‘What then?’ she asked.
‘Then?’
‘After Christmas.’
‘Oh. Well, we’ll see, I suppose.’
He took a step towards her, and brushed his mouth against her cheek again. ‘Sorry. Best this way.’
She stood immobilised as he walked past her and away.
Later, when she got into her car, she remembered Brock’s unprecedented invitation to them both to dinner that evening, and swore under her breath. She didn’t want to call it off. She wanted to meet the mysterious Suzanne, and her children. His children?
As some kind of compensation, she had bought not one but two ridiculously expensive bottles of wine. She stood clutching them on Brock’s doorstep, the wind whistling round her upturned coat collar, turning her nose red, and listened to the heavy footsteps coming down the stairs inside.
‘Kathy! Hello. Come in out of the cold.’ Brock looked over her shoulder. ‘Did you come separately?’
‘Leon’s not coming, Brock. Sorry.’
‘Oh dear. Everything all right?’
‘Not really, no. Bit of a misunderstanding.’
‘You sound glum,’ he said, closing the front door behind her and taking the bottles so that she could take off her coat. He looked concerned, but then a thought seemed to strike him and his expression changed to a little smile.
Kathy regarded this with surprise and some irritation. She didn’t enjoy the idea of him finding her and Leon a joke.
‘These are very good,’ he said, examining the labels on the bottles, and the little smile broke out again.
Kathy wasn’t in the mood for private jokes she didn’t understand, especially if, as seemed likely, they were at her expense. ‘What’s funny?’
‘Oh… just that I’ve been trying to figure out how to tell you and Leon that I’m on my own too.’
‘You are?’
‘Yes. Suzanne and the children have gone, I’m afraid. Sorry. As you say, a bit of a misunderstanding.’
‘Oh dear…’
Kathy didn’t know what to say. Neither of them did. They stood there in the small hallway looking uncomfortable. The more she thought about it, the more awkward it became. They saw each other continually at work but rarely outside, and here they were forced into a social intimacy that probably neither of them welcomed, because of partners who had now abandoned them.
‘They weren’t ill, were they?’ she asked, for the sake of something to say.
‘No, nothing like that. Leon?’
‘No, no. Actually I never even had the chance to tell him you’d invited him. It’s not his fault. I’m sure he would, er, want me to apologise… for him.’
‘Fine, fine.’
She was beginning to understand his smile. What else could you do? She grinned back.
He led the way up the stairs and into the kitchen where he uncorked and poured the wine. She couldn’t see any signs of food preparation.
‘Absent friends,’ Brock said. ‘Mmm, this is good. Bad luck on them. Here, let me show you something.’
He picked up the bottle and led her up the next half flight to the living room. It was exactly as Kathy remembered it, except that in the centre of the room, on the rug in front of the hissing gas fire and surrounded by the sofa and armchairs, on the very spot where she had once stabbed a man to death, was a small pile of garden rubbish. She shuddered and turned away.
‘Ah,’ she heard him say. She realised he must have noticed her reaction. ‘The spot, yes. I’d almost forgotten. You haven’t been back since, have you? Are you all right? Sit down.’
She wasn’t all right, she discovered. She could feel the blood draining from her head, and sat down firmly on one of the armchairs, willing herself not to pass out in front of him. She was startled by the force of her reaction to seeing the place again.
She forced herself to speak, the blood buzzing in her ears. ‘Don’t you mind? I really thought you’d have sold this house after it happened.’ She was glad now that the others weren’t here. She wouldn’t have wanted to have to explain.
‘No need. The blood didn’t stain the polished floorboards. I only had to buy a new rug.’
He was being deliberately prosaic because he had seen now that she was having trouble, and this was his way of helping her. She grimaced in acknowledgement. She had killed the man, but in self-defence, when she disturbed him after he’d half-killed Brock. He’d had a blade-she pictured it now, glittering in his hand-and she’d been unarmed. The only weapon available had been the long fork with which Brock toasted bread and crumpets on the gas fire, and with which she had finally, unavoidably, stabbed the man in the throat.
Her eyes turned to the mantelpiece above the fire, and it was hanging there.
‘Christ, Brock,’ she whispered. ‘You’ve still got the bloody toasting fork.’
She took a gulp of her wine, the glass trembling wildly in her hand.
‘You didn’t tell the children, did you?’
‘No. Are you sure you’re all right, Kathy? Maybe a brandy would be better?’
She shook her head, trying to find words of conversation. She wanted him to talk, about anything else. ‘So, what’s with the compost heap?’
‘Ah yes, I’ve been sitting here for much of the day contemplating that’-he waved a hand at the debris- ‘trying to learn the appropriate lessons.’
Kathy noticed a half-empty bottle of whisky and an empty glass on a side table, and wondered just how much help he’d had in his contemplation.
‘What is it?’
‘It is, or was, my prize bonsai. Juniperus chinensis, Chinese juniper. It was started from advanced stock on VJ Day, nineteen forty-five, by my father. About the only thing of his that I still possessed, that and the bonsai tools. He was an enthusiast, a great admirer of Japanese culture.’
‘So what happened to it?’
‘Two children by the name of Stewart and Miranda. They thought I was getting a bit too pally with their grandmother-’
‘Suzanne is their grandmother?’
‘Yes, of course. You didn’t think they were ours, did you? Anyway, they decided to terminate their visit by doing something so unspeakable that I’d be forced to kick them all out. Quite smart really, for eight and five years old respectively.’
‘And did you? Kick them out?’
‘No, of course not. But the plan worked anyway. Suzanne was so mortified that she insisted on taking them away. I told her not to be so daft, but she wouldn’t stay. I think it was the cold-blooded way they did it that bothered her most. I’d told them about the tree, and they knew it meant something to me. They got up very early this morning and went out to the yard, uprooted it, brought it in here and systematically chopped it up with the bonsai tools. Quite an effort. They owned up to it straight away. Wanted me to see how incorrigible they would be.’
He reached over with the bottle and refilled Kathy’s glass.
‘I wish they hadn’t chosen that spot to do it,’ she said. ‘But why were they so upset at the idea of you and their gran?’
‘Their father ran away with some woman a couple of years ago, and then their mother went off the rails a bit. You know, feelings of rejection, depression, guilt…’
‘Yes…’ Kathy sipped her wine.
‘Then some rich bloke came along. Offered her a great time on some Greek island, but kids not welcome. So she got her mum to take them, just for a week or two. That was a year ago.’
‘Oh.’
‘Yes. So men are very bad news. They break up the family. Destroy their security. It had happened twice, and they weren’t going to let it happen again. They were going to hang on to their gran at all costs. Can’t really blame
