that for Jules’s and Ollie’s
sake, or for Silas’s, for love’s sake, she had done it.
For better, for worse.
Worse.
No real doubt about that.

When she discovered, at Heathrow, that their

destination was Edinburgh, she balked, but Silas
dealt with the moment in his kindest fashion.
‘If you truly don’t want to go,’ he said, quietly,
at the check-in, ‘I’ve no intention of trying to
make you.’
‘You couldn’t,’ Abigail told him.
‘But I’ve had such hopes,’ he said, quietly, ‘of
being able to do something for you - truly just for
you - for once.’
The woman holding their tickets smiled.
And Abigail, seeing the intensity in her hus¬
band’s eyes, recognizing that it was, without a
doubt, genuine, gave way.

He took her to the Caledonian Hotel - and she

had been so desperately afraid that he would take
her to The George, the hotel her daddy had been
taking them to for her mother’s birthday lunch
212
that day, and the relief when it was the Caley in¬
stead was so great she could almost have danced.
Ifyou can even think of dancing, Abigail, you^re as
wicked as he is.
Their room was wonderful, with high ceilings
and a castle view - to the side, Silas pointed out,
remembering the childhood fear she’d told him
about that the castle might collapse onto Princes
Street.
‘See?’ he said. ‘Perfectly safe.’
Abigail remembered when he said that why she
had loved him so much.
Blocked out the rest.
Got into the huge bed with him, and showed
him.

When she saw, finally, the next day, a warm,

humid summer’s day, where they were going in
their rental car, she became rigid with shock, her
feet tramping hard on the floor mat in front of her
seat, as if she were the driver, braking violently.
‘How could you?’ She stared at him. ‘Silas, how
could you do this?’
His jaw tightened, but he went on driving.
‘You’ve never been back, have you?’
‘You know I haven’t,’ Abigail said, her voice
strangled.
‘I thought - I still think - it could help you,’
Silas told her.
The sign above the old gate was gone, no other
replacing it.
‘Please stop,’ Abigail said, faintly.
He drove on. Through the gate.
Onto the long lane that led to the house.
213
 i

Abigail shut her eyes, heard the roar of the

Beastie, felt the wind in her hair.
'Open your eyes, darling,’ Silas told her.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I can’t.’
But they were all there an5way, despite the
cover of her eyelids. Dougie and Francesca, all
done up for her birthday. And poor Eddie
Gibson, riding pillion, one arm around her waist,
his hand on her shoulder, trying to warn her
about the mud.
She thought her brain would burst.
‘Get me out of here,’ she told him.
Silas looked at her, at the eyes still clenched
shut, at the tormented face.
‘All right,’ he said.

He took her, still in shock, to the churchyard

where her parents were buried.
A sweet-smelling place, full of wild flowers, old
and peaceful.
He held her hand, led her, and she didn’t fight
him, too numb for that.
‘You can hate me if you have to,’ he said, ‘but I
did this for you.’
He pointed to a handsome wooden bench on
the path close to the grave.
Abigail looked, read the inscription carved
across the top.
IN LOVING MEMORY OF FRANCESCA
AND DOUGLAS ALLEN.
‘I left out Eddie’s name,’ Silas said. ‘It didn’t
seem right, since he s not buried here, and with
people believing he was the one riding.’
‘Oh, God,’ Abigail said, quietly.
214
 ‘Are you all right?’ he asked, still holding her
hand.
She didn’t answer.
‘Do you want some time alone?’ he asked.
She nodded.
‘Okay.’
She waited, heard his feet crunch away on the
gravel path, and then - whether out of weakness
or some primitive need - she dropped onto her
knees in the grass.
Not to pray. Not even just to feel.
If I feel noW:, she realized, it will overwhelm me.
Their funeral came back to her again. Dark
clothes, grim faces, eyes gazing at her, some in
sympathy, some avidly curious. The coffins going
down into the big grave. Her aunt and uncle on
either side of her. Auntie Betty’s hand gripping
her arm. Not for comfort, Abigail remembered
feeling. Out of duty.
More than she deserved. So much more.
Mea culpa.
She stood up quickly, jerkily, before she gave
way to that.
Turned away from the grave, saw Silas standing
about ten yards away on the path, watching her,
felt hot rage balloon inside her - and then burst
and melt away.
His eyes were pained.
For her.
She walked slowly back to him, through a cloud
of midges.
Midges that day too.
‘Okay?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Perhaps.’
215
 Silas looked towards the church. ‘Want to go in?’
‘Why not?’ Abigail said.
It was dark and smelled of damp and held no
solace or even memories^ and they did not stay
long, both wanting to be back in the light and air.
‘Not a very comforting place,’ Silas said as they
emerged.
‘No,’ she agreed.

‘I was thinking,’ he said, casually, a few miles

further along the road, ‘about church.’
‘What about it?’ Abigail asked.
‘Just that, perhaps,’ he said, ‘if you wanted, we
could go together sometimes.’
‘Why-’ her surprise was genuine ‘-would we
want to do that?’
‘I just thought it might comfort you a little,’
Silas said.
‘No,’ Abigail said. ‘Not me.’
‘Really?’ he said.
She heard the altered, cooler tone, looked at
him. ‘You all right?’
‘Why wouldn’t I be?’ Silas said.

Chapter Thirty-One

He watched her again, a fortnight later, in the

second week of August, in conversation with the
priest at Saint Peter the Apostle.
She looked animated.
He took a rapid series of photographs, zooming
216
in, then examined them.
Saw that the priest admired Abigail.
That the feeling was mutual.
He drove away from the church too fast, con¬
tinued speeding most of the way to Crouch End,
was aware, when he saw a police car, that he’d
been lucky not to get stopped, went on speeding
anyway.
He didn’t care about fines or safety.
Everywhere he looked, everywhere^ he saw her
eyes, gazing at the priest.
Perfidious Abeguile.

Chapter Thirty-Two

Jules came to lunch the next Sunday with Ollie,

pleased to be invited, bearing no grudge for the
unexplained period of apparent aloofness.
‘You’re looking better,’ she said to Abigail, half
way through their roast beef, the three of them
sitting around the old kitchen table, with Ollie in
his buggy between his mother and uncle, sucking
on a Yorkshire pudding.
‘Am I?’ Abigail smiled at her, speared a roast
potato, glanced at Silas.
‘Abigail always looks lovely to me,’ he said,
rather stiffly.
‘I’m not talking about beauty,’ Jules told him,
then turned back to Abigail. ‘You look calmer
than when I last saw you. Or at least spent any
time with you.’ She looked down at Ollie, reached
217
 down to stroke his cheek, received a gurgle in
response, then added, without rancour: ‘Though
that was after Charlie.’
‘I was shocked then,’ Abigail said.
‘Of course you were,’ Jules said.
‘But yes,’ Abigail agreed, ‘I think I am feeling
rather better now than I have for some time.’
Silas stood up, left the table and the kitchen.
‘Something I said?’ Jules asked.
Abigail flushed, shook her head, put down her
knife and fork. ‘He’s been a bit strained,’ she said,
‘since our weekend away.’
Jules looked at the closed door. ‘I was a bit
troubled,’ she said quietly, ‘when he told me
about that-’
‘You knew about it?’ Abigail was surprised.
Jules nodded. ‘He was very enthusiastic, plan¬
ning it, concerned to get it just right for you.’ She
paused. ‘I told him I was worried about the effect
that going back to Scotland, being so much
closer to the farm again, might have on you.’
Abigail was silent for a moment. ‘He didn’t tell
you then.’
‘Tell me what?’
‘He didn’t just take me close to Allen’s Farm.
He took me through the gate, up the lane, right
to the house.’ She saw Jules’s dismay. ‘It’s all
right,’ she reassured her. ‘I was dreadfully upset
at first, obviously, thought he was being terribly
cruel. But then I saw that he genuinely believed
he was trying to help.’
‘Help?’ Jules looked dubious.
Abigail shrugged. ‘You know what they say
about closure.’
218
 ‘Stupid word,’ Jules said, with feeling. ‘You’ve
no idea how many people used that to me after
Ralph.’ She shook her head. ‘Closure. No such
thing.’
‘He’d had a wooden bench made,’ Abigail told
her, ‘for the churchyard where my parents are
buried, had their names carved on it. “In loving
memory of...’”
‘That was nice of him, I suppose,’ Jules
allowed.
Abigail thought about the stone bench seat out
in the garden.
Another grave, the part Silas claimed Jules had
played in it.
Dragged herself swiftly back.
‘Anyway,’ she said, almost brightly, ‘I am feeling
better.’
‘Are you?’ Jules looked at her searchingly.
‘Honestly?’
Abigail, having almost forgotten what it felt like
to be honest, found it hard to meet her gaze. ‘Not
about that day, about what I did, to my parents
and Eddie, of course not. Nothing’s ever going to
make me feel better about that.’
‘If it’s any consolation,’ Jules said, slowly,
thoughtfully, ‘I truly can’t imagine Silas ever
wanting to be deliberately cruel to you.’
Abigail thought about Charlie, gritted her
teeth.
‘I know he can be impossible at times,’ Jules
went on, ‘but-’ She broke off, seeing Abigail’s ex¬
pression. ‘What is it?’
Abigail shook her head, then, suddenly,
abruptly, said: ‘He’s-’
219
 Jules waited a second. ‘He’s what^ darling?’
‘Nothing.’ Abigail shook her head again^ rose
from her chair.
‘Abigail, what’s wrong?’
‘It’s nothing, Jules,’ Abigail said. ‘Truly.’ She
thought the lie must show on her face, in her eyes.
‘I’m just concerned about Silas.’ She went to the
door, seeking escape. ‘I’d better see if he’s okay.’
Jules sighed. ‘Take your time,’ she said.

Abigail found Silas lying down in their bedroom.

‘Are you all right?’
‘Headache,’ he said. ‘Sorry.’
‘Have you taken something?’
‘Just,’ he answered. ‘Tell Jules I’ll be down after
a nap.’
‘Of course.’ She saw how pale he was. ‘Want
anything else?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Thank you. Tell Jules I’m sorry.’
‘No need to apologize for having a headache,’
Abigail said.
It was confusing, she thought, closing the door
quietly, that odd, cool, not quite chilly, politeness
of his that had begun near the end of their
Scottish trip, had been coming and going since
then. Hard to understand...
Not so hard as living a constant lie, not as gro¬
tesque as continuing to sleep beside, sometimes
- only very occasionally, but still sometimes - let¬
ting a murderous husband make love to her. Not
as strange as asking him solicitous questions
about his headache, as if she cared.
Yet she did, she still did^ and that confused her
more than anything.
220
 She shoved the thoughts away again, as she
always did.
Returned to the kitchen, found Jules washing
up the main course.
‘He’s got a bad headache, says he’s sorry.’
‘Not coming back down?’ Jules squeezed Fairy
Liquid onto a sponge.
‘Maybe in a while.’ Abigail produced another
smile. ‘Leave that, Jules. We’ve got pudding to
have first. And then I want a long cuddle with my
godson.’
At least this time Jules stayed.

Chapter Thirty-Three

‘You never ask,’ Abigail said to Father Moran,

‘about the things I told you in confession.’
They were sharing the afternoon tea that Mrs
Kenney — a grey-haired woman who always
greeted Abigail with friendliness, then vanished
discreetly, coming and going with trays or
messages like an unassuming ghost - had brought
them in the sitting room of the presbytery adjoin¬
ing Saint Peter the Apostle. It was a simply furn¬
ished room, but far from austere, filled with
family photographs and a considerable, varied
and colourful collection of cushions and rugs, all
made, the priest had told her, by parishioners
over the years.
It was the last Thursday afternoon of August,
and Abigail was very tense. It had taken several of
221
 these tea sessions - usually arranged when she
knew Silas was shooting fashion models in town
- for her to come to this, to find the inner
strength to match her deep inner sickness.
‘Is it because you’re not allowed to ask?’ she
ventured. ‘Or because you didn’t believe me?’
Or - she thought but did not add - because he
had guessed that she was talking about her
husband.
‘Why would I not believe you?’ Father Moran
asked.
‘I wondered...’ She hesitated, put down her cup.
‘What did you wonder?’
‘If perhaps-’ it was hard to go on ‘-if you
thought I might be mad, saying such terrible
things.’
‘I did not, and still do not, think you in the least
mad.’ Father Moran waited, watching her
intently. ‘What is it, Abigail? Do you want to talk
to me some more? About those matters?’
The urge to unburden herself more completely
was powerful.
Never say that, not to anyone. Francesca’s dying
command about that older tragedy, not these
later horrors, and anyway, long since broken. Yet
still, it seemed, with the power, even now, to
choke off the words in her throat.
Abigail looked away from the priest, shook her
head.
‘I don’t think I can.’ Cowardice, she realized ab¬
jectly, nothing to do with her mother. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘It’s all right,’ Father Moran said gently. ‘When
you’re ready.’

222
Sitting in the VW on the road beyond the church
and presbytery, Silas looked at his watch and saw
that his wife had been inside, with the handsome
God-botherer, for the longest time yet.
He wondered what they were doing.
Remembered Charlie Nagy with his arms
around her.
Sex didn’t enter his mind, not with these two,
at least not yet.
He supposed that what they were doing was
talking.
About private, confidential, intimate matters.
Matters that were for himself and Abigail only.
True treachery.

Chapter Thirty-Four

Jules was unpacking wholesalers’ boxes at the

back of the shop on the first Monday morning of
September when she heard the door open and
her brother’s voice calling her name, and hurried
forward.
‘The studio’s been broken into,’ Silas said, pull¬
ing out one of the chairs around the small
reading table, sinking onto it.
‘Are you all right?’ Alarmed, Jules scanned him
for injury, found him pale and agitated but
otherwise apparently unscathed. ‘Did you disturb
them? Did they hurt you?’
He mustered a feeble smile. ‘Didn’t know you
still cared, sis.’
223
 ‘Don’t be silly.’ Jules looked him up and down
again. ‘Not hurt then.’
Silas shook his head.
‘Coffee?’ She paused. ‘Did you see them?’
‘Long gone when I got there.’
‘Thank God for that.’ Jules poured him a
mugful. ‘Have the police been?’
Silas nodded. ‘The worst of it’s the bloody mess.’
Jules put the mug down on the table, drew out
a second chair, sat beside him. ‘Did they take
much?’
‘Hard to tell, but I don’t think so.’ He picked up
the mug, but his hand was unsteady and he set it
down again. ‘I think there’s more damage than
theft. That’s why I had to get out, come here. It’s
the malice of it that’s got to me.’
‘At least neither you nor Abigail was there.’
‘Thank Christ,’ Silas agreed. ‘But it’s freaked
me out, I can tell you.’
‘What did the police say?’
‘Not much.’ He picked up the mug again, took
a sip. ‘They did their usual stuff, dusting for
prints, but I don’t suppose it’ll lead anywhere.’ He
raked his hair with his free hand, in his habitual
gesture. ‘I’d better get back, start clearing up, get
the door fixed.’
‘You’ve left it open?’
[I stuck something over the glass, and the keys
still work, though I’d better get the locks changed.’
111 shut up for a while, come back with you.’
Jules got up. ‘Is Abigail coming here or going
straight to Edison Road?’
‘I’m not telling her,’ Silas said.
‘Why ever not?’
224
 ‘I don’t want to burden her with it.’
‘You can’t not tell her.’ Jules was incredulous.
‘She isn’t all that strong/ Silas said.
‘I think she’s immensely strong.’
‘You think all women are as tough as you, Jules.’
Silas put the mug down again, shook his head.
‘But Abigail’s still broken inside. Bits all glued
together, but sometimes I can almost see them
coming apart.’ His eyes were sad. ‘I worry for my
wife.’
‘Share things with her,’ Jules told him. ‘That’s
the way to make her stronger, Silas, darling. You,
too.’

Telephoned in the end by Jules, told how shocked

Silas was, Abigail came directly to Edison Road to
meet them and to help with the clearing up of the
mess.
‘I can’t tell you how grateful I am to you both,’
Silas told them.
‘No need,’ Abigail said, and went on cleaning.
‘A bit of gratitude never hurt,’ Jules said.
‘Not sure why I got so worked up about it,’
Silas said.
‘It’s horrible being burgled,’ Jules said. ‘Isn’t it,
Abigail?’
‘I don’t know,’ Abigail said. ‘It’s never hap¬
pened to me.’
‘Anyway,’ Silas said, ‘I’m better now, thanks to
my women.’
‘Not so much of the “your women”,’ Jules told
him.
‘Sorry,’ he said.

225
That night, though, he jolted out of sleep in a
cold sweat.
‘Nightmare,’ he told Abigail, and sank back
against his pillow.
She raised herself up on one elbow, looked at
him. ‘What about?’
‘Two men,’ he said. ‘Breaking in - here, not the
studio.’
‘What happened?’ She could see from his eyes,
even in the half-light, that it had been bad. ‘Tell
me, Silas.’
‘Attacked us,’ he said, and shuddered. ‘You,
too.’
‘Just a dream,’ she said. ‘Go back to sleep.’

‘He’s sleeping very badly,’ Abigail told Jules a

fortnight later in the shop. She had begun work¬
ing there again, regularly, just after the studio
break-in, and Silas had raised no objection,
which had, despite everything, pleased her.
‘He was in a pretty bad way when I saw him the
other day,’ Jules said.
‘Last night’s dream was about you. Your flat
being broken into.’
‘Poor Silas,’ Jules said.
She wondered, later, after Abigail had left, if it
was she or Silas who was most fragile; thought
about their respective childhoods and teenage
years.
She and Silas came close, Jules decided. But
Abigail still won.
Hands down.

Having finished a practice session in the music

226
room one evening the following week, Abigail
made a couple of cups of coffee and carried them
into the living room.
Silas was snoozing, feet up on the sofa in front
of News at Ten^ so, moving quietly, she set down
the drinks on the coffee table.
‘Jesus, Abigail!’
His voice so startled her that one of the cups
tipped, coffee cascading over the table and onto
the carpet. She looked at Silas, saw that he was
pale, breathing hard, sitting bolt upright.
‘You scared the life out of me,’ he said.
‘Creeping round like that.’
‘I wasn’t creeping,’ Abigail said. ‘Just trying not
to wake you.’
‘You should know better,’ Silas said. ‘You know
I’m wound up.’
‘Take it easy.’ She headed for the door, to get
something to mop up with.
‘That’s what I was trying to do,’ Silas said.

‘I’m beginning to think he should see the doctor,’

Abigail told Jules on the phone.
‘What for?’ Jules asked. ‘Tranquillizers?’
‘I don’t know,’ Abigail said. ‘He certainly needs
something to calm him. He’s so jittery. I’m
worried he’ll have an accident.’
‘He should try yoga.’
‘Can you picture Silas in the lotus position?’
Abigail was wry.
‘Ralph and I tried it a few times-’ There was a
smile in Jules’s voice. ‘We were absolutely hope¬
less at it, but it made us laugh, relaxed us that
way.’
227
 i

Abigail was silent for a moment.

‘I still can’t picture Silas,’ she said.

She went for tea again with Michael Moran a few

days later, mentioned, casually, the strain Silas
had been under since the break-in.
‘He should contact the victim support people,’
the priest suggested.
‘He was offered something like that by the
police,’ Abigail said.
‘Said he didn’t need it?’ Father Moran saw her
nod. ‘Many people - men especially - think it’s
admitting to weakness, when that’s the last thing
it would be.’
‘At least,’ Abigail said, ‘he’s talking to me about
it.’
‘He’s a very lucky man,’ the priest said, ‘to have
you.’
She wondered which Silas he was referring to.
Victim or killer.

Chapter Thirty-Five

‘Meet me for lunch today?’ Silas said at breakfast

the following Monday, the last in September.
‘I’m working at the shop. Drew’s on holiday,
remember?’
‘I’ll talk your boss into giving you a lunch
break,’ he said.
‘If you have influence,’ Abigail said. ‘Better not
go too far though.’
228
 ‘How about Florians?’ Silas suggested. ‘Twelve-
thirty?’
‘Lovely,’ Abigail said, pleased.

She waited for him in the restaurant, just a short

walk from Jules’s Books, sipping a glass of their
Pinot Blanco, wondering, as she always did now
when she was idle, what kind of woman could look
forward with any degree of pleasure to seeing a
man like Silas? A man who could do such terrible
things?
As always, the answering thoughts came all too
readily, bounced painfully back and forth.
A woman who had done worse.
Not worse.
Almost. As good as.
Bad as.
She waited ’til one-fifteen, then ordered a
smoked chicken salad, ate it swiftly, went back to
the shop to relieve Jules, and phoned the studio.
‘Oh, God,’ Silas said. ‘I completely forgot.’
‘Maybe it’s time,’ Abigail said, ‘I got a mobile.’
‘You’ll have to let me make it up to you,’ he
said. ‘On Saturday evening.’

Midway through Saturday afternoon, soon after

she’d come home with several bags of food from
Marks and Spencer, Silas phoned to confirm that
he’d booked a table at Loch Fyne, opposite
Florians, but that because he was engrossed in a
complex developing job, he wondered if she
would mind taking a cab and meeting him at the
restaurant.
‘I could come to the studio,’ Abigail said.
229
 i

‘Go straight there/ he said. ‘That way you can

have a drink if I’m a couple of minutes late.’
‘Would you rather cancel?’ Abigail asked. ‘I
don’t mind.’
‘I would/ Silas said. ‘I’m looking forward to it
far too much.’
She took a cab from the house^ arrived at the
restaurant five minutes early, ordered a glass of
white wine, then sat contentedly back.
Fifteen minutes passed. Then thirty.
Abigail found a phone, rang the studio, got the
engaged tone - not the usual Call Waiting mess¬
age - tried again, gave up, returned to the table,
studied the menu for the third time, debated
ordering a bowl of lobster bisque, then went back
to the phone and tried again.

At least, she thought, walking briskly, irritatedly,

the studio was only a few blocks away. Though all
the more reason for Silas to have come to the res¬
taurant, if the phone was out of order — no matter
how ‘complex’ his job was - to explain himself.
She had already taken her keys from her bag,
but the basement door, with its sleek sign -
SILAS GRAVES - was unlocked.
Abigail pushed it open.
‘Silas?’ she called.
The outer office was empty, lit by a single lamp.
The door to the dark room was closed, the red
light above the door on.
‘Silas?’ she called again. ‘Are you in there?’
She waited several moments, growing alarmed.
Ordinarily, she knew better than to enter when
that light was glowing, but in the circumstances,
230
he might be ill...
‘Fm coming in,’ she called.
And opened the door.
She heard his wordless shout at the same
instant that the sweet-smelling liquid hit her eyes.
She screamed, her hands flying up, shielding
them.
Too late.

Chapter Thirty-Six

All she remembered, later, of the first hours, was

the agony and terror, and Silas’s anguished voice
wailing, repeatedly:
‘Oh, my God, oh, God, what have I done?’
There had been other voices too, kind, more
practical voices, and fingers prising her hands
away from her face so that they could help her,
checking that she was breathing properly, that
whatever the terrible liquid had been that had so
wounded her eyes hadn’t burned her throat or
windpipe - and oh, Christ, her eyes hurt, she’d
never known anything to hurt so much. And they
were washing them with something, and she was
fighting them, she couldn’t help it, but then they
gave her something, she remembered a needle -
before or after they took her out of the studio, up
the steps, to the ambulance - shooting something
into her system that had, mercifully swiftly, taken
away the worst of the pain, calmed her at least a
little.
231
 ‘Your husband did the best thing in the circum¬
stances,’ someone’s voice said in A&E at the
Whittington, while they were still irrigating her
eyes with sterile saline. ‘Cold water right away,’
the voice said. ‘Not as good as this, but a start.’
‘I told him to do that,’ Abigail said, trying not
to cry, not sure if she could cry.
She remembered, suddenly, that she had
screamed it at him.
That Silas had just stood there, making help¬
less, agonized sounds.
‘Cold water!’ she had screamed. ‘Now, for
God’s sake, before anything!’
‘Then you did just the right thing, Abigail,’ the
voice told her now, gently.
Voices. Men and women, paramedics, doctors,
nurses, porters, all muddled into one in the pain¬
ful, terrifying semi-darkness, all giving her kind¬
ness and treatment and information, some of
which, much of which, she scarcely understood at
the time.
‘You were very lucky,’ someone said, told her
again that the chemical might easily have dam¬
aged her oesophagus or trachea.
Lucky.
Abigail thought, for the first time, of her face.
‘Is my face burned?’ she asked.
Just your lids,’ they said, ‘and around your
eyes.’
The skin burns would be painful for a while,
they said, but would almost certainly heal well
without plastic surgery.
‘Lucky there too.’
232
 Lucky.
She did not ask the question uppermost in her
mind, could not bring herself to ask, waited, in
agony, all kinds of agony, physical and emotional,
for someone to tell her how lucky she’d been
about that too.
That she was not going to be blind.
But no one told her that.

The punishment then, at last.

The thought came to her while they were
transferring her to Moorfields.
She remembered thinking once, after Charlie’s
death, during one of Maggie Blume’s telephone
calls, that maybe Silas was her punishment.
Wrong.
Blindness was to be her sentence.
Pray for us sinners.
Oh, dear Christ.

They admitted her, began treating her with drops

every few hours, gave her tablets, explained at
every stage what they were doing and why, which
medications were to lessen inflammation, which
were for healing, which for pain, which for lubri¬
cation, which were to prevent infection.
She could see light and shapes, but nothing
more.
Light, at least, she told herself. Better than dark.
She lay in the hospital bed, heard strange
sounds, tried not to weep.

