The lab is spotless. The lighting is low tonight, relegated to one corner of the room where Mockett’s most powerful microscope is set. A row of small, glass sample-jars topped with black thermoset caps sit on the work counter, pristinely labelled. Clovis chooses one, holds it up to the light and turns to Mockett, who stands near, worrying a coin in his trouser pocket.
‘Rafe’s?’
‘Yes.’ He nods.
‘Sometimes …’ Clovis slides into the chair at Mockett’s desk and places her elbows on top of his papers, steepling her hands.
‘Sometimes, Mockett, I think your passion to reach our goal is not as great as mine – as once it was.’
‘Oh it is, I assure you, it is. But, as you know, I need to stay on top of the cosmetics or we lose funding.’
‘Yes, so you remind me whenever you’ve made no progress. But I haven’t driven to Limehouse on a freezing night to talk about that. I’m here about the letter. I’m taking your extra phials. You can keep two for your own use and one for experimentation.’
‘One? But, what about the project? I won’t be able to continue much longer with only one phial.’
‘Yes,’ she snaps. ‘You will. Until production is back to normal. Prepare them, please.’
Mockett stares at her. The first time Mockett saw Clovis Fowler he had been stunned by the image of her, the way her beauty commanded attention. It had been a blustery night; a strange tint of pink was cast against the grey, overcast sky, as though the heavens intended to complement her flaming hair. Mockett remembered the moment she turned her deep amber eyes on him, and how astonished he was by the way they perfectly matched the colour of her hair. She unsettled him then, as she does now.
‘Mockett.’
The sheer threat she enforces with a single word from her sensuous mouth discomfits him. As much as he hates these encounters, he simply enjoys looking at her. Though she is as polished as any, there’s still a quality to her that looks as if she belongs in the wild, and he often thinks of her as she was then, when it all began. The way she drank everything in. How hungry she was for the city, how she never shrank from the people, whose customs were so foreign to her. She took quickly to the utterly unique life on the Thames and wholly inhabited this country and its ways. How proud she was to sweep into his place of business with a command of the language. How she held sway over his wife. She turned heads, customers nodded when she entered. He remembers too when she first began to change and sometimes wondered what he’d missed, how he didn’t see it coming. Then the baby arrived, and it was clear to him that its presence seemed to repulse her, until … How very long ago that was.
‘Owen, for God’s sake. Stop leering at me.’
He flinches when she uses his given name.
He carefully wraps nine phials with Styrofoam sheets and places them into bubble pouches, then into a velvet pocket.
‘Can I offer you something? A drink of some kind?’ He feels he has to ask.
‘No. I’ll be on my way.’ She flashes a smile lacking any genuineness and waits for him to open the door.
‘Less cosmetics, more science, Mockett.’
‘It’s only a matter of time, Clovis.’
She stops abruptly at the door, and with her back to him says, ‘How ridiculous you sound.’
He returns to the security screens to make certain that she’s seated in her car. Her legs swing into the front seat and then she pauses to look up at the camera. He recoils from it, forgetting for a moment that she can’t see him. He grabs his phone and waits for Finn to answer.
‘She’s on her way.’
‘Got it. Thanks, Owen.’
Mockett leans back on his work counter for a moment. He thinks about what will happen the day Clovis discovers that he’s no longer keeping his agreement with her. Would it be so bad? She still needs me, he reasons.
He sets the alarms and walks through the dark laboratory, then enters another section of the building in which he’d built a large flat. It makes him feel more secure to sleep on the premises. He opens the fridge, places his hands on a cold beer and mutters to himself that he’ll be sorry tomorrow. Her visit has left him anxious, so tonight, at this moment, he doesn’t care about tomorrow.
CHAPTER FIVE
Clovis arrives home to muffled stirrings: the faint purr of Willa’s sewing machine, Finn’s monotonous tinkering in his workroom. She pauses like an animal hunting in the dark. There is one missing – Rafe has left them again. The empty space in the house holds the residue of his presence.
After the additional phials are hidden with the others in the wall, she changes into a pair of black cashmere lounge pants and a long, flowing silk shirt the colour of a steel smokestack. A pair of velvet slippers cushion her steps back downstairs to the kitchen, where she fills a crystal bowl with mineral water. Holding a white linen cloth under the bowl, she carries it into the sitting room.
In the corner of the room, against the wall nearest the window, is a rare mahogany stand and oblong case. Clovis places the bowl of water on a short shelf built into the
