in-law’s voice, Juliet guessed he’d launched into one of his interminable golf stories. Sam sat on the floor near the ultra realistic gas fi re, silently picking at one of his shoelaces. And Lally . . . Lally had been curled at her father’s knee, tilting her head so that he could stroke her hair.
Then Caspar had looked up and met her eyes, and the venom in his glance struck Juliet like a physical blow. Suddenly her head swam and her heart pounded. She couldn’t seem to move air into her lungs. Sweat broke out on her face and arms, trickled down between her shoulder blades.
“Sorry,” she’d mumbled desperately. “Left something. In the car.
Back in a tick.” She glimpsed their white, startled faces, turning towards her like sea anemones moving in an ocean current, then she was out the door and down the stairs, gulping clean cold air as she ran.
When she’d reached the car, she’d leaned against it, fists pressed to her heaving chest. Something sharp jabbed her palm, and looking down, she realized that she had somehow, miraculously, snatched up her keys as she ran out the door. They had come in her aging Vauxhall Vectra, thank God, as Caspar’s little sports model didn’t have room for the kids, and when Juliet unlocked the door and slipped into the driver’s seat, it felt like a safe haven.
The car’s interior was warm from the sun, and at first she only meant to sit there until her heart slowed and her head cleared. Then it occurred to her that someone might come after her, and she knew she couldn’t face anyone quite yet, not even her children, not until she pulled herself together.
So she had driven away, but she hadn’t pulled herself together, even now, sitting in an unfamiliar street outside a house where some other family would be having their Christmas dinner. She swallowed hard against the nausea rising again in her throat. The image of Lally at her father’s knee, looking at her with alien, sullen eyes, seemed frozen in her mind.
Despair clutched at her. She would lose her children if she didn’t get out of this marriage; already Lally was slipping away. Caspar was poisoning her children against her, as Piers had poisoned him, and she felt powerless to stop it. Caspar was weak, susceptible to suggestion, but Piers . . . she knew now what Piers was, she had seen what lurked beneath the charm, and that had been her downfall. Hatred surged through her, corrosive and searing as acid. Her body jerked from the force of it, and for a moment her heart seemed to squeeze to a stop.
But then, slowly, she sank back into her seat. Calm washed through her and everything took on an unexpected clarity. She touched the keys dangling from the ignition with fingertips that felt sensitive as a newborn’s.
Caspar was stranded in Audlem, until he had to humiliate himself by begging a ride home from his parents. Piers, as Caspar had told her repeatedly, was spending the day in Chester with his father, a retired barrister. She had the keys to the office, and the freedom to do whatever she pleased, unobserved.
It was time she brought Piers Dutton to account.
The town center was deserted, the shops and cafes tightly, protectively, shut. It was an illustrator’s dream, gilded by the afternoon
sun, the roofs of the buildings still bearing a confectioners’-sugar dusting of snow, unmarred by the messy unpredictability of human subjects.
Juliet passed the empty space just in front of Newcombe and Dutton, cautiously parking a few streets away. She’d left without her coat, and as she made her way back to Monk’s Lane, she soon discovered that the afternoon’s clear golden light was deceptive. The cold bit through her thin blouse, and by the time she reached the office, her teeth were chattering. She chafed her hands together, trying to warm them enough to fumble the key into the lock.
Once inside, she stood, shivering with more than cold. She could hear her blood pounding in her ears, feel her heart thudding against the wall of her chest as if she’d been running a marathon.
Light filtered in through the partially opened blinds, and a lamp had been left burning on the credenza against the back wall of the reception area. The space felt ominously still, and smelled faintly of men’s aftershave and leather furniture. How odd that she’d never noticed the scent before—had Piers’s presence become stronger in her absence?
She told herself not to be silly—she’d been in the office alone countless times and nothing was different. Taking a steadying breath, she reached back and locked the door. No sense in inviting someone to wander in unexpectedly.
It suddenly occurred to Juliet that she was breaking the law.
What would her brother think of that? The idea made her smile, and she felt suddenly better.
After considering for a moment, she went to what
She’d begun to feel an unexpected excitement, an exhilarating pulse in her veins, dimly recalled from childhood when she and Duncan had embarked on some sort of mischief.
Caspar’s office was to the right, Piers’s to the left. Juliet turned left without the least hesitation.
“She’s lovely, your boat,” Kincaid called to the blond woman as he nodded at the long, graceful lines of the
For an instant, her face held the wariness he’d glimpsed the night before. But as she studied them, something in her features softened and she said, “Yes. Although it was years ago. But I always liked the idea of Shangri-La.”
“Weren’t you in church last night?” asked Kit, surprising Kincaid, who hadn’t realized anyone else in the family had noticed this rather odd but striking woman. It was unlike Kit to speak up so quickly to a stranger.
“At St. Mary’s? Yes, I was.” The woman glanced at Kincaid and inclined her head almost imperceptibly, as if acknowledging their brief rapport. “It was a lovely service. But you’re accustomed to it, I’m sure.” There was something in her tone that Kincaid couldn’t quite pin down—envy, perhaps?
“We’re just visiting for the holidays,” he told her. “But I grew up here. Not much has changed.”
She had left the double cabin doors ajar, and Kincaid became aware that Kit was leaning to one side, trying to peer inside the boat.
As he put a hand on the boy’s shoulder, preparing to move him on before they infringed on the woman’s privacy any further, Kit said,
“Do you live on your boat, then?” His face was alight with interest.
“Kit, that’s really none of our business,” Kincaid said hurriedly.
He gave his son’s shoulder a squeeze, turning him back towards the towpath, and felt the reassuring solidity of muscle and bone beneath s
the padded anorak. To the woman, he added, “Sorry. We’d better be off—”
“No, it’s all right.” She smiled, erasing some of the lines in her face, and seemed to reach a decision. “Yes, I do live aboard. Would you like to see the boat? My name’s Annie, by the way. Annie Lebow.”
Kincaid introduced himself and Kit, adding, “Are you certain? If it’s an imposition—”
“No, really, it’s all right. It’s nice of you to ask. Sometimes it’s a bit like living in a fishbowl. People peer in your windows from the towpath without so much as a by-your- leave. Have you ever been on a narrowboat before?” she asked Kit.
“No, but I’ve seen them. The Grand Union Canal runs right behind the supermarket where we shop at home. In London,” he added, flushing a little at her attention. “Notting Hill. The supermarket’s across the canal from Kensal Green Cemetery.”
“Oh, yes.” Annie Lebow nodded in recognition. “The Paddington Branch. A nice mooring spot. I stayed there for a few weeks once.”
“On this boat? You took this boat all the way to London?”
“We’ve covered a good part of England, the
Kincaid let Kit climb aboard first, noticing the length of the boy’s legs as he stepped up from the towpath and jumped easily into the well deck. When had he grown so tall?
