Kite jogged home, showered and changed into a dark lounge suit, slipping a black wool tie into the side pocket of the jacket. He had only one pair of black shoes in the cottage and they were scuffed and dirty. He spat on the leather, rubbing the shoes with the sweat-soaked T-shirt he had worn on the run before drying them with an old handkerchief he had found in the pocket of the trousers.
‘Classy,’ said Isobel, kissing the top of his head as she passed him on the stairs. She was already dressed, the bump of her pregnancy visible beneath a blue cotton dress.
‘Old army trick,’ Kite replied, remembering his father polishing his shoes in the pantry at the hotel in Scotland, telling tall stories about a deranged sergeant-major at Sandhurst.
‘You were never in the army, were you?’
‘Dad was. They kicked him out.’
‘What for? Having dirty shoes?’
‘Something like that.’
Patrick Kite had died when Kite was eleven years old. Hearing the note change in her husband’s voice, Isobel turned at the bottom of the stairs and smiled up at him with the look of quiet understanding she employed whenever they were confronted by the myriad complications of his past. She knew that when it came to Kite’s father, ‘something like that’ could mean anything – fighting, drinking, even desertion – but did not press him for details. Kite’s long life in the secret world was a place as mysterious and concealed to her as her own background was to him. They had met six years earlier at a party in Stockholm and fallen in love with the tacit understanding that they should avoid mentioning the past as much as possible. For Kite, this was a simple matter of Official Secrecy: he was forbidden to disclose the existence of BOX 88. For Isobel, there were elements of her past – former lovers, former selves, betrayals and mistakes – of which she was ashamed. It made sense that they should both want a clean slate. Isobel had been vetted and cleared to know that Lachlan Kite was an intelligence officer, supposedly working for MI6. Her file sat on a computer, but Kite had never accessed it, both out of respect for Isobel’s privacy and because he did not want to think of her as just another source or asset. They had built a life together separate from the secret world, a life that was as precious to him as the child now growing inside her.
‘Want some breakfast?’ she called out from the kitchen.
‘Don’t worry,’ Kite replied, walking in moments later. ‘I’ll get something on the train. You go to work. You’ll be late.’
‘Sure?’
‘I’m sure.’
He stood behind her and kissed the back of her neck, his hand resting on her stomach.
‘Rambo just kicked,’ she said. ‘You missed it.’
‘Really?’ Kite dropped to his knees in a pantomime of frustration, pressing his ear against Isobel’s belly. He turned to address his unborn child. ‘Hello? Are you there? Do it again!’
Isobel laughed as Kite stood up and grabbed an apple from a bowl. She looked down at her stomach and continued the conversation.
‘Your daddy is crazy,’ she said. ‘But he looks very sexy in his suit.’
‘My whole life was designed so that I don’t have to wear one of these things,’ he said, briefly wrapping his arms around the suit as if it were a straitjacket. He took a carton of grapefruit juice from the fridge and set it on the counter.
‘How was your run?’ she asked.
‘Strange.’ As Kite poured the juice into a glass, biting into the apple, he thought again of Strawson and Eskandarian, of the long-ago summer in France. ‘Whatever the opposite of Zen is, that’s how I’m feeling. It’s the funeral. Can’t get used to the idea that Xav’s gone.’
‘You haven’t told me much about him,’ Isobel replied, picking up her car keys. ‘He was at school with you?’
‘Yes. For a long time he was my closest friend. He was around when I was recruited.’
‘OK.’
Ordinarily, that would have been the end of the conversation, but Kite wanted to tell Isobel at least something about their relationship.
‘The nature of the job took me away from him. Xav went to university, and I was travelling in my twenties. He got into rave, Ecstasy, all that Gen X stuff. Like most of the wealthier boys at Alford, he had a trust fund. Half a million on his twenty-first birthday, a flat in Chelsea, an Audi Quattro for the residents’ parking. No need to work or to prove himself. He just wanted to have a good time. He was wild and he lived well. People loved being around him. From eighteen onwards he was basically an addict spending most of his money on coke, vodka, parties – whatever would make the pain go away. None of us were wise enough to be able to persuade him out of it. He was having too much fun.’
Kite was circling around the truth. He was looking at the woman he loved, trying to explain what had happened, but holding back key facts. To tell the story of the life of Xavier Bonnard was to tell the story of Xavier’s father, Luc, and of Ali Eskandarian, the Iranian businessman who had come between them. Kite could not and would not do this because the story belonged to BOX 88. It was all in the files. One day – when they were old and grey and nodding by the fire – he would tell Isobel the whole story. There were times when he wanted her
