“I missed you, too,” I said, and gave him a wicked grin. “Mostly because of hospital food.”
“Typical,” said Rafe.
For a moment I was sure Justin was going to say something else, but then Daniel reached over to refill his glass and Justin blinked, the flush subsiding, and picked up his knife and fork again. There was one of those content, absorbed silences that go with good food. Something rippled round the table: a loosening, a settling, a long sigh too low to hear. Un ange passe, my French grandfather would have said: an angel is passing. Somewhere upstairs I heard the faint, dreamy note of a clock striking.
Daniel cut his eyes sideways at Abby, so subtly I barely caught it. He was the one who had done the least talking, all evening. He was quiet on the phone videos, too, but this seemed to have a different flavor to it, a concentrated intensity, and I wasn’t sure whether this just didn’t translate well onto camera or whether it was new. “So,” Abby said. “How’re you feeling, Lex?”
They had all stopped eating. “Fine,” I said. “I’m not supposed to lift anything heavy for a few weeks.”
“Are you in any pain?” Daniel inquired.
I shrugged. “They gave me supercool painkillers, but most of the time I don’t need them. I’m not even gonna have much of a scar. They had to sew up all my insides, but I only got six stitches on the outside.”
“Let’s see them,” Rafe said.
“God,” said Justin, putting his fork down. He looked like he was seconds from leaving the table. “You’re a ghoul. I have no desire to see them, thanks very much.”
“I definitely don’t want to see them at the dinner table,” Abby said. “No offense.”
“Nobody’s seeing them anywhere,” I said, narrowing my eyes at Rafe-I was ready for this one. “I’ve been getting poked and prodded all week, and the next person who goes anywhere near my stitches gets his finger bitten off.”
Daniel was still inspecting me thoughtfully. “You tell ’em,” said Abby.
“Are you sure it doesn’t hurt?” There was a pinched, white look around Justin’s mouth and nose, as if even the thought had him in pain. “It must have hurt, at first. Was it bad?”
“She’s fine,” said Abby. “She just said so.”
“I’m only asking. The police kept saying-”
“Don’t poke at it.”
“What?” I asked. “What did the police keep saying?”
“I think,” Daniel said, calmly but finally, turning in his chair to look at Justin, “that we should leave it at that.”
Another silence, less comfortable this time. Rafe’s knife screeched on his plate; Justin winced; Abby reached for the pepper shaker, gave it a hard tap on the table and shook it briskly.
“The police asked,” Daniel said suddenly, glancing up at me over his glass, “whether you kept a diary or a date book, anything along those lines. I thought it was best for us to say no.”
Diary?
“Dead right,” I said. “I don’t want them looking through my stuff.”
“They already did,” Abby said. “Sorry. They searched your room.”
“Ah, for fuck’s sake,” I said, indignant. “Why didn’t you stop them?”
“We didn’t get the sense it was optional,” Rafe said dryly.
“What if I’d had love letters, or-or stud-muffin porn, or something private?”
“Presumably that’s exactly what they were looking for.”
“They were fascinating, actually,” Daniel said. “The police. Most of them seemed utterly uninterested: all routine. I would have loved to watch them do the search, but I don’t think it would have been a good idea to ask.”
“They didn’t get what they were after, anyway,” I said with satisfaction. “Where is it, Daniel?”
“I have no idea,” Daniel said, mildly surprised. “Wherever you keep it, I assume,” and he went back to his steak.
The guys cleared the plates away; Abby and I sat at the table, smoking, in a silence that was starting to feel companionable. I heard someone doing something in the sitting room, hidden behind wide sliding double doors, and the smell of wood smoke seeped out to us. “Peaceful one tonight?” Abby asked, watching me over her cigarette. “Just read?”
After dinner was their free time: cards, music, reading, talking, slowly knocking the house into shape. Reading sounded like the easiest option by about a mile. “Perfect,” I said. “I’ve got loads of thesis catching-up to do.”
“Relax,” Abby said-that small one-sided smile again. “You’re only just home. You’ve got all the time in the world.” She stubbed out her smoke and threw open the sliding doors.
The sitting room was huge and, unexpectedly, wonderful. The photos had caught only the shabbiness, missed the atmosphere altogether. High ceiling, with moldings along the edges; wide floorboards, unvarnished and lumpy; horrible flowered wallpaper, peeling in patches to show the old layers underneath-rose and gold stripes, a dull cream-colored sheen like silk. The furniture was mismatched and ancient: a scuffed card table in inlaid rosewood, faded brocade armchairs, a long uncomfortable-looking sofa, bookshelves jammed with tattered leather covers and bright paperbacks. There was no overhead light, just standing lamps and a wood fire crackling in a massive wrought-iron fireplace, throwing wild shadows scudding among the cobwebs in the high corners. The room was a mess, and I fell in love with it before I was through the doorway.
The armchairs looked cozy and I was right on the edge of heading for one of them when my mind slammed on the brakes, hard. I could hear my heart. I had no idea where I was supposed to sit; my head had gone blank. The food, the easy slagging, the comfortable silence with Abby: I had relaxed.
“Back in a sec,” I said, and hid in the bathroom to let the others narrow things down by taking their places, and to let my knees stop shaking. By the time I could breathe right, my brain had come out of neutral and I knew where my seat was: a low Victorian nursing chair to one side of the fireplace. Frank had shown me photos by the handful. I had known that.
It would have been that easy: sitting down in the wrong chair. Barely four hours.
Justin glanced up, with a faint worried furrow between his eyebrows, when I went back into the sitting room, but nobody said anything. My books were spread out on a low table by my chair: thick historical references, a dog-eared copy of Jane Eyre open face-down across a lined notepad, a yellowing pulp novel called She Dressed to Kill by Rip Corelli-presumably non-thesis-related, although who knew-with a cover picture of a pneumatic lady wearing a slit skirt and a gun in her garter (“She drew men like honey draws flies… and then she swatted them!”). My pen-a blue Biro, the end covered with toothmarks-was still where I had put it down midsentence, that Wednesday night.
I watched the others over my book for any signs of edginess, but they had all settled to reading with an instant, trained concentration that was almost intimidating. Abby, in an armchair with her feet up on a little embroidered footstool-her restoration project, probably-flipped pages briskly and twisted a lock of hair round her finger. Rafe sat across the fire from me in the other armchair; every now and then he put his book down and leaned forwards to poke the fire or add another chunk of wood. Justin lay on the sofa with his notepad propped on his chest, scribbling, occasionally murmuring something or huffing to himself or clicking his tongue disapprovingly. There was a frayed tapestry of a hunting scene on the wall behind him; he should have looked incongruous beneath it, with his corduroys and his little rimless glasses, but somehow he didn’t, not at all. Daniel sat at the card table, his dark head bent under the glow of a tall lamp, only moving to deliberately, unhurriedly turn a page. The heavy green velvet curtains were open and I imagined how we would look, to a watcher in the dark garden beyond; how securely wrapped in our firelight and concentration; how bright and tranquil, like something from a dream. For a sharp, dizzying second I envied Lexie Madison.
Daniel felt me watching; he lifted his head and smiled at me, across the table. It was the first time I’d seen him smile, and it had an immense, grave sweetness to it. Then he bent his head over his book again.