The police came, asked Abigail if she wanted to

press charges against Silas.
233
 i

'Grievous bodily harm^’ the policewoman’s

voice said.
Try murder^ she thought, her mind fuzzy from
the drugs.
Remembered Silas’s anguished wailing after it
had happened.
‘Of course not,’ she said. ‘It was an accident.’
They told her they would come back later, went
away, and some time after that a nurse came to say
that Silas wanted to know if she would see him.
‘Why wouldn’t I?’ Abigail said, wondered,
briefly, stupidly, why he had asked such a thing -
then realized exactly why.
The nurse went to get him.

‘I thought,’ he said, taking her hand tentatively,

as if he thought she might snatch it away, his
voice still afraid, ‘you might never want to see me
again.’
‘Odd,’ Abigail said, ‘how often we use that
word.’
‘Which one?’
‘See,’ she said.
‘Oh, God,’ Silas said.
She lay very still, her fear rising. That kept on
happening, she’d noticed since the accident; the
fear rose to unbearable, screaming-pitch levels,
like mercury shooting up in a thermometer in a
cartoon, till the top bulged and exploded, and
then it fell again, became something slightly more
manageable, then soared again.
‘I’ve spoken to the ophthalmologist,’ Silas said.
She said nothing, the fear continuing its climb
up the scale.
234
 ‘She says there’s every reason to hope that the
drugs they’re using will be enough to heal both
eyes in time.’ He paused. ‘They’re both pretty
bad for now^ but the left eye’s a little worse,
apparently.’
‘What if they don’t heal?’ Abigail asked, very
softly.
‘Then they can operate,’ Silas said.
‘What kind of operation?’ Her voice shook.
‘I don’t know exactly,’ Silas said. ‘It’s not
something they rush into, apparently. She said
they like to wait, give the eyes time to settle.’
‘How long?’ Abigail asked.
She waited for his reply, then heard a curious
new sound, and realized that he was crying.
‘Don’t,’ she said. ‘Please don’t do that.’
‘Sorry.’ He blew his nose. ‘Oh, God,’ he said
again. ‘Oh, God, what have I done to you?’
‘What I would like to know,’ Abigail said, ‘is
why you did it.’
‘I thought,’ Silas said, ‘you were another burglar.’

He explained, wretchedly, what he had already

explained to the police. That while he had been
at work in the dark room during the afternoon,
the phone had rung several times, and that each
time the caller had hung up.
‘And the idea started nagging at me that it was
something to do with the break-in, and maybe it
was going to happen again.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ Abigail asked.
‘I didn’t want to worry you,’ Silas said. ‘You
were getting ready for our evening, and I really
felt you were actually looking forward to it, which
235
 made me so happy^ and God knows I was looking
forward to it too^ and oh Christy darling, you
can’t begin to imagine how terrible I feel about-’
Tlease just go on,’ she said. ‘Tell me what
happened.’
‘That was it, really,’ he said, helplessly. ‘Because
of the phone calls, I fell behind with the work,
and that stressed me out too, and first I was
worried about running late for our dinner, and
then I suppose I got absorbed in the job again
and lost track of time, forgot you’d already be at
Loch Fyne waiting for me-’
‘But I called out,’ Abigail interrupted, ‘twice,
before I came in.’
‘I didn’t hear you,’ Silas said. ^Obviously I didn’t
hear you, or else-’
He began weeping again.
‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ Abigail said, ‘do shut up.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Silas said again, composed himself,
went on.
He had still been concentrating on the work
when she’d opened the dark room door, and he
hadn’t heard her voice at all, had just felt the sud¬
den rush of cool air, had taken intense fright,
seen the door opening.
‘It was all pure reflex. I just picked up the first
thing to hand.’
‘Developer,’ Abigail said. ‘They told me.’
She’d felt sick when she’d heard, still felt it now.
Some developers, she knew, were alkaline based,
and alkaline was worse than acid for eyes. She
knew that, and Silas certainly knew that, and God
knew he must have been half out of his mind to
have picked that up, let alone thrown it.
236
 ‘I know/ Silas said. ‘Christ, I know. They seem
to think, thank God, that my washing your eyes
out with water helped a bit.’
‘I told you to do that,’ Abigail said.
‘No,’ Silas disagreed. ‘You didn’t. You were
screaming.’
‘I’m sure I was telling you to get water.’
‘Definitely not,’ he said. ‘You’re confused,
darling. It’s understandable.’
‘Blindness,’ Abigail said harshly, ‘will do that
every time.’
‘Don’t say that,’ Silas said. ‘You’re not going to
be blind.’

The police came again, and she told them how

jumpy Silas had been since the break-in, that she
was entirely certain - and there were few things in
life nowadays that she felt certain about, but this,
at least, was one of them — that if he’d had the
remotest idea it had been her entering the dark
room, he would never have thrown the developer.
‘Throwing it at another person,’ the police¬
woman pointed out, ‘would still have been an
offence.’
‘But he thought he was in danger,’ Abigail said.
‘And anyway, it wasn’t another person, was it? It
was me, and I know it was an accident, and I
certainly don’t want to press charges.’
They went away again.
Left her wondering at her loyalty.
At her treachery against Charlie.
In her new, semi-dark world, the faces of Silas’s
dead and of her own seemed clearer than ever.
More unbearable than ever.
237
 Go away^ she said silently to Charlie and his
sister.
Please^ she said to her mother and father and
Eddie, let me rest.

‘How the hell,’ Jules asked Silas, walking out of

the hospital with him after her first visit, ‘could
you have done such a bloody terrible, bloody
stupid thing?’
‘Don’t you think-’ he glanced, hot-cheeked with
embarrassment, at a passing doctor ‘-I feel bad
enough without you making it worse?’
‘I don’t give a stuff, just this minute, how you
feel,’ Jules told him. ‘It’s poor Abigail I’m con¬
cerned with, not knowing if she’s going to be
blind or not.’
‘Please,’ Silas said, ‘don’t say that, I can’t bear
it.’
Jules paused on the pavement outside in City
Road and stared at him in disgust. ‘You’d better
bloody well bear it,’ she said. ‘She needs you.’
‘I know she does,’ Silas said. ‘That’s the only
good thing about this - that I’m going to be able
to take care of her for as long as she needs me.’
‘Good thing?’ Jules echoed, disbelieving. ‘There
is nothing remotely good about this. Abigail’s in
terrible pain, and she must be so frightened.^
‘I know that, Jules,’ Silas said, ‘without you tell¬
ing me.’ His eyes went flatter, colder. ‘No need to
twist my words.’
‘Then stop sounding so fucking selfish,’ Jules
said.

Though Abigail’s left eye, her doctor, a kind, but

238
practical woman, confirmed, had taken in more
chemical than the right, both eyes had Grade
Three corneal burns.
‘Is that good or bad?’ she asked.
‘Better than Grade Four,’ the doctor answered.
‘But not as good as Grade Two.’ Abigail said.
‘Still good news though.’
The words the ophthalmologist used were, for
the most part, familiar from other usages, yet at
times Abigail felt she might have been learning a
new language.
Corneal abrasion, epithelial loss, corneal scar¬
ring, perforation.
Limbal ischaemia.
The limbus, Abigail learned, was the border
between the cornea and sclera.
‘The sclera’s the white part?’ she checked.
‘The sclera coats every part of the eye except
the cornea,’ the doctor said.
‘And ischaemia’s something to do with blood
supply,’ Abigail ventured.
‘Exactly,’ the other woman said.
‘And the blood’s not getting through?’
‘To less than half the limbus in each eye,’ the
doctor said.
Abigail asked the question at last.
‘What does that mean, to my vision?’
‘There’s likely to be significant haziness,’ the
doctor answered.
‘But I’m not going to be blind.’ Abigail felt her
whole body tremble.
‘Not blind.’The doctor took her hand. ‘And not
forever.’
Not forever.
239
 i

More - yet again^ the old, damning part of her

mind told her - than she deserved.
‘Long way to go,’ the doctor added.
‘Surgery?’ she asked.
‘Possibly,’ the other woman said. ‘Too early to
say.’
They would wait, she explained, for several
weeks, probably even months, before they made
any decisions regarding stem cell transplantation
or corneal grafting or keratoprosthesis, or....
More words.
Not blind.
The only ones that mattered for now.
‘How bad do I look?’ She hadn’t thought too
much about that before.
‘Bit battered,’ the doctor told her. ‘Nothing that
shouldn’t heal pretty well.’
‘It still hurts,’ Abigail said.
‘You haven’t been complaining.’
‘I didn’t like to.’
The doctor squeezed her hand again.
‘You’ve every right, Abigail.’

They sent her home after five days - and another

round of questions from the police - with Silas, a
bag of medication, a sheaf of instructions for him,
and the date of her first outpatient appointment.
‘How do you feel?’ he asked her in the car on
the way.
‘Good,’ she said, her eyes masked by plastic
shields, ‘to be out.’
‘Nervous, too, I expect,’ Silas said.
‘About how Fm going to manage?’ Abigail said.
Terrified.
240
 ‘No need,’ he told her. ‘And it’s not you. It’s we.
We're going to manage this together. It’s the least
I can do.’
‘Yes,’ she said.
They had been counselled at length before her
discharge about the house, about the kind of help
she could rely on, suggesting she ask Silas to
consider organizing a bed on the ground floor,
giving him hints about the removal of obstacles
so that Abigail might experience a degree of
independence in safety.
‘She won’t need to,’ he had told them. ‘I’ll be
there all the time.’
They had pointed out that, however noble his
intentions, this might not be possible. He told
them that since it was he who had done this
awful thing to Abigail, there was certainly no
question of nobility, and that there was
absolutely no doubting that he would be there for
her at every minute of day and night.
‘She can depend on me completely,’ he had said.

No doubting how much she needed him now, he

thought on her first night back at the house,
watching her trying to find her way round their
kitchen.
More than that, better than that, she knew it.
Not a permanent need, of course. One of these
days, weeks, months, those lovely eyes would
probably be fit again to look at her priest - at
other men - but by then, perhaps, she might have
come to realize that he was the only one she would
always be able to depend on, no matter what.
The only one who would love her despite what
241
 she had done.
Maybe even because of what she’d done.
Two of a kind. Kindred spirits. Perfect match.
She had to learn not to let other people get in
the way of that, of their perfect relationship.
Other men, especially.
This time together, this needy period, would,
he hoped, bring her that realization, the under¬
standing that he was all she needed, would ever
need.
He had known, when he’d planned it, that there
was a risk that the injury to her eyes might be
even greater than this, that she might have been
permanently blinded or scarred, and those
prospects had twisted his heart.
Always a price to pay.
.^d the doctors all seemed reasonably optim¬
istic that, in time, her vision would be at least im¬
proved, and that the scarring would be minimal.
That Abigail would, ultimately, be perfectly
beautiful again.
Would look at, and be looked at, by men.
Cross that bridge...

Chapter Thirty-Seven

‘I wish,’ Abigail said, ‘I could go out.’

It was the beginning of November, she had
been home for ten days and it was already driving
her mad. ^
The first few days had been difficult, but living
242
in fog as she was, there had been no question that
she had needed all the help Silas could give her,
and she had still, at that early stage, found his
tender determination to be ‘her eyes’ - as he
insisted on calling himself - quite moving. Only
quite^ given his responsibility for her situation,
though at least his sense of guilt was something
she found all too easy to relate to, so much so
that on several occasions she had found herself
the comforter, rather than the other way around,
comfort twice leading to lovemaking, and then,
too, Silas had been tender and caring and
meticulously careful to avoid touching her eyes.
By day ten, though, feeling almost trapped by
his determined devotion, she was beginning to
feel distinctly stir crazy.
‘Certainly we can go out,’ Silas said. ‘Where
would you like to go?’
They were in the kitchen, where he had made
her an omelette for lunch - discouraging her
every time she made the slightest attempt to help
- and then washed up and cleared away.
‘I meant by myself,’ Abigail said. ‘For a walk.’
‘You can’t,’ he said. ‘Obviously.’
‘I know that, Silas,’ she said. ‘I just said I wished
it.’
He looked at her disconsolate expression and
felt, first, compassion, then irritation because of
her ingratitude.
‘Don’t you realize yet,’ he asked, ‘how sorry I
am?’
‘How could I not realize?’ Abigail said. ‘You ve
told me enough times.’
‘I hope I’ve done more than tell you,’ he said.
243
‘Fve done all I can to help you, given up a lot of
potential business to look after you/
‘Jules would come to help,’ Abigail said. ‘You
haven’t let her.’
‘She has the shop and Ollie and Ralph’s smelly
old dog,’ Silas said. ‘And I’m your husband, not
Jules.’
‘What on earth does that have to do with it?’
Abigail said, crossly.
Silas bit his lip, then counted silently to five.
‘If you were able,’ he asked slowly, pleasantly,
‘to go out on your own, where would you go?’
‘I don’t know,’ Abigail said. ‘Anywhere.’
Silas watched her face intently.
‘To church, perhaps?’ he asked.

She knew from that second on.

Thought she knew. It was hard to be sure,
though perhaps, she suspected, she just didn’t
want to be sure. Did not want to know.
Did not want to believe him capable of such a
thing.
Of hurting her — her — deliberately.
Why would he do such a thing? she asked
herself repeatedly.
He would not, came the reply, which she fought
desperately to believe.
Yet surely that question of his had been some
sort of warning?
He had asked her something about church, she
remembered, the day he’d taken her back to
Allen’s Farm, shortly after they’d left the grave¬
yard where her parents were buried. He had said
something about going together in the future,
244
and she had asked him why they should want to
do that, and he had said that it might comfort
her, and she had told him no.
‘No. Not me,’ she recalled saying, swiftly, truth¬
fully.
He had looked at her then, she remembered
now, quite strangely.
And that was when that curious change in him
had begun.

That night, after he had fallen asleep - easy to

tell, from his breathing, that he was sleeping -
she lay beside him, in her hateful new darker-
than-dark privacy, and thought about his all-too-
well-established jealousy and possessiveness.
Charlie’s face presented itself again.
Go away, Charlie. She twisted the corner of the
duvet in one hand, squeezed it hard, though not
so violently that the movement should wake
Silas. Please, Charlie, just for a while.
She still tried, regularly, to lie to herself about
that horror. To pretend that what Silas had told
her was, despite all the evidence to the contrary,
a fabrication, that he had just been playing a
cruel game with her, as he had about Maggie
Blume.Told herself again that either he had seen
the genuine mugging, or had found out about it,
somehow, and pretended to her that he’d done it,
pretended that his clothes had blood on them
and had to be burned.
Just to hurt me.
Better than hurting Charlie.
Killing Charlie.
Silas had been jealous of Charlie.
245
 And Charlie was dead.
Then Maggie Blume had begun asking ques¬
tions.
And Maggie had been killed.
In an accident. Confirmed.
And Paul Graves was - might be - buried in the
garden.
Abigail remembered what Silas had said about
the manner of his father’s death. After she’d said
something to him about natural causes.
‘He stopped breathing,’ Silas had said. ‘I
suppose that’s natural enough.’
Forget them, Abigail told herself now, lying in
the dark room.
Forget Paul Graves and Charlie and Maggie.
Concentrate on yourself- on what happened to you.
And the thing that Silas had said today, after
lunch.
About church.
He knows, she thought, about Father A/loran.
Beside her in the bed, Silas stirred, gave a small
moan, was still again.
If he knew about her visits to Saint Peter’s,
Abigail went on working it through, if he knew
about her cups of tea in the presbytery, then that
to mean that he had been watching her.
Following her.
If he was following her, but had said nothing
about it, that had to mean that, absurdly, impos¬
sibly - not impossible, not with Silas - he must be
jealous.
Of a priest?
A good-looking, young priest.
That was when the answer came to her. To the
246
question she had asked herself earlier:
Why would he do such a thing?
Because of his jealousy.
Because he had seen her with another attractive
man.
Because a blind woman...
Stop it.
Because a blind woman could not see.
Could not see other men.
Abigail felt suddenly very ill. A flush of heat shot
up through her neck, suffusing her face, sweat ran
down her back and trickled down between her
breasts, and she thought she might be sick.
Automatically she began to reach for the bed¬
side lamp - then remembered there was no point
turning on a light.
A sob rose in her throat, was barely suppressed.
Beside her, Silas stirred again.
Take deep breaths, Abigail.
She inhaled, slowly, exhaled, then did the same
again.
The sweat, cold now on her face and body,
dried, and the nausea faded away with the worst
of the panic, as she reached a decision.
Tomorrow, somehow, she would telephone
Father Moran.
Tell him what had happened, share her new
fears with him.
Ask for his help.

247
 Chapter Thirty-Eight

It was so hard getting even a minute to herself.

Silas was more than her helper, he had turned
himself into her shadow - and the pity of it was
that she did still need him so badly.
See how you need me,’ he had said several
times.
Another motive, perhaps, Abigail thought now.
Making her dependent on him.
‘It’s all right,’ she told him after another lunch,
after he’d made her a sandwich, served it to her,
cleared away, made her coffee, helped her to the
sofa and set the radio beside her for the Afternoon
Play. Abigail had always enjoyed listening to the
radio, but never more than now, and that, plus the
Walkman that Jules had brought her wiftiin days
of the accident - accident - together with a pile of
audio books, had been keeping her sane.
Maybe sane.
It s all right, she said now to Silas. ‘You can go
and do your own thing for at least a couple of
hours.’
‘The play’s only on for forty-five minutes,’ he
said.
‘I know,’ Abigail said testily. ‘I can still go on
listening.
What if you need something?’
;i won’t.’ She paused. ‘Why don’t you go out,
Silas? You really ought to spend some time at the
248
studio, read your post, pay some bills.’
‘What if-?’
‘If the house starts burning down,’ Abigail cut
in, ‘I promise to phone you.’
‘I take it,’ Silas said, ‘you’d like to be alone?’
‘My,’ Abigail said, ‘but you’re perceptive today.’

She noticed, when he had gone (and she was sure

he really had left, because she’d heard his foot¬
steps out on the front path receding, and then
she’d heard the VW’s door open and bang shut
and the car drive away, and it was true what they
said about other senses compensating for a lost
sense, even as rapidly as this), that he hadn’t
brought her the telephone.
Not a mistake, she felt sure, even if it did go
against the meticulous care he’d been taking of
her.
She fetched it herself. Bumped into the edge of
the coffee table and stubbed a toe on the way
back, and she thanked God several times each
day for the knowledge that if her vision did not
improve in time despite the medication, surgery
would almost certainly help her, that the vast
majority of corneal grafts were successful, that
even if a first transplant were to be rejected, there
could be a second.
Corneas of the dead.
Thanking God for other people’s death and
bereavement.
More guilt.
Yet she did thank God for the reassurance, for
the knowledge that she would not be blind
forever, and it was hard to imagine how she
249
 might be feeling were it not so, had transplants
not been invented and perfected.
Don't imagine, she told herself now, briskly,
vowing to remember to donate to Moorfields and
the RNIB.
The cordless phone, once she was safely back
on the sofa, was quite easy to manage, so long as
she took her time and remembered to navigate
from the raised dot on the 5 key, and she didn’t
know the number of the church or presb5^ery,
but she phoned directory enquiries and had
them put her straight through.
They took so long to answer she was afraid
there was no one there.
Tlease,’ she said, waiting. ‘Please be there.’
‘Saint Peter’s.’
A woman, breathless. Not Mrs Kenney.
‘Is Father Moran there, please?’
Afraid not, the woman said. ‘W^ho’s speaking,
please?’
‘When do you expect him back?’ Abigail asked.
‘Not for some time.’
Abigail s heart sank. ‘I’ll try later,’ she said.
woman said.
Who s speaking, please?’
A parishioner,’ Abigail said, unsure why she
hadn’t given her name.
Father Moran’s gone away,’ the woman said.
Abigail was thrown. He hadn’t mentioned any
forthcoming travel plans, though there was, of
course, no reason why he should have.
‘Is he on holiday?’ she asked.
‘Would you like to leave your name?’ the other
woman persisted.
250
 ‘Abigail Allen,’ she said, and felt her cheeks
flush.
‘Father Moran,’ the woman volunteered, as a
reward, ‘has gone on retreat.’
‘Oh,’ Abigail said, helplessly. ‘Is that likely to be
for a week or so?’
‘Rather longer than that. I’m afraid.’ The
woman paused. ‘Would you like the locum priest
to contact you, Mrs Allen?’
‘No, thank you,’ Abigail said, quickly, and.
Angers fumbling, ended the call.

Silas came back a few minutes later.

‘You can’t,’ Abigail said, ‘have been to the
studio in that time.’
‘I haven’t,’ he said. ‘I just went for a bit of a
drive.’
He sat down beside her. It was an effort not to
stiffen.
‘No radio?’ he asked. ‘Play no good?’
‘I didn’t bother with it,’ Abigail said.
‘Did someone call?’ he asked.
‘No,’ she said.
She remembered that the phone was still beside
her, realized that if he chose to, Silas could press
the redial key and find out who she’d called.
‘No,’ she said again, and picked it up. ‘I was just
about to call Jules.’
And did so, immediately, before he could take
the phone from her.
‘Jules’s Books.’
Abigail felt better just hearing Jules’s voice,
though it was - like all conversations she had these
days, with Silas always close by, listening - essen-
251
 tially superficial. Ollie was gorgeous^ Jules said,
and longing - according to his mother - to visit his
auntie, and the bookshop was quite buoyant for
once.
‘How are you coping?’ Jules asked. ‘Do you
need anything at all?’
‘I’m coping quite well,’ Abigail answered.
‘Thanks to Silas.’
‘Still doing the “I can’t bear it if you won’t let
me help” bit?’
‘Very much so,’ Abigail said.
‘At least he is helping,’ Jules said. ‘Though so
he bloody well should.’
Abigail longed, suddenly, desperately, to have a
real, frank conversation with Jules, for if Father
Moran was gone-
And wasn’t that a bit of a coincidence, his going
on retreat at this precise moment, and had he
really gone on retreat, was he all right, was he safe?
But since he was, at least for the moment, gone,
then the only person left who she could think of
trusting fully was Jules.
Still Silas's sister, though.
Hard to be entirely certain where her ultimate
loyalties might lie.
And even if they were to swing against Silas,
there was still his threat to make trouble for Jules
if Abigail did speak to her.
Silence still best for now then.
Silence, hand-in-hand with the new haze of her
world, and her loneliness.
For she was alone now. Never left alone.
But lonelier than she had ever been.

252
 Chapter Thirty-Nine

‘You really should try playing,’ Silas said, not for

the first time.
‘I don’t want to play.’
She had told him so over and over again. Had,
in fact, made a pact with herself not to play the
cello until she could see again, be wholly herself
again. But Silas-the-carer had also, she had
noticed increasingly, been turning into Silas-the-
tyrant who would not take no for an answer.
‘You’ll feel better if you play,’ he said now.
It was morning, and they’d only just got up, but
already Abigail felt weary.
‘I won’t feel better,’ she said, quietly.
‘But you never look at the cello that much when
you play,’ Silas reasoned. ‘It’s mostly instinctive
now, surely?’
‘I read music,’ she said. ‘And of course I look
down, you just don’t notice.’
‘Surely it wouldn’t matter, for now, if you played
imperfectly,’ he persisted. ‘Better to play badly
than not at all. And I’ll bet there’s plenty of music
you know by heart - or you could just play scales.’
‘For God’s sake, Silas,’ Abigail snapped, ‘how
many times do I have to say the same thing? I
don’t want to play.’
‘You’re a silly girl,’ he chided.
‘You sound,’ she said, ‘like my mother.’
‘Better be careful then, hadn’t I?’ Silas said.
253
 Living in the fog was making her paranoid. Turn¬
ing every conjecture into full-blown suspicion.
She felt hemmed in and^ despite - or perhaps
because of - his endlessly tender care, afraid.
Trapped by his love and devotion and by her own
dependence.
At her next hospital appointment, nothing
seemed significantly changed. She could still see
light and some shape, but the mist was still there,
shrouding everything.
Nothing, they assured her, that had not been
anticipated at this early stage.
‘Are you sure?’ Abigail asked, though it was
perfectly true that they had warned her it would
be this way.
They said they were absolutely sure, gave her
more drops and thick, wrap-around dark glasses,
warned her that if things improved, she might be
photophobic, painfully dazzled by light.
‘You look very glamorous and mysterious,’ Silas
said.
And took her home again.

He began to nag her almost ceaselessly about play-

took her one afternoon into the music room.
‘I wanted to go to the bedroom,’ Abigail said.
She pulled away from him and turned around
Silas shut the door.
Abigail compressed her lips, reached for the
handle, began to open it.
‘No,’ he said.
‘What do you mean, no?' Again, Abigail reached
for the handle.

254
 ‘I want you to spend some time in here,’ Silas
told her, and took her hand.
‘I’m not having this conversation,’ Abigail said.
‘Let go.’
‘Not till you give this a try.’
‘Let go of my hand:, Silas.’
‘You’re behaving like a child.’ He kept a firm
grip on her.
‘Stop treating me like one.’
‘I’m only trying to do what’s best for you,’ he
said.
‘Jesus.’ Abigail felt herself beginning to quiver
with anger. ‘Jesus.’
‘Not my department,’ Silas said, coldly, and
tugged her forward towards the middle of the
room, where her cello waited, lying on the carpet
beside her chair.
‘I’m not going to play, Silas, so all you’re doing
is wasting your time.’
‘For God’s sake, Abigail.’ He jostled her
another foot further, pushed her down onto the
chair, then swiftly picked up the cello and thrust
it at her. ‘All I’m asking is that you give it a try.’
Abigail folded her arms reflexively around the
instrument. ‘Why isn’t it in its case? she de¬
manded.
‘Because I came in earlier and took it out. He
bent down, picked up the bow, put that into her
right hand.
‘Get out,’ she said.
‘I want to hear you try to play,’ he said.
‘Get out,'shQ yelled.
Silas looked at her, shook his head.
‘Suit yourself,’ he said.
255
 For the first five minutes after he left the music
room^ Abigail wept with anger and frustration^
clinging to the cello.
Its familiarity, its feel, its smell, comforted her.
‘Damn you, Silas,’ she said, because she knew,
already, that he was right.
It felt wonderful. It felt better than anything
had in weeks.
She resisted the desire to remove the glasses
and wipe her eyes, just mopped at her cheeks
with the back of one hand. Then wiped both
hands, one at a time, over her jeans.
Got into position, tightened the bow hair, took
a deep, preparing breath.
And began to play.

