Candlenight

Claire passed him his coffee. 'Oh, Giles, let's not get—'

'I know, I know, I'm sorry, it's the beer. Bit pissed. But it is rather wonderful, isn't it? Not for the old boy, of course, but we've all got to go sometime and, bloody hell, he couldn't have chosen a better time for us, could he?'

'You can't say that yet,' Claire said. 'They might not even let you do it.'

She'd been waiting up for him with the news, that mischievous little tilt to her small mouth; she knew something he didn't. It was as near as Claire ever came to expressing excitement.

Giles had both hands around his coffee cup, squeezing it.

'Let them try and stop me,' he said. 'Just let the bastards try. Did it say on the news what his majority was?'

'I don't think so. They may have. It was still dawning on me, the significance of it, you know.'

'Right then.' Giles sprang to his feet. 'Let's find out.'

'Will you get anybody? It's nearly one o'clock.'

'No problem.' He was already stabbing out the night desk number on the cordless phone. Standing, for luck, under the framed blow-up of Claire's first photograph of the cottage, the one taken from between the two sycamores at the entrance to the lane. They'd taken down a Michael Renwick screenprint to make space for it on the crowded buttermilk wall above the rebuilt fireplace.

'Peter, that you? Oh, sorry, look is Peter there? It's Giles Freeman. Yes, I'll wait.'

There were blow-ups of five of Claire's photographs on the walls. None of the award-winning Belfast stuff, nothing heavy. Just the atmosphere pics: the old woman collecting driftwood on the shore, the shadowed stillness of a cathedral close at dusk, that kind of thing. The picture of the cottage was the only one that hadn't appeared in a paper or a magazine. Giles loved it. He was still amazed by Claire's ability to move at once to the right angle, to link into a scene.

'Peter. Listen, sorry to bother you. but I've just heard about Burnham-Lloyd, the MP for Glanmeurig. Was there time for you to run it in the final?' Giles sniffed. 'Well I think you should have. Peter. I really do, even if it is only Wales.' He and Claire exchanged meaningful glances.

'Anyway, listen Peter, what was his majority?'

Giles waited. Claire perched on the edge of the sofa and cupped her small face in her slender hands, short, fair hair tufting through the fingers. She wore a cream silk dressing gown and wooden sandals. Giles, re-energized by the news, eyed her lustfully.

'Bloody hell.' he said. 'That's not bad. That's not at all bad. Thank you, Peter, thank you very much indeed.'

He cleared the line and made a whooshing sound.

'Narrow?' Claire asked.

Giles said, very slowly and precisely, 'Eight hundred and seventy-one.' His freckles were aglow again. He tossed the phone almost to the ceiling and caught it. 'Eight hundred and seventy fucking one! It's marginal, Claire! Plaid's been slowly gaining on him for years! Oh God, I really do feel something's working for us.'

'I suppose,' Claire said thoughtfully, 'I feel a bit scared now. It's all coming at once. Propelling us into something. Out of our control.' She was still feeling upset, actually, by her mother's reaction. She'd phoned her while Giles was out, to explain about the inheritance, tonight being the first opportunity since her parents had returned from their cruise.

Giles was hungrily pacing the carpet 'What I'll suggest is a bit of a recce. Zoom up there this weekend. Take the air. Talk to people.'

'I can't. I've got that thing for the Observer in Norwich.' Claire was glad to put it off. She'd been frightened by her own emotional response when they'd first gone to look at the cottage. The feeling that somehow she was meant to live there. Now she wanted to slow things down, give them time to think. Giles, however, had to be firing on all cylinders or none at all.

'Well, all right, next weekend.' he said impatiently. 'You see, what we have to do is build this up as a really significant mid-term by-election, knock up a couple of prelim pieces, hype it up a bit. We can have the cottage as our base, save them hotel bills and stuff. And while we're there… I mean, with the run-up and everything, we're talking well over three weeks for a by-election campaign. So we can do all the groundwork, either for persuading them they really need a full-time staffer in Wales or setting up some decent freelance outlets. I would have sounded people out tonight, but they were all being so bloody snide and superior.'

Slow down, slow down, Claire yelled inside her head. But Giles in overdrive was not open to reasonable argument. She wanted to tell him about her mother, but in his present state of drink- enhanced euphoria he wouldn't take it in. And even when stone cold sober, hearing what she'd had to say — the bitch — would only harden his determination.

As expected, her mother had been stiff and resentful, so Claire herself had gone on the attack. 'Mother, why didn't you tell me he was dead? Why did I have to find out from the solicitor?'

Elinor made an impatient noise. 'Because… Oh, look, we only found out the day we left. I mean, really, what was I supposed to do, put it in a postcard from Greece? Weather fine, old Rhys dead?'

Old Rhys. Claire's grandfather.

'Mum — I can't believe this — he was your father.'

A distant snort.

'I know, I know,' Claire snapped. 'But that doesn't alter anything, does it?'

'It clearly altered things for him, if he's left his awful hovel to you. He only ever saw you once. I wonder what he did with his money.'

'It seems.' Claire said icily, 'that he left most of it to the Church.'

There'd been a silence, then Elinor gave her a short, false cackle. 'Oh dear, do excuse me. It's simply that the idea of God and my father discovering each other in that ghastly Welsh backwater is rather too much to take at this hour of the night.'

Claire had expected bitterness, had been ready for some of this. But nothing as unpleasant as…

'What happened to his whores. I wonder. Perhaps he was predeceased. Do you think he died alone and unloved? I do hope so.'

This is awful. Claire thought. She knew her mother did not need the money. But she must, all the same, have hoped for some token in the will, a sign that Thomas Rhys even remembered once having a wife and a daughter… as well as a grandchild.

'Did you — tell me the truth now. Claire — did you ever go to visit him, you and Giles?'

'Of course not! I mean…' There had, it was true, often been times when Claire had felt powerfully drawn to seek out the mysterious Judge Rhys. That tug of curiosity edged with an undefined sense of guilt and longing, whenever she'd come across a picture of Welsh mountains on some holiday brochure. And then there'd been that electric moment when she'd first seen the village — a mere three months ago. but it fell to Claire as if she'd known it all her life in some unexplored part of her soul.

'Then why?' Elinor's voice was flat and hard. 'Apart from a desire to spit on your grandmother and me. Why? Can you explain it?'

'No,' Claire said in a small voice. 'Mother, look, I–I know you must be terribly hurt—'

'Don't patronise me, Claire. I'm extremely glad the old swine's gone, I didn't want a penny of his money and I shall be thankful when you've sold that damn house for as much as you can get.'

'Sell it?'

'Well you're hardly going to live in it are you?' her mother had said.

'I've been thinking,' Giles was saying. 'Perhaps we should make contact with a few of the local tradesmen — plumbers, carpenters. Book them in advance. Sometimes guys like that can be jolly hard to find in rural areas, and they need lots of notice. Then we're going to need an automatic washing machine and all that. We shall have to work pretty fast.'

'Yes, but Giles… what if the by-election goes ahead before probate's complete. There's no way round that, you know. We can't let workmen into a house that isn't ours yet.'

Claire somehow felt she had to create as many obstacles as she could to counteract the awesome pull of the village. To make sure that it was the right thing to do. that it really was meant.

'Won't happen.' Giles said confidently. 'No way there'll be a by-election until all the party conferences are