‘Look what I found,’ said Jacqui, triumphantly carrying the ghetto blaster. Kite hoped she didn’t trip and fall in the water or accidentally drop the stereo and smash it on the concrete paving.
‘At least we’ll have music down here,’ Xavier said. ‘How’s the temperature?’
Martha was nowhere to be seen. Kite assumed she was taking photographs in the garden. He took off his T-shirt and walked to the edge of the pool, bending down to stick his hand in the water. The next thing he knew Xavier had pushed him and Kite was surfacing to uproarious laughter.
‘Right!’ he shouted and sprung out of the water, chasing the cackling Xavier around the edge of the deep end, only to collide with Martha as she emerged from the hut.
‘Shit, sorry,’ he said, grabbing her shoulders to halt his momentum yet covering her in droplets of cold water.
‘That’s OK,’ she replied nonchalantly and dived into the pool with the ease and grace of a kingfisher. Kite had a nose full of her perfume, the astonishing sensation of her skin on the tips of his fingers. He caught up with Xavier only to see brother and sister jump into the water simultaneously. Kite bombed in to join them. For the next twenty minutes he showed off in front of Martha, beating Xavier in a swimming race, holding his breath underwater for two minutes, ducking him from behind whenever his friend wasn’t looking. His exploits seemed to have no effect on her. Martha mostly chatted to Jacqui and appeared to ignore him. Eventually Rosamund emerged from the garden, keeping her Paris salon haircut bone-dry as she swam an elegant, upright breaststroke. Kite sat on the steps of the pool listening to a Neil Young cassette which Xavier had grabbed from the house. Waiting for Luc to come to the pool was like waiting for a train that would never come. Kite had to stop himself looking up at the house every time he heard movement in the garden.
Finally, at around six-fifteen, Xavier’s father emerged in a pair of dark red Speedos and dived in with an almighty patriarchal splash. Kite instantly stood up, announced that he was going to the house, and prayed that nobody would follow him. To his relief, both Xavier and Jacqui seemed keen to join their father in the pool. Rosamund was happily talking to Martha about photography.
‘Can you bring more cigarettes?’ Xavier called out.
‘Sure,’ Kite replied.
As soon as he was past the palm tree, he ran along the narrow paths of the garden towards the rear of the house. At the veranda, he took off his espadrilles and wiped his feet on the mat. The house was still and silent. Kite walked quickly through the sitting room to the hall, bounded up the stairs two at a time, checked that each of the bedrooms on the first floor was empty. Then he went into his room and unplugged the lamp. Still wearing his damp swimming shorts, he carried it up the narrow staircase to the smaller of the two attic bedrooms and placed it on the floor. He unplugged the lamp behind the door in Eskandarian’s makeshift office and carried it out onto the landing. Having plugged in the modified lamp, he left the room as he had otherwise found it.
A noise below. Kite stopped moving. As noiselessly as possible, he picked up the lamp from the landing and darted into the bathroom. Somebody was walking up the stairs. He could lock the door and pretend to be using the toilet, hoping that whoever was coming up wouldn’t hear him. The person had reached the landing. Kite had no choice other than to close the door and slide the lock as deliberately as possible. He couldn’t hide. It would be disastrous to be caught sneaking around.
‘Bonjour?’
A woman’s voice, tentative and confused. Hélène. There was a low glass table beside the bathroom window with a small plastic tray on it. Kite put the lamp on the tray and allowed the flex to fall behind the table so that if the housekeeper came in she might not notice that the lamp was out of place. He thought of Strawson testing him in the Churchill bathroom. This was a different order of anxiety.
‘Oui?’ he said.
‘Monsieur Bonnard?’
‘No, it’s Lachlan. Xavier’s friend,’ Kite replied in French. ‘I’m just using the bathroom.’
Hélène said something in response that Kite could not understand. He heard her moving around in the office. He prayed that she would not notice the switched lamp. A woman like that, who had worked in the house for so long, would surely know every piece of furniture in every room. If the Bonnard family now came back to find Kite trapped in the bathroom, with a lamp missing from his bedroom and another mysteriously moved to the attic, it would take a miracle of quick thinking to dig himself out of trouble.
Relax, he told himself. Be cool. He remembered conversations with Peele about controlling his breathing and took a deep breath through his nose. He continued to listen as Hélène moved around the office. Was she putting sheets on the unmade bed? That would take at least five minutes. Christ, maybe she was going to sweep the floors and clean the windows? Kite knew that he should make some noise and lifted