Outside, in the corridor, Silas leaned against the

wall, and smiled.
Tears in his eyes.
It was working. She was realizing, slowly and
often painfully, but realizing it just the same.
That she did need him.
Could not do without him.

Chapter Forty

with '^iiannounced, two mornings later,

Silas opened the door.

What are you doing here?’
256
 ‘We’ve come to relieve you,’ Jules said. ‘If you’re
going to let us in, that is.’
Silas stepped back, and Jules pushed the buggy
over the threshold into the entrance hall.
‘I don’t need relieving,’ he told her. ‘Abigail and
I are doing fine.’
‘Abigail’s told me,’ Jules said, ‘and I agree, that
you need a break.’
Silas frowned. ‘When did she tell you that?’
‘Last night.’ Jules saw his expression, smiled.
‘She told me not to take no for an answer, said
you’d argue about it.’
‘Baba,’ Ollie said.
‘Yes, my love,’ his mother said. ‘Advanced
child, your nephew. Uncle Silas.’
‘I don’t need a break, Jules,’ Silas said.
‘Then maybe Abigail does,’ Jules said, gently,
‘Did she say that?’
Ollie began wriggling in the buggy, wanting
freedom.
‘Soon, Ollie,’ his mother told him, and looked
back at her brother. ‘Abigail didn’t say that in so
many words, darling, but that’s only because she
doesn’t want to hurt your feelings.’
Silas stood still, said nothing.
Jules recognized that particular brand of
silence, had lived with it for many years before
Ralph had come into her life, taken her away.
‘Don’t, Silas,’ she said. ‘Please, for Abigail’s
sake.’
He eyed her with distaste. ‘You’d better go and
find her then,’ he said. ‘She’s upstairs in the
music room.’
‘Would you like,’ Jules asked, ‘to have Ollie for
257
a bit?’
‘By all means,’ Silas said coolly.

Now that she had begun playing again, Abigail

found she could hardly bear to stop.
As at other bad times in her life, she surrounded
herself with the music, let her fears, her height¬
ened, painful emotions, become submerged in it.
She heard neither the knock, nor the door
opening.
Her music filled her ears, her whole world.
Standing just inside the room, Jules waited an¬
other moment, then lifted her hand and rapped
loudly on the inside of the door.
‘It’s Jules,’ she said.
Abigail lowered her bow, her heartbeat rapid
from exertion and emotion.
‘Jules,’ she said, breathlessly. ‘Thank God.’
‘I don’t want to disturb you,’ Jules said. ‘Shall I
wait till you’re finished?’
‘Making my awful noise, you mean?’
‘It was a beautiful noise,’ Jules told her.
‘Whichever,’ Abigail said. ‘You’re not disturbing
rne. She still held the cello. ‘Is Ollie here?’ She
tilted her face, listening.
‘He’s downstairs,’ Jules said, ‘with Silas.’
‘Okay,’ Abigail said.
‘And I’m closing the door,’ Jules told her, and
did so. ‘How are the eyes?’
‘A wee bit more shape to things,’ Abigail said.
‘Still very foggy though.’
‘And you?’ Jules asked. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘I’m okay.’ Abigail paused, listening. ‘Have you
got it?’

258
 ‘In my bag/ Jules answered. ‘Though I think we
should hang on till Fve actually persuaded Silas
out of the house^ don’t you?’
‘Yes/ Abigail agreed. ‘If you think you can.’
‘I’ll manage it somehow.’

They went downstairs together, found him in the

living room, with Ollie in the large playpen bought
by Abigail some months back from Mothercare.
‘We both think,’ Jules said, right away, ‘that you
should go to the studio.’
‘What for?’ Silas asked.
‘You need to go/ Jules said. ‘You know you
need to. You have to go through the post, check
your e-mails.’
‘I check e-mails from here/ Silas said.
‘You must have clients/ Jules said, ‘who’d like
to find you actually there.’
‘And bills?’ Abigail asked. ‘They must need
paying.’
He shrugged. ‘I’m not bothered at present.’
‘Not the greatest idea, surely?’ Jules said.
‘Alienating clients and suppliers.’
‘Gaga/ Ollie said. ‘Baba.’
‘Jules is right,’ Abigail said. ‘After all, you’ll want
business up and running when I’m better, won’t
you?’
‘And won’t you?’ Silas queried.
‘Of course/ Abigail said, calmly.
'Gaga, ’ Ollie said again, more forcefully.
‘Clearly,’ Silas said, getting up off the floor, ‘I’m
not wanted here.’
‘Don’t get huffy, darling/ Jules said.
‘I’m not a bit huffy.’ He dusted down his jeans.
259
‘Fll leave you to your women’s chat.’ He looked
at his sister. ‘You’d better realize you need to be
extra careful. Two handfuls to take care of.’
‘Charming description,’ Abigail said.
‘You know what I mean, sweetheart.’ Silas
paused. ‘Sure you can manage, sis?’
‘Silas, for God’s sake,’ Jules said, ‘just go.’

It took another ten minutes of fussing around and

advising Jules of every conceivable pitfall Abigail
might possibly encounter around the house,
before Silas finally left.
‘Right,’ Jules said, from near the living room
window. ‘He’s gone.’
‘Sure?’ Abigail sat on the couch, Ollie on her
knee.
‘Absolutely.’ Jules came over. ‘Let me take this
chap.’ She picked him up. ‘Downstairs loo all
right with you?’
‘Fine.’ Abigail stood up, took a second to posi¬
tion herself, then walked towards the door. ‘All
clear?’ she asked.
‘Perfectly,’ Jules said.
At the door, Abigail paused. ‘Thank you.’
‘What for?’
‘Letting me go by myself. For remembering
I’m an adult.’
‘I could see you were okay,’ Jules said.
‘I’d have been better with a stick to help me
poke my way around, but Silas says I don’t need
one, because I have him.’ Abigail paused. ‘I’m
afraid I do need you to organize me now.’
‘All set,’ Jules said. ‘Very simple, as you know.’
She walked behind Abigail as far as the guest
260
lavatory near the kitchen, Ollie squirming in her
arms, protesting.
‘Fm just going to put him down.’ She did so.
‘And here-’ she took something from her pocket
‘-is what you need, ready for use.’ She reached
for Abigail’s hand. ‘This is the right end, okay?’
‘Okay,’ Abigail said, tensely.
Went into the room and closed the door.

‘Tell me,’ she said, afterwards.

Jules took the strip from her, looked at it.
‘Positive,’ she said, quietly.
‘Oh,’ Abigail said.
‘Do you want to sit down?’ Jules asked, ten¬
tatively.
‘I think,’ Abigail said, ‘I want a drink.’
‘Not the prescribed approach,’ Jules said.
‘No,’ Abigail said.

She had taken her time in the loo, steeling herself.

Had already concluded, over the past several days
and nights, that if she was right - and she’d known
there was a chance she was, because she’d stopped
taking the Pill the night he’d thrown the developer
in her eyes, though her missed period and nausea
might easily have been down to stress — but still, if
she was right, it would alter everything.
Babies always did, of course.
A little more so in her case, she realized, wryly.
This had, necessarily, to change her outlook on
everything. Silas included.
Silas, especially.
‘Jules,’ she said now. ‘Can you please phone the
studio?’
261
 They were back in the living room, drinking tea
while Ollie, back in the playpen, chewed at the
left ear of a soft blue rabbit.
‘Do you want to tell him?’ Jules asked.
‘No,’ Abigail said sharply. ‘I want to make sure
he’s still there.’
Jules sought no explanation, went straight to
the phone.
‘Just a reassurance call,’ she told him. ‘To say
we’re fine and to tell you there’s no need to hurry
back. I can make us some lunch, and then-’
‘Whatever are you both up to?’ Silas broke in,
his tone light.
‘Nothing much,’ Jules said. ‘Women’s chat, as
you put it.’
‘Tell him-’ Abigail pitched her voice so he
could hear ‘—I want him to stop worrying about
me and take his time.’
‘Abigail says-’
‘I heard,’ Silas cut in. ‘Don’t you have to get
back to the shop?’
‘Not for a long while,’ Jules said. ‘So you just
get down to some work and enjoy your time out.’
‘I will,’ Silas said. ‘Thanks, sis. See you later.’
Jules ended the call. ‘He was fine about it,’ she
said.
‘Was he?’ Abigail said, sceptically. ‘Probably
testing us.’
Jules frowned, glanced at Ollie, who’d dumped
his bunny and was now playing with his fabric
bricks, then looked back at Abigail. ‘What do vou
mean?’
‘Me,’ Abigail said. ‘He’s testing me.’
‘I don’t understand,’ Jules said.
262
 ‘No,’ Abigail said. ‘You don’t.’
Jules saw that though her eyes, behind the dark
wraparound glasses, were almost invisible, her face
was quite shockingly pale. ‘Darling, what is it?’
Abigail took a shaky breath, let it out.
‘Tell me.’ Jules went to the sofa, sat down
beside her. ‘Please.’
‘I’m pregnant, right?’
‘So it seems,’ Jules said.
‘I told myself,’ Abigail went on, ‘that if I was, if
it was true, then that meant-’
Jules waited a second or two. ‘What?’
‘That I no longer have any choice but to tell
you.’
Jules said nothing.
She had a bad, unspeakably bad, feeling.
She looked at her brother’s wife, and waited.

Chapter Forty-One

She began with what was, suddenly, the most

important thing of all.
Her baby.
‘If Silas finds out I’m pregnant, I think he may
want me to terminate it.’
‘No.’ Jules’s reply was swift and instinctive. She
paused, forced herself to think about it, became
more certain. ‘No, Abigail, he wouldn’t.’ ^
‘You’re the one,’ Abigail reminded her, ‘who
once told me you thought he might be possessive
enough not to want to share me with a child.
263
 They were still sitting side by side on the sofa,
and she could hear Ollie happily playing in the
playpen in the corner. She felt sickened by what
she’d just said, by all that she still had to tell Jules
- not least by the insensitive speed with which she
was going to have to deliver all her blows. But the
clock was ticking, and there was no knowing how
long Silas, temporarily deprived of his role of
caregiver-guardian, might be prepared to permit
them alone.
‘I said that quite a long while ago,’ Jules said,
distressed.
‘Just after you’d told us you were expecting
Ollie,’ Abigail said.
‘But even if it might, possibly, still be true,’
Jules went on, ‘I don’t think for a moment that
he’d want you to have an abortion.’
Abigail recognized the pain and revulsion in
her sister-in-law’s voice. ‘I’m afraid I’m not so
sure.’
‘I see.’ Jules took a moment. ‘If you’re right,’
she said slowly, ‘then surely the only answer has
to be to talk to him.’
‘No.’ Abigail said the word starkly, forcefully.
Jules looked at her.
‘There’s more, isn’t there?’ she asked, alreadv
filled with dread.
‘Yes,’ Abigail said. ‘I’m afraid there is.’

She told Jules about Charlie and Maggie.

She heard her soft, disbelieving gasps, thought,
but was not certain, that Jules was weeping;
heard and felt her stand up and move away from
the sofa — probably, Abigail felt, simply to be
264
away from her^ the woman destroying her world
with her secrets - perhaps, from her point-of-
view, her lies.
‘I understand,’ Abigail said, painfully, ‘if you
don’t believe me.’
Jules, over by the playpen, staring down at her
child, still didn’t speak.
‘I’ve tried so very hard,’ Abigail went on, ‘not to
believe it myself. To tell myself that Silas was
lying, making things up to torment me.’
‘Why,’ Jules said, quietly, ‘should he do that?’
‘I don’t know,’ Abigail said. ‘I realize now that I
don’t understand him at all.’
She reached up and, fingers shaking, pulled off
the wraparound glasses, unable, suddenly, to
bear their protective oppression, and it was a
little better without them, the gloom lightened a
little more, shapes a little more distinct than they
had been, her sister-in-law faintly discernible.
‘I want,’ Jules said, abruptly, ‘to take Ollie
upstairs.’
‘Yes,’ Abigail said. ‘Of course.’
‘I don’t want him to hear any more,’ Jules said.
‘It’s just that we may not have much time
before Silas comes back.’ Abigail winced at her
own callousness, felt guilt kick her again, violent
as a steel-capped boot. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘It’s all right.’ Jules bent over, stroked her son’s
soft hair, pulled herself together and straightened
up. ‘He won’t have understood any of it.’
‘Even so,’ Abigail said, ‘I shouldn’t have said it
in front of him.’
‘Too late,’ Jules said.
Faintly, Abigail saw and heard her sister-in-law
265
 come a little closer and sit down again^ not beside
her on the sofa, but in one of the armchairs.
‘I do, by the way, believe you,’ Jules said tightly.
‘God help me.’
Relief and sorrow shook Abigail. ‘I’m so sorry,’
she said again. ‘I’ve wanted so badly to tell you.’
‘Why didn’t you?’ Jules asked.
‘I couldn’t,’ Abigail said.
‘You could have,’ Jules said. ‘You should have.’
‘No.’ Stark again. ‘I couldn’t. Because of your
father.’
For another moment, Jules was silent, and then
she asked, in a voice strained to the limit: ‘What
about my father?’
Abigail took a deep breath and repeated to her
what Silas had told her about Paul Graves’s
death and burial, and about Jules’s alleged part in
those things.
‘He said-’ she came, at last, to his threat ‘-that
if I told anyone - including you - about what he’d
done to Charlie, he would tell people that you
were the one who was with your father at the end.’
‘Meaning what?’ Jules was confused. ‘Tell which
people?’
‘I presumed,’ Abigail said, ‘he meant the police.’
‘And what did you think he meant about my
being with our father?’
‘I’m almost certain-’ Abigail’s heart beat
rapidly ‘-he was implying that you might have
done something to him.’
‘God,’ Jules said.
Now Abigail was silent.
If anyone, Jules continued, ‘did anything to
our father-’
266
 ‘It was Silas,’ Abigail finished for her.
‘God,’ Jules said again. ‘Dear God.’ She stood
up, went back to the playpen, bent down and
scooped up her son, hugged him close. ‘Oh, God,
Ollie, your uncle is a terrible man.’
‘Jules, I’m so sorry to spring all this on you, but
I didn’t know what else to do, and he hasn’t let
me alone since he threw that stuff in my eyes, and
I suddenly realized this might be my last chance-’
Abigail snatched another tremulous breath ‘-and
I haven’t told you yet about Father Moran.’
Jules, still clutching Ollie, was staring at her.
‘Jules?’ Abigail grew agitated. ‘Are you there?’
‘You’re not telling me-’ Jules’s voice was quite
faint with horror '-please say you’re not telling me
that Silas throwing the developer at you wasn’t an
accident.’
‘I’m not sure,’ Abigail said, frankly. ‘I think
there’s a very good chance, though, that it might
not have been. I think it’s possible that he might
have done it — set up the whole thing, right back
as far as the break-in - because he was jealous
again, because he’d found out I’d been going to
see a priest and not telling him.’ ^
‘Surely even Silas couldn’t be jealous of a priest?’
‘Father Moran is a man,’ Abigail said, quietly.
‘A voung, good-looking man.’ She thought about
the^ priest’s supposedly coincidental absence, but
said no more, knew she’d burdened Jules with
more than enough already.
Jules was silent again, too bewildered, too
shocked, to speak.
‘I am so sorry to say these things,’ Abigail said
again, ‘so terribly sorry, because he’s your brother
267
 and you love him. And I still love him too, in a
way, in spite of everything, and God knows I’ve
done unspeakable things myself-’
‘You,’ Jules said, as she had many times before,
‘didn’t mean to do them.’
‘I still did them,’ Abigail said, ‘though that’s not
the point now, is it?’
‘No,’ Jules said. ‘I suppose not.’
She sat down on the sofa again, put Ollie
between her and his aunt, kept one arm gently
around him, needing to feel his warmth, his
solidness, against herself.
‘I really have begun to think,’ Abigail went on,
‘that Silas may be more than a little mad.’
The two women sat quietly for a while.
‘First things first,’ Jules said, at last, her voice a
little stronger. ‘We have to get you out of this
house.’
‘You mean, for the baby,’ Abigail said.
‘For you,’ Jules said, ‘as well as the baby.’
‘I’m not important,’ Abigail said. ‘I don’t count.’
They both heard the key in the front door lock.
‘Oh, God,’ Abigail said, panicking. ‘I didn’t
hear his car.’
‘It’s okay,’ Jules said, reaching past Ollie, touch¬
ing her arm. ‘Leave him to me.’
‘Don’t-’
‘Don’t what?’ Silas said, from the doorway.
Jules stood up, and Abigail, instinctively, moved
closer to the baby, put her arm protectively
around him.
‘I was going to make us some coffee,’ Jules lied
swiftly, ‘but Abigail said she wanted to try mak¬
ing it herself.’
268
 ‘That’s ridiculous,’ Silas said. ‘Dangerous.’
‘I’ll have to learn to do far more than make
coffee,’ Abigail said, ‘if it turns out I’m going to
be permanently blind.’
‘But you’re not going to be,’ Silas said, ‘thank
God.’
He regarded his nephew on the sofa beside his
wife.
‘Sure he’s safe like that, sis?’ he asked Jules.
Jules gave him a withering look. ‘As houses.’
Silas gave a small shrug. ‘I’ll make the coffee
then.’ He paused. ‘Have you had lunch yet?’
‘Not yet,’ Abigail said.
‘We’ve been talking,’ Jules said, quickly, ‘and we
both agree it’s high time Abigail had a change of
venue, so she’s coming to the shop with me this
afternoon.’
‘Not your best idea,’ Silas said.
‘It’s a very good idea,’ Jules told him. ‘The
bookshop’s perfectly safe.’
‘Nowhere’s perfectly safe,’ Silas said. ‘What are
you planning to have her do? Stocktaking? Or
cleaning, perhaps?’
‘For starters-’ Jules ignored his sarcasm ‘-Abi¬
gail’s going to keep me company, since Ollie’s
going to his playgroup for two hours, and Drew’s
off.’
‘I’d love to go,’ Abigail said.
‘And what about me?’ Silas asked.
‘You,’ Jules said, ‘can take it easy for a change.
Put your feet up.’
‘Time off,’ Abigail added, ‘from looking after
me.’ , .
‘I’m vour husband,’ Silas said. ‘That s what I m
269
here for.’

He insisted on helping her upstairs so that she

could change her clothes.
‘She doesn’t need to change/ Jules had said
moments before.
‘Abigail takes a pride in her appearance/ Silas
had told her. ‘Her hair’s a mess, and those jeans
have got stains on them. Ollie’s handiwork, I
think.’
Both women had known there was no point
arguing.
‘I suppose/ he said now, as they reached the
bedroom, ‘you’re going to tell me you can get
ready without me.’
‘You know I can/ Abigail said. ‘You sorted the
wardrobes so cleverly, and an5rway, shapes really
do seem to be getting a wee bit clearer.’
‘That’s good/ Silas said.
And left her.
Went downstairs.
Back into the living room, where Jules was
sitting on the carpet with Ollie.
‘You may as well leave/ Silas said.
‘I’m sorry?’ Jules said.
^ ‘I said you may as well leave,’ Silas repeated,
‘since Abigail won’t be going anywhere with vou
today.’
Jules knew, at that instant, that the gloves were
off. How, exactly, she had no idea, but Silas knew
that Abigail had been telling her about him and
Charlie and Maggie Blume and their father, and
perhaps even that she suspected her blinding
might have been deliberate. Abigail had said,
270
earlier, that she believed Silas had left them alone
as a kind of test, and suddenly Jules realized that
she had been right.
Stay calm^ she told herself.
‘Abigail,’ she said, ‘wants to come with me.’
‘Abigail,’ Silas said, very coolly, ‘does not want
to come with you to the bookshop for the after¬
noon.’ He paused. ‘Abigail does^ I suspect, want
to get out of this house with you, and to stay with
you. To leave me.’
‘Don’t be so ridiculous.’ Jules tried to smile. ‘Of
course she doesn’t.’
She looked down at Ollie, absorbed again with
his rabbit - and he was such a good, sweet,
easygoing child, and so much of that came from
Ralph.
Supposing he’d inherited his uncle’s traits?
Never.
‘Come on, my love,’ she told Ollie, and picked
him up, with the toy.
‘I’m not a complete fucking moron, Jules,’ Silas
said, suddenly, harshly.
‘No,’ she said, quietly. ‘I know you’re not.’
‘Nor am I given to idle threats,’ he said.
Jules held tightly to her son, looked into her
brother’s face.
‘So you’ll believe me,’ Silas said, ‘when I tell
you that if you do anything - anything at all - to
assist Abigail in leaving me, I will-’
‘Silas, I haven’t a clue what-’
‘I can promise you, Jules-’ he drove on over her
words ‘-that it would be the very last thing on
earth I wanted to do. But if you do help Abigail,
if you do leave me no choice, I will do it.’
271
 i

‘What will you do?’ Jules sounded hoarse^ her

throat felt constricted.
‘Kill you,’ Silas said. ‘And Ollie.’

Upstairs, in their bedroom, Abigail had put her

jeans into the laundry bag and pulled on what
she hoped was a clean pair, and now she was
fastening the button at the waist, and her hands
were shaking again, so it was taking longer.
She wondered - finding a sweater, one of those
with wider necks that Silas had piled up for her;
no roll-necks for the time being, in case they
rubbed her eyes - how Jules was managing
downstairs.
Thought she’d been right to involve her at last.
Prayed she had been.

The urge to throw herself at Silas after he made

his threat against Ollie, the urge to rip at his cold,
flat green eyes, was more overpoweringly intense
than any physical pain Jules had ever
experienced. But her child was in her arms and
so, instead, she stood frozen, clasping Ollie even
closer, trying to shut herself off from this man
who looked like her brother, but who was, in
truth, some kind of monster.
Scenes from their past flickered through her
mind like old movie clips. His cold-heartedness
after their mother and stepfather had died, his
refusal to allow them to be buried together. His
rage when the terms of Patricia’s will had given
this house to her instead of him; the way he had
emotionally blackmailed, manipulated her into
signing it over to him.
272
 Their father’s curious death and grotesque
burial.
She felt suddenly, violently sick.
‘Once too often,’ Silas said.
‘What?’ Jules was too confused, too appalled to
take in any more.
‘One betrayal too often.’ He shook his head.
‘You coming here today with that thing my wife
asked you for - and you weren’t even going to tell
me, were you, that it was positive?’
‘No,’ Jules said, reeling. ‘I was not.’
‘Lucky for me then that I already knew.’ He
watched his sister’s face. ‘Don’t you want to ask
me how I knew?’
Ollie, who’d been unusually silent since she’d
picked him up, gave a long, breathy sigh and
shifted in her arms, reminded Jules that Silas, his
own uncle, had just threatened to kill him.
Get him out.
That was the most important thing in the world
right now, that she take him away from this
house, get him to safety.
Abigail, too.
‘I’m going upstairs,’ Jules said.
‘I’ve been taping her calls,’ Silas said. ‘Not
legal, of course, but not hard. And even if I
hadn’t. I’m not remotely as stupid as the pair of
you seem to believe. I’ve been taking care of most
of Abigail’s needs, after all, since she came home
from hospital, so I know she’s not on the Pill any
more and that she missed her last period.’
For the first time, looking at him standing
between her and the doorway, Jules felt actually
afraid of him.
273
 ‘Let me pass, Silas,’ she said.
‘I’m guessing that Abigail’s a bit apprehensive
about being pregnant just at the moment,’ he
went on. ‘But I think in time she’ll be happy
about it.’
‘She thinks,’ Jules said, ‘you might want her to
terminate it.’
The pupils in Silas’s eyes dilated, spread black
anger over the green.
‘I would sooner,’ he said, ‘terminate Abigail
than my baby.’
Jules felt suddenly dizzy, clung tighter to Ollie,
afraid of dropping him.
‘I thought,’ she said, ‘you didn’t want a child.’
‘In the past, perhaps not.’ He paused. ‘Before
Abigail betrayed me, too.’
In her arms, Ollie shifted again.
‘Baba,’ he said.
‘It’s all right, my love,’ Jules murmured, and
rocked him.
‘Getting heavy, isn’t he?’ Silas said.
Jules didn’t answer.
‘Want me to take him?’ Silas asked.
Over my dead body.
Abigail had said she thought he might be more
than a little mad, and suddenly Jules hoped with
all her might that he was entirely, hopelessly, mad.
Because otherwise it could only be that he was
entirely wicked.
She did not want her brother to be wicked.
‘Maybe, finally,’ he said, ‘if we have our child,
there may be one person in this world who’ll love
me forever-’
‘Silas,’ Jules said.

274
 ‘One person,’ he went on, ‘who won’t let me
down.’
‘I’m going to go now,’ she tried again. ‘I’ll just
go up and see what-’
‘You will not go up and see anything:^' Silas
snapped violently. ‘Get out, by all means, Jules,
and take Ollie with you, but you’re not taking my
wife or child.’
‘I only want to-’
‘Forget it,’ he cut her off again. ‘Take your son,
if you want, but that’s all you’re taking, is that
clear enough?’
Jules stared at him.
At her stranger-brother.
Knew she had no choice.
‘Very clear,’ she said.
And went.

