faded against the pink glow that was Cambridge. She doubted tomorrow would be as fine.
When her eyes had adjusted, she stepped from the terrace onto the lawn, crossed it swiftly, and let herself out the gate at the bottom of the garden. There was no moon, but she knew the path to the river almost by instinct. A shadow moved beneath the chestnuts at the water’s edge. As she drew closer the shape coalesced into a man, stocky, starlight gleaming faintly from the surface of his oiled jacket and his silver hair.
“Nathan.”
“I thought you might come. Kit giving you fits again?” So rich was his voice in the dark that it seemed to her it might stand alone, disembodied, a condensation of personality.
“It’s these dreams,” she said, huddling a bit more tightly into her sweater as she felt the chill rising from the river. “It’s odd—he never had nightmares when he was small.” She sighed. “I suppose it has to do with Ian, although if he misses Ian he never says so. And he won’t tell me what the dreams are about.”
“Children’s capacity for forming little hedgehog balls round their suffering never ceases to amaze me. Our adult propensity for exposing all our traumas to the world must be a learned behavior,” he said, chuckling, but she heard the sympathy in it.
“It’s silly of me, but sometimes I forget you’ve been through all this. I just see you as Nathan, complete in yourself, without all these family appendages that most of us carry round.” Then, as she realized what she’d said, she gasped and put a hand to her mouth. “Oh, Nathan, I’m so sorry. That was incredibly thoughtless of me.”
This time he laughed outright. “On the contrary, I take it as a compliment. Have you any idea how hard I’ve worked these last few years to achieve that sort of self-sufficient independence? At first it was merely a defense against the well-meaning—I couldn’t bear being fussed over—and then it became something I needed to do for myself. I’d had twenty years of operating as one half of a whole, and there were times when the task seemed insurmountable.” He paused, as if aware of the weariness that had crept into his voice, then added more heartily, “And as for my girls, you just haven’t met them yet. You’ll have no doubt that I’m fully parentally qualified, though I have to admit I sometimes find it difficult to believe they’re my biological offspring. Perhaps all parents feel that way.”
How little she knew him, thought Vic, and how odd that she felt so comfortable with him, as she had never been one to form easy alliances. She must have come to All Saints’ shortly after his wife died, and she remembered having a vague awareness of him as an attractive, if somewhat abstracted, man with whom she exchanged occasional pleasantries over sherry in the SCR. But their paths rarely crossed outside college functions, and it was not until she began her preliminary research on Lydia Brooke that she’d learned Nathan was Brooke’s literary executor.
When approached, he’d been helpful enough in supplying Lydia’s materials, but he had not offered any reminiscences. It was only when she’d mentioned living in Grantchester by chance one day that he’d responded in a more personal way, and since Ian’s disappearance they had spent more and more time together.
“Listen.” Nathan put a finger to his lips. “Do you hear that?”
Vic held her breath, listening. She heard the blood in her ears, then on the threshold of sound, a shriek. “What is it?” she whispered.
“A barn owl. It takes some perseverance to hear them these days; they’re becoming quite rare. Reminds me of my childhood, that and the sound of the tree frogs. I loved the river then. Sometimes I would imagine it moving in my blood.”
“Kit feels that, too, I think. I envy you both a bit. I appreciate this”—she gestured round her—“but it’s in an objective way. What you and Kit have seems to be almost organic. He can stay down here for hours at a time, watching bugs in the grass.” She smiled.
“A naturalist in the making,” Nathan said thoughtfully. “I’d like to know him better. Does he read? He doesn’t
“Oh, he’s capable enough at games, and he does what’s necessary to fit in at school, but his heart’s not really in it. And it’s odd, because he’s always been ferociously competitive about his schoolwork—even more so since Ian left. The other day I found him crying over an exam score, and then he was furious with me for catching him at it. He didn’t speak to me for two days.” Vic hadn’t told anyone this, and now she didn’t know if she felt relieved, or guilty for betraying Kit’s confidence. These were the sort of things meant to be shared by parents, she thought, but she wouldn’t have told Ian even had he been round to tell. He’d have gone all pompous and preachy about it, and he’d somehow, as always, manage to miss the point.
“Poor kid,” Nathan said, his jacket rustling as he moved in the dark. “Perhaps you could encourage him to love the acquisition of knowledge for its own sake, separate from the carrot system of education.”
Vic heard a soft plop from the direction of the river. A frog? Or a fish jumping? Did fish sleep? she wondered. She thought of asking Nathan, then dismissed it as being too humiliatingly ridiculous. How ignorant she was of anything outside her own little area of expertise. Tonight the river seemed merely a dark void in the landscape—she had never thought of it being full of life as complicated and messy as her own.
Now she found that if she stared long enough at the water she could see light and movement, the reflection of starlight filtering through the chestnut branches. “So how do I go about it, teaching Kit to love knowledge for itself?”
“Look at yourself,” said Nathan softly. “Have you forgotten why you do what you do? That’s a start. And I’ve some books he might like. Why don’t you come up to the cottage with me?” he added, cupping a hand round her elbow. “I’ve something for you, as well.”
Vic found that her odd, new awareness had spread from the perception of outward phenomena to her body. She felt the heat from Nathan’s hand through the bulky sleeve of her cardigan and the sensation left her suddenly ripe, aching, weak-kneed with desire. Oh, Lord, she had forgotten this, the strength of it, and she was not prepared. She thought of Nathan’s hand on her breast and stumbled, gasping.
“Are you all right?” He tightened his grip on her arm.
“Fine,” she said, a bit breathlessly, fighting laughter, trying hard to stamp down the singing joy rising in her. “Just fine.”
* * *
“Fancy a drink?” Nathan asked. “Wine or—”
“Whisky,” Vic interrupted decisively. She stood before the fire in his kitchen-dining area as if she were cold, but
