He wasn’t expecting the question, for he had suddenly seemed unnerved, stammering hesitantly, before finally saying, ‘I talk to lots of people.’
Including Mossad, Liz concluded, making a mental note of this. If he was talking to Mossad as well as MI6, God knows who else he knew in the intelligence world. Including the Syrians, perhaps.
There’d been something else strange too. They’d been sitting at the kitchen table and suddenly without warning or explanation, Marcham had got up and firmly shut the door to his bedroom. He hadn’t wanted her to see inside, not realising of course that she already had. What was he trying to hide from her? There was nothing remarkable in there that she could remember, except perhaps the crucifix on the wall. But what was wrong with that?
There was something not quite right about the man. She felt it instinctively. Something he wasn’t saying. Something worth exploring further. I’ll think about it after the weekend, she thought. First I need to concentrate on Mother and this Edward character.
As she came in through the back door of Bowerbridge she was met with a strong smell of cooking. Curry, with a spicy tang that made her hungry. What was her mother up to? She was a competent cook, but old-fashioned and very English. Stews, soups, shepherd’s pie, homemade fishcakes, a Sunday roast – these were her standard dishes. Now, on the stove a large casserole was bubbling, source of the delicious smell. Rice sat in a measuring cup, waiting for a saucepan to boil. On the table there was a half-drunk glass of white wine, and a copy of the
‘You must be Liz,’ said a voice, and she looked up as a man entered from the direction of the drawing room. He was tall and slim, with tidy greying hair and thin-framed glasses. He had a long, sunburned face with high cheekbones and friendly eyes, and was wearing a beige jumper and dark corduroy trousers.
‘I’m Edward,’ he said, extending a hand. ‘I’m afraid your mother’s been delayed at the nursery.’
‘Nice to meet you,’ said Liz, thinking he didn’t look at all how she had expected. No tweeds, no pipe, no bufferish moustache.
‘I hope you like curry.’ He sniffed the air. ‘A bit overpowering, I’m afraid.’ He grinned disarmingly, and Liz found herself grinning back.
‘I’ll just take my bag upstairs,’ she said.
Up in her room, Liz put her bag down and looked out of the window at the tulip tree, its flowers over now at this late stage of the summer; the tree itself was almost the height of the house. They had grown up together, she thought. Her father had planted the tree when her mother had been pregnant with Liz.
She looked around at her bedroom, unchanged since she was a little girl. There was a watercolour on the wall of the Nadder River, painted by her father, a keen naturalist who had fished the river every summer. Liz would often accompany him, and he’d taught her how to manage a rod and the names of flowers and trees and birds. He’d have been sad that she had ended up living in London.
Next to the painting was a framed photograph of Liz, aged nine, sitting on Ziggy, her pony, wearing a black velvet riding hat and smiling toothily for the camera. Liz laughed at the sight of her younger version’s pig-tails, and remembered how bad-tempered Ziggy had been. Once he’d even bitten the riding instructor.
She unpacked quickly and changed out of her office clothes into jeans and a T-shirt. Before she went down, she took a quick peek in her mother’s room. She was expecting the worst: Edward’s brushes on the dressing table, a trouser press in one corner. But it looked unchanged. And across the landing in the spare room, she saw a suitcase next to the bed. Edward’s, still unpacked. He must have just arrived today, she realised, remembering he lived in London. Perhaps he hadn’t moved in after all.
She went downstairs, noticing on her way through the living room a framed photograph on one of the side tables. It showed a posed group of Ghurkhas, wearing dress uniform and sitting in three neat rows, their bayoneted rifles held upright. Two English officers were at the end of the front row, presumably their commanding officers. One looked like a younger version of Edward.
‘There’s an open bottle of Sancerre in the fridge,’ Edward declared when she joined him in the kitchen. She poured herself a glass and sat down at the table, while he bustled about the stove.
