case?”
He could see no need for secrecy, as what little he knew would be public knowledge as soon as the local presses recovered from their Christmas hiatus. So he told her what they had found, and where, ending by saying, “I’m just on my way to Leighton for the postmortem.”
Margaret sat silently, her head bowed, for so long he thought she had lost the drift of the conversation, or perhaps even dozed.
But then she looked up, and he saw that although the lines in her face seemed etched more deeply than before, her eyes gleamed with understanding.
“It was an act of desperation,” she said softly. “Do you see? Whoever buried that child suffered an unthinkable grief.”
The dream began, as it always did, with Kit running through the Cambridgeshire cottage in search of his mother. He felt an increasing sense of urgency, but the rooms seemed to elongate ahead of him, as if he’d fallen into the wrong end of a telescope. He ran faster, his panic mounting as the rooms seemed to stretch into tunnels.
Suddenly the kitchen door appeared before him. He stopped, his chest aching, seized by a dread that froze his fingers even as he reached for the doorknob. His mother needed him, he told himself, but his hand felt leaden, his feet rooted to the floor. His mother needed him, he knew that, but he couldn’t make himself go farther.
Then, before he could back away, the door swung open of its own accord. Kit swayed as he saw the room before him. The floor and walls curved upwards like the sides of a bowl, and at the bottom lay his mother. She lay on her side, her knees drawn up, her head resting on one arm, as if she had just lain down for a nap.
It’s a cradle, he thought, the room was her cradle and it had rocked her to sleep. He would wake her. She was depending on him to wake her and he mustn’t fail.
But when he knelt beside her and brushed back the fine fair hair that had fallen across her face like a veil, he found that her skin was as blue as glacier ice, and felt as cold to the touch. The sound of his own scream echoed in his head.
Kit’s eyes sprang open and he kicked and pummeled the bedclothes as if he could free himself from the nightmare’s grip. As the cold air hit his sweat-soaked T-shirt, he shivered convulsively and came fully awake. For a moment, the dream’s disorientation continued, then he realized that not only was he not in the Grantchester cottage where he had grown up, but he wasn’t in his room in the
Notting Hill house, either. He was in Nantwich, at his grandparents’, in Duncan’s old room.
Jerking himself upright, he peered at Toby, still sleeping soundly in the next bed. Good. That meant he hadn’t screamed aloud. He didn’t want to think of the humiliation if he’d brought the whole bloody house running. He wiped his still-damp face with the corner of the duvet and considered the slice of light showing through the gap in the curtains. It seemed to be morning, but there was no sound of movement in the house, and Tess still slept curled in a hairy ball at his feet. Beside her lay a dark oblong. Squinting, Kit edged his foot closer to the object, until he could feel its weight and its odd-shaped lumps. His sudden spurt of fear resided and he felt an idiot.
It was a stocking. Now he saw that there was one across the foot of Toby’s bed as well. Someone had come in while they slept and left them. It was Christmas.
He started to reach for the stocking, but his hand trembled. He lay back, pulling the duvet up to his chin. The dream was still too close.
The wave of homesickness that swept over him was so intense that he bit back a groan. He wanted to be in London, in his own room, in his own bed, with familiar sounds and smells drifting up the stairs from the kitchen. Sid, their black cat, would nose open the door and stalk across the room with his tail waving, his way of telling Kit it was time to get up. Kit would go down and help with preparing the Christmas dinner, and their friends Wesley and Otto would drop by to exchange gifts while Gemma played the piano . . .
As hard as Kit tried to sustain it, the comforting fantasy evaporated. He knew too well that being home wouldn’t have stopped the dream—hadn’t stopped it these past few months. It had come often, in various guises, in the weeks after his mother’s death. Then the dream had faded and he had begun to hope it had gone for good, that he could tuck it away along with the images he couldn’t bear to remember.
But it had returned, in isolated snatches at first, then with more
detail and greater regularity. Now he counted the nights he
To distract himself, he looked round the room. Toby had pulled the covers up over his face, but a cowlick of blond hair rose from the top of the duvet like a feather, and Kit was glad of his sleeping presence.
It was a calm room, with French-blue walls and white trim. Kit wondered if it had looked this way when it had been his dad’s. There were a few framed prints of famous locomotives, but most of the available wall space was taken up by bookcases. He’d had a quick look at the titles the night before. There was science fi ction, fantasy, detective stories, as well as childhood classics he recognized, like Arthur Ransome’s
Tess raised her head and yawned, showing her small pink tongue, then stretched and padded up the duvet to settle next to his side.
Freeing an arm from the covers to stroke her, Kit let his mind wander further. What had his dad been like when he’d slept in this room at thirteen? Had he known what he wanted to do with his life? Had he kept secrets from his parents, and got in trouble for it? Had there been a girl, like Lally?
But that idea made him flinch, and his hand fell still on the dog’s flank. He shouldn’t even be thinking of Lally that way. It was wrong.
She was his cousin, and his face flamed at the thought of anyone in the family discovering how he felt.
Besides, last night he’d realized what a fool he’d made of himself when he’d met Leo Dutton.
Things had started to go wrong after they’d got to Lally’s house.
They’d been in Sam’s room, admiring the younger boy’s collection
of Star Wars action figures with varying degrees of enthusiasm, when Lally had heard the sound of the front door.
“My dad,” she’d said, slipping from the room with the quickness of anticipation. Then Kit had heard raised voices, the words indistinguishable, and a few moments later Lally had come back in, much more slowly, her face shuttered.
With the same sort of sibling radar Kit sometimes experienced with Toby, Sam stopped in the midst of demonstrating an X-wing fighter and looked questioningly at his sister.
“Mum and Dad are having a row.” Lally had shrugged, as if it didn’t matter, and perched nonchalantly on the edge of Sam’s bed.
But after that there had been an edginess to the atmosphere and Lally had begun to tease her brother so mercilessly that Kit found himself coming to the younger boy’s defense.
Dinner was even worse. It was a relief when the meal was over and Lally pulled him aside, whispering, “Come on. We’ll say we’re going early to save seats at the church, but we’ll have time to have a smoke.”
“Smoke?” Kit said, before he could think to hide his surprise.
“Don’t sound so shocked.” Lally’s conspiratorial little smile turned to a pout. “Don’t tell me you don’t have a fag now and then.”
“No,” he said honestly. “I don’t like it.” He couldn’t tell her that the smell reminded him of his grandmother Eugenia, and made him feel physically ill.
Lally regarded him coolly. “Well, you can do what you want, as long as you’re not a telltale. Are you game?”
“Yes, okay,” he’d agreed, hoping that once they were away from the house she wouldn’t be so prickly. To his surprise, Sam had not asked to go with them, but had given Lally a look Kit couldn’t
fathom.
He had little opportunity to enjoy his time alone with Lally, however, as her mum had given her a package of leftover food to deliver to an elderly neighbor, and by the time the task had been
accomplished, she’d hurried him down the dark path into the town.
“I promised to meet a friend at the Crown—that’s the old coaching inn,” she explained as they reached the
