‘You reckon?’
‘You seem to be very highly regarded. Everybody knows you round the division. Not to mention the general public.’
‘Oh veah, the public,’ he said dismissivelv.
‘If they had a vote on it, you’d be mayor by now.’
‘Yeah? Well, we all know how much we can trust them.’
But Fry had done her apologies now and was getting fed up with his reluctance to shake off whatever was making him so moody and morose. She watched him bounce the ball again
J o
and swing his racquet at it, hitting a slow lob that curled back towards them.
‘You know, it must be really nice to have so many friends,’ she said, ‘and such a close family too.’
^
He took his eye off the ball, puzzled by the change in her voice.
‘I don’t suppose you’ll ever move away from here, will you, Ben? You’ll marry somebody, maybe some old sdhoolfriend, and you’ll settle down here, buy a bungalow, have kids, get a dog,
J ^ O ‘ ‘ O O*
the whole bit.’
‘Sure,’ he said. ‘It sounds great.’
‘I can’t think of anything worse,’ she said, and smashed the
j O 7 ‘
ball into the ceiling lights.
Charlotte Vernon had found Daniel in Laura’s room. On the dresser was a pile of letters that had been tied neatly in a pink ribbon. Charlotte had seen the letters before, but had not touched them. She had not touched anything of Laura’s yet. It seemed too much of an acknowledgement that she had gone for ever.
‘I wrote to tell her that I would be home last weekend,’ said Daniel. ‘She wanted to talk to me, she said.’
‘What about?’
‘I don’t know. It sounded serious. I told her I would be home for the weekend. But I wasn’t. I didn’t come home.’
162
‘You always wrote to her far more than you wrote to us, Danny.’ ‘To you? You never needed letters — you always had your own concerns. But Laura needed contact with the outside world. She felt she was a prisoner here.’
‘Nonsense.’
‘Is it?’
Daniel turned over another letter and ran his eves briefly over his own scrawl. His mother walked to the window and fiddled with the curtains as she peered down into the garden, squinting against the sunlight reflecting from the summerhouse. She moved a porcelain teddy bear back into its proper place on the window ledge, from where it had been left by the police. It was a Royal Crown Derby paperweight with elaborate Imari designs on its waistcoat and paws, a gift to Laura from Graham after a business trip. Charlotte averted her eyes from the room and turned to stare at her son, studying his absorption until she became impatient.
‘What exactly are you looking for, Danny? Evidence of your own guilt?’
Daniel went red. ‘I certainly don’t need to look for yours. Yours or Dad’s. It’s been pushed in my face for long enough.’
‘Don’t talk like that.’
Charlotte had been upset herself by the fact that her son had failed to return to his home, even for a day or two, between the doubtful attractions of a holiday spent in Cornwall with his friends and the peculiar sense of obligation that drew him back to university so long before the start of term. She didn’t know the reason he stayed away. Now she pulled a face at the streaks of dirt on Daniel’s jeans, the scuffs on his shoes and the powerful smell of stale sweat. He looked tired, his fleshy face shadowed with dark lines and a day’s growth of stubble. He reminded her so strongly of his father as he had once been, nineteen years ago,
O J ‘ J O ‘
before success and money had superimposed a veneer of courtesy and sophistication. Graham, too, had been a man whose passions were barely kept in check.
‘There’s one missing,’ said Daniel suddenly.
‘What?’
163
I
‘A letter. I wrote to Laura from Newquay last month. But it’s not there; there’s a gap. Where is it.’ She always kept them a
together.’
‘The police have been through them,’ said Charlotte uncer f|
tainly. ‘I suppose they might have taken one.’
‘What the hell for?’
‘I don’t know. It depends what was in it, doesn’t it?’ ^
‘Are they allowed to do that?’ ‘I suppose your father will have given them permission. You’ll have to ask him. I don’t know what they were looking for.’