Abigail was sitting on the edge of the bed, run¬

ning her fingertips over the loafers she’d just put
on, trying to make certain they were a matching
pair, when she heard the front door close and, a
second or two later, Silas’s tread on the staircase.
She stood up, paced her way over to the door,
opened it.
‘Was that Jules?’ she called.
‘Leaving.’ Silas came into the room. She s
taken Ollie to his playgroup.’
‘But I was going with her,’ Abigail said.
‘You’re not going anywhere.’
‘Why not?’
‘You’re not to be trusted,’ Silas said. ‘Any more
than Jules is, or our mother was.’ He took her
hand. ‘Come on.’
275
 ‘Where?’ Abigail felt fear and anger mounting.
‘The music room.’ He began to draw her out of
the bedroom.
‘Silas, stop it.’ She pulled away, groped for the
wall, laid a hand flat against it to balance herself.
‘What the hell is going on?’
‘Best thing for you-’ he gripped her arm this
time, tightly, propelled her with him along the
corridor ‘-is going to be your cello.’
He opened the door to the music room.
‘Music,’ he said, ‘is supposed to be good for
unborn babies.’
Abigail wanted to scream. She was as certain as
she could be that Jules would not have told him,
at least not voluntarily, but he knew^ and that was
all that counted now, and she was going to have
to be extra careful, for her child’s sake.
My child. Even in the midst of this new bizarre¬
ness, the thought thrilled her, pierced her with a
wild, frantic kind of joy.
‘Can’t have you getting in a state.’ Silas
manoeuvred her into the room, closed the door
behind them. ‘Risking my baby’s health.’
‘I’m not going to play,’ Abigail said.
Don^t show him you^re scared^ she told herself,
even as fear clutched at her.
I think you should,’ Silas said, sounding
reasonable.
Tm going to the shop with Jules.’ She tried to
concentrate on exactly where she was in relation
to the door. ‘As we arranged.’
‘You’re not going anywhere,’ he said again. ‘Not
for a very long time. Not, that is, unless I go with
you.’

276
 ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she said.
‘Jules called me ridiculous, too,’ Silas said.
‘She was right.’
‘Right or not,’ he said, ‘you’d better listen to
what I’m telling you.’
‘You can’t possibly think,’ Abigail said, ‘I’m
going to let you stop me going an>where I choose
to.’
He pushed her, quite hard, then caught at her
left arm to stop her falling.
‘Sit down,’ he told her.
‘I will not-’
‘Sit down'
He manhandled her onto her chair, picked up
the cello from where she had left it after Jules’s
arrival with the pregnancy testing kit, thrust it
into her arms.
‘Play or don’t play,’ he said. ‘I don’t care any
more.’
‘Just as well.’ Anger lent her bravado.
‘But you will not be going anywhere without
me, Abigail,’ he assured her, ‘until after my child
is born.’
‘Your child.’The word was scornful, outraged.
‘You’ll be with me, or you’ll be locked in.’
‘You wouldn’t dare do-’
‘The bedroom door and windows will be
locked at night, and the phone-’
‘I’ll smash the windows,’ Abigail said. ‘Scream
my head off.’
‘Don’t push me too far,’ Silas said.
She heard the strange, dangerous note in his
voice, and bravado left her.
‘You’re mad,’ she said, quietly.
277
 ‘Takes one to know one,’ Silas said.
She fought down panic, struggled to regroup.
‘I’ve outpatients appointments at the hospital,’
she said. ‘And if I’m having a baby, there’ll be
antenatal visits too.’
‘I’ll be with you for all those,’ Silas said. ‘Obvi¬
ously.’
‘Not every minute,’ Abigail said.
‘I’ll make sure everyone knows about your
tragic past,’ he said. ‘Your fragile mental state.’
‘They won’t believe you. Certainly not the
people who already know me.’
He shrugged. ‘Beside the point, since you won’t
be telling them anything, because you know
who’ll suffer if you do.’
‘Jules already knows about everything.’ Abigail
gathered strength again. ‘You can’t threaten me
with hurting her any more.’
‘Not Jules,’ Silas said. ‘Ollie.’
Dread gripped her, gnawed at her heart.
‘You wouldn’t,’ she said.
‘Jules believed me when I told her the same
thing.’
Abigail said nothing, felt him move, detected
his shape in the fog, drawing away from her back
towards the door.
‘Why else do you suppose she’s abandoned
you?’ Silas asked.
And left the room, locking the door behind
him.

278
 Chapter Forty-Two

‘Priorities/ Jules said to herself and the dachshund

back in her Highgate living room, surrounded by
normality.
Nothing looked normal, nothing felt normal.
Late November outside. Colder and much
bleaker inside, in her heart.
‘Priorities,’ she said again, sank into an
armchair, then swiftly sat upright, shifted to the
edge, knowing there was no time for comfort.
First priority. Get Ollie to safety. Somewhere
safer than here or his playgroup.
She looked down at him, still strapped into his
buggy, sound asleep.
Not safe here. Not any more.
Then, next, somehow^ find a way to help Abigail.
Another woman, with a different, normal
family history behind her, might, she supposed,
be on her brother’s side at this moment, rather
than on her sister-in-law’s. Would be outraged by
Abigail’s allegations, think her mad. But Jules had
spent too many years, put too much effort into
trying to forget her own dark times with Silas.
Her mind lurched back again now to their
father’s death.
To Silas’s refusal to inform anyone.
To the appallingly grisly burial, which she had
countenanced.
Only fifteeny Jules.
279
 A strange, bizarrely sheltered fifteen at that,
sheltered by her brother.
Till Ralph.
Silas had been so cold when she’d fallen in love.
Jules recalled, suddenly, the conversation not
long before Ralph’s death in which she’d told
Silas that she’d shared their secret about the
garden grave with her husband. Silas had been
icy for a few moments, hadn’t he, but then he’d
surprised her, said his own marriage had helped
him understand her need to confide in Ralph.
That he didn’t mind, so long as Ralph didn’t
tell anyone.
She remembered talking to Silas about Ralph’s
trip to South Africa.
And then, soon after that, he’d gone to Deau¬
ville with Abigail, and had been called back for
some glitzy magazine commission - for Sleeky, she
seemed to remember - and he’d phoned her,
asked her to take his place, keep Abigail company.
Which was why when Ralph had come home,
Jules had still been in France, and Silas back in
London taking photographs.
Her spine prickled.
When Ralph had died, Silas had been in
London.
No one had ever, from Jules’s point-of-view,
come up with a truly satisfactory explanation for
Ralph s having bought the lethal dinner that had
caused his fatal anaphylactic shock.
Fatigue after the long journey.
The pathologist and Coroner might have
accepted that, but Jules, knowing Ralph so much
better than anyone, never really had.
280
 Silas had not wanted Ralph knowing about
their father’s grave.
Then, when it was too late, after Jules had told
him, Silas had not wanted Ralph telling anyone
about it.
Had been in London, taking photographs.
Though if she thought about that last-minute
commission, she didn’t recall ever seeing any of
his work in Sleek magazine.
You weren reading magazines, you were grieving
for Ralph.
Who had died because he’d eaten a little of a
dinner that he would have known was dangerous
to him. Who would never have bought it in the first
place, never have put himself in the position of
touching a dish containing ingredients he wasn’t
certain of. Unless someone else had bought the
dinner.
Brought it to the flat. To Ralph.
Someone familiar, perhaps, who told him it was
safe.
And Ralph, who had been weary, might have
been hungry, too, might have believed that person.
And Silas had been in London.
‘Dear God,’ Jules said now, and stood up.
A man who could threaten his own baby nephew
was capable of anything.
Anything.
Jules, feeling light-headed and nauseous, shook
her head.
Running out of time.
‘One person who’ll love me forever,’ Silas had
said about their baby-to-be.
Which meant that, perhaps, for as long as she
281
 i

was pregnant, Abigail might be safe - so long as

she behaved as Silas wanted her to. But though
Jules realized now that her sister-in-law’s massive
guilt complex had, till now, made her far too ac¬
quiescent with Silas, even Abigail, with all her sus¬
picions and fears - and for now at least so much
more helpless and vulnerable than before - would
not be able to tolerate much more, and then what?
And what might happen once the child was
born?
One person who 7/ love me forever.
Jules looked down again at Ollie, then found
the phone and dialled the shop.
‘Jules’s Books.’
She heard, with gratitude, the familiar
Yorkshire-accented voice.
‘I need a favour. Drew,’ she said, straightaway.
‘A big one.’
‘Anything,’ he said, without hesitation.
Jules told him that she needed him to shut the
shop and go home, that she would, if he agreed,
be bringing Ollie over to his place, that she might,
very probably, have to leave him for the rest of the
day and perhaps overnight because what she
needed was a really safe person to leave him with.
‘What’s happened?’ Drew asked anxiously. ‘Are
you all right?’
‘I’m fine,’ Jules lied.
‘Something must have happened,’ Drew
persisted.
‘Nothing I can tell you about. Drew.’
‘Fair enough,’ he said.
‘Is it all right then?’ Jules asked.
Actually, he said, ‘could you give me a couple
282
of hours?’ He paused. ‘Only there’s some shop¬
ping I promised I’d try and get in for an elderly
neighbour who’s just had her hip done, and she
can’t get about on her own yet, and if I could just
shut up shop and get that in for her...’
Jules thought about it.
She wasn’t ready to make a move yet, needed
time to plan.
‘Do your neighbour’s shopping. Drew,’ she said.

Chapter Forty-Three

At the house, Silas finished making a sandwich

for Abigail, poured orange juice into a glass and
carried a tray, complete with her array of eye
drops, upstairs to the music room.
She was sitting on the chaise longue.
‘Late lunch,’ he told her, ‘even if you haven’t
been playing. All healthy ingredients. Wholemeal
bread, chicken breast, salad.’
‘I’m not hungry,’ Abigail said.
‘You should eat,’ Silas said. ‘For two, as they
say.’
‘Where did you go?’ she asked. ‘I heard you go
out.’
‘I had some errands to run,’ he said. ‘I knew
you’d be safe in here.’
‘Safe?’ She was incredulous. ‘Locked into a
room.’
‘I’ll wait with you, if you like,’ Silas said, com-
panionably, ‘while you eat your sandwich. And
283
then I can help you with your drops.’
‘I’ll do my own drops,’ Abigail said.
He had put the tray down on one of the small
tables, then pulled it closer to the chaise longue,
made sure she knew where it was, but she made
no move to touch it.
‘I do hope you’re not going to be childish, for
the baby’s sake.’
‘I told you. I’ll do the drops.’
‘You need to be careful,’ he said, ‘not to muddle
them up.’
‘I’ll manage.’
‘Don’t let your anger with me harm your eyes,’
Silas said.
‘Jesus,’ Abigail said softly.
‘Please eat,’ he said.
‘Are you going to let me out?’ she asked.
‘I can’t,’ he said, ‘for the present.’
‘Then I shan’t be eating,’ Abigail said, ‘for the
present.’
‘We’ll have to see about that,’ Silas said.
He left the room and locked her in.
Ten minutes later, as he was leaving the house
again, he heard the cello.

Chapter Forty-Four

At his flat in Wood Green just after five-thirty.

Drew Martin - having bought and delivered his
neighbour’s shopping - was now listening to
Jules’s instructions for Ollie’s feeds.
284
 ‘I don’t know why you’re fussing so much,’ he
told her finally. ‘It’s not as if I’ve never sat for
Ollie before, and I’ve even got the travel cot, and
have you forgotten I have two little nieces and I’m
a godfather and this young chap quite likes me?’
‘Ollie loves you,’ Jules said.
Tears sprang unexpectedly to her eyes and she
blinked them quickly away, made a foolish gesture
of rubbing her nose as if she’d been about to
sneeze, knew she hadn’t fooled Drew for a second.
‘I’m getting very worried about you,’ he said.
‘I’m fine,’ Jules said, brightly. ‘But I don’t know
when I’ll be back.’
‘I know,’ Drew said. ‘You’ve told me, and
you’ve told me I’m not to tell anyone else I’ve got
him, including your brother, though I can’t begin
to think why not, but that’s okay, and I won’t tell
him or anyone else, cross my heart and hope to
die.’ He bent to ruffle Ollie’s hair. ‘So you go and
get up to whatever it is you’re getting up to.’ He
paused, still troubled. ‘So long as you really are
all right, and there’s nothing else - nothing more
- I can do for you.’
‘You’re already doing the most important
thing,’ Jules told him.
And then she kissed her son, tried not to burst
into tears, and left.

285
 Chapter Forty-Five

Silas had come to release Abigail from the music

room shortly after six, offering no explanation as
to where he had been.
Not that she had asked him.
On strike.
If she refused to comply with anything and
everything he demanded of her, she had rational¬
ized some time ago, then, given her pregnancy,
surely he was bound to see that he had no choice
but to back down himself.
Wrong to use her baby as a bargaining tool, she
knew that, hated herself for it.
Needs must.
And hating herself was no novelty.

‘Since you won’t eat or speak to me or play for

me,’ he told her in the bedroom just before nine
o’clock, ‘you might as well go to bed.’
‘I’ll go to bed,’ Abigail said, ‘when I feel like it.’
She waited for him to lock her in, leave her, but
he didn’t budge, sat on the bedspread on his side
of the bed, reading a book. She could hear the
familiar swish of pages being turned at intervals,
knew from the sound that it was a paperback,
wondered, idly - bored, by now, as well as furious
and frustrated - which book he was reading, if it
was still the Ian Rankin...
Silas had, during the period of his greatest
286
contrition, read to her for hours at a time, and
she had found considerable comfort in escaping
into fiction.
If he tried reading to her now, she thought with
a sudden, almost overwhelming surge of rage, she
would seize the book, somehow, and slug him with
it.
He did not try. Did not speak to her again.
Just went on silently reading until she could
bear it no longer.
‘I’m going to bed,’ she said, abruptly.
She heard him close the book.
‘Would you like me to help you undress?’ he
asked.
‘What I would like,’ she said tightly, ‘is for you
to leave me alone.’
‘Not till I know you’re safely tucked up,’ Silas
said. ‘I don’t want you falling and hurting my
baby.’
'Our baby, for God’s sake, Silas.’
‘But you, apparently, don’t want me any more,’
he said.
‘What I don’t want,’ she said, ‘is to be your
prisoner.’
‘So I’ve decided to settle-’ he ignored her ‘-for
having, and keeping, my child.’

287
 i

Chapter Forty-Six

Jules was back home in her flat again^ Asali beside

her, walked and fed and feeling her mistress’s
tension.
Jules stared at the television in her living room,
seeing nothing.
Waiting.
Dressed in dark clothes, like a burglar. Black
roll-neck sweater and the old olive-green combat-
style trousers she used for serious cleaning work
at home and at the shop because of their comfort
and wealth of zipped and velcro-fastened pockets.
Everything she might need - so far as she’d
managed to calculate - was by the front door. A
torch, and the biggest screwdriver she’d been able
to find - in lieu of a crowbar - which she hoped,
fervently, she wouldn’t need to use, since she still
possessed a set of keys to her brother’s house.
The keys lay beside the screwdriver.
Not much use if Silas had bolted all the doors.
Or changed the locks.
Even if he had, though, there was a ground floor
side window that opened onto what he called the
utility room, but which had, in their early child¬
hood, been called the laundry room. The window
was a push-up, sash affair that had never, at least
in the past, either locked properly or opened fully.
Jules remembered using it once, as a child, to
squeeze through after she’d accidentally got
288
herself locked out, and she had no recollection of
either her mother or, later, Graham getting it
repaired, and until today, she’d forgotten all about
it, so maybe...
She had been smaller then, of course, could not
be sure that even if it did still open she’d be able to
get through the gap, hence the substitute crowbar
with which she planned, if absolutely necessary, to
force either that window or the side door.
She had considered her other main option, had
worked through the logistics of reporting Silas’s
crimes to the police and letting them deal with
getting Abigail out; but the more she’d gone over
it all, the more insane her collection of accu¬
sations had sounded even to herself.
One murder disguised as a mugging. A witness-
supported road accident that Silas had just hap¬
pened to see. A grievous assault on his own wife,
who had repeatedly insisted, both to the police
and hospital personnel, that it had been purely
accidental. A body buried in the garden of her
former home. A wholly unsubstantiated threat
against herself and her baby.
And Ralph.
They’d probably think her barking mad. And
even if she did manage to persuade them to send
a couple of officers round to the house, if Silas
had, by then, made sufficient threats against his
wife and their unborn child, there was every
chance Abigail might feel compelled to tell them
nothing was wrong.
‘So,’ Jules said to the dachshund, ‘all down to
me.’

289
 Chapter Forty-Seven

Abigail was undressed, in bed.

All alone in the dark.
Silas had waited till she was ready, had, true to
his word, locked the bedroom and en-suite bath¬
room windows, unplugged the telephone and
taken it out of the room before locking her in.
She wasn’t certain which was more appalling.
The fact that she was trapped, virtually blind and
alone, with no immediate prospect of rescue, or
the knowledge that Silas might, at any moment of
his choosing during the rest of the evening or
night, unlock the door and come in, perhaps even
come to bed.
You^ve been sleeping with him for months.
With a murderer, God help her.
All changed now. All different now.
She laid her right hand on her flat stomach.
Because of you.
The baby had changed everything.
That and, of course, Silas’s threat to hurt Ollie.
She’d put the radio on a while back, had hoped
it might calm her a little, at least distract her from
her predicament, allow her to pretend again, for
an hour or so, that she was a normal woman lying
in bed trying to get to sleep.
Book at Bedtime had not worked, and anyway,
she wanted to be alert to any sounds, to feel just
the slightest bit more prepared, less vulnerable,
290
when Silas did decide to make his next appear¬
ance.
So she sat, propped up by pillows, determined
to stay awake.
Don^t sleep.
A lullaby sprang into her mind, something
sweet and gentle that Dougie Allen, her poor
lovely father, had sung softly to her when she was
very small. She hardly remembered any of the
words. Rest your head...
‘Not now. Daddy,’ Abigail said into the darkness.
Rest your head.
‘Please,’ she said.

Chapter Forty-Eight

Drew adored babies, especially Ollie, who he had,

through circumstances, come to spend much
more time with and know far more thoroughly
than either of his sister’s children or even young
Harry, his godson, whose family did at least live in
reasonable reach, unlike his nieces up in Harro-
gate.
Content, for the most part, as he was with his life
(and working for, or rather with Jules, as she always
emphasized, was a big part of his contentment),
one of the things he did find himself fretting about
now and again was the great likelihood that he
might never have children of his own. Nick, his
treacherous lover, had talked at one time about
their adopting or even looking into surrogacy, but
291
then again, as Drew had, alas, come to learn, Nick
had talked a lot of codswallop.
Drew had fed Ollie and changed his nappy, and
now the little lad was sleeping again in the travel
cot beside him on his couch, the telly turned
lower than usual so as not to disturb him.
Drew sighed, one of his broody sighs, and
gazed down at the sleeping boy.
Jules had looked very ... peaky was the word his
mum would have used.
And frightened, he thought.
‘Never mind, Ollie,’ he said softly, soothingly.
‘Mummy will be back for you soon.’ He
hesitated, being a great believer in honesty, even,
daft as it might be, with sleeping babies. ‘Soon as
she can, sweetheart, all right?’
The front door bell rang.
‘Goodness.’ Drew smiled. ‘That was quick,
wasn’t it?’

Chapter Forty-Nine

Jules had been watching the house through the

trees for several minutes from her car, parked a
little way down the hill.
Time to go.
She got out, closed the door as noiselessly as she
could manage, stuck the keys in the top left hand
pocket of her trousers, closed it securely and
made her way, silently, courtesy of her battered
trainers, towards the house.
292
 Not the front door.
Absurd. Her brother’s house. Her family home,
bequeathed to her, her^ by their mother.
She paused, brought her thoughts firmly to the
present.
The house was in absolute darkness, at least so
far as she could tell, and she had seen no activity
since her arrival. Nor was there any sign of Silas’s
VW, but then again the garage door was shut, so
it might be - probably was - in there.
Better skulk a little more.
Not so absurd at all, not after his threats.
And her new suspicions about Ralph.
Rage surged, shaking her, physically and
emotionally.
Not now^ she told herself. Later, but not now.
She made her way around the house to the
right-hand side, watching her step, managing
without the torch, afraid of alerting the Brooks or
perhaps some passer-by, to the possibility that
she might be a burglar.
There was the window, just past the side door,
in its still promisingly not-quite-straight old
timber frame.
Jules stopped.
Door or window?
The door - leading to the little anteroom beside
the kitchen - was preferable, obviously, except
that meant taking out her old bunch of house
keys - four Chubbs and five Yales, several more
keys than doors, no identifying tags on any of
them - which were bound to jangle as she tried
them out. And even if she did find the right one
and the lock had not been changed, there was
293
still the matter of the inside bolts at top and
bottom of all the external doors, and even if they
hadn’t been used and if she did get the door
open, it might creak or groan
Not as loudly as a stijf warped window.
With one gloved hand, Jules unzipped a pocket,
pulled out the house keys carefully, gripped them
tightly, holding them against her pullover to
muffle any sounds, then withdrew the torch from
her velcroed right thigh pocket (the left-hand one
held the screwdriver), shone the beam onto the
Chubb lock and tried the first key.
No go.
This was mad.
Go to the front door.
That was what she ought to do before things
got completely out of control. Go to the front of
the house like any normal, respectable family
member, try her keys there and, if that failed,
ring the bell and knock, loudly, until Silas had
virtually no choice but to answer. And if he didn’t
want to let her in, if he left her no choice, then
she could go next door and rouse the neighbours,
and that, at least, was bound to get her across the
threshold.
Except that Max and Tina Brook probably
wouldn’t want to get involved in any un¬
pleasantness, wouldn’t want to come inside with
her, and even if she told them just a tiny morsel
of the truth, even if they believed her - especially
if they believed her - they would very likely bolt
back to the safety of their own house, lock the
doors and call the police.
Which might be best all round.
294
 Truth and justice, and safety for Ollie and
Abigail and her baby.
And prison for Silas.
Her big brother, whom she had loved so deeply.
Still loved.
But how could she still love someone who had
done such terrible things, who had, at the very
least, pretended to his wife that he’d killed a
man? Who she had now even begun to suspect of
killing her husband?
Who had threatened to kill Ollie.
She made up her mind. No more procrastin¬
ating. She was here, now, at this side door, with
at least a chance of entering the house without
Silas realizing. Better just to go with her first
instincts, get inside and take it from there.
She tried a second key, slid it into the lock, met
no resistance.
Turned it.
Stood quite still, listening.
Open it.
She gripped the old door knob, and turned it
slowly.
The door opened.
Creaked.
Jules switched off the torch, hardly daring to
breathe.
It was pitch dark inside. No sounds except the
wheeze of the boiler.
Go. For God's sake, just go.
She stepped into the dark.

295
 Chapter Fifty

Abigail was sleeping.

In her dream, she was a child again in the
kitchen at Allen’s Farm.
Three tiny kittens, black as coal, lay in a basket
on the stone floor near the stove, while Nell, one
of the border collies, snoozed close by.
The aroma of baking bread hung in the air.
Abigail’s mother was sitting in a rocking chair,
knitting something pink.
Her stomach was swollen with pregnancy.
In the dream, Abigail knew that she was the
unborn child.
Safe in the dark.

She heard a sound.

A man’s footsteps, coming towards the house
across the yard.
Abigail smiled into the dark.
She knew it was her daddy coming.
Already, she felt a rush of love, could see him
even before he came into the house, a newborn
lamb tucked beneath his jacket, one of the needy
wee ones that her ma would bottle feed and keep
warm till it was stronger
She felt so safe.

But the man came in and it wasn’t Abigail’s

father, but Silas, his gorgeous hay-coloured hair
296
flopping over his forehead^ his eyes softer, a more
luminous green than she had ever seen them.
Yet what he brought with him, within him, was
neither soft nor beautiful, and suddenly she felt a
dark clamminess in the air, and Silas was looking
at her, looking right at her - and that wasn’t
possible, Abigail knew, because she hadn’t yet
been born, was still safe inside her mother, so
there was no need to feel so afraid...
But she was, desperately so.
He turned away from her, from her mother,
and scooped two of the black kittens out of their
basket.
‘No!’ Abigail screamed. 'NoF
But being not yet born, she was not heard, and
though the kitten that was left in the basket
mewed plaintively, Silas gave it not so much as a
glance as he lifted his two captives by the scruffs
of their necks - and then, twisting his body
around, like an athlete preparing to throw discus,
he whipped back and hurled them both against
the wall.
Abigail screamed again.
While her mother went on knitting, and blood
ran down the wall in rivulets.
And suddenly Abigail was outside the house,
born and full-grown now, standing in the yard,
staring at the stream of blood flowing out
through the front door of the farmhouse onto the
cobblestones and mixing with Francesca’s and
Dougie’s and Eddie’s...
Abigail woke up.
Still in the dark.

297
 Chapter Fifty-One

Jules had decided, earlier, in the semi-sanity of

her flat, on two alternative approaches. Her
preferred option would be to locate Abigail and
bundle her immediately, if necessary with no
more possessions than the clothes on her back,
out of the house, into her car and over to Drew’s.
The second option - much more probable,
unfortunately - was that if she encountered Silas,
she would bluff it out, tell him that Ollie was
safely out of his reach and that she had left a
message with one of her neighbours stating that
if neither she nor Abigail got in touch next
morning, they should call the police, make them
send an officer to the house.
And if Silas called her bluff?
Call the cops, scream for the neighbours, kick him
where it hurt.
Whatever it took.

