Rut Fry said nothing at all. Her expression didn’t change. She took the picture by the frame and wiped it carefully with the cloth, rubbing at the glass to get the smears from the surface. And again she knew exactly where it had to go. This was one instance where Cooper had his own idea of the right place, but Fry didn’t need telling. She hung it over the fireplace and positioned it dead centre, making minute adjustments to its angle until she was satisfied it was perfect. She stood back and examined it, then took the cloth again and wiped off her own faint fingermarks. He was astonished to see that she did it gently, almost tcndcrlv. He had never seen her do anything in that way before.
The picture was the one of his father in his police uniform, lined up proudly with his colleagues — the last photograph taken of him before he was killed in the street. The way Fry caressed it with the cloth meant more to Cooper than any amount of words she could have used. Her instinctive
y
reverence made his throat spasm uncomfortably. He wished she would stop now, and drink her damn coffee. He thrust the mug at her, forcing her to put down the cloth and stop what she was doing. He couldn’t think of a thing to say for
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a few moments, until he managed to get his vocal cords working again.
‘Where exactly were you passing on your way to?’ he said, Hnally.
The tone o( his voice made Fry look at him quizzically.
‘I’m not always working, you know. I have my own private life.’
‘Right.’
There was a small noise from the direction of the kitchen, a sort of tentative chirrup. Cooper turned and saw a broad, black face and a yellow eye that peered at Fry, hoping for attention.
‘What on earth is that?’ she said. ‘That’s Randy,’ said Cooper. ‘He’s sort of part of the property.’
Fry stared at Cooper, then back at the cat, which had decided not to come any closer, after all.
‘It’s so typical,’ said Fry. ‘Only you, Ben, would take on a Hat that came complete with its own stray.’
After that, they both seemed to run out of things to say. Fry looked at the window. Cooper could sec that she was thinking oi where she had to go next. She had put in an appearance, done her duty, and now she was ready to move on to more important business. She began to move towards the door, then stopped and pulled something from her pocket. It was a small object wrapped in blue paper.
‘I don’t like you all that much, as you know,’ she said. ‘But I brought you this.’
‘Thank you.’
Cooper took it and weighed it in his hand. It was solid, and heavy for its size. He began to tug at the tape scaling the parcel.
‘No need to open it now,’ said Fry. She swung her scarf round her neck. ‘I can sec you’ve still got things to do.’
‘I suppose so.’
‘Sec you on Monday, then.’
Cooper watched her slither down Welbeck Street. Presumably, she had been obliged to leave her car at the bottom of the street because of the number of vehicles parked outside the
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houses. Fry didn’t look back, and she had soon disappeared. Hehad noticed when she was in the Hat that she was wearing new shoes. He wondered whether she had bought some that had a bit of grip in the soles.
He went back to the sitting room and opened the little parcel. She had bought him a clock.
c*
Cooper considered the advantages of living alone. He looked forward to being able to listen to the omnibus edition of The Xrc/ierj on Sunday morning, without competition from videos or pop music or daytime children’s TV. And, because he was on his own, it would hardly seem necessary to get dressed or have a shave on his days off. As long as he didn’t have to go out of the house, no one would sec him. He could slop around in his dressing gown or a pair of jogging bottoms for as long as he liked. He could sit at the kitchen table and drink coHee and eat toast and read the Sunday papers all morning, if he really wanted. If he had thought to put an order in to have any papers delivered, that is. At the moment, all he would be able to do while drinking his coffee and eating his toast was stare at the cat. Maybe he would have to unpack the box oil books he had brought.
o
Finally, he realized why his thoughts were running on so last. He was babbling to himself to cover the silence in the house. He had never known a silent house in his life. He had a foreboding of how depressing, how desperate, even how frightening it would be to come home every night to a dark and empty house. Every evening, the post would still be lying on the doormat where it had fallen in the morning; a single unwashed coffee mug would be in the sink where he had left it after breakfast because he had been in a rush to get to work again; the house would have that
o o ‘
feel of having gone along in its own world without him all day, that his presence in it was unnecessary, maybe even unwelcome. That wasn’t what you could call a home.
The Hrst taste of loneliness was sour and unexpected, a burst of metallic bitterness on the back of his tongue. He remembered once breaking a tooth playing rugby at school, when he had got a boot in the face attempting a foolhardy tackle. The sudden
23+
gush of blood in his mouth had given him a moment of cold panic and made him feel nauseous. He had felt the taste of his own life trickling between his teeth and mingling with his saliva. Loneliness was like that taste. Just like the bitterness of the blood on his tongue.
o
The sound of every little movement made by the cat was reassuring. The touch of its claws on the tiles in the conservatory, the rustling as it changed position in its basket, even the faint snore when it was sleeping. These were now the sounds he listened for. Without them, the house would have been dead and hostile. Like a narrow crack of light entering his brain, he thought he had an inkling for the first time of why Diane Fry spent so much time