‘You’ve had some sun, I see,’ Liz ventured, feeling pasty and pale by comparison.
‘Comes with the job.’
‘Are you still in the army?’ asked Liz with surprise.
‘No, no. They packed me off in ’99. I work for a charity now; we help the blind in developing countries. At least we try to help them – you wouldn’t think politics could get in the way of something so straightforward, but it does. I travel a fair amount because of it – India, Africa once in a while. Funny how people think if you’ve got a tan you must have been lolling about in a deckchair in the Bahamas. Sadly not.’
‘I saw the photo in the next room.’
‘Ah,’ he said, looking slightly embarrassed. ‘I brought it down to show your mother. She insisted on seeing a picture of me in uniform.’
‘Were you with the Gurkhas for long?’
‘Thirty years,’ he said, with a touch of pride. ‘Very fine soldiers,’ he added quietly.
‘You must have got around a bit,’ said Liz, sipping her wine, which was deliciously dry and cold. Here we go, thought Liz: tales of Aden and derring-do. She wished her mother would hurry up.
‘A bit,’ he said. ‘The Falklands, the first Gulf War, six months in Kosovo I’d sooner forget.’
But that was all he said. Liz gratefully noted how adroitly he changed the subject, asking her where she lived in London. Within minutes Liz found to her surprise that she was telling him all about her flat in Kentish Town, when she’d bought it, how she’d done it up, what she still had to do to it. He was a sympathetic listener, interjecting only occasionally, though at one point he made Liz laugh out loud with an account of living in a leaky tent while on manoeuvres in a Belize rainforest.
The ice was broken, and though Liz sternly reminded herself to reserve judgement, they continued to talk about all sorts of things, including music, and she saw Edward’s face light up as he described a Barenboim concert he’d been to recently at the Barbican. They were talking about acoustics, of all things, when Susan Carlyle came through the back door, a bunch of freshly cut flowers in her arms and a look of relief on her face to find the two of them chatting.
They had supper in the kitchen, then sat together in the sitting room, reading and listening to Mozart. By ten, Liz found herself stifling a yawn. ‘I’m for bed,’ she declared. ‘Is there much to do tomorrow to get ready for the party?’
Susan shook her head. ‘All in hand, dear. Thanks to Edward.’
Upstairs Liz fell quickly into a light sleep, then woke up as her mother and Edward came up the stairs. Doors closed, another opened; Liz gave up trying to decipher what was going on, and this time fell soundly asleep.
In the morning she drove into Stockbridge, having established that there really wasn’t anything she could do to help. When she came back her mother was at the nursery, but Edward was busy – the wine had arrived, and he’d put a clean tablecloth on the dining-room table, vacuumed the sitting room and dusted. My God, thought Liz, instead of the Colonel Blimp she’d been expecting, Edward was turning out to be a New Man.
The party was a success, full of long-standing friends of her mother’s, most of whom seemed to know Edward already. There had been a few new faces, and even someone Liz’s age – Simon Lawrence, who owned an organic farm nearby. They’d been at school together, but Liz hadn’t seen him in almost twenty years. He’d grown immensely tall, but still had the apple-cheeked fresh face she remembered.
‘Hello Liz,’ he’d said shyly. ‘Do you remember me?’
‘How could I forget you, Simon?’ she declared with a laugh. ‘You pushed me into Skinner’s pond the summer I turned fourteen.’
They’d chatted for half an hour, and when he’d left Simon asked for her number in London. ‘I try and avoid the place as a rule,’ he confessed cheerfully, ‘but it would be lovely to see you again.’
On Sunday, for once Liz slept very late, and realised work had been taking a physical toll. When she came down to the kitchen Edward was just starting to fix lunch, and declined all offers of help, giving her a welcome cup of coffee and a hot croissant instead. He explained Susan had popped over to the nursery garden for a minute; Sunday was its busiest day.
Liz sat and read papers, noticing a column about the Gleneagles peace conference.