Even after she’d moved away from the sounds of

the boiler and the fridge’s startlingly loud
rumbles, the voice of the old house still intermit¬
tently broke into the night silence of the deserted
ground floor. Knocking pipes and creaking
boards, the mantel clock, ticking away, then, star¬
tlingly — on the dot of one o’clock — chiming.
Even Jules’s own breathing sounded raucous in
her ears.
298
 No other sign of life down here.
She turned the torch back on, as sure now as
she could be that they were both upstairs in bed,
which was just what she had been fearing most.
Full-on confrontation with Silas, with Abigail
still half-blind.
Jules steeled herself, then began to make her
way up the staircase.
If Silas was asleep, that might render him at
least a little vulnerable, too.
She reached the upper floor, lit her way to the
bedroom door, then switched the torch off again,
ran over her plan such as it was: she would open
the door sharply, switch the overhead light on,
hoping, with a bit of luck, to dazzle Silas and
thereby briefly get the upper hand.
She reached the door, put out her shaky, still
gloved hand.
Think of Ralph.
Think of Ollie.
She turned the handle.
Nothing happened.
Jules fumbled for the sliding switch on the
torch, trained the beam on the lock, saw the key.
She turned it, opened the door and turned on
the light.

Silas was not in the bed, or in the room.

Abigail was half sitting up, startled out of sleep.
‘We don’t have any kittens,’ she said, confusedly.
It’s only me,’ Jules said, softly. ‘Where’s Silas?’
‘I don’t know.’ Abigail shook her head, fully
awake now. ‘He locked me in a long time ago. I
didn’t mean to fall asleep.’
299
 i

Jules crossed to the bathroom, found it empty.

‘I don’t think he’s in the house.’ Abigail was
already out of bed, feeling for her dressing gown.
‘Don’t bother with that, darling,’ Jules told her.
‘We’re getting you dressed and out.’ She pulled
off her gloves, stuck them in one of her pockets,
went to the wardrobe, dug out jeans, sweater and
loafers. ‘Here.’ She put them all into Abigail’s
arms. ‘Put these on while I listen at the door.’
‘Don’t go looking for him, Jules,’ Abigail said.
‘He’s gone quite mad, talking about keeping me
locked up till the baby’s born.’
‘Did you hear him go out?’ Jules watched her
pull on the jeans, zip them up.
Abigail shook her head. ‘But he’s been coming
and going since you left.’ She pulled the sweater
carefolly over her head, mindful of her eyes, then
put on one shoe, fished around for the second,
found it, tilted her face up anxiously. ‘Jules?’
‘I’m here. It’s okay.’ Jules noticed Abigail’s dark
glasses on the bedside table, went to pick them up.
‘Here.’ She handed them to her. ‘Your glasses.’
Abigail put them on. ‘Where’s Ollie?’
‘Safe with Drew,’ Jules said. ‘Ready?’
‘My bag,’ Abigail said.
Jules looked round, saw it on the dressing table
chair, went to pick it up, handed it to Abigail.
‘Let’s get out of here.’

They were downstairs, halfway to the front door

when Jules hesitated.
‘I ought to call Drew, warn him.’
‘You don’t think Silas might-?’ Abigail stopped,
appalled.
300
 ‘Stay here, don’t move. I’ll be right back.’
She ran into the kitchen, returned a long
minute later. ‘No reply.’
‘Maybe he’s-’
‘We have to get there.’ Jules gripped her arm.
‘Let’s go.’
They both heard the key in the lock.
Jules saw the front door open.
Silas stood in the doorway, Ollie asleep in his
arms.
‘Going somewhere?’ he asked.
Abigail gave a small moan of fear.
‘He’s got Ollie,’ Jules reported and, swiftly,
firmly, propelled her back to the foot of the
staircase. ‘Abigail, go back up to the bedroom
and lock yourself in.’
‘I’m not leaving you,’ Abigail said.
‘I’ll be fine,’ Jules said sharply. ‘Go on'
‘Yes, go on, Abigail,’ Silas said, and closed the
door behind him.
‘What are you doing with Ollie?’ Abigail said.
‘Abigail, please, do as I say,’ Jules told her. ‘It’ll
be okay.’
Abigail fumbled for the handrail, sucked in a
desperate breath, and went.
Jules waited for her to disappear from sight,
then turned to Silas.
‘Please give Ollie to me,’ she said, quietly.
‘He’s fine with his uncle,’ Silas said.
Everything Jules had planned to say on
confrontation flew out of her mind.
‘You must know,’ she said, ‘there’s no point to
this nonsense about trying to keep Abigail
locked up. It’s mad to even imagine you could
301
do such a thing.’
‘Then that must make me mad,’ Silas said.
‘Because one way or another. I’m not planning
on letting Abigail leave me so long as she’s
pregnant with my child.’
In his arms, Ollie stirred, whimpered.
Jules held out her arms. ‘Please give him to me.’
Silas looked down. ‘Still hard to see his father
in him, don’t you think?’
‘I see Ralph in him all the time.’
Just speaking his name brought the rage back to
the surface.
‘You killed him too, didn’t you?’ she said. ‘You
came to see Ralph that last night, brought him
that food.’ She watched his face, knew already,
without doubt, that she was right. ‘You told him
it was fine, and he believed you.’
‘You shouldn’t have told him about our father,’
Silas said, calmly. ‘Your fault, really, Jules.’

Listening at the top of the stairs, Abigail felt such

a violent attack of nausea that she thought she
might pass out. Her hands moved to her stomach,
then down to her womb.
She had to protect it now.
Not it. Him or her.
She reached for the wall to help guide herself,
more frustrated than ever about her lack of
vision, about having to move so slowly when every
instinct cried out for her to run back downstairs
and help Jules and Ollie. Yet common sense told
her that if she fell, and if Silas heard her, that
would help no one at all.
Especially not my baby.
302 .
 She reached the bedroom, hesitated, changed
her mind and went on, to the music room. Took
the key from the outside of the door, went in,
closed the door and locked herself in.
Now she couldn’t hear.
She began to pace, knew the dimensions of the
room well enough, despite the fog, to walk back
and forth without bumping into walls.
Thinking about what she had just heard.
For all that Silas had told her about Charlie, for
all her other suspicions - more than just sus¬
picion now, of course, God help them all - it had
never, never^ for one single instant occurred to
her that he might have done that hideous,
abominable thing to his own sister’s husband.
She stopped pacing, remembering again how
Jules had loved Ralph. Remembered Silas - her
beloved Phoenix - and dear Christ, even that
made her feel violently sick now, her blind, truly
blind, adoration of him - remembered him going
ahead of Jules to open their kitchen door, being
the one to find Ralph’s body.
Remembered Jules cradling him on the floor.
Remembered Ralph’s poor contorted face.
Remembered Silas pointing to the phone on
the floor near the body, saying that Ralph must
have dropped it while trying to call for help.
When all the while, it had been him...
Abigail moved into the middle of the room,
found her cello and bow, groped for her chair, sat
down and began to play.
Blotting it out again.

Still downstairs in the entrance hall, Silas and

303
 i

Jules both heard the cello.

Its raucous pain.
‘Right.’ Still holding Ollie, the baby awake now,
Silas pushed past Jules to the staircase.
‘Give him to me,’ she said, desperately, follow¬
ing him up. ‘Please^ Silas.’
He ignored her, turned towards the music
room, tried the door.
‘Abigail,’ he called, loudly. ‘Let me in.’
The sounds from inside stopped.
‘Give me my son,’ Jules said, behind Silas.
He rapped on the door.
‘Abigail,’ he shouted. ‘Open this door.’
‘You stay put, Abigail,’ Jules called, her voice
even louder.
Silas whipped around. ‘Be quiet.’
Ollie began to cry, his cheeks looking hot.
‘It’s all right, my love,’ Jules told him, trying not
to cry herself, trying to calm at least her tone for
her child’s sake. ‘Silas, please, just give him to me.’
Silas’s eyes were flat and colder, deader than
pebbles now.
‘My God.’ Jules couldn’t help herself. ‘I never
realized how right our mother was, wanting to
leave this house to me.’
‘Shut up,’ Silas said.
Ollie’s crying grew louder, and he thrust out
one free, pudgy arm towards his helpless mother.
‘She must have seen it in you,’ Jules went on,
driven now by pure rage. ‘The rottenness, even
back then.’
‘Shut the fuck wp,’Silas said.
‘She couldn’t have known the extent of it,
though,’ Jules pushed on. ‘How could she? How
304
could anyone have begun to guess what a wicked,
sick-’
Silas’s slap was hard enough to propel her
backwards.
Jules’s head struck the wall with a sickening
crack.
‘Oh,’ she said, and slumped to the floor.

Inside the music room, on the other side of the

door, Abigail heard the cracking sound, and then
the silence - and then Ollie’s wail, growing
louder, more hysterical.
‘Abigail, open this door!’ Silas bellowed from
the corridor.
For an instant she covered her ears, then out¬
stretched her arms again to help herself back
towards the chair.
She sat, dragged up the cello and bow again.
Began to play again, playing, playings trying to
hide inside the music.
Failing.

‘Right,’ Silas told his nephew.

He carried Ollie, still howling and struggling
now for freedom, along the corridor to the
bedroom, where he stepped inside and dumped
the child down on the floor.
‘Scream all you want in here,’ he said, shut the
door, locked it, stuck the key in his trouser pocket
and returned to the music room, stepping past
Jules.
‘I’m going to kick this in now, Abigail,’ he
yelled.
The music stopped again.
305
 Silas stepped back, kicked hard at the door, his
boot splintering wood.
Behind him, on the floor, Jules moaned.
Silas kicked the splintered panel again, hard
enough to smash it, bent to thrust his arm
through, located the key on the inside, extricated
it, used it to unlock the door.
‘Ready or not,’ he said and stepped through.
From her hiding place behind the door, seeing
his blurred shape entering, feeling his anger
almost as palpably as heat, Abigail took a deep,
shuddering breath, lifted the cello high over her
head and then brought it down against his shoul¬
ders, sending him to his knees.
Outside in the corridor, Jules gave another
moan.
Jules? Still clutching the cello, Abigail groped
her way out of the room. ‘Jules, where are you?’
‘Here. I can’t seem to stand yet - whacked mv
head.’
Abigail made out her shape, crouched down,
keeping her left arm around the neck of the
instrument as she sought to try to help the other
woman.
‘Jules, grab hold of my—’
‘Ollie,’ Jules broke in urgently. ‘Get Ollie out
and call the police.’
‘Not leaving you,’ Abigail said.
‘You have to get Ollie out,’ Jules said. Tlease:
‘All right.’ Abigail got to her feet. ‘I’ll get him.’
Gripping the cello differently now - a weapon
for now, not a musical instrument, and she
thought she could almost picture her mother
encouraging her - she groped her way to the
306
bedroom door, felt for the key.
‘Oh, God, Jules, he’s taken it, he’s got the key'
Inside the room, Ollie’s crying was a little less
shrill.
‘Break it down,’ Jules called to her.
‘All right, Ollie.’ Abigail raised her voice
encouragingly.
‘I’m coming.’ She heaved the cello up under
her arm, used both hands to swing it back, heard
Jules’s warning cry too late.
‘I don’t think so,’ Silas said, behind her.
He made a grab for the instrument, but Abigail
held onto it.
‘You open the door then,’ she said. ‘For Ollie’s
sake.’
‘Can’t do that,’ Silas said.
He took hold of her right arm.
‘He’s just a baby,' Abigail beseeched him.
‘Even so,’ Silas said. ‘I can’t let you take him
out of here now.’
‘You bastard.' Abigail tried to wrench her arm
away, but he was too strong.
‘Don’t make me hurt you, Abigail.’ He began to
wrest the cello from her. ‘Not while you’re
carrying my baby.’
They both heard movement behind them.
‘Leave her alone!' Jules grabbed Silas’s right
arm, kicked at his legs. ‘Abigail, get away, get out
of here!’
Silas let go of Abigail, turned and punched his
sister in the face.
Abigail heard Jules’s shout of pain, saw her
sister-in-law’s shape sink to the floor, saw Silas
looming at her again, gave a cry of terror and hit
307
 out with the cello, heard a crunch, knew she’d
struck him hard.
‘Bitch,’ he gasped. ‘You absolute bitchP
Hanging onto the instrument with her left arm,
holding it tight against her body, Abigail turned
towards the staircase, put out her right hand to
the wall for balance, feeling her way.
Silas’s fingers grasped her right ankle.
‘No!’ She stumbled, steadied herself, but his
other hand grabbed at her knees. 'No!' she
screamed.
Panic filled her, overwhelmed her, and rage, too,
and searing, agonizing memories of all the terrible
things he’d already done, to the others and to her.
And Ollie’s cries were magnifying, piercing her
ears, echoing in her mind, and Abigail knew she
had to stop Silas before he did worse.
His hands were dragging at her legs.
‘ATa^’she screamed again. ‘I won’t let youV
She raised the cello high again, higher than
before, and with every remaining ounce of
strength, brought it down again.
Silas screamed.
She knew, right away.
Knew what had happened.
What she had done.
As the cello, its sharp metal spike impaled in
Silas’s body, swayed, vibrating with his final
scream of agony.
And became still.

308
 Chapter Fifty-Two

Observing Abigail’s state-of-mind, and swiftly

realizing the strong likelihood of her giving a self¬
destructive first, and crucial, interview to the
police, Philip Quinlan - the lawyer recommended
to Jules by Stephen Wetherall, her mother’s old
solicitor - suggested to his client that she might
find it easier to let him read a brief, prepared
statement rather than face questioning.
‘What would I say, in this statement?’ Abigail
asked.
They had arrested her back at the house,
cautioned her, then taken her to the police
station, booked her in at the custody suite, and
now she felt adrift in the fog. All things familiar
gone. This kindly stranger, Philip Quinlan, her
lifeline, her only hope of survival.
She was no longer sure she wanted to survive.
‘The truth,’ Quinlan replied to her question.
‘That you don’t deny killing your husband, but
that it was in self-defence.’
‘I don’t know that I was defending myself,’
Abigail said. ‘I know I was afraid for Ollie and
Jules.’
‘And for yourself,’ Quinlan said.
‘I don’t know,’ Abigail said.
‘I think you do know,’ the solicitor pressed on,
gently but firmly. ‘You and Jules have already told
me that your husband had threatened to kill her
309
 i

and Ollie, that he was out of control when-’

‘I’d already hit him,’ Abigail interrupted,
‘before the last time.’
It came back to her, the sound of the spike
entering his body. She felt sick, her left hand flew
to cover her mouth.
‘Are you all right, Abigail?’
She took a deep breath, laid her hand, shakily,
back in her lap.
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘You hit your husband,’ Quinlan reminded her,
‘because he had just slapped and knocked down
his sister, and because he’d just kicked in the
door to get to you.’
‘Yes,’ Abigail whispered.
‘Then that’s what you’ll write in your state¬
ment.’ He paused. ‘I know it feels impossibly
hard right now, Abigail, but I want you to believe
that we really do have a strong case of self-
defence, so long as-’
‘I can’t write at the moment,’ she said, abruptly.
‘No,’ Quinlan said, still gentle. ‘Because your
husband threw a chemical substance in your eyes
in September.’
She nodded.
‘I can write everything down for you, Abigail,’
he said.
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘But I think maybe I’d
rather just speak to them, answer their questions.
Tell the truth.’
‘Are you sure?’ Quinlan asked.
Abigail nodded again.
‘I’ll be with you, sitting beside you,’ he said.
‘Good,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’
310
A doctor - the Forensic Medical Examiner -
came to check that she was in a fit condition to
be questioned, and the sense of drifting, of
floating in the fog, stayed with her through that
and on through the interview itself, conducted by
a male detective inspector named Fletcher and a
female constable whose name Abigail forgot the
instant she’d heard it.
‘Did your husband try to kill you?’ DI Fletcher
asked.
‘No,’ Abigail said. ‘But he had already hit Jules,
and he was trying to stop me from getting Ollie
out of the bedroom.’
‘And you had already hit him with your cello,’
Fletcher said, referring to notes made earlier, at
the house, ‘knocked him down, you think, before
he tried to restrain you.’
‘Yes.’
She told them that Silas had been keeping her
a prisoner.
‘But at that precise time,’ Fletcher said, ‘you
had locked yourself into the music room, hadn’t
you?’
‘Yes,’ Abigail said again.
It went on and on for what seemed a long time.
The fog was like a shroud now. She felt cold and
alone, despite Philip Quinlan, and very, very
tired.
They began to ask her about the cello.
About the spike.
‘Isn’t there usually a rubber tip on the end of
these extendable spikes?’
The woman DC asked that question.
311
 )

‘There used to be one,’ Abigail said. ‘It came off

a long time ago.’
‘And you never bothered to replace it?’ the DC
asked.
Abigail shook her head.
‘For the tape-’ the DC said ‘-Mrs Graves just
shook her head.’
‘So you knew,’ Fletcher took over again, ‘when
you rammed the cello down onto yoiir husband,
how sharp the spike was?’
Abigail felt very sick again.
‘I didn’t have time to think about it,’ she said,
quietly. ‘Not till after.’

On and on.
They finished the interview and took her back
to the custody suite, where the Custody Sergeant
took over the proceedings.
‘Are you Abigail Graves?’ he asked her.
‘I am,’ she said.
‘You are charged...’
The sergeant’s voice was a monotone as he
stated the date, and Philip Quinlan gripped Abi¬
gail’s left arm, and he seemed proficient at guid-
itigj she had thought as they’d left the interview
room, and the police all seemed unfazed by her
blindness, too, and she supposed they were used
to arresting all sorts for all kinds of crimes.
...you did murder Silas Graves,’ the sergeant
told her, ‘which is contrary to common law. You
do not have to...’
Murder.
Mother, father, boyfriend, husband.
‘Abigail.’ Philip Quinlan’s voice drew her back.
312
 On and on, in the fog.
They were speaking to each other now, not to
her, discussing bail. Quinlan was saying that she
had a fixed address and no previous convictions,
and DI Fletcher was saying something about
failure to surrender, and Quinlan said something
about her sight and her pregnancy and her
admission that she had killed Silas.
On and on.

‘It’ll just be overnight,’ Quinlan told her, ‘and

they’ll look after you.’
He was waiting, Abigail felt, for her to panic,
perhaps to cry or plead, because the FME had
declared her fit to be locked in a cell at the station
till morning when they would take her to Haringey
Magistrates’ Court for her first appearance.
‘It’s all right,’ she told him.
‘Try and get some rest,’ he said, ‘if you can. I’ll
be organizing bail, so you don’t need to worry
about that, and I’ll be telephoning, too, to make
sure you’re okay.’
‘Are you really sure Jules is all right?’ Abigail
asked.
Quinlan had already told her that Jules had
been seen by a doctor, had gone to A&E for an
X-ray, had been pronounced fine and sent home.
‘Quite sure,’ he said now. ‘And Ollie, too. No
need to fret about them.’
She felt his discomfort, felt, abruptly, as if he
was the one in need of soothing.
‘I’ll be fine,’ she said, found his hand, gripped it.
‘Brave girl,’ he said.

313
 i

She had wanted it - she realized much later,

when a degree of rationalization had been
restored to her - to be bad.
And it had been.
The stench and the sounds, of human distress
and anger and sickness. The disorientation,
worse for her because of the fog - though maybe
it was less so for her than for most at lights out,
no great drama for her, just grey to black.
It was not just Quinlan’s two telephone calls
that had saved her, but also, she thought after¬
wards, oddly, the poor, anguished man in the cell
next to hers. His swearing, his raging, his throw¬
ing of things, the hideous, repetitive, sickening
sound of what she thought might have been his
head banging against the wall, a sound so dis¬
turbing that it had made her huddle on her own
hard bunk and jam her hands over her ears to try
to blot it out.
But it had saved her, for at least a part of the
i^ight, until they had calmed him, from something
much worse. Her own thoughts.
About what she had done.
Killed him.
The way she had done it.
Killed her husband.
The father of her child.
Killed Phoenix.

314
 Chapter Fifty-Three

‘Fm worried about her,’ Jules told Philip Quinlan

in his document-cluttered Chancery Lane office
on the twentieth of December.
Nineteen days had passed since Silas’s death.
Eighteen since Abigail had appeared at Haringey
Magistrates’ Court and been sent to a bail hostel
because the house had, to begin with, been the
crime scene, and afterwards Abigail had not been
able to contemplate returning there, and Jules, as
a key wimess to the crime, had not been permitted
to offer her flat, and there had been no one else.
Eleven days since the judge at the Old Bailey
had granted Abigail bail.
All the conditions worked out in advance this
time. Jules standing surety in the sum of ten
thousand pounds. Abigail’s agreement - though
it had been a little like getting an agreement out
of a sleepwalker - that she would report each day
to Hornsey Police Station. The condition of resi¬
dence no longer a stumbling block, because
Father Moran had returned to Saint Peter the
Apostle earlier than expected from retreat (and at
least his temporary disappearance had not, after
all, been connected with Silas), had learned of
the tragedy, and suggested she come and stay
with him and Mrs Kenney in the presbytery.
‘She thinks she should be in prison,’ Jules told
the young, bespectacled, composed but un-
315
mistakably deeply motivated, lawyer now.
Abigail had consented to their meeting without
her, had said she had no objections to their talking
about any aspect of the case, or about her psy¬
chological state. She knew how concerned they
both were for her, was grateful to Jules for her love
and to Quinlan for his kindness, had no secrets
now from either of them, yet she felt, deep down,
beyond their help.
‘I know,’ the solicitor said. ‘Own worst enemy
at present.’
‘I suppose we should be grateful,’ Jules said,
‘she’s agreed to plead not guilty.’ She bit her lip.
‘I keep worrying she’s going to change her mind.’
‘My worry is that I’m not quite sure how much
I’m getting through to her,’ Quinlan said. ‘I’ve
explained to her that self-defence is the only
possible full defence against a murder charge,
though when it comes to it. I’ll be listing all pos¬
sible defences: self-defence and provocation and
diminished responsibility.’
‘Abigail was totally responsible,’ Jules argued.
‘She was saving our lives.’
‘Nevertheless,’ Quinlan went on steadily, ‘if this
weren’t so clearly self-defence, diminished respon¬
sibility could be very useful. Battered Woman’s
Syndrome comes to mind.’
‘Yes,’ Jules gave way. ‘All right.’
‘I am concerned, though, that our case could
suffer down the line if Abigail isn’t wholehearted
about testifying in her own best interests.’
‘I know what you mean,’ Jules said. ‘And about
not getting through.’ She shook her head. ‘All I
want is to help her any way I can, but I think
316
Abigail believes that deep down I must be blam¬
ing her, even hating her, for killing Silas. Fve told
her I might just as well blame myself for being
such a fool as to try and rescue her in the middle
of the night, but it makes no real difference.’
‘Are you,’ Quinlan asked gently, ‘blaming
yourself?’
‘In some ways, yes, of course I am,’ Jules
admitted. ‘But that doesn’t mean I don’t know -
really know^ I mean - that it was all Silas’s fault.’
‘But still,’ Quinlan said gently, ‘you’ve lost your
brother.’
He waited while Jules fought for a moment
against tears. He had met her several times since
her brother’s death, had liked her immediately,
felt glad that the feeling appeared mutual. The
police having swiftly interviewed her with the
intention of making her a prosecution witness,
had dropped Jules like a hot brick when she had
not only backed up Abigail’s story, but also
dramatically strengthened it. Quinlan had briefly
feared that they might raise the suggestion that
Jules -- having told the police, among other things,
that she believed Silas had murdered Ralph
Weston, her husband - might have conspired with
Abigail to kill him. They had not suggested any
such thing, and the lawyer had felt relief for her.
Nevertheless, even if Jules was trying to face up
to the terrible things Silas Graves had done,
Quinlan knew better than to overlook the fact that
she had plainly loved her brother deeply. And
grief, as he had observed over the years, could be
a complicated and unpredictable creature.
‘Sorry,’ Jules said, composing herself again.
317
 ‘You’re allowed to grieve,’ Quinlan said.
Jules nodded, then dredged up a smile. ‘So
what can we do for Abigail?’
‘You go on doing what you have been,’ he said.
‘Being Abigail’s very good friend, letting her
spend time with your little boy - I know she’s
very fond of Ollie.’
‘That’s not nearly enough.’ Frustrated, Jules ran
a hand through her hair. ‘She’s a mess, Philip. I
mentioned corneal grafting to her the other day -
something they’ve said they may want to do
ultimately, if her sight doesn’t improve sufficiently
- but Abigail wouldn’t even talk to me about it,
and I’m sure it’s because she’s decided she’s not
deserving enough.’ She took a breath. ‘Then
there’s the pregnancy.’
Quinlan frowned. ‘Not taking care of herself?’
‘Michael Moran says she’s started eating,
which is something, and Abigail says that taking
care of the baby’s the only thing that matters, but
I’m not convinced she accepts that means really,
truly taking care of herself too.’
‘Package deal,’ Quinlan said succinctly, ‘but she
currently hates the wrapping.’
‘That’s about it,’ Jules said.
‘What else does Father Moran think?’
‘That she’s a mess, that she needs professional
help.’
‘Already organized,’ the solicitor said. ‘Psychia¬
trist and psychologist.’
‘But they’re just to help with the case, aren’t
they?’ Jules said. ‘We think - Michael and I - that
Abigail’s going to need long-term help, if she’s
ever going to start really healing.’
318
 ‘I entirely agree,’ Quinlan said.
‘But surely she shouldn’t have to go to too
many different people,’ Jules pressed on. ‘Maybe
you could have a word with one of your experts,
see what they can suggest?’ She paused. ‘I’ll
gladly pay.’
Philip Quinlan smiled at her. ‘I’ll have a word,’
he said.

It had been clear to him, from the outset, that

Abigail’s state of mind was likely to be the
prosecution’s greatest ally.
‘There’s really very little doubt in my mind,’ he
had told her, ‘that we have a very good chance of
convincing a jury that this was self-defence.’
‘How can you really prove that?’ Abigail had
asked.
‘By producing as much evidence as possible,’
Quinlan said. ‘Though it isn’t as much a question
of our having to be the ones to prove it, as of the
prosecution having to (improve it.’ He had paused.
‘Same with provocation, if we were to choose to
raise that as a defence - the burden’s on them to
disprove.’
Abigail had sighed. ‘At least you’re not trying to
pretend I’m completely innocent, the way Jules
is. Because I’m not, obviously. I did kill Silas,
after all.’
‘I really would much rather,’ Quinlan had told
her mildly, ‘you didn’t keep saying that, Abigail.’
The old memory, of Francesca dying in the
ambulance, had come to her again.
You mustn h say that.
Enough lies.
319
 ‘But it’s the truth,’ she said. ‘I am a murderer.’
‘And your plea, when the time comes, will be
not guilty by reason of self-defence.’ Quinlan had
remained steady. ‘That you only used such force
to defend yourself as was reasonable.’
‘But my force killed him,’ Abigail had said.
‘In self-defence,’ he’d insisted doggedly. ‘I
cannot stress this often enough, Abigail. There is
not the slightest question that yoii killed your
husband in self-defence.’ He’d waited for a
response. ‘You do still accept that?’
Abigail had remembered Jules’s cry of pain and
Ollie’s screams and her own sheer, undiluted
terror.
‘I do,’ she had agreed, quietly. ‘Yes.’
‘Then, please, just try to remember that,’
Quinlan had said.

The police, Quinlan knew, had felt, during their

early encounters with Abigail and Jules, that they
might be dealing with a case of at least one, if not
two, seriously disturbed minds.
‘Talk about bizarre,’ DI Ken Fletcher had
commented.
A man gruesomely dead, pierced by the ex¬
tended spike of a cello which had previously been
used to batter him. A half-blind, pregnant woman
(who claimed now, but had denied at the time,
that her husband had deliberately thrown a chem¬
ical in her eyes, because of his alleged jealousy of
her friendship with a priest) freely admitting that
she had killed her husband in a moment of terror,
believing he might be going to kill her, his own
sister and baby nephew. And she and Julia
320
Weston, the other woman, both rambling on
about past crimes, including a murder disguised
as a mugging and a poisoning by peanuts...
Neither Fletcher nor Philip Quinlan - no one
now except Jules, Abigail and Father Michael
Moran - Imew about the body in the back garden
of the house on Muswell Hill.
It had been Jules, visiting Abigail one afternoon
at the presbytery, who had suggested telling the
police about the fishpond and the stone bench
and what lay beneath.
‘What for?’ Abigail had asked.
‘It might help your case,’ Jules had said.
‘I can’t see how,’ Abigail said. ‘They’ve already
heard worse about Silas.’
‘Then it might help me,’ Jules had said.
‘How could risking getting yourself accused of
God knows what help you?’
‘At least I could stop lying,’ Jules said.
‘But it’s not just you to consider, is it?’ Abigail
pointed out.
‘Ollie, you mean.’
‘Of course, Ollie,’ Abigail had said. ‘Not now,
perhaps, but later.’
‘And what happens when we sell the house?’
Jules had asked, quietly, aware that the priest or
his housekeeper, having left them alone to chat,
might return at any time. ‘Do we just leave him?’
‘Unless you decide not to sell,’ Abigail had said.
‘Neither of us is ever going to want to live there
again,’ Jules had said.
‘Well, then,’ Abigail had said. ‘I don’t see what
else you can do.’

321
She supposed she was guilty of double standards.
Had not yet told Jules that she had confessed to
Philip Quinlan that it had been she, not Eddie
Gibson, who had ridden the motorbike when he
and her parents had been killed.
‘What do you want me to do with this?’ the
lawyer had asked.
‘I don’t know,’ she had said. ‘Except that I think
I’d like his parents to know.’
Quinlan had thought for a while.
‘May I be frank?’ he’d asked, finally.
‘Frank as you like,’ Abigail had said.
‘It’s waited nearly fifteen years,’ he said, ‘and I
doubt if raising it now would do your case any
significant harm, but neither would it help you.’
‘You want me to wait till it’s over before telling
them?’
Quinlan had watched her face, her eyes still
hidden by her dark glasses.
‘If you think you can cope with that,’ he said.
Fifteen years.
‘Why not?’ she said, wearily.

Chapter Fifty-Four

Drew Martin, who had, to all intents and

purposes, vanished off the face of the earth after
the night of Silas’s death, reappeared on Boxing
Day morning at Jules’s front door.
Ollie’s first Christmas had come and gone.
Their first after Silas.
322
 They had gone to Midnight Mass at Saint
Peter’s out of gratitude, more than anything, to
Michael. Jules had sung carols, weeping some of
the time.
Abigail had stayed silent. The fog before her
eyes still inside her too.
They were all trying, gently but constantly, to
persuade her to believe in the future, but Abigail
found it impossible to do so.
She believed in the child she was carrying.
Kept, all through Midnight Mass, her hands
clasped over her womb.
Speaking to it.
Fm sorry, my love.
She told it, her daughter or son, all the time, all
the time, that she was sorry, begged her child to
be strong and healthy and safe.
All the rest - her eyes, her trial - was nothing.
You are everything, she told her child.
‘Lord hear our prayer,’ the congregation said in
unison.
Please, God, bless and protect my baby.
Her only prayer now, over and over again,
wherever she was.
All that mattered.

‘I’m so ashamed,’ Drew Martin said now, put

down the gift-wrapped parcels he’d been hold¬
ing, and burst into tears.
‘For God’s sake. Drew,’ Jules said, ‘where have
you been? Your neighbour said she’d seen you
leave, so I knew you were safe, but-’
‘I was in Harrogate,’ he said. ‘Hiding at my
sister’s.’
323
 ‘But I rang Pauline/ Jules said. ‘She said she
hadn’t seen you.’
‘She never told me you’d phoned till Christmas
Eve/ Drew said. ‘She didn’t want me getting
involved, said there wasn’t anything I could do,
and I got so angry with her that I walked out,
came straight back down to London, and I
wanted to come yesterday, but I didn’t think it
was right, not on Christmas Day,' and I know
Pauline was only trying to protect me, but still.’
‘It’s all right/ Jules said.
‘No, it’s not/ Drew said. ‘And it’s not Pauline’s
fault, it’s all mine, because I knew, really, that
you’d be trying to find me, but I was scared to
talk to you, and I don’t know how I can be such
a snivelling little coward.’
‘It’s all right,’ Jules said again, and put her arms
around him. ‘You’re here now, sweetheart. Better
late than never.’

He had been so afraid that evening because Silas

had made such awful threats against him, he ex¬
plained while Jules made a pot of tea and proved
to him that Ollie really was perfectly unscathed.
‘He said if I didn’t let him take Ollie, he’d send
some men round to break my arms and legs, and
he said he knew where my sister lived, and I
needn’t think that her family would be any safer.’
‘Oh, God, Drew-’ Jules was freshly appalled
‘-I’m so sorry.’
‘Why shouldbe sorry?’ Drew blew his nose.
‘I’m the one who let him take your baby, and I’m
just so ashamed.^
‘It’s my fault/ Jules said. ‘I should never have
324
put you in that position.’
‘And then I heard he was dead, and I didn’t
know what to think.’ He was speaking at break¬
neck speed, purging himself. ‘Part of me wanted
to race back to be here for you, but then another
part of me thought - God help me - that you
were better off without him, and Pauline kept
telling me to wait till things settled down, and I
know it was wrong, and if you never want to see
me or speak to me again, Jules, I’ll understand.’
‘You’re here now.’ Jules poured him a second
cup of tea, spooned sugar into it, stirred it for
him. ‘Stop torturing yourself. Drew.’
‘I haven’t slept, and I’ve hardly eaten, and I
know I’m weak, and I know you must hate me,
whatever you say, and I don’t blame you.’
‘I don’t hate you at all,’ Jules said.
‘You’re just being kind,’ Drew said. ‘And if you
want to fire me-’
‘That’s the last thing I want to do,’ Jules broke
in. ‘Especially now, when I need more time off
from the shop to be with Ollie and help support
Abigail.’
‘But-’ He stopped and his cheeks coloured.
‘But what?’ Jules asked.
‘Abigail did it,’ Drew said. ‘She killed your
brother.’
‘Because she had no choice,’ Jules said, steadily.
‘And what she could use now, what we could all
use, sweetheart - if you could stand it - is for you
to tell the police that Silas threatened you.’
‘I couldn’t,’ he said, newly horrified.
‘It might really help Abigail’s defence,’ Jules
said.
325
 ‘But are you sure you want me to?’ Drew asked.
‘Because he was my brother, you mean?’ She
was gentle.
‘And you loved him,’ Drew said. ‘Didn’t you?’
‘Very much,’ Jules agreed.
‘Then how can you...?’ He trailed off again.
‘I think you’d better wait,’ Jules told him, ‘until
you’ve heard it all.’ She blinked away her own
sudden tears. ‘Then I think you’ll understand a
little more.’

Chapter Fifty-Five

It was Michael Moran’s idea to look for the

photographs.
‘I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before.’
It was the twenty-eighth of December, two days
after Drew’s return, and Moran had come,
without warning, to the bookshop to suggest they
went together to Edison Road.
‘Busy time for you, surely,’ Jules said.
‘Busy or not,’ he said, ‘some things have to be
dealt with.’
In all the painfulness, he told her, he had for¬
gotten that the last time Abigail had come to see
her before he’d gone on retreat, he had noticed a
man with a camera standing in the road beyond
the church. He had seemed - though Moran had
not been certain — to be taking photographs of
himself and Abigail, and he had wondered at the
time if it might perhaps have been Silas.
326
 ‘Only you’ve never said anything about such
photos being found.’
‘I don’t know,’ Jules said, ‘if anyone’s searched
the studio.’
She had been there a handful of times to see to
correspondence and to hand over the books and
papers to the accountant and solicitors dealing
with Silas’s estate, had found the place almost
unbearably hard to be in.
‘The last thing I want,’ the priest went on, ‘is to
increase your pain or Abigail’s, but it occurs to
me that they might possibly help just a little to
illustrate your brother’s state of mind.’

The studio gave up more than they had antici¬

pated.
More than Jules could bear.
A series of photographs first, in one of Silas’s
locked desk drawers, of Abigail embracing
Charlie Nagy beside a car.
‘Mr Nagy’s road, do we presume?’ Moran said
to Jules.
‘Possibly,’ she said. ‘Probably.’
She turned to the next photograph, felt sick.
A man lying face down on a pavement.
‘Oh, dear God,’ Jules said. ‘Charlie.’
Father Moran looked at it, then at her face.
‘Want to sit down?’
Jules shook her head, still staring at the picture,
wondering why on earth Silas had kept such
things, when clearly they might, were he still
alive, have been used against him. Had he been
proud of his achievements? Or had he wanted,
perhaps, to be found out?
327
 Please God, the second.
‘Fm so sorry, Jules,’ the priest said. ‘This isn’t
fair on you.’
‘None of this is fair on anyone, Michael.’
He was looking at one of the other photographs
they’d found in the drawer.
‘Do you know who that is?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ Jules said, faintly.
It was Maggie Blume, standing in a familiar
looking road.
Elgin Avenue, she was almost sure, where
Maggie had been knocked down.
Another shot left her in no doubt.
Maggie lying in the road, a small crowd around
her.
‘Dear God,’ Jules murmured.
‘Mr Nagy’s sister?’ Moran checked.
Jules nodded.
‘I really am very sorry,’ he said.
‘Me, too,’ she said.
They were both silent for a few minutes.
There was a plastic wallet at the back of the
drawer, more photographs in it.
Jules put out her right hand to pick them up,
saw it was shaking.
‘Want me to?’ Father Moran asked.
She nodded, watched his face as he scanned the
rest of the pictures, not looking at them herself,
not daring to.
‘Oh, my,’ he said, softly.
A shudder went through Jules.
You have to look.
The priest handed them to her swiftly, averted
his eyes.
328
 They were not what she had feared.
Not of Ralph.
All of Abigail, playing the cello. All at different
stages of their life together. Some nude and laugh¬
ing. Some of her playing with great intensity, hair
sweeping over her face, eyes closed. Some of her
staring at the photographer, her expression frus¬
trated, even angry.
Some of her playing, wearing her dark,
wraparound glasses.
Jules put them down on Silas’s desk.
‘Better get these others to Philip,’ Moran said,
gently. ‘Don’t you think?’
Jules nodded, not yet able to speak, not really
wanting to think, still wondering what else might
be hidden in this room or in the studio or dark
room.
‘Jules?’
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘Do you want to go on looking?’ he asked, gently.
‘No,’ she said. ‘Not really. We’ve enough to
prove that Silas was at least there when Charlie-’
She stopped, the bleakness of it all choking off
the words.
‘I know,’ Moran said.
‘I’m not even sure,’ Jules went on, ‘how much
it’s going to help Abigail. She didn’t see the
photos, after all.’
‘I think they might help,’ the priest said. ‘Add
another layer to the evidence.’
‘Maybe.’ Jules sighed. ‘It certainly won’t make
any difference to Silas.’
Justice for Ralph and Charlie and his sister
already handed down, after all.
329
 i

By Abigail.
She looked at the desk, then around the office.
Remembered her brother at work in here, and in
the studio itself, surrounded by lights and um¬
brellas and all his photographic paraphernalia.
Closed her eyes, hoping to store up the norm¬
ality in her mind.
Saw, instead, Silas lying on the floor with the
spike in his chest.
The only time she had envied Abigail her blind¬
ness.

Chapter Fifty-Six

Abigail waited until after the New Year to break

the news to Jules that she had decided against
having the first corneal graft until after the birth
of her child.
‘It would mean a general anaesthetic,’ she said,
‘and there might be all kinds of drugs, and there’s
no real proof that they’re safe, and then, after the
surgery, they tell you not to do strenuous exercise
for quite a long while, so they’d probably want
me to have a caesarian, and I don’t want that, I
want a natural birth.’
‘But if they said it was safe,’ Jules said, ‘then
you’d be able to see your baby.’
‘Not necessarily,’ Abigail said. ‘Even if things go
well, they say you can be very blurry for quite a
while, even distorted, and you have to keep going
as an out-patient for ages, which would be
330
difficult with a wee baby.’ She took a breath. ‘And
if you ask me, Jules, which is more important, my
vision or a healthy child...’
‘No contest,’ Jules said, ‘of course. Though if-’
‘There’s nothing you can say I haven’t thought
of.’
‘What if waiting longer lessens the chances of
success?’
‘Waiting won’t make any difference,’ Abigail
said. ‘They’ve told me that. The damage won’t
get worse, and sometimes the longer they wait,
the better.’ She paused. ‘But even if it weren’t, as
you said, no contest.’
‘All right,’ Jules said.

The Pleas and Directions Hearing in Abigail’s

case took place at the Central Criminal Court
two days after Ollie’s first birthday in the first
week of February.
Right up until the last instant, when Abigail, in
the dock, was told to stand up and asked for her
plea to the charge of murder, Jules, sitting in the
public gallery, heart pounding, palms damp, was
terrified of what she might say.
‘Not guilty,’ Abigail said.
Jules sat back, shut her eyes, gave thanks.
The image of her brother on the floor, dying,
then dead, sprang back into her mind, more
bloodily clear than ever.
She opened her eyes again, looked down at Abi¬
gail, asked herself, as she had many times before,
if, grief and sorrow and profound confusion not¬
withstanding, there was after all any part of her
that did blame her.
331
 Knew that there was not.

The closer Abigail came to the birth, the less

interested she became in her case.
‘I need to spend time with you,’ Philip Quinlan
told her on the phone in April.
‘The trial’s not till late November,’ she said.
‘The better prepared we are, the greater our
chances of acquittal.’
‘I’ll do,’ Abigail said, ‘whatever you tell me.’
‘I need you to meet your barrister,’ Quinlan said.
‘And I need to go to natural childbirth classes
with Jules,’ she said.
‘You’ll have to do both, Abigail,’ the solicitor
said, with rare exasperation.
‘If I have to, I will,’ she said.
There was, for the moment, a semblance of
serenity within her, and a vast longing to meet
her child for the first time, to touch her or him -
and she had asked, before her first scan, not to be
told which it was, and Mary Hine, her sensible
and very kindly psychologist, had tried but failed
to persuade her to discuss, among many other
things, her reasons for that decision.
‘That doesn’t matter,’ Abigail had told her. ‘All
I’m focusing on is making sure my baby’s safe
and healthy.’
‘And the other things you need to think about?’
‘I’m choosing to blot those out,’ Abigail said.
‘Choosing,’ Mary Hine repeated.
‘Yes,’ Abigail said. ‘This is deliberate. I’m choos¬
ing to channel all my strength into my child.’
‘Yours and Silas’s,’ Mary Hine said.
‘Of course,’ Abigail had answered.
332
 And Silases.
It came to her regularly, the concept of Silas-as-
father. Not in the comforting way that it must have
come to Jules, thinking of Ollie as Ralph’s child.
This was haunting rather than consoling, dragging
with it undeniable fear because of what Silas had
become, of what he might perhaps always have
been, deep within himself. Often, when those
thoughts came, she pushed them forcibly away,
but in weaker, less guarded moments, Abigail still
felt overwhelmed by the old, now infinitely sad,
rush of love for Silas, as if all the dreadful things
had not happened - and after that, inevitably,
came the guilt, worse, stronger than ever, because
she had killed the object of that love, the father of
her child, and this new guilt was agonizing enough
for her to long to be flayed alive.
No one really understood. They tried hard, her
gentle, valiant circle of friends, but none of them
could comprehend what it was to be Abigail
Allen Graves just then, cocooned and marooned
and isolated all at once.
Waiting.

Chapter Fifty-Seven

She did not admit to herself until it was over how

much she had been hoping, with something close
to desperation, for a daughter. Though it was
only during one of the times of her terrible
bleakness months later that she realized how
333
 i

illogical it had been for her to fear that a boy

might be like Silas, when it was patently just as
terrible to imagine a girl taking after her.
Killer-mother. Mother-killer.
Mary Hine and Michael Moran and Jules all
wanted her to talk about it.
‘Fm all right,’ Abigail told them all.

She bore a son, on the fifteenth of July, and she

was far from all right.
Not because her child was a boy, not just
because he was Silas’s son, but because he was
her son, the son of the woman who had killed his
father. And because as long as he had been
within her, the rest of her life had been kept at
bay, and now that was over. Now her son was out
of her body, in the world, the terrible, beautiful,
terrifying world. And she could no longer
pretend to herself that the time was not coming
when she would have to make the decision that
might shape not only her own life, but his.
That was coming now, it was all coming, at
breakneck speed.

His birth, she supposed later, when she could

think again, had felt like a great tearing apart of
her mind as well as her body. The pains had
ripped through her and she had welcomed them,
opened herself to them, felt temporarily liberated
by them.
Gloria^ she sang in her head, rejoicing even as
she screamed into the fog, because this agony
was, at last, what she deserved for destroying her
child’s father, Jules’s brother, Ollie’s uncle - and
334
Nla and Daddy and Eddie, don^t forget them — and
they offered her drugs, which she refused, and
Jules, by her side, tried to help her with her
breathing, tried to make it easier for her, believed
her wretched and helpless and thinking only of
the child and its struggle...
Gloria! she screamed in her mind.
And then he was born, her new beloved, and
she knew that the suffering had been fraudulent,
no punishment at all, because it had brought him
to her.
Phoenix’s and Abeguile’s son.
Her new, and best, beloved.
She could see no more of him than his shape,
wanted no one to describe him to her - would
allow no one to describe him. But she could feel
him, run her fingers over every millimetre of him,
hold him to her cheek, her lips, her breast; she
could feed him, change his nappy, bathe him,
breathe him in, taste him, whisper to him of her
love.
But all the while, even then, she knew it was
coming.

Chapter Fifty-Eight

She had the first corneal graft at the end of

August. Ten days after her mother’s birth-and-
death-day.
Left eye first, the more damaged. The right,
they had told her, would not be operated on for
335
at least six months or even a year.
Now that her child was safely born, Abigail was
more than ready for the transplant, prepared to
push aside all her earlier thoughts of unworthi¬
ness; selfish again now, too hungry to see him.
Thomas Graves.
She had chosen the name because Silas had
once told her that he liked it, would rather have
been called Thomas than Silas.
‘What about middle names?’ Jules had asked.
‘None,’ Abigail had replied.
Names she had almost chosen roamed around
her head: Douglas, Charles, Edward, Paul - each
of them right and proper for their dead relatives
and friends, but each one dead because of
Thomas’s parents.
And not Silas. She could not do that, could not
take away the father and then bestow his name as
a kind of consolation prize.
So no middle names for their boy.
‘Just Thomas,’she said.

Lord, it was miraculous, this extraordinary gift of

sight from a stranger, and Abigail had made her¬
self think about the family of this normal, guiltless
person, about what they must have gone through
to make this possible — and she was unworthy,
infinitely so, but again she had succeeded in
setting those thoughts aside and had gone ahead.
Just a few days back at Moorfields, the temp¬
orary change of bail conditions cleared with the
court and police by Philip Quinlan, as it had
been when she’d gone into the Whittington to
give birth.
336
 Easy — for her^ at least - so easy. Going to sleep
and waking up with it done, and just a little pain
- nothing, nothings considering the miracle - and
they were all so kind, and she felt such gratitude
and humility, but none of that mattered as much
as it might have, all that mattered now was
getting to see Thomas.
Not yet, donh expect anything yet.
She knew, had been told, more than once, that
it would take a long time, that at best her vision
would be blurry for months, that it would prob¬
ably fluctuate, that it would be a year until the
stitches were removed, and fifteen or eighteen
months till she could be fitted with a contact lens,
and she would need to use drops, against rejec¬
tion and infection, and there was a possibility,
though not a great one, that the graft might be
rejected, though then they could start again.
‘All I want,’ Abigail said, ‘is to see my son.’
Before.

She saw him, blurrily, fuzzily, but she saw him.

‘He’s so beautifulf sht said.
Father Moran had come to collect her, take her
back to the presbytery, where Jules and Ollie
were waiting, with Thomas.
She was still wearing dark glasses, partly for
protection, partly against her increased photo¬
phobia, and she would wear a protective plastic
shield at night, and the eye was uncomfortable
and watering, and it was still a maddening blur,
but the fog had gone.
Enough for her to see him.
Gloria, she said inside her head.
337
 Singing again now, not screaming.
‘Isn’t he wonderful?’ Jules said, softly.
Abigail was sitting on the sofa, the baby in her
arms.
Now, slowly, cautiously, she raised him a little
higher, closer to her face.
Looking at his eyes.
The midwife had told her one day after his
birth that they were a lovely blue, though of
course that might yet change.
Since then Abigail had asked no one, nor had
anyone told her.
Now she peered through the new window of
her own left eye.
Steeling herself.
‘Green,’ she said, quietly.
‘Beautiful,’ Michael said, warmly.
‘Like his father’s,’ Abigail said.
She let no expression pass her face.
‘Are they,’ she said to Jules, ‘like his?’
‘Yes,’ Jules said.
‘Sea-green,’ Abigail said.
‘Yes,’ Jules said again.
Understanding.

Chapter Fifty-Nine

‘Now,’ Philip Quinlan said to Abigail on the

telephone in the first week of October, two days
after Thomas’s baptism at Saint Paul the Apostle.
‘I need you to start working with me right now.’
338
 Abigail, sitting in her bedroom at the presby¬
tery, in an old rocking chair that Mrs Kenney and
Father Moran had retrieved for her from the
basement, gazed down at the still blurry sight of
her son, lying contentedly in her arms.
‘Abigail,’ Quinlan’s voice nudged her. ‘Are you
listening to me?’
‘Of course,’ Abigail said. ‘What do you need me
to do?’
‘To concentrate,’ the solicitor told her. ‘On
preparations.’
Here it is.
She felt the calm inside her disappearing, as if
all the warm blood in her veins and arteries was
being sucked out, being replaced by ice.
‘For my trial, you mean,’ she said.
‘For your defence,’ Quinlan said.
Coming now.
‘Only seven weeks now,’ he added. ‘And a great
deal to do.’
Tell him, Abigail.
‘No,’ she said.
‘I’m afraid there is,’ the solicitor corrected her.
‘I know it’s very hard, with Thomas and your
eyes, but that’s all the more-’
‘I mean, no, there isn’t going to be a trial,’
Abigail said.
‘I’m sorry?’ Quinlan sounded momentarily
confused.
‘I’m going to change my plea,’ she told him. ‘To
guilty.’
She tried to imagine his expression, felt
suddenly deeply sorry for him, and ashamed, as
if he had been taking great pains to prepare a
339
 i

feast for her^ and she was telling him she’d just
begun a diet and couldn’t eat it.
‘I’m not saying I don’t want to offer any
defence,’ she said, quickly. ‘I’m not quite mad, I
don’t want a life sentence - I have a son to think
of now. You can tell them provocation or
diminished responsibility or whatever you like, I
don’t mind, but I’m definitely pleading guilty to
manslaughter.’
‘Why?’ Quinlan asked.
‘Because of Thomas. Because I don’t want to
gamble between walking free and risking life.’
Abigail paused. ‘And because I am guilty, and
because I want to tell the judge that I do feel
remorse, and I want to tell Eddie’s parents, at
long last, that I’m so sorry for what I did to him
and to them, and-’
‘Abigail,’ Quinlan cut in. ‘We have to talk about
this.’
‘I’ve made up my mind.’
‘Even so.’
In her arms, Thomas gave a small whimper.
‘I really have done all the thinking, Philip,’
Abigail told him gently.
She stroked her son’s hair. White-gold for now,
too early to tell if it would be the same colour as
her own hair, or turn into soft golden hay, like his
father’s.
‘I want you to come in to the office,’ Quinlan
said. ‘Please.’
‘All right,’ Abigail said.
‘Tomorrow,’ he said.
‘So long as you don’t try to change my mind.’
‘We’ll discuss the options,’ the solicitor said.
340
 Abigail heard the forcefulness of his tone and
her heart sank at the prospect of the meeting, for
there was no point to talking now, not when she’d
made up her mind.
‘Ten o’clock,’ Quinlan said. ‘And allow plenty
of time.’

Chapter Sixty

‘She won’t budge,’ Quinlan told Jules and Father

Moran four days later at his office. ‘She said
we’re welcome to talk about her behind her back
all we like, so long as we don’t kid ourselves we
can change her mind.’
‘But if we let her do this,’ Jules said, ‘she’ll go to
prison.’
‘It isn’t as simple as “letting her do” anything,’
Quinlan said, ‘unless she were to wish to plead
guilty to murder and go to prison for life, which
mercifully she does not. If we’re going to try to
prove diminished responsibility - possibly using
Battered Woman’s Syndrome - we’re going to be
in the hands of the psychiatrists and psycho¬
logists. I’ve already had reports, of course, but
bearing in mind Abigail’s shift in attitude. I’ve
written further letters of instructions asking for
an addendum to those reports.’
‘Then what?’ Jules asked.
‘Depends on the reports,’ the lawyer replied. ‘If
I feel convinced that were a jury to read them,
they’d believe that there was an abnormality of
341
 i

mind at the time of the killing, and if Fm satisfied

that there’s no risk of over-egging the omelette,
because the very last thing we want is a Hospital
Order-’
‘You mean they could commit her?’ Michael
Moran looked horrified.
‘Conceivably, but hopefully not in this case,’
Quinlan said. ‘The psychiatrist and psychologist
have to state that they feel her mental responsi¬
bility was substantially impaired at that moment^
and that her actions were not in any way pre¬
meditated.’
‘Sounds like a balancing act,’ Moran said.
‘After that,’ Quinlan went on, ‘if I am satisfied
with the reports. I’ll pass them to Trevor Butler -
Abigail’s QC-in-waiting - and if he feels similarly,
he’ll contact the prosecution’s barrister and the
court, and the other side will appoint their own
experts who’ll meet Abigail several times and then
make their own reports.’ He took a breath. ‘Then,
if - as we hope - those experts agree that there
was an abnormality of mind, then however much
the prosecution may hate the idea, they’ll have no
choice but to accept diminished responsibility.’
‘Which would mean what?’ Jules was struggling
to follow.
‘Things would move pretty rapidly from there,’
Quinlan said. ‘We’d get a hearing almost
immediately to enter the new plea and apply for
bail, while we put all our most helpful character
references and reports together for the judge.’
‘How long?’ Moran asked.
‘Probably four weeks.’
‘Then what?’ Jules asked.
342
 ‘Then it’s sentencing,’ Quinlan said.
They all sat in silence for several moments.
‘You still believe you could get her off, don’t
you?’ Jules asked.
‘On self-defence, yes,’ Quinlan said. ‘But I
couldn’t guarantee it.’
‘And then she could get life,’ Jules said.
‘Don’t forget,’ the solicitor said, ‘that if our own
expert reports aren’t satisfactory, no one else will
ever get to see them, and the case will go to trial,
and then we can still run all three defences, self-
defence, provocation and diminished responsi¬
bility.’ He paused. ‘Much the same if the
prosecution’s shrink disagrees.’
‘If they do both agree on diminished responsi¬
bility,’ Moran asked, ‘might Abigail get a sus¬
pended sentence or probation?’
‘Possible,’ Quinlan said.
‘But not probable,’ Jules said.
Quinlan’s smile was grim. ‘Up to the judge.’
‘Has Abigail told you,’ Jules asked, ‘she wants
me to have Thomas if she gets a custodial
sentence?’
‘She has.’ Quinlan smiled. ‘One of her better
ideas.’
‘But she’s his mother,’ Jules said. ‘She should
be with him.’
‘Of course she should,’ the lawyer agreed. ‘And
she knows that there are mother and baby units
available, in some cases.’
‘I’m not talking about being with him in prison. ’
Jules was horrified.
‘No,’ Quinlan said. ‘I know you’re not.’

343
 i

Chapter Sixty-One

On the twenty-third of December, just under five

weeks after the experts instructed by Philip
Quinlan had reported that, in their opinion, at
the time of Silas’s killing Abigail had been
‘suffering from such abnormality of mind as had
substantially impaired her mental responsibility’,
the prosecution’s psychiatrist and psychologists
arrived at the same conclusion.
‘Just too late to make it before Christmas,’
Quinlan told Abigail on the phone. ‘More waiting
for you. I’m sorry.’
‘I don’t mind,’ she said. ‘At least Thomas and I
can have his first Christmas together. He may be
too young to appreciate it, but I’m not.’
Jules arrived at the presbytery ten minutes
later, found Abigail up in her bedroom changing
the baby’s nappy.
^ ‘We’ve got a buyer for the house,’ she said.
‘Chain-free and in a hurry.’
Abigail told her that was good news, then
reported her own.
‘Oh, Lord,’ Jules said. ‘How do you feel?’
‘Let’s not talk about that,’ Abigail said. ‘Tell me
about the buyer.’
A family called Salter. Very nice couple,
according to the estate agent, supposedly madly
in love with the house and garden, not wanting to
change much.’
344
 ‘Children?’ Abigail asked, thinking, as she knew
Jules had to be, of the pond.
‘Young teens.’ Jules remembered Silas’s
prophesy that the house would go, one day, to a
family with older children. ‘So what do you
think?’
‘It’s your decision,’ Abigail said.
It had been a long time selling. Plenty of people
had come to look in the early days, most of them
intrigued, Jules had realized, by the prospect of
seeing a recent murder scene at close quarters,
but genuine buyers had balked when it had come
to actually contemplating paying to live there.
And none of them, of course, had known about
the grave.
‘They do sound perfect,’ Jules said, ‘all things
considered.’
‘But?’
‘Isn’t it all a bit much? Everything coming at
once?’
‘For the best, perhaps,’ Abigail said. ‘Getting
everything sorted.’
The last word - sorted - hung in the air as she
finished fastening the clean nappy, picked up the
baby and kissed the top of his head.
‘I can’t help worrying,’ Jules said, ‘about the
pond.’
‘Of course you can’t,’ Abigail said.
‘Not so much about these people finding out,
because with a bit of luck they never will,
especially if they really do like it all the way it is.’
Jules paused. ‘And if and when they sell up some
time in the future, and if their buyer does decide
to get rid of the pond, even if they dig up the
345
 whole area-’
‘Don’t think about that.’
‘I was going to say that even if the worst does
come to the worst some day^ at least Ollie and
Thomas will be older.’
‘True.’ Abigail sat down with her son in the
rocking chair. ‘How do you really feel about
selling?’
‘We’ve been through all that,’ Jules said. ‘We’ve
agreed neither of us-’
‘This isn’t a case of “us”,’ Abigail said. ‘It’s the
house your mother left you.’
‘Which I moved out of a long time ago,’ Jules
said.
Abigail shifted the baby to her left arm, so that
she could see him more clearly.
‘And how do you really feel,’ she asked, ‘about
leaving your father’s grave?’
‘That it’s terribly wrong,’ Jules said. ‘But then
everything about it, whatever really happened to
him, what Silas and I did-’
‘What he made you do.’
‘I still helped,’ Jules said, ‘and anyway, there’s
no undoing any of it.’ She took a breath. ‘There’s
something else.’
‘You want to move away,’ Abigail said.
Jules’s cheeks flushed. ‘How do you know?’
‘Because it’s obviously the right thing for you to
do, Abigail said. ‘If I go to prison, and you have
Ollie and Thomas, and the house is sold, and
maybe the flat too, you’ll certainly have plenty of
money to buy something beautiful well away
from here.’
‘Not too far,’ Jules said. ‘You don’t have to
346
worry about that, if-’
‘I won’t worry,’ Abigail said. ‘Even if you can’t
visit, at least I’ll be able to picture the three of
you somewhere lovely and new and different.’
‘And when you come out,’ Jules said, with an
effort, ‘it’ll be the four of us.’
‘That really would be lovely,’ Abigail said.
'Will be,’ Jules said.
Abigail nodded, though she could not, for now,
imagine that at all, because all her imaginings
were of prison, of being shut away.
The right thing. The only thing.
‘And there’s still a good chance,’ Jules said,
‘that you might not go to prison.’
‘Don’t harbour false hopes, Jules.’
‘They might not be false.’
‘They are,’ Abigail said. ‘I’d bet on that.’

Chapter Sixty-Two

On the second of February, after four final weeks

on bail during which Philip Quinlan and Trevor
Butler had prepared for the sentencing hearing,
Abigail sat in the dock in the Central Criminal
Court listening as first Sara Gallman, QC, stood
for almost an hour outlining the case for the
prosecution, then, for almost as long again, as
Butler spoke in mitigation for the defence.
Through it all, every last painful second of it,
Abigail was aware of Eddie Gibson’s mother and
father up in the public gallery. Felt their eyes on
347
her, raking over her, hating her as much, she
guessed, for their son’s posthumous loss of good
name as for his death.
Looking forward, she had no doubt, to the
sentencing.
Three years.

‘I don’t understand how he could do that,’ Jules

said afterwards as she and Quinlan and Michael
Moran adjourned to a pub for stiff whiskies.
‘After all she’s been through in the past year
alone.’
‘It’s conceivable,’ Quinlan said, ‘that having
held onto her liberty long enough to give birth
and spend some time with Thomas, and have the
graft, might have had a negative influence.’
‘The grand luxury of eye surgery out on bail,
you mean,’ Moran said ironically.
‘Jesus.’ Jules downed a large gulp of whisky and
winced.
‘It could have been worse,’ Quinlan said.
‘Please don’t start talking about maximum sen¬
tences, Philip,’ Jules snapped. ‘It could - should
- have been nothing at all.’
They all took large swallows of their drinks, all
trying to blot out the memory of how Abigail had
looked being taken down from the dock.
‘All things being equal,’ Quinlan said, ‘and with
tagging, she should be out in, say, fifteen
months.’
‘What happens to her second operation?’
Moran asked. ‘I believe they were wanting to do
that in the summer or autumn.’
‘That’ll have to wait,’ Quinlan said.
348
 ‘Didn’t you know?’ Jules was sarcastic. ‘Abigail’s
partially sighted now^ and this kind of surgery is
“elective”.’
‘Lord save us,’ Moran said, and finished his
drink.
‘Another?’ Quinlan asked.
‘She’s going to miss the rest of Thomas’s
babyhood.’ Jules was close to tears.
‘At least-’ Moran patted her hand ‘-she’ll know
he’s with you and Ollie.’
Quinlan stood up. ‘And God willing, she’ll be
back with Thomas again before his second
birthday.’
‘I didn’t know you were a believer, Philip,’ the
priest said.
‘Every now and then,’ Quinlan said.

Chapter Sixty-Three

It began in Holloway.
Abigail told Jules on the telephone - using her
first, already disproportionately precious, phone
card - that she was all right, that they had kept
her in the hospital wing until they could be
reasonably certain she wasn’t going to crack, and
she and Jules both knew that it had been suicide
watch, but neither used the words, both fighting
to keep the short conversation as upbeat as they
could.
Abigail asked Jules to pass on her special love to
Ollie, whose second birthday it was, and Jules
349
 told her that she would give Thomas a big cuddle
from his mummy.
‘No need/ Abigail said. ‘I told him on our last
night that I was giving him every ounce of my
love^ asked him to hold it inside himself till the
next time we can be together. Daft, of course, but
it made me feel a wee bit better.’
‘Not daft at all,’ Jules said, ‘but I’ll still give him
that extra cuddle.’
‘Philip’s already been to see me,’ Abigail said,
after a moment. ‘He was very comforting.’
She had found, as the long limbo months of
bail had passed, her liking for Quinlan growing
ever stronger, had even begun to foster some
romantic hope that the bachelor solicitor and
Jules might realize how suited they were, and she
had certainly noticed that, even in her depths,
though it was something of a surprise to Abigail
that she was still capable of being romantic.
Only for Jules, not you, not ever again.
‘Anyway, I’m all right,’ she said now. ‘So you
and Michael don’t need to worry about me.’
A lie on that day.
Still a lie a month later.
She had not understood quite how it would be.
Not just the imprisonment itself, nor even
Holloway, with its five bleak floors, six women to
a cell, its grinding grimness and a misery so
deeply entrenched that Abigail sometimes felt, or
imagined, that even with her one still blurry, but
functioning eye, she could see it ingrained in the
walls and floors, descending from the ceilings like
a kind of fallout.
It wasn t that that she minded so much. That
350
was what she deserved.
Killer-mother, mother-killer.
It was being without Thomas, now that she had
been with him, seen him, knew the feel of him,
the sounds of him, the sheer beauty of having her
child. Now that she had been, was, a mother.
Now that she had lost him.
She was still certain, most of the time - not so
certain at night, the lowest, sleepless time - that she
had done the right thing in admitting her guilt
and letting Thomas have his safe, happy start
with Jules and Ollie.
‘But are you sure?'' her friends had all asked her,
over and over again, until she had thought she
might explode with the agony.
So long as he was safe and happy, that was all
that counted.
She did not count.
Having to give him up, even to Jules, the best
person in her life, had almost felled her. The pain
of handing him over that last time, of turning her
back and walking away, had been so intense, so
all-consuming, that she had actually believed, for
several moments, that she might die of it.
She had not, of course, and now here she was,
a number now, convicted at last, with all the
others, locked away from society paying the price
for what they had or, in some cases, she
supposed, had not done. And in many ways, she
felt, this new life was not so terrible, and the
women she lived with were all right to her, inter¬
esting women, many with kind hearts, less rough
than they might have been with her partly
because of her eyes, partly because they under-
351
 stood what it was like to miss children, and
partly, too, Abigail was well aware, because of the
nature of the crime she had committed. And even
those comparatively few women who were
abusive to her, or even violent, had their stories,
she imagined, their reasons for becoming that
way, and she was afraid of them sometimes, but
that was just a part of it, she told herself, part of
her sentence; and it was called punishment, yet
the prison officers she encountered were decent
enough to her, and it had been agreed that when
her next Moorfields check was due she would be
escorted there and back; and they gave her food
to eat and a roof over her head and work to
occupy her, and they let her live^ so it was not, in
truth, nearly bad enough, was it? Not for her.
Mother-killer, killer-mother.
Except for being without Thomas.
That was real punishment.
For the first time.

Jules came to visit, according to regulations, once

a fortnight, while Abigail was waiting to learn if
she was to be moved on. And no one could say
yet where that might be, how far away, and
though her need for checks on her corneal graft
might affect the decision - expensive enough to
arrange for the two officers to take her from and
back to Holloway - her being the mother of a
small baby would have no great impact since she
had made it clear that she had no intention of
letting Thornas come to see her. Not here nor in
any other prison, because it would only, she said,
be for her own selfish sake, would do nothing for
352
him at all^ and so it would make no real differ¬
ence where they sent her.
JuleSj hoping she would change her mind, sent
her regular updates and photographs on both
boys.
Ollie looked wonderful, boisterous and happy.
Thomas looked...
Abigail stared at the pictures of her baby son
for so long that her vision grew even hazier and
her eye hurt.
He looked like a normal, healthy baby, but now
that she could no longer see him in the flesh or
feel or hear him, he seemed unreal to her, like a
mystery.
It was not detachment, nothing as unfeeling as
that, just that appalling, acutely painful, unreality
of looking at his photographs. And the worst of it
to her was that if she could no longer feel him,
then neither could he feel her.

‘Please let me bring him next time,’ Jules said on

her second visit in April. ‘I could bring both the
boys, and Michael could come, too, if you
wanted.’
‘No,’ Abigail said.
‘Just Thomas then?’ Jules said.
‘No.’ Abigail’s eyes were hidden, as usual,
behind her dark glasses.
‘Why not?'' Jules knew the answer to her ques¬
tion, yet it still frustrated her, being so patently
wrong. ‘It wouldn’t hurt him at all - this isn’t a
terrible place, not for the ones who come and go,
certainly not for a young baby.’
‘They search you,’ Abigail said.
353
 ‘They’re not rough/ Jules said. ‘They certainly
wouldn’t be rough with Thomas^ I promise you.’
‘No/ Abigail said. ‘Please stop asking me.’
‘But all you’re doing is adding to your torture,
darling.’
‘Not as much as seeing you carrying him out
again.’
Jules knew that was still only part of it.
‘Don’t you think, even now, that you’re being
punished enough?’
Abigail was silent for a moment.
‘If they move me a long way away,’ she said, ‘I
shan’t want you to come. I don’t want you
driving long distances on motorways.’
‘It’s up to me whether I come or not.’
‘Not if I don’t send you visiting orders.’
‘Don’t even joke/ Jules said.
‘Sorry/ Abigail said. ‘But you’ve got enough on
your plate with Ollie and Thomas and the shop -
you can’t keep loading yourself with me too.’
‘You’re not a load.’ Jules was almost angry.
‘Sorry/ Abigail said again.

Chapter Sixty-Four

‘Wow/ Jules said, on her first visit in June.

‘What do you think’?’ Abigail asked.
Her hair had been cut short, almost savagely,
Jules thought, and while it reasonably suited her
sister-in-law’s good bone structure, it also em¬
phasized her gauntness.
354
 ‘I like it,’ she said.
‘Liar.’ Abigail smiled. ‘It’s easier to manage.’
‘I’m sure,’ Jules said. ‘And I’m not lying. It’s
just that your hair was so beautiful.’
‘Silas would be upset,’ Abigail said.
‘Is that why you did it?’
‘Not really.’ She shrugged. ‘Maybe a touch of
out with the old.’
Jules nodded, shifted in her chair, glanced
briefly at the next table, then swiftly averted her
eyes, and that was an unwritten rule she had
quickly picked up on: keep your nose out — all
anyone could do to protect the meagre-enough
privacy they had with their loved ones.
‘What’s up, Jules?’ Abigail asked.
Jules took a breath. ‘I’ve found a house,’ she
said. ‘A cottage.’
‘Okay,’ Abigail said. ‘Tell me about it.’
‘It’s in Suffolk, just outside a village called
Foldingham.’
‘I’ve never been to Suffolk,’ Abigail said.
‘Very pretty, lots of old villages. Bit flat for some
tastes, but great for cycling, lots of winding lanes.’
Jules smiled. ‘When you get out, after you’ve had
the second op, we could buy some bikes, get fit
together, really get to know the place.’ She
paused. ‘That’s only if you approve of the cottage.
I’ll send pics with my next letter, but I wanted to
tell you about it face-to-face first.’
‘You don’t need my approval,’ Abigail said.
‘I most definitely do,’Jules said, ‘since it’s going
to be our house.’
‘Not legally,’ Abigail said. ‘Not in any way, for a
long time.’
355
 ‘Not all that long/ Jules said, ‘the way time
flies.’
‘Not in here,’ Abigail said.
‘No,’ Jules said. ‘Of course not. Sorry.’
‘No need,’ Abigail said.
‘You have to like it as much as Ollie and I do.’
Abigail smiled.
‘Does Ollie like it then?’
‘Certainly seemed to when I took him.’
‘Then who am I to disagree?’ Abigail said.

The cottage was white stone with a thatched roof

and a pretty garden with trellises, apple trees and
a stone table and bench seat.
Jules had hesitated when she’d first seen the
seat.
So similar to the one Silas had concreted by the
pond over their father’s grave.
Ollie’s and Thomas’s grandfather’s grave.
Just a bench, Jules.
No real similarity at all, she had told herself
firmly, and moved on.
It was perfect, substantial enough for two adults,
two children and an old, rheumatic dachshund,
and it needed a new heating system, and Jules
planned to put in a new bathroom, but the kitchen
was charming, and the living room faced south.
And it held no memories and had the added
blessing of anonymity.
Perfect.

‘It sounds gorgeous,’ Abigail said.

‘It is,’ Jules agreed. ‘It really is.’
‘What about Jules’s Books?’
356
 ‘Fm going to sell it as a going concern,’ Jules
said. ‘Only real stipulation that they keep Drew
on, if he wants to stay.’ She paused. ‘No book¬
shop in Foldingham, so I might think about that.’
‘Won’t you miss London?’ Abigail asked, after a
moment.
‘Don’t think so,’ Jules said. ‘I can always visit.’
‘What about Philip?’
‘What about him?’ Jules’s gaze was calm.
‘I thought you’d been seeing him.’
‘One drink, one dinner,’ Jules said. ‘Hardly
seeing him.’
‘He’s been to see me again,’ Abigail said.
‘I know.’
‘He’s a lovely man,’ Abigail said.
‘I know that, too,’ Jules said.
‘Do they have a law practice in Foldingham?’
Abigail asked.
‘Stop trying to matchmake,’ Jules said. ‘It’ll
never work.’
‘Pity,’ Abigail said. ‘It gives me something nice
to think about.’
‘Afraid I can’t oblige,’ Jules said, ‘not even for
that.’

Chapter Sixty-Five

On the first Saturday of July, eleven days before

Thomas’s first birthday, three days before they
were due to vacate the flat and move to Suffolk,
Jules dropped Ollie at the presbytery for a visit
357
with Michael, and went to Muswell Hill.
She told herself it was on impulse, though it
had, in truth, been lurking in her mind for weeks.
Perhapsshe thought, they won't be in.
If they were not at home, she vowed, that would
be it. She would take it as a sign and accept it and
go away without a backward glance.
A Lexus was parked in the drive.
Jules rang the bell.
Nina Salter, a pretty woman in a white shirt
and jeans, recognized her instantly.
‘Hello,’ she said, warmly. ‘Forgotten some¬
thing?’
‘I hope you don’t mind,’ Jules said. ‘I know I
should have called first.’
‘Not at all.’ The other woman opened the front
door wider, stepped back. ‘Please do come in.’
Jules stayed where she was.
‘It’s just,’ she said, ‘that I’m moving away in a
couple of days, leaving London, and I thought,
maybe-’
‘You’d have a last look round,’ Nina Salter
finished for her.

The memories were in the air, ghosts dancing

around her head. Perhaps, Jules thought, if the
other Salters had been there, defining it more
clearly as their home, she might have felt more
removed, but as it was, with only this friendly
woman present, offering her tea, then tactfully
keeping her distance, the house, for all its new
furniture and clutter of strangers, felt as familiar
as ever.
She had hoped, unrealistically, to bypass the first
358
floor, her need, above all, to go into the garden to
say a final farewell to Paul Graves, but without
risking drawing special attention to the pond,
there was, of course, no way of avoiding a swift
tour of the whole house. And there it all was again,
so starkly, blood-chillingly clear: the room in
which she’d found her dead father, from which she
and Silas had carried his body bag down to the
garden; the master bedroom in which first her
parents had slept, then her mother with Silas, then
her mother with Graham, then herself with...
Ohy Christ.
The music room.
‘I adore that room.’
Nina Salter’s voice broke into the memories.
‘That lovely wall,’ she said, ‘was one of our
main reasons for wanting the house so badly.’
She stood back as Jules came out. ‘And the
garden, of course.’
Jules had managed not to look down at the
floor near the staircase as they had come up, had
steeled herself, kept her chin up, stepped over the
place.
Not this time.
She paused, made herself look down.
Remembered the astonishment and agony in
Silas’s face.
‘Are you all right?’ Nina Salter asked, quietly.
‘Yes,’ Jules said. ‘I’m fine.’
The other woman turned, started back down
the stairs.
‘How about some fresh air?’ she suggested.
‘Please,’ Jules said.

359
 4

The only thing that had changed in the garden

was the amount of care now being lavished upon
it. Lawn recently mown, borders neat, roses
pruned, paths weeded.
Jules walked slowly towards the pond.
It was the one place she had fervently hoped to
be alone, but perhaps because of that moment of
concern up in the corridor, Nina Salter was now
sticking close.
They stepped onto the crazy paving.
The bench was as it had been.
‘Max Brook told us you and your brother did
all this yourselves.’
Jules looked at her. ‘We did.’
‘Marvellous,’ Nina Salter said. ‘We absolutely
love it.’
‘Would you mind very much,’ Jules asked, ‘if I
sat down for just a moment?’
‘Not in the least,’ the other woman said.
Jules went to the bench and sat, and now Nina
Salter withdrew a little way, wandering over to
the pond.
Fm sorry, Jules said, in her head, to her father.
Really so very sorry.
For his death.
For leaving him.
‘Oh.’
She looked up, saw that Nina Salter was frown¬
ing into the pond.
‘What is it?’ Jules asked, and stood up.
‘Look,’ the other woman said, and pointed into
the water.
Jules looked.
Saw a large goldfish lying on the surface near
360
the grey carved stone Cupid.
She felt as if insects were crawling on her skin,
all over her body.
‘That’s the second one in two days,’ Nina Salter
said.
Jules couldn’t speak.
‘Did it happen that way to you?’ the other
woman asked.
Not at all accusing, just enquiring.
‘Once or twice,’ Jules said.
‘Oh, well,’ Nina Salter said.

Jules dreamed that night that three dead goldfish

were lying on the carpet in the corridor near the
top of the staircase, exactly where Silas had died,
and the following night she dreamed of more
dead fish lying on a bed, and Abigail was
standing over them saying that it was all her fault
that they had died.
In daylight hours, and during the evenings, while
she was finishing the packing or feeding Thomas
or trying to convince Ollie that boxing up his own
toys was not the most helpful idea in the world,
she wondered how many more fish would have to
die before the Salters decided there was something
wrong with the pond. Before they decided clean¬
ing might not be enough, before they brought in
an expert who would take away a sample of water
for testing, and come back with the police because
the type of pollutant they’d found could only come
from human remains, and then...
Enough.
She and the children would be in Foldingham
by then, but the police would come to find her
361
there, and by the time she was sent to Holloway,
Abigail would probably have been moved on, so
she would be on her own, and the children would
be taken into care, and-
More than enough.

Chapter Sixty-Six

They moved to Suffolk.

To their untainted white cottage close to the
pretty village where no one knew them or anything
about them. Where Ollie and Thomas both
thrived.
Where Jules met with new neighbours and fami¬
liarized herself with the local shops and nurseries
and schools, and began decorating.
And sent change of address cards to a very few
people, and a stream of photographs of the cottage
and the children to Abigail, promising her that as
soon as her local support network was a little more
established, she would come to visit her.
Michael Moran came to see them, stayed for a
weekend in the spare room.
‘It’s not decorated yet,’ Jules had told him.
‘Do you imagine,’ the priest said, ‘that would
matter to me?’
He told her that he had been to see Abigail the
previous week, had found her looking a little
better, a little more at peace, he thought.
‘Did you know that Philip’s been a few times?’
he asked. ‘And not on legal visits, just to see her?’
362
 Jules said that she did know.
‘What a lovely man he is,’ Moran said, ‘for a
lawyer.’
Jules said that he was.
‘I hope he’ll be coming this way soon,’ he went
on.
‘You never know,’ Jules said. ‘He’s a very busy
man.’
‘I hope you’ve told him he’s welcome,’ Moran
said.
‘He knows where we are,’ Jules said.
‘I think,’ the priest said, ‘maybe he’d like to
know that he would be welcome.’
Jules shook her head.
‘Not you too,’ she said.

She found an empty shop in Foldingham three

doors from Valerie’s, which sold home-made
chutneys and served fresh-ground coffee and
sandwiches.
‘Looks like there’s going to be a second Jules’s
Books,’ she wrote to Abigail in August, telling
her, in the same letter, that even if she wouldn’t
be able to see her on the day itself, she would be
thinking of her on the fifteenth.
Francesca Allen’s birth-and-death-day.
Formerly the worst day in Abigail’s calendar.
Another day now, of course, the thirtieth of
November - the day Silas had died - to rival it.

No one got in touch about dead goldfish or

human remains.
Nothing from the Salters.
Nothing from the police.
363
 Philip Quinlan came to visit, though not to
stay, and good as it was to see him, Jules knew,
with a touch of regret, that the romantic thoughts
both Abigail and Michael Moran had harboured
for them were wishful, nothing more.
She settled into her new life, found a nursery
and creche she trusted, to make it possible for
her to organize the shop and visit Abigail periodi¬
cally.
Still in Holloway, where the authorities had
decided to wait for the stitches to be removed
from her left eye before transferring her to
another prison - probably Styal in Cheshire,
Abigail reported stoically, which was bad news
from the visiting point-of-view, but not the very
worst otherwise, she said, since some prisoners
were allowed to work on farms and gardens.
Humanity all around, Jules thought darkly.
Abigail hadn’t mentioned the suicides that had
been written about in the press, at Styal and in
Holloway, seldom talked about the darker side,
the rule of drugs and tyranny or about the fear of
those things or of the madness, perhaps above all,
the fear of going mad. But despite one assault on
her that Jules knew of, a scare that had resulted
in an unscheduled visit to Moorfields - no
further damage to either eye, mercifully ~ Abigail
had survived, was still surviving, and maybe it
was because she’d been lucky in finding decent
allies inside, or maybe it was because she had,
from the outset, been so hellbent on finally doing
the time she’d always felt she deserved.
Or maybe it was just because Thomas was
waiting for her.
364
 Chapter Sixty-Seven

When Abigail - in and out of Styal after a happily

brief time, now in the open prison at Askham
Grange near York - became eligible for her first
weekend out of prison, she refused to come to
the new cottage, her reasons wholly unrelated to
the distance between Yorkshire and Suffolk. For
one thing, she tried to explain to Jules during one
of their all-too-brief phone calls, she hated the
idea of ruining what would, after all, be the
introduction to her future home.
‘And it would be ruined for all of us,’ she said,
‘knowing I’d have to leave again as soon as I’d
begun to take it in. When the time does come,
really come, I want to know that’s it, home.’
‘But mightn’t it give you hope?’ Jules asked.
‘Something real and solid and lovely to look
forward to? And it is lovely, darling.’
‘It might,’ Abigail replied, honestly. ‘If what I’d
said was the only reason.’
Not even the main reason, not by a long chalk.
Thomas was the main, the only real reason. Not
seeing the cottage, seeing him^ actually being with
him again, and then having to surrender him up
at the end of the weekend, would, she knew,
without doubt, be simply unbearable.
‘And I’m so afraid,’ she told Jules now, ‘I won’t
be able to hide my feelings, that he’ll pick them
up and get upset, and he’s much too young for
365
 i

me to put him through that.’

Jules was silent.
‘And if he doesn’t get at all upset when I leave
him again,’ Abigail went on quickly, afraid of
disintegrating into tears, ‘because he doesn’t
have the slightest sense that I’m his mother - and
how could he? - then to be honest, Jules, I’m not
sure what that might do to me.’ She took a
breath, gritted her teeth. ‘Which is why I’ve asked
if I can stay at the presbytery again, and please
don’t suggest bringing Thomas to see me there,
because it won’t be any easier.’

It was Michael Moran, finally, who came up with

a way for Abigail to at least see how beautifully
Thomas was progressing without any risk of
emotional upheaval for the child himself.
Jules would come to London with the children
and stay at Drew’s flat, and on the Saturday
afternoon in question would take Thomas out for
a gentle stroll at some pre-arranged spot.
‘What if it rains?’ Abigail asked.
‘I daresay Jules will cope with that,’ Moran told
her. ‘And if it thunders, or if Thomas has the
sniffles, or we’re all kidnapped by aliens, we’ll
postpone for another time. Don’t look for
problems, Abigail.’

No rain, colds or alien abductions. Just sunshine

and a gentle breeze as Michael Moran sat beside
Abigail on a bench near the duck pond at
Golders Hill Park, holding her hand tightly as
Jules, close enough to Abigail’s left side, to her
good eye — and it was so much better now that
366
the stitches were gone - picked Thomas up out of
his buggy and lifted him high in the air.
Abigail heard his throaty, baby-chuckle.
Saw his sweet mouth open with delight.
Saw Jules put him down on the ground, saw her
little boy standing on his own two sturdy legs.
Wanted to get up and seize him, to cover him
with kisses and inhale his scent. To run away with
him, anywhere, anywhere.
She sat quite still on the bench, let her mind fly
into the fantasy, embrace it, then crash back
down to earth.
‘Not yet, Abigail,’ Moran said gently. ‘But one
day.’
She could not speak.
Waited until after aunt and baby were gone,
then turned towards her other utterly depend¬
able, true friend, and let him hold her while she
sobbed her heart out.

‘He is a most beautiful child, don’t you think?’

Moran asked her later.
They were back in the sitting room at the
presbytery, drinking the whisky-laced tea he had
made for her himself (better, he’d told her, than
the endless cups of black coffee she was these
days in the habit of drinking).
‘And very happy, thank God,’ he added.
‘Thank Jules,’ Abigail said.
‘Thank God and Jules,’ he said, easily.
She drank some of the hot tea.
‘Do you think,’ she asked after a while, ‘maybe
it might be better for Thomas if I never go to
Suffolk?’ She felt as if her mind was burning with
367
the agony of her thoughts. ‘If I stay out of his life
altogether?’
‘No,’ Moran answered. ‘I do not think that at
all.’
‘But you said yourself that he’s happy.’
‘With his auntie caring for him, and his cousin
for company, yes, of course, and that’s good, very
good,’ the priest said, energetically. ‘But only
because his greatest blessing is yet to come.’
‘Me, you mean.’ Abigail was cynical.
‘Yes, indeed,’ Moran said. ‘His reunion with his
mother.’
‘I’m not so sure,’ Abigail said, slowly. ‘I’ve been
wondering, for a while now, if perhaps I shouldn’t
ask Jules to adopt him.’
The priest’s mouth compressed tightly for a
moment.
‘That is the first time,’ he said, ‘that I’ve heard
absolute and complete shite come from your lips,
Abigail.’
She looked at him in surprise.
‘I use the word advisedly,’ Moran said.

Chapter Sixty-Eight

‘We need to talk some more,’ Abigail told Jules

on the phone three weeks before her scheduled
release date, ‘about my tag.’
‘What more is there to talk about?’ Jules said.
‘Are you sure you’re not going to mind it?
Having people coming into the cottage and con-
368
necting the thing to your phone?’
‘Our phone,’ Jules said. ‘And frankly, I wouldn’t
much care if a platoon of prison officers moved
into the cottage with you, so long as you’re
coming home.’
Abigail paused.
She seldom did that with the phone card
ticking down.
‘I was wondering,’ she said, ‘if maybe I shouldn’t
go to Michael’s till after they take the tag off.’
‘Then stop wondering,’ Jules told her.
‘But what if something goes wrong? What if I
miss my curfew one evening, or commit some
small, stupid crime and they make me go back?’
‘You won’t do either of those things,’ Jules said.
‘But what if-’
‘You’re coming home, Abigail.’

Chapter Sixty-Nine

On the first Thursday morning of May, with the

Yorkshire air smelling fresh after a heavy shower
and the sun sliding out from behind dark clouds,
Michael Moran met Abigail outside Askham
Grange.
‘Hallelujah seems about right to me,’ he said
and embraced her.
Abigail hugged him back briefly, tentatively,
then pulled away.
‘I can’t believe you’ve come such a long way for
me.’
369
 ‘And why wouldn’t I?’
Moran tried to take the plastic HM Prison bags
of accumulated possessions from her, but Abigail
held onto them tightly and he didn’t press her,
just turned and began to lead the way back to his
car.
‘Jules wanted so badly to be here,’ Moran said,
‘but with having to stay overnight and the little
ones to think of, it wasn’t possible.’
‘How are they?’ Abigail’s tone was almost neu¬
tral.
‘They’re all wonderful.’ Moran smiled. ‘And
your son is spectacular, as you’ll see for yourself
in just a few hours.’
‘I could have made my own way, Michael.’
‘No one was going to let you do that,’ he told
her. It s been no hardship, I can assure you. I
stayed the night at a charming B&B.’ He paused.
‘Are you hungry, by the way, Abigail?’
She shook her head, saw they were nearing his
car, saw it was the same old blue Ford Granada
he’d always driven, felt oddly comforted by that,
then remembered that her first duty as a semi-
free person was to see her probation officer.
You know I have to go to Ipswich first,’ she
said.
‘I do,’ Moran said.
He waited as she put her bags into the back,
then got into the passenger seat.
‘All right?’ he asked.
Fine, she said, and fastened her seatbelt.
Two of Moran’s words were going around and
around in her head.
Your son.

370
 A stranger.
She, more to the point, a stranger to him.

They took a break after two hours at a pub just

off the Al, Moran devouring toad in the hole,
Abigail hardly touching a cheese sandwich.
‘Still living on that muck?’ The priest looked
disapprovingly at her black coffee. ‘Would you
not fancy something a little stronger?’
‘No, thank you.’ Abigail smiled. ‘Later, maybe.’
‘I’m sure your probation officer would under¬
stand it was me who’d led you astray.’ Moran
grinned. ‘Maybe you’re right.’
He tried and failed several times on the rest of
the journey to engage her in conversation, to ease
her tension, but she would not be drawn, felt
sufficiently tightly strung to snap in two, thought,
as they approached Ipswich, that if Michael were
to stop the car for long enough again now, she
might consider fleeing. Curiously - or maybe not
so curiously - she found herself suddenly,
intensely, missing her friends at the prison, and
some of them had become good friends, and
they’d looked out for each other, all in the same
sinking, stinking ship, some denying, month after
month, others holding their hands up and getting
on with it; a few more like her, welcoming it,
letting it roll over them, willing it, at times, to
drown them.
And now here she was, sitting in this familiar
car beside this familiar man who was behaving as
if nothing so uncivilized as murder and impris¬
onment had separated them, had ever happened,
come to that, and for the first time Abigail almost
371
 resented Moran, felt isolated from him, trapped
by him.
‘Would you like to stop a while?’ he asked her
suddenly, gently, as if reading her thoughts. ‘Take
another wee break before we get into town?’
‘Yes.’ She paused. ‘No.’
He glanced sideways at her, found it hard, as
always, to penetrate the dark glasses she still
wore. ‘Which is it?’
‘It’s no,’ she said. ‘I’m all right.’
‘Get it out of the way then, yes?’
‘Please,’ she said.
It wasn’t, in any case, the meeting she was
nervous about. That was nothing by comparison
to many of her daily encounters over the past fif¬
teen months.
It was what was to come later.
In the cottage just outside Foldingham.

Chapter Seventy

It was just as Jules had described.

Almost, but not quite, chocolate-box, the clean
white stone, the thatch, the attractive little front
garden. No actual roses around the door, thank
God - though why shouldn’t there have been, she
wondered, angry with herself — what was wrong
with fucking roses round the door?
What was wrong, she answered herself, was
that they were like ads for happy-ever-after.
No such thing.
372
 ‘What do you think?’ Michael Moran broke
into her thoughts.
‘It’s pretty,’ Abigail said.
He pulled off the narrow, peaceful road into the
little driveway.
Abigail stared at the front door, braced herself.
Moran turned off the engine, remained still in
his seat.
‘I don’t know,’ Abigail said tightly, ‘if I can do
this.’
‘You’ll be all right,’ he told her, gently.
The front door opened, and there she was.
Jules, in jeans and a T-shirt, smiling and alone.
‘We thought,’ Moran said quickly, ‘you’d prefer
no fuss.’
Abigail opened her door, fingers numb.
‘Yes,’ she said, and got out.

‘Welcome home,’ Jules said, and hugged her.

‘Thank you.’ Abigail’s mouth felt bone dry.
The hallway was narrow, with a small oval
mirror on one wall beside four brass coat hooks
- one occupied by a waxed jacket, one by a rain¬
coat - and an umbrella stand in the corner near
the door.
Three pairs of Wellington boots were lined up
along the floor. One adult size in green, one bright
yellow in what she supposed was Ollie’s size.
The third pair was very small.
Abigail’s heart began to pound.
‘Here’s Asali,’ Jules said, softly.
Ralph’s old dachshund came out from the back
of the house, very grey now, stomach bowing like
an old, overloaded bookshelf. She wagged her
373
 tail^ but Abigail ignored her^ hardly saw her,
could hardly breathe.
From the other side of a door came the sound
of a child’s laughter.
‘Ollie’s minding Thomas,’ Jules said. ‘They’re
meant to be crayoning.’
Moran came from behind Abigail, noted her
pallor.
‘Need another minute?’ he asked.
‘Abigail?’ Jules looked at her.
‘Why don’t you both go ahead?’ Her lips felt
like cardboard. ‘I’ll follow.’
‘No problem.’ Jules threw Moran a swift
glance, and opened the door.
‘Mummy,Thomas drew on his tummy!’
‘Did he, darling?’ Jules said.
The chintz-covered sofa and armchairs and
small oak coffee table had been pushed out of the
way to create a larger play space for the children,
who were sitting on the floor with large pads of
paper and two open boxes of wax crayons.
‘Look.’ Ollie got up, went over to his cousin,
tugged up his smudgy T-shirt and pointed at the
red and yellow smears.
‘Wow,’ Jules said.
Thomas, how very clever of you,’ Moran said
from behind Jules.
‘Tummy,’ Thomas said, looked up at his aunt
and giggled.
And then he stopped giggling, looking past her
and Father Moran.
At someone else, just entering the room, taking
ott a pair of very dark glasses; a woman with
short, slightly spiky hair almost exactly the same
374
colour as his own.
‘Is that-?’ Ollie broke off, stilled by his mother’s
hand on his head.
Thomas was gazing with open curiosity.
‘Lady,’ he said.
‘Hello, Thomas,’ Abigail said.
And looked down at her son.
Into his beautiful sea green eyes.
Steady^ she told herself.
She drew a deep, steadying breath. Knelt slowly
down on the rug.
Held out her hand.
‘Hello, my darling,’ she said.
Jules let out a small sigh.
‘I think-’ Moran cleared his throat ‘-I think I’ll
go and make some tea.’
‘Is it her?’ Ollie hissed at his mother.
Jules nodded, whispered back: ‘Yes, it is.’
‘Oh,’ Ollie said, more loudly, and then, moving
forward quickly, he tapped his little cousin on the
shoulder. ‘Thomas, this is your mummy.’
Thomas said nothing, just went on staring up
at Abigail.
‘Why is she crying?’ Ollie asked.

Chapter Seventy-One

It was, as Michael Moran had told Abigail it

would be, all right.
The cottage, a homely place, settled around her
comfortably enough. She often felt, during the
375
 first weeks and months, as if her son was a human
puzzle she needed to solve, trying to slide into
place, as he grew and flourished, all the snippets
of information with which Jules had kept her
supplied at every stage of Thomas’s development
up until her release.
He was a beautiful little boy, physically start¬
lingly like his father at that age, but more at ease
with other people, Jules said — recalling tales their
mother had related - than Silas had been.
Less easy, it seemed to Abigail, with her.
My fault,’ she said to Jules. ‘I’m too tense
around him.’
‘It’ll pass,’ Jules said. ‘You’ll start to relax, and
then he will too.’
Ollie, Abigail found, helped her more than
anyone. A warm, natural person, like his mother,
he seemed to comprehend his aunt’s great need
to draw closer to Thomas, and he became her
ally, involving Abigail in games he played with his
cousin, whispering to her about things that
Thomas found particularly enjoyable and, more
important, those he either disliked or feared.

Their anonymity in Foldingham had stuck fast,

for which both Abigail and Jules were profoundly
grateful. With Jules’s Books doing nicely, its
proprietor and Abigail alternated between child¬
care and bookselling and fitting into village life,
and if any of their neighbours were especially
curious about the two women living with their
children, they were too well-mannered to show
It.
Don t you think it’s time you began playing
376
again?’ Jules asked Abigail, six months after she
had returned to Moorfields for her second
corneal graft.
Once the cello had ceased to be evidence for
the prosecution, Jules had sent it to Foote’s in
Golden Square to be repaired, after which she
had taken it to the cottage and placed it in the
attic, waiting for its owner to ask for it, but still it
stood in its case in that dark corner, unclaimed.
‘I can’t,’ Abigail said. ‘It would bring it all back.’
‘But don’t you need to play to be properly you
again?’
‘I’m afraid to play.’ Abigail paused. ‘I’m afraid
to touch it.’
‘I know.’ Jules persevered gently. ‘You could try.
You could always put it away again, after all.’
Abigail did not put it away again.
It was, when she took it from its case, just an
instrument after all, bringing her peace, as it so
often had.
Ollie did not like the sound.
‘Maybe I should stop,’ Abigail said to Jules.
‘Maybe he remembers that night.’
‘He’ll get over it,’ Jules told her firmly. ‘Besides,
Thomas loves it.’
Which was true, making Abigail quite absurdly
happy. Maybe this, she thought, was how Fran¬
cesca must have felt when she was little. And for
once, at least for a short time, her pleasure was
not instantly blown away by guilt, because she
realized, too, that her mother would have loved
the idea of Abigail finding a path to her son -
Francesca’s grandson - through her beloved
music.
377
 i

Via her old cello.

The cello that killed his father.
There it was again^ bales of sackcloth being
heaved back onto her shoulders.
Done your time:, she told herself. Stop now.
Easier said than done.

The secretary of the Foldingham Musical

Society - a woman named Felicity Barr - having
been alerted by neighbours who had heard the
sound of Abigail’s cello through the cottage’s
open windows^ approached her one day in Shad
& Sons, the butcher’s.
‘They’ve had a string trio, apparently, for a good
few years,’ Abigail told Jules later. ‘According to
Mrs Barr, they’d like to make it a quartet.’
‘With you?’ Jules asked. ‘How wonderful.’
‘I told her it was out of the question.’
‘Why should it be?’
‘Because I’m only playing for myself now’
‘And the rest of us, I hope.’ Jules grinned. ‘Ollie
excepted. She paused. ‘You used to play in a
quartet in Glasgow, didn’t you?’
‘Long time ago,’ Abigail said.
Lifetime ago.

She went on refusing for another three weeks, but

then, as Mrs Barr’s persistence and the friendli¬
ness of the other society’s musicians won her over,
she gave in. The music was gentle stuff of a mid-
dling standard, played with great verve and
warmth, and Abigail found it exactly what she
needed.
‘You’re looking wonderful, I must say,’ Philip
378
Quinlan said when he came to visit. ‘Very fit and
happy.’
‘I feel it,’ she said.
Surprised, because it was true.

Chapter Seventy-Two

When Thomas was six years old, he came into his

mother’s bed one night - as he loved to do when
he wanted to chatter or just to cuddle - and told
her that one of his friends at school had a new
little brother, and that he thought he should let
her know that he didn’t much like the sound of
that.
‘You don’t need to worry,’ Abigail told him. ‘If
I ever do have another child, my darling, it won’t
be for a very long time.’
‘But you might, one day?’
‘It’s not very likely,’ his mother said. ‘But it
might be lovely for you to have a wee brother or
sister someday, don’t you think?’
‘No,’ Thomas said. ‘It wouldn’t be lovely.’
‘But think of Ollie,’ Abigail said. ‘You love him,
and he’s mad about you.’
‘Ollie’s different,’ Thomas said. ‘He’s my
cousin, not my brother, and anyway, he was here
before me, wasn’t he.’ He paused. ‘If you had
another baby, I would hate it.’
‘Of course you wouldn’t.’ Abigail put one arm
around him. ‘You’re just being a bit silly, aren t
you, sweetheart?’
379
 Thomas snuggled very close to her^ the way he
often did^ the way he knew she loved more than
anything, and after a minute she put both her
arms around him, and he knew she was waiting
for him to go to sleep.
‘That’s right,’ she said, softly. ‘Go to sleep.’
She felt his warmth, the beautiful, precious
solidness of him, and remembered, suddenly, his
father telling her, a long time ago, in their
Phoenix-Abeguile days, that the first time he had
seen her, when she had been carrying her cello
out of the Wigmore Hall, it had made him think
of how she would look carrying a child.
Thinking about the cello and about Silas made
her tense up.
Thomas snuggled even closer, laid his cheek
against her breast.
Looked up at her sideways.
‘If you ever have another child,’ he said, ‘I
might have to kill it.’
‘Thomas,’ Abigail said, quite sharply. ‘You
mustn’t say things like that.’
‘Why not?’Thomas asked. ‘Ollie says you killed
my father.’
Abigail felt her heart turn over and her stomach
shrivel.
She looked down at her son’s face. His cheek
was still resting on her breast, only one eye fully
visible.
Cold, suddenly, and as hard as a green pebble.
She felt very nauseous.
^ Is it true, he asked, in that same, normal tone,
that you killed your mother and father, too?’
Abigail pushed him away, scrambled out of
380
bed, ran into the bathroom and was violently and
repeatedly sick.

After it had finished, as she sat back, still on the

floor, leaning against the wall for support,
pressing a wet towel to her face, she realized that
Thomas was standing in the doorway, in his
favourite red dinosaur pyjamas, watching her.
‘It’s all right,’ he said, softly, uncertain now. ‘I
don’t really mind.’
Abigail opened her mouth, tried to speak, but
no words came.
‘It’s okay. Mummy,’ Thomas said. ‘About my
father.’
The hand holding the wet towel trembled,
suddenly, violently.
‘It’s all rights'Thomdi^ said again. ‘Someone
told Ollie at school, but Auntie Jules told him it
was an accident.’
He looked, Abigail saw, scared, frightened,
perhaps, of the effect his words had had upon
her.
Still shaky, she put out a hand to him.
Thomas remained in the doorway.
‘I’m sorry. Mummy.’ His voice wobbled.
‘Nothing for you to be sorry about, my love,’
Abigail said, weakly.
He stepped into the bathroom, stopped again.
‘I wouldn’t really kill a baby,’ he said.
‘I know you wouldn’t,’ Abigail said, her voice
choked.
He came running then, flung his arms around
her, so fiercely that the back of her head struck
the wall. Good pdifi) she thought. Passion pain.
381
 ‘Oh, God,’ she said, putting her own arms
around him.
He leaned back, resting all his weight against
her forearms, and swiftly Abigail linked her
hands together behind him to make him safe.
He was looking intently into her face.
‘Have you any idea,’ Abigail asked, ‘how much
I love you, Thomas Graves?’
‘More than anything?’ he asked back.
More than anything or anyone—’ she answered
as most mothers reply to that same question ‘—in
the whole wide world.’
His eyes were wet now, softest green again.
Phoenix’s eyes.
‘That’s all right then. Mummy,’ Thomas said.

382
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■i:
 Guilt
HILARY NORMAN
‘Genuinely scary. . . touches of sheer horror. . .
a real page-turner^ Daily Telegraph

Abigail Allen’s dark secret is that when she

was thirteen years old^ she was responsible for
killing her parents and boyfriend in an
accident. Now a cellist with a modest career,
guilt has become Abigail’s most constant
companion. Charming, persuasive Silas Graves
is a photographer who knows about her past
but loves her in spite of it — maybe even
because of it. The women he’s loved most in
his life, his mother and his sister, have both, in
his eyes, betrayed him. Abigail is different.
Abigail won’t betray him. She’d better not.

ISBN 0-7505-2372-7

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